***TST's Official "Boring" Thread, Part Deux***

[420sx]

I awoke in the small hours of the night to an incessant pounding. My brain sputters before realizing someone is knocking on my door.

“Who is it?” Elise asks, half-asleep.

How the hell should I know? I wanted to say, but instead I say “I’m not sure,” and grab my bathrobe and the gun from my dresser. Elise rolls over and falls back asleep. I knew immediately it wasn’t Scrazzle and his boys; even they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try the same stunt two nights in a row. I wasn’t unaccustomed to late-night visitors, not in my line of work, but I never could shake the disquieting feeling that four in the morning brings trouble, trouble and only trouble. I check the peephole to see what trouble I’m in for tonight.

It’s Paul. He’s wearing a black trench coat and he’s got a smile on his face. I let him in, lowering the gun.

“You ready?” He asks, his voice rising with excitement.

“Ready for what?” I say, whispering. “Keep your voice down, my girlfriend’s sleeping.”

“Sorry,” he says, still with that manic grin. “Ferdinand didn’t tell you? We’re gonna take a ride down Rockaway Boulevard. Show those ******s who robbed you they’re ****ing with the wrong people.”

I sigh, exasperated. “My girlfriend’s asleep back there, Paul. What the **** am I supposed to tell her?”

“Don’t need to tell her anything. We’ll be back before she wakes up. Come on. Let’s go.”

I change quickly, take a last look back into my bedroom, and shrug. Quietly, we step out and I lock the door. I’m tired, but I’m also pissed off, and itching for revenge.

Two cars are idling on the street below, beater Oldsmobiles with dark colors. Ferdinand is sitting in the driver’s seat of one car; two scarred and tattooed Loisaidas are in the other. I get into the passengers seat next to Ferdinand. Paul starts heading to the backseat, but I roll down the window.

“No,” I say. “Go with them. We’ve got stuff to discuss.”

“Hey man,” Paul starts. “I’m just as…”

“Did you ****ing hear me?” I shout, suddenly angry. “Get in the other car and I don’t want to hear another ****ing word, understand?”

Paul shoots me a look of pure disgust and does as he’s told. Ferdinand looks at me but says nothing, and we head off toward Queens.


“Why is he here?” I ask, as we make our way through the placid, late night streets of the city that never sleeps.

“Paul?” Ferdinand asks. “He’s the one who found our boys so quickly. It was his friends in Queens saw these new guys trying to hustle skag and doing a bad job of it. I thought he deserved to tag along.”

“I don’t want him hanging around in our business anymore,” I say. “He’s a junkie, isn’t that what you told me? Sooner or later he’s going to **** up, big.”

Ferdinand sighs. “You were the one who told me he was a valuable guy to have around. And having one more man around tonight won’t hurt.”

I just shake my head.

“You got any coke?” I ask. Ferdinand hands me a small baggie, and I do a few lines off the dashboard. Suddenly I’m feeling a whole lot better. Suddenly I’m more than ready to take on Scrazzle Dazzle and his mouth-breathing thugs. I’m ready to take on a whole ****ing army. Ferdinand’s stuff is really good.

“So what are you doing here?” I ask, suddenly talkative because of the cocaine. “Don’t you have guys to do this kind of **** for you?”

“It’s my ****ing drugs they stole,” he says, as if that explains everything. Ferdinand is ****ing nuts, I realize with sudden lucidity, every bit as goddamn ****ing nuts as the junkies and Scrazzle Dazzle and all the rest of them.

A little later we roll into Queens. The lead car directs us to a neighborhood full of tenements and crack houses, dilapidated, run down pieces of ****. The coke is still going strong and I feel like I’m in Saigon or Anzio or something. I reach down and feel my gun, to make sure it’s still there. We pull over to the side of the road and kill the engine. The two Loisaidas and Paul step out. Paul’s still looking at me like I pissed in his cornflakes.

“Look,” I say. “If **** goes down, then it goes down. But this guy could have iced me and he didn’t. We’ll get our **** back, but I don’t want any shooting unless there’s gotta be.”

