Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

So anyway I came back here and started working for the guy. That was about four years ago and I have to admit that Escalera was good to me at first. He worked mostly out of Queens at the time and I was staying at one of his apartments in Jackson Heights. The Colombians were everywhere in that area. That’s Little Colombia basically and they controlled almost all the selling in that area. Anyway, they weren’t crazy about E let’s put it that way. This was mostly because they knew he wasn’t Colombian, but also because of the way we made inroads into their business. Okay the way it works, I know you know this, is that at the level we were at we have someone getting us our stuff from Santo Domingo whereas the Colombians are obviously getting their stuff from Colombia somewhere and bringing it in through Tijuana. Now we’re turning around and selling our stuff at a hundred percent usually to one of these little street guys like Red Bags. Now I don’t know how, but E was able to get a great price from his guy in the DR. So in turn we were able to undercut the Colombians’ price and get more and more of the street guys to come to us including even some Colombians. Well this pissed the Colombians off because now they have to either drop their prices or convince us to raise ours. They decided they weren’t going to do neither. Instead they kidnap Escalera so they could give him their business proposition: either get the fuck out of Queens or start wearing your tongue through your throat. You know about that right? Well let me say that none of us had ever seen Escalera so freaked out. He was like let’s get the hell out of Queens I don’t need this shit. Suddenly it was Manhattan all up in his brain and that’s where our people are, blazay-blazay, and we needed to get over there and all that.

So that’s what we did and basically I was in charge of setting it all up. I had heard of Red Bags and maybe even met him once or twice. He was famous. Basically you heard about him because he was considered a violent fuck and he was like huge, his physics I mean. Also he was the only black guy you ever saw with fucking red hair and freckles. I thought he was stupid because basically those violent guys are. But I’ll say this and I’ll give the man credit. For his level of dealer, like those street guys with no foreign connection, he moved more than anyone in Manhattan really. So while some piece-of-shit street guys are buying maybe an eighth a week he would buy at least a kilo maybe two in that time. He could move that much because he controlled a bunch of spots around 127th Street and the reason he controlled all them spots was that people were afraid of him because of shit he had doned in the past. You have to understand that from our end we don’t give a fuck how many spots he has or how he got them just like our guy in the DR doesn’t give a fuck who Red Bags is. All we know is this guy has a lot of spots to constantly re-up and he stays clean, doesn’t pick up cases. What that means is if you get him to go with you, you’ve got a great head start to doing business in Manhattan and shit. And I knew that he was having problems with his guy and was looking for someone else. I also knew from looking into it that his current supplier was low-key and not someone you had to worry would step to us and trip out all violent and shit if we took one of his guys.

One of the big advantages we had was that we were like new and unknown being we were coming from Queens and whatnot. E was able to portray it like we had stood up to the bad big Colombians and now were looking to branch out to Manhattan when obviously that wasn’t the case at all and we were actually running for our lives. I give him credit for that though and we were able to shift to Manhattan and take over Red Bags and a couple other minor guys without any real problems. This was the best time. E knew he wouldn’t be where he was if I hadn’t had set up the whole Red Bags/Manhattan thing so he gave me a lot of responsibility and I basically answered only to him and this other guy who’s no longer around. Everything was peaceful too. On our end anyway. I mean Red Bags is a Blood as you know, he’s like a Four Star General and shit. That’s where the whole red thing comes from. And the hair too I guess. That and the way he packages his shit obviously. Anyway he’s a big Blood so there was always some mad violent shit going on with that between him and other blacks but that didn’t really affect us in any way. We stayed out of that shit and all we knew is every Saturday he was at E’s buying, like I said, one or two kilos and paying in full and in cash. So because of that it was all good you know what I mean?

We was making money fist over hand and that should have been the most important thing but fucking E had to be stupid about it. There was this whack girl. Okay she was amazing. I’m serious man you should have seen this chick. She was all that and then some more let’s say. And I took up with her or whatever but the truth is she never had any interest in Escalera from what she tells me. So that was the beef basically and, I don’t know, maybe I should have made a better effort to smooth things under but I didn’t and things just kept getting worser and worser between us. Next thing I know I’m being knocked down and shit and I’m not making any money. So I admit it. I basically went over his back or behind his head or whatever and went to Santo Domingo to talk to the guy who was getting us our stuff, to see if he would front me if I split from Escalera and whatnot. The truth is I didn’t have the money to pull off a move like that so I needed this guy to hook me up. He wouldn’t and when it got back to Escalera he flipped out. He got all in my face and shit. Then he also started talking shit about the fact I had used once or twice even though we both knew that was bullshit and he was just using it as an excuse. He was basically saying, well if you’re going to use you can’t be trusted with anything important and shit and junkies are the ones doing hand to hands on the street so next thing I know he’s talking to Red Bags on my behalf and I’m busted down to some bullshit four-hundred-dollar-a-week street seller working for Red Bags, but with supposably special status because I’m supposed to still be with E and whatnot. The whole thing was bullshit because it was really about that girl I’m telling you you should have seen. But the truth was I had gone behind his nose so I had to take it like a man. I had made my move and failured you know? The truth also is that even though I had been making sweet money for over a year, I was spending it just as fast as I could get my hands on it, mostly on this girl I’m talking about, and because of that I couldn’t really afford to tell E to go to hell and fuck off. I just had to like gargle my pride as they say, kiss his ass, and take whatever crumbs he threw at me.

So now I’m like the only white guy working for Red and he trains his guys to use crackheads and shit to do a big part of the sales for like a dollar or whatever. I hated that shit but I did it figuring it was just a moment of time before I would be back to where I was before and where I belonged. I knew no one could a did what I didded for E better than me. As far as Red is concerned he treated me well because everybody knew I was Escalera’s cousin or whatever. This went on for like six months or something and I’m doing street sales basically in that entire area of 127th Street until the day I got popped. Some fucking guy, I knew he was a fucking cop. I don’t know why I went through with that shit. I’ll never forget, I mean what kind of construction worker wears white sneakers? I felt like an idiot. Deep down I think I knew he was a cop but I was so sick of the whole shit I almost didn’t care. When I got arrested I kind of figured Escalera would let be-gones be gone and come to my defense. I was broke. I knew the deal. A guy like Red Bags, if one of his guys, someone who works for him, gets arrested, he’s not going to lift a finger to help them. I mean nothing, no bail, no paid lawyer, nothing. Everybody knows that. That’s just the way it is at that level.