Like our old drunk friend Hank (as in Bukowski, who truth be told i become less impressed with as the years go by) i reserve the right to re-hash, re-tell, re-issue, re-package the stories spun here on the lounge, mainly because i've often been much too unorganized to get it all straight... then again this is the sort of conversation i should be having with myself not you dear reader but just bear with me as we sort through this as we briefly review the moron that was Disco Dave...
It was at this time that Disco and i parted ways mainly due to the fact the Disco was an idiot and the best way to keep one's ass out of the penitentiary is, to quote Bill Burroughs, avoid all fuck-ups... and Disco Dave was a fuck-up, mainly because he was a trustafari, a rich kid with a rich family who was the beneficiary of a class action suit brought in his name by his rich grandaddy... so while Disco liked to parade around like some club kid scraping by the reality was he was getting a check from the trust fund in his name monthly, granted his mom controlled it so Disco wouldn't blow through it all though from what i understood of the situation it would have taken decades of wild spending to do that which gives us an idea of the size of the settlement...
Disco was in the habit of getting half pounds of grass so that he could pretend to be a dealer, he could act cool and play the part and it provided him with enough of a head stash to be hot shit at the club or the after parties... (we'll recall how this fucking nitwit thought he had the game to approach the lovely Veronica to which she laughed him off)... to be fair Disco did a fairly decent job of moving product, he would usually show up every week roughly, hand me the money and then get another half pound on the front... so when Disco disappeared for a couple weeks i was wondering what was happening... the beauty of having done this for so long is that my customers were like a big network, like some weird and wasted southern family, all second and third cousins who would hang out so when someone flaked on something getting information on said person was never that difficult... so when the sexually ambiguous hairdresser Chad showed up one day i began to ask some questions about his AWOL friend and my missing bag of cash...
Chad was a good guy and he and Disco were introduced to me around the same time by a friend of a friend's girlfriend... see how that works... and while there was always a strange vibe from Chad he was cool... in fact one fine Sunday afternoon while the waitress was at work, Chad and Disco showed up to my apartment with a small tank of Nitrous Oxide, aka whippets or hippie crack or what your favorite dentist doled out when one sat in the chair... we then proceeded to inhale balloon after balloon for a couple of hours until the Waitress came home from work none to pleased at the scene in my office/bedroom, she also informed us that one could hear the fucking tank going off from outside and suddenly i got that lovely feeling of the nut sack tightening up... it's the very kind of stupid shit that could get one caught for no other reason than dumb luck, a neighbor getting fed up with the noise... luckily the apartment full of techno/raver clowns below me didn't concern me nor the chubby girl upstairs but the neighbors on either side might get a little tired of it especially after a couple of hours... realistically it was daytime so there wasn't much one could do about noise but it i still understood this was probably not the smartest move... with the arrival of the Waitress, who as we could tell was none too pleased, the vibe had changed and Chad and Disco made for the door... Chad, being the lovely chap he was, would help me procure a couple more large tanks of Nitrous Oxide so that me and the crew could spend a few Friday nights gooned out of our gourds... (one may recall one of the first nights i hung with Veronica and the Little Blonde was at a tank party at my old apartment...)
Back to the business at hand... i questioned Chad about the whereabouts of his friend and though i detected a bit of bullshit to Chad's answers it was mainly a balancing act of trying not to piss off his dealer while also not selling out his friend... Chad stated he hadn't really seen much of Disco and that it had been roughly a month since they hung out, he stated he heard some things about him hitting a little snag but the snag was rather vague and non-descript... i told him he should tell Disco to answer his phone when i called and that i appreciated the info, i tossed a little extra into his bag and sent him on his way...
The message must have gotten through as shortly thereafter Disco gave me a call... i could tell from the get go things were amiss, Disco sounded nervous and unsettled and he began by telling me that he had gotten popped, busted in a gas station parking lot by some fuckhead friend of his who had rolled on him because she had gotten busted with something else previously (see little stamp bags of brown powder)... i told Disco to sit tight and that i'd call him back, not from my number but from a new one, and so i grabbed my coat and walked down the street to the mini-mart which had a pay phone outside of it... looking back it's one of those times i'm glad i came of age before the tech revolution, the last thing i wanted to do was talk on a cell and maybe i'd seen too many gangster movies but the fact was the idiot trustafari that was Disco Dave just informed me he got busted and now wanted to talk on the phone... i needed info but had to balance that with being careful... so into the gray and blustery afternoon i went..
I put the coins in the payphone and dialed, i studied the myriad musings of delinquents and graffiti artists that decorated practically every inch of the phone and it's stand, it rang a few times and then Disco picked up... i didn't even say hello, i growled "what happened?"... thus began Disco's tale... seems Disco being the fucking cool guy had met said junkie narc looking to save her own skin in the parking lot of a gas station, he stated that this was unusual but that she needed to meet him there and that she was being a bit weird and nervous when he showed up... now had it been my ass standing there i would have bolted, never shown the gear or offered to sell it cuz if the fucking fuzz want to collar you there all they get is simple possession and as we all know they love to make the papers, the boys in the dope squad were thinking big and figured Disco, selling an ounce at a time, was the way to move up the ladder to bigger and better fish... but what did Disco do? well he claims he felt something was up and told her he didn't have it but would get back to her but she apparently told him she really needed it, that it was to help her and her friend kick or some such sob story and so he said okay and handed her the ounce... before he could even ask for the money there were a gaggle of cops around him and Disco, of the expensive and ugly sweaters and trust fund was busted...
