Down and Out on Murder Mile by Tony O'Neill Page A

expression that only overly serious eighteen-year-olds can give.
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    â€œMy addiction,” he said, completely seriously, “Deserves as much respect as yours!”
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    So I filed Jack away mentally as just another asshole kid who needed to define himself through his problems—real or perceived. I thought it was cynical how the NA meetings embraced him, despite how obvious it was that he didn’t have a problem. Now Jack was interacting with real-life addicts—crackheads, prostitutes, junkies—people he would never have had any contact with in the real world. For someone as guileless and naive as he seemed, this probably wouldn’t be a good thing. Little did I know that in a matter of weeks I would be living with Jack, and everything would fall apart.
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    The meetings were now superfluous to my needs. I didn’t have any friends in the program. But I did have some people I thought I could use to my advantage, and that kept me coming back.
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    Michael, the guy I knew from the Narcotics Anonymous meeting that I attended on Tuesdaynights, still had the illegal sublet available on his old council flat in White Hart Lane. I asked around because I was informed that the lease was coming up on the flat share in Batman Close and we would all have to be out at the end of the month. The beer belly and the South African were going to take the opportunity to go backpacking. Susan and I were too high to make any adequate provisions for this event, so I decided it would be prudent to keep attending NA meetings to secure Michael’s sublet. Susan stopped showing up with me, content instead to sit around the flat shooting heroin, watching daytime television, and smoking cigarettes.
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    But, of course, secrets do not last long in NA meetings and suddenly Jack was sniffing around Michael, wanting to get in on the action. One day Michael took Susan and I out to see his place. We took the tube to Seven Sisters, and then an aboveground train out to White Hart Lane. The area was run-down, nothing but high-rise council flats, shabby-looking semi-detached houses, low-end supermarkets, and corner shops. All they had out there was the football ground. To Michael, this was a selling point of Herculean proportions.
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    â€œYou’re just dahn the road from the ground, mate. It’s fuckin’ ace. You can hear ’em cheer whenever Tottenham score! Blinding!”
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    Michael obviously fancied himself as a wide boy. He looked like he would be handy with his fists. He was always in a Fila tracksuit and pristinetrainers. He made his money as a ticket tout, now that he was out of the drug game.
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    â€œFackin’ Madonna’s coming to play London soon! I ’ave five of us gonna get in the line for tickets. They’ll ’ave a limit, but these fuckers are gonna go for a couple hundred each, mate! Nice little profit, yer know?”
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    The flat was on the seventeenth floor of a piss-stinking council rabbit warren. The elevator was literally sopping with urine and garbage. Susan made a disgusted face at me, but I just shrugged and told her to get in. Michael seemed entirely oblivious to it. He just seemed happily surprised that it was working. Inside, the place was a shambles. Dirty clothes lay all over the floor, and the air was stale. It had two bedrooms and a small bathroom. The main bedroom was at the back and had balconies where you could walk out and enjoy the view of the gray skies and the countless other high-rises. It was one of the most singularly depressing panoramas I have ever seen.
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    â€œI’ve not been back since I quit the brown, you know? I had to get out of here to get clean. Too many memories. Too hard to stay clean here, you know? I’ve been in this flat ten years, using for all of them. You see down there?”
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    Michael pointed to a muddy patch of grass, seventeen floors down.
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    â€œYeah.”
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    â€œA mate of mine jumped