Deaths come in 3's and 4's, but cops die in 1's.

Top of the morning gents,

I hate being lectured. Just this morning I got a scolding from one of my business partners who was angry at me. "Fuck Karl. If you shut down yer operations here in Mountlake Terrace, the hard guys will shoot yer nigger ass and burn this place to the ground." How do I argue with gangster logic? You don't. Lem's served as a hub as the retail cocaine distribution site for regional wholesalers that moved serious weight in the greater Seattle area. My place was the top sales outlet and I was their top salesman. I was the Amway sales leader for blow and Lem's was the 7-Eleven for cocaine. I was open 24 hours a day, I offered free samples and served coffee and liquor with every sale. I even offered check-cashing services and a coin-operated cigarette machine.

In the back room, I found a good friend who was dead for at least an hour from injecting really strong cocaine in his arm. In the front yard, my boss's son from R&R Automotive blasted his brains out, inside his car. Gary Los was high risk because he preferred shooting his cocaine into his arm, Keely Jones was high risk because he preferred shooting his gun into his head. In both passing's, not a sound did I hear. I aren't deaf, but likely real dumb.

I'm might also be blind. I didn't notice the change in my friends nor my customers. My party pals drifted away, replaced by serious money dudes that no longer snorted their coke, they were smoking it. Instead of mirrors and short straws littering Lem's crack house (and mortuary), I was stepping on glass pipes and propane canisters with thread-on torch attachments. Instead of partiers passing out and sleeping it off in the back room on the dogs' sofa, they were breathing out cocaine smoke then going into seizures. "Buckwheat says crack not Otay" (Eddie Murphy).

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't running a welding shop. Nor was I Harborview Medical Emergency Burn Unit.

A really pretty girl named Alette, was known to frequent my establishment was hospitalized with a series of burns on her breast, stomach and leg: L-shaped burns that mirrored the thread-on brass pieces commonly attached to various sized propane torch canisters. After making her purchase, driving home and smoking freshly washed up rocks of my product, she went "on the nod" and passed out, releasing her grip on her torch. Her left hand retained possession of her glass pipe, but her torch rolled down the front of her and burned L-shaped holes through her clothes and left deep-ass burns down the front of her and ignited the carpet beneath her feet.

She is no longer really pretty. Similar to our own lives, her burn trauma can never be undone.

To make things even more dicey, just yesterday afternoon, a strange kid I never met, knocked on my door asking, "Hey Karl, ya got any product?" I have no idea who this kid was, so I blew him off and told him to drop by later. I let the dogs loose and took a quick walk around the corner fast enough to see this kid jump into one of 3 unmarked Dodge Diplomats with more antennas than a porcupine. All 3 cars quickly evacuated the street behind my house. We're talking standard government issue dork-mobiles that stupid cops drive. Stupid cops that broadcasted on scrambled radios, impossible to eavesdrop, but were causing weird buzzing, distortion and garbled transmissions over my CB radio.

Fuck dudes, this is decades before cell phones and pagers, so I had to use old school ancient hi-tech. To avoid phone taps, I preferred my dudes call in on their Citizen's Band radio and inquire if I was home and could they pick up some paint, or sheet rock or whatever the agreed code words for that day. It was understood to use my handle "home base" not "free base." Cold calls at my front door, during white man (daylight non-vampire) hours, from punks I never knew, was WAY out of the ordinary.

After walking around the block to see where this kid came from, I ran back home and did a thorough clean-up of my house. I bagged all the paraphernalia and welding equipment, pocketed the last of my blow, and sneaked through the fencing along I-5. I walked down to the freeway and from behind a thick stand of trees, lobbed all the glassware into the freeway between speeding cars and buried the burned spoons, propane canisters and razors in the dirt where I knelt. The passing traffic powdered the glassware shards and I layed a clump of sod over my buried treasure of shit.

I walked a half-mile further down the wooded margin along the freeway, climbed the fence and went into Franky's house. My dudes were still sleeping, so I put on coffee. To rid my ass of any incriminating evidence, I poured the last of my stash, a couple grams of cocaine into the coffee grounds before brewing. When Franky, Marto and Paul dragged their asses out of bed and joined me fer coffee and bong hits, I told them to drink their coffee carefully while I told them about the narc squad sending a torpedo to my front door.

