Brick Pavall began “chipping” heroin sometime in 1971 and soon moved from snorting the narcotic up his nose to injecting it in his veins. Immediately he told Richie how “good” it was, but Richie seemed totally uninterested. “There’s no way I’m gonna stick a needle in my arm,” said Richie with finality.
But Brick persisted, even after he was stopped by East Meadow police, discovered to have a small amount of heroin in his car, kept in jail a week, and put on a year’s probation. He never developed what might be called a New York City habit, perhaps because the drug was so scarce in his community. “We never had much of a heroin problem in East Meadow,” said one drug clinic therapist. “Probably because there’s so much other stuff around.”
Brick managed to satisfy his drug needs by using pot and pills, heroin only when it turned up and he had enough money to buy some. By late 1971, most New York area heroin was so diluted with sugar, so undependable a high, often as little as 3 percent pure, that many addicts turned to barbiturates instead.
One evening during the Christmas holidays, Brick and Richie were lounging around Peanuts’ room listening to new albums he had received as gifts. Brick casually produced the paraphernalia of heroin—a cooking spoon, a rubber tube, a syringe, and a packet of white powder.
“You wanna get off on dope?” he asked Richie.
Richie shook his head vigorously. “I told you before,” he said. “No way.”
Brick persisted. “Just try it once. Satisfy your curiosity. You won’t get addicted.”
Richie glanced at the hypodermic. “I’m scared of needles,” he said. “I wouldn’t even know where to stick it.”
“I’ll do it for you,” said Brick. “You really ought to try something just once, and if you don’t like it, well, you’ve at least had the experience. You might never like ice cream if you never even try it.”
Richie did not respond, but Brick walked over to him and took his left arm, which was suddenly trembling. Expertly he attached the rubber tube just below the biceps. Veins stood out like cord on a package. “You got good veins,” said Brick.
Richie flinched.
“Don’t worry,” continued Brick. “I know what I’m doing. I’m gonna ‘boot’ it a couple of times.” Richie turned his face away so as not to see the needle. Brick injected carefully, pulling blood in and out of the syringe as he had been taught.
Almost immediately, Richie said he felt the “hit.” He began pulling at his nose, scratching his face, which itched all over. He touched his body almost wonderingly. The experience lasted for two hours. Richie stretched out on Peanuts’ bed and nodded on and off. Occasionally he would say, “This is good, man.”
“Enjoy your head,” said Brick, who was right there with him.
Twice more in succeeding days Richie shot up with Brick. Then Brick explained the facts of heroin life to his friend. “It costs $5 a bag in East Meadow, when you can get it, and that’s not often,” said Brick. “That’s enough for one fairly weak hit. But if you go into Harlem, you can buy the same bag for $2.50.”
Richie had never been to Harlem. That scene, he said, was heavy.
But a few nights later, when Brick suggested at least driving around Harlem and seeing if anything could be bought, Richie agreed.
As Brick piloted his decaying Plymouth on the Long Island Expressway, cutting off to the Triborough Bridge, and into Harlem, he explained what would be done. “There’s a place called the Edgecombe Rehabilitation Center, and I’m gonna drive around there until I see a likely colored dude. Then I pull up easy and I roll down the window and say, ‘You got anything to sell, man?’ And if he’s cool, he’ll have some on him. And if he doesn’t, he’ll know where to send us.”
After fifteen minutes of circling the crowded streets, of exploring the ghetto world a million miles away from East Meadow, Brick spotted someone he knew.
“That’s Butch,” he said. “He’s cool. He deals dope.”
Brick pulled up beside Butch, who was strolling with a friend. He called out his name. Butch came to the car, opened the door, and got in. Richie moved over quickly, nervously, to make room.
“We wanna cop. You got anything to sell?” asked Brick.
“Well, how much you want, baby?”
“Half a load.” Brick had previously instructed Richie that “half a load” meant fifteen glassine bags, at $2.50 each. But by buying fifteen, the street price was only $30, instead of $37.50.
