Ken Windes
San Francisco, California
February 1968
I went to San Francisco and reported to my parole officer. The only reason I reported to him was to pick up my ‘gate money’, sixty dollars which paroled convicts were given to live on until they could get a job, or rob somebody.
“Windes, you’re a ‘high-risk’ parolee and you’ve been assigned to a Special Parole Unit,” Samuels the parole officer barked at me. The parole officer was short, about 5'4", and tried to make up for it by talking tough.
“What’s a Special Parole Unit?” I asked naively, as though I couldn’t guess.
“It means you’re under intensive supervision. You’re moving into the hotel next door. I want you in here at eight each morning until you find a job. If you’re even ten minutes late, you go back to the joint” he said still trying to sound like a Marine Corps sergeant, “and you show up for drug testing twice a week and go to a counselling program. Flunk the test, you’re on the next bus to San Quentin. You’ve violated parole nine times. Last time you stabbed someone in a fight. You use drugs. You’re a violent offender with a drug history. You don’t get any passes coming. You fuck up, we lock you up,” he said.
I felt like slapping the wimp but this wasn’t the time or place. The funny thing was he looked like he actually believed I would do what he was demanding. Then he gave me the money and I walked out of his office and disappeared.
I went over to the East Bay and hung out with an old girlfriend Peggy, a junkie and occasional prostitute, for a few days, smoking opium and getting laid. Once I got tired of her, I grabbed a bus north to Santa Rosa to visit my mother. She'd just remarried for the third time to a Japanese American named John so I went up to meet him. He was a produce manager for a grocery store and a friendly guy who seemed to love my mother and liked me right away. I spent one night with them and John sold me a 1966 Buick for $200.00 and said I could pay him later. My mother objected, telling him that I would be back in jail in a few weeks and he’d never get paid. I couldn’t argue, that was her experience of me, but he sold me the car anyway.
I jumped in the car and drove back to San Francisco. When I pulled up to the toll booth at the Golden Gate Bridge, the car stalled. It had over-heated. John had warned me that it had some problems. I waited an hour for it to cool off, then drove into the city and looked up Bobby, a friend of mine. He had a house on Potrero Hill. It was a green two story San Francisco gingerbread house with bay windows. He was living in this big place alone and invited me to crash there for awhile, so I moved into his spare bedroom. I'd met Bobby at the state hospital the last time I'd been out on parole. I'd been out for about three weeks and had overdosed on speed and flipped into a drug psychosis. I got picked up by the police while wandering around the streets, paranoid. They'd booked me into the psychiatric ward at the county hospital. The drugs wore off after a couple of days and I was fine but I'd violated parole. My parole officer visited me at the hospital and offered me the choice of going back to San Quentin to dry-out for ninety days or committing myself to the drug program at the state hospital for ninety days. I'd just gotten out of San Quentin so I opted for the state hospital. Bobby was there at the same time doing ninety days in drug rehab, kicking a heroin habit.
I rang Bobby’s doorbell and he opened the door.
‘Hey Kenny,’ he welcomed me, ‘when did you get out?’
‘A few days ago, what’s been happening?’
‘Same-o, Same-o’, he said. He looked thin and wasted and I guessed he was using smack. ‘I got some good Mexican Brown,’ he said smiling, ‘wanna get high?’
‘Yeah, do you have any crank to go with it?’ I didn’t like heroin by itself. It was a sleepy high, just sitting around and nodding out and mumbling to each other.
‘I got some crank somewhere here,’ he said with a frown, ‘but I don’t like that stuff, Kenny. It drives me crazy. I get paranoid behind it.’
We got high and began catching up with each other.
‘I’m dealing a little smack,’ Bobby mumbled, ‘but otherwise keeping low ‘cause I’m out on bail.’
‘What for?’, I asked, surprised because Bobby had never been busted before.
‘My brother, John, got paroled from Folsom just after you went back in and we started pulling burglaries together. We were working the obituary section of the newspaper. We’d see when someone was being buried and then rip off the dead person’s house while everyone was at the funeral. One day they were burying a retired cop and we ripped off the house. Every cop in the city got pissed off. They figured out what we were doing and were waiting for us the next time. John already had a Five to Life for Armed Robbery so they just shipped him back to Folsom on a parole violation but I have to show up in court.’
‘That shouldn’t be rough, you’re a first offender and you’ll get probation.’