I described the kid to them and Paul nodded and stated his name was Desmond. Paul further explained that he was pulled over for speeding and DUI, busted for possession, booked in, then walked out free as a bird, knocking on doors of our party shacks looking to buy blow with more money than he should have. The detail about cops driving him around must have slipped Paul's mind. So I stressed out and asked him why he didn't enlighten the rest of us. His response was a shrug and "I dunno." Stupid stoners.

Yup, you coppers are thinking the same thing as me. I'm toasted shit nuggets and it's time to pull up stakes and move my operation to another crack house. A smarter man would simply leave state.

Franky drove me to Miller's Rent-All and under my dad's charge account I snagged a carpet steam cleaner. Then we drove to Lynnwood to Preservative Paints where me and Marto had a charge account and picked up masking tape, plastic paint tarps and a couple fivers of latex interior paint. Up front, Preservative Paint Co. had a Clearance Section of mistints that were marked way down below cost. A couple 5-gallon buckets of odd color semi-gloss interior latex was perfect. And way cheap too. Come on fuckers, I'm painting a smoke-stained crack house, not yer sisters' favorite abortion clinic.

Back at Lem's, we carried every stick of furniture out. All the beds were dump-bound with Franky taking the tables and chairs. We then hauled the rest of the nasty furniture out into Franky's truck and dumped the shit in the woods nearby. Marto discovered a surprise treat. Underneath the stinky dog sofa, we discovered another large packet of coke, so we snorted the entire pouch, then layed plastic tarps all over the house.

In a manic hyperactive flurry we painted the entire house, wiped the counters, mopped the vinyl floors in the kitchen and bathroom, oiled all the wooden doors and cabinets with Liquid Gold, then pulled up all the plastic sheets from the floor and pulled up all the masking tape. We took a toke break, ran to the store and bought some dark beer, then proceeded to suck the shit outa the carpets with the steam cleaner. Come on fuckers, our parents all had rental houses, so doing these drug-induced speedy turn-arounds in record time was in-grained in us all. Second nature, behind well entrenched drug habits.

We started at one end of the house using scalding hot water and carpet shampoo. When we got to the back room, we started over again and used just real hot water adding a good douch pour of bleach. The bleach was Marto's idea because he pulled rusty water from areas where anonymous fatalities occurred. The same fatalities that became wood and tire smoke and a layer of ash under an outhouse. A layer unlike ash from Mt. Redoubt, but oddly like a crematorium clean-out after smoking akka milluks.

We returned the carpet steam-cleaner to Miller's Rent-All, hauled all the paint supplies to Franky's and then booked to my parent's house and borrowed the lawn mower and lawn rakes.

Me and Paul, Franky and Marto mowed and trimmed the entire yard, raked and bagged up the debris and loaded it all in Franky's Toyo truck.

The exterior of the house had already been painted last summer, so all I had to do was phone the landlord and tell him that I was moving out and that this August was gonna be my 30-day notice. My landlord was a heck of nice guy and said that my timing was perfect. He asked if I was already packed and that he was just contacted by a prospective renter and could he do a walk-through this Monday. I smiled and said sure.

Monday morning, the carpet was bone-dry and so was all the paint. The whole house smelled like cleaning products and fresh paint and the yard was beautifully landscaped. All the dogs were ditched up at 7-Lakes and all the nasty furniture we dumped in the woods nearby. The abandoned cars we towed all around town with Franky's Toyo and left them on side streets. Fuck my druggy pals that owned them, they can pay the towing and impound charges to the City of Mountlake Terrace. Plus, it'd give Don Beuler and his defective detectives something to do besides bother a legitimate criminal like me. Lem's Mortuary and Crack House was completely renovated and looked brand-new and perfect.

On schedule, my landlord pulled up at noon and did his walk-through inspection. Fuck he was smiling big. He said to me, "Damn Karl, this place looks really good. I didn't expect new paint inside and out." "The carpet and cabinets look great and so does the lawn." Dude just reached into this pocket and handed me the $500 dollar security deposit and shook my hand. He added that he'd be more than happy to give a recommendation or a reference and if I needed another house to rent, just call him.