Butch hesitated a moment. He knew Brick, but he had never seen the red-haired boy beside him. Richie was looking straight ahead, through the windshield, as if he were not a part of this scene. Brick saw Butch’s apprehension. He put his arm around Richie’s shoulders. “He’s cool,” said Brick, brotherly.
“Let’s see the bread,” said Butch. Brick produced $30 in worn bills. Butch seized them, pocketed them, produced fifteen small bags, handed them to Brick, and was quickly out of the car. The entire transaction took only two minutes.
As Brick drove away, exultant, he told Richie how lucky they had been. “It’s a scary place up here,” he said. “Lot of strange shit going on. I know one kid who bought some dope, kept walking down the street, met another guy who ripped him off, stuck a gun to his head, took his dope and all his money.”
Richie’s body began to tremble. He could no longer conceal his fright. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, his voice shaking. He did not speak for the rest of the trip home.
When Brick offered him one of the glassine bags a few nights later, Richie refused. “I don’t need it,” he said. And he told Brick that never again would he go to Harlem. “I did it once,” he said, “but I ain’t gonna do it again.”
A probation officer, Moira Kosmynka, investigating George’s action against his son, asked Carol and Richie to come to the Family Court Building in early January for a conference. Interviewing Carol first, the woman asked her to summarize the problem at home.
“There’s no communication between the two of them,” answered Carol. “No matter what George says, Richard gets on his high horse and won’t listen and won’t answer.”
Did Carol feel George was in any way to blame?
Carol hesitated. But she answered candidly. “I feel that on some occasions George has been unduly harsh and critical and that this provokes Richard,” she said. But, she quickly pointed out, this had been only in the deterioration of recent months. Before that, she felt George was a loving and devoted father who “never tried to force his will on Richie.”
When it was Richie’s turn, he sat in a slouched position, arms folded, immensely bothered and bored by the entire session. The probation officer touched but lightly on the drug question, asking if Richie had considered going to Topic House, a voluntary drug therapy clinic.
“I don’t want to,” said Richie. “I know too many kids who went there and other places like it and it didn’t help them at all.”
Mrs. Kosmynka suggested family counseling for Mr. and Mrs. Diener and Richie, individually and as a parent-child unit. Carol was surprised to see Richie suddenly sit up and agree. “He seemed to welcome it,” said Mrs. Kosmynka in making a report on the meeting.
Carol asked, in private, if Richie could not immediately start therapy with a court-appointed psychologist or psychiatrist. She was told that family counseling should be tried first.
On January 6, 1972, all three Dieners went to the Family Court Building for their first meeting with the family counselor, a young man named Malone. George went in first and said, behind locked doors, that there had been another “violent confrontation” in his home. “When Richie is eighteen,” George said, “I’m going to put him out.”
Richie went in next and complained that his father made no attempt to understand him, accept his point of view, or communicate with him. Rather than fight with him, Richie said, he chose the silences that enraged George.
Carol waited outside for her turn. Suddenly her husband and her son and Mr. Malone came into the waiting room after a session that
had lasted less than twenty minutes. Malone announced that he would be in touch with the family for another appointment.
“You can’t see me now?” asked Carol, annoyed. Malone looked at his watch. “All right,” he said, “if you really want to.”
Carol felt her words and feelings were being endured by the counselor, not particularly welcomed. Malone asked a few perfunctory questions: Did Carol love George? Did they fight? Did they have other children? Then he said he was going on vacation, and when he returned, he would resume counseling with the troubled Dieners.
Carol expected more than this. Her fantasy had been that the family counselor would wrap his arms about them and comfort them and bind their wounds. Didn’t this man realize there was danger in her house? Didn’t this man hear a time bomb when it was ticking?
But she did not complain. She did not complain even when Malone returned from his vacation and telephoned her to say that he had been transferred to another position and that a new family counselor would take over the Diener case. She did not complain when days and weeks went by and there was never a call from the new family counselor, whoever he was. “I’m a person who respects authority,” she would later say in bitterness. “I’m not pushy, I do what people tell me. When George and I used to go out driving on Sunday afternoons and he would turn around in a driveway that said ‘Private Driveway: Do Not Enter,’ I would tell him, ‘We’re not supposed to do this.’”
