You Don't Know Me

Now this may not mean that much to you, but to a drug dealer, payment is everything and not everybody, believe it or not, gets paid. Let me try to explain this … If you were shifting ten kilos of gear in kilo loads, you could expect to be paid about ninety per cent of the time. And the ten per cent you maybe didn’t get paid, you didn’t get paid because you got ripped off or taxed by someone even more gangster than you thought you were.

If you were shifting shit to soldiers in twenty gram loads, you could only expect to be paid about sixty per cent of the time. Why? Because forty per cent of the time the kids you gave your shit to sell for you, smoked it. Then all you could do is punish them, but that did not get you paid. It just got you vexed. But the upside was, if you off-loaded to crews in those smaller deals, your profit was like three hundred per cent rather than the fifty per cent you might pick up dealing in bulk. You following?

The thing with Jamil was that he was buying in twenties at first but it wasn’t long before he was buying a whole kilo. But here was the other thing. He was buying bigger deals, but he was still paying twenties prices.

Okay, that must sound confusing.

Basically what you need to know is he was buying enough rock to get it at a third of the price but paying full price. Does that make sense?

So he was buying a kilo but paying for it as if he wasn’t buying in bulk, without asking for a discount. That was crazy. Why would you do that? Because as I said before, he had some brains.

On the outside he was saying that he didn’t really give that much of a shit whether he was making five grand a week or ten grand a week. To him it was all fucking pocket money anyway, he would say. Once he’d bought a ride and some garms and a few watches or whatever, there was a limited amount he could do with more cash anyway. He couldn’t stick it in a bank because people would want to know where he got it from. All he could really do with it was fill up his safety deposit boxes that he had. The rest was just hidden, literally under fucking mattresses, you get me.

He was just biding his time truth be told. That’s what he kept saying to anyone who would listen. He was making the contacts and setting himself up so when the time was right he could do it properly. For now, what he needed most was back-up. He knew he was paying top dollar for every kilo he bought. He also knew that meant that as far as the Olders were concerned, he was more or less laying golden eggs for them. And he knew that meant he was basically untouchable. It meant that he was protected.

Now it might be strange to hear that he was paying twice what he needed to. But really and truly that boy weren’t making no losses. He was still cutting, you know diluting the drug, and he was selling retail prices so he still made a margin. But for him it was worth it to be paying the extra because of who he was paying the extra to. It gave him proper protection. Ain’t nobody was going to mess him up if he was connected to them Olders as their main buyer.

This meant that whenever Jamil came across anybody who he couldn’t deal with alone, and by alone I mean using his mans Shilo and Binks, he could just pick up his phone and call in the Older tanks. This put him in a different league. Where the best the others could do if they was in trouble was to call up their mandems from their crews and cause a small-time gang fight, what Jamil could do was something else. He could face down a gang without even having to call it. Because he knew, and anyone who stood in his way knew, that if he called in the Olders they were going to settle the shit in old-timer style.

Now maybe I need to explain this a bit more to you if you don’t know about it. There is a big difference between some crew made up of boys having a stab-up in the park and a man’s crew.

In a boys’ gang, someone fronts you up and you maybe stab him. Then he goes back to his gang and his gang comes out looking for your gang. When they find them, there’s a riot. Everyone gets a good beating and then goes home. Minus teeth, or fingers or a gang member if they are really unlucky. Don’t get me wrong though, it is still scary shit. You do not want to be in the middle of something like that when it goes down because people are bringing swords and army knives and even shooters to them parties. And people do get hurt. It is serious.