DEALS ON WHEELS

Relentless beepers. Lonely clients. Latino street gangs. Oh, and a
tax-free income of $300,000 a year. THE FACE finds out what life is
really like for a courier in Manhattan's booming drug delivery service

A call is made to a beeper. A recording comes on. "Hi, you've reached
the offices of Dr Indica. Our office hours are from two to 10pm,
Monday through Saturday. Please leave a numeric message after the
beep." This is how it happens. You dial in your number and wait. Ten
minutes later the phone rings. "Yeah this is the doctor did somebody
page?" They ask for your account number and code. "Alright, somebody
will be there within the hour."

Dean is standing on the corner of Bleecker and Broadway in New York's
Greenwich Village. He's wearing a black ski jacket and green combats.
Urban camouflage. His pager buzzes. SoHo. Beneath his New York Yankees
cap is a crew cut and a handsome face. But behind a friendly veneer
are fierce, knowing eyes that could burn a hole in you. He's tired and
swears that this is the last delivery of the day.

Inside Jason's apartment, all the lights are off except a single lamp
that is lying behind the couch. The flicker from the TV washes over
him and casts a pale glow over the entire room. The apartment is
recently renovated, and quite large. But Jason is thrust in the corner
with his eyes glued to an old episode of Star Trek. His buddies sit at
the kitchen counter, smoking cigarettes. The intercom buzzes. "It's
Dean!"

Dean leans through the door with a smile so wide and a face so
comprehensively assuring, it would put a cop at ease. He greets
everyone of them - "Hey man, great to see you" - grabbing every hand
in the room, checking everybody out easy, laid back, like he's your
best friend. He walks up to the counter, in the middle of everybody
and sets down his gear. "I got $50 bags, 75s, 100s and 125s."

Dear sells weed, lots of it. He has no employees and makes all
deliveries himself. His service is small compared to others in the
city. Working the way he does, which is quite mellow, he'll probably
make between $250,000 and $300,000 in cash by the end of the year.
Unlike regular messengers, Dean does not use a bicycle. Instead he
zooms around Manhattan on a KTM Enduro motorcycle. With his yellow
crash helmet, Oakley rainsuit and face mask, he's the very embodiment
of the urban superhero, delivering the 'buzz' to needy New Yorkers.

Inside Dean's backpack are variously sized plastic containers that
hold roughly two and a half grammes of high quality designer weed. He
lays the different jars or the table for the buyers to inspect Jason
unscrews the jar and smells the bud. He holds it up to the light, like
he's inspecting a diamond. Finally he settles on a 50. Dean puts away
the samples and adds Jason's $50 bill to the already huge wad of cash
sitting in his pocket. He hangs out for a while and rolls a big spliff
and gets to chill with the smokers for a moment or two. Then, just as
the joint begins to take hold, right before he can unload his whole
weight into the sofa, his pager buzzes. "Fuck. Midtown."

Dr Indica and Dean are just two services in a thriving multi-million
dollar pot delivery industry. Anyone with a pager, a mobile phone, and
a good weed connection can set up shop. The service owes a debt of
gratitude to the Godfather of ganja delivery, Michael Cesar, aka The
Pope of Pot. He brought the idea with him from Amsterdam in 1978. He
set up a freephone number, l-800-want-pot, and dispatched bike
messengers from his Greenwich Village comic shop with $50 weed deals.
Police estimate his business made $10-15 million a year. His antics
were legendary. In the annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade he
would dress up in Papal attire, handing out joints taped to the back
of business cards. In 1990 he was busted after announcing his phone
number to all of New York on The Howard Stern Show.

New York mayor, Rudolph Giulani, has declared zero tolerance on weed.
The recent crackdown has driven the entire drug trade off the streets.
Last year, 40,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges, 80 per
cent of them for possession. Washington Square Park, once a
urine-soaked drug bazaar, is ground zero for the city's giant pot
bust. They've installed a mobile precinct to arraign would-be dealers
and buyers. Cameras are mounted in trees and on buildings, watching
the park 24 hours a day. It used to be the case that anything you ever
wanted could be procured from the streets of New York in less than one
hour. The trade is still there, but the Mayor's law and order crusade
has driver it underground. Sex and drugs can still be had, only now
they have to come to you.

