by Holmes, John
“They’re all bark.” came a voice from above, “just kick them off if they give you trouble.” A light was on upstairs where three people stood gawking over a spindly balustrade. One of them waved us up and we made the climb. For the next few minutes I was grabbed, fondled, squeezed, hugged, petted and patted. I heard my name mentioned no less than a half-dozen times. The recognition and attention pleased me.
The one doing most of the feeling was a woman named Joy Miller. Like the house itself, she was desperately in need of a good once-over. She wore no makeup and her hennaed hair was stringy and limp; no telling when it had last been exposed to a comb, let alone soap or water. Her eyes were puffy and darkly lined, as was the rest of her face. Even when she smiled, which wasn’t all that often, she appeared tired and haggard. Old beyond her years!
Joy, I soon discovered, shared the Wonderland house with two men, Billy Deverell and Ronny Launius. No one shared Joy; she was Billy’s exclusive property. Billy and Joy were similar in several ways. Both were short and in their mid-to-late forties. It’s possible that Joy colored her hair to look closer in age to Billy. On the other hand, Billy’s jet-black hair was streaked with gray, which tended to make him more a match for his “old lady.”
Although Ronny, the baby of the trio, was seven or eight years younger than his roommates, the gap seemed narrower. His thinning blond hair didn’t help, nor did his cold, steel eyes and spacey expression. A tall man, six feet or more, Ronny towered over Billy. They made an odd combination: the Mutt and Jeff of the drug world.
Joy, Billy and Ronny each had a long history of arrests, a fact I didn’t discover until later. That probably wouldn’t have bothered me had I known from the start. My slate wasn’t all that clean either.
These people were scum, the poorest excuses imaginable for humanity, in my opinion—now, of course. Had I met them a year or two earlier I would have turned and ran. But times had changed. I’d changed. To my distorted way of thinking, they represented security and camaraderie. I was short on friends. When they reached out I wanted to grab hold. Getting close to the Wonderland threesome wasn’t at all difficult. In fact, I became part of “the family” that very afternoon. It happened the minute I forked over $500 for a quarter-ounce of cocaine.
Over the next few months, 8763 Wonderland Avenue became my hangout, my hideout, my crash pad. My apartment was gone; without a job, no money or offers coming in, I’d had to give it up. For the first time in over ten years, producers were snubbing me. I was poison. Unpredictable and irresponsible! It didn’t help that I looked like death warmed over. I couldn’t even sustain an erection. Nobody wanted a hophead—or a limp phallic symbol.
Money became so tight that I was forced to sell my van. With part of the money, I bought David’s beat-up Chevy Malibu. David accepted the cash on the spot, just as he’d accepted the car as a gift fresh from the showroom. My new best friends saw to it that my pockets were never empty. I became their star delivery boy—a drug runner making clandestine calls to some of Hollywood’s most famous addresses. Showing up at a bigwig’s house with a pound of cocaine and a hundred base pipes for his celebrity guests wasn’t unusual. Not all of my clients were in show business, but it didn’t matter what they did or who they were as long as they had the bucks.
Buying a stash from John Holmes (or “Betty Crocker,” my code name) became a real kick. See Mr. Big. See the Porn King. Fast-fading royalty, live—functioning, anyway—and in person. He really delivers!
For my efforts, I was paid in nugget-sized rocks of base worth a thousand dollars. The trouble was that I had to “earn” that much every day just to sustain my own habit—not that I was irrevocably hooked. I never believed that for an instant. Nor was I overly concerned about my expenses. By comparison, the two grand that Joy, Billy and Ronny each shot away daily made me look small time. We weren’t even close to being in the same league.
While making my rounds I became exposed to an underground that I never dreamed existed. Most of the people I dealt with on a drug level lived in quiet, residential neighborhoods. From the outside, their homes or apartments looked perfectly respectable. On the inside, however, they were armed camps containing entire rooms filled with crates of automatic weapons, shrapnel grenades and ammunition, suitcases packed with counterfeit money, boxes and bags crammed with jewelry and narcotics.
