His complete list of rules, for the curious: - Always have a job. And get the best one there is. It's a lesson. Drive rentals but make sure you've got in-state plates as often as possible. Because someone will always try to pay you less. Work hard to focus on a few simple goals. Not as good as Taibbi's non-fiction, but not bad. Petty sure the Huey Carmichael co-author is a fiction to let Taibbi use AAVE without justifying himself, just as the idea of of it being a novel is way to get around the rigours of fact checking if it'd been a journalistic work.
But you know what, who cares? It was an interesting read. Aaron Kheifets. Couldn't put it down. It was fascinating, incredibly insightful and very well-written. I loved it. In this subversive how-to guide from the firsthand experience of a never-caught drug dealer, Matt Taibbi weaves an impressively coherent narrative.
His anonymous collaborator, whom he names Huey Carmichael, lays out his code of precepts over the course of genuinely fascinating tales from his adventures. While sympathetic and likable, Huey occasionally reminds you that he is in fact a drug dealer, and the rudimentary code of honor he lives by is hardly the equivalent of real morality.
Taibbi, a political writer, found Carmichael's political involvements too interesting not to include, but it felt out of place in a book about drug dealing. Nevertheless, a pure page-turner, this one. Kshitij Dewan. It was fun! Michael Guzman. An interesting look from the inside of a mid-high level marijuana dealer. It doesn't lay out the business plan entirely but rather provides basic rules on how not to get caught by police.
The ending was strange and seemed rushed. Ben Pothecary. Loved it. I would recommend this book to any good and earnest person who is seeking a career in the military or in law enforcement. Definitely goes into to the list of media I've consumed that people will look at me weird for. Why read a book on dealing drugs when I have not nor plan on committing such a crime?
Or why, as a Christian, I read Proverbs or the Epistles. They're doctrines or philosophies on how to carry yourself and be successful. They have their specific areas of study war, business, morals, closeness with God, etc. Nearly every Sun Tzu book has an introduction by some guy saying how the rules in "The Art of War" apply not just to war but to business as well.
But family members in real life are liabilities. I had a cousin named Buddy. His real name was Darnell, but people in his neighborhood started calling him Buddy after this ugly, flea-infested dog he had. I swear to god that dog had more sores than hair, more fleas than follicles.
People started busting on him about that dog, naming him after it. It caught on. He was out of St. Aunt Sonja treated me like a son of her own. We were tight, which is why I made a mistake and brought in her son. Buddy was a street dealer out there, a younger guy. He thought he was a real dealer until he met me. Then he saw what real money and real product looked like. But a lot of guys are like that. Buddy thought he knew how to sell weed.
Then I let him in. Made him overconfident. But then all these California farmers got in this situation, and I suddenly had to unload a lot of product. I had no choice. Louis was a market I knew I needed. I wear a nice polo, a nice pair of jeans, clean shoes.
I make even shitty jobs like that work for me. Experience is my education and education is my advantage. Be friendly. When Buddy showed up, I worried right away he was going to be a problem. He thought he was too big time for that, even though he was still only twenty-four. He insisted on being in charge, in the rear car. We were packing up the caravan and I could see Buddy smoking a joint in the front seat of his car, right out there on the streets of Oakland, before he started driving.
He smiled, picked up the gym bag, opened the door, and slid out of the car. Any resemblance to real people in this story is coincidental. He thinks his lawyers are fucking him on the deal and always wants to tell you all about it. You can lose an hour if you let him get started. The minute I put my first fifty pounds in its trunk, that Toyota paid for itself.
Anybody who uses phones, they're going down. Phone tapping is the most basic technique cops use. What they're not on is the encryption. We were using Blackberries back then. Having Brutus as a neighbor is a relationship that cuts both ways. He keeps an eye on my place. But it took a long time to get him to stop asking for weed on the phone.
Not much of an improvement, but a step in the right direction. He reaches over and slips fifty in my pocket. Close to the truth, but not quite. Out in the big West Coast city where I live, you buy what they call grower's pounds, and grower's pounds are always over a half an ounce to an ounce.
