According to Corky, Scary Barry said, “Use this, or, I swear to sunny Jesus in heaven, I will kill you. And I’ll have fun doing it.”
Corky was a follower, a spineless weenie who’d do whatever his meth guru told him. So on May 4, Corky toodled over to the apartment of fellow meth dork and Scary Barry acolyte Al Darnell, mixed up a batch of the stuff, and boom goes the dynamite. The ensuing fire burned down Darnell’s entire apartment building. Three people were killed, 12 were injured, and the property damage was ugly. Even a month later, the place still reeks.
But here’s the weird part. There was no evidence of a meth fire.
Austin, Texas’s chief fire officer, Dennis Leary—and yes, that’s Dennis Leary like the fireman-worshipping comic, except with an additional “n” in Dennis—says that meth fires are almost always easy to detect. “They have a distinct odor, almost like human hair, and that smell stays around for a good long time. Additionally, the people who cause these sorts of fires aren’t generally the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, so they tend to leave evidence everywhere.”
The investigators who checked Darnell’s building after the fire came away with the belief that the conflagration was caused by faulty wiring. The investigation ended about 45 minutes after it started, and Cork-A-Doodle-Doo went right back to work.
Davidson took his wandering minstrel show over to his girlfriend Antonia Beresford’s house. (Antonia is 25. The only reason she dated Corky is that she, too, was a tweaker. I didn’t have a boyfriend when I was 16, nor when I was 25. Some meth heads have all the luck.) Same recipe, same result, except this time, lives were lost, specifically those of Beresford’s two roommates. Beresford, who was on the other side of the room when the meth “lab” went kerflooey, suffered only minor burns. Corky, however, ended up with his first dose of pizza face.
But that didn’t stop him. His hair was still smoking when he went back to work the next week.
At this point in our tale, you may be asking, Why would this kid, this tweaker, this dipshit, keep cooking his junk?
Simple: It was some good shit. According to the locals, it was the best shit.
Tweaker #1, female, 21: “It was so much mellower than the stuff we’d been getting in the ’hood. It sped you up while slowing you down.”
Tweaker #2, male, 28: “The best thing about it was there was no hangover, and meth hangovers can be, like, crippling.”
Tweaker #3, female, 20: “Not only was it good, but it was cheap. They were practically giving it away.”
Fantastic. Just fan-fucking-tastic.
Turns out that Corky wasn’t the only person using Scary Barry’s recipe. Fires raged across town—Chief Leary said there were 47 of them, and those were the ones that were reported; he’s convinced there were more—and the local fire experts were baffled. Their theory was that it was the work of a very clever pack of arsonists, but they didn’t have any evidence to support that. They brought government experts from Washington, DC, and civilian experts from New York, and came up with bupkus.
So how did they catch Corky? Here, I now offer you the reason that I keep referring to Corka-Cola as a moron.
Corky wasn’t a moron because he did drugs, although tweaking is pretty moronic.
Corky wasn’t a moron because he made drugs. After all, Pizza Hut wasn’t going to rehire him—would you?—and the guy had to somehow bring in some money.
Corky wasn’t a moron because he burned down four buildings, killing two people and causing several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Sometimes, y’know, shit happens.
No, Corky was a moron because he bragged about it on Twitter.
This Tweet from Corky to Scary Barry: Burn baby burn disco inferno!
This Tweet from Scary Barry to Corky: you do well my son. keep up the good work. newer and better recipe to follow.
This Tweet from Corky to Scary Barry: To quote Beavis and/or Butt-Head: FIRE FIRE FIRE. Man, I’m good at this stuff!
This Tweet from somebody called GTownRepresent to Corky: Was that apartment deal yours?
This Tweet from Corky to GTownRepresent: Hell to the yeah! E me at CorkyDeeTX (at) msn for deets.
And there it is. An e-mail address. Give it up for Corky Davidson, ladies and gentlemen, a genius for the ages.