These people made their money by stealing, primarily Mercedes Benz cars, which they repainted and outfitted with new serial numbers, then shipped to other states and countries (Hawaii was a favorite destination). The cash that they received was turned over to me for drugs that they wanted or needed to buy something else.
There’s a subculture of trading in America that the general public knows little or nothing about. Each of the states and many cities within them have separate bands of burglars, armed robbers, car thieves, arms dealers, and counterfeit money traders. These groups have several common links: they’re all terrified of the police, they’re all resentful of authority, and they all deal in narcotics and money.
Narcotics and money are their stock in trade, and they need both to operate. For instance, if you want to buy a submachine gun, you can pay cash or trade drugs for it. To get the drugs you need money. To make money you need drugs. The two go hand in fist.
An endless supply of counterfeit money was available. At one point, I heard that $3 million in bogus bills had been pumped into the County of Los Angeles over a two-day period. The connection was offering to trade real dollars for counterfeit at a five-to-one ratio, and word had it that takers from as far away as New York and Chicago were lining up at his back door to make the switch ($10,000 in real money brought them $50,000 in hard-to-detect fake $100 and $50 bills). From the connection’s house, the fake paper made its way into the stores in exchange for such inexpensive items as chewing gum or cigarettes. The pressure was always on to make the exchange as rapidly as possible, and then back off before the Feds had time to find out where the dealings were taking place. Otherwise, they’d swarm in hot and heavy.
Guns were always prized and always in demand; they were often preferred as barter. Uzi and Thompson submachine guns could bring up to three times the going rate in counterfeit money.
God have mercy on anyone who created problems for the connections. Virtually every group had an enforcer to clamp down on troublemakers. The most common “victims” were customers who were unable to pay their huge and mounting drug debts.
Enforcers were known for their unique, persuasive methods of collecting money. One had a notorious reputation for using hot irons. If the customer wasn’t home, he would grab anyone who answered the door— usually the customer’s wife—strip her and tie her down on the floor, then place a steam iron on her stomach. He’d plug it in and walk out the door, leaving the iron to cook its way through her guts.
Driving from place to place I’d often see stores with massive “Going out of Business” signs plastered across the windows. The next time I’d pass by, the building would be charred rubble, burned to the ground. The stores had been torched for the insurance money, with the owner’s full cooperation. There was talk on the streets that one powerful dealer had “his man” torch two or three shops and office buildings a week.
In time, the Wonderland people had their own enforcer, a bull-necked, powerfully built and heavily tattooed wrestler type who’d spent more time in jail than out. His name was David Lind but he answered to “The Bounty Hunter,” a label he’d proudly pinned on himself. David Lind had two great passions in life, killing anyone who got in his way, and torturing women. To look at him, with his chilling, stone gray eyes, was like standing naked on a block of ice in a meat freezer. If David Lind came to the door selling encyclopedias, dressed in his Sunday clothes, you’d call the police.
Several months after I’d been invited into the Wonderland house, Ronny Launius and Billy Deverall began flying to Sacramento, “on business.” Actually, they’d gotten into some kind of trouble and had to appear in court. They were
ultimately absolved, but they didn’t catch the first plane home; they lingered long enough to try and set up a big narcotics deal, dropping a bundle of money in the process. Infuriated, they took to a local bar to plot their revenge.
It was in the Sacramento bar that they met “The Bounty Hunter.” Lind had overheard their heated conversation, introduced himself, and offered to get their money back. Ronny and Billy were so impressed with Lind’s awesome presence and intimidating tactics that they invited him to Hollywood to strong-arm their debtors there. David Lind was accepted on the spot and Wonderland had a frightening new family member.