That one brief thirty-minute session was the only time that George and Carol and Richie would have any kind of family counseling. A Nassau County probation officer would one day not long after tell an associate that “everybody around our office felt George Diener was a very angry man,” and that “George Diener seemed a fellow who was running … running … running all over the place … running mainly from himself.”
But somehow the case of George Diener v. Richard Diener fell in a crack.
The entries in George’s daily log, which had begun as terse paragraphs, began to lengthen, even as George began to spend longer hours listening and writing down what he heard. He became so consumed with the tape recorder that Carol’s worry for her family deepened. It occurred to her that George seemed actually to enjoy what he was hearing, that he was participating vicariously in the world of his son. He had seemed absolutely zestful when on the track of Richie’s motel pot party, crestfallen when it fell through. Was he a hunter stalking elusive game? Of course not. Why then did he set the trap night after night and listen hour after hour? Carol could not put away one feeling that pressed down on her, the feeling that kept her awake until it was dawn and time to rise and make coffee and call Richie to get ready for school, a feeling that George had abandoned any hope of solution. He has given up on Richie, thought Carol. He is just marking time, playing policeman, until June, when Richie becomes eighteen. And then I am going to lose my son.
On February 2, George wrote:
Richard took off from school today, supposedly sick. He called Mark about 10 A.M. and they made plans for Mark to come over here at 12 with some “STUFF” because nobody else would be here until 3 when Carol gets home. Richie now calls his mother “that scumbag,” which is about what he thinks of me. Mark called his mother from our house to tell her he was going to his appointment with the psychiatrist at the mental health clinic of Family Court, but he came here to smoke pot instead. Richard called Fritz, the boy who sells drugs. Fritz said he hated Brick, that he told Brick never to call his house again, that he was worried because Brick had his phone number written on his wall. Richard said for Fritz not to worry, that he had erased it. Richard warned Fritz that Brick planned to kick him in the ass. Fritz said, “Let him try, I’ll blow his fucking head off.” Richard said that was cool. Richard said Brick was in trouble already for selling Dick somebody a nickel’s worth of parsley, that Dick wasn’t so tough but he has a few friends in the “BREED” and they are going to kick the shit out of Brick if he doesn’t give them Dick’s money back by Friday. Richard said Cameron, another dealer, has some good “blond hash,” at least two ounces, which he has been carrying around in his pocket. “Cameron’s crazy,” said Richard. “He drove Mark and me to Roosevelt Field to steal albums and waited out front with the hash in his pocket. He even lit up a bowl of hash and smoked it in broad daylight while walking down Merrick Avenue. Cameron told Richard, “Don’t worry, if the fuzz come by, I’ll eat it.” Fritz said if he ever ate as much as two ounces, Cameron would go to sleep forever. Richard said “Yeah, a couple of times I had to eat some and it fucked me up good.” Fritz was stopped by the police outside his house about eleven o’clock last night; he had eleven ounces of hash in a package under his arm, but the policeman just said, “Good evening, son,” and didn’t bother him about it.
