Long Way Home

by Cameron Douglas

  “The bath salts are fabulous!” Emmanuel says when he calls the next afternoon.

  “Yeah, I thought you would like them, my friend. I thought you would like them…I was so excited for you to take a bath and see for yourself.”

  Emmanuel and I are already talking about our next deal, referring in our communications to money as “paperwork” and crystal as “pastry.” Over the next three days, as I try to set it up, I speak on the phone with Nero more than a dozen times.

  * * *

  —

  A week later, I’m back in New York and there’s a message from the Gansevoort’s head of security, saying there have been noise complaints about my room and to call him. This is strange. Erin and I and the dogs are very quiet. In the afternoon, I call the guy back and he doesn’t pick up, but I say I’m in the room. A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the door. I’m in the bathroom and I tell Erin to answer it and say I’m not here. She opens the door, I hear someone say they want to talk to me, she says I’m out, and they leave. I come out of the bathroom. “Who was that?”

  “The security guy and a couple of other guys.”

  “Did they look like agents?”

  “No, absolutely not. Young kids. I think he was training them.”

  “You’re sure, Erin?”

  “One hundred percent.”

  I call the guy back and say I’m in the room again, and a few minutes later there’s another knock. As soon as I open the door, I see a guy in a polo shirt and a New York Yankees hat who could not look more exactly like the central casting version of a federal agent.

  Three of them, they all look like ex-lacrosse players, grab me by my shirt—I’m wearing an Urban Outfitters T-shirt that reads YES IT’S REALLY ME—and pull me through the doorway. A cop at the end of the hall has his gun drawn. They handcuff me and take me into another room and sit me down. Yankees Hat says, “Cameron”—he pulls out his badge—“I’m not with the LAPD or the NYPD. I’m a Special Agent with the DEA, and you’re jammed up right now. We can do this two ways. You can make a scene, we can throw you in handcuffs, take you out the front door kicking and screaming. Or, for your family’s sake, we can take you out the back way, put you in a car.”

  For my family’s sake. Pappy and Dad enjoy media attention when it suits them, but not the sort my arrest would bring. I say to Yankees Hat, let’s leave the quiet way, and they take me down the back stairwell.

  In their small, unmarked sedan, Yankees Hat, whose name is Justin Meadows, tells me he never thought I’d go for their sting. After nearly three years, this was their Hail Mary. They’d tracked me using my cell phone. At the DEA’s Manhattan field office, five blocks from the Gansevoort, I take off my shirt so they can photograph my torso, and I get a “whoa” or two, as they see the track-mark scarring around my ribcage and armpit.

  * * *

  —

  I’m left alone in a holding cell with a bench, and every couple of hours Justin or his partner, Susan, comes back, looks at me through the bars, and asks if I want to talk.

  “You probably won’t get a life sentence, but I think you’re looking at fifteen years.”

  “Every minute you sit there and think about what to do, the window gets smaller and smaller for us to give you a deal.”

  “If you give us a statement right now, we’re going to let you go home, and we’re going to make sure this never gets out.”

  “Think about your father, your family, your grandfather…How old is he?”

  “Ninety-five percent of the people we arrest cooperate.”

  “This is a one-time-only offer.”

  I don’t say anything. I’m processing what’s happening. I’d been out of the business for two years, and they got me by creating a scenario I wasn’t looking for. How did this happen? Clearly, Emmanuel fucked me. Beyond that, I don’t know what they know. I’m trying to come up with a plan of action.

  Each time they ask if I want to talk, I say no, and they leave, but after several hours of this I’m starting to get really dope-sick. I keep telling them I’m ill and need medicine.

  “Give us a statement, and we can help you out with that.”

  The tone is: We’re on the same team. You fucked yourself, and we want to help you un-fuck yourself.

