Minor Demons (22 page)

The ride back to Diego’s warehouse was mostly uneventful, but Carlos thought of his son the entire way over. He wanted to be with him while the doctors gave him the tests but Diego’s terms for loaning the money were that he be at work as soon as he had checked his son in at the hospital. At least Junior had a private room and enough to do to kill the time when he wasn’t coughing or throwing up.

As Carlos pulled his barely functioning vehicle into a parking spot near the front of the warehouse, two security guards eyed him. As he approached the front of the building, they stopped him. They frisked him, removed his .45, and escorted him back to Diego’s office.

“He was carrying this.”

The gun was thrown on Diego’s desk. Diego turned slowly in his chair, smoking a large Cuban cigar.

“Why the hell should I care? He’s my cousin. Let him carry his toy gun if he wants to.”

“You said we aren’t supposed to let anyone...”

“Shut the fuck up. He’s my
cousin
. He’s not here to kill me. Get back to your posts.”

The guards turned and left the room. Diego picked up the Colt and looked it over.

“Grandpa’s?”

“Yes, one of his. He had quite a collection before he died.”

“You’re right. Hold on a sec, I want to show you something.”

Diego left the room and came back holding a Winchester rifle. Unlike the gun Carlos had inherited from his grandfather, this one was polished and in pristine condition. No major marks or scratches. He handed it to Carlos.

“This one also came from grandpa. It’s an original Winchester from 1866. In the condition it’s in, it’s easily worth $15,000.”

“It’s a beautiful gun, Diego.”

“You forget that grandpa actually liked me too.”

Diego placed the rifle on his desk.

“So here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to help my guys load one of the trucks. One of them will go with you and show you where our clients regularly visit. The value of any product stolen comes out of your wages. I have a decent amount of pull with the police, but don’t do anything stupid like shoot someone in broad daylight. Once I think you’re ready to work on your own, I’ll pull the other dealer. He’s getting half of your cut plus his cut while you’re in training. That’s how it’s going to be, don’t fight me on this.”

“No worries. I’ll still be making more than I did at my last job.”

Diego slid a phone across the table.

“This is a burner phone. If you call anyone from our crew on it, delete the call history and then toss it. We have a lot more of these in the back office. You can never really be too careful in the drug production and selling business. You always delete the call history and destroy the phone. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“One more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to visit Junior. I want to make sure they’re taking care of him and throw some more money around if I need to. Write down the hospital he’s at and the room number here.”

Diego slid a piece of paper and a pen towards Carlos. He did as instructed.

“Anything else?”

“No. Just don’t die on me out there.”

“I’m not planning on it.”

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O
nce Carlos helped the men load the truck, one of the men sat next to him in the back of the van. He offered his hand. Carlos shook it.

“I’m Andres. Diego says you’re the new meth dealer and I’m supposed to show you how we do things. Let’s start with the basics. What do you actually know about what we’re selling?”

“Not much.”

“I figured as much. Diego said you probably wouldn’t know shit for the first little while. That’s alright though, the longer it takes you to learn, the longer I get to take half of your cut.”

Andres grinned at him. Carlos had a feeling Andres might drag his feet to keep taking his money and didn’t want that to be the case.

“I learn quickly. Start explaining it to me.”

“Just so I have a point of reference, how much did you make at your old job?”

“Around $10 an hour. It was back breaking work.”

“It should be pretty easy to break that, even at your reduced rate. So let’s start from the beginning. Are you pretty good with math?”

“Not especially.”

“That’s fine, we have an accountant. All you really need to do is keep track of your inventory and how much you sell. We have high-grade stuff that goes for around $16,000 a pound. We break it up in smaller quantities. A teenth is a sixteenth of an ounce. An eightball is one eighth.  We sell a teenth for $65 and an eightball for $120. You’ll sell it in small quantities like that. If they ask for anything larger than that, you come to me and we’ll figure out if we’re being harassed by a cop or what to charge them. I’ll do the number crunching. The cops will generally turn the other way out of fear of Diego’s connections, but we occasionally have to give up a teenth or some cash to make a police officer leave us alone. If that happens, it comes out of your cut. We can’t be losing inventory to the police.”

