Where it all began

I am a criminal, a gangster, a thug, a hoodlum. It is what I am and who I am. It is all I have ever been and I know no other life. I am a professional criminal, I am calculating, cunning and devious.and I would do it all over again.

The first time I committed a crime I was about 4 or 5.

I remember stealing money from my uncle’s pocket as he lay sleeping in my grandmothers house. He was passed out drunk and I saw a few dollar bills stickin’ out of his pockets and I remember taking a bunch and hiding them in my room.

I told a priest about it once at confession when I felt remorseful. He suggested that I give the money back. Instead I said 10 Hail Mary’s and disregarded what the priest had said.

It just didn’t make sense to me to do something wrong then have to do 2 rights ( confession & returning the cash ) to fix my one wrong.

Since that day I had no remorse for anything else that I had ever done.

I haven’t been to confession much either.

As I grew older my crimes went from stealing money to stealing bicycles, to breaking open coin operated machines at the chinese coin operated laundromat down the road. The old chinese couple that ran the joint would be tending to their business adjacent to the laundromat most of the time anyway, leaving us to break into the machines and steal the quarters. I never went into their other business or store or whatever the hell it was, I remember it was a dark hole in the wall and people came in and out, I remember the smell of citronella incense and I remember the hanging straw curtain divider. I remember the people that went in and out yet and no one ever knew what went on behind that curtain yet myself and my brother had our own thoughts. We thought at 1st it was a shady place that hid stuff, then as I grew older I realized that the laundromat was a front for something far more illegal than I ever imagined.

The trucks out back that came and went at all hours of the day and night told me a story.

But thats another matter all together, it was after that when I realized that stolen goods were being moved in and out of that dinghy Chinese store, that I became excited when hearing about gangsters like Capone and Dillinger, I remember how exhilarating it felt to want to do something that meant going against the grain, breaking the law, taking something that didn’t belong to you.

Make no doubt my pops beat the crap out of me a few times as I was growing up.

My brother more or less stayed on the straight but no amount of beatings could ever keep me straight and narrow.

I never made it to Juvenile hall, however I did time totaling 4 years between the ages of 22 and 34 for crimes ranging from armed robbery, drug smuggling, racketeering, gun running, extortion, assault to attempted murder.

I was never in jail for longer than 4 months. I was always well behaved and I always had money.

I had no desire to be a petty criminal forever and often searched for the big score, I made my moves carefully as I grew older and went onto bigger things than ripping off a handful of quarters from washing machines. Much bigger.

By the age of 40, I had made a fortune.

Maybe this blog is my confession, because man, I know that I have gotten away with some mean shit in my time. Lets just say that luck’s been riding with me for a long long time.

I am 42 years old and I have every thing that I want.
My Ill gotten gains gave me what I need to sleep at night.
Massive success.

I do not fear for my life. I do not fear jail and I do not fear death.

I retired a rich man and I have no regrets.

These are my crimes.

Cars to Mexico

When I was about 17 I got a gig driving cars across the border into Mexico.

The cars, mostly brand new cars with less than 1000 miles on em, were stolen from dealerships all around the country, resprayed, new papers were made for the cars and driven across the border. Mexicans were paying cash dollars for those cars and they weren’t asking too many questions.

While my drop off was in Ensenada we used the cover of spring break to party into Mexico together with thousands of party mad students from all over the US heading off to exotic places like Cancun & Acapulco.

I did this for 3 years.

Other drivers drove the cars to California, myself and a couple of other guys then were told where to pick the cars up from then drive em across the border. Couple of times from LA, coupla times from San Bernadino once from Freemont but mostly from San Diego cause its a short run across the border. You got a bag full of food, a dodgy passport and a tank full of gas. you drove the cars across the border by yourself. Drop the cars off at Ensenada. Catch a ride back across the border in another (legal) car together with the other guys. You were expected to do 2 cars a day for a week. Anything more than that was going to raise eyebrows, someone was going to recognise you.

Spring Break was the perfect cover, what happened with the cars from there was not my concern. What was my concern was the $150 per car I was getting paid. You got at the end of every day once you were back in the US.

The money was good but it didn’t last very long. And the gig was too short, one week a year wasn’t enough. I gave that gig up only in my 3rd year after the driver who drove the guys back across the border was nabbed for DUI towards the end of the week.

Stupid ass.

I had made good money that year cuz we had a 3 day headstart as well as having made some prior cash driving from Fresno down to San Diego in the weeks prior to Spring Break.