“Fine by me,” Ferdinand says. The two Loisaidas pull out pistols. Paul pulls out a pistol. I pull out my Glock.

“I’m going to stay in the car,” Ferdinand says. “You guys got 10 minutes to do your thing and get out, otherwise I roll out of here. I’ve got your back if there’s trouble.” He says something to the Loisaidas in Spanish.

“You guys ready?” Paul asks. I nod. The house we’re about to enter is some condemned thing, rotting wood and broken glass everywhere. Rap music is playing very faintly from somewhere inside. I’m reminded very strongly of Camden. I’m ready, as ready as I’ll ever be I guess. The two gang bangers take the lead and Paul and I follow.

The door to the crack house is swinging off its hinges. We push it aside and go in.

Inside is filthy. The only light comes from what’s streaming in through the broken windows. Trash and wires are strewn everywhere; there’s foul smelling liquid dripping off everything and filling my mouth with a repulsive, pungent taste. I nearly step on a hypodermic needle and kick it aside in disgust. There’s probably more AIDS here than in Africa. The Loisaidas bust into a few rooms, while Paul and I check the others. All we see is detritus from squatters; more needles and trash. There’s no one on the first floor. We head toward the stairs.

One of the Loisaidas trips over something on the stairs and nearly loses his balance. We look down and I can see the faint outline one of the thugs who robbed me. I see an empty bottle of gin lying to next him. He starts to stir.

The first Loisaida, the one with more tattoos, pistols whips him viciously across the face, and he goes back out like a cheap flashlight.

“Stupid ****ing ******,” Paul mutters. I whisper to him to shut up. We step carefully over his unconscious body and head upstairs.

There’s a faint light still flickering on the second floor. Most of the trash and debris has been swept into a huge pile in the hallway. The rap music I heard outside is louder, the bass thudding away through the thin plywood walls. There’s a light on in one of the rooms. It smells like weed.

Suddenly, thug two steps out of one of the adjoining rooms, his back turned. He doesn’t see us, but we can see him walking toward the room with the light on, the butt of his pistol sticking out from behind his waistband. The other Loisaida raises his gun and shoots him twice in the back. It sounds like an air raid in the small hallway. Two bright spots of blood blossom in the thug’s shirt, and he falls forward. Then everything goes crazy.

“Holy ****!” Paul yells. We bust into the room where the rap music’s playing. I’m shaking and sweating with adrenaline, holding my gun out in front of me like a divining rod or something.

Scrazzle Dazzle’s on a filthy white mattress with some jungle princess, fumbling underneath his pillow for his gun. The jungle princess screams at a decibel usually reserved for dog whistles. One of the Loisaidas yells something in Spanish.

“Don’t move mother****er!” I yell, and Scrazzle stops moving when he sees four guns pointed his way. He raises his hands and sneers.

“****,” is all he says.

I learned at this moment that while having a gun pointed at you is one of the worst feelings in the world, pointing a gun at someone who ****ed you over, while not the best feeling, is pretty good.

“Where’s the money Scraz?” I ask.

Scrazzle doesn’t do anything for a long moment, then moves his hand and points toward a closet. There’s a crash louder than thunder and Scrazzle Dazzle’s head explodes, turning the mattress into something that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

I jump a mile into the air and turn to see it was Paul who fired, looking out of his mind with fear.

“Oh ****,” he says, in almost a whisper. He fires again and shoots the girl in the head.

“WHAT THE ****!” I yell, about to strangle Paul. One of the Loisaidas has to hold me back.

“Sorry man,” Paul says, still holding the gun out in front of him. “I thought…I thought he was reaching.”

I’m still in shock as the Loisaidas rummage through the closet and gather up the heroin and the cash.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” Paul says, in an infuriatingly calm voice. “I’ll leave my gun by the guy on the stairs. We’ll call the cops and he gets the heat. ******s shooting each other all the time, right?”