  My nose is running, my eyes are watering, I’m getting cold sweats, and the diarrhea is beginning. I ask an agent to bring me toilet paper. I know this is about to get a lot worse. An urge begins to rise in me to do just about anything to get out of here. I ask if I can call my father. Justin unlocks my cell door and brings me to a room filled with desks and other agents. He hands me his cell phone and I call Dad, who’s on vacation at his place in Mont-Tremblant, in Quebec.

  “Cameron!” It’s been a while since we talked.

  “Hey, Dad, I’m in a bad situation. I need to know what you think I should do.” I’m just starting to explain when Justin grabs the phone from me and says, “Mr. Douglas, this is Agent Meadows,” and walks away from me, still talking. When he returns, he hands the phone back to me. Dad tells me to do whatever they ask.

  I’m sick and scared, and Dad always knows how to handle tough situations. And so, with Justin and Susan watching, I waive my Miranda rights and write out a statement. I’m thinking this will get me out from under the long sentence looming over my head, but the statement is the confession of an addled mind—a soup of truths, half truths, and fictions.

  They ask who my suppliers were. Gabriel fucked me, so I give them his name and Carlos’s. But I don’t think the DEA can do anything with this. I haven’t done business with the Garcias in years, so there’s no way the DEA will be able to connect them to this latest deal with Emmanuel. Maybe they’ll get a little heat, but that’s it.

  Justin asks who their supplier is, and I make up a name.

  “I know him as Maestro.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I’m being so vague, and making so much up, that I’m sure the DEA won’t be able to arrest anyone.

  The DEA is hitting me with the pitch they hit everyone with to wear down any determination not to cooperate: Someone wore a wire on you. Why should they go free, while you go to prison? So why don’t I just name names and enthusiastically cooperate? 1) There’s a code among criminals, and I believe in it: this is a situation I got myself into, understanding the risks, and I don’t think it’s fair to drag other people into it; 2) I don’t want to give information about some people I genuinely care about, or to live with the weight of knowing I did that to them; 3) If I cooperate with the government, I’ll forfeit a lot of rights, including the right to appeal; 4) I know that the stigma of cooperating will make for a much more difficult prison experience.

  Then Agent Meadows shows me a picture of Maestro, who is actually Nero. “Is this Maestro?” How do they even know about him? Is this a trick? I leap into the void.

  “Nah, that’s not him, I’ve never seen the guy.”

  Agent Meadows takes the picture off the table.

  * * *

  —

  It’s after midnight when they take me out to a car, handcuffed, for the ride to the Downtown Hospital for medical clearance. Along the way, they make good on their promise to help me with my sickness, stopping by the Gansevoort. They’ve called Erin, and she’s waiting outside when we pull up. She hands them the bottle with my Suboxone prescription, but they don’t give it to me yet.

  At the hospital, I’m dry-heaving and have serious diarrhea, and a doctor who diagnoses me with opioid dependence gives me some shots to ease my withdrawal symptoms. He tells the DEA agents that I should continue to take the Suboxone I’ve already been prescribed, and says I should see a doctor in the next two days.

  MCC.

  We drive on to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, beside the federal courthouse at Foley Square, where the car comes to a stop. The agents have left the bottle of Suboxone on the center console, within easy reach, and one of them says, “Do wh
at you need to do, but do it quickly.” Then they step out of the car for a minute to arrange my intake. I’ve never taken Suboxone before and have no sense of its potency. I swallow a handful of the pills.

  Within minutes, I’m delirious. Inside MCC, I still have some tablets in my pocket, but when I reach for them a guard says, “Take your hand out of your fucking pocket.” I hold up two fists, like I’m displaying my biceps, and he says, “Open your fucking hands.” He takes the tablets from me and orders me to undress. As I pull off my clothes, I stumble into a wall. Once I’m completely naked, he has me open my hands again, squat and cough, lift my nut sack, turn my ears out, and run my hands through my hair. Then I’m allowed to put my street clothes back on.

