The Wilderness Years - More Schemes (Opportunities)

 While i'm on the subject... to say that the Billy Goat was the only guy broaching lame-brained schemes would be a mistake, there were always opportunities popping up and for the most part they were fucking horrible ideas... take Ginger Mark for example, and Ginger Mark was one of the more sensible minions in the stable, a guy in it purely for the money, though that's also a bit misleading, Ginger Mark loved being able to play the king hipster role... he was in a horrendous band, a poet, a promoter, a scenester who threw rolling skating parties at his rather large apartment on Penn Ave... this was back in the day when a large space like that on Penn Ave. was considered the hood, the border between Bloomfield and Garfield, these days i'd wager to guess a space like that would cost five times as much and most likely would be subdivided into four or five units with each one costing twice as much as what Ginger Mark paid back in the day... and i'm guessing Ginger still paid a decent amount it's just that Ginger had the drug money rolling in from his various ventures hence he had the cash to live alone and pay the rent... 

And so it came to pass that Ginger Mark showed up at my door one day to make his pitch on a fine deal... Ginger was definitely in the running for top mover of goods and was far more sensible and reliable than the Billy Goat, though truth be told when it came to top movers Billy always thought he was higher up the ladder than he was, Ginger Mark and Metal Jerry were probably the top boys... Metal Jerry worked with me at the warehouse and once he got rolling he got to observe the snowball effect in real time, going from a pound, the two, then jumping up to the five pound special and finally arriving at a standing order that was usually more like 7 or 8 elbows every time he showed up... he lived east of the city which somehow pleased my ego due to the fact my web was cast far and wide though it did cause a little concern as i didn't have any eyes or ears out that way, if something went down i wouldn't know it other than Metal Jerry suddenly being absent from work or relying on my co-workers who hung out with him to hopefully inform me but the best case scenario for all involved was to not get fucking pinched, Metal Jerry though seemed to take to the game quick and did and excellent job... but back to the tale... 

Ginger Mark was sitting in my place picking up his usual five pounds, (Ginger, one may recall, was the guy i had to do business with the first night i hung out with Veronica, the only reason i even made the effort was because he did move a ton of gear, only picking up five at a time but usually twice a week and more importantly he always came with cash in hand) he said he had an offer for me, you see he had some guys he sold to who wanted to get more weight, in fact they wanted to get ten pounds and maybe even more after the first go round... i sat and listened... he then stated that he didn't want to do this at his place hence his plan...  he was going to rent two motel rooms, the buyers would be down the hall in one and we'd be in a room a few doors down, he would then go and get half the money and bring it back, take the gear down so they could check it out and collect the rest of the money, meanwhile i'd be hanging in the other room waiting, i would count out the money and take the seventeen and a half thousand that i was owed and he'd take his cut from the deal... the fact is the deal would net me two grand but there was not one fucking thing i liked about it at all...  

The first red flag was the fact Ginger didn't want to do the deal at his place... why? there was also the mention of fucking firearms being involved which was another big fucking no-no in my book... the laws at the time stated a pound a grass and gun meant a mandatory five year stretch, granted i wouldn't have a gun as i never had nor carried one, but the fact Ginger Mark felt the need to have this kind of shit going on meant that Ginger didn't exactly trust these guys to not try to jack him and make off with the gear... if there was one bit of knowledge i'd gained in this whole endeavor it was the fact people are both stupid and short sighted... if this crew was smart they'd understand that they were hooked into a killer connection with the fact being they could get as much grass as they needed but i also understood that half-ass gangsters would think it was cool to rob some dude of ten pounds and then walk around bragging about it, they'd be more interested in the fucking tale they got to tell than the fact they could have made a shitload more money by not robbing the connection... but as i often like to say, most of these fools out here were playing checkers not chess... 

