Dan Webster - Forced into damnation

"And nobody else did, either. We haven't got a case." The lieutenant's sad expression told Connie that he was almost as displeased with the situation as she was. "But she's only a small fish, anyway," he continued. "If we tried to lock up every whore in New York City, there wouldn't be any room in the jails for the real criminals. And it's the real criminals that I want to talk to you about."

"What do you mean?" Connie asked, uncertain of why she had been sent for.

"Junk! Heroin! That's the real culprit," he said. "If we can't stop the drug traffic in this city well never be able to clean up the streets. Junk! It's everywhere. Have you heard about the rash of overdoses in Forest Hills?"

"Yes," she answered. "Two kids died in the last couple of weeks, I believe."

"Correction," said the lieutenant. "Three! The third one died this morning."

"But what does that have to do with us?" Connie asked. "Forest Hills isn't our precinct. It isn't even our borough. Forest Hills is where the rich folks live. We've got troubles enough down here."

"Troubles, yes," said the lieutenant with a smile. "But troubles enough? Never. You see, when some ghetto-dwelling junkie overdoses down here, not too many people give a damn. But when it happens to a couple of smart college kids up in Forest Hills, a lot of people start getting uncomfortable. And one of them is the mayor. It seems that his telephone has been busy all day. Quite a few of those influential Forest Hills folks want to know what he's doing about 'their' problem."

"Everybody's got problems, Lieutenant," Connie said, still not sure of what he was getting at.

"But Forest Hills is something special," he continued. "The dope pushers don't do business in the street up there like they do here in this neighborhood. And that makes them harder to find. That's where you come in Connie."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"The mayor has asked for my help," the lieutenant explained. "He needs an undercover agent to infiltrate the Forest Hills youth culture. Someone young and relatively unknown. Someone who has never worked Forest Hills or any of the neighborhoods around it. And most important of all, we need someone who doesn't look like a cop. Someone who'll be able to gain the confidence of the kids."

"And that's the hard part," he continued. "Finding someone who doesn't look like a cop. You see, most cops look like cops. I can't tell you what it is – perhaps the facial expression, or the way we walk – but there is something about a cop. Most of those kids can spot one a mile away. But you've only been on the force for six months, Connie. You haven't acquired that 'cop' look yet. You're still fresh and clean. You could be a schoolteacher, a college student, a nurse maybe. Anything but a cop."

"What do you want me to do, Lieutenant?" Connie asked. It sounded like he was about to give her an important assignment and she wanted to let him know how willing she was to undertake it. "It's an undercover assignment, Connie," the lieutenant said. "If you manage to pull it off I can almost guarantee your transfer to the detective squad. I know you'd like that."

"Like it?" Connie interjected. "Like it? Just tell me when I start and what I have to do?"

"It's pretty simple, really," the lieutenant said. "But there is some element of danger. You'll move to Forest Hills and pose as an art student. Do your best to work your way into the confidence of the young drug users. You'll find that most of them frequent a place called the Glass Onion. It's a kind of a discotheque, but they use it as a hangout and meeting place. Then I want you to buy some heroin."

"You want me to what?" Connie asked. Her eyes opened wide in surprise.

"You heard me," the lieutenant said. "Buy some heroin. It's a lot easier than you might think. Chances are that any of the kids that hang out at the Glass Onion can get you a fix. But that's not what we're after. We want the 'supplier'."

"You mean you want me to buy a large quantity of it?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter how much you buy," he answered. "The tiniest crumb is enough to get us an arrest warrant. Just make sure you buy it from someone who's in a position to sell a large quantity. Think you can handle it?"

"I'm sure of it," she answered. "And thanks for your confidence."

When Johnny Walker laughed, there was no mirth in the sound. To Johnny, laughter, like all other expressions of human emotion, was no more than a tool – an instrument of deception – to be used in the manipulation of people. While his soft, almost-hypnotic base voice might lull strangers into a false sense of security, those who knew Johnny knew him to be as cold and as hard as the knife that was his ever-present companion.

Johnny was lounging on the raised black platform in the center of his living room, dressed comfortably in green double knit slacks and a green-and-yellow smoking jacket. Around his neck was a white satin ascot, tied loosely and tucked into the front of the jacket. The stark whiteness of the material contrasted sharply with the coal black color of his skin.

Johnny laughed again, flashing two rows of shiny white teeth. One of the upper centrals was capped in gold, the white tooth enamel showing through a heart-shaped cutout in the center of the cap. Gloria stared at it in fascination as Johnny's upper lip curled back to let the laugh out.

Gloria was on her knees in front of the platform, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Please, Johnny," she begged. "Just one shot. Just one shot and then I won't ask you again. I'll kick it, I swear. Just let me have this one shot and then, so help me, I'll be through with heroin for the rest of my life."

Johnny laughed again, shifting his six-foot-two frame to a more comfortable position on the foam rubber surface of the platform. He was broad and well muscled – built like the heavyweight fighter that he could have been if he hadn't found an easier way to make a living. A pink scar running from a point alongside his right eye nearly to his chin was evidence that things hadn't always come easy.

Johnny Walker had been born in Corona, one of New York City's lesser-known slums. Although every bit as oppressive and as savage as New York's other Black ghettoes, Corona never received much attention from the city's sensation seeking tabloids, perhaps because it was located in the borough of Queens, always less dramatic than Manhattan. As a result, Corona received even fewer city services than the better-known Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant sections.

Ever since he was a kid, Johnny fought for everything that he got. At first his fighting was restricted to the crowded two-room apartment occupied by his mother and her family of twelve. Back then the victims of his fury had been his brothers, his sisters, and his cousins. And his rewards had been a few more inches of elbow room and a couple of extra forkfuls of hominy grits, stolen from someone else's plate when his mother wasn't looking.

By the time he was ten, Johnny's fighting had moved on to the streets and into the yard of the broken-down old Corona school building that he visited whenever the mood was upon him. Children three or four years older than he were already learning to fear his quick temper and his flying fists. But Johnny didn't emerge completely unscathed from his fights.

Having spent the early part of his life making enemies, it was only natural that some of them would look for a way to strike back at him. It happened one day when he was twelve years old. Johnny found himself cornered in one of Corona's garbage-strewn back alleys, surrounded by six of the young Black boys who had felt the force of his wrath in the past.

After beating him for the better part of a half-hour, the boys had left him for dead, lying face down in a puddle of his own blood. But Johnny, who was tougher than they reckoned, had managed to drag himself home where his mother, using a darning needle and black button thread, sewed up the gash on his face and patched up his other injuries.