  The on-call psychologist observes me to be “visibly high,” and for tonight, as a precaution, I’m put on suicide watch in a cell with a glass wall. I lie on a mat in a dreamy stupor, and watch shifts of inmates sitting outside the cell, observing me and writing in a notebook.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, before I’m arraigned, I meet briefly with my lawyer, Nick De Feis, referred to Dad by a friend. Nick, who’s in his late forties, is skinny, short, and balding, with the assured demeanor and careful speech of an ex-prosecutor, and mainly defends corporate clients and white-collar criminals. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” Nick says. “Your charges carry a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years. The only way we’re going to get a downward departure from that is if you help them with their case.” This sounds kind of sketchy to me, but I defer to Nick.

  My bail hearing will be closed. Mom is in Spain with her younger kids. She and Dad have signed my $5 million bond, so I can get house arrest, and Dad has arranged to pay for the private security guards required by the court to guard me around the clock. When I go before a magistrate, I’m shivering and can barely stand up. I’m released to home detention and driven by the DEA agents to a townhouse Mom is renting on East Seventy-First. The guards will sleep in a room opposite the bedroom I’m in.

  I’m grateful to be out, but in time I’ll realize the deal was a mistake. The conditions of my house arrest require me to help the government in exactly the way I don’t want to. If I’d just stayed at MCC, I would have made regular bail in a matter of two or three days, and in the meantime I’d have been given methadone instead of tearing my hair out from heroin withdrawal.

  * * *

  —

  Nick comes to the house. I’ve emerged from my haze and have more clarity, and I say, “Listen, that statement I gave the DEA has to be worthless. I was fucked up on heroin and then going through withdrawal. I want that thrown out and to start from square one.”

  “That’s not going to wash,” Nick says. “You already agreed to this deal, and they have you dead to rights.” The prosecutors are claiming they have evidence that I sold over 100 kilos of drugs. Nick explains the drug conspiracy laws, which maybe I should have boned up on earlier, considering that they were the ones I was breaking. I’m shocked to learn that testimony alone, from witnesses looking to save their own skin, can mean the difference between conviction and acquittal. The sentencing guidelines call for 120 months to life behind bars. If I plead guilty and give the prosecutors “substantial assistance,” I’ll give up my right to an appeal, but Nick can make a strong case for less time in prison.

  I’m coasting along on the decisions of others. All I can think about is alleviating the all-encompassing pain of my dope sickness.

  * * *

  —

  The DEA has warned Erin that she can’t tell anyone, including her family, what has happened. She’s alone at the Gansevoort, and the agents ask her if she wants to see me. They pick her up at the hotel and drive her over. She’s bawling when she enters. We hug, and I ask her what’s wrong, but she won’t say. She just keeps bawling as we hang out with the agents near us, and then I whisper, “Did you bring negra?”

  She says, “Didn’t they give you your Suboxone?”

  She had told them, the night of my arrest, that I needed it, but other than the handful of pills before my intake at MCC, they never gave it to me. At this point, I’m extremely sick. Erin’s still crying when she leaves, and as soon as she gets back to the Gansevoort, we talk on Skype. She tells me that the agents had told her, on the drive to see me, that they think her being in the city is a distraction for me. We talk about going to City Hall and getting married so she’ll have the right to see me.

  * * *

  —

  At Mom’s, as I’m foraging for a match to light a cigarette, I luck out and discover a couple of roaches in a matchbox, left behind by houseguests. I take them into the bathroom and smoke them next to an open window, trying to let as little smoke into the house as possible.

  Mom is still in Spain, and Dad is in Canada. Even if they were here, they couldn’t do anything to help me address my biggest problem, which is trying to end the suffering of withdrawal from my five-year-old heroin habit. The only person I want to talk to on the phone is Erin, because she’s the one person who might be able to help alleviate the pain.

  Erin and I leave the Skype window open, so there’s a two-way video feed between us at all times. We watch TV together. I watch the dogs running around the hotel room, and they hear my voice when I say, “I’m right here.” Sometimes, during the night, I’ll wake up and say, “Erin?” and if she doesn’t answer, I say it more insistently and wake her up, and when she says, “Cameron,” I can fall back asleep. It’s hard knowing she has everything I want: freedom, privacy, drugs.