‘My attorney says they won’t go for probation ‘cause they’re really pissed off about it being an ex-cop and all. He’s says I’m going to have to do time,’ he mumbled with his head nodding on his chest.
‘We can probably do something about it if you do.’ I said ‘let’s see what happens’.
‘Where are you crashing, Kenny’ he asked
‘Nowhere, I’m homeless today.’
‘Move in here,’ he offered, ‘I’ve got three extra bedrooms.’
‘Ok, thanks’
When I came out of Soledad this time I'd decided that I was tired of being in prison. I'd already served eleven years and I couldn't see a future that didn't include more prison. So I decided that I would get a gun and, when they came to arrest me the next time, I would shoot it out and either get away or die. I didn't really care which it was. I wasn't a gun person. I'd never carried one or owned one but I decided that dead was better than prison. I was just tired of doing time. I'd been out about a week and I knew a warrant for Violation of Parole had already been issued so it wouldn’t be long before the cops were looking for me.
‘I need a gun. Have you got anything?’ I asked Bobby.
He had .22 caliber Derringer, that he gave me for seventy five dollars, saying I could pay him back later. It was a weird gun. It had four barrels. Two over and two under. The firing pin revolved when you fired it. I'd never heard of anything like it but, I wasn't very sophisticated about guns. I did know a .22 didn't carry much fire power so I took a file and cross-hatched the nose of the bullets, turned them into dum-dums, so they would explode on impact. Then I had dipped them in garlic. I had read somewhere that doing those things vastly increased the fire power of a small caliber weapon.
I spent the next few weeks working a few scams to pick up some money. I’d run into a friend of some friends and we’d begun a check-kiting scheme on some banks to finance buying twenty thousand dollars worth of some good counterfeit twenty dollar bills he said he had access to. I was also working credit cons on some store and finance companies. I’d gotten a new set of ID right away because of the warrant for Parole Violation, and I was changing it every week or two. I was establishing credit and buying merchandise with little or no down payment, then selling it to a fence Bobby had introduced me to. I was also helping Bobby in his drug operation, which was really small-time. Bobby was scoring from ‘Lippy’, an old convict, and dealing to a few junkies, mainly supporting his own habit.
By now I was using everyday. I had a small habit going, just enough to feel uncomfortable if I didn't have the drug. When I shot heroin, I would sit around doing nothing, which wasn't my thing. I liked hustling, creating, moving. I really preferred Speed to Heroin. Speed would put me into overdrive. I could go days without sleep, moving here and there, with energy to do anything. The problem with Speed is that, if you go without sleep, paranoia creeps in and psychosis occurs. My solution to this was to "highball" or mix methamphetamine, called "crystal or crank", and heroin or "smack". Methamphetamine would speed me up and heroin would mellow me out so I had the energy to hustle without the danger of paranoia and psychosis. I also slept regularly. I got into a routine of getting high and hanging out with Bobby and some other junkies.
One day three Hippys showed up from the Haight Ashbury district, wanting to score some dope. They showed me a cashiers check they had just stolen from a mailbox. The woman it belonged to had just gotten married and left for Europe on her honeymoon. It was for $3000 and drawn on the California Street Branch of a foreign bank. They asked me if I could do anything with it. I told them I'd handle for 75% and they agreed. They drove me over to Oakland in a little yellow Volkswagon Beetle. Four of us filled up that car. There was a branch of the bank in Oakland and I wanted to cash the check there. Since I didn't have a copy of the woman’s signature, I wanted to cash it someplace where there wouldn't be a signature card on file.
I walked into the bank, went up to a teller and said with a smile, "Is this any good?"
She laughed and said, "Well, it better be," since it was a cashier's check drawn on their bank.
One of the Hippys was a girl and I'd had her endorse the back of the check so it would be in a woman's handwriting. The teller didn't have enough money in her cash drawer to cash the check so she went into the safe and came out a couple of minutes later with a handful of hundred dollar bills. The manager walked over and asked what was happening and she showed him the check. He came over to me and asked a couple of questions and then said he would have to call San Francisco to make sure the check was good. I said OK and stood there while he made the call. He got off the phone and said that the check was good but it would have to be cashed at the San Francisco branch so they could check the signature against the signature card.
I got back into the car with the Hippys and discussed the situation. I figured that the worse that could happen would be that they would refuse to cash the check. It hadn't been reported stolen so there was no heat on it. We drove to San Francisco.
