Doughboy: Memoirs of the Streets

By Lonnie Cowan

Enter the streets of Los Angeles. Witness the creation of a gang leader. Walk the yard of maximum security prison. Experience the dangers of the Dope Game and the lessons learned on the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524660529

Lonnie Cowan

Lonnie spent five years in the California Youth Authority before he was twenty-one. He spent time in San Quentin, California’s most infamous state prison. Now Lonnie is an aspiring author. His uniqueness stems from his experiences. He was raised in Los Angeles, and he builds his characters from real people that he has walked with during his journey in life. Lonnie lived the gang life, the prison life, and the drug life. Now that Lonnie changed his life, he writes about it.

Book preview

1

2010

It took me seven years to realize I did not belong here, not here as in the federal penitentiary, here as in, in front of the crowd before me.

No matter what I do, I cannot be right. If I tell them there is one thousand grams in a kilogram, they will tell me there are thirty-six ounces in a kilogram. If I tell them, there is twenty-eight grams in an ounce, they tell me it depends on where the ounce was purchased.

In Alabama a ounce weigh twenty-five grams!

I don’t care where you at, an ounce an ounce!

Not in Alabama.

I give up. I do not know what provoked me to want to teach the GED class at Coleman Maximum-Security Federal prison. I guess so I would not have to sweat in the kitchen for sixteen cents an hour. At least in here I am my own boss in a way. I do not have to wear a uniform, and I work only two hours a day – and I get thirty-four cents an hour for an eight-hour day – everyday.

My boss is a blond-haired white girl. She is my age. She is very petite, like I like them, and cute. She is as dumb as a box of blocks, but her personality is refreshing. It sure beats looking at a bunch of convicts with Gold’s in their mouths and dreadlocks in their hair, and the same taste in music – all day.

One of the convicts raised his hand. His name is…I cannot remember his name; it is something like a bird, like Hawk, or Falcon, or something like that. I do not know any of my students by name. I know them when I see them. I know where they sit. I know some of their nick-names. Their AKA’s are all far-fetched and hard to remember, so I do not try.

Bird or Pigeon, whatever his name is - is from somewhere in Alabama. He started off as the class clown of the classroom when he first got here two years ago, but when he realized that he was the only clown in the class he started trying. In his spare time, he tries to find math problems in the GED math book that I cannot solve; which is a waste of both our time, but, at least it keeps him occupied with math in a way. He is the one that insists an Alabama ounce weighs twenty-five grams. And he is right.

He had his hand raised like a child in the second grade. I smiled to myself. It is amazing how in this classroom of killers, drug dealers, bank robbers, and gangsters, with absolutely no authority figures to enforce the rules, the convicts have the decency to raise their hands before saying something; They’ll curse your ass out, or outright call you a liar, but they will raise their hands to be called on first – to do it in a polite way. Respect is not only necessary, it is a must, in prison. Yeah? I acknowledged Crow.

I’m saying, right? You was saying Wednesday that you knew Juiceman James. Well if you know JJ why you in jail?

Nobody laughed, but everybody looked up expecting an answer. Sometimes I felt class was one big trivia show. I could imagine myself giving an answer and the Family Feud man saying, Survey says! as he looks over his shoulder at the survey board. JJ’s in jail too, I reminded him.

JJ not in jail. He in Virginia.

In jail. In Virginia. He’s in jail in Virginia.

He not in jail.

Suddenly the classroom went into a big debate over whether JJ was in jail or not. He is in jail. I know that because I know him well. He is tight as hell. I remember he called me to inquire on some weed that he had fronted me. I almost exclusively sell cocaine, but he asked me to take sixty pounds off his hands as a favor, and since he is JJ I said yes. Two days later he called me to see if ‘I got that’.

It’s been two days JJ.

Yeah. I ’ma day late. Got that?

No. I did not have it. I did not have the money. Not his money. I had all the weed though.

Yeah. Send somebody. I said.

Send somebody? I ‘ma fly down myself, JJ said.

Yeah? I was shocked because usually for such a small amount of money a person would pay somebody to go pick it up. A two-day trip to pick up twenty-one thousand dollars normally would cost somewhere around one thousand dollars, maybe less.

