crew; his forte was pushing powdered coke on American college students here on school break or for a long weekend.
Chops was supposed to be carrying a $10,000 payment for a load of coke Black’s men had given him the week before. Tonight was the night to pay up, which was the reason Black had left his hideout in the first place. He wanted that money in his own pocket, no one else’s. But when Chops walked in and saw Black himself in the flesh, he immediately tried to turn and run. Black’s bodyguards stopped him at the door, though, and the pirate captain motioned them to bring him over.
By the time Chops reached the table and sat down, he’d turned ghost white. He also looked beat up. His eyes were puffy, his lips swollen.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, not daring to look at Black across the table. “But I don’t have your scratch.”
Black glared back at him. “What do you mean?”
Chops was trembling. “I had the money. But I was rolled thirty minutes ago. Two guys in military uniforms. They took everything I had.”
Black drank an entire glass of rum without taking his eyes off Chops. “I got rolled” was the oldest excuse in the book, and everyone at the table knew it.
“But it’s true,” Chops insisted. “I was leaving my crib and these two army dudes came out of nowhere. Masked faces, billy clubs. They hit me from behind, then dragged me into the alley and took my roll. Ten grand in tens and twenties. It was like they were waiting for me. It was like they knew I was coming here with your money.”
Black never broke his gaze. The tension in the room was nearly unbearable.
He asked Chops, “So, when can you get us the money? Tomorrow? The next day?”
Chops’s relief was so apparent, he nearly fell out of his seat.
“For sure, Captain,” he said. “Tomorrow, for sure.”
Black reached across the table and tapped Chops lightly on his face.
“Tomorrow,” the pirate captain told him. “Or else.”
More blood trickled from Chops’s busted-up nose. But he didn’t care. He’d somehow escaped with his life.
“Yes, Captain,” he said, wiping the blood away. “I won’t gin it up.”
Black reached into his shirt pocket and came out with a joint the size of a cigar.
“Let’s smoke this outside,” he told the others at the table. “It’s new stuff—from Panama. We don’t want everyone out there to be smelling us.”
Everyone at the table got up and filed through the secret doorway and outside via a short stairway that faced the dirty canal. Black’s heavily armed motorboat was tied up close by.
The pirate king handed the Panama blunt to one of his men, who lit it with a huge cigarette lighter. He got the joint going and blew out a huge cloud of bluish smoke.
The man passed the huge joint to Chops. The dealer took a long drag—but before he was able to exhale, another of Black’s men had moved up behind him and suddenly had a leather belt around Chops’s neck.
The pirate started pulling the belt tight, slowly twisting and turning it. Chops began fighting madly, but his fate was sealed.
“Examples must be made,” Black told Chops nonchalantly. “You understand, mon?”
Chops collapsed to his knees, but his executioner yanked him back to his feet. The pirate kept twisting the belt tighter and tighter while Black and the others calmly passed the joint back and forth, looking on, unmoved.
Finally, the pressure was so intense, Chops’s eyes popped out. Only then did the pirate let his lifeless body fall to the ground. Black took another long drag on the joint and then gave Chops a final kick in the stomach.
“He’s lucky we didn’t tear him to shreds first,” Black said.
They took rope from Black’s motorboat and tied Chops’s body to a docking post. When the sun came up, his corpse would be visible for all of Badtown to see.
It was a clear warning: Don’t cross the Muy Capaz.
* * *
THE PIRATES RETURNED to the hidden room and opened another bottle of rum.
Dispatching Chops had eased Black’s frustration level a bit. But it left the gang with the same old problem: They still had no money. In fact, now they were another ten grand in the hole.
That’s when Black’s cell phone rang. It was one of his contacts in the nearby casino district. Could Black still get a large quantity of coke on just a few days’ notice? The contact had three customers looking for a substantial