YOU CAN ALMOST PINPOINT THE MOMENT Elizabeth fell in love with Beau. It was the night following his first home invasion. Beau was busy telling the story of his survival to anyone who walked through the door, and Elizabeth was visiting with her boyfriend, Eric, a crackhead who delivered drugs for Beau. (Names in this story have been changed.) Like Beau, Elizabeth had lived alone since she was 15, after her dad--a convicted drug dealer--left her mom, and Elizabeth decided the best thing to do was drop out of school, find an apartment, and take a job waitressing. She was only 18 on that evening, and something of a loner, and looking back you could see why she was ready for someone like Beau.
At that time Beau had just moved out of the Dude Ranch--a ranch house just off Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood that he had shared with a half dozen roommates since he was 15 and his mom packed up for a new life in Orange County, leaving Beau suddenly responsible for himself. He ate Super Big Gulps for breakfast after that, lived on change, skateboarded until three in the morning, and stayed away from school and the five gangs and eight crack dealers on his street. He took in teenage roommates to pay the rent, and the house was dubbed "the Dude Ranch."
Anyone might show up at the ranch. The actor Jason Lee, who was a skating friend of Beau's, hung out there, and so did Giovanni Ribisi, and a DJ's daughter who is said to have inspired Tom Petty to write his ode to Valley teenage life, "Free Falling." One day a friend with FBI bulletproof vests and assault rifles stuffed in his trunk drove up to show off his car. It was a house run by teenagers with no parental oversight--the surest generator of vice and lawlessness you can find in Los Angeles. Beau eventually began a secret life dealing marijuana to make ends meet, and by the time the Mexican Mafia burst through his door and taped his wrists to his back and held a shotgun to his face, he was suspected of having skimmed 100 pounds of product off his wholesalers. He didn't even own a driver's license.
I began spending time with Beau on a hot and muggy Friday night, once he agreed to let me into his house to record the particulars of his job, illegally selling drugs. Beau is now 30. After his home invasion Beau moved again, and today he lives with Elizabeth in a house he believes is relatively "home invasion-proof." It sits in the San Fernando Valley on a quiet street of middle-class houses and stately elm trees. There is a good high school nearby, and better than average shopping, and a block of families and retired couples living on either side of his front lawn who Beau is hoping will call 911 should anything out of the ordinary go down. This idea can seem like wishful thinking when you consider Beau has dealt drugs undetected on the same street for more than a year. He lives a dual life not unlike Tony Soprano's. He shares a gardener with his neighbors, holds backyard barbecues, chats up the couple across the street about their son's new life in Israel, and follows the Little League batting average of the kid next door. He worries about his monthly bills, his credit rating, and how best to build up his equity. Three months ago Elizabeth became pregnant; she and Beau are now planning a family.
It is true that Beau is acquainted with some of the more interesting precincts of L.A. life: He knows a medical technician who will remove a bullet without informing the LAPD; he can hire a crew if he ever needs to sponsor a home invasion; he's familiar with the doctors of Beverly Hills who supply prescription script for a price; he knows the best way to smuggle $50,000 worth of speed through LAX (wrapped in plastic, stuffed into the crotch of Lycra bike pants).
Yet when you spend much time with Beau you realize he is little more than a middle-class businessman, stuck on a middle-class street, making a middle-class living--he's not getting rich--inventing a bizarre version of the American middle-class dream. Beau's largest purchase last month was not at a Ferrari dealership but at Best Buy, when he and Elizabeth went shopping together and brought home a new Whirlpool refrigerator. Beau's customers also comprise an aggregate of L.A.'s middle class: teachers, mailmen, plumbers, car salesmen, musicians, carpet cleaners, PR racks, waiters, and members of the Los Angeles Police Department. In Los Angeles, despite the drug trade's notoriety, most of the buying and selling of narcotics takes place on quiet streets and in comfortable homes like Beau's. It's not unreasonable to surmise that there are a hundred houses just like his scattered across L.A.'s bedroom communities, each known by 100, or 200, or 300 steady buyers, invisible to the rest of the city. Beau's customers show up at his door due to the risk aversion in most people; the trade couldn't thrive if drugs were sold only on worn-down blocks or the alleys of struggling neighborhoods. Drugs are sold and bought on your street, on your block, by your friends and neighbors.
MY FIRST NIGHT AT BEAU'S WAS BUSY. AT any one time there were as many as 15 waiting individuals milling about the place. Beau's house rule is that customers must spend at least a half hour in his home--feigning a friendly visit to ward off his neighbors' attention--and you could find visitors playing guitars, roughhousing with the dogs, reading Playboy, shooting hoops in the driveway, or watching the Angels on TV. Three women in tight dresses and spike heels were putting golf balls across the living room floor. It was the natural appearance of a completely unnatural home life--a dozen or so strangers pretending to be friends until Beau raised an eyebrow or called out a name, whereupon the chosen person could finally leave to get high.
By ten o'clock Beau was already running low on cocaine. He sat alone at the kitchen table, counting out $100 bills. Taped to the wall beside him was a three-by-five card reading PLEASE RINSE OUT ALL FOOD AND DRINK CONTAINERS TO PREVENT ANTS. Another read ELIZABETH'S LAWYER and included a local phone number. Beau was dressed in jammer shorts that revealed his muscular calves and a $30 T-shirt stretched over his broad shoulders. He has dark, expressive eyes, tawny skin, his head was recently shaved, and he looked casual and a little intimidating at the same time. He also looked slightly agitated. One of his cocaine wholesalers, a heroin addict named Billy was hours late with a second delivery that evening. A promised pound of marijuana was idling somewhere in traffic on the 405. And a cocaine wholesaler who had stopped by earlier--a small man named Smooth with a shaved skull and a bright down jacket the size of a beanbag chair--informed Beau that a Corolla filled with people was parked just around the corner.
"What I want to know," Beau said to no one in particular, weighing the presence of a carful of strangers and holding up a marijuana bud to help make his point, "is, What is a Toyota Corolla doing outside with people in it?" Beau's second house rule is that no one stays outside during a drug buy--it attracts notice.
A skinny guy in a bright Hawaiian shirt asked, "Who told you that? You want me to go fuck them up?"
Beau considered the idea along with the dead plant in his hand. "No--it's more like, Why is there a Toyota Corolla outside?"
"You want me to find the guy and fuck him up?" the skinny guy asked again, this time with an ironic flourish and a smile. "That's a great movie."
Beau raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"The Royal Tenenbaums. You know that line--`You want me to find the guy and fuck him up?'"
Beau shot a blank look at the man. The phone rang--actually the five phones tactically placed throughout the house rang for the 75th time that evening--and Beau growled, "Phone, I am going to kill you one day." Next, a big man in an Izod shirt bounded into the kitchen and announced, "Look what I got you, Beau--a green burrito! Got any Vicodin?"
Beau knew Matt was a recovering cocaine addict, someone not to sell a gram to. Vicodin, though, was different. Beau crossed his kitchen floor, peered into a drawer like it was a Magic 8-Ball, then asked Matt, "How many do you want?"
"I need 12, I need 12," Matt murmured excitedly, then as an afterthought said, "Hey--you should eat that burrito."
