A week or so later, Cabrón called my cell and asked me if I wanted him to drive over and bring me some lunch.
“I can stop by Ali’s and pick you up a roti,” he said.
“That sounds nice,” I replied. “I’ll be here until four, then I need to head out.”
“Alright, I’ll be by in an hour,” he told me. “Oh, and I’m gonna bring Eula with me. I want you to talk to her about the EBT thing.”
“What EBT thing?” I asked, frustrated. “I don’t even know what’s going on!”
“I just need you to play bigga boss and let her know we’re going to need her to step up soon. Just tell her she’s gonna hafta pick up some routes soon.”
“I’d rather not,” I replied.
“Hopeton,” Pierre said, placatingly, “we are so close to getting this nailed down. I just wanna get ahead of it with this girl. Please, just follow my lead. And I promise, we’ll be in and out quickly. Just the way you like it!”
I hung up on him.
Cabrón showed up that afternoon, rotis and white girl in tow.
This time I was going to see what she was about.
“Hello, young lady,” I said in my best stern uncle tone.
I punched the code to the back room and led the kids back to my domain.
Pierre spread our lunch orders out on my desk.
“You got the Busta Cup?” he asked.
“Of course,” I replied. “Jamaica ah go tromp Guyana.”
“Haha, I know,” Pierre laughed. “I was giving Doe shit about it yesterday.”
I glanced over at the little girl. She’d flinched at the sound of her ex-man’s name, then quickly gathered herself. Now I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt- Mundo had passed her off fi real.
The afternoon stretched out far longer than I would have preferred- it felt like we spent hours on lunch and the Busta Cup. Then I directed us all back to my desk. It was time to get down to business.
First off, Pierre and I spent fifteen minutes reviewing red flag items. We conducted our discussion solely in Spanish, enabling us to talk freely in front of the little girl.
And then, finally, I brought her into the conversation, calling her by her government name. That threw her off, even more than Cabrón’s mention of Mundo had. This girl was at a serious disadvantage. From that point on, I said what I knew Pierre was expecting me to say- nothing less, nothing more. And when I was done, I sent the two of them on their way.
I was not happy about not having the full EBT story from Biz and Cabrón and thought it was fundamentally stupid to tell this little girl anything before having the entire process mapped out. But this was the kids’ project and I was going to stand back and watch how they managed it.
I’d played the role of bigga boss and talked to Pierre’s future employee in vague terms about a role that did not yet exist. It was now up to Cabrón and his associates to make it happen.
