CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
A Little Casual Snooping
I took a week of vacation in July. Work was slow and I felt like sleeping in.
One day mid-week I was feeling bored and uninspired, so I decided to go snoop around PanStar.
I had a feeling Hopeton was up to something grey-area-adjacent, that he didn't want to drag me into since he knew I was in my good boy era, but fuck it. Like I said, I was bored.
I threw on a pair of grey sweat pants, a white t-shirt, a pair of Timberlands and a Mets hat, drove the zo reken over to Nostrand Ave. and found a parking space almost directly in front of the shop.
This iteration of Panamanian Star looked really different from the days when it was a “Shipping and Logistics” company. Once he got his RIA agent’s license, Hopeton had spent a decent amount of money remodeling the space. The bright blue plastic shipping barrels were long gone. In their place were a few mini desks with ballpoint pens and remittance forms stacked neatly on their surfaces. There was light RIA branding here and there, and a pair of upholstered wing chairs in a corner opposite the front door, to remind customers that this was a legitimate place of business.
Hopeton was behind the counter, talking to an older lady about a multi-point wire transfer. I nodded to him and let myself into the back room- the electronic code was still the same.
The back room had also gone through a radical transformation- the entire space had been cleared of all the shipping materials and the walls freshly painted. In this iteration, it was just a big-ass space for people to hang out in and maybe get some work done, if needed.
Hopeton’s gigantic mahogany desk still had pride of place towards the center of the room, but now it rested on an expensive looking Persian rug and the old, metal and pleather swivel chair had been upgraded to an ergonomic Knoll. Luxury and function.
Biz had his own desk, covered in rubber banded stacks of printouts and legal pads filled with chicken scratch writing. When I’d commented on how legit it all appeared, Hopeton said he'd get me my own little mahogany jammy if I ever wanted to come and join them.
I sat down on the new couch- a surprisingly modern slate grey sectional, and took a hard look around me, clocking all of the updates put in place since Hopeton convinced Bolo to pivot.
They'd upgraded the furniture to offer both stability and comfort. The TV was now a sixty inch flatscreen with surround sound. The CD player and ceiling mounted speakers had evolved into an iPod and a turbo-charged Bluetooth speaker-dock. And I peeped that the pub style pro league dartboard that I’d given Hopeton almost ten years ago had been neatly mounted on one of the far walls. Clearly, the backroom had become a place to hang out in, as opposed to a place to watch drugs and guns be moved in and out.
This was the HQ I would’ve loved to have been able to set up all those years ago.
But I knew there was more to the story and I was finally ready to get to the bottom of it.
