The Fury - Jason Pinter [90]
I knew that wherever he was, Jack would approve.
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Jason Pinter
The amount of research and notes Jack took was
staggering. Through the Darkness was forty-two
chapters long, and these pages only touched on twelve
of them. Jack had transcriptions of interviews with
dozens of people, from street dealers to middlemen, to
cops and politicians, to local residents who'd witnessed
their streets regress from thriving neighborhoods into
third world countries.
He'd looked at this story from every angle. And I
would have killed to be able to discuss it with him.
Some of the statistics Jack had uncovered were stag
gering, and in the years since the book was published
they could have only grown more bleak.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, over
four million people in the United States had used crack
cocaine at some point in their life, including nearly five
percent of all high-school students. The drug was used
primarily by men over the age of twenty-five. The
typical user was African-American, aged twenty-eight,
with an income at or below the poverty line.
The main reason, Jack had written, that crack cocaine
had become so prevalent was due to its relative cheap
ness to manufacture, as well as the immediate high it
produced. An eight ball, or an eighth of an ounce of rock,
cost about thirty dollars depending on where it was pur
chased.
According to Jack's interviews, a surprising number
of people would actually cook the mixture themselves
rather than buy it ready-made, simply due to monetary
concerns. It was cheaper to be your own chemist than
go to the store. It was carried and sold in everything
from glass vials to cellophane to tinfoil, even the rolls
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261
people generally used for coins. It was most predomi
nant in larger cities with more densely populated urban
areas, such as Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore and
Chicago.
It was also surprising to note that in interviews with
nearly twenty dealers, Jack was unable to find one
person who actually used the drug.
Flipping through the pages, I came upon an interview
with Butch Willingham that Jack had apparently con
ducted just weeks before Willingham was killed. Wil
lingham denied ever using the drug, and in fact said that
anyone who did was frowned upon. Jack had pressed
in the interview:
BW: People who smoke don't do their jobs. They
sit around all day acting stupid. They ain't out
there making money. They ain't out there selling
product. This a business, man. Isn't one of the first
rules of business to always get rid of the bottom
ten percent?
JO: I've heard that before:
BW: See, in our line of work, that's more like
twenty-five percent. Figure ten percent get stoned,
take themselves out of the game. Another ten per
cent get busted.
JO: And the other five percent?
BW: They gots ta be made gone. I been around
the country, man. Lived in L.A. and Baltimore be
fore coming to NYC. Got family and friends
everywhere. Cities change but things ain't that
different. Don't matter where you are or where
you work. If you sell, you gotta sell right.
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Jason Pinter
JO: Butch, you said if someone doesn't sell
right, they have to be "made gone." What do
you mean by that?
BW: I mean, if you run a business, and some
one's screwing up the bottom line, what do you
do with them?
JO: Somehow I don't think you're talking about
early retirement, a pension plan.
BW: You might call it an early retirement.
JO: So if someone needs to be "taken out," where
does that come from?
BW: Come again?
JO: Who decides that bottom five percent? Who
makes the final call which people, pardon the ex
pression, live or die?
BW: Don't know, man. Ain't up to me, that's for
sure.
JO: But surely you don't work for yourself. There
are other people higher than you, I guess you
might call them the board or something along
those lines.
BW: Always report to the crew leader (Note: Wil
lingham refused to identify his crew leader's
name, but it was confirmed by several subjects to