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Heroin holds him in its vicious thrall
Tuesday, April 13, 1999 By Michael A. Fuoco, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Pittsburgh police narcotics Detective Barry Fox slams on the brakes and quickly turns the car around. He's just seen a girl, about 14, slinking away from the rear of the boarded-up Ellis Hotel in the Hill District.
Fox decides to take a look inside. He's in the Hill as part of a yearlong investigation of heroin selling there, and he suspects the crumbling building is being used as a shooting gallery by addicts.
On the way to the rear entrance Fox, a reporter and a photographer pass remnants of an air conditioner, a 26-inch television set turned on its side, buckets, boards and other refuse. At the door, they bend over to climb through the hole where the bottom panel has been kicked out.
Inside, they enter a world of little light. The smell of urine and feces assaults the senses; garbage of every description fills each glance.
Slivers of sunlight stream into the darkened hallway from a room to the right. Inside, on the floor, seemingly everywhere, are no fewer than 75 syringes, orange syringe caps, and empty syringe packages, all confirming Fox's suspicion. Also, empty beer and pop cans, a commode on its side, potato chip bags, a Subway cup, Tyler Water bottles, numerous cigarette butts, and even more numerous bloody tissues.
Next to the wall, a man is passed out on a red kitchen chair, his chin on his chest. The man, apparently nodding off after shooting up, is wearing a green sweatshirt under a heavy coat, green pants, boots and a black beret. Two used syringes lie at his feet; two more are under his chair.
Three chairs form a semicircle around an overturned bucket. The makeshift table holds packages of unused syringes and the burned bottom of a beer can that's been used as a "cooker" for heating the mixture of heroin and water prior to shooting .
Additional used cookers litter the floor, along with tiny red and green balloons - too numerous to count - in which heroin had been packaged for sale.
The man stirs to consciousness, his eyes blink open.
"Hi, Barry. How you doing?" he says matter-of-factly, recognizing the police detective. His voice is soft and raspy. He seems almost pleased to awaken to a friendly face, even if it is someone who has arrested him numerous times.
"What are you guys doin', making a documentary?" he asks, noticing the photographer's cameras.
Fox explains that the journalists are working on a story about heroin in the Hill. The man, who identifies himself as Charles Clay, readily agrees to tell his story.
A lifelong Hill District resident, he's 48 and has been shooting since he was 17. He's just gotten out of rehab and wants to go back in now that he's relapsed again.
He says he just shot $100 worth of heroin from a stamp bag - so named because it is stamped with a dealer's "brand name" and also because the glassine bags are normally used by stamp collectors. Stamp bags generally contain a higher purity of heroin than those sold in balloons.
"That kind of had me scared. I don't mess with stamp bags too much. I thought I was going to [overdose]. If it had been $200 worth, I'd might be dead," Clays says.
He lights a cigarette, briefly illuminating his downcast eyes and the blood that had been squirted from syringes onto the walls.
The time is 2:10 p.m. Clay said this last fix was his third of the day.
"I got up at 8. I shot one bag, but that wasn't enough. It got my legs working but, that's all," he says.
He got the drugs on Centre Avenue by "touting" - selling for a dealer and getting paid in dope.
To get his next fix, he'll "either tout or boost [shoplift] something," he says, but then he quickly establishes his personal limits. "I don't rob, I don't stick nobody up. I don't want to hurt no elderly person. My mother's 90."
Six days earlier, he spent Thanksgiving at his mother's Hill District home after shooting heroin and drinking.
"I went to my mother's and tried to be normal," he says, adding that he got through the day OK, but not the night. "It was so sad when I woke up. I was sick after spending the day with her. I didn't save any [heroin]."
He had to leave. He had to get some dope. He had to get high to get near normal. But again, he highlights his self-imposed limits.
"There was money there she left out for me. I didn't want to use her money," he says, adding that he sleeps at the Ellis most of the time. "I could stay at my mother's, but I don't want to stay there. I ain't going to worry her. She knows what I do."
It has been a year since he had spoken with his 27-year-old son, a "computer whiz" for NASA in Houston.
"His mother brought him up right. I was in and out of jail so much I only spent about two years with him," Clay says.
"It wasn't that I didn't love him. I guess I loved dope more. It's something I've worked myself into and something I have to work myself out of."
He pauses, lowering his head even more.
"I'm depressed," he whispers more to himself than his visitors.
He remembers how this all began. He was 17 and had been regularly smoking marijuana and drinking. One night, someone in his group said they were going to shoot heroin.
"I held my arm out," Clay says, demonstrating how he rolled up his sleeve, stuck out his arm and turned his head away. "I said, 'Hit me, hit me, hit me!'"
He's quiet for a moment. There is no sound in the room. And then he begins to cry. His hands cover his face. His chest heaves up and down.
One of the visitors glances out of the window toward the intersection of Centre Avenue and Elmore Street. A drug deal is taking place.
In a moment, Clay composes himself. He looks at Fox. "Even though you come from one side and me from the other side, we can still kick it," he says, using street slang for getting along.
Fox nods in agreement. He changes the subject, recalling how Pittsburgh Pirates great Willie Stargell's "Chicken on the Hill" restaurant was once located in the Ellis.
"Do you know what made [the chicken] so good?" Fox asks.
"What?" Clay responds distractedly as he picks up balloons and used syringes from the floor. He's looking for more dope, any dope at all. He knows there's little chance a fellow junkie left any, but maybe ...
He keeps looking. Fox continues the conversation without missing a beat. The scene is surreal.
"He dipped it in honey," Fox says.
Clay nods his head. "There used to be a picture in there of this Steeler player. I can't think of his name," he says, as he continues looking for heroin residue.
Fox ponders a moment. "Brady Keys!"
Clay brightens for the first time during the visit.
"Yeah, Brady Keys! I never would have thought of that. There was a picture of him tackling Jim Brown," he recalls, smiling.
It is unspoken, but somehow everyone knows it is time to go.
Clay's visitors wish him well, even as they know that within minutes he will be back on the street, denying his heart to embrace his demon.
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