States of Grace

by Mandy Miller

  “One-stop shopping. How convenient.”

  “Exactly! But it gets better. One pill that costs three dollars at the on-site pharmacy goes for as much as eighty out here on the street, or even twenty times as much out of state where the laws don’t allow doctors to prescribe and dispense drugs from the same location.”

  “Big bucks,” he says, with a faraway look.

  “Big business. The height of junkie entrepreneurship.”

  “Yeah, until you get caught. Sinclair. He got caught and then he got dead, right?”

  “Maybe Sinclair got greedy. Says here he tried to offload thirty-five pills. Over thirty-one, it’s a minimum mandatory prison sentence of three years and a fine of fifty thousand dollars.”

  His eyes bulge like a frog’s. “Fifty grand? And a three year bit?”

  “The more pills you get caught trying to sell, the more prison time you get and the higher the fine, until you go away for life.”

  “You said he didn’t have a sheet.”

  “No way to know for sure, but I’d guess Sinclair agreed to help the cops.”

  “You tellin’ mean he was a rat?”

  “If he was in the business, he could finger other dealers to save himself. And if the cops dropped the case, Sinclair could have all evidence of his arrest erased. It’s called an expungement. Presto, all gone from his record. And the fancy folks at St. Paul’s are none the wiser.”

  “Snitches make enemies, sweetheart.”

  I rub my chin. “Maybe you’re onto something there. Maybe he paid the ultimate price for trying to save his own ass.” I wave the second police report. “But why would he risk everything—his job, his freedom—a second time?”

  “People do stupid shit for money. That’s why you stayed with that creep for so long, remember?”

  “That’s not why, Vin.”

  “Sure, I forgot. You loved his sorry Cuban ass.”

  “That’s ancient history. I pinch his arm. “Let’s get back to why we’re here.”

  Vinnie slides down in his seat. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  A group of twenty-somethings emerges from the pill mill, all emaciated with skin so white it’s translucent, like parchment paper. They get into a white panel van, the type we used to call a pedo van at the State due to the fact they are the vehicle of choice for pedophiles. Before climbing in, each one hands the driver a brown paper bag. They’ll get their cut later, as well as a few bills for their trouble. The rest goes to the big boss, back wherever they came from.

  “Not that I’m a fan of cops or nothin,’ but why don’t they shut these places down? Look at this circus. Kids going in an out like it’s a candy store.”

  “Pain clinics are legal.”

  “Shameful.”

  “And you want to know the best part? Anyone can own one of these places. All you need is to hire one doctor with a medical license and a DEA number to order narcotics, and you got yourself a cash cow. Doc writes the script and it gets filled on site. Everyone goes home rich or high.”

  “What gives with all the out-of-state plates?” He points at a Tennessee license plate with the dubious state slogan, Sounds Good to Me, above the number.

  “Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky, they’re all just a day’s drive away. It’s gotten so bad the cops call I-75 in and out of Florida the Blue Highway to Hell.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “There’s a flight every Monday into Fort Lauderdale from Huntington, West Virginia that never has an empty seat. The Oxy Express.”

  “Where the heck is Huntington, West Virginia?”

  “You get my point.”

  “How’s it you know so much about this?”

  “I once prosecuted a woman who testified she was sponsored by a guy back up in Nowheresville, Kentucky, who ran five vans packed with addicts down here every week. Did the circuit of all the pill mills. Addicts got their visits and drugs paid for, and got to keep some of their prescriptions. The rest, the guy sold back home for ten times what he paid for it down here.”

  “Doesn’t anyone keep track of who’s buying what?”

  “Nope, our good old governor has blocked a statewide database to shut down doctor shopping.”

  “Jesus. What’s this place called? There’s no sign.”

  “They don’t need to advertise.”

  After a half hour of watching zombies parading in and out with brown paper bags stuffed with enough pills to anesthetize a small island nation, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what Sinclair was up to. Just as I’m about to tell Vinnie to get us out of here, a young woman strolls in front of the car.

