by Rob Sedgwick
this is a genuine rare bird book
Rare Bird Books
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Copyright © 2021 by Rob Sedgwick
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Set in Dante
epub isbn: 9781644282069
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sedgwick, Rob, 1961- author.
Title: Bob goes to jail / by Rob Sedgwick.
Description: Los Angeles, CA : Rare Bird Books, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013436 | ISBN 9781644281086 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Sedgwick, Rob, 1961- | Drug dealers—United
States—Biography. | Actors—United States—Biography. | Drug
abuse—United States.
Classification: LCC HV5805.S396 A3 2020 | DDC 364.1/77092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013436
For Caleb, Patrick, Bowie, Morgan, Charlotte, and Tybalt
Contents
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1
So I had the load in front and Jordan had the load in back, and Jordan was saying:
“Cash, cash, cash!”
I looked up, and there were eight to ten guys streaming into the lobby with more artillery than you’ve ever seen, and it just looked too real. I figured they had to be water pistols because they looked too detailed, too significant, too vivid to be really real. My mind slowed everything down like Joe Montana, like Larry Bird. At first I thought: This is Jordan’s birthday. These are friends of Jordan’s that I don’t know.
And then I thought: No. This is a joke. This is a joke, and these are friends of Jordan’s that I don’t know, even though I know all of Jordan’s friends.
And then I was spun around, and I saw myself in the lobby mirror with one of those cylinder machine guns at the base of my brain and another gun at my side and one to the middle of my back. They swung me back around. One guy was pistol-whipping Jordan on the ground as they dragged me to the elevator.
At the elevator was a prominent sign that read:
NO MORE THAN FIVE PEOPLE ON THE ELEVATOR AT ONE TIME
All eight of us got on.
It stalled.
One of the guys brought out one of those huge hammer jobs that belonged on an anvil and started hammering the side of the elevator. “I can get the car moving again,” and they responded, “You better not do anything stupid.”
I had three guns on me, and I was cuffed.
Who am I, Bruce Lee?
I placed my foot on the sliding door of the elevator and pushed it open, and that reactivated whatever ancient mechanism was on the fritz. We were on our way up. I told the guys about Tybalt, my dog—the love of my life, the reason I dragged my ass out of bed in the morning, usually clobbered with a hangover mean enough to paralyze a small county.
They said that if he did anything they would have to shoot him.
Then one of the guys—Andy, I would find out later—said overlapping, “Look, I got dogs, I know how you feel. I’ll let you in the apartment first. If you can settle him down and if he seems okay, we won’t shoot him.”
I didn’t give a shit about myself at that moment.
If they shot my dog, I’d be next.
I opened the door and spoke to Tybalt. He understood immediately that I was in deep shit and that this was no time for monkey business. He backed up slowly, carefully, no fast moves, giving the semi-frenzied men a wide berth so they knew this was their ball game, that everyone else’s rules were out the window. His paws were practically up. Then he sat solemn and calm to cool everyone off. It worked. The pack of humans took a collective breath, and in a couple of brief but precious seconds everything went from scary to just really bad and everyone’s trigger fingers seemed to relax.
I knew these guys were some kind of cowboy superhero cops; as we entered the apartment, the first words out of anybody’s mouth were not Miranda but “Where’s the cash? Where’s the cash?” There was no Miranda warning until we were well into the apartment. There was our first load: a refrigerator box filled with 250 pounds of dope, standing sentinel in the dining room like an upright coffin. And there were all the other accoutrements: Hefty trash bags to be filled; Bounce to offset the scent; duffel bags from the now sadly defunct Morris Brothers (a neighborhood store across the street that had been around since before NBC had a color peacock), which would later be filled with pot to sell to other drug dealers; and a scale.
We were caught on the shitter in the midst of shitting.
The TV was on in the living room, the Knicks playing the Larry Bird Celtics, and one of the guys started doing dips on an exercise bar I’d set up near the TV to work on my lower pecs and triceps when there was a game on. He could barely hoist himself up once, but there was something in his bumbling effort that made him seem almost sweet.
Ralph Scott, soon to be revealed as the bad cop, asked me again where the cash was.
I said I didn’t know.
He indicated the refrigerator box filled with 250 pounds of pot and asked me if that was for personal use.
I told him no.
He asked what the Bounce was for. And I told him.
He asked me what the trash bags were for. And I told him.
He asked me who Jordan was. I told him Jordan was in charge.
He nodded at the jar of Vaseline on the table in front of me (which I kept handy to smear on my winter-chapped lips) and suggested that I would need that in prison.
He wasn’t very nice, and it dawned on me that maybe I should stop answering Ralph’s questions and talk to a lawyer.
