CHAPTER THIRTY
2001 – Constant Calibration
Summer, summer, summertiiiiime.
As expected, July was slow.
S-T Real Estate Group scored some quick hits on empty mixed-use lots- one of them was that off-market sale in Gravesend that Hopeton had brought me into. The two of us were making inroads into racist ass Brooklyn, one distressed property at a time.
On the grey market front, Bolo’s guns fuckery was very, very quiet. Every so often, I’d get a call to take a lunch meeting in TriBeCa, or meet a large group of out-of-towners for dinner at an under-the radar Midtown steakhouse. And for that, my reluctant faceman ass was earning Mundo money.
And I certainly needed to stack money, while the stacking was good.
I was very conscious of the fact that, at 27 years old, I’d firmly aged out of my young gun years, and that anything I dreamed of moving forward was going to require time, money and strategy. No matter what the potential might be, to quote my peoples from childhood, The Notorious B.I.G., being broke at thirty gives a brotha the chills.
And my exit plan, grad school, was front and center- the majority of my free time was spent studying for the upcoming GRE test. I’d signed up for the August date. If I did well on it, and I expected to, I’d jam on my applications and try to get them sent off by November- a month before deadline.
After that, it was a short stretch of waiting. I was sure I’d get accepted to at least one program, but was expecting admission to all three. And from thereon in, I could put my Renegade Cabrón persona to rest and confidently step back into being Pierre Dorvil Taveras on a daily basis, 24/7.
Then August reared its ugly head.
It was supposed to be a slow period. I’d already planned out those thirty-one days:
Study for the GRE.
Take the GRE.
Cover for Hopeton while he was out of pocket.
Maybe take this girl out for a dinner or two- we’d met way back in November at the Princeton Review class. She’d asked me to grab a beer with her a few times, but I wanted to invite her to something a little more formal. Obvious? Whatever- I wanted to take this girl out, and this seemed to be as good a time as any. Hopefully, she’d still be in town.
Weeks ago, Hopeton had told me he was gonna spend all of August back a yard.
“I think it’s time,” he told me. “My family has property up in Red Hills, but you know how that goes. I’m ready to get something for myself.”
“You gonna buy some land while you’re there?” I asked. Buying property in Haiti had always been my dream. Similar to Hopeton, my mother’s family had a huge parcel of land down in Aquin. But there was no clear order of inheritance and the deed was in dispute.
“I’m going to look,” Hopeton replied. “I don’t think I want to be in Kingston or Saint Andrews Parish. Too close to the bad old times.”
I smiled and nodded. Hopeton may have had twenty plus years on me, but I already felt that same weight.
“I’ll go check my people in Kingston for a minute, then had out to Portland,” Hopeton told me. “I think that’s where I need to be. Portland or Saint Thomas.”
Back then, I had zero clue about any of this but with time, I came to know Jamaica as well as Haiti and the D.R., and even better than I knew Panama.
Of course, things got hectic right before Hopeton left. All of a sudden, I was slammed with back-to-back meetings and endless paperwork maintenance sessions with Biz, who very clearly let me know he had bigger fish to fry. Hopeton, of course, chose to look on the bright side.
“I expected it to be dead, but I’m happy to have the unexpected income,” he told me. “Between this and the lots, I should be okay until I can pull off the next phase.”
“Oh, yeah?” I asked. “And what exactly is that next phase?” I knew Hopeton was cooking up the next scheme, but he’d been very tight lipped about it.
Hopeton told me he needed to talk to Bolo before he could speak it to the universe.
I sighed and stopped trying to press.