I walked into the bank and did the same number with a young woman teller. She called a manager over to get approval and the manager was hesitant.
"Why do you have this check", he asked.
"She owed me some money and paid me with this. Don't tell me it's no good".
"No," he replied, "it's good but it's made out to her and she needs to cash it herself."
"She endorsed it", I said, "and told me that was all that was needed. I can't have her come in and cash it. She got married and left for Europe on her honeymoon. She's owed me this money for a long time and I need it in my business right now. She won't be back for a month.”
We talked a bit more and he finally agreed to cash it and told the teller to pull the signature card and check the signature. Then they couldn't find the signature card because the account had been closed. I was breathing a sigh of relief about that but now the manager was balking about cashing the check again. I explained how desperate I was for the money, pointed out it was a cashier's check that is supposed to be the same as cash, and continued to be as charming as possible. Then they found the signature card in the "closed accounts" file. The signatures didn't match but they weren't that far off. We had a discussion about that.
"Look, she just got married,” I finally said, “that creates a lot changes in a person. The signatures aren't that different. She's probably just reacting emotionally and it's showing up in a slightly altered signature."
The young teller who had been handling the transaction said to the manager, "That's true. My signature looked different when I got married."
I couldn't believe she'd said that.
The manager looked at her, then looked at me, and said, "I hope there's nothing wrong here". Then he told her to cash the check. I walked out with $3000 and a real good feeling about myself. I felt proud. I gave the Hippy's their $750 and they drove me back to Bobby's place.
After I told Bobby about the score I'd made, he told me that he had a connection in Mexico for Heroin. We could score ounces, cut it five times (into five ounces) and deal it for $20 a spoon. There were twelve spoons in an ounce and the original ounce would only cost $325.00. That was sixty spoons for a gross of $1200.00.
Bobby's connection was THE connection in California at that time. They were brothers who were dope dealers. Both had served time in California prisons. The younger brother, was parolled from San Quentin. He stopped in L.A. long enough to pick up his wife, and then went to Tijuana, Mexico and set up a drug operation. The older brother was parolled later and he joined them. They had set it up really well. They sold ounces of Heroin. You could score kilos too but ounces was their main business. It was all "arms length".
To purchase heroin, you wired the money, in advance, to Mexico. Then you flew to Los Angeles, called Mexico and gave them the phone number where you could be reached. Within 24 hours you would receive a call, directing you to go to a gas station, restaurant, etc., where your merchandise would be taped inside a toilet, under a public phone or hidden somewhere. Nobody ever saw anybody. There was no personal contact. Lippy, the old convict, had the franchise for San Francisco with the brothers. He'd served time with them both and had the relationship. If you wanted to score heroin through this channel, you had to deal with Lippy at a big mark up.
Bobby told me that Lippy had just gotten busted for a parole violation and was in San Quentin for a "dry out". A "dryout" was a 90 day sentence on the ranch at San Quentin for parolees who were found using drugs. They didn't revoke your parole but just sent you to the ranch to "dry out", i.e. get the drugs out of your system. I'd done a dry out a couple of years earlier but had assaulted someone while I was at the ranch so I got sent inside the walls for a year. Bobby and I had decided to go into the heroin business together.
My identity was hot from the bank scam so I went to another Department of Motor Vehicles office and got a new driver's license and picked up another social security card at the social security office in Oakland. I'd also rented an office in the financial district and installed a phone so I could verify my own employment when applying for credit. I was continuing the credit scam at retail stores, picking up clothing, jewelry and appliances that I sold to the fence. It was the Christmas season and easy to justify making multiple purchases of diverse items. I'd also gone into a couple of small finance companies and gotten a personal signature loan for $300.00 dollars in each, explaining that I needed the money to make christmas for my family.
Once we were set up, I called the brothers in Tijuana.
"Bueno", a woman answered.
"Is this Maria?", I asked. I'd never met the brothers and was calling cold.
"Yes", she responded.
"My name is Kevin, I'm a friend of Lippy's. Lippy's down. He's doing a dryout at Q. I'd like to do business with you."
"How long will Lippy be away?" she asked.
"Probably 90 days".
She asked me how much I wanted and I ordered 3 ounces. She explained where to wire the money and told me to go to LA and call her with my phone number. As simply as that I was doing business with the top heroin dealers in Mexico.