I was numb at this point. I didn’t say anything else. Paul wiped his prints off his gun with his shirt and put it in the hands of the passed out thug on the stairs. We all hustle back outside, and take off in the Oldsmobiles. Ferdinand sees the bag with the drugs and money and nods to me.

When we’re about 15 minutes away we stop at a payphone and make an anonymous 911 call.

As you can imagine, things were not the same after this. As a matter of fact, things began to unfold very quickly at this point. But before I take you into the final stretch of my sordid tale, let me paint a picture of the last heroin deal I ever made.

I head into Brooklyn to meet named Alex, who had been calling my phone incessantly and who I just wanted to shut up. I’d stopped using my runners, paranoid that they would lead the cops back to me. I made the trek into Brooklyn alone, looking over my shoulder every five minutes like someone in a bad spy movie.

Alex had been in rehab for a while, but once the phone calls started up again it was clear he had relapsed. I arrived late, probably looking disheveled and disoriented. After you start seeing people murdered in front of you, “the game” starts to lose much of its allure. Alex’s place is some dingy ****hole, no furniture, only the bare necessities to make the place habitable. He let’s me in and they take a seat on a couple of milk crates with blankets thrown over them.

He’s there with a girl. Alex himself looks terrible. He’s about six two, one-hundred-forty pounds, and he’s acquired the hollowed out stare and nervous tics of the addict. He’s sweating a good deal, although it’s not warm. I figure they probably had him on methadone, so he’s not going through heavy withdrawal, but the slow uphill crawl of methadone can’t compete with the orgasmic rush of heroin, and Alex knows it. The girl he’s brought with him is quite lovely. Long black hair, a cute face that looked vaguely Italian, and dark brown eyes. She can’t be much more than 18 years old, if that. I take one look at her and know she isn’t using. She’s too vibrant. Part of me—the same part that felt stirrings of pity when I sold to Amanda—doesn’t want her to start.

“What’s your name?” I ask the girl

“Isabelle,” she says, shaking my hand. I remember her voice was low and sexy, and I wonder what she’s doing with a **** up like Alex.

“You’re young,” I say.

“We met in rehab,” Alex says, scratching his neck with a gnawed fingernail. “Her parents had her in there for pot, man, can you believe that?” Isabelle frowns and says nothing.

“Didn’t you just get clean?” I ask him. “Why are you going back to this?”

“What do you care?” Isabelle says. “You’re making money.”

Alex just smiles, slow and sad. I know why he’s doing it. Because the nerves at the base of his spine crave the opiates, because Alex is weak and self-destructive and a spiraling train wreck of epic proportions. I don’t care. But Isabelle is not using, and for some reason this makes me happy.

“How much are you looking for?” I ask. “I can give you twenty bags for two hundred.”
I get the bags, and Alex hands me the money. If Isabelle has any objections, she does not voice them.

“How you been?” Alex asks me as I get up to leave and he breaks out his paraphernalia. “Staying out of trouble?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I’m about to step out the door when I notice that Alex has tied off Isabelle’s arm with a belt and is readying the needle. I stop with my hand on his doorknob and turn around.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask. Alex looks at me with a dumbfounded expression.

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought she wasn’t using the stuff.”

Alex shrugs. “She’s curious.” He starts filling up the syringe as Isabelle looks on with a bored expression.

“Are you ****ing kidding me?” I say. “You just get out of rehab and you want to get her into this ****? Is she even out of high school?”

I don’t know where this sudden bout of self-righteousness comes from. All I know is that I’m very pissed off at this moment, and Alex is making me angrier.

Alex just laughs. “Chill out man, everything’s cool.”

“Yeah,” Isabelle says. “It’s not any of your business.”

“None of my business? None of my ****ing business?”

I head toward them and Alex stands up, suddenly scared. But he’s lanky and weak, and I push him aside. He drops the needle and it rolls quietly along the barren floor.

I stop suddenly, feeling futile and empty.

“Do whatever the **** you want. Don’t ever call me again.” I kick the syringe into the wall and walk out the door.