This time we left the apartment in two shifts so we wouldn’t stall the elevator. Amazingly, we didn’t run into any other tenants while leaving the building. I gave the narcy doorman a look because he always stared at me like I was up to something and I was sure he was the one who tipped off the Drug Enforcement Agency. On the way out, I twisted my body Houdini-style so my fingertips could sneak out the apartment keys to give the doorman so someone could take care of Tybalt.
Jordan had disappeared.
They shoved me into the cruiser. I looked out the windows at the Town Shop for Brassieres, Shakespeare & Co., Zabar’s, people freely walking up and down the wide boulevards of Broadway, doing stuff. My inalienable right to wander around footloose and fancy-free just got snuffed. I was in the back of a cop car with my hands cuffed b
ehind me, headed downtown.
The agent driving me was the same one who couldn’t do dips. The car was hermetically sealed, quiet. Almost serene. “What’s that exercise called?” he asked.
“Dips,” I said.
“Oh. And they’re for your…”
“Lower pecs and triceps mainly.”
“Christ, what a fat fuck. And to think I used to swim in high school, not drown, and actually beat people.” Then he said, as he casually turned down Twelfth Avenue, “I have a feeling things are going to turn out okay for you. I know they seem bad now, but I think you’re going to be all right.” Looking in the rearview mirror to catch his expression, I caught a glimpse of my own whiteness and figured it would give me a fairer shake.
We arrived at Fifty-Seventh and Twelfth, home of car dealerships and DEA headquarters. A shitty, almost deliberately depressing area of town. Jordan was already there. We were usually pickle silly with each other, but now there was no silly, only a peculiar amount of mouth tension. We looked at each other as if this were the betrayal-discovery-we’re fucked scene in a movie. We were processed, fingerprinted, photographed, and put in a cell together, both of us very weirded out.
Jordan asked me what I told them and I said not much: just that the boxes were to be distributed, the Bounce was there to cover the odor, the bags were to divvy the stuff up, that we used the scale to weigh stuff, and that he—Jordan—was in charge.
Jordan said those were probably not good things to say.
2
My sister and I are snorting coke in my apartment-sized bedroom at 127 East Seventy-Fifth Street, the townhouse we live in that is twice as big as any Eastside townhouse. I’m seventeen and Kyra is thirteen. The house is so big we don’t see the parents for days. The back staircase wraps around the elevator shaft, and wherever the elevator is parked is the floor my stepfather Ben is on. We always hang out on any other floor.
The coke is fantastic. We get it from Ned, who works as a chef down the street. He is so cool-looking, like Rod Stewart when he sang “Maggie May.” He’s great friends with our cook, Linus, who teaches us all about drugs, amazing music, advanced debauchery, Bohemia gone berserk. Linus instructs us to call the coke “recipes” when we contact Ned in case the phone is being tapped. The surreptitiousness of this enterprise makes me feel not unlike Superfly, the title character in the song by the great Curtis Mayfield. The quality is ridiculous and the product uncut: a sparkly eggshell-white rock that you shave off as you would the finest of truffles.
It’s daytime, right after school, and I am delicately shearing this magnificent rock—but not too much, we want to save some for later. The anticipation of snorting it is so intense that our teeth ache. Kyra keeps poking me, pushing me. I’m trying to be fast.
“Oh man, that looks so fucking amazing. HURRY!” My sister dresses like the love child of Mama Cass and Janis Joplin.
“Don’t squeal so loud. I’m almost there. Hold on. I don’t want to fuck up the rock.”
“I can’t wait.”
My little sister—who I would dive into traffic for—has the biggest mouth in New York City.
“Okay, Jesus! Here, take some flake.”
“Just to taste,” she says before greedily licking and running her index finger along the mirror to sop up cocaine dust. “UMMM! Fa fa frrreeedddo! Oh my God! My gums are numb already! Ned is the best!”
I’ve laid out the lines with militaristic care.
“Okay. Done. Here you go.”
I give Kyra the coke mirror first.
“I’m so happy”—snort—“God, so wonderful I feel smarter. Does that sound stupid?”
“Oh no, I mean”—snort—“Oh God, so pleasant, so wonderful…anyway…oh yeah, of course you feel smarter cause it’s going up your nasal passages and that stimulates your brain and your thinking becomes more fluid, more free, released from the drudgery and bondage of ordinary thoughts.”
BANG BANG BANG!
“Sweetheart, it’s your mother! Open the door!”
We both go into panic mode. The door is latched with one of those cheap hook-and-eye jobs. Mom’s trying to push it open anyway. The door is eight feet tall and thick, and my five-foot-two-inch mother is pushing and pounding with such thundering force it sounds like an avalanche is trying to burst through.
“Oh, fuck! You deal with the coke, I’ll get Mom,” I whisper, before calling, “Coming, Mom! Just a sec!”
“OPEN THE DOOR!”
“I’m coming! Hold on!”
