“When Royce found me,” said Glade, “I was detailing cars in a mall parking garage. Pocketing fucking nickels and dimes found under the seat cushions. I’m out running this half-triathlon to get my ass back into fighting shape, and this guy comes up to me on the last leg, running beside me, gets me talking. Half out of breath, we’re shooting the shit like we’re at a cocktail party or something. And he lays all this broad shit out on me, smart stuff, where I’m at, where I’m going.”
“Yeah,” said Maven. “Exactly.”
“Fearless leader, you know?” said Glade. “So I don’t ask.”
Carlito nudged Maven, looking down the short hallway into the kitchen, Royce and Termino stacking cash on the kitchen island. “Mad money, dude. It’s sick.”
Glade said, “Royce takes a double share off the top, and all I know about that is, he earns it, for sure.”
Maven sank a ball, then attempted a touch shot and missed completely. “What about Termino?”
Carlito said, “He’s older. An acquired taste, but tough as fuck.”
Glade said, “He and Royce served together in Germany.” He paused to chalk up. “What about you? Royce said Special Forces.”
“Yeah,” Maven allowed.
“Where’d you get dirty over there?”
“All over,” said Maven. “Mostly north of Baghdad. Samarra.”
“I was in Samarra,” said Carlito. “Late ’04. Samarra, Fallujah. Every fucking resistance base. Just my good luck.”
Glade said, “You did the job.”
“Yeah, I did the fucking job.” Carlito smacked the cue ball down into a cluster of solids and stripes, not aiming anywhere in particular, just breaking them up as hard as he could. “And what fun we had. That was the asshole of all assholes.” Carlito straightened and said to Maven, with a thumb toward Glade, “Milkshake here still believes in the war.”
“Fuck, yeah, I do. I didn’t waste five years of my prime for nothing. Maven here stands with me, don’t you, New Guy?”
“Enough,” said Royce, coming into the room. “Fucking boring.” Termino followed with the open suitcase, setting it down on the pool table. “It’s payday, boys.”
They gathered around.
Royce said, “It was sixteen keys, total. I know, we were hoping for twenty or more. The Maracones were getting them for a nice round thirty each, either a sweetheart deal or the price per key is falling again. Thirty times sixteen is what, Carlito?”
Carlito answered, “A lot of dough.”
“Four hundred and eighty thousand.”
Royce separated big stacks of cash. Maven moved his hand off the felt bumper so that he would not leave a sweat mark.
“Divide by six, that’s eighty grand each. Six being two shares for me, one each for you three.” He pushed piles toward each man like casino winnings. “And one for the new guy, Maven.” Maven’s came last, smaller than the others, but still a lot of green. “Maven gets a half share. Consider it a gift.”
“A generous fucking one at that,” said Termino.
“Start-up money. Our investment in you. You could park cars for a full year and never see that much.” Royce looked to the others. “Maven’s other half, the forty, was cut in fourths, so ten more on top for each. Bringing your total to ninety. Not too shabby.”
“Well goddamned done,” said Glade, getting skin from Carlito and vice versa.
Termino said, “If only this shit had been brown and not white.”
The others nodded. Royce explained, for Maven’s benefit, “What Lew is whining about here is the fact that heroin is worth more than twice as much per kilo as cocaine. Scag has the biggest upside, but we can’t always pick our poisons, can we?”
Termino said, “I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.”
“Let me give you some perspective, Maven. Jimmy here still doesn’t understand why every kilo isn’t worth millions automatically, but it’s simple economics. Wholesale versus retail. The per kilo cost of cocaine in Bolivia or Colombia is about fifteen hundred dollars. That’s its export value. As soon as it crosses the border into the United States, the price jumps two hundred per cent. Actual price varies from region to region, but thirty g’s is the average Boston area wholesale price right about now. The buyer, the Maracones in this case, then break these kilos into more affordable ounce lots. Ounces are again broken down into grams by midsize shops, and grams into powder bags and crack caps by street crews. Two things happen at each step. One, the purity gets cut. Two, the price goes up. For scag, the basic rule is seven to one. For every one wholesale kilo, seven kilos of product eventually hits the streets. It’s like black magic. Cocaine purity runs a bit higher, but consider this. Step down one kilo to say three-quarters purity, and you’ve just turned one thousand grams of product into one thousand three hundred and thirty-three grams total.”
Glade said, “This is where my head starts to hurt.”
“Staying conservative, say that every one-thousand-three-hundred-and-thirty-three-gram magic kilo was broken up into one thousand grams of crack and three hundred thirty-three grams of powder. For simplicity’s sake. Say two hundred dollars per crack gram, one hundred dollars per gram of powder. Carlito, compute that?”
“I’d run out of fingers and toes pretty quick.”
“About a quarter mil. That’s retail gross earnings, per original wholesale kilo. So, sixteen kilos? Four million dollars’ worth of action we took off the street today. Four mil. That’s a shitload of ten-dollar street-corner deals. One number I don’t have for you is how many lives we just saved. Overdoses, drug crime. Think on that.”
Maven tried to. He thought of the money changing hands all across metro Boston.
Royce said, “The others, they’ve heard this before, but my bunkmate, back in Germany, he died of an overdose. I was the one who found him. He was my best buddy out there, and I never even saw it coming. And that still fucking haunts me to this day. The waste of it. Why I’m a little psycho about this, understand? A little fucking evangelical. My tolerance for this shit is zero. In case you were wondering how I came to this unusual line of work. It’s taken me a long time to put this thing together, and now it’s starting to flower, starting to bear some serious fucking fruit.” He nodded to the table. “So, Maven, consider yourself lucky. Even thankful.”
Maven nodded. A big pile of cash sat out in front of him. “I do.”
As the others celebrated, Royce walked Maven back into the kitchen. “You have questions.”
Maven said, “I have a lot of fucking questions.”
“Save them. We’ll go over things step-by-step these next couple of days. Starting tomorrow morning, when we go out and rent you a safe-deposit box. A big one. A bank account won’t do.”
“But... how is all this possible?”
“Drug dealers are a paranoid lot. You have to be either fucking crazy or fucking hard-core to think about crossing them. We happen to be both. I didn’t bring you in for your personality, I brought you in because no one else can do what we do. The equipment, the training. The work is hard and it can be tedious, but now you see it more than pays off in the end.”
“But how do you know—”
“I have some connections. And that, right there, is the sum total of how forthcoming I am going to be on this matter. I will tell you nothing more, and you will ask me nothing more from this day forward. Can you live with that?”
Royce’s entire demeanor had changed. Looking at him, Maven felt ungrateful. “Sure.”
Royce shook his head. “Not ‘sure.’ I want it clear. I want it absolutely rock solid, right here, right now. Your pledge.”
Maven nodded. “Okay. Yes.”
“All right.” Royce backed off a bit, but kept his tone serious. “We’re doing good here. Every fucking crumb of that shit that goes down the drain — we’ve made a difference. And the best part of it is, nobody else will ever know.”