Troy hit my phone thirty times straight before I could answer; he left hour-long voice mails too, which were super annoying.
“Old head just blessed us with yeahhhhh, it’s time to rock and roll, Dee! Old head asked when you was dropping by to say hi again too!” Troy said, breathing heavy through the receiver.
“We gotta rap about some other shit, Troy, let’s link later. One.” I hung up with Troy, realizing that I had to be very patient with him. He talks on phones as if nobody is listening and I’m not sure if they were listening or not, but I’d rather be safe than facing a trial date. He also needed to learn some simple how to’s of this smack game.
1. How to drive. Troy drives like a nut, and you can’t be like that with drugs in the car. Pull your seat all the way up, pop on the safety belt, cut the radio down, and go the speed limit. Never pull up next to cops, and don’t make eye contact with them; don’t even look at them.
2. How to act around girls. Basically shut the fuck up: girls will spend all of your money, get snatched up by the cops, snitch on you, and easily be accepted right back into society—fucking with the new dealer, the dude who took your spot.
3. How to treat your friends that don’t hustle. Basically keep them away from this shit. I didn’t want Troy to hustle but he paid attention to my every move and loved what I made. He was going to try this drug thing with or without me so at least I could keep him from doing something stupid.
4. How to stretch heroin. A little chemistry lesson was in order, that dope from old head was too good: fiends would die off of that, and the east/west dudes we hit with that first batch wasn’t used to getting dope that good. They were stretching it too so we might as well get some of that money.
5. How to brand. Dope like cocaine, or Coke or Pepsi, McDonald’s, Twinkies, Taco Bell, and everything else that will kill you needs to be branded right. It needs a strong, catchy name attached to a gimmick that will get the streets excited. Branding was my favorite part.
6. How to front work. He needed to know who he could trust when giving out drugs up front. I’m a big fan of the fifty rule, like you buy fifty grams and I’ll front fifty grams—you fuck up once and I’d never do it again. And you always have to collect because if one person gets away without paying, nobody will pay you.
7. How to put some money up just in case he got booked. Public defenders will get you sixty years for one baggie. Troy needed real defense lawyers that charge like three or four hundred an hour, not some C student from a fourth-tier law school.
8. How to develop an exit strategy. I didn’t have the answer to that one yet, but I was hoping we could exit together.