Bobby and I wired $975.00 to Tijuana from the Western Union on Market Street, drove to the airport and purchased two round-trip tickets to LA for $29 apiece. When we got to LA, we caught a taxi to a motel about a mile from the airport, checked in and called Maria to give her the number.
We didn't have any heroin left and Bobby had been going into withdrawal before we left San Francisco. We were in the hotel room for 24 hours, waiting for the call. He was in misery, eating candy bars, taking hot showers and doing the other things a junkie experiencing withdrawal does to alleviate the discomfort. Mostly bitching a lot. I wasn't using that much heroin so I wasn't too uncomfortable.
The call came and we went to a small cocktail lounge a couple of miles away. We went into the toilet and lifted the top of the tank. Three packages were taped inside. We took them, went back to the motel and sampled the product. Bobby got well and we checked out of the motel and flew back to San Francisco. The heroin was 28% pure. That meant we could step on it, cut it with lactose, five times. One ounce became five ounces of about 5% heroin. 5% was the normal purity of street heroin in San Francisco. In Los Angeles, it was two to three percent. The rest was milk sugar. Bobby suggested that we only make four cuts and put out a stronger product but I vetoed it. I been in San Quentin a couple years earlier and met a dealer named Manny Gomez. He was serving five years to Life for a couple of Armed Robberies and had also gotten an additional five to life for 2nd degree murder. He told me that he had put some 10% dope on the street and a couple of people had died from over doses. Since he'd sold them the dope, he'd been charged with murder and convicted. I didn't want to make the same mistake.
We moved the dope in a week and were back in LA scoring again. We began developing a small organization of runners who took the dope on consignment and sold it on the street. That put a layer of protection between us and the junkies. We were also keeping some of the 28% pure for our own use and I was getting heavily addicted even though I was mixing it with crank. I had what was called a "dealer's habit". The dope didn't cost me anything and it was high quality. Money was rolling in. I was stashing it in accounts in banks under various names all over the city. I was changing identities about once every two weeks and that included getting a different car every two weeks.
There were a couple of bi-sexual women living around the corner from Bobby's who were lovers. They occasionally scored drugs from me and we had a loose sexual relationship. One night I got a call from one of them, Laura.
"Kenny", she said, "Would you like to go to a Sexual Freedom League party?"
"What's a Sexual Freedom League party?"
"It's this bay area organization that rents a house for an evening and throws a big orgy", she replied. "You have to go with a partner and I've got a girlfriend who wants to go but her partner can't get there until midnight and she wants to go earlier. If you go with her, you can go from eight to midnight but you have to leave when her boyfriend gets there."
With all the drugs I was pumping into my system and the time I was spending hustling and running the drug operation, I didn't have much of a sex drive. But I'd never been to an orgy so it sounded like fun and I agreed. I picked up the woman at an apartment on Geary St. that night and we drove out to a two story San Francisco gingerbread house in the Haight Ashbury, near the park. We were met at the front door by a guy who was acting as host/doorman. He asked if were over 21 and we said yes; then he asked if we were affiliated with any law-enforcement agency and whether or not we were in possession of any illegal drugs. We answered "no", paid two dollars apiece and walked inside.
The downstairs living room was full of nude people, standing around talking and drinking. About 50 of them. There was a small room to the right of the entrance that had clothes hanging from hooks and piled on the floor. The woman I was with began undressing so I did too. Then we joined the crowd. She wandered off and I was standing there by myself, naked in a crowd of naked people. I was feeling awkward, not sexy at all. There was an old style claw-foot bathtub in the middle of the room filled with ice and soft-drinks. And there was a bar set up in a corner. I got a coke from the bathtub and started joining little groups and talking. After a while, I started exploring the rest of the house. It had five or six bedrooms but there was no furniture in the entire house except the claw-foot bathtub in the living room. They'd rented it unfurnished.
I opened the door to one of the bedrooms and walked into an orgy. The room was about 10' by 10' and packed with people connected to each other every way they could be. I jumped in. But couldn't do anything. The drugs in my system, combined with the awkwardness I was feeling about being in a room full of naked bodies frantically fucking each other, kept me limp. Several people did their best to help me get it up but nothing worked so I left after about 30 minutes and went back downstairs. After another couple of hours of cokes and conversation, I went home. I could now say I had attended an orgy. My conclusion about orgies was that sex is best with one or two friends.
Copyright 1994-2010 Liana Di Stefano & Ken Windes
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