A traditional East Coast pound is grams. A grower's pound might be , something like that. It's a heavy pound. But I just take the extras off all those grower's pounds, and that's what I give to him. But I wait a day. I let Brutus go back to his house. I let night fall. I go out for a drive in the morning. I come back. I see him, like he often is, on his front steps, doing jailhouse pushups on a diagonal — feet on the sidewalk, hands on the stoop. I let him look up and see me pull into the driveway.
He gets up off his porch again and starts limping over again with that same big smile on his face. Brutus cries every time I see him, because he gets so emotional about how happy he is that I help him.
He used to sell crack, big time. He went to prison a while back, because he got caught with a couple ounces of it. But he convinced the prosecutor that he was a user and not a seller, so they reduced his time. White friends when they get caught dealing pull this, and they get rehab. Brutus used it to get a reduced prison sentence. Brutus has got a past. Armed robberies, home invasions. That can be a good thing if I keep the relationship right.
I think he smokes a little crack now. Not good signs. The only reason I give him weed is so he doesn't starve. He doesn't work, and on hard times. So I'd rather give him a couple of ounces every month, and have him happy and docile, instead of starving and looking. The guy lives across the street.
He sees me. So I make the best of it. And again, played right, there are benefits to the relationship. August, There are three other guys in the car, all with stockings on their laps, ready to go. And they know I have a gun. Way too much power for a high school kid to have. And one day, during summer school, these guys were like, "Man, we're hurting. We really need some help. Come on man, if you can't set us up, at least take us on a lick.
See, I was living in the suburbs by then, and only came home to the West Ward periodically. We call him Ro for short. He presses me and I make a bad decision. They might start to get curious about where I keep my own money.
So we go, from the Ivy Hill projects out toward Short Hills. There are four of us. Romeo is in the back with the big silver gun, tapping it on his thigh. It ends when he says it ends. Think Kimbo Slice in high school. He jumped out of a building in a juvenile detention facility, gotten ghost and run off.
We wait until sundown before setting off on a random trip around the New Jersey suburbs. We have no plan at all. The problem is, Short Hills gets pretty slow after dark. We roll through some residential neighborhoods and there are literally no people on the sidewalks, no one in driveways. We keep driving. Finally, to my relief, Ro gives up on Short Hills.
We drive around for a while and end up in what I think is a crappy little suburb called Mountainside. In the rearview mirror I can see Ro looking anxious as we turn into a residential area. Finally I park up the street.
Ro puts the stocking on his face, leaps out with the gun, and runs up on this woman. She has to be about thirty-five. Pink fleece, lycra pants, highlighted hair, the full-on suburban mom uniform.
He runs up on her and puts the gun right to her head. She just looks back at him and shouts — I mean shouts :. Ro, a little surprised, pulls the gun away and cocks that thing back, puts it back at her head. Try me if you want. The minute I see that, my heart starts racing beats a minute. I also know what hollow tips are designed to do. And that thing has a hair trigger. Worse, Ro has the least sense among us, and the least to lose. He probably already has bodies on him. My mind is flying in different directions.
Mom hesitates again. I never actually see her give the money up, but she apparently does. I can hear the others in the car whistling with relief. The lady has clearly called the cops quick because as we turn onto route 22, I can already see the cruisers zooming down the other side of the divided highway, right toward us.
I see them coming, then look up in the rearview mirror and over at Curtis and realize the other guys still have their masks on! What fools, I think. The cop cars come and, amazingly, drive right past the only car on the road, which happens to contain a Black driver and three guys in masks. Finally the others rip off their masks and start throwing them out the car windows. Rule: Never trade minutes for years. You think you want to hurry sometimes, but hurrying is what will get you caught, so lose that minute if you have to.
I took it from him. My father was and is a working man. Had his own Century 21 storefront and everything. He had a tough upbringing, coming up out of East St. When he was six, his own father got his brains blown out, being a street guy. So my old man grew up tough, proud, and strict, determined to show everyone that he could make it straight. My mom is a straight arrow, too. She worked in a bank. They were both working in a bank once upon a time, when the place got robbed.
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