zing zang zing was all full of shit. Most gun fights didn’t last an hour and a half, anyway. You shot somebody, he was either dead or gonna shoot you soyou were dead. Frank tended to agree, though he himself had never been in a gun fight. He admitted this to Thomas now.
“You never shot nobody?” Thomas said.
“Never,” Frank said.
“Shit, man,” Thomas said unbelievingly, and began chuckling. “Where you from, man, the planet Mars?”
“I’ve just never found the opportunity.”
“How long you been doing this?” Thomas asked.
“Almost eight years now.”
“And you never found no opportunity to shoot nobody?”
“Most people I deal with aren’t interested in ripping anyone off. We’re traders, pure and simple.”
“I got to tell you bout Wiggy,” Thomas said. “He ain’t such a pure and simple trader, man.”
“He seems like your average businessman.”
“He ain’t so average, neither. You know how many peoplehe has found the opportunity to kill?”
“I’d rather not know,” Frank said.
“He got the name Wiggy not ony cause his lass name’s Wiggins. It’s also cause he wigsout whenever things don’t go his way. Blows hislid,that’s the second part of the handle, he Wiggy theLid, man. Reason he so tempermennul, is he doped up day and night. This is one man involved in dealing shit who don’t believe shit isshit, you take my meanin? He believes shit isgood for a person. I don’t know how much you sellin him in there …”
“A hundred keys.”
“Wiggy goan snort half that fore the week is out.”
“I know you’re exaggerating.”
“I am. But the mando like his cocaine. And when he’s stoned, why, man, that’s when he wigs out, that’s when he blows his lid, that is when you has to shoot him first or he goan shoot you dead, man. He shot and killed …”
“I don’t want to know. Really.”
“… twelve niggers ony last year,” Thomas said, and shrugged. “It was Nigger of the Month Club roun here.”
Frank never felt safe when black men—especially black men named Thomas—began calling themselves niggers in his presence because he never knew when the inside familiarity would suddenly turn against him. And whereas he’d never shot a man, he did not particularly encourage situations where gunplay might be called for. He himself carried a Walther P-38. It made him feel like a Nazi in a war movie. They had not relieved him of the gun when he’d come up here. Perhaps because they knew he’d be crazy to attempt a shootout. Anyway, he’d have handed it over in a minute because there was no need to worry about his cocaine failing any test put to it.
The stuff Frank was selling had been grown in Bolivia and processed in Colombia for about $4,000 a kilo. That came to a growing-and-manufacturing cost of $400,000. The Mexicans he’d purchased it from in Guenerando had probably paid $800,000 for it, and had sold it to him for $1,700,000. He was now about to turn it over for $19,000 a key—$1,900,000. That’s the way it worked. A pyramid with everyone making a profit from top to bottom. Eight hundred large in Colombia, a million-seven in Guenerando and now a million-nine in New York.
But Frank served a much higher cause than any of these assholes knew about.
Besides, he had a decided edge.
WIGGY HAD TASTED THE COKE , and so had Tigo, but tasting it meant nothing because you could get bad stuff’d fool the keenest taste buds. Ony way to make sure was the trio of tests Wiggy called the TNT, for “Tried ’N’ True.”
First test you got straight from the water tap.
Opened the faucet, filled the glass with a few ounces of plain water, then scooped a spoonful of shit out of the plastic bag and dropped it in. If it dissolved directly, it was pure cocaine hydrochloride. If any of it stayed solid, the dope had been cut with sugar.
Second of the TNT was Clorox.
Put a little in a glass jar, drop a spoonful of the powder in it, and watch the movie. If you got a white halo trailing the powder, it was cocaine, my dear. If you got red following the powder as it fell, the stuff was cut with some kind of synthetic, and somebody was going to get killed.
Last of the three was the best of them all, cobalt thiocyanate. What you did with the chemical was you dropped it onto the cocaine, also known as the White Leash, or the White Lady, or Lady, or sometimes just plain Girl, or any one of a thousand other cute little names to lure the kiddies in. If the powder turns blue, you’ve got cocaine. The brighter the blue, the better the Girl. Is what they say, man. The brighter the blue.
Frank’s stuff lit up the sky like neon.
Wiggy had been taught to distrust every white man in the universe. He turned to Tigo and said in something like astonishment, “Why, the honkie’s honest!”
But Wiggy also served a much higher cause.
Himself.
And he, too, had a decided edge.
4 .