[420sx]

After the murders in Queens, I knew I had to get out. Dealing drugs and making money was fine, I could live with that, but in my dreams I kept reliving the scene; Scrazzle Dazzle’s cornrows getting blown onto the wall behind him, the screams of that girl he’d been with. All the money in the world wasn’t worth those nightmares. I still had Ferdinand’s drugs and money in my apartment, and I knew I had to find someway to get out, to get rid of it, to leave New York and get myself as far away from the mess I’d made as I could. Forget about my college education. If I didn’t do something soon, I wasn’t going to make it to my 20th birthday.

I scanned the paper everyday and found the headline: Gang Violence Suspected in Queens Triple Slaying The cops had arrested the thug Paul had tried to set up, but I knew the charges weren’t going to stick. The detectives weren’t stupid. It was only a matter of time before they traced the gun back to Paul, to me. I thought of what my parents would say if I got sent to prison for life for accessory to murder. I started to collapse in on myself.

I didn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t trust anybody. Elise came over to cook dinner and asked me what was wrong. I told her I thought I might have the flu. I realized that every word out of my mouth since I went under the Holland tunnel into New York City had been a lie. I had nobody to turn to.

I was sitting on nearly sixty grand. I couldn’t deposit it. I considered buying a plane ticket and moving to some other country, but strolling into the airport and buying a transatlantic ticket with a big wad of cash was bound to set off some alarms. When Elise wasn’t there I took out my gun and stared at it for a long time before deciding to take a walk and throw it into the East river. Who the **** was I kidding? I didn’t know what to do with it. If heat came down, it wasn’t going to help me. All it could have done was make things worse.

I got a call from Paul, telling me he’d be keeping a low profile and I probably wouldn’t hear from him for a while. That was fine by me. If I never heard from him again, I’d be happy. I’d been sequestered in my apartment myself for a few days before I finally heard from Ferdinand. He wanted to meet in Washington Square Park to discuss things. He assured me that he would have everything taken care of. I wasn’t so sure. I asked him if Paul would be there, and he told me no. With trepidation I agreed to meet Ferdinand.

It was a gray and miserable afternoon in WSP, rainy and wet, the kind of day where nature knows just how you feel. Ferdinand was sitting on a bench, eating a falafel and throwing bits of it to the pigeons. I sat down next to him.

“Good to see you again,” Ferdinand said, still just that hint of accent creeping through his words. “Sorry things turned into such a ****storm the other day. But the cops brought in that guy Paul framed up. They’ve got nothing on us.”

“They’re gonna know something’s up,” I said. “The guy didn’t fire the gun. And one of your boys shot someone with a different gun. The ballistics aren’t going to match up.”

Ferdinand looks ahead for a long moment. “The cops just need to arrest someone for the papers,” he says finally. “They’re not going to care if they have the right guy if it gets the media off their back.”

“You really think they’re going to whitewash a triple murder?” I ask, my voice rising just a little bit. “Because I don’t think they will!”

“I’ll worry about it if and when the time comes,” Ferdinand says. “But you don’t need to worry. I’ve got your back. I have a big deal coming up that I want you to see to personally. These guys in Brooklyn want to make a transaction. Five kilos. Half a million dollars. Fifty grand for yourself.”

I looked up at the bleak, overcast sky. Fifty grand was a lot of money. I didn’t want to help Ferdinand anymore, but I didn’t know what he’d do if I said no.

“You’ve already got the transaction set up?” I asked. “So why do you need me?”

“Think of it as an apology for the unpleasantness in Queens. I want this deal to be just between you and me. No one else knows. A nice little bonus for ourselves.”

“Paul doesn’t know?” I ask.

“No one knows,” Ferdinand says. “I was wrong to include Paul in our business. I don’t want him causing anymore trouble.”

I think about it for a long while. I say yes. Ferdinand tells me to meet him at an address on Delancey Street late tomorrow.

Later that day I get a call from Van the Man. He hadn’t heard from me in a while, and he was worried. I feel a strange tug of compassion, and I tell him to come over to my apartment if he wants to chat. I realize that he’s been left almost completely in the dark my Paul and Ferdinand, and part of me feels bad for him. This whole time I’d been making money, while he’d just been getting high and digging himself deeper into a hole.