  I snatch Vinnie’s threadbare Marlins World Series cap from his head.

  “What? What you doin’?”

  I aim both index fingers at the young woman. “That’s Serena Price! Zoe’s BFF.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl who found Sinclair’s body.”

  “You sure?”

  “Damn straight, I’m sure.”

  “Wait here,” I say, bolting out after her.

  “Wait! Maybe I should come…Wait!”

  ***

  By the time I get inside the pill mill, Serena’s nowhere to be seen. Two giants stand sentry outside the only door off the interior hallway, their otherwise trim suit jackets bulged out with handguns. One has a tattoo of a teardrop under his left eye.

  The man without the teardrop holds out his tree trunk of an arm. “Phone?”

  I nod.

  He signals for me to deposit my phone in one of the pigeon holes on the wall. “Frisk her,” he says to Teardrop.

  More than a little uncomfortable about having the monster’s paws on me, I widen my stance and extend my arms like a scarecrow for Teardrop to pat me down. I ball my fists to refrain from clocking him when he spends way too long on my chest.

  “Go,” Teardrop says, waving me through.

  Douche bag.

  Florida Center for Pain is stenciled on the inside door in benign, small black letters. I step into a room which looks like a warehouse, not a waiting area. I pull the ball cap low and walk around, as if I’m looking for a place to sit. No Serena. Rows and rows of folding chairs are set up in the middle of the space, like at the DMV. At the far end is a door to the clinic’s inner sanctum with a No Entry sign. The cement walls are bare, except for a poster, a twist on the classic Florida mantra: No shirt. No shoes. No problem. Instead, it reads: No Weapons. No Phone. No Cameras.

  Those waiting are in various stages of deterioration. It’s obvious some are too far down the road to survive much longer, their bodies shriveled, teeth mostly gone along with any hope for a better tomorrow. Today, along with whatever they can swallow, snort, or shoot, is all they have, all they will ever have. There are a few bright faces, young, for now. They too will look as old as time soon, the light in their eyes extinguished by what will become their single-minded obsession—the next fix.

  On the side wall there are three bulletproof-glass windows: Check In—Cash Only, MRIs—Cash Only, and Prescriptions—Cash Only. Dozens of people are lined up in front of each, not one of whom is standing still. All biting nails, scratching skin, sniffing and sighing, every second getting closer to their next high. Behind the glass are women wearing scrubs decorated with pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh characters. Yellow background for Pooh, pink for Piglet, and blue for Eeyore.

  I join the Check In line. The attendant takes two hundred fifty dollars in cash from each patient and drops the bills into a large red garbage bag labeled BIOHAZARD. A heap of identical bags is piled behind her chair.

  “You have appointment with doctor, miss?” asks a young Asian woman in the Piglet scrubs seated behind the glass.

  “No, but I’d like to see a doctor.”

  “Not today, sweetie. We too busy.”

  “I just want to get some information. I was thinking about making an appointment, but—”

  The woman shoves a clear plastic bag through a slot under the window. “Here, information.
Cash only, no insurances, fill in forms before come. Next please.” She flicks her wrist for me to step aside. I grab the bag and step back.

  A cheer rises from the crowd when a woman wins a car on The Price is Right, playing on an ancient TV mounted high in a corner. A security camera is bolted to the top of the TV. I count seven other cameras.

  I sit and tip the contents of the bag onto my lap. A photocopy of an ad from South Florida Weekly, a free local newspaper, saying, Chronic Pain? Stop Hurting and Start Living!, along with a list of all Florida Center for Pain locations: Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Delray Beach, Riviera Beach, and Orlando. Coupons offering a free first visit and twenty-five dollars cash for bringing in a new patient. The final item in the bag is another ad, this one for a fifty percent discount on an MRI at Mobile MRI.

  On the far side of the room, a crowd has gathered around something. Shouts of “Out of the way. Out of the way!” burst from the center of the group. Four paramedics from the Fort Lauderdale Fire Department charge in and load a woman onto a stretcher, a twig of an arm dangling off the side.

