by Trick Daddy
“You have to move,” said Ms. Ridley.
Reality hit me. I had grown used to stepping in the shoes left vacated by my father, but I was a child, no doubt. I couldn’t let my brothers and sisters be split up. That crummy apartment in the Beans wasn’t much, but it was Pearl’s home. I packed my things before heading south to stay at my father’s house. His dope slinging, pimping, and numbers running had already made him a household name in the hood. He was one of the OGs in Miami who had noticed early what was happening across the bridge on Miami Beach.
While we scraped by in Liberty City on petty hustling, high-rises were sprouting along Ocean Drive. Benzes and BMWs cruised the strip. Snowbirds flew south during the winter to soak it all in. I guess it was what people would call paradise. In the other Miami a couple of hustlers were getting rich off the white girl.
13
Snowin’ in Miami
EVERY AMERICAN CITY HAS ITS CLAIM TO FAME, HOWEVER honorable or messed up it may be. New York’s pizza is to die for. I’d like to bone my share of L.A. actresses. Even thug-ass Philly got cheesesteak. Miami has cocaine. The white girl. Blow. Bricks. Lace. Pies. Birds. Whatever folks want to call it, the powder was ours before it lit the rest of America on fire. So every time you see a dazed addict in your locale, or a cracked-out hooker peeking from behind a lamppost, credit Miami. It’s funny how death can dwell in the most idyllic of places. There’s blood on the hands of my city. We’re drenched in buckets. I wonder if tourists think about that historical fact when they come to South Beach. I wonder if they know the ghosts of the runners, hit men, addicts, and jack boys roam amid those high-rises that tower over Biscayne Bay.
When the powder arrived from Colombia, it caused a blizzard in Miami. Everyone went dancing in the snow. By the time I was five, the Colombian and Cuban dope kings were in an all-out war. Seriously, Miami’s streets mirrored some cowboy-and-Indian Wild Wild West shit. Strangely enough though, South Beach was a sleepy little retirement spot. Its couple of mobsters from the old school were no match for the Colombians. As I mentioned earlier, Latin American and Caribbean cats are cut from a different cloth. They don’t bow down to anyone, but they knew they were on unfamiliar turf. Picture some Colombian cats crashing some ritzy party down on South Beach with a bunch of white doctors, lawyers, bankers, and other professionals. They would have stuck out like sore thumbs. Remember, these were the days when the city was primarily white or black. I already told you where the black folks were.
In Miami’s cutthroat underbelly it was easy to find some opportunistic white dudes to push the powder. Enter Mickey Mundey and Jim Roberts. They were typical all-American cats bent on looting and plundering. Miami always attracts those types to this very day. They got in good with some Colombians who were itching to get their dope to America. Mickey and Jim fit the part. In our hood we heard the stories about those dudes long before the world got a glimpse of the mayhem in that movie Cocaine Cowboys. I’m surprised it took so long for some filmmakers to figure out the craziness my friends and I witnessed daily was made for TV drama.
The dope was getting folks high as a kite. From ballplayers to politicians and other quote-unquote socialites, everybody was snorting the white. My eyes lit up when I tagged along with the older hustlers on a trip to downtown and South Beach. I couldn’t believe people had the kind of money to buy the cars I saw. Porsches, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis were all on display. I used to peer out the window of the beat-up Lincoln I rode in. Of course I daydreamed. Those dudes were raking in cheese. A lot of cheese.
In those days the name Pablo Escobar was legendary. Imagine some kind of fairy-tale Wizard of Oz where all dreams came true. Well, Colombia was Oz and Escobar was the wizard. But of course to some poor black kids all that land could be was fantasy. Word around the campfire was that cats like Mundey were actually starting connecting with the wizard himself. When they brought the white girl back, they flew down the western coast of Florida. Every hustler back then did the same. Whether it was weed coming from the islands or blow from Colombia, narcs wouldn’t think a plane heading south from Georgia was packed with powder. That route was off the drug-trafficking radar. Mundey and Roberts even built their own airport runway. They were some bold dudes who continued to get bolder.