The N train pulls up at 42nd Street station and Dean wearily exits the
subway into Times Square. As he walks towards his next delivery he
imagines himself as a character in a movie. His Walkman beats out the
soundtrack. Each anonymous face is a character. He is the hero.

"I just pretend that I'm going on a mission," he says. "Before I leave
my place I get psyched up. Sometimes I'll put all my stuff on - my
rain-suit, all buckled in, my beeper and cell phone attached. I'll
put my helmet on, and my sunglasses, and...,' he pauses, getting a
dreamy look in his eyes "I can't tell you what it feels like. It's
crazy, I just feel like I got it going on."

He buzzes up to a website design firm just off Times Square. Richard
lets us up. The office is identical to every other new media firm in
New York. Drum and bass pounds over the office speakers as geeks toil
over web pages. Richard is wearing a Just Do It T-Shirt, with a
syringe in place of a Nike swoosh. He already has his money out and
his bowl ready before Dean can sit down. He looks like he's had too
much espresso - or too much of something.

Dean's out the door again before he can even warm up. "Sometimes
people just can't hang. They get all nervous and uptight around me. I
don't blame them. Some of these dudes wouldn't smoke unless it was
delivered so they make me for some lowlife dealer. I bet he thought I
was casing the place for what I could steal."

The key, according to Dean is to put people at ease. Even so, their
nervousness is understandable. The FBI's latest statistics on
marijuana arrests indicate that roughly 695,000 people were arrested
in 1997, the largest number in American history. 87 per cent of those
were arrested for possession. This flurry of activity has cost
American taxpayers some $3 billion.

A conservative American legislature has turned the issue into a moral
crusade. Republican Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the US House of
Representatives, sponsored a bill demanding a life sentence or death
penalty for anyone caught bringing two ounces or more of marijuana
into the country. There are already a number of severe penalties in
place. Students found to use marijuana are denied college loans, and
the practice of drug testing in the workplace now covers 97 per cent
of all US corporations. Testing positive could ruin your life. A joint
after work could cause you to lose your job, your house. and the right
to government assistance.

It is almost impossible to become a drug messenger. The competition
for a slot working for one of the delivery services is intense. Alain,
a rider for one of New York's larger services, came to his job purely
by chance. A native of St Martin, he met a rich young couple who were
sailing their yacht through the Caribbean. After showing them around
the islands for a week, he befriended the couple. They then invited
him to New York and offered him a job delivering weed. He's been here
two years now. "There's no other way I could stay in the city," he
says. "I love music, writing and film, and this is a great way for me
to do those things and pay the rent."

Dean is standing in a record shop on Avenue A in the East Village,
looking nervous. Outside are a couple of guys he thinks are following
him. Messengers dread making deliveries in the East Village. Here,
more than anywhere else in the city, messengers get jacked. In recent
years the neighbourhood has seen a huge number of young, white
hipsters move in. With them have come marijuana delivery services.
Since many of these guys are also young, wealthy and white, they are
easy targets for muggers.

"They can just tell, some of these dudes have a third eye," says Dean.
"They start to recognise you goin' to the same places. I know when
someone else is doin' it. These guys must."

When he says 'they', Dean is referring to the real dealers in the area
- - the young, hard Latino gangsters who control the streets.

"And they see some skinny lookin' white kid on a fancy mountain bike,
making deliveries, they're going to jack him."

It's easy money to the street dealers: free weed and a couple of
thousand in cash. And they know that nobody is going to call the cops,
or fight back. Dean makes a lot of deliveries in the East Village and
was recently jacked himself. He isn't in the mood for a repeat
episode. He thumbs through the records some more and continues to look
out the window. It looks like the guys outside have moved on. Or maybe
they're hiding.

When they got him a few weeks ago, it was because he couldn't start
his bike in time. He was on the corner of 18th Street and Third
Avenue, a good neighbourhood in Gramercy Park, talking on his mobile.
All in broad daylight.