The FBI hunted down Corky. The five agents I spoke with refused to discuss how, and I have no problem with that, although I’d bet that whatever they did involved some computer tracking and would have some folks kvetching about that whole personal rights thing. If that’s the case, I have no problem with it. If the Feds want to track my Tweets, fine, I have nothing to hide.
The bad news is that they haven’t found Scary Barry, and that’s becoming a problem, because Barry is clearly the mastermind, and Austin continues to burn. Sixth Street has all but closed up, and to my mind, Sixth Street is Austin. Without Sixth Street, Austin is Texas, and Texas is, well, it’s Texas. Nuff said.
From his cell at the Gardner Betts Juvenile Center in Austin, Corky told me they’ll never catch Barry. “The dude’s practically invisible. I met him once, but to be honest, I probably wouldn’t even recognize him if I tripped on him. But even if I did, I wouldn’t turn him in or anything. I think what he’s doing is great. I wish everybody could take a hit of his stuff, because it makes you feel like you’re kissing God or something. And as soon as I get out of here, I’m going to find Barry and help him. We can change the world, one tweaker at a time.”
Seriously, what an idiot.
EXCERPTED FROM THE PAPERS OF DR. AARON GILLESPIE,
RISK MANAGEMENT ANALYST FOR THE DEPARTMENT
OF HOMELAND SECURITY
June 18, 2009—Brian is obsessive about American television. CNN is on in our little headquarters 99 percent of the time, and the other 1 percent is split between MSNBC and Fox News. Brian finds CNN the most neutral. I have no feelings one way or the other. Up until recently, it was merely background noise to me.
Over the last week, however, I have been paying close attention, in part because I want to find out if my friends at Homeland Security are as clueless as they usually are, and my answer is an unequivocal yes. The authorities have zero idea as to our identities. Or if they do, they are not talking, which I have found is quite unlike them. When they find a clue, they tend to trumpet at least a hint of it from the mountaintops. After all, Joe Taxpayer must be appeased.
This is all so easy. Enjoyable, even.
The other reason I have been viewing the television so much is that I seem to have started a trend. And I could not be prouder.
In Miami, a twenty-two-year-old white male drove his car into a club called Club Play. The crude explosive device strapped to his front bumper blew up upon impact. Only two people were killed, but there were countless injuries. The footage that CNN ran was gruesome.
In Atlanta, at a club called Masquerade, somebody put a trace amount of sarin in the ventilation system. It was not enough to cause any fatalities, but several hundred people had to be taken to the hospital.
Here in Chicago, somebody set off a nail gun on the first floor of Water Tower Place. Again, no fatalities, but plenty of injuries.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for any of these incidents, which I find delicious. If you do not know where the violence has originated, it is that much more terrifying. Let us say that Hamas sent out a communiqué that they were responsible for the sarin attack. People in Georgia would be sure to cross the street whenever they came across a Middle Eastern male. But since the attacker (or attackers) has remained silent, the locals must fear everybody. For all they know, it was a white supremacist—which is actually a possibility, as Masquerade is a predominantly black club—or a gang member, or a former club employee hell-bent on revenge for his dismissal. What a way to create terror!
If I were to venture a guess, I would say these are all copycat crimes. There is something in the air, something wonderful and horrible, something magical and frightening, something on the brink of chaos and renewal.
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NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
THE SPRING OF OUR DISCONTENT
JUNE 18, 2009
BY JESSICA BRANDEIS
People are scared.
People are angry.
People are depressed.
People are sweaty.
People are burning.
People are exploding.
People are broke.
Welcome to the spring of 2009, a spring replete with suicide bombers, burning cities, an inordinate number of missing persons, and a new strain of STD that has doctors baffled. To paraphrase classic British rockers the Zombies, it’s the time of the season of misery.
