Sly Evans was picked up in a motel room on Hollywood Boulevard with a skinny weasel named Lamar Johnson and seven balloons of heroin. Here is Sly’s story: He and his buddy are walking down the street when these two girls come up to them and say, “Hey, baby, you want to party?” Because they are no fools, they jump on this, wrapping their arms around the girls’ waists, and off they go to this crummy motel setup where the girls already have keys to the room. Everyone starts to make themselves comfortable amid much hahas when one of the girls says, “Hey, sweetie, let’s run over to the liquor store to pick up some C.C. and wine coolers so we can party down the right way.” The next thing they know, the broads are gone and the police is knocking in the door. The shit has to belong to the whores, right? It’s their room.

The first time I heard this story, I thought I saw possibility in it. Sly develops a trembly voice when telling this story, amazed and hurt. It is impossible to keep your eyes off Sly Evans when he talks. His front tooth has a filling shaped like a marijuana leaf with a diamond in the center of it.

“I don’t know nothing ‘bout no shit,” Sly keeps telling me. I remember the first time I interviewed him over at the glass house. He told me heroin is not a happening drug. He is indignant that I as his lawyer do not seem to understand this. It was not news to me. Everyone is using cocaine now. Teenagers, school kids, housewives. That is what a Republican administration is doing to this country. No one’s eating any better or going to school or job-training programs, but now they have cocaine in the ghetto. Rock cocaine. Crack. Pellets the size of peas that will kill you. Cut with PCP sometimes, held together with baking soda or whatever’s handy. The government and organized crime together.

Sly tells me the only ones dealing smack are the fucking Mexicans. He presents this as a defense.

I wondered what Cathy Vega was sticking in her arm. I asked Sly what drug can be used without heating it to make it liquid.

“Oh, momma,” Sly moaned. He was in pain. He was convinced now that I was stupid, that I would not be able to find my way from one side of the courtroom to the other if we went to trial.

“They don’t teach us this stuff in law school, Mr. Evans.”

He vacillated between pride that I turned to him as a teacher and fear of what I would look like in front of a jury. Finally pride won out. Sly Evans has beaten the system on numerous occasions with PDs as young as me.