February 4:
Richard called Mark. His mother answered and said Mark was in school where he was supposed to be and why wasn’t Richard for the past several days? (Evidently Richard is cutting out early every day and calling Mark’s home before either of them are supposed to be there.) Richard next called Fritz and asked him if he wanted to buy another gram scale; he stole two more today from school. Fritz said he knew somebody who needed one. Richard is apparently out of money altogether, even his savings from last summer, because he offered Fritz his prize tape deck for one quarter pound of pot, the brown pot that Fritz has been selling for seventy-five dollars a quarter pound. Fritz said his parents found out he is dealing and won’t let the people he is dealing with in the house, so kids have to throw stones at his window. Somebody named Splatte used too big a stone and broke their big window. Richard said a dealer named Milligan has his girl friend make up nickel bags for his high school customers, and if she makes a mistake, he beats her; he seems to get his kicks that way. Richard bought Seconals from Arthur K. today. Arthur has a thousand caps and is selling them at two for one dollar. Richard complains that this price is “outrageous” except for genuine pharmaceuticals with “Lilly” written on them. Fritz says Arthur K. is crazy; he has seen him smoke three bowls and grab a girl by the throat. He thought Arthur was going to kill her, but he threw her out the front door instead. Fritz says he is not going to do any dealing for about three months; things are hot for him at home. Richard offered to take the one quarter pound of hash Fritz has now and sell it for him. Richard says he can get rid of it easy because he has his driver’s license now and can take his mother’s car anytime he wants it and get around. It seems that Richard is going to buy a large quantity of Seconals tonight, if he can find the money. He is well fixed for drugs. He brags he has some “nice red hash.” Late today he called David and says he has sold one of the scales he ripped off from school for “a terrific dime of hash” and he somehow got an extra nickel of blond hash for getting this dealer a big buyer. (Finder’s fee?) Richard finally got through to Mark, who has been at somebody’s house smoking all day. Mark is so stoned he can hardly speak. Richard says he is coming over to join him and that he has just ripped off some kid named Rob for five dollars. Mark says he is going to connect for twenty Seconals “at least” tonight, and Richard says to save some for him. Richard says he usually takes two Seconals before home room and, aside from being a little sleepy, he is OK the rest of the day.
George summoned Carol to hear a portion of the tape in which Richie referred to her as “that scumbag.” Carol clasped her hands over her ears and refused. The next day, when George was at work, Carol went to the hiding place of the hated tape recorder and thought about sabotaging it.
She had the idea of picking up the telephone and screaming into it—screaming for an hour, or until the tape ran out. The machine was becoming part of their lives, a new member of the household.
Chapter Twenty
Early one Sunday morning in February, Richie called up Brick and suggested driving over to the Roosevelt Field shopping center.
“You gonna rip off something?” said Brick, who was still unsteady from the drugs he had taken the night before. He was not sure he would make a
good accomplice so early.
“No. Let’s just walk around. Shit, there isn’t anything else to do.”
Richie’s complaint was a common one in the homes of East Meadow. George and Carol had heard it for years, and even though it was tempting to list the assets of their quiet village, they realized that the town was not accommodating to youngsters. Dean Saracino of East Meadow High believed that the restlessness of the young, indeed, the drug explosion of the young could be blamed in large part on East Meadow’s lack of “things to do.”
There were movies, of course, but they cost $2.50 to enter, and often the same feature stayed for several weeks, and if it was rated R or X, a youngster could not even go. There was a roller-skating rink, but the conservative-minded owner refused to admit “long-hairs,” thus eliminating a large segment of the town’s under-eighteen population. Richie once went there on a Sunday afternoon with a group of his “straight” friends and all were denied admission. “This is really ridiculous,” said Richie. “You’ve gotta have a crew cut to roller-skate.” East Meadow High experimented with a weekend recreational program, opening the gym to jocks and the cafeteria for dancing, but after a brief spurt of heavy attendance, the idea expired. “Kids want to be away from school on weekends,” said Saracino.
More generally, East Meadow had no community identity, no Main Street, no mayor, no sense of belonging to a special place. No central, cohesive factor, either political or structural, united its citizens. Three divisive geographical elements—Eisenhower Park, Nassau County Medical Center, and Nassau County’s Jail Farm—split the town and made social contact between youngsters difficult. Because no boundaries marked the town’s limits, it was eminently possible to go from one village to another without realizing it. By 1972 East Meadow had become a place where more than 60,000 slept—the classic bedroom community. The residential lanes were about as quiet and beautiful as they had been the day when George and Carol emigrated from Brooklyn. But the broad boulevards, as wide as those of Paris, had become infested with the landmarks of urban blight—massive shopping centers with acres of asphalt parking, parades of franchise restaurants, rows of shops festooned with so much paint and neon that one could imagine giant strips of Southern California being ripped up and transplanted in the alien soil of faraway Long Island. The smell of plastic fouled the air.
Richie Page 22