Chapter 10
I remember an instance where I met Ferdinand for coffee near West Fourth Street. I arrived early and sat outside, crumbling some biscotti in between my fingers to feed to the pigeons. The weather was a glorious Indian summer, all mellow breeze and tepid sun. Ferdinand arrived, dark hair blowing in waves behind him. He is tall and lanky, like a robot bolted together at perpendicular angles, but he slides adroitly into the seat across from me, grinning.
“God bless this global warming,” he says, just a hint of accent in his English. “Another fifty years or so and the New York winter will be like Costa del Sol.”
This is just me embellishing, I think. In reality I’m sure Ferdinand said nothing so eloquent. He was a businessman after all, and businessmen usually only have one thing on their minds.
I first met Ferdinand through Paul, who introduced us at a nightclub that I don’t recall the name of. Paul claimed that Ferdinand had heard of me and was interested in making a few “business propositions.” Later on I would realize that Paul had probably known about Ferdinand all along, way before he met me.
I was still naïve as a newborn at this point. The fact that people were talking about me had me scared, as if I’d been protected by some magical shield that made me invisible to rival drug dealers. Ferdinand told me something when we first met that had chilled my blood. He said that “someone” had put a hit on me, and that I had been about two minutes away from getting shot in the back of the head as I walked down East Third Street. He said this with a smile, as if we were making small talk about the weather. He said he was glad I wasn’t killed, because he had an idea we could be pretty useful to each other.
I had no way to know if he was telling the truth, but his words knocked me off my high horse and drove home the reality of the matter pretty fucking fast. Ferdinand never divulged exactly who his associates were, what gang he was working with, but from the looks of him I’d say it was a group of Puerto Rican bangers, the Loisaidas. He dealt mostly in coke running, he told me. He was a shipping guy, bought off people at the ports and made sure the product got past customs and into the hands of dealers. Capable dealers, like myself. Recently he’d made deals with some new people and was started to branch out into Heroin—good stuff, he said, but not as good as the shit I’d supposedly been running. We talked a bit more and arranged that meeting on MacDougal Street, a nice, neutral location.
His words put a fright into me, but I figured a lot of it was typical Latin machismo blunder. If they really wanted me dead, they would have tried to ice me by now, and I was still walking around. Ferdinand didn’t know what kind of muscle I was packing, and I had to give the impression that if I wanted to, I could put a serious hurt into his business. West Fourth Street was safe enough, for the time being. I would hear what he had to say.
At this point also I was beginning to have serious questions about Big L. I had close to eighty grand in cash stashed away at my apartment, and no one seemed to be checking up on me to make sure I had the money. Big L had instructed me to contact him via payphone, for obvious reasons, but I hadn’t been able to get a hold of him in about two weeks. Every time I tried to call I was greeted with his answering machine or one of his flunkies whispering cautiously that Big L wasn’t around, to call back later. It didn’t make sense to me. Big L had unloaded a veritable fortune into my hands, enough to leave the country and start a pretty comfortable life in some tropical country, if I so intended. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t even get a chance to skim anything from the top, because he never collected anything in the first place. I trusted Big L and he trusted me, so the lack of communication was unsettling, to say the least.
Back to Ferdinand. We sat outside the café and drank coffee. It was a nice day and crowded with people, so our conversation was long among the undercurrent of chatter.
“So what’s the deal?” I asked. “What are you looking for?”
“A partner,” Ferdinand said. “Or maybe, more accurately, a business associate. You’re just a kid, but you’re a smart kid. How much you made since you been in the game? A hundred grand? Two hundred?”
He’s being glib, but I have to fight to smile, and even then it just barely materializes, like a shimmering mirage. He was trying to flatter me, maybe. I didn’t say anything.
“How reliable is your supplier?” Ferdinand asked, as if he’d been reading my mind about Big L and his recent disappearance. “You’ve got a quality product. Better than anything I’ve seen around here. You’re obviously a front for someone, probably Jersey or Delaware I’m guessing? They giving you the cut you deserve?”
This was the first time his prescience really started to unnerve me, and I wondered if I had finally met someone in the game as smart as myself. I knew he wasn’t getting any of this from Paul or Van, because I didn’t tell them shit.
“I wouldn’t put too much trust into Paul,” Ferdinand continued. “He’s a junkie, and he’ll fuck you just as soon as a better deal comes along.”
So would you, I thought, but instead I say “I don’t rely on Paul to do anything but find me more junkies. And he knows a lot of them.”
“Listen to me,” Ferdinand said, leaning over the table and nearly knocking over his espresso. He smelled like a combination of expensive cologne and cigarettes. “I’ve got the ports locked down. I’m going to have a steady shipment of skag coming in, and I don’t know skag, I know coke, and I need someone who knows what they’re doing to get it out there. I can get you runners to do your small deals. I can make sure no one fucks with you, that no one finds out where you live. I’ve got plenty of muscle behind me. I’ve got friends at the NYPD, to make sure they stay off your back. And I can give you a big cut, not sure if it’s larger than what you’re getting now but I’m willing to bet that it is. 30%, maybe? And I can do that because I’m rich and you’re only going to make me richer.”
I don’t say anything and look Ferdinand over, trying to do my best steely faced stare. He’s still grinning that grin, and it’s a strangely comforting one, the grin of a man who’s capable and in control. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw his grandmother, but greed was my main incentive in those days, and greed has a way of obfuscating your rational thought in ways that would baffle even the most cunning of men.