But not JJ. He came down himself with two bricks in his golf bag, something only someone as stupid as Juiceman James would do. I remember the day I met him…

* * *

January 1996

This ain’t no mothafuckin Key! * Derrick laughed. It was the kind of laugh that had absolutely no meaning. It serves as a pause. He say it’s good. It just looks funny.

You could say that again. Will it come back?

He say it will.

Who the fuck is ‘he’? You always coming with that ‘he’ shit.

JJ.

Everybody in Pacoima knows that ever since JJ beat his trial, he been selling dope – being assisted by the Black Mafia, but nevertheless, Derrick is one of the BM’s representatives. I had known him since we played pop-warner football together when we were in middle school. He was a nerd then, like he is now.

I went to California Youth Authority in early 1983. When I got out in 1986, Derrick owned the beeper shop on Glenoaks and Van Nuys Boulevard, plus he owned a ghetto clothing store on Paxton and Glenoaks named The Hood, that sold stuff like Dickies, and Ben Davis, and Pendleton’s and Chuck Taylors, Penney loafers and corduroy house shoes. They even sold old-school golf hats, and red and blue bandanas for the Crips and Bloods that materialized over the last four or five years.

Derrick even drove a 1987 big body Mercedes Benz, so I was impressed. I could not understand how a nerdy person like Derrick could come-up in a city of jackers and killers. I soon found out he was working for the Black Mafia – and that explained it all.

In Pacoima, TBM meant black organization. That is exactly what they were; a mafia full of smart business-minded ruthless, murdering gangsters. They were known for murdering people for the smallest infraction, and known for having the best and most affordable work. * Quarters* back then, went for $125.00.

They worked out of establishments that everybody in the hood knew as The Breakfast Club. One day the Breakfast Club would be on the west side of town, the next day it would be on Dronfield, the next day at the Billiard room across the street from the Garden of Angels projects. The next day, at Hansen Dam park. No matter where it was located it was where everybody got their work. They would serve anybody back then; and back then, everybody was connected one way or the other to the TBM.

Names like Jeff Ryan and Ron-Ron from Pasadena, would roll off people’s lips like Michael Jackson and Jack Nicolson; everybody knew who they were, but nobody ever saw them in life. Their names were infamous in Pacoima and Pasadena. They were Doughboys! They were running shit; and to a nineteen-year-old Crip who did not have any worthwhile goals in life, I could not think of anything I wanted to be more than to be a Doughboy!

2

April 2010

Coleman Prison

A young black kid from Florida had his hand up. Everybody in this class, my Monday-Wednesday-Friday class is black.

How many ounces in a pound?

I love these kinds of questions but they all end up on the Dope game.

If you bought a pound of weed— I stopped and rephrased the question to avoid any kind of confusion. How much a pound of weed cost where you from?

Depends on who I get it from, he said.

In general, On the average.

Depends on who I—

Let’s just say you got it from your best most reliable connection, I said.

My connection? he said sarcastically.

Your plug.

That all depends on how good the weed—

Mothafucker, how much a pound of weed cost? My patience runs very low with my students. I have no formal training to be a teacher. I only took the job because I feel anybody can teach. I taught several people how to cook crack for example, so I did have some experience.

I looked over to the convict that always sat in the front row to my right. He was always doing word searches or mazes or reading an urban novel. He is from Houston, and his name is something like Snow Man or Brick Man which puts emphasis on what he does, or did, for a living, and probably has something to do with why he is in prison with a life sentence. I seemed to have his attention now. These kinds of conversations always sparked interest.

How much a pound cost in Houston? I asked, though it was a question that I knew the answer to.

If you only get one, you pay anywhere from three to four hundred.

I was thinking the same thing. Okay. Now, say you bought a pound of weed in Houston, Texas. I looked over to the young man from Florida that was being difficult.

I would not go way the fuck to Texas to buy no weed. I would—

Let’s just say you did, okay? I could tell he was trying to think of something slick to say as he wondered where I was going with this. How many ounces of weed would you expect to be in your pound?

What kind of weed?

