blurring_the_edges_15_the_long_road birdmad You get all the way out to goodyear and make a phone call from a little mom-and-pop convenience store that has just closed for the night. It is still early, but for being just outside of the city, you feel like it's the middle of nowhere. MeeKrob answers, says he will send two people to pick you up from the store. One will ride with you to keep the delivery safe and one will ride with whoever brought you to provide the cash. Jimmy K is sitting in Greg's unholy Cadillac with the top down and smoking a cigarette. You bum one of the undoctored smokes frm Jimmy, nearly gasping from how harsh it is, fucking Pall Malls. Given your choice it's either Camels without filters or Gauloise. You take a pull off the soda bottle you picked up just before the store closed. You have three more of them in your backpack, next to the .380 and the two speed-loaders. If you were smart, you would have just said fuck it and picked up the two-liter. You are so gonna fuck up your kidneys with all that Mountain Dew and doesn't it maybe feel just a little counter-productive with the doses of junk that almost constantly seem to be in your system lately? Oh, well, fuck it, right? No one lives forever. MeeKrob's house is way the fuck up in Peoria, not too far from the Air Force base, but a lot of his guys are down here in Goodyear, Avondale and Tolleson, out in the agricultural territory. From experience, you know how easy it is to go unseen in a wide open space. Deep enough into the farm belt, no one sees or cares what goes on out in the expanses. Jones pulls up in a beat up old Pontiac LeMans, not unlike Wilkes' car, but a different color and not afflicted with the rust brought on by all that humidity and occasional sea air of being down near the gulf-coast The body looks straight and the only flaw you can see with the car from the standpoint of someone who appreciates a car like this is that the paint looks faded and grimy. Time and eighteen years of sunlight have definitely taken their toll. It surprises you to see that it is even carrying the old yellow and green license plates that say ARIZONA 73 across the top. The engine purrs and rumbles alternately. Jones is showing you that the car can and will run nicely with this little display. You don't know too much about cars, but you know from listening to these old machines when your dad used to work on them and go out to look at some of the classic cars he always dug as a hobby when a car runs well. Jones slaps the hood and makes a gesture like cutting his throat. Whoever is driving cuts the engine and steps out. A girl who, neither pretty nor not pretty steps out and goes around to the passenger side. She looks a little bit Asian, but not quite, you've seen Mexicanas and some Indian girls who have that look. She is wearing a plain grey T-shirt and pair of slightly baggy jeans. in the back of her waistband, you can see what looks like a Beretta tucked in. Jimmy pops the trunk of the caddy and steps out from behind the wheel, The girl in the pontiac reaches into the glove-box and you hear the trunk latch pop. All business, she holds up her hand, signaling you to wait right there. MeeKrob goes around to the trunk of the Caddy and has Jimmy open the suitcase. Business has been good and there is about four-hundred-thousand in the case. If you cut MeeKrob in on the "dealer-mark-up" you all stand to be able to still gross a profit of just over a million and a quarter total, since the shortage he plans on creating with this little stunt will drive the price way the fuck up. Jones nods his approval and the girl gets out, walks you over to the trunk and introduces you to a few kilos of "china white" you take the toothpick attachment off the pocketknife on your keychain and sort through the packages before you randomly grab and jab a bag, scooping out the tiniest trace onto your fingernail and snorting it. It's just enough to take the edge off and good enough to let you know that the shit is on the level. Jimmy produces a wireless phone that looks like a brick with an antenna and Jones tells the girl, "Marisol, the phone, please." The girl reaches into the car and produces the exact same phone. "Alex, Marisol, i don't think me and Jimmy here are gonna have a problem getting to my place on the northside, but you two be careful. The Mexicans know you're coming, and some of them might know the car. Watch your asses." Marisol tosses you the keys and shuts the trunk. "You know where we're going, so YOU drive," Marisol says, with a tone in her voice that sounds like playful sarcasm. It is 7:15 in the evening and here in the first weekend in November it is chilly and dark. Marisol throws Metallica's "Master of Puppets" tape in the stereo and you are moving east along Buckeye Road. You cut north at 126th avenue and break east again on McDowell through Avondale. Marisol