Van the Man comes over and for once I’m actually happy to see those stupid dreadlocks and his goofy eye. I realize he’s the only one of the whole bunch whom I actually considered a friend. I ask if he wants any H and I’m shocked to hear that he doesn’t, that he’s starting methadone and trying to wean himself off the stuff. We sit and talk for awhile, Van wistfully relating to me all the times he’s done drugs with celebrities and supermodels, etc etc. I wonder how long he’ll be able to stay off the stuff. It’s clear he doesn’t know about the debacle in Queens. He’s talking fast and is really happy-go-lucky, and I wonder if he’s maybe a little drunk. He’s running his mouth so fast that I don’t even really process most of what he’s saying.

“How’s business?” he asks me, fingering his dreadlocks and making some weird compulsive movements with his hands.

“Good as always, I guess,” I say.

“Hear you got a big deal coming up tomorrow?”

“Oh, where’d you hear that?” I say idly, not really paying attention.

“Heard Paul talkin’ about it on the phone. Sounds like it’s gonna be a good score.”

“Well, you know, it’s probably—”

I stop mid-sentence.

“What?” Van the Man asks.

I flashback to earlier that day and the conversation with Ferdinand. I see the words forming on his tongue. He tells me he doesn’t want Paul in his business anymore. He said only him and I know about the deal.

But Paul knows about the deal. Which means Ferdinand was lying to me. Which means something is not right. Something, in fact, is very wrong.

Just then my phone rings. It’s Elise. She wants to know if she can come over. I tell her no. I make up some excuse. I turn to Van the Man, and he can tell by my expression that something’s very wrong.

“You need to go into hiding,” I tell him. “Don’t talk to Ferdinand. Especially don’t talk to Paul. Get out of the city if you have to. Get rid of any drugs you still have.”

“What’s going on?” Van the Man asks, not understanding.

“You have to go,” I tell him. “You gotta trust me, man. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

There’s that funny word again, trust. Everything always seems to come back to it.

Van the Man is still puzzled, but he sees the fear in my eyes and it’s a strong incentive. He leaves, and I realize now that if I want to get out of this I’ve got no one I can trust but myself.

I go through my apartment and gather up all the heroin I’ve got left, about a half kilo and put it into a backpack. I don’t know exactly what Paul and Ferdinand have in store for me, but they’re either trying to have me killed or selling me out to the cops. I have some phone calls to make.

I take a walk to a phone booth and dial a police station in Queens. I tell them I have information about the triple murder. They transfer me over to a bored sounding detective named Peters.

I tell him some details about the crime scene and suddenly his ears perk up.

“What’s your name?” he asks. I don’t answer.

“You find any prints on the gun you can’t match up?” I ask. Detective Peters pauses for a moment.

“There’s a partial on the magazine we can’t identify. You know anything about it?”

I give him Paul’s name and tell him to do a search. I figure Paul’s probably gotten himself into trouble sometime before, his prints are most likely on file. I hang up the phone.

I move to another payphone a few blocks away and call Paul. He picks up the phone sounding scared and frantic.

“Paul,” I say. “I know about Ferdinand’s plan. Ferdinand told you he was gonna have some of his boys try and ice me at the deal tomorrow, right? I know you think you guys are playing me, but actually he’s playing you. He’s going to have you killed, not me.”

I figure Ferdinand is actually trying to have both of us killed, but I don’t tell Paul that.

“What the…” Paul trails off, and I can tell from his voice that he’s deeply shocked. And then, sounding almost like a petulant child, “Why would he do that?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I want to get us out of this. I’m going to head over to your place in a few minutes, and we can talk about how we’re gonna get out of this.”

Paul agrees, and I can tell by the warbling in his voice that he’s not playing me, that he’s scared and that he trusts me. I’m pretty ****ing scared myself, but this is my one chance, my only chance to get out of this. I take the backpack and head over to Paul’s.

