Mccreary County, 2002

WARY, BUT STILL DEALING

In The Garden

The cocaine dealer crouched in his vegetable garden, pulling weeds in the
early afternoon sun.

David Perkins was wearing his favorite ball cap, the one that proclaimed in
blue letters that he was a No. 1 Dad.

The summer heat was lingering. Like the rest of McCreary County, Pine Knot
is a quiet place -- more forest than anything else. The woods are so thick
in some spots you can't tell where the county ends and Tennessee begins.

The stillness of the day broke as Perkins heard a truck rumble over the
gravel path to the garden.

Perkins stood up, surrounded by bright colors: peppers, green and yellow,
beds of lettuce and mustard leaves, three rows of yellow corn and a thick
cluster of red tomatoes.

He saw a black GMC Jimmy pulling up.

Ralph Grundy was behind the wheel. Perkins was not happy to see him.

There were some around town who said that Grundy had recently become an
informant for the police.

As the truck came to a stop, Perkins shook his head. He made his way to the
driver's side. He didn't walk fast. He never did.

At 36, Perkins had the body of a man much older -- and sicker. His pale
green eyes were failing him. The right one was gone to the point of being
legally blind, and the left kept getting dimmer.

He took a medicine chest of drugs every morning: nasal spray for bad
headaches, a pill for heart problems, a pill for blood pressure, another
still for general physical pain, and the list kept going.

Perkins leaned into the truck window to talk with Grundy, the man he'd
heard was a snitch. He chose his words carefully.

Ralph Grundy did too. He knew about the rumors, and they made him nervous.

"I didn't know what to think," Grundy said later. "I didn't know if I would
get killed or what."

Grundy, then 51, was a small-time local dealer who kept his hair combed
back and usually had a pack of Marlboros rolled in his T-shirt sleeve. He
typically bought cocaine by the ounce, making $200 or $300 when he sold it.
He'd been buying from Perkins for months. Most of his income, though, came
from rebuilding wrecked vehicles and selling them.

More than anything, he made a living by doing "whatever was convenient."

Grundy asked Perkins whether he could buy an ounce of cocaine.

At almost every turn in David Perkins' story, there are disputes among the
characters about facts large and small. With each retelling, one dealer is
made more the criminal, and the other more a bystander.

For example, Perkins said that on that warm August day, as he leaned
against the truck, he refused to make a deal.

But, he said, Grundy made a peace offering.

"He said, do you want a pill?" Perkins said, "and I said yeah, and he gave
me three of them."

The pills were little blue tablets, Perkins said, 10 milligrams each of
Lorcet, a painkiller popular with drug abusers. Perkins softened a bit. "I
told him I'd check around for him," Perkins said.

Grundy said he never gave Perkins any pills. He didn't have to, Grundy
said, because, after dodging him for a while, Perkins was ready to sell.

"It took me about a week to get that ounce of coke," Grundy said. "He kept
on giving me the runaround."

About half an hour after they talked, Perkins walked through the door of
his white double-wide mobile home and began making the usual arrangements.

First, he got someone willing to make the delivery. Then he called a man he
paid to hold his cocaine. Ever the careful businessman, Perkins didn't want
the stuff at his home, in case the police came to the door one day.

A man brought an ounce of coke over in a Glad sandwich bag. Perkins handed
it to his delivery man, who put it into his pocket.

The next day, Grundy met the delivery man at a garage a stone's throw from
the vegetable garden. The transaction was quick -- $1,350 for the ounce --
and both men headed off.

Perkins got his cash. Grundy went to a nearby church.