Under the pseudonym “Joey O'Shay” a deep cover narcotics agent operates in an undisclosed city at the heart of the nation. He's a man with nearly three hundred drug busts, orchestrated over a span of more than twenty years.
Fighting an unofficial war the U.S. lost long ago, the late Charles Bowden details O'Shay's last endeavor—a high-stakes heroin deal worth $50 million. The deal, originating in Colombia, triggers a chain reaction that places federal agents on high alert, spanning the stretch from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and reaching New York City. As the narrative unfolds, we learn of O'Shay's relentlessness that guides him through deadly terrain as he dismantles drug kingpins.
Set in the shadowy and unforgiving streets of middle America, this is a masterclass in the brutal and corrupt realities of the war on drugs. Something made very clear about the drug world, you have to keep your deals. In that world, you can't say, “Well, look, the guy cheated me. I'll go to court and sue him.” The only enforcement is force.
Several figures stand out. One is Bobbi, a woman battling cancer who oversees various hotels and provides lodgings for O'Shay's drug-dealing clients. She knows him better than anyone. As he tries to step back from this world, she holds that no one that “knows” can ever leave it.
Another is Gloria, who he encounters while setting the stage for his Colombian counterparts, the dealers Garcia and Irma. They are immediately attracted to each other, but O'Shay is confronted with the painful necessity of betraying her, such is the job. This leads to imprisonment, decades minimum, without her being aware of his true identity as the cop responsible for her downfall. “Not him, he's my baby,” she says when the feds try to get her to flip on her contacts.
Through this ordeal, he realizes destroying people like her wasn't going to solve “the drug problem.” People are going to buy these substances and find them no matter what he did. Then, finally, a woman he got to know really well on the case said, “Look, I have never created a single addict in my life. They existed when I was born; they're going to exist when I die. I just supply them.” And he realized she was telling him the truth.
This time, his path leads to a realm where distinguishing heroes from villains becomes impossible, robbing him of his purpose. As he gets deeper in it, he slowly stops believing in what he is doing. As he gets to know the people he destroys, he stops believing he is any better than they were.
“He did not betray Gloria, who played out her hand in the only hard world she ever knew. He betrayed himself. He enforced a law he no longer believes in,” Bowden writes, (p. 301).
In the end, he is haunted by the weight of his deception. He's also torn between loyalty to his fellow narcotics agents and prosecutors, whom he disdains. As time goes, he finds himself respecting the drug dealers he brings down more than law enforcement.
There is a scene that really adds insult to injury. This comes when O'Shay is closing out all hope for Gloria and the others caught in his snare when he had to meet with two bosses from a federal agency.
“It is Halloween,” Bowden writes, “and one is dressed as some kind of troll and the other a candy-ass vampire or something. One is a man, the other a woman, but to O'Shay both are ridiculous. There is a decency on the street, some kind of honest ground, people are ruined... O'Shay has put his life on the line, and here he's talking about what to do and how to settle the case with a troll and a vampire. And he and his dew feel violated. He feels sin for being there. There are decencies that must be observed, things old cops taught, and criminals and creeks and stars at night, and you don't sit in an office dressed like pansies and decide the fate of hardworking drug dealers. It is a violation, an insult to the crew...
“There is a world that is rock hard and actual and it runs like a stratum through the city. And there is this other world, soft and dishonest... and it is worshipped,” (p. 251).
As becomes clear, you can't live certain things without paying a price. You can't pretend they didn't happen. He'll have to live with the damage of his life. As O'Shay deals with his blurred allegiances, he reads Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl's seminal work Man's Search for Meaning, feeling kinship with the author. It tells of his time in the camps and how he found the will to live, surrounded by so much death. “It is death that gives life meaning.” It's the most difficult book I've ever had to read, FYI.
I'm not sure I'd call what Bowden did “true crime,” though it is that. More cultural critique. I adore Bowden's voice, both literal and in the written form. He wrote extensively on the U.S.-Mexico border, shining light on the femicides in Juarez, and later the drug violence taking place there, and America's part in it. If you've never heard him speak, I encourage you to check this out. No one can say it like him. Excellent read, for anyone that's got the stomach for rage and disgust.
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