For the first time that week, I was feeling pretty damn good. I tried to behave normally, but my patience was waning and my legs were running in place. I was itching to run as far and as fast as I could. I owed some serious debts to my cocaine wholesalers and I wanted to be long gone before anybody got wind of my disappearance.

I'd kept all the cash payments from my week's sales so I was flushed pretty fucking good. I stayed that night at Franky's, drank beer and smoked some pot and watched VCR movies. We also didn't open the front door when visitors came by. Frank screened his phone calls and claimed ignorance where the parties were, all the blow was and where the heck Karl booked. Franky sold a bogus story that I was likely in jail. It was starting and word was slowly getting out.

The next morning I showered and put on the few clothes I'd laundered at Franky's, walked to the Circle K convenience store, bought a large coffee and waited for the bus. While waiting inside the bus stall, I saw familiar cars racing all around Mountlake Terrace. From inside the glass stall bus stop, I saw at least 4 cars patrolling all the streets looking for you know who. Two were cop cars and two were Bruce and Ray. Two armed cops likely looking to make a buy/bust off me and two armed dealers likely looking to make collections immediately after hearing my house was vacated and yer author on drugs vanished. I'm so low-budget and lame, I was hiding from cops and mean coke dealers inside a glass stall waiting for a fucking bus.

On schedule, the bus pulled up and I boarded. All I had was a backpack with my clothes, toothbrush, shampoo and a handy 38 special revolver. What a character change, I had transformed from top salesman into a hobo. I guess you could now describe me as,"Sherlock Homeless." The smart guy that was on the run, racing at the speed of public transport and headed north to live in a trailer, a shed with a sauna and outhouse on a large heavily wooded lot. Don't forget the outhouse that had 3 burnt, powdered, crushed and buried skeletons, just waiting for my gushing runny stools. Ghosts covered in withdrawal diarrhea are known to reach up and pull yer nads off. I'll probably shit with the dogs way out in the woods and take my chances with a million mosquitoes, poison oak and stinging nettles.

The ride up north to 7-Lakes took a couple hours because of a transfer in Everett. I grabbed some groceries at the Lucky Store nearby, walked next door and grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam to keep me and the dogs company. We were gonna be on our own and alone way north by 2 counties and I think all us dogs were going to be lonely.

At my grandpa's place, I quickly sneaked in and dragged the fence back closed pushing brush back in place to conceal my trespass. The dogs went ballistic and super happy I showed. I unhitched them off their chains and let 'em run around and jump all over me. I filled their food and water bowls, and went inside the trailer to turn on grandpa's radio and dialed in Canadian news and talk.

I doubt any of y'all know how lonely a loser can get. I had 3 dogs for company, a couple newspapers and a radio broadcasting dorky Canadian accented news and I'm living in a trailer. I fucking felt a hunnert years old and all I had was a bottle of liquor to share with 3 dogs that didn't drink anything stronger than beer and magic mushrooms. Brian Higman made a batch of magic 'shroom scrambled eggs, but the dogs jumped up on the counter and stole them all and you've never seen neurotic dogs tripping on psylicibin. Funnier'n watching drunk kids running with scissors at the daycare or getting cats stoned blowing pine tokes in their faces. Me and Brian just drank magic mushroom tea, went to the park and threw the frisbee around watching the dogs tear the shit outa us as we laughed at them like asylum residents.

I downed a good measure of Beam, ate a bit of dinner and dozed off with all 3 dogs piled all around me. In the middle of the night, I heard car tires skidding, a super loud crash and then the dogs scratched me up jumping awake and whimpering to get out of the trailer. Me and the dogs sneaked through the trees and bushes to peek up and down the highway. All four of us put our heads through the fence and craned left and right to spy the accident. It wasn't pretty. A cool old Pontiac convertible went off the road and slid into a tree, upside down.

After a devastating car crash, the following peace and quiet is surreal. Man it was almost cricket chirp quiet within minutes. The occupants of the car weren't moving and truth be told, I doubted a body could function without its head and shoulders. I had zero means of calling the cops and the neighborhood was spread out with a good walking distance to any nearby houses. Fuck.