Sometimes they had it dropped near the Bahamas, where boats would bring it in. I always daydreamed of finding a stray package floating along the bay, like those found by a couple of older cats in my neighborhood who worked on the docks cleaning the drug runners’ speedboats. I knew some of those dudes had to steal a couple of bricks. At five I was game enough to do it, but I was too young to be working down by the docks. I would have tucked that brick in a garbage bag and run as far away as I could. I would have run all the way to Georgia, even South Carolina. Finding a stray package in the bay was like wishing upon a star. It was only wishful thinking of course. For now, I could only listen to the stories.
Powder was flooding Miami. Club owners were letting folks snort in their nightclubs. As if God was playing a joke on poor religious folks, one Sunday a shower of bricks even crashed through the roof of a church. About 80 percent of America’s cocaine was coming from Miami. The news headlines showed that the country was in a recession. I remember folks got really strapped for cash at that time. Alongside the police brutality, the lack of cash flow sent folks over the edge during the riots, but judging from all the cars, jewelry, and mansions downtown, you would never have known it. Dope runners even doled out six figures on bulletproof cars.
Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega allowed dealers to launder their millions through the country’s banks, but some of those dudes had too much cash. They buried the excess in their lawns or paid folks to stash it in their homes.
If they weren’t at the horse races, they spent their cash at a ritzy spot called the Mutiny Hotel. But my city is like a pretty chick that’s good-looking from afar but really far from good-looking when you get in bed with her. All that money was sure to lead to bloodletting. You can’t dangle a ham hock in front a starved dog and not expect to get bitten. The party would be soon over, at least in their part of town.
14
Survivin’ the Drought
THE RIDE SOUTH ON THE PALMETTO EXPRESSWAY, A six-lane highway that takes you into the heart of suburban southwest Miami and farther into citrus country, offers one of the most breathtaking sunsets in all South Florida. It’s where you go to escape the urban madness. Folks who had already stacked some cheese bought a nice home in Pinecrest, the Falls, and Cutler Ridge. South Beach was too risqué, so to speak, to raise a family. Shit, with all that dope dealing and whoredom going down near downtown, those neighborhoods offered a more serene atmosphere.
White folks were hightailing it out of there as the Cubans, Haitians, Trinidadians, and Jamaicans were moving in. The whites either moved down south or north to Fort Lauderdale. The current upscale hoods like Miramar and Pembroke Pines between Fort Lauderdale and Miami didn’t really exist yet. The traffic as you went southwest was crazy, but like I said earlier, the ambience was off the chain. As Miami’s skyline fades in the background, cloudless blue skies loom above and tomato fields glow under violet and orange hues in the foreground until Dadeland Mall interrupts the suburban bliss. So when some crazy Colombians lit the place afire on July 11, 1979, folks in Miami knew the U.S. government would soon step in.
If ever there was a stereotype about Latin folks, the one about them being passionate and hot-tempered has to stick. When they get to popping off, someone call the coroner. It’s a catch-22. That Latin influence is part of what makes Miami hot and sizzling to the rather dull and mundane rest of America. Latin and Caribbean folks give our city character, but that Wednesday they scared the living daylight out of white folks.
Two cats armed with machine guns walked into a Crown Liquors and blasted a couple rivals, then sprayed the parking lot. They let off eighty rounds from the kinds of weapons that would have made Rambo look like Andy Griffith.
That year mor
e than 400 were murdered in Miami. In 1980, 567 were murdered, followed by 621 the following year. The city had to bring in a moving morgue. Sadly enough, as young as I was, I wanted in on the action. Kids didn’t play cowboys and Indians in the Beans. We used to pretend to be dope traffickers, even faking the foreign accents sometimes.
As if that wasn’t enough, Fidel Castro did the unthinkable a couple months after the McDuffie riots. I have to give it to Castro. He is one bold and crafty old dude. He continuously gives America his ass to kiss with impunity. He opened Cuba’s prisons. The Mariel Boatlift was a spectacle. How do I say this while trying to be politically correct? I can’t. Castro sent over the niggas. That’s what good American folk will try to shy away from saying, so I just said it for them. The media and Republicans had a field day of course. They blamed all of Miami’s ills on some poor folks who just came over here for a better life. How did people from an impoverished Caribbean island come into assault rifles and MAC-10s?
