CHAPTER THREE
1999 – Summertime
Summer of 1999 was a really fun time. Very hectic.
Hours and hours were spent driving. Bolo, by way of Hopeton, had me and Mundo on the road all over the tri-state- we called it “running errands.”
We pretty much divided and conquered, each of us carving out our own little territory and conscripting whatever tolerable side-kick we could find at that moment. Mundo, usually with Biz in tow, took care of Hartford, Connecticut and all of upstate New York. I handled Port of Newark and Paterson, anything uptown from Harlem to Mount Vernon and any little one-offs that Hopeton felt might need “a delicate hand,” as he always phrased it. I was less volatile than The Heir, plus I spoke four languages- so I was always assigned the “shit details,” as I always phrased it. And I tended to travel solo, because there was usually no one around that I could stand to be stuck in a car with for hours on end.
The holding bay in the garage was humming that summer- we made a KILLING selling bulk boxes of fireworks that fell off the truck somewhere between Florida and Brownsville. I even convinced Mundo to cool out on the arms dealing for a while- we were making more than enough money just dealing in something that, although it could get us jail time, wouldn’t necessarily derail our entire adult lives. He tried to persuade me that his weapons clientele was worth catering to.
“Bro, we can’t just shut it down like that,” he argued. “Especially not over Fourth of July cherry bombs and bottle rockets! These people’s money will carry us through the winter if we rock with them.”
I shook my head.
“C’mon, ‘Brón don’t be stupid,” he tried. “I know you wanna trade in that hand-me-down Acura that your sister’s husband sold you. Let’s just do this until December and then we can pull the plug!”
“Nah, Olmando,” I replied. “First of all, I’m not down with jail time. I’m cool with storing them here, but I’m not down with moving them like you seem to want me to”
Mundo tried to interrupt me, but I held up my hand. He backed down.
“Secondly,” I continued, “I see how this story goes. You’re the face man- you make the connect, you spin your tale and then you stick me with the errand boy shit, while you disappear into the dark of night.”
“I would never son you like that, ‘Brón.”
“You do it all the time, Mundo. I just want to keep this situation here at the holding bay as contained as possible. And you might not’ve noticed, but we’re starting to draw attention. Remember last week when Biz and Lucci were out here like at 3am on a Saturday and you let them rip through half our supply of M80s?”
Doe laughed. “Biz fuckin’ loves that shit.”
“Yeah well,” I said, “half the neighborhood of little kids on dirt bikes were here the next day, trying to get me to sell them cherry bombs.”
Mundo made a weak attempt at showing concern.
“This is why I didn’t want to fuck with you on this,” I reminded him. “You don’t take security seriously and you are anything but low key, bredda. You want to stock this place to the roof with guns but you don’t give a shit who knows what we have going on. We need to dismantle this place before September and find something more secure. You should just start renting it out to neighborhood people, like monthly parking or something.”
It will probably come as no surprise when I say that Mundo completely ignored my advice and it came to bite us in the ass.
My ass.
Mundo was long gone before then.