"I saw these five big black dudes come walking towards me," says Dean.
"They just knew that I was holding. I saw them and got on my bike and
tried to take off, but they tackled me and just started kicking and
punching me, trying to get my bag. They couldn't, and ran off. I got
up and tried to get back on my bike, but as I straddled it they came
out and tackled me again. They stole my phone, my beeper, but I
wouldn't give up that bag. I had, like, 1,000 bucks in weed and 3,000
in cash in there."

Dean is walking toward the East Village apartment of a music writer
with a voracious weed appetite. "This guy calls me three times a
week. I don't understand how he gets any work done with the amount of
grass that he smokes."

Martin lives on the fifth floor of a 'walk-up' in Alphabet City. In
the far east fringe of the East Village, the avenues run out of
numbers and become letters, This once-derelict area has recently been
the focus of intense urban renewal with an influx of young people.
These people are Dean's regulars. Martin seems to think he and Dean
are old friends and encourages him to hang out and party. Dean has
started to feel sorry for him. "He's one of those guys that spends his
whole day cooped up in his apartment. I'm the only person he sees
somedays. I feel bad having to leave."

Martin's floor is strewn with papers and the place emanates a weird
smell. It is utter chaos. He buys a '75' of weed and a '50' of hash
and sets about packing both in the bong. Dean stares in disbelief as
Martin fills up all three feet of the tube and sucks the whole thing
down. He passes the bong to Dean who reluctantly repeats the feat.
Bowls and joints are packed and rolled. The TV is on; the stereo is
blaring Guns N' Roses. It's almost too much to take.

Finally Dean can't stand it any more. He pretends he has a page.
"Sorry man, gotta go."

Martin slaps him a low five. "Yeah dude," he says. "See you in a
couple of days."

None of the services grow their own pot. To supply the demand for
ganja, services depend on brokers. They act as a liaison between
growers and dealers. Growers are suspicious of everyone and rarely
deal with anybody except one guy they've probably known for years. If
a grower notices that a particular individual is moving a lot of
product fast, they send a broker as a representative of their
organisation. In Dean's case, brokers for a large biker gang contacted
him. They'll extend credit, discount on bulk orders. Just like
ordinary retailers.

The growers are hardcore super-criminals. "You wouldn't fucking
believe it, man," says Dean. "Huge warehouses in Harlem and Brooklyn
and the Bronx - all for growing dope. There are dudes standing outside
with M- 16s."

According to Dean the growers are all "nerdy science guys" whose
entire lives are dedicated to growing weed. They hang out together and
don't talk to many people. They deal with maybe one broker and don't
stay in business long, a couple of years at a time. They make a few
million fast and get out. Nobody knows anybody, nobody works for
anybody. That way it anyone gets busted, you can't roll or your co-workers.

Dean says he's not worried about jail, either. He came to terms with
it a long time ago: "Otherwise I couldn't wake up in the morning." He
has the constant nagging fear that today will be the day he gets
busted. "Every morning I wake up, I wonder." He clings to the old
saying, "If you're man enough to do the crime, be man enough to do the
time." He figures that if he gets put away at least he'll have an
opportunity to write his memoirs. Even so, he's well educated, good
looking and has never been arrested. Why take the chance? The truth is
that he genuinely enjoys it. He watches no TV, rarely reads the
newspaper, pays no taxes and has few close friends. But he is living
the life he wants to lead.

"I'm a writer and all day long I get to have the opportunity to meet
new characters. I go into 20 or 30 different apartments a day," he
says. He gets to act as psychiatrist, buddy, confidant - and he gets
paid to do it. "I can blow all my money and just get more. If I don't
want to work I don't have to. I meet movie stars, rock stars and
bigwig execs." And, best of all, he just likes to get people stoned.

At the same, Dean is thinking about the future. Over the coming months
he plans to go bi-coastal and mid-Atlantic. He's rented an apartment
in LA and hopes to have the franchise up and running soon. He's got a
new broker who's offered him a partnership and plans are underway to
fund a London service. He also aims to ascend to the next level of the
pyramid and become a broker. "I told my partner, 'I think I could do
this for a while.' I want to make some real money, then fund my own
film. That's my goal." Like all the best movies, it would be about
what he knows best: in this case, pot dealers. "Or maybe a movie with
motorcycles."