Straight Life - Art Pepper [272]
George, Carl, David, Ed Michel, the greatly talented Bulgarian, Milcho Leviev, Art's alternative pianist during those years-these were good friends. But there were bad friends, too. As far as I was concerned, the bad friends were the fans who wanted to be near Art no matter what, and who gave Art bad drugs-in order to spend time with him. They couldn't be reasoned with, wouldn't be discouraged or driven away. They messed him up. And then they got to tell people that they knew Art Pepper, and, "Boy, he's really messed up." Bad drugs were alcohol (he had very little liver left that wasn't cirrhotic), powerful downers, uppers that burned up his body and his brain, and Valium. Valium: First it made him dopey and forgetful, then, as an afterthought, it rendered him psychotic. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it seemed to happen the same way every time. He'd take some Valium and then, six to eight hours later, he'd decide that he'd lost a gram of coke and that he had to find it. He'd ransack the house, turning out every single drawer and closet, every container, taking things apart, dismantling the beds, all the furniture, pulling up the carpeting (he did that once in a motel when we were on the road). I could promise, I could deliver, more coke. It didn't matter-he had to find that particular gram. I never touched Valium. Years earlier I'd learned that its hangover depression made me want to kill myself. Art never learned, and these people always gave it to him. "It was only Valium," they'd say. The not-so-bad drugs were small amounts of cocaine, which he was using anyway, and marijuana (which affected his sightreading ability. He stopped being able to read music, even his own charts, when he smoked).
Don't get me wrong, Art liked these people who wanted to turn him on. He looked for them, manipulated them, got annoyed at me when I insulted them, said, "Awwww, baby you shouldn't say that. You'll hurt his feelings. He means well."
One of the worst of these bad friends was a woman whose apartment was a drug salon for stars. She didn't sell, she bestowed-and surrounded herself with talent. At her house Art got flattery, bad drugs, and too much pharmaceutical cocaine. Art thought it was a shame to waste such good stuff, so he got a needle from one of her friends and took it home and shot the coke, and shot it and shot it. He wound up in the hospital with an infected arm. She went to see him there and brought him more cocaine. She brought some to the house when he came home (she arrived in a Cadillac with a driver and a bodyguard), and I wouldn't let her in, and she wouldn't leave our front yard. I finally called Art's best friend who came over and threw her, bodily, out. He's a little guy, but he tossed her over our four foot fence with such energy and menace he scared the bodyguard. The woman never came back.
Chris Fisherman was the little guy. He was plumpish, curly haired, about Art's age, and he was probably Art's oldest friend. Chris had been a teenager dealing drugs on Central Avenue while Art had been playing in the clubs and afterhours spots. Chris had had a long, interesting career, in and out of prison (on his bookshelf I found a copy of Mickey Cohen's autobiography inscribed, "To my brother, Chris"), and he and Art had had infrequent friendly contact. He had cleaned up and he came into our lives. He'd settled in West L.A., and, though Art preferred to hole up at home when he wasn't working, he was willing to go out from time to time-to Chris's house where they talked and talked about the people they'd known and the adventures they'd had. Chris locked up his liquor cabinet and doled out, Art complained, a stingy little line of coke an hour. If that. Art would try to manipulate more cocaine. He'd try to manipulate Chris