Dr. Stavros Alexander, a social sciences professor at Columbia University, claims that this outbreak of what he calls “negativity” is far from unprecedented. “If you’ll recall, the New York City of 1977 was an unequivocal mess. You had David Berkowitz’s murder spree; you had a massive blackout that led to massive looting and an almost-riot; there was a rash of arson in both the Bronx and Brooklyn; there was a garbage strike that turned the Manhattan streets into a junkyard, a problem that was particularly galling because there was a subway strike that forced people to walk more than they ever had before.
“We live in different times now,” Dr. Alexander says, continuing, “so the incidences are more drastic and violent. For instance, the fires in Austin, Texas, are being attributed to incompetent methamphetamine labs, whereas the 1977 Brooklyn and Bronx fires were simply the work of a firebug. You see, nobody was mixing crystal meth in their basement in ’77, nor did we have terrorists who had access to professional-strength bombs and chemical weapons, and the only sexually transmitted diseases that the general public had to deal with were syphilis, herpes, and gonorrhea. Modern times bring us a modern negativity.”
The issue of the missing individuals appears to be most troublesome in the western and southwestern United States. Phoenix police chief Russell Crosbie believes that the issue is being blown out of proportion. “It’s a sad fact of our society that people disappear all the time, and it’s generally nothing sinister. Mostly it’s a person who wants to get away from their life for whatever reason, and they’ll usually turn back up in a day, or a week, or a month. As everybody is aware, the Internet has turned this world into a global village, so if a family member or a loved one goes missing, it’s easier to alert the world. I don’t think more people are disappearing. I think it’s just being more widely reported.”
Dr. Christian Wade, chief of urology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, agrees with Alexander and Crosbie about the public’s misguided take on the spring of 2009. However, he is concerned about the new STD strain. “It’s difficult to study,” Wade says, “because so few people have acquired it. The primary symptom in both men and women is an oddly colored discharge. If you notice something out of the ordinary, it is recommended that you see your doctor immediately.”
Even though none of these incidents are related, online wags have cited the cause of the country’s woes as “the Game,” a moniker that seems to be edging its way into the mainstream, and in a way, it’s a perfect encapsulation of the weirdness that is the spring of 2009.
THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE
June 20, 2009
The Emerging Risk of a Sexually Transmitted Disease Involving Discolored Discharge and Heightened Desire
BY CHANDAHAR ZOONI, PHD, MPH; CORNELIUS REMAR, MD, MPH; MARY GRIFFIN-WATTS, PHD, MPH
Context: Transmission of sexually transmitted disease that can be passed via genital and oral sexual engagement.
Design: Cross-sectional survey conducted May 12, 2009, to June 12, 2009.
Setting and Participants: A total of 20 clients of the Denver Public Health HIV Counseling and Testing Site in Colorado.
Main Outcome Measures: Self-report of heightened sexual desire, increasing pain in the genital area, and a blue discharge in both men and women.
Results: Of the 20 clients, 16 were male (80%); all were white (100%), heterosexual (100%), and aged 20 to 50 years (100%). Of those, 16 (80%) had had multiple sexual partners over the 14 days prior to the test. Of those, 10 (50%) had 2–4 such partners; 6 (30%) had 5–10 such partners, and 4 (20%) had 11–20 such partners. All (100%) reported the blue discharge; 18 (90%) reported painful and swollen genitals. All (100%) reported increased, painful sexual desire.
Conclusions: The strain is completely debilitating, as it renders the sufferer unable to function without repeated sexual encounters through their waking hours. It appears the strain can be passed via either penetration (vaginal, oral, or anal) or physical exposure to either male or female discharge. It is a possibility that it can also be transmitted via saliva, but the testing period did not allow for sufficient time to draw any meaningful conclusions in that venue. Additional testing will be required before a treatment protocol is recommended. As it is vital that this remain contained, it is advised to quarantine any patient who demonstrates a symptom.
Pre-publication Notes:
Just prior to publication, a female lab technician at the Denver Public Health HIV Counseling and Testing Site in Colorado was exposed to the virus via saliva transmitted by Patient #3 (white, male, heterosexual, age 32). Symptoms were detected in 52 minutes. The lab technician requested she be quarantined. As of deadline, she has exhibited acute sexual desire and blue discharge.