I leashed all 3 dogs, talked them into subordination with low voiced commands and started my trek back up the highway to the neighbor's house. We arrived out front and there was not a single light burning. Smart as I was, ain't no way I was gonna march up and knock on the door. That'd get my guts blown out with a shotgun. Next best thing was to make some noise from the street and try to wake them. So I whispered to the dogs, "You boys want go fer a run?" The dogs started jumping around and barking psyched as shit. I yelled at the house above the barking dogs hoping to raise the dead.

I did. The porch light came on and an old man looked out. With a shotgun in hand. I yelled that a car crashed about a mile up the highway and could he call the cops and an ambulance. He looked at me and the dogs, then asked if I wanted to come in. I didn't and told him I was just walking the dogs and saw the crash. We said our goodbyes, I walked a little further down the road, then reversed back towards my grandpa's property. I sneaked back through the fence, pushed the branches and brush in the way, then we layed low in the brush to watch the cops arrive.

My estimate was approximately 10 minutes before I heard the sirens. Upon arrival, the cops lit flares along the roadway, climbed around the wreck trying to see inside. The ambulances were on scene minutes later, then a county wrecker came and tipped the car over. There were four kids in the car and all of them flopped around like puppets with cut strings. Not one survivor. Kids sure like to flip cars and scrub their heads and upper torsos off with pavement.

The dogs stayed super quiet and watched the cop action just like me. The bright strobes were kind of cool so far north and so deep in the woods. I tugged the dog leashes to head back to the trailer but the dogs stayed put and just sat and watched the crews salvage the roadside mess. Ye see, the dogs were just like all you coppers. They were fascinated with dead bodies, death causation and loading the meat wagon for the last final drive up to boot hill. I also think the dogs were getting used to croakers after so much stupid shit guarding Lem's mortuary and crack house.

The old man I notified drove up and explained his part of the story, looked around and shook his head. My belief was that he didn't know who woke him and requested emergency services. The police walked up and down the highway, taking pictures of flipped car debris and skid marks. They then took a long measuring tape to the skid marks and the plowed grass and shrubs in the car's flight path. I kind of wanted to step out of the woods and add my two cents, but I believed it would've resulted in my arrest. Not smart.

I tugged the dogs' leashes, whispered it was time to go and all 4 of us headed back to the trailer. I put on local Canadian news/talk radio to see if the crash made the news: none such. Fatal car crashes out in the boonies seldom cross international borders. So I took a good pull offa Jimmy Beam, dreamed of green bud and coke piles and fitfully dozed until sunrise.

After we took shits and pisses in the woods, all 4 of us went back to the highway, slipped through the fence and walked around the crash site. Those cops were fucking incompetent. There was blood and skin and icky bits still remaining in the soil and against the tree where they abruptly stopped and lots of glass bit scattered about. The dogs' noses were stuck to the ground and I couldn't pull them away, so I did some treasure hunting. I found a few dollars and coins, but nothing else worth noting. The dogs huffed and hacked for the rest of the morning.

Them dildo patrolmen could use a lesson from you KPD motherfuckers, you boys are famous for shoveling up red chunks. When we got the 911 call in dispatch that a car flipped short of the runway on base road, I was impressed how well you boys sterilized the impact seepage left behind by Bessie Harris (Saima Johnson's cousin). Charlotte Harris was hustled away with Trox and Munson, loaded on a Medi-Vac jet and rocketed all the way south to Harborview Medical, a place we've all heard about. Way too much. The trail of tears for massive trauma and ungodly burns don't end at ANMC, the trail ends at the hospital on the hill overlooking Puget Sound. Sadly, Bessie Harris was trucked up to boot hill.

I used to wonder why cops would stop and get out of the patrol car, look around and secretly weep. Trox told me that close to where Bessie Harris was killed, many years previously, another similar crash took place. I was puzzled until he wiped his eyes, blew his nose and told me about a roll-over car crash that horribly killed 3 boys on base road, just short of the runway. He rambled off the 3 names and I had to think for a second, then recalled the names of "Lambert, Clark and Gregg." It hit me the same way, creating difficulty swallowing.

