Root (27 page)

Though, to be fair, as I wandered through I
could see plenty of ordinary family activity going on. There were
grandmas out shopping for beet greens and yams, first graders at
recess playing kick ball in a paved lot.

Old men stared at me as I passed by their
front stoops. Knots of younger folks checked me out as I passed,
their conversations squelching or shifting into whispers. Most of
these cliques were teens, way too young for the kind of business I
had in mind. I was looking for middle men not end users. I wanted
gang-bangers and small time pushers.

Down the street I saw a cluster of
twenty-somethings loitering around the side of a Dominican grocery.
I thought about using my old ‘lost my wombat line’ to break the
ice, but thought better of it. From the looks of these guys, they
might not even speak English.

They certainly noticed me coming, their eyes
flitting my way as I approached. But I sensed no danger. They were
just big kids goofing around on a corner.

“
Polly wanna cracka?”

“
What’s this white boy doing here?
Lose his way from Pitt?”

“
He looking to buy some shit,” said
a lanky, light-skinned guy whose forehead was a wasteland of
pimples. His baggy clothes seemed to float over his slender
frame.

One of the other guys giggled. “Yeah. He
probably thinks we deal. Sees some brown skin hombres on a street
corner and he thinks we got the goods. Shit.”

“
Actually,” I said. “I’m looking to
sell.”

That got them all stirring like wasps in a
nest that had been poked with a stick.

“
Say what?”

“
You know what’s good for you, get
your ass out of here,” said the pimply guy. “Nobody slings rock
around the Hill but Crips. Do yourself a favor. Get the fuck out
before they grab your ass.”

One guy with wire rim glasses slipped a phone
from his pocket and thumbed the keypad.

“
Tonio! You texting them?” said the
guy with the pimples. “Aw, shit. This poor kid don’t know any
better. Why you bringing down the heat?”

“
I have to, George. It’s my civic
duty.”

“
That’s fine,” I said. “Bring ‘em
on. It’s not you guys I want to sell to anyhow. I’ve got bulk
goods. I’m looking to sell wholesale.”

“
Shee-it!”

”
Who you with?”

“
Nobody,” I said.

“
He lucky he ain’t wearing no red,
no blue.”

“
They’re on their way,” said Tonio,
tucking his phone back into his pocket.

“
Fuck it, I ain’t sticking around,”
said George, all antsy and agitated. “Listen. Stay respectful and
maybe you got a chance.” He and everybody but Tonio ambled off down
a side street.

Tonio was a short fellow, about my age, his
hair neatly combed and gelled, with a checkered button-up dress
shirt. He had no visible tattoos or piercings. He would have looked
at home behind a desk in an H&R Block office.

I was getting nervous, shifting my weight from
foot to foot. Tonio stayed casual about the whole deal, maintaining
a calm, flat visage. A message chimed into his phone. He glanced
down.

“
You hang tight,” he said. “They’ll
be here in a minute.”

“
So … are you a member or
something?”

“
I got family,” he said, though I
wasn’t sure what he meant by that, whether he was doing this
because he was worried about his family, or because his cousin was
a Crip.

I leaned against a brick wall whose the mortar
had been picked out by too many idle blades. The graffiti tags were
ghosts of their former glory.

“
Here they are,” said Tonio,
shuffling his feet.

Chapter 24:
Chinstrap

A silver PT Cruiser rolled slowly down the
hill. A busted suspension made it lean to one side. Its finish was
scratched and dull, like it had been rubbed all over with fine
steel wool—the work of too many Pittsburgh winters. Not exactly the
kind of wheels I would expect from a drug lord.

It pulled up alongside, the throbbing
reggaeton going silent as an untinted window rolled down. Two
Latinos in their late twenties glared out at me with a cultivated
menace that almost seemed comical. The driver wore a soul patch so
tight and dark it could have been a tattoo; his passenger had a
pencil-thin chinstrap of a beard that stretched from ear to
ear.

“
You the guy with the yayo?” said
Chinstrap.

“
The what?”

“
Llello,” said Soul Patch,
inflecting the word with its full pizzazz. “He means
blow.”

“
Yeah,” I said. “I got the
yayo.”

“
Check him out.”

Tonio came over and patted me down kind of
haphazardly. “He’s clean. No hardware.”

“
Get in the back,” Chinstrap
barked.

I hopped in without hesitation. These guys
looked agitated, but it was probably mostly bluster. Their eyes
betrayed a diffidence that had been absent in those assholes from
Cleveland.

The doors slammed shut. Tonio squirmed around,
pressing his back against the door, facing me. Was he actually
worried I might attack him?

The car pulled out and went cruising down the
street, the back left suspension creaking with every bump,
bottoming out in the potholes.

“
Tonio says you come to sell,” said
Chinstrap. “That right?”

“
Yeah,” I said. “That’s
right.”

“
Zángano
!”
said Soul Patch. “Where you come from? East End?
Shadyside?”

“
Florida.”

“
Shit. What makes you think you can
just stroll into our hood and do business with our
customers?”

“
Didn’t Tonio tell you? I didn’t
come to sell to them. I came to sell to
you
.”

“
Say what?”

“
So … are you guys
Crips?”

“
Crips? Who told you we was
Crips?”

“
Those guys on the
corner.”

“
George,” said Tonio, rolling his
eyes.

“
Them guys. They don’t know shit,”
said Chinstrap. “We ain’t Crips. No disrespect. They some fine
dudes, but we just some cacos. We got our own thing going. The
Crips on the Hill got busted couple months ago. Big ass clampdown.
FBI. ATF. Whole shebang. Since then, been kind of a vacuum here. We
just trying to fill it. Taking advantage, you know, of the
opportunity. Course, Crips want their turf back, they welcome. We
just filling the void. Temporary-like.”

