1.
I met Monica at a twelve-step fellowship meeting in Decatur. She gave me the impression that her life of crime was behind her. She said she never wanted to look at heroin again, and she had no desire to go back to transporting illegal drugs. The money was good, but there were too many problems associated with organized crime. She wanted nothing to do with her past life; she loathed it. The first night she came to my house and told me these stories, I was aghast but enthralled. I'd never heard such bizarre stories before, and never thought about real people being in the mafia. But almost instantly, I felt a part of that world. All the excitement and danger of Monica's former life cast a lurid gleam into my living room and the cobweb of her past connections was hanging about my walls. I basked in the stories she was sharing with me, night after night, and vicariously placed myself in them with her. I loved to hear those tales of murder, deceit and blackmail . . .
For two years, she lived in a one bedroom apartment paid for by the “Italians”. She was expected to carry drugs once a week from Chicago to St. Louis. They paid her one thousand dollars in cash for each trip, and there were lots of perks. The Bosses took a liking to Monica and the nephews offered protection to their little sister. On occasion, they even pandered to her desires, bringing her a box of Godiva chocolates, a rare bottle of wine, and a gossip magazine. She cut all ties to family and friends because nobody could know about her job. For her, this would be a short period of her life, a sacrifice. She couldn't trust anyone and it was too dangerous to have a boyfriend.
She lived in near solitude but I saw that this was part of her persona; she was a loner, except for Kate, her one close friend in the city. Monica talked very fondly about Kate. Kate was the one person who really understood her, who really cared about her. The two of them went to clubs on the weekends. Dancing was Monica's passion, her release. On most nights, she occupied a small half-moon stage above the crowd, grinding her hips and tossing her hair in the colored, flashing lights. She was untouchable in the clubs. Guys tried to dance with her but she preferred the women.
She became addicted to heroin through her job; by accident she explained. When I told my father this story, he said to me to stay far away from her. He said that the people she worked for were dangerous-they gave her drugs and made her do illegal things for them. But I checked and it wasn't anything like that. They didn't want her on drugs. They expected her to do her job properly.
What happened was this. Before making her trip every week, she went to a loading dock in the city, an abandoned warehouse. It took up to three hours to load the car. The workers had to get under the car to remove a false bottom. Then, slowly and methodically, they filled the hatch with millions of dollars worth of cocaine and heroin. While she was waiting, Monica sat with the guy in charge of transport, who usually took some heroin off the top for himself. In the backroom, Tomas showed her how to shoot up heroin. She seemed naïve about the effects of the drug. She said how the next day her whole body was craving it and she didn't expect to get sick.
Heroin and drug trafficking became a way of life for her. She learned to hide her habit and do her job. The Bosses met with her once a week for lunch in a fancy Chicago restaurant. They gave her money to buy clothes on Michigan Avenue. They wanted her to dress up and look nice. During the lunches, the Bosses never mentioned anything about the job; they talked casually with her. She told me they were checking to see if her head was on straight. I imagined three older Italian men, smoking expensive cigars, and acting like gentlemen. Monica exuded a cool, sexy demeanor. She had narrow eyes like an Asian, but high cheekbones like a southern belle. Her fair, freckled skin and thick auburn hair reminded me of Rita Hayworth in her early twenties. So I could see how she appealed to these older men. She was self-assured and street-smart, with a touch of feminine mystique.
Monica didn't like being hooked on heroin. She described the terror that came over her while driving the contraband, a paranoid fear that was arising for the first time. For a year, she carried out her job without a doubt in her mind, without a speck of paranoia. One time a police officer stopped her on the highway and she just smiled, giving him a fake name and driver's license. She told me the alias she used, and how she had changed a couple letters around in her name. But once using heroin became a chore, she lost her thrill-seeking panache for crime. She mentioned the long process of her desire to stop running drugs for the Bosses. She said she had to “work on them slowly,” because you couldn't just walk away from the mob . . .