When I wasn’t making my rounds, I’d flop around the Wonderland house, half-stoned in faded jeans and a crumpled shirt, either watching television with Joy, a slovenly portrait herself in slippers and a tattered, shapeless housecoat (she’d lost both breasts to cancer), or hovering around Ronny while he sharpened his knives. Ronny had one of the biggest collections in Hollywood even before he’d had a walk-on in a Sylvester Stallone movie and ripped off half the props. His prize was a custom-made combat knife worth $3500.
Watching TV was impossible if Billy and Ronny happened to be in the room. They never stopped talking. If they weren’t planning drug deals or discussing persuasive methods of collecting bad debts with David Lind, they were boasting about their latest heist. Hardly a day passed that they didn’t knock over a gas station, corner market, liquor store, pawnshop or residence to bring in extra cash. For kicks, they’d often wrap up a successful outing by snatching a purse from some helpless victim on the street.
Life at Wonderland was seldom dull. The doorbell rang at all hours, day and night, pushed by shifty-eyed strangers after a quick fix or a takeout. Joy deftly doled out the drugs and raked in the profits. The majority of visitors stayed only briefly. Others, many of them regulars, lingered on to join in the evening drug feasts, which were wild and frantic, stereoblasting affairs that had the revelers (and nearby neighbors, no doubt) climbing the walls.
During the months that I spent at 8763 Wonderland Ave., so many people passed in and out the front door—hundreds upon hundreds—that faces became featureless blurs. Names, when offered, which was seldom, were soon forgotten. There were two notable exceptions. Susan Launius also came from Sacramento. Her reason for visiting the house was far different than Barbara’s, however. Barbara was David Lind’s girlfriend. Susan came to try and patch things up with Ronny, her estranged husband. They’d talk behind closed doors or go off together briefly to get away from the rat race. Then they’d reappear, unsmiling and silent once more. They never seemed to make any headway. Ronny had more pressing matters on his mind. We all did, like “basing,” and partying, and growing old.
One day, Billy carried a heavy-looking plastic bag through the front door. “What’s that?” Joy growled, staring at the bag through half-open lids. Sprawled limply across the living room sofa, she looked awful, worse than usual. She needed a fix, bad. So did the others. “This will get us feeling good again, babe,” Billy said. “We scored big this time.”
Joy struggled to prop herself up on an elbow. “Yeah? What have you got there?”
Billy set the bag on the floor beside her and pulled out a handful of glittering gold chains and three heavy handguns.
“Jesus,” she groaned, “haven’t we got enough of that shit already?”
“Nothing like this,” Ronny said. “The chains are solid gold and the guns are antiques. They’re worth real money.”
The guns did look old, but there was no way of telling if they were as valuable as Ronny made them sound. He called them “museum pieces” and said that they once belonged to “some historical figure.” He kept mentioning Davie Crockett’s name, although he had no proof.
“Well, do something with them,” Joy snapped, “and hurry up about it.”
Billy’s face twisted with rage. He tolerated Joy’s testiness during withdrawal only because he could so easily identify with what she was going through. Still, he often acted as if he wanted to slug her. He never did, as far as I know—not that she would have felt anything, being so out of it. He usually turned away, as he did this time, to toss the stolen merchandise back in the bag. Then he pointed to me and said, “Take this stuff over to your Arab friend and see what you can do.”
I was dealing mostly in cocaine and marijuana, but my Arab friend, Nash, had a tight heroin connection. Like the Wonderland people, Nash was hooked on heroin. He was also heavily into speed-balling, though not by injection. He’d freebase heroin and cocaine, mix them up and smoke the substance in a bubble pipe. (It was speed-balling that would kill John Belushi nine months later.)
It took approximately five minutes to get to Nash’s latest residence— he moved every other month, it seemed, for security reasons—a sprawling, spacious, very private one-story home. He too now lived off Laurel Canyon, although on the other side of the hill, overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Before leaving Wonderland, I called to make sure that I’d be welcome. Nash did not like visitors dropping in unexpectedly. Neither did the burly bodyguards who roamed about his place at all hours. The guns and jewelry brought an immediate expression of interest from Nash, along with a wariness to accept the merchandise. For several long moments, he paced nervously from one end of his enormous living room to the other, at times seemingly lost as his diminutive frame moved between huge, overstuffed pieces of furniture. When at last he came to a stop, he turned abruptly and said, “No, I don’t want what you’ve brought me. How am I going to handle it?”
