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Sympathy for the Devil

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Nebbitt's brother backed off, but not before he sneaked in a suggestion to try a matchhead (a small bit of heroin). "I was in so much pain I was ready to try acupuncture," Nebbitt says, wincing. He waited until Mims was out of sight, tried the matchhead — and knew instantly why they'd always called heroin Magic Tragic ("magic when you got it, tragic when you ain't"). Every symptom vanished.

"It was a great relief physically, but emotionally it was devastating, because I had to accept the reality that I was a fuckin' dope fiend, just the same as the guys and girls on the street that come to you begging."

Downhill Slide

When "the whole drug-dealer thing was in maximum effect" — car, clothes, jewelry, bankroll — Nebbitt did as well as the white guys trading junk bonds on Wall Street. The stress was even higher. "It's an uncertain happiness," he observes wryly. "You had to have a gun, always. I'd show up on the street and say, "I need a heater.' Somebody else, they'd send to Central Hardware. But if you know the language and you're in a nice car, with some jewelry.... You get yourself a heater, a burner, a strap. And at home, you sleep with it under your pillow.

"It's like the sword of Damocles hanging over your head," he reflects. "Ninety percent of the people out there are working against you — police, feds, addicts who want something, people who say they're your friends but want your position. Only very occasionally do you run into someone who is seriously by your side."

Heroin lifted the fear right off him. But the more he used, the lower his profits fell. "I wasn't on top of things. I should've been opening up new spots, finding new parts of town where I could put drugs. At one point I was narrowed down to just one spot. And I wasn't checkin' on the guys who were working."

One night, Nebbitt got caught with a group of guys out looking for revenge, their guns in a hidden compartment closest to where he was seated. All the weapons charges landed on him. He served time, then went to the prerelease center and arranged a fake job (paid somebody to give him a check stub from a dry cleaner's and, if someone called for him, say he was out making a delivery). Went back to dealing. Went back to prison. Started "rough hustling," stealing to support his habit. Wound up back in prison again.

That's when he found out he was smart: "On the placement test, I scored pretty high. The teacher told me she wanted me to help the other students. I said, "Hey, I want to get some help, too!' But it did make me feel a little better about myself." Nebbitt's older sister, Edna Taylor, had prayed in relief every time he went to prison, because he was safe and he'd be forced to "sit down and be still, and read, and open up his mind. Because that's how he was when he was little — quiet, a nature child, loved plants and lizards and snakes."

In prison, he earned the associate's degree, and when he hit the streets again, he had some reservations about going back to dealing or using. He got a real job, hauling steel in a factory. Then he went to visit an old friend who happened to be a dealer, and walked in while the guy was mixing and capping heroin. "He poured some on a plate and slid it in front of me, and even though I hadn't had any in three years, I really wanted it. I got high, and I went to see a young lady I was dating, tried to keep myself sober-looking, but she knew immediately, kind of turned away instead of embracing me. I thought, "Damn, is it that obvious?'"

The next ghost to taunt him was a guy he'd known since childhood. Fresh out of prison, this guy kept talking about how much money they could make dealing. Sick of emptying dumpsters of steel for minimum wage, Nebbitt slid right back into the old life. But it didn't fit so smoothly. "I knew I had a little bit more to offer the world. So I had a lot of internal battles."

The conflict dissolved when he started smoking crack. "That's when I knew I was on borrowed time, prison or death. I used to practice how to pull off as fast as I could, closing the car door in the same second, so somebody couldn't catch me in between and shoot me. You're living for the moment. Don't hear a lot of people in the 'hood talking about their retirement plan or their IRA.

"Sometimes I think I was suicidal, doing the things I did," he muses, "hoping they'd take me out of my misery. But nobody ever did. I started stealing, playing tricks, telling people I wanted to buy drugs and putting out fake money with a $20 on top. I thought, they catch me, they gonna peel my potato (shoot him in the head)."

Around this time, he was "given," by one of the guys who worked a street corner for him, a girlfriend from North St. Louis, a "bonnie" to drive or hold his gun. But that never touched his relationship with his "square girlfriend," Jackie Cox, to whom he returned when his relationship with Mims ended. ("I loved him — still do — but I didn't want my children to see what was going on in his life," explains Mims. "I thought somebody was gonna call me and say he got shot dead.")

Cox, who worked as a stenographer at a state agency's office in the county, hid in the bathroom when Nebbitt shoplifted. "I remember nights sitting outside drug houses crying, always trying to convince Von of how smart he was," she sighs. "When we first met, I was 16 and he was 19, and I kept telling my family how wonderful he was, and they kept saying, "No he's not!' I told my mama he didn't eat pork, and she said, "He'll eat whatever the hell I fix.' But we used to read poetry together. How many people do you meet read Kahlil Gibran?"

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