What Doesn't Kill Us--A McKenzie Novel by David Housewright (most read books txt) 📗

a half million deaths, the government finally caught on and began monitoring the behavior of doctors and health clinics that prescribed opioids; regulations and insurance policies were established. As a result, the prescription market began to contract. Many in the white community were suddenly cut off from their supply—the vast majority of opioid addicts were white for the simple reason that they had greater access to traditional health care—and they had to seek their fix elsewhere.

Enter Jamal, who was happy to meet their growing needs at a cost of about five dollars for a single Vicodin that usually went for a buck twenty-five or fifteen dollars for a fifteen mg tablet of OxyContin with a retail price of six-fifty. ’Course no one ever bought just one pill. Usually it was in lots of one hundred or more.

While these prices were certainly steeper than they—or their insurance companies—had paid when they received their pharmaceuticals legally from the medical clinic or the corner pharmacy, Jamal’s customers were content knowing that they weren’t stooping so low as to buy fentanyl or, shudder, heroin, the opioids of choice in the poorer quarters, from some back-alley drug dealer working the North Side of Minneapolis. Oh, no. They were acquiring perfectly legal prescription drugs purchased from a polite, young, well-dressed African-American who would drop them off at their homes or offices or the coffeehouse near the mall when it was convenient and then tell them all to have a nice day.

“What you care if I’m slinging?” Jamal asked.

“I don’t,” Chopper said. “Was a time I’d probably be workin’ the trade with you. I just want some information and then I’m outta your life.”

“What kind of information?”

“I heard you’ve been buyin’ your shit at RT’s Basement off of Rice Street.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Nah, uh-uh. That’s just where I pick it up. Used to be I’d get it in the mail. FedEx, man. UPS. Now, my supplier, I don’t know if he thinks RT’s is safer or more convenient.”

“So, what do you do?” Chopper asked. “Knock on the back door, give a man your money, he gives you your product and you walk away?”

“That’s exactly what I do.”

“What man?”

“Who’s ever workin’ the door. I don’t ask no questions, ask no names. If the order is correct, and it always is, that’s all I care about.”

“Who’s your supplier?”

Jamal refused to answer.

“Who’s your supplier?” Chopper repeated.

“You gonna put a gun to my head, convince me you’ll squeeze the trigger if I don’t tell you?”

“That can be arranged,” Herzog said.

Jamal stared at him as if he could picture the scenario unfolding.

“Fuck, man,” he said. “C’mon.”

“Is it RT?” Chopper asked.

“No. Like I said, his place is just the drop.”

“Does your supplier hang there?”

“The fuck I know? Lookit, I don’t know where the Oxy comes from. I met a man while back, he hooks me up. Probably he’s a middleman just like me. Haven’t even seen him in months. I call him on a burner, place my order, he lists a price, and I do what I say I do—knock on the door, pay the price, and get my goods. Simple.”

“RT’s Basement,” Chopper said. “Is it just the distribution center or do the users hang out there? Maybe there’s someone sellin’ shit table to table.”

That would explain the unexpected number of white customers frequenting an African-American bar, he thought.

“Couldn’t say,” Jamal answered. “I’ve never been inside, not even for a taste. I don’t linger, man. I get my supply, I get out. It’s a job, not a life. ’Kay? This is not my long-term career goal, dealin’. Once I’m outta college and clear of my student loans, I’m goin’ basic.”

“Yeah,” Chopper said “I reached the same conclusion you did only I got there late. Way late.” He rolled his chair back and forth a couple of inches to emphasize his point. “It’s hard to give up ballin’.”

“Not me, man. I’m gonna be fuckin’ Bill Gates.”

“How you gonna do that?” Herzog asked.

“Stock market, man.”

“Gates be rich because he built something that never existed before.”

“No. Bill Gates be rich because he owned stock in the company that built something that ain’t never existed before.”

“His company.”

“My point, it’s the stock that matters.”

“You looking for another Microsoft to buy into?”

“Not the only way it works. Another way you go to a broker and borrow shares of a company. You sell the shares. You wait for the stock to go down. You buy back the shares at the lower price. Then you return the shares to the brokerage firm you borrowed them from, pay your interest, and pocket the difference.”

“Selling shorts,” Chopper said. “Dangerous when the stock don’t do what you want.”

“Huge rewards when it does.”

“How would you manage that, a black man in America not even got a college degree yet?” Herzog asked.

“I’m makin’ connections.”

That caused Chopper to raise an eyebrow.

“The investment bankers you sell to?” he asked.

“And others. Them rich soccer moms, sometimes they need more than their prescriptions filled, you know.”

“I know.”

“Not just a good fucking, either. Sometimes, they’re looking for a friend.”

“You that friend?” Herzog said.

“I’m a businessman. I’ll be whatever my customers need. Whatever gets me where I want to go.”

“I predict that you’ll go far, Jamal,” Chopper said.

Jamal was excused, but only after Chopper admonished him to keep their conversation private.

“I promise,” Jamal said before leaving in a hurry.

“You believe what he say?” Herzog asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“So, whaddya think?”

“I think a white man in a nice jacket walks into a black man’s bar where Oxy’s on the menu, the clientele thinking he’s there to fuck with ’em, anything can happen.”

“Could’ve gone down that way, ’cept it don’t explain what McKenzie was doing there in the first place. Can’t see ’im chasin’ the opioid trade. Just not somethin’ he’d do.”

“You know, McKenzie. One thing always leads to another.”

“What we gonna do?”

Chopper looked at his watch.

“What say we run down to On’s Kitchen on University and get some Thai and then later see what’s happenin’ over to RTs Basement?”

Deese rapped on his sister’s front door and