“I follow you so far. How do we do this though? We can’t just sell drugs out in the open, right?”

“Right. We have little stands at a lot of different locations. We sell gum, candy, other little things like that. We also sell newspapers. We hide a teenth or an eightball in tiny plastic bags in each of the newspapers that you hold in the back. If it’s one of our regular customers, they’ll ask you for a special edition of the news. That just means they want a teenth for...”

Andres stopped short to make sure Carlos was paying attention.

“$65. I got it. What if they want an eightball?”

“They’ll ask for two copies of the special edition. We’ve tried to make this as simple as possible. So if you made around $10 an hour at your old job, you only have to sell a teenth an hour to make the same money. Well... close. You’re getting 15% right now so at $65 a teenth, you’ll get $9.75. You’ll get $19.50 per eightball. As soon as I think you’re ready, I’ll move on up to dealing cocaine and you can get your full 30%.”

“You’re pretty good with numbers.”

“It comes with time. I wasn’t all that great with them before I started dealing.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Yes.”

Andres handed him a scrap of paper with a phone number on it.

“Commit that to memory. That’s my number. Call it from the burner phone if you need me. I’ll try to stick around for a while, but I have other things that I may need to take care of... and I’m sure Diego already told you to...”

“Always delete the call history and dispose of the burner phone. How often do we get new burner phones?”

“Daily. If you see anything suspicious, just destroy it right then. We can’t let our burners becoming evidence if some self-righteous cop tries to take a shot at Diego.”

“Any other advice?”

“Yeah. Work hard and make some goddamn money. If I’m going to have to play babysitter, I expect to get paid.”

Carlos thought about shooting Andres in the face right there. He didn’t need his help and definitely didn’t want to give him a cut of his money, especially when it sounded like Andres planned on being lazy and not doing much to help. Although it was just a stray thought, Shadow stepped in to counteract it.

You can’t do anything about him now. Diego sent him to watch you. If you don’t like him, remember to find a way to make him pay in the future. You’ll need him for the present.

Shadow saw Diego nod slightly as if the thought made sense. He then saw him relax the hand on his gun. The van came to a stop.

“You go ahead and get started. I’m going to take a nap in the van.”

Carlos again put his hand on his gun, but relaxed it a second time.

“Who gets the money for the candy and gum and other things that I sell?”

“Again, you’ll get a cut of the profit. It isn’t worth much though. It’s just what we do to not look as suspicious. If you try to make a living selling that stuff, it won’t work out.”

Carlos finally couldn’t tolerate his superior tone any longer.

“I’m not
trying
to make a living off of selling them, dumbass! I just wanted to know that I would get a little extra income from selling them.”

Andres, who had been lying down on the van floor to relax, got up and punched Carlos in the mouth. His bottom lip started to bleed.

“You don’t call me a dumbass. Now unload the cargo and make me some fucking money while I sleep.”

Once again, Carlos was prompted to shoot him, but he did as he was told. He loaded all of his newspapers and drugs behind the counter and restocked the other items. Before long, a line had formed. Mostly children came and bought candy bars and other little toys that he had on display. Carlos took note of the sales he made in a small notebook. He began to panic as he realized that it has been nearly two hours and he hadn’t sold any meth. As he thought that, a man in patched up jeans and a hoody approached his stand.

“Where’s Andres?”

“He’s... taking a break. I’m working this stand now.”

“I usually buy some... stuff... from Andres.”

“You can buy the same stuff from me.”

“Oh really? Sweet dude. Same prices?”

“Yes. Prices haven’t changed.”

The man in the hoody leaned in and whispered in Carlos’ ear.

“I’d like an eightball, man.”

