CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
2001 – Shipping Out
As soon as I was home and settled, I stopped by my parents to say hi. I’d brought a pound of coffee for my mother and a box of cigars for my father- Tío Bolo had asked me to deliver them with his compliments.
“How is Olmando doing out in Panama?” my mother asked.
“Oh, you know,” I said, “Mundo’s taking it easy, but he’s still crazy.”
“That boy has been crazy since the day he was born,” my mom agreed.
“I don’t think he’s ever coming back to Brooklyn, though,” I added.
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” she replied.
I didn’t linger at my parents’ house- next stop was PanStar. I needed to get up with Hopeton.
“Pierre,” he said by way of greeting.
“Hopeton,” I replied and handed him a bottle of homemade aji chombo sauce that I’d purchased from one of the ladies who’d cooked for us at Rio Pacora.
“I’m grilling some chicken in the back,” Hopeton told me. “Grab us two beers from the fridge.”
The backyard area was really just a small concrete patio with a picnic table, and a Jamaican style oil drum barbecue. Hopeton was grilling up some jerk chicken and homemade sausage. A few husked ears of corn were piled onto a plate on the picnic table, next to the bottle of hot sauce and loaf of hard dough bread. The chicken needed a few minutes but the sausage was done. Hopeton plated the sausage and threw the corn on the grill.
Once we were eating, my business partner wasted zero time going in.
“So yute, how was Panama, this time out?”
Hopeton was very familiar with how Doe and I would fly in and out of the country during our younger days. Back then, it had been our party spot. We’d go there without a care in the world. Hopeton, I knew, had a very different relationship with Panama, and with Bolo. I understood exactly what he was really asking.
I knew there was no getting around this conversation.
“Ionno, man, it was really different this time out,” I hedged.
“In what way?” Hopeton asked.
The Socratic session was about to begin.
“I mean,” I started, “Bolo lives there now and he’s gone full-on ‘ruling class.’ He sleeps late, he leaves work early and he treats all his workers like shit. He’s getting soft.”
I knew Hopeton really wanted to know if I thought Bolo was still in control- if Mundo had found a way to maneuver around him, or if he even cared enough to try.
“I was up at Bolo’s house a few times,” I continued, “and I sat in on a meeting he had with Olmando.”
“Go on,” Hopeton said, sounding exactly like a therapist in a Hollywood movie.
“Bolo has his foot on Mundo’s neck. He is not giving up control. At all.”
Hopeton nodded- I knew this confirmed what he’d suspected.
“But,” I continued, “Bolo knows Mundo is lazy as fuck and only wants to be the boss to get the perks.”
Hopeton nodded, like, ‘Tell me something I don’t already know, please.’
I went on, “And it’s true- Bolo is getting old. But it seems like there’s no one there for him to hand the reins over to.” I shrugged. I found shit like this sort of interesting- I did like to study people, but at the end of the day, I found Bolo, Mundo and their sub-Godfather machinations kinda dumb.
That was it. That was really all I had to say on it.
Hopeton got up and went to throw some more chicken on the grill.
“I’m going to tell you this,” he said. “Panama as a staging site and mid-point is close to being done. There are too many eyes on the usual routes. Drugs, guns- it doesn’t matter. Neither are viable right now. Bolo is too old to pivot again. He just wants to concentrate on his real estate play. And Mundo isn’t solid enough for him to count on. Legal business actually requires more diligence than illegal work. Olmando can’t hang.”
“I know,” I replied. “I saw it first-hand.”
“Listen, I am ready to pull out of this guns business,” Hopeton said in a clear, sharp tone. “You were right, Pierre- this shit isn’t fun. Not like the old days.”
With that confession on the table, Hopeton let me know that the logical next step was to fully disengage from Bolo’s trafficking business by December.
Eight months left of this shit and then I could leave it behind, forever.
“So, what’s up next?” I asked. “What’s gonna fill the void?”
There was always something to fill the void. Nature abhors a vacuum.
“I can’t speak on it right now, but I have an idea in mind,” Hopeton replied. “Stay tuned.”
