The Cop and the Reporter: Art Carrillo Strong and Charles Bowden

I was thinking about Arturo Carrillo Strong's Corrido de Cocaine (1990). I knew Art very well, better than I ever knew Chuck Bowden. Art was not capable of writing the sentences in this book, and when I compared it to Blue Desert, it was very clear to me that Chuck had written most of the book, using material that Art had dug up. I asked Chuck once, point-blank, "Did you write this book?" And he said emphatically, "No, it was Art." But that was typical of Chuck because he gave credit freely to everybody. He gave money freely to everybody. Anybody that needed it and he thought worthy of some help.

I met Art when I worked at City Magazine. I had a crash in my personal life, a financial and emotional crash. Then I ran out of money, period. I was living on Fontana, which is a backwater street down near the Red Dog Saloon, which I discovered after I moved to Fontana. It was a plain little house, but the neighbors were one step out of jail and people would burst into your house while you were sitting on the couch and steal your TV. That happened more than once. So, at one point, I got really sick and tired of being penniless and not having any prospects. I took two part-time jobs. One was with Bookman's first big shop, on Grant Road, and the other at City Magazine, which was overseen by Chuck Bowden and Dick Vonier—the Tucson Citizen gang that Chuck had worked for. Vonier was the chief editor. I didn't know Chuck very well but got along with him. They were doing a story on Roy Elson, a political figure who got involved with the mob. He somehow owed the mob money and they threatened to kill him if he didn't pay them back. Roy had to drop out of sight and City Magazine did a cover story on it written by Chuck. I did the paste-up and so on.

Eventually, I would come out and hang out in the offices on River Road and I would talk with Art Strong a little bit. I became friends with him first, and then later, with Chuck. I wasn't really close to either one of them until I moved to my office on Simpson, which is in Barrio Viejo near the Tucson Community Center. Art lived right across the street, literally right across the street from my office, in a wonderful old historic building. I could look out the window and watch Art's duplex and see him coming and going. Chuck would show up almost every weekday to drink wine at Art's, and I fell into going over there to drink 7 & 7, or occasionally beer. Chuck and I had some common experiences in our background. Chuck had gone to the University of Wisconsin, which was a liberal bastion in the '70s, and I had gone to the University of Michigan, which was another liberal bastion. Being exposed to that whole atmosphere—plus I'd been a journalist in those days working for the Associated Press, United Press, and Detroit Free Press over time—gave us something to talk about. We became, I suppose, friends, although it's not anything we ever talked about, because Chuck didn't talk in those terms. He was always very emotionally aloof, but he would do things that were wonderfully friendly. And you could appreciate the real warmth in Chuck. Once I got there, I grew to be at ease with him.

Art Carrillo Strong, left. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, Art Carrillo Strong Collection.)

Art was comfortable right away because Chuck had done wonderful things for him. Art's wife, Josie, had died of a massive stroke in a beauty parlor. This was shortly after I met Art. Chuck was the one who brought Art back to life and back into the world.

The way he did it was: Chuck was going...