  I approach one of the medics who is packing away equipment. “That was scary. That happen a lot in here?”

  The medic slings a heavy pack over her shoulders and shakes her head in disgust. “Every damn day. We’re over here every damn day. Overdoses, fights, you name it, it happens here in Zombieland every damn day.” She trots away to catch up with her colleagues toting the stretcher.

  I sink onto a chair beside a sleeping woman, head tipped back, mouth open, no doubt one of the few moments in her day when she’s not trolling for her next high. In her lap, an open purse, a pill bottle visible on top, its contents a brownish color through the amber plastic. I don’t need to see the blue to know they’re oxycodone.

  It would be easy, wouldn’t it? Just one pill. She’d never miss it. At least not until long after I’m gone. A moment of relief, the feeling that all’s right with the world. It would be easy.

  No one will ever be the wiser, will they? Tomorrow will be just as good a day as today to rebuild my life as today. I deserve a break, a few moments of euphoria, don’t I?

  Easy maybe. But also, wrong. So wrong.

  I stand and shake myself so hard the woman awakens.

  “One day at a time,” I say under my breath, a non sequitur which results in the woman clasping her purse to her chest.

  “You okay, honey?” she asks.

  I nod and walk away, forcing myself to focus on the task at hand—how to defend Zoe.

  I clasp my shaking hands and close my eyes. When I open them, Serena and a stocky man are emerging out of the restricted area. He hands her a duffel bag. It’s the albino guy from the Sinclair house.

  I stuff the paraphernalia back into the bag and take off after them.

  At the exit, I tap Serena on the shoulder. “Excuse me, you’re Serena Price, aren’t you?”

  Serena keeps walking, the man’s beefy arm around her waist.

  “If I could talk to you for a minute. I’m Zoe’s lawyer. You guys were friends.”

  The man deposits his bulk between me and Serena. “Who she is ain’t none of your business.”

  I grab my phone at the entrance and chase after Serena, the man having disappeared back inside the clinic.

  “If I could just ask you a couple of questions, I’ll get out of your hair.”

  Serena keeps walking. “Crazy bitch killed Brandon. No way I’m gonna do or say anything that could help her. I’m not telling you nothing.”

  “But you guys were friends.”

  Serena tucks the duffel under her arm.

  “Why are you at a place like this?”

  She clicks her key fob in the direction of her white BMW.

  “You know anything about Brandon Sinclair selling drugs?”

  Serena whips around, her eyes spearing me like dual daggers.

  “How about you?” I point at the duffel. “What you got there?”

  She shoves me aside and drops the duffel in the trunk. “Get away from me.”

  “From what I hear, you were pretty close with Brandon. Maybe too close, is what I hear. I bet that’s something your parents might be interested in.” I step back. “You can’t avoid me forever. You’re going to have to answer my questions in a deposition.”

  “Screw you,” she says, before getting in her Beemer and taking off.

  Back at the car, Vinnie’s fiddling with the radio. “Why can’t I get the Marlins on this thing?”

  I change the frequency to AM and tune in the Marlins game.

  Vinnie grabs my arm. “And next time, give me a heads-up when you’re thinking about doing something stupid.”

  “What?”

  “This place ain’t exactly safe.”

  “You mean for someone like me?”

  “I mean for anybody.”

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 23

  I jab my finger at the windowless, concrete-block structure. “That’s it! 1447 West Sunrise Boulevard.”

  “What is that place? Looks like the death row at Starke,” Vinnie says, his top lip curled back.

  “That, my friend, is a pill mill, also known, in more polite circles, as a pain clinic.”

  A low growl from the back seat.

  “Maybe we should have left her in the crate back home?”

  Another growl.

  Vinnie shoots me a look that could strip paint. “No one’s getting locked up in a cage again. Not on my watch,” he says, docking Carmela in one of the few empty parking spaces outside the pill mill.