Somebody else laughed – an Old-head that sits in the fourth seat behind Snowman from Houston, who is good in math, and talks with a lisp because he was once shot in the face with a .44 Magnum when somebody robbed him and his girlfriend. They kidnapped them both, shot them both, killing the girl, and threw them over a bridge. I remember his name now. Nestle. That is his last name. He survived the attempted murder, but he did not survive the Feds three months later when he got out of the hospital. He was sentenced to forty years for conspiracy to some drugs he never actually saw. His main topic of discussion, whenever anybody would pay attention to him, is what he is going to do when he gets out.

Some Dro, Nestle said.

Some Bobby Brown, someone else yelled out.

Some Chronic, someone else added.

Some—

Listen you guys, I cut them off before this discussion escalated. It never ceased to amaze me all the names people give marijuana; and how little people know about it. Like Dro that derived from the word hydro which derived from the word hydroponic, which only means it was grown in water. Also, Chronic is not a breed of seed; It is a name people called weed back in the days before the Chronic CD came out by Dre and Snoop Dog that also derived from the word hydroponic – keeping the hydro and changing the ponic to chronic. In the real world, most marijuana, whether it is called Kush, Hawaiian, Tai, Indica, Sess, Dirt, Mex, or Sour Diesel, is grown organically, in dirt. No matter what kind of weed you got, who knows how many ounces there will be in the pound?

Snowman was about to answer, but I put up my hand up in the universal sign for Wait! I know he knew the answer, he is from Houston, Texas. I looked at the youngster that initiated the conversation. Do you know?

Better be sixteen in mine. If a motha—

So, that answers your question. Sixteen ounces in a pound. I looked at the youngster. So, if you are taking the GED test – which I think you’re scheduled to take on the first of March, which is, I looked at my G-Shock watch, that I had on my left wrist since the day I got here at Coleman over seven years ago, only nine days away, and you run across a question that consists of how many ounces in a pound, what will be your answer? How many ounces in a pound?

A pound of what?

3

January 1996

Los Angeles, California

The problem with the Key was, for one, I never saw a kilogram of cocaine so large; and for two, it was all powdery. Kilos that come from South America – are hard – not powdery. They are rock solid! It is compressed with prints from the compressor engraved in it.

There are hearts, lightning bolts, clovers, parrots, crowns, foot prints or snakes and emblems or sometimes abbreviations. I have seen dolphins – which implicates that one way or another it came to California by way of Florida. I have seen more decals on kilos than I have seen on acid tabs. Charlie Browns, Palm trees, McDonald’s arches, snakes, which means it came through Mexico before being compressed, which also mean it was probably oil base, and cut. Horse shoes means Texas; Coca leaves would imply somewhere in South America; Bolivia or Peru more than likely. Gold fish means fish scaled, keeping in mind that fish scale can always be added to the dope before compressing it back by cutting it with a substance called Lua that comes in a liquid that looks and smells like Super Glue, and could be for all I know; but fish scale, real fish scale is a Doughboy’s favorite. I have all kinds of favorites because I have all kinds of experience with all kinds of cocaine’s; oil base, Ether base, diesel base; chalky, damp, white, yellow, brittle, flakey, crumbly, hard, soft, paint-smelling, chemical-smelling. All kinds.

I like when it has a print on it that I am familiar with; like the Cartels in South America – especially Bolivia and Peru. They are so comfortable in the Game that they put their seal of approval on their product; like the cocaine manufacturers from Trujillo, Peru; and Popayan, Colombia. Sometimes their work is so pure it appears to be transparent like a big brick of cloudy ice. When I stumble on good stuff like that, I purchase as much as is available. If I run out of money, I will get the rest on a front. My word is good. Your credit must be good in the Game at this level. If you are still alive everybody in the Game at this level will know your credit is good. Word gets around to the higher caliber Doughboys like TRW checks.

When I say Derrick’s Key was powdery, that was not the problem. The problem was it was powder. I never saw a Key that was actually powder – like flour. The first thing came to my mind was exactly that; flour, but I am not narrow-minded. I know in the Game you can always learn.

My Sureño plug is from BVN 13, Barrio Van Nuys. The ones I dealt with I have known all my natural life – and still dealt with as I got older. They would serve you kilos as if they were selling dime bags.