I knock on Paul’s door and announce myself. He unlocks the chain and I step inside. He’s got another gun in his hands, and he looks like he’s been doing some of Ferdinand’s coke. He doesn’t point the gun at me, just lowers it and looks at me, almost like he’s about to cry. He’s a mess.

“I’m sorry man, I’m sorry I tried to play you, I’m just scared man, I’m really scared, and those people that I killed man, I don’t want to go to jail.”

“Hey, hey,” I say. “Listen, everything’s gonna be cool. I gotta take a piss, I’ll be out in a minute.”

Paul nods but his gaze is vacant, like he’s in his own world. I go into Paul’s bathroom and take out the heroin. I stuff it into the toilet tank, and flush for posterity. I come back out.

“You and Ferdinand have been working together for a while now, right?” I ask. Paul nods.

“I guess, yeah. I’m like his right hand man. Was.” He says this with a faint note of pride. “I can’t believe he’d ****ing do me like this. You got any H, man? I could really use a fix.”

“A fix is the last thing you need,” I say. “Look, here’s what we do. I’ve got muscle Ferdinand doesn’t know about. We can get him if he’s not expecting it. Do you think you’d be able to get Ferdinand up here?”

“What do I tell him?”

“I don’t know. Make up some excuse. Tell him you want to talk business.”

“He’ll probably bring his boys with him.”

“That’s fine. I’ve got a lot of muscle. When you guys are done talking, we’ll ambush ‘em on the way out. No survivors. You can get out of New York. They’ll be no evidence to link you back to the murders.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?” I ask. “We either help each other or we’re both dead. I’m not gonna sell you out. Make the call.”

Paul dials the phone and calls Ferdinand. He tells him he wants to talk about tomorrow. They talk a bit more and Paul hangs up the phone.

“He’s in Chinatown,” Paul says. “He’ll be here soon.”

“Okay,” I say. “I’m going to get my muscle. I’ll give you a call when all is said and done, okay?”

“All right,” says Paul. “Thanks.”

“Just keep Ferdinand and his boys here for like 15 minutes,” I say. “Everything should work out.”

I leave Paul’s apartment and hustle to find a payphone. When I get there, I dial the police station in Queens and ask for detective Peters. He picks up the phone, sounding a lot more interested than the first time.

“Did you run that print?” I ask.

“It matched your guy,” detective Peters says, sounding very excited. “Paul Hawthorne, ex-army, discharged with psychiatric problems, That explains a lot I think to myself.
“… and priors for heroin possession,” he continues. We just finished getting a warrant.”

“Beautiful,” I say

“What else can you tell me?” Peters asks.

I give him Paul’s address.

“A drug deal is going to be going down in about 10 minutes, so you guys better hustle. They’re all armed, so you might want to get the SWAT team.”

I hang up the phone and head through a couple of alleys so I have a vantage point of Paul’s apartment. A few minutes later the beat up Oldsmobile arrives, and I can see a very pissed off looking Ferdinand and his two Loisaidas heading up to Paul’s place. About ten minutes later the building is swarmed with police cars, and I walk casually away. I don’t look back.

[420sx]

About a week later I’m packing up my things and preparing to leave the city, when I hear a knock at my door. I look through the peephole and there’s two detectives standing there. I let them in and they seem almost embarrassed. They introduce themselves. They ask my name and I tell them, my real name.

“Moving out?” one of them asks me.

“City life isn’t really for me,” I said. “It’s too stressful.”

“You go to school?” One of them asks, sounding as if they think there’s been a mistake.

“NYU,” I say, “but I’m probably going to transfer someplace else after I move.”

“My nephew goes to NYU,” says one of the detectives. “Great school.”

I nod. “So is there a problem?”

“We’re just following up on a lead. A guy we arrested last week said drugs were being dealt at this address. Probably bull**** like most of our leads, but we have to follow up on everything. But you look like a pretty upstanding kid to me.”

I shrug. “You guys can look around if you’d like.”

