Ricardo and Jesús were two of Dragos’s most reliable soldiers. He used them for really important jobs, and for jobs that were too complicated or too messy for his ordinary soldiers. He used them this time to deliver a special ticket to Ohio. Instead of the usual twenty keys this week, he sent Chino forty. He was doubling everyone’s ticket, because two of his major clients in North Carolina and Virginia had gotten popped. That had left him holding an unusual amount of product. His clients in Virginia and North Carolina had enormous tickets, and now those two tickets had to be divided among the remaining clients in order to get rid of the enormous stockpile of cocaine that he had been left with.
“Damn! What y’all doin?” Chino said, as he watched Ricardo and Jesús unload kilo after kilo. “I only move twenty.”
Ricardo shrugged. “The boss’s orders. Everyone gets double.”
“I ain’t never moved this much in a week!” Chino complained. “And then next week, he’s gonna want us to move the same?”
“Probably,” Jesús said, nodding. “The boss has a major problem right now.”
“Damn,” Chino declared. Normally he wouldn’t complain about getting so much dope; no one would. It was just that he had no idea how he could move so much stuff in such a short amount of time. He was already pushing his max right now at twenty. He would have to move into other people’s territory, start stealing clients, start pushing his crew to do more. He was already pushing two keys a week off on them, some were moving three, and he was pushing Chris J and Infa to move even more. But that would mean that they would be stealing other people’s clients too. And if they were all stealing other people’s clients and moving in on other people’s turf, that could spark a drug war. Crew against crew, if they were lucky. But crews ran deep, and if they were working for niggas from another city, that could spark a city-against-city war. The last time Columbus went to war against Cleveland, the body count was crazy. No one wanted one of those again. Wars fucked up everybody’s business and ruined way too many people’s lives, but Chino could see no other way to expand. Was he truly the Prince of Columbus, or was he just bull-shitting?
Chino knew that he had dreams, big ones, but he also knew where he wanted to be a year or two from now. He wanted to be done, and if pushing this much weight until Dragos got out of his jam was how he had to accomplish that, then so be it. He had to keep his connect happy. Besides, things would probably go back to normal after a couple of enormous shipments. It would mean more work for him, but it would also mean a lot more money. Who couldn’t use more money? It would bring him to his goal just that much faster. But then again, it would also bring more attention.
Chino weighed the good and the bad. More bread, good. More attention, bad. More attention would bring more jackers and more haters out of the woodwork, bad. It would also expose him to greater danger, because he would be fucking with more people, even worse. And everyone in the game knew that the more people you fucked with, the greater the chance of one of them being a snitch, and getting caught up in a conspiracy wasn’t something that he wanted to do. Columbus had its share of people working for the man, just like any other major city. People snitched because they were haters, people snitched to get rid of the competition, people snitched just because they wanted to be good citizens, and they snitched because they wanted to be the police. The majority of muthafuckas who snitched were trying to save their own rotten skins. Muthafucka snitched for a variety of reasons. And then there were the undercovers.
There were many of those and they came in all shapes, colors, and sizes. The fattest, stinkiest, most grimy-looking muthafuckas turned out to be narcotics detectives. Chino had seen one fool with a giant scraggly beard that looked like it had lice in it, and who had slept on the street for a week, turn out to be a detective. The scariest fool he had run into was a cat that looked like he was an eighteen-year-old baller. The cat had fat gold chains, rolled in a Benz, and was always in the club hollering at bitches. That fool wound up as the officer testifying at his partner’s drug trial. You had to really watch your ass in Columbus, ’cause the police had taken out all stops in their war on drugs.
“Damn, kinfolk, what are we going to do with all of this?” Chris J asked.
Chino shook his head. “I need for you to take six keys and move ’em.”
“What?” Chris asked.
Chino nodded. “Rock, I need for you to move six, and Infa, I need for you to move about six or seven. Ant, I need for you to move six, and Corey, I need for you to move four.”
“Man, kinfolk, give me ten of them hoes, and I get them off!” Young Mike told him confidently.
“Ten?” Rock asked.
“Nigga, you can’t move no ten birds in a week!” Infa told him.
“Watch me, fool!”
“Man, don’t you give that youngster no ten birds!” Rock told Chino.
“I can move them hoes, kinfolk!” Young Mike reiterated.
Chino looked into the youngster’s eyes. There was straight confidence and no fear in them. He nodded. “You got that.”
“Bet!” Young Mike told him.
“Chino, Dragos knows that he’s asking a lot of you to move this much product, but he still ain’t taking no shorts,” Ricardo said, after hearing the conversation.
Chino looked at Young Mike, and then back at Ricardo. “He’s like my little brother. He lives with me.”
Ricardo nodded.
Chino knew what Young Mike was going to do. It was basically the same thing that they all were going to have to do, which was beat the streets. They were going to have to push dope in uncharted territory. Other people’s territory. Young Mike was going to grind in other people’s hood and be all up in the projects. And he was going to get the job done. He just hoped that the kid didn’t get himself killed in the process.
Chino pulled out a gym bag filled with money and handed it to Ricardo. “Give this to Dragos. This is last week’s ticket, and for what I thought was going to be this week’s ticket. I was just going to pay him in advance, but now it appears that I owe him for another twenty.”
“This is going to make him real happy,” Ricardo said, holding up the gym bag.
“Chino, how in the hell are we all gonna move this much shit?” Rock asked.
“We gonna have to do the best that we can,” Chino told him. “We can move it. Besides, I already gave him half the money for this ticket, so if we come up a little short, then that’s okay. If it takes us an extra day or two to finish up, then so be it.”
“And then another major ticket?” Chris J asked.
“By then, we’ll have built up enough clientele,” Ant said.
“Man, this is a dream, niggas!” Infa told them. “Most niggas only dream about getting this much yayo, but we got it! You niggas is acting like it’s a funeral. Let’s ball till we fall, niggas!”
Infa got a point, Chino thought. They were acting like it was the end of the world, but they should have been celebrating instead. They finally got a major ticket, and they were acting scared. It was do or die. Time to see what they really were about.