So i sat and listened patiently, Ginger Mark had most definitely earned that much from me, i respected the guy because he was a professional in a field where morons like the Billy Goat abounded... when he wrapped up his pitch i asked point blank why a motel? to which he explained his rationale and to which i replied that just ups the risk, a bunch of hoods going back and forth between rooms and only using the rooms for an hour looks more than a bit suspicious... secondly why did i need to be there at all? why did he not just pick up ten elbows from me and make the deal, i even told him i'd save another five for him once the deal was done so he'd have his usual to sling to his clientele...of course once again it came down to money... not that i didn't think Ginger didn't have a nice little nest egg building up cuz of all the guys in the weight crew Ginger Mark seemed most likely to be saving cash, once again it was not lost on me that what this deal did was actually put the financial risk on me, hence why he thought he should have me there when in fact, if i was foolish enough to go through with a deal like this, i would want to be as far away from it as possible, the only person i wanted to see was the tall ginger guy handing me my money... but this whole situation stunk worse to me than a Porta-John on a hot and humid August afternoon... 

Since Ginger Mark was one of my top movers i felt it was important for me to advise him as best i could because honestly the last thing i wanted was to have him go down, he made me too much cash every week... i was only a few years older than him and it was strange to act the wise old sage but this business is excellent at making even smart people decide to do the dumbest of things, the money creates a blind spot and until one grasps that and sits back and thinks about each and every deal that involves a large amount of weight one increases the risks of getting popped or popped aka arrested or shot... 

And so i did what i did best, i explained to Ginger while appealing to his ego that i really wanted no part of this thing and that he should definitely think about going forward with it, how the variables created more moving parts and the more moving parts there were the greater of the chance of something breaking down --- i told him i thought he was an intelligent guy and that one has to sit back and think these things through... i mentioned how going to a motel is always dicey, one never knows about a nosey employee or guest or whatever who thinks there is something suspicious going down, i also pointed out that if he didn't want to deal with this crew at his own place to me that was a red flag, it basically communicated a lack of trust and i felt that it would be even easier for things to go south if he decided to use a motel, they could easily knock his ass out or worse and by the time he came to they'd be long gone, it was better to stay the course, slow and steady wins the race, he could move that same ten pounds with a lot less risk and while yes a multi-pound deal was always a nice score one had to weigh the risks of that score... i told him there's no way i wanted a part in it and that he should seriously consider running away from a deal like this, i told him something about it didn't sit right with me... he listened and said he'd think it over, grabbed his five pounds and headed for the door... 

As usual Ginger Mark called four or five days later, as stated he was usually good for ten a week and i cut a side deal with him that if he came back and say, only needed three pounds, i'd give him the nice price, with my own little skim of selling pounds for the normal price and telling Stiv they were bought by the weight crew (thus making me more money) it wasn't any sweat to me, plus Ginger knew the score and liked the fact he got a deal to which i told him not to mention to anyone else... fact is i always kept the weight crew away from each other because the boss doesn't need the minions commiserating with one another, Ginger did run into the Billy Goat once or twice but the fact is Ginger Mark was far too smart to get mixed up in any half-assed scams with Billy, in fact Ginger had told me that he and Billy had crossed paths here and there previously, the Burgh being small enough that the circles hoods traveled in were likely to overlap and that Ginger didn't think much of the Billy Goat... 

So Ginger Mark stopped by and picked up his usual and while i counted the money he told me that he'd thought about what i said and had nixed the ten pound deal with the Motel Crew... good move i told him, he agreed and stated as much, said he thought about what i had said and that upon  some further reflection had seen my points, the risk wasn't worth the reward especially considering that if the shit went down he's out of the game for a one time deal, he could take a big risk and make a big deal once (to which i had also told him that even if it went down the first time didn't mean they weren't setting him up for a future robbing, possibly even upping the amount they needed) or he could just keep doing his thing while the money steadily rolled in while also reducing the risk... this was a business built delicately on trust and the less one trusted someone the less one sold, and vice versa... 

After Ginger left i sat back and breathed a sigh of relief, i couldn't really say the last guy i wanted to lose was him cuz the last thing one does in this game is give someone leverage, Ginger was smart enough to use that info had i given it to him but i also knew that connections like the one i had weren't just floating around and had any of my weight crew come to tell me they could get a comparable grass at a better price i'd have told them, that's great, good luck but that my prices were set... call the bluff and see if it's real but let them know that the current sweet deal might not be there when they got back... fortunately it never happened.... unless one counts Billy and the previous post... call it management skills that i could never put on a resume... but most importantly i kept a prime mover on the payroll...