They dragged Disco down the station where and proceeded to do what cops do, mainly lean on him and explain that they thought he was the kingpin and that it wouldn't take long to get a search warrant and blah blah fucking cop talk blah... luckily for Disco and myself, what the fuzz didn't know was that Disoc's mother was a well-connected lawyer whom Disco had called straight away... the strategy of the local boys in blue now changed to trading up, as in this could all go away, or more correctly almost go away because Disco would not walk without some sort of crime, this is America after all and the prison-law enforcement-legal complex needs their money, all he needed to do was roll over on the higher ups, something they giddily bragged about when it came to Disco's junkie pal, she rolled like a boulder downhill as soon as she was nabbed and now here he was (remember this was the late 90s -early Aughts and grass was still a schedule 1 drug lumped in with smack and crack)... Disco explained all this in a shaky voice stating that the pressure was immense and the even his mom advised him to give a name but that he did not, he said he knew selling an ounce was still a slap on the wrist misdemeanor and with no prior violations he knew it was nothing more than a fine... i told Disco that was about the only smart decision he'd made in this whole fucking fiasco...
It was here that i told Disco to shut the fuck up and listen very carefully... the first thing i asked him was this, "you got popped selling an ounce correct?" yes was his reply to which i then asked, "what happened to the other seven ounces in the half?"... not that i wanted him to bring them to me, in fact if i never saw Disco again it would be to soon but i wanted all the info on this shit show... Disco did a fair amount of stuttering and stammering while explaining he gave the rest to his brother to get rid of while emphasizing the cops wanted him to roll and he didn't and didn't that deserve something? to which i replied it did, he did a good job in making sure he wouldn't walk with a limp the rest of his days or talk funny from the shattered jaw that awaited, Disco knew too well of some of my associates, one of whom i helped find a wayward soul who owed him a large sum of money, these were ranking hoods, the kind of guys who were always strapped but who liked and respected me cuz i was a righteous white boy who could get high end weed... i stated that if i so much as smelled fuzz, that if there was a strange car parked on my street, that Disco wouldn't even see it coming, that i'd be nowhere in sight but that my "friends" would take care of things for me... granted i didn't want to call in a note like that, mainly it was a ploy in case something like this happened, like some warped insurance policy, i'd made it this far never carrying a gun or resorting to any sort of violence when it came to the business, that shit just drew more attention to what one was doing and the less attention the better... but the truth was it was always a useful card to have in the deck...
Standing at the payphone watching the traffic go by on Ellsworth Ave. my stomach was doing somersaults, after explaining to Disco what could happen if he did open his mouth i then explained what would happen next... that Disco and i would call it a day, like Marcellus Wallace i was revoking Disco's North Oakland privileges, we were done and it would stay that way, there was nothing more to discuss and he was not to call me or try to contact me in any way, if for some reason i needed to speak to him i'd get a message to him through his pals, i could fairly see Disco nodding dejectedly on the other end of the line, his player days, at least for now, being over, i explained his debt was cleared, that was his reward for not rolling and that was that, i gave a quick reminder as to the previous things discussed and hung up the phone...
I walked slowly back to my apartment, i needed to keep a level head and think this thing through, i began to think of an idea of a safe house, a place where i could stash some of the gear and some emergency money, things were rolling so well now it was hard to think about stopping but the fact was i had to put some trust in a shitbag like Disco... did i trust the trustafari? Disco had an idea of the weight i was moving and realized this shit wasn't a game on my end.. getting popped with an ounce was nothing, fuck what Johnnie Law was telling you any half-assed criminal defense lawyer could tell you it was a slap on the wrist and a fine especially for a first offense (though i'd find out later it was actually his second as he'd previously gotten a simple possession charge), for some people, mainly those who weren't white kids with trust funds that would be a problem, for Disco it was more of an embarrassment for him and his momma... i didn't give a fuck about his social standing i was more concerned with the state of my ass... meaning the amount of weight involved bumped this out of state jurisdiction and into fed territory, i was under no delusions at all how i'd fair in a place like that so there was a definite part of my thinking that made the asshole clench with fear, no other word for it, inside i'd be Disco and except my name wouldn't be Dave it'd be Betty, as in someone's bitch, that's not exactly the future i was thinking of...
There was a lot to ponder on my slow walk back to my place... do i tell Stiv? my gut said no, he was paranoid enough not to mention high strung, no it was best to keep this close to the vest, information was a valuable asset, i'd make sure i touched base with Disco's friends, the last thing any of them wanted was me getting popped, they'd have to find another dealer then and i knew they didn't want that, risk and reward... i knew for the time being the risk would be higher than what i was comfortable with especially considering the amount of grass involved but currently the reward was too much of a lure... the money was pouring in, i was wrapping multiple thousand dollar bundles in rubber bands and putting them in my safe every week, i just had to think, keep a level head, be on the lookout for anything out of sorts and trust the hoodlum's intuition... fucking rich kids...
No comments:
Post a Comment