They do, but just a cursory glance into the rooms. They obviously feel like they’re wasting their time. I’ve long since thrown away my old cell phone. I’ve got no more drugs. The only thing I have left is the 60 grand, below my floorboards, but the detectives don’t look there. I figure it was one of the Loisaidas tried to implicate me.

Paul and Ferdinand got killed when the cops raided his place. He drew his gun and they blew him away. I don’t know if Ferdinand got nicked in the crossfire or what but he’s dead too. The two Loisaidas surrendered, but the cops traced their gun back to the murders in Queens and they’re both probably gonna do life. I figure they coughed up my address, maybe tried to cut a deal. I disavowed all knowledge.

The cops found the H in Paul’s toilet and the long list of names in his phone and figured him for a dealer. I guess they figured the Queens thing for a deal gone bad. A blurb credited the bust to a “mystery informant,” and I grinned a little when I read that. But I still wanted to get out of the city. I didn’t know if any vestiges of Ferdinand’s gangs were hanging around, and too many people knew my face. I never did find out what happened to Van the Man. I’m sure he likely OD’d or ended up in prison, but a small part of me likes to think he got clean, and makes his money playing dive bars or something, wailing out reggae music with a little guitar and steel drum.

My parents were a little disappointed. I told them I wasn’t happy with Economics at NYU. I wanted to transfer somewhere else, maybe become an English or Comparative Lit major instead. I figured the 60 grand would help get me on my feet and pay my rent for a while, but I was going to life the straight life from now on. I had my lucky break, my time in the fast lane, and it was nice for awhile, but it would have killed me if I stayed much longer. Elise was sad to see me go, but it was really more of a fling then anything.

The cops asked where I was on the night of the Queens shooting and Elise alibied me. She remembered because it was her father’s birthday. She’d had no idea I’d been gone.

“Sorry for wasting your time,” one of the detectives said. “You seem like a good kid. Good luck wherever you decide to go to school.”

They left, and that was that. Soon after I left New York. I was a little less than 20 years old.

Every town has its man. You won’t always recognize him if you meet him on the street or in a bar. If you’ve got that 26 dollars in your hand, he can be your friend. The man is usually late, but he always arrives. I was that man, for a little while, and it’s a tough gig. The man don’t last long, in this world. I was going to let someone else be that man from now on. I was fine with that. There were plenty of people to take my place. Because, in the end, no matter how far you go, there’s always going to be someone waiting for the man.

[Elliott18t]

TL;DR..

Wtf wall of text.

[jpalamar]

I'll be honest, I don't plan to read that.

[420sx]

Haha, then dont. I wasnt gonna start a thread just for it though. Its entertaining and kills some time while at work- thats why we're all here right?

Plus this thread was dead. Figured Id liven it up with a little heroin dealing.

[grimm]

yea... good lord.

[jpalamar]

1 more hour left. Thinking about doing a quick wash to the car.

[Snoozie]

Meh...I'll probably read it when I have nothing to do.

[russiankid]

Not planning on reading that.

[piku]

I read it... Definitely a life I'm not and don't want to be familiar with.

[Big_Jim]

Great read.

Im going home. back is killing me, causing shortness of breath. if i dont feel better, im going to the dr's tomorrow.

[piku]

Originally Posted by Big_Jim

Great read.

Im going home. back is killing me, causing shortness of breath. if i dont feel better, im going to the dr's tomorrow.

Get better dude. That situation sucks.

[ASIAN JUL]

It's my Airplane Day! WOOT

[DPancoast]

man I get myself into some **** sometimes.

[jpalamar]

Man, it is humid already. Can't wait til work is over. Gonna grill some lemon pepper chicken for dinner tonight.

[TR MS3]

G'morning all! Now I'm in the mood to grill tonight.

[Elliott18t]

so much pain @_@

[HickRocket1258]

Morning all. Can't wait for the day to be over. Once girlfriend gets off work at 11:30 tonight we are headed to the beach until Tuesday. Finally get to relax for a lengthy period of time.

[jpalamar]

Originally Posted by TR MS3

G'morning all! Now I'm in the mood to grill tonight.

Come over.