Hard Time Read Online Free Page B

than be enemies.’
    ‘What’re you proposing?’ There are not many things in the world more reckless than an Englishman on GHB, yet I could always negotiate business shrewdly no matter how high I was.
    ‘We’re getting a lotta pills, and we figure we can give you a better price than what you’re paying.’
    ‘You don’t know what I’m paying. I’m familiar with your pills, and I don’t think the quality is there. I’m getting European pills. None of the coloured pills you guys are getting.’
    ‘Who the fuck do you think you are, talking shit about our pills?’ Mark yelled.
    Because of the GHB, Mark didn’t scare me. I viewed him as a monster but a funny one with a little brain.
    ‘Hey, Mark, calm down,’ Spaniard said.
    ‘Do you have any idea who Jimmy Moran is?’ Mark said, still fuming.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘Sammy the Bull,’ Mark said. ‘That’s who we work for. One call to him and we can have you taken out to the desert.’
    I was aware of Sammy the Bull from the news. He’d been a hit man for the Gambino Crime Family run by John Gotti, aka ‘the Teflon Don’. Later on, he became an FBI informant, confessed to killing 19 people, and helped the Feds put the Teflon Don away for life. Still, looking at those two in their shiny animal-print polyester shirts, I assumed they didn’t have as much power in Arizona as my associates in the New Mexican Mafia. I glanced at Rossetti. The look on his face said, Should I shoot that lunkhead or what?
    Almost imperceptibly, I shook my head at Rossetti.
    ‘There’s no need to say all that,’ Spaniard said. ‘Forgive Mark, Shaun. He gets upset real easy. He’s a bit of a hothead.’
    ‘I have no problems with you guys. But I really don’t care who you work for. You just moved in. Over the years, I’ve made friends with a lot of locals,’ I said, playing it like a gangster.
    ‘I hear you,’ Spaniard said, implying he knew of my connections. ‘But what if we can get you a better price on pills, would you be interested?’
    ‘I appreciate the offer, guys, but no thanks. And here’s why: before you guys moved into Ecstasy, the police pretty much ignored us. Now your runners are going around bragging they’re the biggest Ecstasy barons in the world. That’s brought considerable heat to the scene. And I’m not saying this to put you guys down but to give you a heads-up on what’s happening. Every weekend at the raves, we’ve got undercover cops and vehicles hanging around. We’ve got undercover vehicles taping who’s going in and out of the raves and driving through the parking lots taping licence plates. It’s no coincidence that the police moved in shortly after you guys. It’s not each other’s crews we need to beware of, it’s the cops.’
    ‘What about your security team?’ Spaniard asked.
    ‘What about it?’ I asked.
    ‘Will our runners have problems with your security guys jacking their pills?’
    ‘I don’t want to start a war with you guys. If my security grab someone and we find out they’re part of your crew, we’ll let them go. Ecstasy’s so hard to get and the demand so high, there’s enough of a market for us to coexist. But if I tell my security not to jack your runners, I don’t expect any problems from you guys for my runners in the Scottsdale scene.’
    ‘Sounds like a good agreement,’ Spaniard said, and shook my hand.
    Years later, when I became friends with Sammy the Bull’s son, Gerard Gravano, he said he’d headed a crew dispatched to kidnap me from The Crowbar in Phoenix. Wild Man and his girlfriend had fought that night, so we had left the club in a hurry. That’s why the Bull’s crew just missed us.
    The meltdown of my business interests came on fast. The NASDAQ, where I’d invested most of my money, crashed in the latter half of 2000. Some of my smugglers were arrested at airports in America and Europe. Most of my crew were doing so many drugs they were growing paranoid and scheming against each