"What’s up Perro*?"

"What’s up? Estás bién? Estás listo? (Got anything?)

How many you need? No code talking or anything that you see all the time in the Southern and Mid-west states. We have established bank accounts of trust over the years. Our entire lives.

Got three?

I think I got three.

Mothafucker know he got three. He may have three hundred for all I know. They always have work. Well almost always. If they did not have what you wanted it is a good sign that a drought is on its way. Usually they would give me a Heads-up.

Fourteen?

Fourteen five. Another sign.

What’s that?

Forty-three five. Experience makes counting large amounts of change in increments of five hundred – second nature.

What it look like?

"Firme como siempre." Good like always. And that is true too. I never have to ask if it is good. I am only going through the motions, keeping the conversation rolling, but seldom do I ever have to look through the window cut-out on the kilogram. I know it is going to be firme.

"Aceite?" I ask, which means oil base, which is not what I prefer. Oil base is good if you are going to step on the work before you dump it, and if you are going to sell it as crack. Oil base is almost always dirty dark yellow in color, like the color of a dirty white rag. But if you plan to turn it into crack – which are not my intentions, it is the best kind of cocaine to put the twist on.

Dry-cooking a kilogram of oil base, turning it into one and a half Keys of hard is something I can do without the necessity of measuring devices. I do not know anybody who can cook better than me. Not even close.

Take two for me.

That means pay for three now and take two on a front. The price of the other two will not be discussed until it is time to pay for it. If it takes a long time, say more than two weeks, the price will compensate for the delay. But if I pay him in less than a week, I will pay probably seventeen for each – which is a bargain because I can sell them in St. Louis for twenty-four thousand. Fronting me two is like giving me an extra fourteen stacks.

I’ll take it.

That is how business goes with me and the Mexicans in Los Angeles. A lot of trust has been established over time. We used to spend the night at each other’s houses when we were kids. Our first times going to jail were together. I used to buy dime bags of weed from them when I was in high school. We used to go with them to fight the Sanfer 13’s in the barrio of Sanfernando where their competition resided. Years later this small dispute over street territory would escalate into a perpetual war between the two neighborhoods.

Ten years later, these same men are my Kilo connection. I have never carried a gun when going to purchase drugs from them. Though, in Los Angeles there is a never-ending battle between the blacks and the Mexicans, the street wars never affected us in any way. This is about money. All that other geographical stuff is for the streets. So, I never needed a pistol when dealing with them – but dealing with the brothers is an altogether different thing.

I thought about that now as I looked at Derrick. The Glock on my right hip seemed to weigh me down a little. The Glock 17 is a Doughboy’s favorite gun because they do not have hammers or safeties. My blue Tommy Hilfiger short-sleeve button-down shirt barely concealed it.

Why it look like this? I smelled it. It smelled like paint – which is a good sign, but I know through experience the smell can be altered too.

He say it straight; Try it, Derrick said.

Which means cook it. People have all kinds of ways to test dope; taste it, look at it, rub it between their fingers, pour water on it and stir it, some have test kits that resemble the kits that people use when they test the chlorine in a swimming pool; but the only foolproof way of testing it is to cook it.

I usually open the triangle shaped window on the bird* and breath a gush of hot air on it as if I was blowing on some glasses before wiping them down. By doing this I can see the natural color that the dope is going to turn when it gets cooked into crack. I say natural color because the color of dope can be changed very easily too. I have sold blue crack. I have sold orange crack on Halloween. I like cooking crack. It is like printing money. I can manufacture this forbidden drug with proficiency. I can alter the texture or color or solidity with the same finesse a chef may apply to a gourmet dish. I am a chef in the kitchen, and I have more tricks to this trade than anybody I have ever known - or heard about.

To a real chef – a dope chef – there is no such thing as bad cocaine. What is bad is the cut that has been added to the cocaine. An experienced chef can easily extract the cocaine, separate it from the cut, and now you have good cocaine again, after all, all cocaine is good.

I am a fixer of dope. Whatever the problem with it, Rondog can get it back for you. I have fixed kilos upon kilos of cocaine. The Sureños got ahold of some bricks* that were dumped in the ocean.

