Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

Miss B led me over to the closet, opening the door and pulling on a chain that caused a bare lightbulb to illuminate. She parted some of the clothes and pointed to a cardboard box.

“It’s all in there,” she said, still holding the clothes aside, not wanting to go any further.

“Thanks,” I said, bending low to pick it up. It didn’t have much weight to it.

“I don’t think I can be in here. I’m going in the other room with Tynesha. Holler if you need anything,” she said, closing the door behind her.

I gingerly sat on the chair in front of the vanity, shoved aside some of the cosmetics to make room for the box, and pulled open a flap to look inside. I didn’t have a great deal of experience pawing into dealers’ stash boxes, but I had to assume this was fairly typical: there was a jar of baking powder, a few straight-edged razors, a tiny scale, and a heaping pile of dime bags.

Even though they were called “bags,” they actually resembled tiny envelopes. Each was filled with one tenth of a gram of heroin. Ten bags was known as a bundle. Five bundles was a brick. A brick went for about $300 wholesale-or about $6 a bag. The dealer selling a dime bag for $10 each was going to clear $200 for his $300 investment, but only dealers in the suburbs could get away with charging that much. In the inner city, where there was more competition, dime bags went for $7 or $8.

Wanda’s stash consisted of two bricks, two bundles, and a large pile of loose bags, some of which appeared to have been opened. Most of the bags had the same brand-name stamp on them. Yeah, heroin really does come in different brands. People unfamiliar with drug culture always get a kick out of that.

Some of the brands seized in drug busts we had written about had names like Body Bag, Blood River, Head Bang, Power Puff, Instant Overdose-the idea being that the more dangerous your brand sounded, the more potent your dope must be. When a brand got hot, people would line up around the corner just to get it.

Wanda’s brand was a name we hadn’t written about before.

It was called “The Stuff.”

The Director came up with the brand name himself and was proud of it. It was an easy name to remember, straightforward and instantly identifiable. People always used the word “stuff” when they talked about drugs.

Now they could talk about The Stuff. It was simple, yet distinguished. The Director also designed the logo: an American bald eagle whose talons clutched a needle. The words “The Stuff” were written in fancy script underneath.

He had several stamps of the logo created and spread them around the production department. Each of his technicians was reminded to make sure every dime bag of The Stuff had the logo stamped on it. But the Director always spot-checked each shipment, just to make sure.

He even kept a The Stuff stamp on his desk. He loved that logo.

The Director’s dealers loved it, too. Within the crowded heroin marketplace, it was a logo-and a name-that stood out. You didn’t have stuff unless you had The Stuff.

The Director scoffed at all those cretins who tried to outdo each other with gory, violent names. Who really wanted to be snorting something called “Walk of Death” or “Corpse Powder”? It was so literal. It would be like naming a tissue brand “Sir Sneez-A-Lot.”

The Director liked to think of The Stuff as being the Kleenex of the heroin world. He imagined a day when the brand went national, when people everywhere would ask for it by name, when only injecting a batch of The Stuff would do. Just like everyone asked for a Kleenex. It had a ring to it.

And, really, the principle behind branding heroin and branding tissues-or clothes, or cereal, or any other product-is identical. You need to be able to differentiate your product to the consumer. Then you build brand loyalty. That was true whether you were talking about denim jeans, corn cereal, or illegal narcotics.

The Director’s only regret was that he couldn’t push his brand out there even more. He sometimes fantasized about what he would do if he were allowed to advertise. He imagined billboards, radio spots, print advertisements, online campaigns, merchandising opportunities, a clothing line, all of it. And it was all terrific.

But the only person he could share his ideas with was Monty, who naturally told him how wonderful they were. And that didn’t mean much. The Director could have defecated on Monty’s shoes and Monty would have told him it was ice cream.

No, the Director told himself sadly, his marketing genius was never going to be appreciated. Sometimes, he would take the stamp on his desk and imprint it on a glossy piece of paper, just to see what it would look like on a magazine cover.

And then he would ball it up and throw it away, saddened that the world could never know the brilliant man behind The Stuff.

I picked up one of the dime bags and examined the picture on it more closely. It was an eagle, sort of like the one on the back of a quarter, except instead of clutching arrows, this one had a syringe in its talons-a national symbol for junkies.

Then I started combing through the stash box, staring at its contents until suddenly it became obvious what Wanda had been doing: the empty bags, the razor, the baking soda, the scale. Wanda had been running her own cutting operation. It involved opening The Stuff bags, diluting it with the baking soda, then repackaging it in the unstamped bags. It was a quick way to augment supply.

The Stuff was obviously the top-of-the-line name-brand product that she sold to her best customers. The blanks were like the generic brand that she sold to everyone else. On an impulse, I grabbed four of the bags-two of The Stuff and two of the generic-and dropped them in my pocket. I briefly debated the ethics of doing so, since I was sort of tampering with evidence. I also briefly debated the sanity. .

Why, no, Officer, that heroin isn’t mine. My interest is, uh, purely professional. .

But, ultimately, I knew I’d regret it later if I didn’t take some product samples while I had the chance. Heroin was clearly the link between those four bodies. Having some of it in my possession just seemed like a good idea. Maybe we could have it tested at a lab? Maybe it would make a nice photograph?

And maybe I was just out of my bleepin’ mind. But before I chickened out, I repacked the box, replaced it in the back of the closet, then rejoined Tynesha and Miss B in the living room, where they were sniffling into their tissues.

“Should we head to the funeral home now?” I asked.

Miss B nodded and began preparing herself for a trip outside, allowing me a few more moments to dwell on all those pictures of Wanda.

We often ran head shots of people who died quick and violent deaths in our paper, and there was something about them I found endlessly fascinating. Especially when they captured some happy moment-a graduation, a wedding, a retirement, whatever. I just couldn’t help but think: if the guy in that photo had known he had three years until he got splattered on some drunken trucker’s grill plate, would he have lived differently? Would he have left his wife or spent every second with her? Would he have gone on a cruise around the world? Or just gone to the racetrack every day?

If Wanda had known the choices she was making would have left her dead before her thirtieth birthday, would she have chosen differently? Maybe. Except, of course, Wanda probably never thought about her thirtieth birthday. It’s a common problem among the impoverished, the lack of future focus. People are so worried about surviving today they don’t have the luxury of thinking about tomorrow.