Bidness Is Bidness

A RED LIGHT blinks, Keats can be seen through the cross hairs of a periscope lens, someone watching, big cop walking towards the cafe.

“Fucking Keats.” Billy Murmurs as he watches further through the periscope.

OUTSIDE, camouflaged perfectly, within the cars wreckage, a tiny periscope slowly revolves, dogging Keats as he hits the door, opens it, then enters the cafe.

Lowering the periscope, Billy collapses the arms of the tube, turns, gazes back into the cave where he, Doc Earl and his crew have ingeniously built an underground processing lab to brew Crystal Meth Amphetamine (ICE). Stressed, eyes jerk off at the red light, he groans, angry, always on edge he slaps a button on the wall, the red blink dies.

Exhaling from tension, he turns around, like a movie set, lab equipment, low wooden tables, vessels, beakers, copper tubes, sifters, boiling pots, mixer machines, sucking fans, instruments, all the stuff an entrepreneur needs to make Crystal Meth is there, a fucking lot of it.

In the back of the cave, slanted concrete ramp, elevated loading dock, several fifty gallon drums of Acetone, heavy steel accordion floor to ceiling door, a fork lift, tilted on the ramp, flat bed truck idlying on it. The place is spotless, professional, Billy is responsible for that, he is a Virgo.

Worried, about Keats, his mad scientist burnt out lynch-pin also, he looks at Doc Earl doing some kind of chemistry thing. Bunsen Burners flaming, blue stains against a white surgical mask, lightening bolt hair, fuddling around a huge boiling vat of “Crank.” Doc Earl is functioning, barely.

Groaning, thinking too much and though Mava does the real heavy tote thinking, he moves to a table, white powder spread long on it, drying. Lifting a fine, large tooth comb, he rakes it out, eyes darting at the Doc as he jolts straight up. The Doc sees something in the Ozone, mumbles something, calms, looks at Billy, gives him a mischievous wink, goes back to work.

Unfortunately for Billy, the Cox clan, though not stupid still needed the maniac to do the math, chemistry stuff at production level. Bathtub crank was where they had started, until the day the Doc had arrived. Two years earlier, a much less fucked up Doc Earl, after doing 5 to 10 at the Federal lockup in Houston for drug finagling had materialized, and like other lost souls, he had planted himself at their door step.

Before his fate twisted arrival, Billy, Arvan were just minions in the world of Meth distribution and production. With the absolute love American Youth had for the drug, well it didn’t take long to put two to two together, a calculation that even Billy could master. Thus, the union with the ex Stanford Prof, like sin to a women’s flesh, had begun.

A deal was struck, and like Dell Computer, or Netscape, Venture Capitol was found. An IPO proffered, and the Cox had banked almost a half mil, mostly in Mava’s safe, as well as various mattresses spread around the compound, of course figuratively.

Billy was in a hopin’ mood, for they were about to score, move up the chain, into a massive distribution deal with some edgy men in Corpus Christie, set up by Speedo Gonzalez MS-13 contacts. His future never looked brighter, if he could just string out Doc Earl a little bit longer as well as live long enough to see that golden plumb.

Billy, staring at Doc Earl, hated his guts. Nothin’ he wanted more was than to wrap his pinchers around his scrawny neck, choke the fucking life out of the crazed fuck bobble head. Also, rummaging around

Billy’s head was thoughts of fratricide, as well as genocide, though he didn’t know that word even existed.

He was planning to murder his Ma, Art the cook, maybe even Sue, if beauty Betty fucked like she looked and especially fucking Arvan, who was now confirming those thoughts in Billy simple brain.

Arvan, over in a corner, a hip knife tip digging into the white, then to the nose, a SNIFF, crank into Arvans cranium the powder goes.

Billy, irate, yet maintaining, walks over to his bro whose eyes are jerking around his head like Mexican Jumping Beans, the white stuck on the tip of his nose.

Sitting on the table, in front of Bro was a kilo of the white, silky, fluffy and ready to be pressed in to kilo blocks by the pressing machine. Along side of the mound, five wrapped cellophane kilos waited. Next to them, their cousins, smaller gram cellophane packs to be delivered along The Interstate to truckers, bikers, waitresses, doctors, priests, high schoolers, every body in America wanted the shit.

“What was that?” Arvan, jitters, tongue licking some stray crank from the tip of his blade.

“Keats.” Billy snarls, hand, likes a rattlers strike ripping the knife out of Arvans hand.

Free hand, vice of pain, Billy viciously grabs finger full’s of Arvans greased hair, rips his head back, presses the knife to his neck, draws blood, seethes.

“What’s I tell ya. That shit gonna rot yer fucking brain...Ya want ta end up like THAT...’

Billy twists, points Arvans bulging eyes at the Doc who’s humming bird tweets in his head.

Blade edge, tighter now, blood trickle, down Arvan’s neck, Billy yanks harder, in his face, Arvans panicked eyes, inches from his bros. “”I catch ya snortin’ again, I’m gonna make an ashtray outta yer head...CLEAR, bro?”

Ready to even take a shower if that will make the pain go away, Arvan, stutters. “Ya...Ya...Ya Billy...Ya...CLEAR.”

In your face, Billy swallows his hatred, releases him, pushes him back against a wooden pole, then sluices the knife through the air. Knife, TWANG, embedded in the wood next to Arvans ear, the Cox boys are good at throwing knives.

Arvan, breathing swelling, fury in Billy’s eyes, knife handle swaying back and forth, rips the blade out of the wood, be cool, play it better now, time will come, whispers. “I was just gettin’ high. Why ya gotta thump on me all the time?”

Billy groans, crunches his molars, begins to move toward him, Arvan throws his hands out, whimpers. “Okay, okay, Okay...no more shit...whatever.”

Billy, mix master in his brain on fire, now is not the time to wipe his brother off the face of the fucking map.

“Well fucking don’t. What time we pickin’ up from Speedo tanight?”

Knife in the sheath, not in Billy’s violent heart, not just yet, Arvan backs off, tack red zoning, close now, not now, but soon, whispers. “Midnight...Salt Flat Ridge, like afore...Chill Billy, it’s all good.”

“Right.” Billy says with disgust.

“Garth, Tommy they packed hard, ain’t they, they cool? Jimmy, Lester, they got that big boy ready, right?”

“Yeah Billy, it’s all good. Pick-up is runnin’ hard. The crew is happenin’. Chill man, I said it’s all good, okay...whatever?”

Groans, from Billy, moves on Arvan, Arvan winces. Billy grabs a leather back pack from a hook, scoops up three kilo packs, a dozen gram cellophane packs, shoves them in the pack, shoulders it, leer’s at Arvan.

“It fuckin’ better be cool, and don’t fucking whatever me, ya prick.”

Arvan, snorts his hatred, nods, moves back into the lab towards another table where the white is drying.

Billy, checkin’ his P’s and Q’s, like his Ma done taught him, moves to the periscope, lifts the arms; it ascends as he then looks through the scope. Through the cross hairs, he sees Ranger Keats talking to his Ma, grinds his jaw, decides to wait it out, sits on a stool, finds a smoke, lights it with the Bic, exhales, turns, looks at Arvan, and fucking groans.

In the back, near doc Earl, near the sifting tables, Arvans just taking a scoop in his fingernail, up to his nose, a sniff. Billy goes livid, his adrenaline and fury fucking off the charts. He cannot wait to cut his brothers fucking head off and make a fucking lamp post outta it.