Always good to see you, Mr. Lucas,” said 007.
“Likewise,” I said, climbing into his car.
I was back in Bangkok, just three weeks after my first trip. And almost all of my first shipment had already sold on the streets. I was back to pay 007 the remainder of what I owed him and re-up for the next shipment.
“Did everything work out for you, Mr. Lucas?”
“Perfectly,” I said.
“And what can I do for you this time, Mr. Lucas?”
“Five hundred keys,” I said.
“Not a problem.”
This time, when I got back to the States, I had to go to the Fort Gordon Naval Base in Augusta, Georgia to pick up the product. I followed the same routine. Had a crew of people to pick up the product and another crew in Harlem to put it in storage and distribute it to the people who would prepare it for the streets.
Soon after my second shipment hit the streets, I heard from my lieutenants that different bosses from around the country wanted to buy direct from me. One of them, a black man I’ll call Felix Jackson, flew out from Los Angeles to see me.
“Mr. Jackson is in town,” said Doc. “Staying at The Plaza. You gonna meet with him?”
“Tell him to meet me at Small’s tonight,” I said.
I knew Felix through Bumpy Johnson. I don’t know what business they had. But I remember meeting him and I remember sitting nearby at various clubs and diners as they talked business. And now, here I was at Small’s, meeting with Felix directly while Doc Holliday sat nearby to watch my back.
“I hear you can offer a very good price, Frank,” said Felix, while we listened to a jazz band.
“Better than anything else out there,” I said.
“How much better?”
“Fifty thousand and two hundred dollars.”
Felix smiled. “And two hundred dollars?”
“That’s my price.”
A key of heroin cost me four thousand and two hundred dollars. And I had to factor in my costs to transport it and still make a nice profit. I’d determined that I needed to make at least forty-six thousand dollars to make it worth my while. I wanted my full forty-six thousand, so I decided that my price per key would be exactly fifty thousand and two hundred dollars. I could have just made it an even fifty thousand dollars, but I wanted my exact profit—no less.
“Is it pure?” Felix asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Ninety-eight percent. Now how much you want?”
“Fifteen keys.”
“That’s seven hundred and fifty-three thousand. You’ll hear from someone,” I said. I drained my drink and stood up to go.
I knew Felix Jackson would have no problem paying my price. At that time, heroin was going for as much as eighty thousand dollars a key from people who needed to charge more because they had to pay more than I was paying. And you’d be lucky to get something that was 60 percent pure.
I became very popular. Very quickly.
By the time Felix got back to Los Angeles, I was hearingfrom my lieutenants that bosses from Milwaukee, Chicago, and Denver were inquiring about buying wholesale from me.
“Thirty sell in Chicago,” Doc would say to me on some mornings. That meant we had an offer for thirty keys. I’d let him know if we could do it or not, based on how my supply was at the time. I didn’t mind selling wholesale. But my bread and butter was selling in the streets, where the profit margins were higher. I had to keep my own operations running smoothly, first and foremost. I did not want to take a chance on selling so much wholesale that I wasn’t able to keep the streets supplied properly.
Before long, it was time to make another trip back to Bangkok. I booked yet another round-trip ticket, updated my visa, and got in touch with 007 to let him know I was on my way.
The next time I saw 007, I told him I wanted fifteen hundred keys. He just looked at me and smiled.
“Not a problem, Mr. Lucas.”
After my third trip to Bangkok, I asked 007 if I could see where my product was coming from. I wasn’t sure if he would go for it.
“It is a very dangerous journey, Mr. Lucas. Not a vacation.”
“I understand that. Still interested in seeing how it works.”
He laughed. “Can’t be satisfied with a good price and a pure product?”
“I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I’d been easily satisfied.”
“True indeed, Mr. Lucas,” 007 said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
A few weeks later, I was trekking through the jungle in the dense area of Thailand that borders Burma and Laos. I had been warned by 007 that the trip out to the poppy fields would take several days each way. And that there was always the chance of things going horribly wrong. Needless to say, 007 didn’t join me on the trip. He introduced me to the other men on their way and left me on my own.
As we walked, I felt more alive than I ever had. I had done exactly what I’d set out to do. I thought about those days I daydreamed about what I wanted out of life while I was working in Bumpy’s numbers spot. I wanted to feel alive. I wanted to feel like I was in control of my own destiny. I was looking up, not forward or backward. And I had cut out all the middlemen. I was at the top of the chain of command, far above where I’d started out, buying heroin in a bar from Old Man Pop.
I’m telling you, I felt like we crossed every river in Asia on our way. From the Ruak River to the Mekong River, we trekked out on foot for miles and miles.
Finally, we got to a rock-covered mountain pass big enough to drive a car through. I went through and then looked out and saw flat land for as far as the eye could see. And across the land, there was nothing but poppies—everywhere. I was in complete shock.
Now, when I say there was nothing before me but poppy fields, you really have to understand what I’m trying to tell you. I’m talking about land the size of all five boroughs in New York City combined. And there was nothing but the poppy-seed plants—the plant that heroin is made from—stretching from one end to the other. I looked up and noticed that the entire field was covered with dark netting. The netting made it impossible to see the fields from the sky so that traveling military planes wouldn’t know what was going on there. But the sun could still shine through and allow the plants to grow.
