Pull up a syringe and kick back: It's Superfly Heroin Kingpin Nostalgia Week in New York. On Friday, Denzel Washington will bring his charms to bear on one of the most ruthless drug dealers in the city's history, playing Frank Lucas in the heavily hyped American Gangster. In the early 1970s, Lucas served the junkies on 116th Street by establishing what they called "the cadaver connection," shipping pure heroin back from Asia's Golden Triangle in the coffins of soldiers coming home from Vietnam.
Lucas cut a glamorous figure, living in a suite at the Regency Hotel and strutting around Harlem in a pimp-tastic wardrobe of furs and bespoke suits. Like Tony Soprano's crew members, who dissected and took after characters in The Godfather, Lucas liked to call himself Superfly, after the 1972 Gordon Parks blaxploitation flick. But his empire collapsed onto itself. After he was convicted in 1976 and sentenced to more than 70 years in prison, he gave evidence that led to the convictions of dozens of federal drug agents. For his efforts, he was released in 1991 to a life of penury.
Lucas will be celebrated in this week's edition of the American Gangster documentary series on Black Entertainment Television. Last night, in a sweet bit of corporate synergy helping out NBC's Universal Studios, which is releasing American Gangster, the network's newsmagazine show Dateline featured a chummy interview with Washington and his on-screen antagonist Russell Crowe, hosted by Matt Lauer.
Over the weekend, moviegoers here had a chance to whet their appetites for American Gangster with the release of Mr. Untouchable, a documentary about Leroy (Nicky) Barnes, who dominated the local heroin trade through the early and mid-seventies even more than Lucas. Barnes, a Machiavelli-quoting former heroin-user, sold his product throughout the city, taking in, with six associates, an estimated $72-million a year. When the Yankees won the World Series in October, 1977, the columnist Jimmy Breslin asked a kid in Harlem whether the slugger Reggie Jackson was his hero. No, the kid replied, Nicky Barnes is my hero. Never mind that his business was gutting black communities from Harlem to Bed-Sty to the Bronx.
Known as Mr. Untouchable, from a June, 1977, New York Times magazine story that featured him in a swaggering cover shot, Barnes was finally convicted in late 1977 and sent away for life. But after he, too, turned state's evidence, ratting on his associates (including his best friends and his wife), he received a reduced sentence. In 1998, he was released into the witness-protection program and hadn't been heard from until the filmmakers tracked him down.
On a drizzly morning last week, I went to the U.S. District Courthouse in downtown Brooklyn to meet Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. From 1975 to 1991, Johnson was the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York, overseeing the city's legal strategy against Barnes, Lucas and hundreds of other dealers.
Johnson began in law enforcement as a 22-year-old cop in 1956. Back then, because de facto segregation still hadn't been dismantled, even in New York, he recalled, "I couldn't ride in a radio car with a white police officer." Against that backdrop, the adoration of Barnes and Lucas makes a certain amount of twisted sense. "The powers-that-be never envisaged blacks could be entrepreneurs," said Johnson. "If you were into drugs, you had to go to the mafia, the white guys. Now [with Lucas and Barnes] you didn't have to."
Both men have been celebrated in hip-hop songs, and Johnson thinks Mr. Untouchable is an unfortunate addition to the canon burnishing Barnes's myth. He notes that Barnes, who is interviewed in the film (with an obscuring backlight) seated at a boardroom table like some seventies CEO, has been outfitted onscreen with a pinkie ring and a large gold watch. His hands float over stacks of $100 bills.
"Here's a guy who killed people, who sold drugs, and he's in the witness-protection program, and you see him sitting there with the French cuffs, the cufflinks, the ring," said Johnson. "That's just the wrong message to send. I don't think Nicky has a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of," Johnson said.
Sitting in a purple windbreaker and sipping a 7-Eleven coffee, Johnson reached into a drawer and pulled out a small canvas bag. "These are some of the mementoes I took from Frank's organization," he chuckled, spilling onto the desk a handful of rubber stamps that Lucas and his gang had used to brand his packages of heroin. One had a picture of a swinging, bug-eyed monkey and the phrase, "No Monkey Business." There was a fat judge - The Judge - and a cartoonish image of a Chinese man - Chinese Rocks. Happy faces on packaged death.
"I'll tell you what type of guy Frank is," Johnson said. "He put out a package. Gave it to his brother Shorty. Shorty [expletive]up the package. Frank put out a contract on his brother. The only reason the contract was not executed was that he had another brother, I think his name was Levon, had a domestic dispute with his wife in Jersey and the wife stabbed and killed him, and he didn't want his mother mourning for two sons at the same time." Johnson paused to let that sink in. "That's the only thing that saved Shorty. Frank was ruthless."
Johnson knows from ruthless. On more than one occasion, he's had contracts put out on his head. He remembers wearing bulletproof vests, and arranging police escorts for his wife's travels around town, and trying to explain to his two daughters why they couldn't go out into the schoolyard to play at lunchtime.
The threats didn't stop after he left the Special Narcotics office behind. In 1992, Pablo Escobar sent his chief hit man Dandeny Munoz Mosquera to do some work in New York. Mosquera was arrested and Johnson tried the case, undeterred by the fact that Mosquera attempted to hire a hit man to kill both him and the prosecuting attorney. (Mosquera is now serving 10 consecutive life sentences.) There may no longer be 2,000 murders a year in New York, said Johnson, but the drug problem is still fierce. "What about people who are dying the slow death, who are taking the crack, who are taking the meth? They're not dead tomorrow, they don't make the headlines, but slowly and surely they're dying. They just haven't had sense enough to lie down. But they're walking dead. There are a lot of people out there," said Johnson.
The current interest in those old stories is fine as long as audiences don't get nostalgic for those days. "Frank Lucas damaged a lot of families, he hurt a lot of people. I don't think you should glorify that," said Johnson. "When you get in a car, you see the rearview mirror there, but you're really looking forward. It does nobody any good to look back, unless you're going to learn from that."
Simon Houpt