Busted by Wendy Ruderman Read Free Book Online Page B

He told her not to go, but she wouldn’t listen, so he reluctantly went along.
    The children were playing outside when they arrived. Their mom, released from jail six hours ago, sat on a stoop a few houses away. She shot Barbara a steely stare. Barbara knelt down and asked the kids, “How are you guys?” A cluster of drug dealers walked toward Barbara. To them, she was a busybody meddling with their business.
    â€œTime to go, Barbara,” Ed said, heading to the car.
    â€œI’m not ready,” she said, shooing him away with one hand.
    â€œIt’s time,” he shouted.
    The young dealers closed in on Barbara. A few reached into the pockets of their baggy jeans.
    â€œBarbara, NOW!” Ed bellowed in his thick Boston accent. Only then did she hop in the car.
    So when friends and relatives asked Barbara and me if we were scared to knock on the doors of drug dealers, we didn’t understand the question.

6
    IN THE SEVEN YEARS THAT BENNY HAD WORKED WITH JEFF, THEY BEGAN TO LOCK UP SECOND GENERATIONS OF DRUG DEALERS. IN PHILLY, THERE were cop families and drug families. Children of cops wanted to wear the badge; children of drug dealers got sucked into an underworld of fast money.
    The first house that Barbara visited belonged to Jorge Garcia and his family, whose names have all been changed in this book. Benny had told us that he’d never bought heroin from Jorge, even though the search warrant said otherwise. Jorge lived in the Badlands, a four-square-mile drug bazaar centered in West Kensington, home to the city’s top three drug corners.
    Drug dealers hung on corners while lookouts, teens on four-wheelers, sped around the block, looking for cops in uniform or street clothes. They yelled various codes as a warning:
    Bomba! Aqua! Gloria! Five O!
    This was corporate America of the streets, home to a multimillion-dollar business that had a finely tuned organizational structure. Above the corner boys were the holders, or guys who stashed the dope, and the caseworkers who pickedup cash and delivered it to the drug bosses. Blood was spilled over turf wars. Little else.
    By 2007, murder in the Badlands almost single-handedly gave Philly its nickname: “Killadelphia.” That year there were 391 murders, the highest rate per 100,000 residents among the nation’s ten largest cities, according to crime statistics compiled annually by the FBI. Gunshot wounds were so common that trauma surgeons from Sweden traveled to Philadelphia to learn lifesaving techniques they’d rarely need in their country. On average, one person was killed in the city every day. Many of these murders happened here in the Badlands.
    When kids walked to school, they saw dealers pushing their brands. At Cambria and Hope Streets, the dope was known as Louis Vuitton. At Cambria and Master, Bart Simpson. At Cambria and Palethorpe, Seven-Up.
    At Howard and Cambria there were two brands, Nike and Lucifer. This was the corner that never slept, one of the hottest drug spots in the city—and the most dangerous.
    Most children at the elementary school on Cambria Street knew at least a few people who had been killed. Some were relatives. Kids as young as seven spoke of gunfire and blood on the street as if it were part of life; for them, it was. Every morning, school custodians swept up used condoms, needles, vials, and trash from the concrete play yard before children arrived.
    Weathered memorials with teddy bears, balloons, and candles were scattered all over the Badlands. Sidewalks became street cemeteries. And these urban graves became part of the drug trade. Some dealers hid their heroin packets under worn stuffed animals.
    A number of homes in the area were vacant or boarded upand reeked of pee and dead rats. Inside, addicts shot up, sitting on grungy mattresses or sofas with no springs. In the middle of some blocks, one or two houses had collapsed or been torn down to become weed-filled lots that looked like