blurring_the_edges_14_crosstown_traffic birdmad Jimmy K and Henry, ever the bargain hunters, have made a better deal on a purer quantity of H than what you all have been getting from the Ngo Brothers over by Maryvale. Sitting at a table by the bar in the lounge at the Hyatt up by the Ranch, you drink a diet Coke with a big slice of lemon in it to kill the bitter film left by the sweetener. The man himself has come all the way from West Hollywood, half Black-half Thai with a name nobody as stoned as the lot of you can pronounce. With this in mind, he takes no offense to being called MeeKrob Jones. You can't help but laugh at the thought of this oddly tall man being nicknamed for a shrimp dish. Over drinks and a few snacks, he tells you that the Ngo brothers are on his shit list and he is cutting them out of the deal from now on. "If they weren't relatives, i'd have to kill them, but then my mother's family would never speak to me again. I'm telling you, it's rough." "So, what's the deal?" You ask him. "Between my people in Mexico and my people out by Pattaya, i had a bumper-crop kind of year. That's bad for prices. Too much supply, even with big demand," he says. "Tell me more, MeeKrob." "Easy enough, I sell out Freddy and Tran and their cut of the shipment. This takes them out of the game and takes some of the product off the street and into the police incinerator. Everybody panics and the price goes up." "No offense, MeeKrob," Tony starts in, "but that's a pretty fucked up thing to do." "None taken, you're right, but what else am i gonna do? Anyway, here's where I need you guys. You've already shown a better head for this shit than the Ngos, problem is that Freddy was tight with some Sinaloan fuckers that i'm not to keen on dealing with one way or the other. They don't like that the coke trade is slowing down so much lately and they want in on the Horse market. They know i have a back-up shipment coming through town and if they can keep it from getting where it needs to go, they can make a ton of money by having the only supply in town, that deep black-tar shit they bring up from down south." "So, what are you telling us?" MeeKrob explains that the plan is to get a carload of heroin and cash to a friend of his up on the far northeast end of the Valley, the only trouble is that all of his peolple are easy to spot and that just like the cops are taking down Freddy and Tran as this conversation is taking place, the guys from Sinaloa played the anonymous tip game and have the cops out looking for his usual mules. "What i need you guys to do is to meet one of my boys way down in Goodyear and take the car we tell you to take, all the way up to 136th Street and Bell. I don't know if anyone knows what the car looks like, so you will have to be careful because it won't just be cops looking for you." Your last couple of long-distance calls between you and Elena have left you feeling in a reckless mood. "I'm in." you say, without hesitation or even blinking. It doesn't bother you that trying to get up through the south and west sides of town is going to put you dead in the grasp of just about any and every bunch of low-rent gangsters who might want a piece of this action. You can't wait. Has anyone told you you're crazy, Alex? 030415 ... Anjel Christabell Now and Then There is no feeling like empty, empty, empty There is no feeling like ugly, ugly, ugly There is no feeling like jealous, jealous, jealous There is no feeling in my entire left side There is no feeling like wanting, wanting, wanting There is no feeling like needing, needing, needing There is no feeling like helpless, helpless, helpless There is no feeling from which I cannot hide 030430 what's it to you? who go blather from