More jewelry had passed through Nash’s hands than over the counters of Cartier. I’d seen coat hangers strung with hundreds of stolen wedding rings, and bags of precious stones—diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires—marked to be sold. The gold mountings that had held the priceless gems had been melted into bricks and sent to Iran in exchange for shipments of guns. I knew more about Nash’s operation than I wanted to share with him. “You’re the one with the connections,” I told him. “The guns are worth real money, sure, seventy-five grand maybe, but they’re too easy to spot. I could never unload them.” He started pacing again, working his way toward the huge picture window with its spectacular view of the valley below. He stood there for several moments, motionless and silent, with his back to me. “I don’t like this,” he said, sharply, “but here’s what I’ll do.” His eyes narrowed as he moved closer. “I’ll hold the guns and jewelry for seven days in exchange for an advance of one thousand dollars. You can take the money and get the heroin from somebody else to hold your friends over.”
“A thousand dollars?” I said, stunned. He was offering nothing—or, at least next to nothing. The Wonderland people could shoot up a grand of heroin in a few hours. “The merchandise is worth much more than that,” I argued. “You said so yourself.”
Nash’s expression hardened. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Movie Star. I don’t like dealing with heroin people. They’re not like cocaine people. When cocaine people run out of cocaine—and cash—they won’t try to kill somebody for the money they need to supply their habit. Heroin people are different. They’ll knock off a cop to get his badge if they think it’s worth anything. I know you understand.” He grabbed one of the antique guns and began fingering it.
“I understand.”
“Good,” he said, nodding. “Then I’ll advance you the money for your friends on Wonderland—but only for seven days. And if they start giving you a bad time, or causing you trouble, come to me. You tell me—is that clear?—And I’ll handle it.”
Nash was a great salesman. I’d come away with a paltry sum, not what I’d expected, but he made me feel as if I’d just negotiated a major coup. I had his complete backing, or so he said, and I wouldn’t be returning to Wonderland empty-handed. It sounded like a no risk situation. How could I lose?
Seven days passed, then fourteen. Nash’s financed supply of heroin at Wonderland was long gone. Everyone was growing progressively more desperate, getting sick on withdrawal, even though the
y were seldom without drugs for long stretches. Billy, Ronny and David saw to that. Over the two-week period they must have ripped off twenty-five people. They’d run shouting through the house while tracking down their guns, then tear off half-crazed to cruise the streets in search of money to feed their habits. On their return, the men would take a position on the second-floor balcony, their guns poised and their eyes riveted to the street searching for cops. A few minutes of that were long enough to satisfy them that they hadn’t been followed. Getting back inside, and slamming heroin, took priority over everything. They were in a constant frenzy, at times so filled with tension that I half expected their spines to shatter from the strain. It wasn’t all due to drugs, or the thought of being caught.
None of the stolen money was earmarked for Nash. Part of it went for heroin; the rest went to pay off another powerful drug source. I’ll call him Sam. The Wonderland people were into Sam for $125,000, and he wanted his money back. Hardly a day went by that Sam wasn’t on the phone to Billy or Ronny demanding to be paid in full. There were loud, screaming arguments followed by quick, desperate departures into the streets for money. One call ended with Sam demanding that they come up with the cash within a week. If they failed to deliver, he threatened to knock over the Wonderland house. Sam always made good on his threats.
As the due date drew nearer, Billy and Ronny, especially, became more frantic than ever. Raising the enormous sum of cash that they needed through their daily heists was impossible, which left them not only clawing at the walls, but at each other. There was only one way that they could make Sam’s deadline, they figured, and that was by getting their guns and jewelry back from Nash and fencing the goods for an astronomical amount. They became obsessed with the thought.