A couple of us bailed and headed for cancun to live out 2 days in the sun frolicking with young nubile women.

I made my own way back across the border and didn’t bother collecting the $150 that was owed to me. A gut feeling told me to let it go.

The next year I didn’t make contact with the ring.

I was too busy selling stolen tyres in Carson City.

gee

I traveled quite a bit one year. I got to see quite alot of this big beautiful country. From California to Nevada to Arizona to Colorado and up and down the Midwest,  courtesy of 2 Italian nut jobs, Lucio and Carlo, that secured themselves a scam that wasn’t really illegal as much as immoral.

Lucio had a connection from Bangladesh who was importing cherry wood furniture, Persian rugs, tapestries and paintings from Pakistan and was trying to sell the stuff from a home depot kind of place. The problem was that the funiture was good quality but the rugs weren’t proper persians (although to the average man in street they looked like expensive works of art) the tapestries too and the paintings? well no one had heard of the artists. Most of the paintings had frames that were worth more than the actual prints.

So Lucio and Carlo somehow came up with a plan to buy the stuff from the Bangladeshi guy (for the life of me I can’t remember his name) and sell it at auctions. But the auctions were rigged.

They packed up a truck and set up auctions on the side of the road, outside malls, in school halls wherever they were allowed to and they’d set up a canopy, put some chairs out and start an auction.

Well it wasn’t as clear cut as that. It took them a while to work out a proper strategy. They failed a few times but then a chance meeting with a seasoned “Gee” called Luis set them on the right track ( Or wrong path, depending on which side of the railway tracks you are standing. )

A “Gee” is a guy that sits in the audience at an auction and bids on items to raise the price. “Gees” are employed by the auctioneers. The unsuspecting public don’t know who the “Gees” are as they look like serious buyers. The old lady in the big flower hat, the young couple in love looking as though they are purchasing stuff for their new house, The quiet man in the back with the yellow teeth and the cheap wristwatch, the middle aged couple in the front row. No one knows. The gees know each other but don’t talk or acknowledge each other during an auction. They are there to create an atmosphere and encourage other people to buy.

The barker knows who the gees are and if the barker does not get the price he wants on a certain item, he “sells” the item to one of the gees by pretending to see them bid and taking a bid from them.
Why are they called “Gees” ?

Because at most auctions the gees are experts, they chat to other people telling them that this Artist is known in Africa and that Persian is one of the better ones they have seen and not even the tapestries they saw in Moscow on their last trip to Russia can compare to the quality of the tapestries on sale at the auction. The gees also land up “buying” most of the items when the barker doesnt get the price he wants. Real buyers tend to think “Gee he must be rich” , “Gee they bought a lot” , “Gee he knows about persian rugs / Art / European Tapestries”

It’s all bullshit anyway but to the average Joe, its legit and they land up paying thousands of dollars for crap. Well not crap really but the prices are definitely hiked up.

Luis taught Carlo the tricks and I met Luis after dating his daughter. Luis needed a gee one weekend and asked me to stand in. Luis said I was natural and asked me if i wanted to do it full time. The money was good. I said yes. Thats how I met Carlo and Lucio.

Lucio scared me, well he scared most people. He was quiet and serious and could stare through you.
Carlo fancied himself as an auction barker guy and would often do the auctions himself. Hyped up on crystal meth, the man could make you dizzy with his fast talking, so much so that your head would spin and your check book would flop open.

He would grin this awful yellow and black toothed grin while taking your money.

Luis became their right hand man and showed them how to get it right using an itinerary and would often drive to locations ahead securing a spot to have an auction, pass out flyers, put posters up to advertise the upcoming auction.

The truck would then arrive at the location and the auction would start.

The summer months were the best for this as people were on holiday and holiday = money spending season.

I spent a summer travelling up and down the California coast with Luis and the auctions. Free food, free accomodation, free holiday and got paid for it.

We made a fat packet in the midwest, the Nebraska farmers were quite taken with “them dang furen carpits an’ other fancy thangs.”

It came to a rather abrupt end when Luis’ daughter caught me cheating on her and Luis wasn’t too impressed with me and decided to come after me.

I landed up doing 3 months for battery and aggrevated assault after I beat his head in with tyre iron.

into the green

Shortly after I turned 23, I found myself in LA where I met this stoner called Greg, this highly intelligent dude who had more degrees than your average rocket scientist. He was initially from South Africa, and had come to surf the Californian surf and decided to stay. He was quite handy with a guitar too and after a motorbike accident left him unable to surf properely he made his money by gigging at bars and pubs.

