Washington, D.C., May 1969
The next day Mike and I arrived early at court for the initial appearance and bail setting for “Slim Jim.” Normally, this hearing was quite predictable. The Assistant U.S. Attorney pressed charges on the High’s store robbery, the stolen car, and the other felonies – except the cocaine. She argued in court that he was a flight risk, had no fixed address, a long record, and required a high bond. The judge concurred, and set it at seventy-five thousand dollars. We smiled at ourselves for putting one more bum in jail until trial. He couldn’t possibly post that much money. Having no other business, we walked outside in time to see Slim Jim talk to the driver of a blacked-out Lincoln, and get into the rear seat. We stared.
The rear window cracked a little. It was Slim Jim’s voice.
“Yo! White cops. You can never win. We gonna out-slick you at every turn. Bye, assholes.”
“Mike, I’ve never seen a big-shot criminal post bond for minor charges, and have a new limo waiting in front of the court. This is about the cocaine. Spot me a dime for a call to Detective Roberts.”
We walked over to a phone booth, and I called the main number at headquarters. I had left his card in my bag and had to find him the hard way; every secretary is trained as a guard dog for the senior staff.
Finally, “Good morning, Lieutenant, it’s Jake Stone.”
“Good morning, Jake, what’s up?”
I explained what had happened and gave him the tag number of the limo, which began with an “R” for rented. He said that he would send someone to the rental agency, but the owners always have faulty memories. They know most of their clients are not wealthy executives.
“Jake, how does it feel to have met your enemy.”
“My enemy?”
“In addition to heroin, we now have cocaine on the streets. Both are white death. It was bad enough just dealing with heroin. Whoever rented that Lincoln is a vendor of death. You don’t invent a well-oiled distribution system, better to use one that’s in place. We know that, but so far, we don’t know much else. I thought you might want to know that hospitals are reporting more overdoses, especially from speedballing.3 This is a new problem, and the Baltimore and Richmond police are beginning to report it. We’re starting a log of these reports to look for patterns.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Don’t feel bad. Most people don’t, and it’s not in the papers.”
We exchanged a few pleasantries and hung up. His reference to “my enemy” still bothered me. What was he thinking?