  * * *

  —

  A psychiatrist named Robert Millman visits me at the house and writes me a new prescription for Suboxone, but the DEA still doesn’t fill it. Erin calls Dr. Millman, and Nick, and the DEA, telling them I need my Suboxone. The agents tell her they think I’m more clearheaded without it.

  By now, I’ve seen that friends are permitted to bring me clothes, and a couple of days later Erin comes to the house and leaves a bag of miscellaneous items for me—toiletries, snacks, clothing—with the security guard. She’s put some bindles of heroin in a hidden pocket near the crotch of a pair of my pants, and sewn it shut, but as soon as she drops the bag off, the guards take the pants to the laundry room. I go in there to try to retrieve them, and a guard says, “What are you doing?” I say I’m on my way to the kitchen, and I’m just getting a pair of pants. “Nah,” he says. “They all need to be washed first.” When the pants are delivered to me later, the glassines are all empty. On Skype, I tell Erin what happened.

  She tries again. This time, she puts the cheeva in an electric toothbrush and drops it off when I’m at a court hearing. When I get back to the house, I know what I’m looking for. In the battery compartment, I find ten envelopes of heroin. It’s not enough to get me high, but at least it keeps the sickness at bay.

  * * *

  —

  A few days later, on Skype, I tell Erin, “I need you to bring me another toothbrush.” She goes to Duane Reade, buys another Sonicare, opens the battery compartment, and stuffs in as many glassines as will fit: nineteen. Then she reseals the toothbrush’s clamshell packaging so it looks unopened, and drops off the toothbrush at Mom’s house in a black bag. When I come back from another court hearing, a female guard says to me, “Your girlfriend seems pretty worried about your oral hygiene. She brought you a second toothbrush.” It’s the same guard who received the first one.

  I shrug and say, “Yeah, the other one broke.”

  “We’re going to take a look at it,” she says.

  A few minutes later she returns. “We found something that looks like heroin in it. We let the cops know.”

  Fuck.

  Agent Meadows arrives and field-tests it. Seven grams of heroin. “I had no idea that was there,” I say. “My friend Patrick gave Erin that bag to bring over. He must have put it in there.”

  “We’re taking you in,” Justin says.

  I say I just need to change out of my court
clothes. I tell Erin on Skype to tell the DEA that she was just dropping off a bag that Patrick gave her. “I’ve got to go,” I say.

  22

  2009: Crazy Legs

  At MCC, I’m given an orange jumpsuit to put on. Twelve brutalist stories of hulking brown ugliness, MCC holds nearly eight hundred inmates, all waiting to be tried or sentenced or to testify in other people’s cases. Since it’s a place for pretrial detention, it’s a maximum-security facility, with some of the most depraved and violent prisoners from the most dangerous penitentiaries housed alongside people like me. Or like Erin, who a few hours after I was brought back here is arrested, sweating and shaking, at the Gansevoort. In the hotel room, the DEA found empty glassines and glassines containing small amounts of heroin, marijuana, and crystal meth. I feel terrible for Erin, and I’m also scared: I know the prosecutors are going to try to pull every piece of information they can out of her, which is going to jeopardize my strategy of feeding vague, incomplete, and false information to them.

  Everyone starts out at MCC in the Special Housing Unit on 9S—ninth floor, south wing—known colloquially as the SHU, or solitary. Except that solitary confinement is no longer solitary, in many cases. As a result of prison overcrowding, the practice of double-celling, or confining two inmates in one cell, has become rampant. My cell is a tiny cement box with a bunk bed, a metal toilet connected to a small sink, a steel door, and a narrow opaque window near the ceiling that reveals only whether it’s light or dark outside. My cellmate, Juan, is a friendly guy from the Bronx who’s in for some drug-related crime or other.