CHAPTER TEN
2000 – Ghost in the Machine
The first six months of the year were supposed to be all about making sure the machine stayed well-oiled.
On the plus side:
Biz and Lucci finally cracked the code on the EBT scheme, and the money started rolling in.
I bought Eula an expensive mountain bike and big-ass backpack and sent her on her way, as our undercover courier. She was surprisingly good at the job.
Now that he had Mundo directly under his wing, Bolo began to focus the majority of his attention onto his burgeoning real estate development empire, which caused shipments to PanStar via the Port of Newark to be severely curtailed. Hopeton and I were both fine with it, even though it meant a formerly steady revenue source was drying up. I was sick of driving all the time and the Port gave me bad vibes. Hopeton told me he felt the winds changing and knew it would soon be time to get out of both the shipping barrel and narcotics import business. This freed up time for the two of us to incubate other opportunities- ones that were not contingent on Bolo’s patronage.
On the minus side:
Biz and Lucci had given up on HQ. Lucci was unsuccessful in forming his own little gang of mini weed dealers and Biz turned to other methods of harvesting grey market EBT cards and food stamps. Biz didn’t give a fuck if HQ fell off, because he’d basically co-opted Eula’s entire apartment (minus her bed) as his white-collar crime headquarters. Once Luciano realized she had a comfy couch and a huge tv, he lugged his PS1 console over and never looked back. She was pissed about it and I was expecting her to come running to me, crying to fix it for her. Any day now. It was inevitable.
Downturn in the import business meant I had more than enough time to manage Mundo’s fucking gun depot out in Brownsville. I was trying to hold his feet to the fire and make him stick to that June shut-down deadline, but we were closing in on May and he kept ducking and diving every time I brought it up. Inventory was dwindling down, but there was still enough left to make me uncomfortable. And now that school was almost out, I noticed the little pre-teen hood rats had started sniffing around again. That’s the first sign that people are onto you.
And on the personal front, both my parents separately pulled me aside and gave me the same speech: “You just turned 26 years old. What are your plans? We know you’ve been working for Mundo’s family business but now Mundo’s gotten a promotion and moved away. You should be in grad school.” And they weren’t wrong.
I was starting to feel like the walls were closing in on me.
