Shipments started pouring in right after New Year’s.
I had no idea what strings Bolo pulled to get that level of movement, but whatever he’d had to do, it was impressive. It seemed as if Bolo would do his best to make sure we maximized all available profit within the calendar limit I’d imposed.
At this point in time, the whole PanStar operation had a very different vibe to it. Cold, clinical and mobilized. No joking around, no human emotion. Just product in, product out.
My freelancer, the “new Cabrón,” was working out well. He really was exactly as Ever had packaged him- mature, hard-line and not in it for the thrill of it all. His M.O. was to keep his mouth shut, but when I asked him to give me a report on the port drivers my Surinamese connection had been supplying, his feedback had been direct and specific. Very useful.
I actually utilized the freelancer as my first test case of Biz’s paperwork aptitude within this specific PanStar system. The freelancer had a shell corporation that he used to route his money through- he’d invoice PanStar’s Brooklyn entity and from there, Biz would have to conduct an intricate series of entries from PanStar Brooklyn to PanStar Panama City and back again, with the money eventually hitting the freelancer’s account in the Bahamas. By February, the first of the freelancer’s invoices had been submitted.
“I need you to watch this very carefully,” I told Pierre when I walked him through the process. “This is nothing to play with. Biz has to know exactly what to do and have the schedule memorized. Yunnastand?”
“I got it,” Pierre said.
And I knew he did. Cabrón, though clearly wanting to check out of the whole PanStar mess for good, was keeping to his word. He was managing his “face man” duties competently and keeping me up to date on Biz’s progress.
“It’s going fine,” Cabrón told me during our latest personnel meeting. “Biz just needs to get what we’re doing and why paperwork needs to flow the way you have it.”
“And you feel like you understand things well enough to train him properly?” I asked.
I knew that Pierre hated paperwork, although he’d been raised by his parents to respect the process.
“Totally,” he replied. “I understand everything and I get how Biz needs to see it. I literally busted out my PowerPoint program and made a bunch of flowcharts with bright graphics and bulletpoints and shit. Biz went bananas over it.”
“And what did you do with those flowcharts once you were finished with them?” I asked.
“I deleted the files,” Pierre told me, with a tight smile. He hated micromanaging nearly as much as I did.
“I figured you did,” I replied. “But it never hurts to double check, especially at the beginning of a new routine.”
Pierre proposed we switch topics to S-T Real Estate, his true interest.
We’d done surprisingly well in the short time our joint venture had been up and running, selling off three South Brooklyn properties quickly. Prentiss and I put up the bulk of the capital, with a token contribution from Pierre. Cabrón documented necessary clean-up and repairs and managed the crews I sent out to get the properties ready for viewing. There’d been a few kinks in the process, but overall, it seemed as if S-T Real Estate would be a success.
In the days leading up to his GRE test, Cabrón had made himself available to me as much as possible, but I took it easy on him whenever there was an unaccounted-for pocket of silence. He sat for the exam in early February, and then prepared to travel to Panama City in March. At Téo’s invitation, he’d spend a couple of weeks with Mundo. They hadn’t seen each other in over a year. I was interested in hearing Pierre’s thoughts on Mundo, Bolo and the Panama City side of things. I wanted to see if he had a different take on what I’d observed, but had a feeling he'd just confirm what I already knew.
