Blood-stained Wingtips

There went my pharmacist, my former pharmacist.  Not your regular, run-of-the-mill take two of these and call me in the morning kind of pharmacist.  Pharell Badger was a specialty pharmacist. He catered to the rich and the famous, and thus became rich, and famous in his own way.  It was a back-circles kind of famous.  He was the guy at the posh parties that every rapper and B-list actress knew, but got embarrassed when it became apparent that everyone else knew him too. 

I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t illicit drugs.  Well, not only illicit drugs.  Sure, he could get you amphetamines and high-grade uppers and downers, but that wasn’t his specialty.  He specialized in other things.  Death for those who needed it.  Life for those who couldn’t get it past the FDA.  And occasionally torture for those who deserved it.  In time, Pharrell became a force of his own.  It was bound to happen.  He knew every pill that every celebrity in L.A. had taken in the last six years.  If that wasn’t power enough, he had started cutting just about everything he gave out with his own mixture that kept them coming back.

At first I thought I was the only one meeting furtively in back alleys, and I think everyone else did too.  But then one night at a party we started talking.  It turned out that everyone one of us was in debt to Pharell Badger.  Not money, we always had money, but he carried a load of secrets, and we all wanted out.  The problem was, Badger had set up his system perfectly.  No one wanted him out of the picture completely, because then the drugs would dry up.  So although everyone wanted him dead, no one wanted him dead.  And certainly no one wanted to be caught conspiring against him.

We started getting desperate enough to go to the police, but one day I saw Darren Kyl, White Knight of Los Angeles, police chief extraordinaire, leaving 68 El Camino Way, and I knew that we would find no help that way.

Pharrel’s drugs had odd side effects.  You would order your painkillers or your laughers and no matter what it was it would leave you with a slight buzz for days.  When you fell out of it, everything was gray, and food had lost its flavor, but not its draw.  You started seeing it on the faces of people, the hunger.  The longer you were on it, the worse it got.  I was at Black Top, Chef Depardieu’s new place in La Canada, and I saw it on the face of half the customers.  They were ordering dish after dish and plowing through them, but no one looked happy.

I tried weaning myself off.  The third day in I woke with a splitting headache and I couldn’t open my mouth.  I had left a stash at my buddy’s place, so I headed over there and managed to get one down.  It took me a week to get back to work.

Pharrel started going to more and more parties, and his glee became more and more apparent.  He started spending time with the big names.  You’d see it start, suddenly one singer, one actress would be at every party with him and then one week it was all over the tabloids that she had gone into permanent retirement.  Or moved to run orphanages in India.  Or disappeared.  They found one of them floating face down near Santa Monica.

So now it’s October.  2012.  I’m sitting in my office, waiting for my next client, some cattleman from Central Valley on his third wife, when I get a phone call.  The caller ID flashed *unkown caller*, and when I picked it up, I heard a voice I recognized.  I hadn’t actually seen Pharrel for a couple of months, he was working through other agents now, apparently too busy or too scared to meet clients personally, but I remembered him from the early days, when I was one of the first kids carrying my pillbox to shows and concerts.

“James,” he said, “It’s been a while.  Look, I need something.  Some legal work actually.  When can you come over?”

I told him I had an appointment but that I’d be there at six.  He thanked me and hung up.  I felt for some reason a great weight lift from my shoulders.  A dim voice in my head started saying something about how this was strange, that I was an estate attorney, that Badger had a lawyer, that no one went in that house, but my buzzed conscious self felt an odd elation at the thought of meeting Pharell, the man who owned my life and so many lives around me.

At 5:55 I pulled my car onto El Camino, parked a block away and walked slowly to number 68.  I knocked seven times (I assumed the knock was still the same from the old days) and waited.  The door opened and there stood Pharell.  He was grayer than I remembered him, but he was wearing a beautiful tailored suit  and the most expensive watch I have ever seen.  There was blood on the toes of his shoes.  For some reason this greatly amused me.  I looked at the blood and laughed and then walked into the dim hallway. 

“Why do you still live in this dump, Pharell?”  Can’t you get yourself a nicer place up in the West Hills or something? 

“Oh, you know me, James. I don’t deal well with change.  Anyway, I don’t spend many nights at home these days. “

“I see.  You said something about some legal work?  Not planning to die soon, are we?”  I managed what I thought was a robust, chummy laugh.

He looked at me skeptically.  “You don’t look well, James, can I get you anything?  Have you tried our new A-line?”

I hadn’t tried the A-line, but I’d heard it was wonderful. 

“You know Pharell, the B-line is about breaking my bank as it is, I’d hate to…”  I trailed off.  Badger had thrown his arm around my shoulder. 

“James, I was hoping to not talk about money just yet.  Let me get you something.”  He led me into a dim kitchen.  I noticed the marble countertop was dusty.  He rummaged in a cabinet and produced a bottle of fluorescent yellow pills.

I swallowed one. 

- David C.