Just prior to publication, Patient #13 at the Denver Public Health HIV Counseling and Testing Site in Colorado (white, female, heterosexual, age 21) assaulted a male doctor. Both individuals have since expired.
ERICK LAUGHLIN:
The 9:33 thing stopped. Just like that. And I was fine. Never found out why it started. Never found out why it ended. Never found out what those red things were. Didn’t want to dwell on it too much. So I moved on.
Bad call. Really bad call.
Truth be told, all of Austin was in a state of denial. What with all the fires—I think there’d been over fifty of them at this point—the city was a mess, but nobody wanted to talk about it, myself included. Everybody I knew went about their business as if nothing was wrong, as if people hadn’t been burned beyond recognition, as if you could walk down the street without smelling something smoldering.
Sixth Street had some … I guess you could call it collateral smoke damage, and a bunch of clubs had to shut their doors. But nobody discussed it. Me, Theo, and our bass player, Jamal, lived for our band, but when we couldn’t gig anymore, we were all like, Whatever, shit happens, things’ll pick up again soon enough.
So I reviewed movies. And visited Janine.
JANINE DALTREY:
I got incompletes in all of my classes. The professors were cool about it. How could they not be? I mean, what’re they going to do, tell the girl who’d been beaten within an inch of her life that since she didn’t turn in her African history term paper because she was in the hospital, she’s getting a big honking F?
I didn’t go out much. I knew Dave was in jail, but the vibe in the city was off, so I was perfectly content staying parked on the couch. Naturally, just like in the hospital, I watched a whole lot of tube.
Things were pretty messed up, but I was very, I don’t know, sanguine about the whole thing. Probably because I was whacked out on Vicodin.
Erick also kept my mind occupied. He was on the make, and I was fine with that, because he was being a sweetie about it. He’d sometimes come over with a big bag of groceries and make me dinner, which was fortunate, because I was unbelievably sick of ordering out. He brought over tons of DVDs—the studios sent him everything weeks before they were in stores—and he’d hang out for a double feature. He probably wouldn’t like hearing this, but it felt like he was my father, or my older brother, you know, a family member who was protecting me. And even though on paper it seemed like I had nothing to worry about—I knew that nobody was making meth in my basement, and I didn’t think somebody would suicide-bomb my apartment building—it was still nice to know that somebody had my back.
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nbsp; EXCERPTED FROM THE DIARY OF DAVID CRANFORD,
BARTENDER, THE COVE, AUSTIN, TEXAS
EMERGENCY MEMORANDUM
TO: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Austin Field Office Texas Department of Public Safety/Texas Rangers Austin Police Department
FROM: Sergeant Wilmer Arb, Austin Police Department
SUBJECT: Escapee
June 24, 2009, 4:13 A.M.
To Whom It May Concern:
Please alert all personnel to be on the lookout for David Cranford (physical description and photograph attached). Cranford escaped from the Austin City Jail at 9:12 P.M. on June 23, 2009.
On the evening in question, Cranford assaulted his cell mate, La-Marcus Jackson, with his bare hands. When guard Gerard Clovis came to Jackson’s aid at 8:54 P.M., Cranford assaulted him, then relieved him of his billy club before Clovis could handcuff Cranford. At 9:01, Cranford assaulted and killed Jackson with the billy club, then took Clovis hostage. Personnel could not subdue Cranford, and he exited out the front door. Cranford then dragged Clovis to his personal vehicle and forced him to drive to whereabouts unknown. Cranford threatened to murder Clovis if he was followed, so officers did not immediately pursue.
Pursuit began at 9:21. Clovis’s automobile was found on Interstate 35 a ¼ mile north of exit 246 (Howard Lane). Clovis was deceased; cause of death: fractured skull. Cranford was not in the vicinity.
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