I unlatch the door. Kyra’s only had a few seconds, and I have to buy her more time. I open it slowly and block my mother’s view of the room, but this is such a lame and amateur ploy. I know Kyra needs more time. I throw away social mores, and—fully aware of the Oedipal nature of the act I am about to undertake—I swoop down to my mother, kiss her squarely on the lips, and hold it there for a moment. When I pull away, my mother looks startled and confused. I’m startled and confused.
I think I just crossed some sort of line.
There is a big, strange, what-just-happened pause. Then she groans, “You’re taking pot, aren’t you?”
“No, Mom, we’re not. Do you think—”
The words bumble out of my mouth, and I know my mother won’t buy it. Kyra appears beside me, bright and chipper, like she’s got nothing to hide. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetheart. You look like Janis Joplin. I need to take you to Saks. You sure you’re not taking pot?”
“I’m sure, Mom,” Kyra says seriously.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Mom, Kyra and I were just talking. And it doesn’t smell like pot in here, does it?”
“No.”
“So there it is.”
“Okay. And stop grinding your perfect teeth. They’re the only set you have, and you’ll wear them down.”
“Okay, Mom. Sorry.”
I always say I’m sorry to head off any attacks or criticisms leveled at me. I say it all the time and hardly ever mean it. But I say it with deep feeling.
“I love you both so much.”
In unison: “We love you too! Bye, Mom!”
Exit Mom.
“Fuck, that was close.”
“Oh yeah, my God!”
“What happened to the coke?”
I thought for sure she just threw it onto the rug and rubbed it in.
“Here.”
My huge overcoat from the Salvation Army lies thrown across my office-sized desk. She gently lifts the coat. Sitting on top of the big mirror is a fist-sized message-paper holder in a plastic case, its bottom hollowed out. Kyra lifts the paper holder. The coke glistens and gleams smilingly, undisturbed.
3
Jordan and I got our phone calls. I called my brother Nikko because I figured, of all my family, he’d be home.
“Hi, Nikko, it’s your brother Rob.”
“Hi, brother Rob, it’s your brother, Nikko.” He sounded, as usual, like an above-it-all asshole, and in his own mind a vastly entertaining one.
I was saying “brother” on purpose, trying to be overly formal as a signal that something was up, but he was not grasping the severity of the situation because he wasn’t really listening to me, unlike Tybalt who always knew what I was saying underneath my words. Nikko always did this, and it always annoyed me. It was his brand of pestilence.
“Okay. Write this down. Have Mom and Ben come down to 40 Foley Square at noon.”
I heard him mumbling as if he were doing an assignment for math class. “Hold on, hold on.” He stopped. “Are you in jail?”
“Yes!”
That shut his trap. I was perversely happy to say I was in jail and able to stick it to him—that my plight was a serious one, impressive, and that he would have to drop his obnoxious tone for a change.
“Is Jordan—”
> I hung up the phone before he could get the word out.
He was going to ask, “Is Jordan there?” Knowing the phone was probably tapped, acting the experienced pro, I hung up before he could get the word out. A very slick move on my part. I was confident it would throw the DEA off the track.
All this because, one pleasant fall evening in 1988, while walking Tybalt I saw Jordan (Nikko’s best friend of ten years) talking on a payphone. At six-five and 190 pounds, his body shaped like a question mark, Jordan looked like Ichabod Crane. I’d always felt a superiority to him that I couldn’t shake. He dealt drugs; I merely ingested them. When we were together in a group, I kept my distance. But, on that particular night, I was moping around feeling sorry for myself. I hadn’t gotten any acting work recently, which always made me feel especially lousy. I would get drunk and listen to Neil Young and weep. During these sessions, Tybalt would normally place his head on my knee for support or jab me with his snout, indicating it was time for a walk. I always thought I was destined for greatness, but greatness kept eluding me.
Money was bad because, other than acting, I had never figured out a way of making any. I had asked my grandfather, who was off to the West Indies for his annual midwinter retreat with my grandmother, if I could stay in his huge Upper West Side apartment while they were away for the next six months.
He said yes.
And that’s where Jordan was: right in front of my grandparents’ snazzy old-world apartment building on Eighty-Fifth and Broadway, talking out of the side of his mouth on a greasy payphone. Jordan had gone to high school with my brother Nikko, and their bond was deep. I wanted to be part of that depth. I wanted to exude loyalty. I wanted to win him over. For that, I had to joggle my unenlightened thinking. So what if he was a drug dealer? Once I made nice, we could hang out at parties. It would be fun.
I sidled winningly up to Jordan, even though Tybalt, always hip to dangerous situations, was yanking me in the other direction. When he hung up the phone, I asked, “Are you doing nudge nudge, wink wink?” I already knew the answer to my question, but I wanted Jordan to know that I was in the know.
He said yes.
Tybalt kept gnashing and snapping the leash, wanting to get away from Jordan.