The U.S. government has always blamed black folks for their mishaps. Those Cuban cats became what I call honorary niggas. Black folks should have given them and the other Caribbean cats a nigga handbook to follow that outlines the ins and outs of coping with day-to-day stresses such as driving while black.
If you get pulled over, dragged out your vehicle, and smacked across the head with a baton, your casualty minority insurance should cover it. Don’t take it personal. It’s part of the protocol that comes with being colored in America. Get used to it.
Blacks around my way were blind to the hypocrisy. They saw our new neighbors as competition for the scraps thrown out by the man. In my opinion the Cubans, Haitians, and other Caribbean folks helped us. They came over here and gave those crackers their ass to kiss. I got love for all my chicos and Haitians. They stuck together, which is something we African-Americans are still trying to learn how to do.
As far as I saw it, our worst enemy was and still is ourselves. The sad truth is niggas don’t like niggas. Too many of us drink the Kool-Aid served by Democrats who give us the victim card while they watch us wallow in our own ignorance. I can’t get mad at a Haitian or Cuban for coming over here and snatching the goody bag you were taking your sweet time to pick up. Look at American history. Those Pilgrims didn’t ask Chief Running Wolf or whatever his name was if they could squat on his sacred patch of prairie. They put a gun to his head, then ran in the tepee and boned Pocahontas. Whatever opportunities blacks thought they were supposed to have, they should have taken. They didn’t, so others did.
The racist media coverage caused by the Boatlift and the violence was ridiculous. Before CSI: Miami, there was Miami Vice. People soaked in the images of lawlessness. The movie Scarface solified the stereotype. Imagine seeing a movie showcase all the madness happening around you. We all related to Tony Montana, whether you were a black kid in the Beans, a Haitian praying for better days over at Notre Dame de Catholic, or a Cuban cabbie toughing it out in Little Havana. But the movie destroyed Miami’s image. That was followed by some jackass at Time magazine who wrote a cover story declaring Miami a “paradise lost.” The FBI started cracking down on all the kingpins. Runners like Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta who used the Opa-locka airport to make coke deliveries in the heart of the city came under the microscope. Those dudes made Mundey and Roberts look like Little Leaguers in the dope game. At their prime they made about $2 billion. From paying for ads to look for potential witnesses then having them killed, those two Miami Senior High School dropouts were accused of doing it all. A former Miami Herald reporter, Jack DeVoe, was their courier. The dude got sick of reporting the news and became it. Even scenes from Miami Vice were a bit too authentic. Several episodes of Miami Vice were filmed at the mansion owned by Willy Martinez, a well-known kingpin. Miami’s cocaine allure was addictive.
The powers that be promised to double the police force, but they had to lower their induction standards to find the manpower. That was the dumbest thing they ever did. I’ve never given the boys in blue any rave reviews, but that decision had to put the Miami-Dade police department in the Guinness World Book of Idiots. When a good cop turns bad, he’s gone forever.
Unhappy with the low salary, many of the new, mostly Cuban recruits waged an all-out war on dealers. Those cops formed a rip-off crew that executed smugglers. They were actually holding dealers hostage. I would have paid to see the look on those dudes’ faces when Officer Suarez was taking their dope.
You have the right to turn over the bricks, sucker.
They stole more than seven hundred kilos of powder that came in on the boats up the Miami River. One cop, Alex Marrero, went to prison for offering protection to one of the smugglers for $300,000. Remember him? He was the same cop acquitted of killing Arthur McDuffie back in 1980. The Miami River Cops, as they were called, made cocaine accessible to locals outside ritzy Miami Beach and Brickell Avenue. Prices on the white girl dropped. She went to the highest bidder. You could say Miami’s cocaine economy was democratized. Those cops made it snow on my side of the bridge.
That part of Miami’s cocaine history the filmmakers and media didn’t get to. They never showed who chopped it up and broke it down. You never saw who got addicted and whose lives were destroyed. The joke always seems to be played on black folks. They got rich and we did the time. They cheated us. Unlike those white cats whose motivation was greed and power, we were just trying to survive. Criminals aren’t born; they’re created. We got that messed up hand with no aces or dueces and played it the best we could.
