You Don't Know Me

I found out later, too late, that The Squad had changed in the previous few months. It had grown. The shit had started getting serious. Truth be, it might have changed anyway. They probably would eventually have grown up into a full working man gang given enough time. But the thing that catapulted them into the big leagues was just something you could call luck. Bad luck or good luck, it’s up to you how you see it. Whichever way you call it though, that luck was all linked in with these guys we came to know as the Olders.

Look this is a lot for anyone to get just looking from the outside. Gangs and shit aren’t like in the movies. They’re complicated and have rules that don’t make no sense to other people from other places. They have history. They don’t just come out of nowhere. Before a big gangster was a big gangster he was a baby gangster. And before he was that he was the next thing. It sounds obvious maybe to a person like me but maybe not to you. I grew up hearing about all this shit. It’s part of like my local knowledge. Everyone round my ends knows about this. But you probably ain’t from my yard so I need to try be clear about this because it matters, for later.

The Olders was like these old-time big drug dealers who got sent down in the eighties and nineties for ten, fifteen, even twenty years at a time. Proper big names who had been into all kinds of shit including guns and armed robberies.

Anyway these Olders started leaving jail at about this time. It was weird but they were like all coming out at about the same time or that’s how it seemed to us. Every day an old name would turn up on the vine. ‘Oh you heard about Caesar – he out now and looking for a crew.’ That kind of thing. And the one thing they all had in common apart from being Olders was that they wanted to get out there and start making some P. You know, ‘paper’. Money. But this time they didn’t want no risk if they could help it. But they were happy to pay some kids to take the risk for them and sell their drugs for them. On commission. This was where Jamil and his boys came in. This is how they begin to link in.

It became kind of a well-known thing that JC had hooked up with some of these Olders. It wasn’t just that his crew became known for it. Really and truly it was him that was known for it. People began to know him. He became like a, not exactly famous, but just like a known name round our ends. And for why? Because he became about the most highest volume salesman those streets had ever known. I don’t mean like those Olders who bring in twenty keys. That’s different. But on the street, as a street merch, he was like superstar. But I didn’t know that then. Because like I told you, I ain’t no gang-banger.

So once he’d got in with one of these Olders, JC turned from a kid who was just interested in pushing other kids around to something like a businessman. Before you knew it he was everywhere. He pushed the stuff wherever he could and nothing and no one was off-limits, not even school kids.

But it was more than that. JC, Jamil, was dangerous, anybody with a mind could see that. Because he was organized. His best idea, and the idea that earned him big money and big respect, was that he was modern and systematic. If there was a lull in one area, he would take his rocks and sell them in some other area. He would go online, find all the schools and colleges in a five-mile radius and hit them all one by one. He would do the schools first for new customers, then the colleges, then a bit later on in the day he would knock on the pubs and late, late at night he would do the clubs. When it was quieter, like early and mid-week when the clubbing crowd was light, he got himself known amongst the crack houses and started dealing there. He had crack dens on his books all over town, you know, places where people could do their drugs without being bothered by no one; places where there was a load of customers all together all wanting the same thing. A crack den is some nasty shit you get me. But it meant that before long he got to know the small-time dealers and the prostitutes who hung out there.

The whores were excellent business for him. He used the same tactics that the Olders used with him. He gave the girls a free rock for every twenty they took and they loved it. The girls sometimes had punters who wanted action and wanted it while they were getting high. The girls got to double their profits and he got to shift even more gear. The boy was methodical I give him that. There was even a rumour that he had a spreadsheet on his phone. His dealer list was electronic. That was a first for street dealers. Most of them just had scraps of paper with numbers on. Jamil had encrypted lists. The boy was new generation, you get me?