I choked up and in my newspaper memories, I re-read the Sounder bulletin listing the details of the crash and the names of the deceased. The hole in the hearts of Kotzebue's citizens is immense, but these 3 boys only widened this gulf of souls, gaping and torn and will never heal. Ned Lambert, Norman Clark and a boy nick-named Junie Gregg were flying inbound on base road, lost control and flipped and rolled the vehicle they were driving. Ned Lambert was Harold, Daisy and Pete's brother, Norman Clark was Bella Clark Woods' brother and Junie Gregg was Charley Gregg's brother and Lillian's Gregg's son. Mr. Gregg was driving, Ned Lambert was passenger and Norman Clark was in the back seat.

When an ambulances leave the scene of an accident slower than a hearse, you know they all died, boot hill bound. And to some extent, so did all of us. I believe fatal accident scenes distort our emotional well-being as we walk nearby. We may not know what's so upsetting, but if you ask an elderly native woman, village cops or medics and their eyes well up, no other explanations are necessary.

A few years ago, I flew up to Nome to house-sit Patrick Octuck's apartment. He was given an ultimatum from NPD: recovery or resignation, so Officer Octuck flew down to Seattle and checked into the Schick-Schadel Recovery Center. When he completed his 10-day residency, we roomed together for a few weeks till I found a small cabin from Cussie Kauer, 410 Second Avenue, just off Bering Street. Me and bun lived there for almost a year. The time me and bun stayed with Patrick was also a period to make lots of good coffee, thorough cleaning of his apartment, cooked lots of roasts, pastries and Indun Fry Bread.

Bun prepped Octuck's meals in the morning while Patrick slept after his graveyard shifts, covered them with foil, then we booked downtown to the UA Northwest Campus to send emails and compose long reports, just like this one. After emails and perusing the library for books and DVD's to check out, me and bun strolled Nome's main drag. Some days we'd have a late lunch at the Polar Cafe, then to Soap and Suds, Board of Trade Saloon, the Anchor or Breaker's Bar fer brews fer me and seltzer waters with lemon or lime fer bun.

Nome's a small town and everybody asked how Patrick was doing and how Nome compared to Kotzebue and Barrow. I told some doozies, lied my ass off and was in general more generous than any fucked up Alaska town deserved. Folks collected around me and bun, asked a thousand questions and inquired which boarding schools we attended. I refrained from biting their heads off with retard insults, spastic chiding and off the cuff acrid corrections that I wasn't from Alaska: despite my foul odor. I let bun reunite with Indun Boarding School classmates and stayed out of their hair, albeit native hair. After our daily walks, talks and visits to every bar and restaurant in Nome, Alaska, we'd headed back towards home and hit Nome Trading to grab a few sticks of groceries and my choices of gourmet coffees for Octuck's machine.

Sobriety leaves old cops extraordinarily tender and vulnerable. Patrick was telling long-winded stories of rough call-outs he attended up in Kotzebue and remarkably, linked his career to his alcoholism (overlooking his ancestry). One story that comes to mind was a 911 emergency service request that some kids sunk their raft in the slough along the hillside. Kevin Norton (Helen Norton's son), Chapter Wilson (Morris and Marianne Wilson's son) and George Yost (Luanna Goodwin's nephew) were rafting across and playing around like Huck Finn. Their raft got punctured from the willow branches and they couldn't paddle to shore. The water was so damn cold they couldn't swim back either. Octuck was first on scene followed by Trox and they both threw life lines with life rings, then grappling hooks. Trox quickly got into his wet-suit gear and waded in to fetch the boys and Patrick pulled them ashore and administered CPR. None of these beautiful boys awoke from their peaceful sleep.

The emergency crews arrived and with hand held stretchers ran the boys to the ambulances for emergency warming and pump their lungs with oxygen. The scant equipment at the old MMC hospital didn't move the needle nor change the final score. Boys 0: Boot Hill 3. I was overwhelmed with the loss a small town like Kotzebue suffers with the deaths of kids, boys and men. Bun was a little upset and Patrick was pretty tearful too. These kids meant something to bun and Patrick, and more accurately, meant the world to their parents, friends and neighbors.