objects, but you point out that someone in the car that has been trailing you along the empty road for the last two miles is less likely to do anything in the middle of a little place where the cops are always near the main drag. You drive non-chalantly along McDowell until you hit 99th avenue at which point, you are in Tolleson and don't always know where the cops are. You break south and do a little residential driving counting on your knowledge of the back-alleys and side streets to get you back out onto the road and maybe buy you enough time to risk the I-10 eastbound. "Hey, Marisol," you instruct her in the measured demeanor of a man determined to swat the fly that has landed on his nose, "do me a favor, get your gun ready and take mine out of the backpack on the floor. This might get tricky." You loop around through some of the little side streets and make your way back out to 87th Avenue and Buckeye. If you can get to the freeway at 75th, you'll be fine as there is enough traffic and population that only the craziest motherfucker would risk attracting too much attention. Look behind you, Alex, that Toyota is still following. Looks like four guys, and by the looks of it, even from a distance, one of them is sporting the stupidest-looking mullet haircut you have ever seen. Shit. It's not the Ngos, it's those fucking Mexican cowboys. "¡Hijo de una chingada madre!" ["son of a fucking bitch!"] you whisper to yourself, knowing that you had better figure out a really good, creative way to lose these guys because if they get close enough, having too many people around might not stop them unless some of those people are cops, and you don't want them asking you any questions or your whole little charade is just fly-shit in the breeze. Think fast. They're gaining on you. You cut back up at 83rd, heading north again, this time you don't stop until you are right by the Pavillion and you hook a hard and fast turn west. Breaking around as much as you can, you make your way back around to 75th Avenue by cutting through some of the more twisty streets by your uncle Carlos's house. "Hmm," you think to yourself while you and Marisol sweat it out in an unlit cul-de-sac, "If this wasn't a really lousy time, i'd go pay my tîo a visit." You see the Camry pass and wait for a minute. No luck, they've spotted you. Tear ass, Now! Your fear of who is after you is confirmed when they passed by, in a statement of pure tackiness, there is a giant mirror-tint decal of a cowboy hat with Olde-English lettering that reads SINALOA on the back windshield. You try to shake them while still heading east, doing your best not to stray far enough north that you end up in Glendale and risk a definite cop-stop. Bad goes to worse when you just happen to pull up behind Tran Ngo's VW Fastback at the corner of 51st avenue and Thomas. The man in the VW looks in his rearview and recognizes both you and Marisol. Darting into the left turn lane, you get around him and nearly get T-boned in the intersection running the red-light, still heading east on Thomas. When you get to the six-points intersection of 27th Avenue, Thomas and Grand, you break to the southeast on Grand but hook back up. It dawns on you that braving the thought of Glendale cops maybe the only way to lose these guys. By the time you reach Glendale's city limits, you are freaking out. It has taken nearly an hour just to get where it would normally have taken you just over 20 minutes if you had taken the right streets at the right speeds. After an eternity of trying to bait Tran and the Mexicans into moving too fast along Glendale Avenue, they seem to shake off. You also find it interesting that both know the other is there, but are thankful that both sides hate each other enough that they are keeping their distance from each other as well. You lose them. but by now, you and Marisol are so paranoid about who may come out of the woodwork next to chase you down, it takes you another three hours of side-street navigation and other over-worried maneuvering to get to 136th Street and Bell Road all the way over on the complete opposite side of the Valley. You are so wound up, that when you get back to Jimmy K's house, he laughs at you for taking so long and you decide to forgo your usual distaste for the things and ask Jimmy if he happens to have any fresh needles handy. As Marisol and Jones leave, she breaks her cold, rather businesslike demeanor and gives you a thumbs-up gesture and a fairly cute smirk. "Jeesus!" you hear her exclaim as they get in the cab that Jimmy has called for them, "That was fucking intense!" The needle hits home and you feel the world melt away when the opiate rush enters your system and does it's magic boogie all over your cereberal cortex. This, you think, as you slide into your little nod, was definitely worth the trouble. 030417 what's it to you? who go blather from