I asked my guides how the area had become the headquarters for heroin. In halting English, it was explained to me: in the 1960s, there was an anticommunist group of Chinese people who had settled near the border of China and Burma. They ended up getting support from the American CIA, which of course had their own reasons for trying to defeat communist China. The Hmong people traded in heroin, and with the CIA turning a blind eye to their illegal activities, the region exploded. They would use donkeys and mules to transport the product down from the mountains into the cities, where it would be converted to heroin and then sent throughout the world.
For my journey, I was tracing the steps of so many millions of people before me. Except that I was going to be following my package all the way to the corner of 125th street and 8th Avenue, where junkies would trade their wrinkled dollars for a glassine envelope that would get them high faster than anything else on the streets.
I bought one hundred keys that day, directly from the elderly Asian man who had been instructed by 007 to take care of me. The workers there packed the product onto twenty-eight jackasses. And after a day of rest in their small village, we started our journey back down the mountains and to the city of Bangkok.
A few hours after we started down the mountain, I heard a rustling behind us. I stopped to listen. And the men I was traveling with also stopped, their hands at their sides, on their weapons.
I heard my travel companions speaking rapid-fire in their language. And then, through the trees, a group of masked men came blasting through, guns high in the air and screaming in high-pitched voices.
I pulled out my gun and started firing. I could barely make out who was who and I dove behind a bush to try to focus and make sure I only shot at the bandits that were trying to rob us.
I had my head down, one arm out, trying to return fire. There was yelling and screaming coming from all over and all I could think about was how far I had come and how it might all end right there in the mountains.
After a few minutes of exchanging gunfire, there was nothing but eerie and intense silence. I mean, just like that, I heard nothing. Not even the sounds of people retreating. Just nothing. When everything cleared and we were sure we were safe, we began to inspect the damage. Quite a few of our men had been killed. The members of my team began to bury the dead. Even more of the bandits had been killed as well. They were simply moved out of the way and not given the honor of a burial.
We lost half the dope. And even worse, we lost almost all our food and supplies. But I was alive. And if I made it out alive, I knew I’d never need to see the inner workings of the poppy fields again. From then on out, I’d be happy to meet with 007 in nice, cool, air-conditioned hotel-lobby bars.
We had a long journey to make it out. And we had no food. By nightfall, the men brought back what looked like grub worms, huge and fat white wiggling worms that they ate raw. Just the thought of it made me feel sick to my stomach, even though they insisted that they were healthy and full of protein. Hunger eventually took over and I choked one down. Don’t ask me what it tasted like ’cause I can’t tell you. I just chomped it down enough to get it down my throat and swallowed it.
That night, I slept. And when I woke up, I was as sick as a dog. I had a high fever, a headache, and I felt like I had the flu. Looking back, I guess it could have been malaria. But at the time, all I knew was that I was deathly ill. And I was so hungry, I would have eaten a dozen of those grub worms if they had them.
While I tried to rest, the Thai men went out to the jungle for food. They returned with an animal strung up to a stick by its feet. I still don’t know what exactly it was. But it looked like a dog or maybe a hyena. And it ain’t look like no kind of meat I’d ever eaten. But I was so hungry. When they cooked up that animal, I ate it right down and was ready to suck the marrow out of the bones when I was done.
The Thai people put me on a handmade stretcher for a while, carrying me down the mountain until I was well enough to walk again.
And then we made our way out of the Golden Triangle and back into the city limits of Bangkok.
I could not believe I had made it out alive. I felt like getting the dope back to Harlem would be a piece of cake—now that I had my life.
Although the plan was to start getting the dope back to Harlem immediately—I couldn’t do it right away. I had to take five days to rest in my room at the Dusit Thani Hotel in Bangkok before I could even think about the next step.
The whole time I rested, taking meals in my room, I thought about how close I’d come to losing my life. My whole life flashed before my eyes, the way they say it does when you have a near-death experience. As I recuperated and got my mind right, the trip started to feel like a movie, like something that happened in another lifetime even though it had just happened.
On the flight home, I was weak and still sick from the trip into the mountains. I must have lost twenty pounds. But I was still proud of myself. I’d started out paying other people for their dope. And now, finally, I was supplying them and making more of a profit than they’d ever gotten from me.
I’m sure I can be judged for choosing to sell heroin. But I was still proud of myself. Proud that I’d made it from La Grange, North Carolina to the city that never sleeps. And I’d done it on my own terms and was completely self-sufficient and self-reliant. That was always the name of the game for me. How can I be my own boss, make my own rules, and be the master of my own fate? Going to Asia had given me the power to do that. And though I had no further plans to actually go out to the jungle, I appreciated that I had been able to see exactly where my supply came from. It made the whole process even more real to me.
I returned to Harlem in one piece, tired and worn out. But richer than I’d ever been in my life. And on my way to becoming even wealthier. Not just rich. Wealthy. That was the goal.