EVERY AMERICAN CITY HAS ITS CLAIM TO FAME, HOWEVER honorable or messed up it may be. New York’s pizza is to die for. I’d like to bone my share of L.A. actresses. Even thug-ass Philly got cheesesteak. Miami has cocaine. The white girl. Blow. Bricks. Lace. Pies. Birds. Whatever folks want to call it, the powder was ours before it lit the rest of America on fire. So every time you see a dazed addict in your locale, or a cracked-out hooker peeking from behind a lamppost, credit Miami. It’s funny how death can dwell in the most idyllic of places. There’s blood on the hands of my city. We’re drenched in buckets. I wonder if tourists think about that historical fact when they come to South Beach. I wonder if they know the ghosts of the runners, hit men, addicts, and jack boys roam amid those high-rises that tower over Biscayne Bay.
When the powder arrived from Colombia, it caused a blizzard in Miami. Everyone went dancing in the snow. By the time I was five, the Colombian and Cuban dope kings were in an all-out war. Seriously, Miami’s streets mirrored some cowboy-and-Indian Wild Wild West shit. Strangely enough though, South Beach was a sleepy little retirement spot. Its couple of mobsters from the old school were no match for the Colombians. As I mentioned earlier, Latin American and Caribbean cats are cut from a different cloth. They don’t bow down to anyone, but they knew they were on unfamiliar turf. Picture some Colombian cats crashing some ritzy party down on South Beach with a bunch of white doctors, lawyers, bankers, and other professionals. They would have stuck out like sore thumbs. Remember, these were the days when the city was primarily white or black. I already told you where the black folks were.
In Miami’s cutthroat underbelly it was easy to find some opportunistic white dudes to push the powder. Enter Mickey Mundey and Jim Roberts. They were typical all-American cats bent on looting and plundering. Miami always attracts those types to this very day. They got in good with some Colombians who were itching to get their dope to America. Mickey and Jim fit the part. In our hood we heard the stories about those dudes long before the world got a glimpse of the mayhem in that movie Cocaine Cowboys. I’m surprised it took so long for some filmmakers to figure out the craziness my friends and I witnessed daily was made for TV drama.
The dope was getting folks high as a kite. From ballplayers to politicians and other quote-unquote socialites, everybody was snorting the white. My eyes lit up when I tagged along with the older hustlers on a trip to downtown and South Beach. I couldn’t believe people had the kind of money to buy the cars I saw. Porsches, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis were all on display. I used to peer out the window of the beat-up Lincoln I rode in. Of course I daydreamed. Those dudes were raking in cheese. A lot of cheese.
In those days the name Pablo Escobar was legendary. Imagine some kind of fairy-tale Wizard of Oz where all dreams came true. Well, Colombia was Oz and Escobar was the wizard. But of course to some poor black kids all that land could be was fantasy. Word around the campfire was that cats like Mundey were actually starting connecting with the wizard himself. When they brought the white girl back, they flew down the western coast of Florida. Every hustler back then did the same. Whether it was weed coming from the islands or blow from Colombia, narcs wouldn’t think a plane heading south from Georgia was packed with powder. That route was off the drug-trafficking radar. Mundey and Roberts even built their own airport runway. They were some bold dudes who continued to get bolder.
Sometimes they had it dropped near the Bahamas, where boats would bring it in. I always daydreamed of finding a stray package floating along the bay, like those found by a couple of older cats in my neighborhood who worked on the docks cleaning the drug runners’ speedboats. I knew some of those dudes had to steal a couple of bricks. At five I was game enough to do it, but I was too young to be working down by the docks. I would have tucked that brick in a garbage bag and run as far away as I could. I would have run all the way to Georgia, even South Carolina. Finding a stray package in the bay was like wishing upon a star. It was only wishful thinking of course. For now, I could only listen to the stories.
Powder was flooding Miami. Club owners were letting folks snort in their nightclubs. As if God was playing a joke on poor religious folks, one Sunday a shower of bricks even crashed through the roof of a church. About 80 percent of America’s cocaine was coming from Miami. The news headlines showed that the country was in a recession. I remember folks got really strapped for cash at that time. Alongside the police brutality, the lack of cash flow sent folks over the edge during the riots, but judging from all the cars, jewelry, and mansions downtown, you would never have known it. Dope runners even doled out six figures on bulletproof cars.
Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega allowed dealers to launder their millions through the country’s banks, but some of those dudes had too much cash. They buried the excess in their lawns or paid folks to stash it in their homes.
If they weren’t at the horse races, they spent their cash at a ritzy spot called the Mutiny Hotel. But my city is like a pretty chick that’s good-looking from afar but really far from good-looking when you get in bed with her. All that money was sure to lead to bloodletting. You can’t dangle a ham hock in front a starved dog and not expect to get bitten. The party would be soon over, at least in their part of town.