They ended up with over four- hundred wet kilos of cocaine that originally came from Columbia. I could tell by the parakeet impression in the dope, and the fact that they were all sealed with geometric wax cookie sheet paper and then sealed with a black rubber pouch that looked like a black balloon - but thicker, which was done in case they had to make a quick dump in the ocean – like now, which is a way the Columbians are known to package their product.

Most of the bricks were okay, and the ones that were not okay I salvaged. This project consisted of me systematically cooking twenty Keys a day, for three weeks. I have seen cooked kilos, or attempted cooked kilos, turn into a bright orange deadly chemical-smelling mush that is so orange it is almost red. I can fix it. I have fixed dope that got wet by gas while being concealed in gas tanks; dope that smells like Bounce dryer sheets is not ruined; I can fix it. I can make it smell like paint, or I can make it smell like pumpkin pie if that is what you prefer. I can turn yellow dope white; white dope yellow, or butter or transparent, or scaly, or turn it green if that is what you want. People come to me when they got dope that will not harden, or when your dope is too hard, or when it never seems to dry, or when it does not have legs, or when it sticks to the Pyrex, or if you have any problem whatsoever, or need someone to turn your kilogram into one and a half Kilos – or into two Keys – they call on me; and It is because of my crack cooking skills that JJ and I became best of friends.

4

Coleman Prison

May 2010

Don’t nobody use this shit in real life! He was talking about algebra. I think his name is Animall. It sounds like animal, but with an ‘aw’ at the end so it rhymes with Panama. He is another one from Florida, but that is where the prison is located, so there is probably five hundred of them on the yard from all over Florida; Palm Beach, Ocala, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Orlando, Pensacola, and everywhere in between. Animall is from St. Pete.

Most people’s nick names reflect their character or their way of life in some form, so I would assume Animall was not in prison for anything drug-related. More than likely, he is a jack boy, addicted to hitting banks, and like most of that breed, he winded up in federal prison with a long sentence – among multiple bank robbers, like him. I had to think quickly.

Algebra is to math what Chinese is to China. It’s the language of numbers.

I don’t know no Chinese people. And the only numbers I’m worried about is the number these crackers gave me, which we probably would need to set up an algebra problem to figure out. He got time for eight different robberies with eight different guns, in four different states, and an attempted murder that the state picked up, so after he finishes the time he must do for the feds, the state will be waiting for him to answer for the attempted murder.

Yeah, but you’re going to need math in life period, I told him.

I don’t need to know no algebra. I don’t need to know Chinese. All I know is niggas. Killers! We don’t—

What about if, I paused to think of a scenario that might apply to his life. If you robbed a bank, right? And you and three other people—

I would not rob no bank with more niggas. I ain’t trying break bread with three mothafuckas! Only a dumb-ass nigga would try—

What if you hit the bank by yourself? And your girl works there, and she’s the one that put you up on the move? She told you when to come and which teller to go to, and exactly what time the security guard is going to be outside, because he’s in on it too. I had everybody’s attention now, so I took advantage of the learning session. Say yall get one million dollars—

From the tellers?

Okay, say you got real lucky and got ninety-eight thousand dollars.

You ain’t never gone get ninety-eight thousand dollars from no mothafuckin’ teller.

Just go along with this okay? Hypothetically.

This shit would not happen in real life!

"That’s what hypothetically means, okay? Now let’s just say you did though," I said.

How much?

Ninety-eight thousand dollars. And let’s say the deal was that you had to give your girl half—

"And I’m the one ran up in the bank?" Animall said.

Okay, let’s say one fourth of the money, which is a number his brain could not calculate. …And you had to give the security guard $10,000 less than twice the amount you had to give your girl. How would you figure that out?

I’d kill both of them so I would not have to worry about none of that bullshit. Laughter erupted. My baby momma don’t deserve shit. I would not do nothing with that bitch anyway. She liable to get us all fucked up. That’s why I’m in here now.

He now had the full attention of the class. He continued his story as his left hand scratched into his dirty short dreadlocks, spilling particles of hair and filth