So much for code phrases. Carlos put an eighth of an ounce bag of meth inside a newspaper and handed it to him. The man in the hoody slammed his hand down on the table and released two bills. He then walked away. Carlos looked at the bills and saw that the man had left two hundred dollar bills. He had overpaid by eighty dollars. When Carlos realized the man’s error, he tried to see where he had gone but realized that he had left the park. He knew he couldn’t get up from his stand to search any further, so he simply decided the guy was an idiot. Carlos was sure he would meet plenty of those in the meth business.

Leech cut in this time.

Don’t tell Andres about the extra eighty dollars. You need it more than he does. Just pocket it. It’s for your son.

Carlos cautiously looked around and then pulled eighty dollars in twenties from his cash box. He added it to his wallet and grinned.

“I guess today will be a little more lucrative than I thought it would be. That’s what you get for napping in the van, Andres.”

A
s Carlos continued to sell throughout the day, he realized that he didn’t have to tell anyone a price. He also realized that they were all overpaying. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Andres was skimming off the top. Meth heads were stupid, but there was no way they were all
this
stupid. His cut for the day if he just took 15% of the prices Andres quoted was around $100. If he kept the extra cash from the overpaying customers, he would have easily over $500. The only question now was whether to tell Diego or pocket the difference and keep his mouth shut.

Of course, Andres was still a problem as well. Obviously he knew his customers were going to pay more and that Carlos would bring in more. If he decided to keep the money, Andres wasn’t likely to let that happen. He could always just kill him while he slept in the van and figure out what to tell Diego later on...

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S
hadow, Leech, and Lilith were unsure how they should approach the situation. While Carlos thought it over, the three demons discussed their dilemma.

“We should find a way to pocket the money. He’s going to need it.”

“Andres isn’t going to let him
take
the extra cash, Leech. The second he wakes up from his nap, Carlos is going to lose everything but his 15%.”

“Then what do you suggest, Lily? Should we just let him run off with the extra money?”

“No, we make him tell Diego. Prove his loyalty.”

Both Leech and Lilith turned to Shadow, appealing the decision to him. He looked pensive for a moment and then presented a third option.

“We could tell him to shoot Andres.”

Leech and Lilith exchanged worried looks.

“If he kills Andres, Diego will kill him Shady. I don’t think that’s the way to play this.”

“Leech is right. I still think we should just make him tell Diego.”

“And that leaves him with a hundred bucks for the day, Lily. He owes Diego
thousands
. It’s time to start reeling in some serious cash.”

Shadow cut in.

“We’re going to have him shoot Andres. Not shoot him to kill him, just maybe one in each leg so he can’t run. Then we’re going to have him drive back to the warehouse with Andres in the back of the van. He’s going to drop the extra cash on Diego’s desk and let him know what was going on and how he dealt with it. The likely outcome is that Andres goes away. Diego will realize that Carlos is loyal and Carlos gets a pay bump up to his full 30%. We need Diego to see that he took action and turned Andres in, but we’ll get the added bonus of more money. Any problems with that approach?”

Leech and Lilith both shook their heads.

“Good. Now let’s convince Carlos that it’s the smart play.”

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C
arlos opened the back door of the van. Before Andres knew what was going on, Carlos aimed his gun and put a bullet in each leg. Andres screamed out and clutched at his wounds to slow the flow of blood. He looked up at Carlos.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Diego will kill you for this.”

“I doubt it. How long have you been skimming off the top?”

“None of your business. That’s my money, you’d better hand it over.”

“Oh I will, but not to you.”

Carlos pulled a stack of bills from his back pocket and waved it in the air.

“This is going straight to my cousin. I would deliver your head too, but I figured I would let him decide what to do with you.”

“I’m going to shove that gun up your...”

Carlos slammed the van doors shut and got in the front. On the drive back to the warehouse, he made sure to hit every bump and crack in the road, knowing it caused Andres pain in the back of the van. As he parked and got out of the van, he was approached by the warehouse guards once again.

“Where’s Andres?”