Bun had sold a dandy new 22 rifle to Kevin Norton so he could hunt rabbits and squirrels and her retelling brought tears down her cheeks and staggering bottomless grief to me: an asshole that don't get affected by deaths of druggies and assholes, but the heartbreak losing loved ones in remote arctic villages tore my guts out. I merely got a fraction of a glimpse via osmotic storytelling and it hit me pretty hard how much grief you coppers stow. You fuckers picked totally suck-ass jobs. You may be hundreds of miles away, across mountains and tundra, but right now, I'm trying not to cry like you cops.

On a much happier note, let's get back to my fleeing a crack house and the large amounts of money I owed these fuckers.

A few days and saunas after scavenging the car crash scene across the street from my grandpa's property, I ate a scant breakfast, then leashed the dogs and walked down to the local bait shop. I loaded a handful of coins into the payphone and called Franky to see what was up back home. He laughed and told me that a bit of ruckus developed at my old house. The new tenants were moving in and Bruce dropped by to collect a couple grand I owed him for blow. Whilst harassing the new tenants, Ray pulled up and started interrogating them (and each other) for the same reason. The new residents phoned the cops complaining that some armed strangers were threatening them if they didn't reveal where Karl, all the money and all the drugs were. The police were quite familiar with my nuisance address and with lights and sirens, stormed the joint, exiting their cars with rifles and pistols drawn and yelled commands that everybody lay face down and don't fucking move. Everybody, including Ray, Bruce, 2 thugs in tow, and the new tenants.

After sorting out the good guys and bad guys, the cops seized all the guns off Ray and Bruce and their two bully backups, found blow and money on them, then impounded their cars for further search and seizure. The cars yielded quite a crime novel story. In the trunks were more guns and more drugs and even more money. Those boys ain't dumb, they kept all their collections in their cars and NOT in their apartments. One aspect of their stupidity was that I'd sold them all the guns they were carrying. Guns that I bought offa Pim.

The first legal snag that Ray and Bruce and their two thugs faced in jail was the cocaine possession, cash possession and the firearms possession. In Washington State, having all three presents evidence of felony crimes. No bail was offered and the 4 dummies sat in the clink awaiting trial. Until all the serial numbers from the guns were back-grounded, then ballistics were completed. The guns were either reported stolen and/or matching slugs pulled from crime scenes in 2 counties. By accident and sheer stupidity, I doomed my own cocaine wholesalers to long stretches in Monroe State Penitentiary. Even a retarded inbred moron like me couldn't plan this absurd fiasco.

I've been interviewed by police numerous times since then, denied any involvement in their gun problems and denied any involvement in their cocaine problems. I only agreed that these gentlemen were notorious dealers that frequented my party house, sold piles of blow and were bullies to me and my poor defenseless friends and neighbors. Go ahead, you can laugh and puke. I couldn't believe I was allowed to walk out of the Washington State Patrol building: repeatedly. Fuck!

I simply agreed to investigators' and prosecution's claims that yes, I did have way too many parties, too many loud bands and really ought to repay the towing and impound fees to the City of Mountlake Terrace for leaving nearly a half-dozen automobiles abandoned all over the fucking place. I was also a suspect in the malicious dumping of stinky furniture in the city park and I was threatened with spill-over charges related to the blow, weapons and suspicious fatalities. Not me, despite witness claims originating from that particular nuisance address, it was just a party house. Home sweet home, Lem's.

I was advised if I don't find full time work, in another state, I was to report to Kathy Elam at the Kotzebue Jail. I no longer had any more of my 9 lives remaining and had to respectfully not fuck around with the wishes of asshole Chief of Police Bueler. Oh, and quit fucking calling his investigative team "assholes", "fucking cops" and "defective detectives", yer not funny and yer this close to joining yer friends DTR. Down the road, meaning prison.

I had to shift gears and phoned Higbitch and asked what job offerings were available for a reformed owner of a den of iniquity, party junky going through withdrawals and all around shithead scoundrel of the lowest order. When you join me hitting bottom, it's all upward and northward and everything looks brighter. I ain't blind, stupid nor retarded. Okay, maybe a little but with glasses made of twin rectums, Kotzebue started looking perty fucking good.

My vision now matched my fuckhead pals and customers, and future coworkers, seeing through blue eyes that are actually twin bruised anus orbs.

I aren't dumb, I just can't think fer shit.

That's me, shithead and asshole eyes.

Karl.