Chapter 11. Mad Max - The Crime (pt. 2)

Billy’s trailer was on the other side of the tracks… well, the other side of the freeway and the tracks… in a storage lot… a yard where RVs, boats, trailers and storage bins were hidden away from the eyes of the tourists and locals. The fenced-in lot was secured with razor-wire running the whole perimeter. He felt secure in the depths of the lot. 

While amid shooting up, his pager beeped. “Who the fuck can this be.”

He checked the number on the display. He’d been using heroin a long time and it had been ages since he’d ever gotten much of a rush out of a fix. It amounted to little more than keeping dope sickness at bay. The number on the pager wasn’t a familiar one. 

“Damn,” putting on a flannel shirt over a stained wife-beater undershirt, “Probably another one of the French bitch’s friends?”

Still, he had to get a few more bucks together to score another 100 grams, had about ten halves wrapped and ready that had to be unloaded before he had enough for that. Maneuvering his bicycle over to Scolaries on Milpas to use the pay phone, his chest sank as the Hispanic accent answered on the other end of the line, “Hey, Billy, meet me at three.”

“I’m not ready yet.”

“Sheet, Billy, wotchew mean… not ready?”

“Just a couple bucks short…” he wanted to bitch about Miguel using his name on the phone, but he let it pass, “… didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“I’m in town joss a few hours… sometime today. I give you a good deal; have a grand on you when I call.”

“Can I get credit for the diff…?”

“No, I call you back…”

“Give me ‘til five…” the line was dead before he could finish.

He pulled up to the chain-link fence and remembered he’d been so eager to get to the phone that he’d forgotten to lock the gate. 

“Can’t get too hungry, Billy,” he chided himself. “Whew,” he exhaled when he saw Nick’s car in front of the trailer. “I might be able to unload all my stash on Nicky.

“What’s up, Nick!” He hit the driver’s side window with the palm of his hand.  Nick was nodded-out… “Yo, Nick!”

“Uh?” the window came down… “I tried pagin’, where you been?” Nick muttered.

“No, you didn’t… I ain’t got no calls but it don’t really matter now.”

“We need to talk… let’s go inside.” Nick slurred, opening the car door.

Pushing it shut, Billy fumed, “We can talk here”… shit, looking around… always paranoid… glancing over his shoulder towards the gate, “C’mon, let’s take a walk.”

About fifty feet away, Nick asked, “How much you got?”

“Right now?” Billy knew Nick was good for much more, “About ten hits.”

“I’ll take ‘em… you got a deal for me?”

“A buck-fifty…”

“One-fifty? Are you shittin’ me?” Nick had to bargain for everything… even though a hundred and fifty dollars wasn’t such a bad deal for fifty grams of tar. “I got a C-note… that’s all.”

He turned towards the trailer without answering: Nick followed.

“Okay, maybe?” Billy had already talked with Adrienne earlier and knew that Nick had a c-note and a fifty on him he’d lifted from her stash of cash the last time he’d been at her place.

But it was in Nick’s DNA to wheel and deal. He knew you can rarely get change from a drug dealer, and especially not Billy. He would have to get it down to a hundred bucks or give up the whole fifty.

“Get the fuck outa here, you know one-fifty is the best I can do.” Billy was only playing along. He only needed about eighty bucks to score more and a hundred would have been a little gravy on top of what was needed. Billy hated these rich-bitches when they tried to milk him.

Nick played it hard one more time, “One-hundred, you prick… and that is my final offer.”

“One-twenty-five then,” Billy stepped around to the end of a trailer.

Nick followed him, pulled out a c-note without saying anything more and handed it over rolled up.

Billy looked at the c-note in expectation of getting the rest. When it didn’t come, the deal became a ‘take it or leave it’ one. The deal was done… “Wait here.” Billy walked back to the other end of the trailer and pulled the trailer-hitch off, looking back to make sure Nick wasn’t watching. He took out the snack-sized zip-lock with ten wadded-up foils of tar from the square tube within which the hitch was left unbolted. 

Returning to where Nick awaited, he passed the bag and they walked back to the trailer. Billy was satisfied that he had enough to buy the hundred grams from Miguel just on time.