Cocaine wasn’t even meant for poor folk. It wasn’t for us. The only people who could afford to use it back then were professionals. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and cops were all getting high off it. When it came to the hood, blacks started smoking it. They started inhaling the vapors from cocaine. Freebasing is what we called it. It offered a more potent high than snorting. It even lasted longer.
On Friday nights my mother, uncles, and aunts would go in the bedroom and lock the door. They thought we didn’t know what they were doing, but we did. They were in there getting high as a kite. I was too young to have an opinion, but I didn’t like the way Pearl’s mood changed when she was high on the white.
The lasting effect of freebasing was worse than from snorting. That’s why people in powerful positions are doing coke weekly. Don’t think the pillars of our community aren’t getting high on the white right now. They’re what people may call functional coke users. I sold it to my fair share of doctors and lawyers when I was out there hustling. I was lucky because the average dope boy couldn’t get it to those folks, so dealers got economical. They cooked the freebased form of cocaine with baking soda to stretch it.
Enter crack rock or what we called boulders.
That’s right. The birth of a drug that caused so much pain in society and wiped out the black inner city was purely economical. Black folks have always been good at getting the most for their buck. We’re some of the world’s best bargain shoppers. Take a stroll down Harlem’s 125th Street or Queens’ Jamaica Avenue if you don’t believe me.
Folks wanted to get high faster and longer for cheaper. The profits from a dime rock—$10 worth of crack—didn’t compare to what someone could make from $10 worth of cocaine, a dime soft. However, most couldn’t even afford that. Those smokers were so hard up for cash, we ended up selling a nickel rock and sometimes $2 and $3 hits. I got lucky when I came across a juggler once a week who could afford a dime rock. A juggler was a dope boy’s favorite smoker. Those with a lot of money could get a lot of hits. Someone with less would get a smaller hit, but there was something to be sold. That’s really how crack became more popular than cocaine.
We didn’t stop there of course.
We got creative with the white girl. Imagine going to a house party in the hood where Kool-Aid often tastes like it has a million different flavors. It’s because the party’s host ran out of one flavor. Folks start adding other mixes to make it happen. It was no different with the drugs. We added coc
aine to the weed joint and called it boonk or dirty. We even added the powder to cigarettes and called it a chopper. Of course all this mixing and stretching made the dope more lethal.
The dope game was the black man’s only way out as far as I saw it. I know that sounds like a cliché, but don’t judge me until you stand in those shoes. In Miami the option was to be a pimp or dope boy. If someone was born in the hood in Miami around 1975, his or her mother had dated or was messing with a pimp or dope boy. Somebody in their family was doing something illegal.
Any brother in the hood who was a street-level dealer never thought he could have gotten rich. By the time it reached our hood, too many people had dabbled in it and made their cut already. When folks ask how could I sell poison to my own people, I say that’s an unfair question. The world isn’t that black-and-white. It isn’t that cut-and-dry. I respond with introspection. What if I don’t value myself or my community? Dealers are as much addicts as the users. We both have the virus, but one is just succumbing to the disease faster. We live in a messed-up society. Besides, it would have got to my people if we didn’t get it to them. We weren’t the problem, but we most definitely didn’t help the problem.
In the hood they called us the Get High Boys.
After the McDuffie riots, no jobs or opportunities came to black Miami. I, Dante, Bodeem, HB, Tater, and Tronne were just some ghetto kids looking for an economic savior. We tried to find it in cocaine. Hollywood showed us how.
15
Pimp
BEFORE THE DOPE BOY COULD TAKE OVER THE block, he had to contend with the pimps. They were the original hood superstars. Prostitution was the main means of getting money before coke dealing. People usually point toward Chicago and Detroit when they talk about pimping. I’m sure those cities had their share of Archbishop Don Juans, but Miami brought swagger to the hustle. Let’s face it. Where else can a woman strut around half-naked with her goodies exposed for most of the year? Bob Marley had to be high on the good green thinking about Miami when he wrote “Pimper’s Paradise.”