“
That’s fine,” I said. “I don’t
really care about the details. I just want to unload my stuff as
soon as possible.”

Soul Patch made a turn onto the major street
that formed one of the Hill’s ramparts.

“
That’s all nice, but the question I
got is, who you wit?”

“
Nobody. I’m a free
agent.”

“
Shit don’t work that way, man.
Where you get your supply?”

“
Um. Out of state,” I
said.

“
What cartel you work for?” said
Soul Patch.

“
None of them,” I said.

The guys looked at each other for a longish
spell and then burst out laughing. Tonio pitched in his girlish
giggle.

“
Is this guy for real?” said Soul
Patch.

I pulled out the strip of sealed packs and the
laughing ceased as if someone had flipped a switch.

“
Ostia puta! Get a load of that!
Holy crap!”

“
Looks like it was packed in a
factory,” said Chinstrap. “It’s pure. Uncut. Straight from
Colombia. If you stole this, you messing with some dangerous shit,
dude.”

“
I don’t care,” I said, sliding the
packets into the front seat. “Here. Take it. All yours. Free
sample.”

“
Joder!” Chinstrap reacted to the
packets falling into his lap as if he has been burnt. “What the
fuck you doing?”

“
Take it. Sign of good faith.
There’s nineteen more, at least, where that came from. And it’s all
yours. I’ll get you a bargain price.”

“
That’s way more than three grams,”
said Tonio. “Automatic Class C felony.”

“
What the fuck you do, jump their
mule?” said Soul Patch.

“
I am their mule,” I said.
“Was.”

“
Aaaah! Now we getting somewhere,”
said Chinstrap.

Soul Patch pulled the car into a parking space
along a quiet residential stretch.

“
Pedro, why you stopping?” said
Chinstrap.

“
We got contraband,” said Soul
Patch. “I’m not getting pulled over in Julia’s car. She’d kill
me.”

“
Don’t be a lo loco! What makes you
think we’re better off stopped here? This is a bad neighborhood.
Keep on driving, man!”

The car surged back into traffic.

“
Now tell me, what’s with this free
sample shit?” said Chinstrap. “This ain’t Costco. You want
something from us.”

“
I just want to do business. Like I
said, I got nineteen more of these.”

Chinstrap squinted. “How much you got, total …
by weight?”

“
Don’t know for sure. Maybe ten
kilos.”

“
Mierda!”

“
Where’s the rest of it?” said
Tonio.

“
You guys make me an offer … get me
a down payment … and I’ll tell you where to find it.”

“
This is too strange,” said Soul
Patch, shaking his head. “Shit like this just don’t happen. Not to
cacos like us.”

“
Listen. I just want to go to
Europe. That’s all. I need enough money for a one way ticket … to
Rome … and some spending money … hotel … food.”

“
So how much? How much you expecting
to get?”

“
Depends how much the ticket is. I
don’t know … two thousand, maybe three.”

Chinstrap breathed in deep, his eyes vacant
and calculating. He let his breath out slow. “How soon you need
it?”

“
Soon as possible,” I said. “I mean,
tonight would be great.”

Chinstrap looked me in the eye. “Okay. The
thing is … we … we ain’t very liquid right now. We could use the
inventory … but it’s gonna take some doing to round up enough
cash.” He turned to Soul Patch. “What do you think?
Julia?”

“
No fucking way,” said Soul Patch.
“Don’t you even think of asking her.”

Chinstrap pulled out a knife and poked the tip
into the corner of one packet. He pulled it out and licked the
light coating of white dust clinging to the blade.

“
Oh yeah! This stuff’s the shit
alright. Hundred percent pure, unprocessed. We talking upscale, way
uptown.”

“
I’ll even throw in a truck to haul
it,” I said.

“
Oh stop! You’re killing me. Who do
you think you are, Santy Claus?”

“
This don’t smell right,” said
Tonio. “I’m thinking … he might be a narc.”

“
He ain’t no narc, man. Look at him.
He ain’t even old enough to drink.”

“
Still … we should check him … for a
wire.”

“
You check him,” said Chinstrap.
“You in the back with him.”

I opened my jacket and lifted my shirt to show
them I was clean. I started undoing my pants.

“
Okay dude, that’s enough,” said
Chinstrap, waving me off. “We believe you.”

“
So?” I said, anxious. “We got a
deal?”

“
We’ll see what we can do. Like I
said, liquidity’s an issue … with the short notice and all. And, uh
… we probably should check things out … make sure there’s no heat
coming down. Understand?”

That last bit worried me. I don’t know what
kind of connections Jared’s cartel had in Pittsburgh, but if word
had gotten out about my deeds in Cleveland, I would be
sunk.

“
We can sit on it, Pedro.” said Soul
Patch. “Warehouse it. Turn it into rock little by
little.”

“
Yeah. Maybe so.”

“
Listen. Drop me off at a travel
agent. Go do your thing, come back with the money and I’ll tell you
where to find the rest. That strip I gave you is worth 2k easy.
Like I said, there’s nineteen more if you hook me up. If you don’t
… I’ll find someone else.”

***

They circled around Hill and dropped me off at
a place called Three Rivers Travel, just a block or two down from
the parking garage where I had parked the pickup.

Soul Patch reached back and handed the strip
to Tonio.

“
What you want
me
do with this?”

“
Stuff it down your shirt and go
take a walk. I don’t any trace of that crap in Julia’s car. We’re
going back to the house.”

“
Bring it to Frank’s,” said
Chinstrap. “But tell him, he takes any, he’s paying.”

Tonio’s face went sour but he complied,
exiting the car with odd lumps protruding from shirt. He shifted it
around to try to hide it better.