  Many of the vehicles in the jam-packed lot are multi-passenger vans with out-of-state license plates. Most of the cars with Florida plates are beaters, some rusted out, others with mismatched quarter panels. All appear to be on their last legs, not unlike the dozen or so emaciated, jittery people pacing back and forth outside the entrance, smoking cigarettes and chomping gum.

  A white, middle-aged man exits the building and hones in on a skeletal woman in skin-tight jeans and a bikini top leaning against the fender of a tan pickup with West Virginia plates. The woman sucks on a cigarette and forages deep in her pocket as if it contained untold treasure. Cash in her hand, the man shoves something at her, grabs the money, jumps into the truck, and guns the engine. The woman stays behind, swaying, staring at whatever is in her hand.

  “If I had to guess, I’d say they’re giving away blue candy in that bunker.”

  “Huh?”

  “The blues, baby,” I say, affecting a dreamy tone.

  “That a music club?” Vinnie asks, the furrows in his brow carved deep by time and a hard life.

  “For a former made guy, you sure can be naive. No, not music, silly. Drugs. Pain pills. OxyContin. Called blues because of their color. Hillbilly heroin. Whatever you wanna call it, it’s pure evil on steroids.”

  A young couple, hand in hand, walk inside. Her hair’s in pigtails. He’s wearing a Nirvana T-shirt.

  A young woman gets out of her car and straps on a back brace, before limping inside with the help of a cane.

  “More grist for the pill mill.”

  “I read about them pill mills in the paper. It said Broward is the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. Whatever epi and opi are.”

  “They mean this is where people come to die at the hands of those sworn to do no harm.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning doctors in white coats pushing drugs. All legal. All made out to be a regular medical office. Except the patients, most of them at least, as just looking for their next fix.”

  “Back in the day, we weren’t no pushers. We had our rules, and drugs were against them.”

  “Only girls and gambling. Isn’t that the party line?”

  “A little of this, a little of that,” he says, examining his age-spotted hands on the steering wheel. “But that’s all another lifetime ago, sweetheart.”

  “Check that out. Dude over there in the brown Toyota. He’s shooting up right there, out in the open!�
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  “Mother of God.” Vinnie covers his eyes, but peeks though his fingers at the man tightening a rubber band around his arm with his teeth. “Thought it was pills they’re sellin’.”

  “Yeah, but the high is twice as special if you crush the pills and shoot or snort the powder.”

  “Jesus, Gracie. Enough. I ain’t got the stomach for this. And neither do you,” he says to Miranda, along with a command to lie down.

  “Thank God, nor do I. Anymore,” I whisper to myself.

  “Why is it we’re here again? You said Sinclair got arrested here. But for what, if all this is on the level?”

  “Sinclair was arrested here for drug trafficking. He got caught trying to sell some pain pills to an undercover cop.”

  “Oops,” Vinnie says with a shrug. “But why here?”

  “You ever heard the saying that bank robbers rob banks because that’s where the money is?”

  “Sure.”

  “Drug dealers deal drugs at places like these because it’s where the drugs and the consumers are. Here in the Sunshine State, not only can you get pain pills prescribed at a pain clinic, but you can also get that very prescription filled there too at an on-site pharmacy.”

  “One-stop shopping. How convenient.”

  “Exactly! But it gets better. One pill that costs three dollars at the on-site pharmacy goes for as much as eighty out here on the street, or even twenty times as much out of state where the laws don’t allow doctors to prescribe and dispense drugs from the same location.”

  “Big bucks,” he says, with a faraway look.

  “Big business. The height of junkie entrepreneurship.”

  “Yeah, until you get caught. Sinclair. He got caught and then he got dead, right?”

  “Maybe Sinclair got greedy. Says here he tried to offload thirty-five pills. Over thirty-one, it’s a minimum mandatory prison sentence of three years and a fine of fifty thousand dollars.”

  His eyes bulge like a frog’s. “Fifty grand? And a three year bit?”

  “The more pills you get caught trying to sell, the more prison time you get and the higher the fine, until you go away for life.”