I often asked him why he didn’t pursue a career as a lawyer or something in computers but Greg’s only answer was that “the corporate world is evil maaan” and would rant that the corporate world is the center of capitalism and how it should topple because the average man suffers and so on. Highly passionate about it too, so I stopped asking. His arguments made my head hurt.

We often toked a joint together before or after his gigs and one night out of the blue he asked if I knew anything about growing hydroponics. Not that I even knew what he was talking about. To me, weed was weed.

He went off on this tangent about how hydroponics was the absolute shit and it cost a fortune which is why he wanted to rather grow his own. So my business brain kicked in and I forked out some cash so Greg could set up his grow house.

Within a few months we had a rich crop of probably the best weed I have ever smoked.

This shit was like smoking serious acid, 1 tiny bud was all it took to get you and 2 or 3 friends off your faces.

Soon word got around that Greg had the best weed in town and by the end of that year, Greg and I were coining it, we had come into the green so to speak.

We were making close on $25 000 each a month at the height of our game.

Being the smart bloke that he was, Greg suggested that we stop being greedy and shut down the operation or move it to another state and start fresh. Fact of the matter is that we could become very rich, or we could become very long time cell mates. The risk of getting caught was starting to increase , we had a massive client base and people from neighboring states were coming down to LA to come and buy Greg’s stuff. It was about to go out of control.

I wasn’t keen on moving because I had met this gorgeous young filly and I wanted to see what was going to happen with her.

After much deliberation, it was decided that we would dissolve our partnership and Greg would move on.

Since then I have seen Greg a few times, still looks the same, except his beard is a lot longer and his guitar is always something shiny and new. Never in one place for more than a year, Greg moved his operation from state to state.

Last I heard Greg was occupying himself playing gigs for free. Business must be good.

I, on the other hand, had started investigating the cocaine market.

I was about to make my first million.

Sifting through the trash

Being young and having made more money in 9 months than most men twice my age make in 5 years, you tend to go out and do stuff that you wouldn’t normally do, like gamble alot of it away. Not that I was a degenerate gambler, but I did find my way to Vegas. I didn’t work. I just spent money, stayed in fancy hotels, chased women and eventually found myself playing high stakes No Limit Texas Holdem with a rag band of misfits, thieves, smugglers, criminals, low lifes, cheats and con men. As long as you kept your eye on the cards the whole time, you could actually enjoy yourself and make a few bucks.

Every once in a while at our weekly game, one of the guys would be caught dealing from the bottom of the deck or doing a 2nd card deal and tempers would flare, voices would get raised, threats would be made, someone would be given a black eye and some bruised ribs but then everyone would settle down again and carry on playing sans the cheat who was always welcome back the following week anyway.

The aforementioned smugglers were a Columbian, Diego, and his American “partner” Jeff. Jeff was in fact just a lackey.
A glorified driver, deck hand and ship mate. His bad teeth told me what his vice was. He reminded me of Carlo the auction barker.
The two were from Florida and ran their little business around the keys. They worked a week, maybe 2 weeks a month then would come up to Vegas and blow the money they made on whores, booze and poker, then return to the keys to get involved in some other dodgy affair.
Diego owned a speed boat, apparently one hell of a fast mother fucker. They used the speed boat to make runs between the keys and down to Cuba, shipping all sorts of contraband.

When Diego wasn’t around there was nothing better that Jeff liked to do than to shoot his mouth off about what they were up to. This week it was contraband cigarettes, last week it was Scotch Whiskey, and next week it will be something else.

I enjoyed listening to Jeff flap his lips about their escapades, and I would often pour his whiskey just a little stiffer than everyone else’s. The stiffer the whiskey, the looser the lips.

Diego would often come, play a few rounds of the blinds and then leave Jeff in our care while he went to visit his local squeeze. The other guys would often just ignore Jeff when he went on about this deal and that run and all the rest of it.

But not me.

I was learning their game.

All I had to do was separate the bullshit from the truth and Jeff was a gold mine of information.

Every once in a while a man has to sift through the trash to find something of importance.

One week, they came in as usual, but Diego kept glaring at Jeff the entire evening. Jeff was obviously uncomfortable, he refused his drink and settled for a soda.

Something was up and I wanted to find out what was going on. I acted cool and as calm as usual and went about telling jokes and making the guys laugh. Eventually Diego left, but Jeff still looked as nervous as hell.

I tried offering him a whiskey or two to loosen him up, see what was up, but he was steadfast.

I had to resort to what I had thought about being plan B a long time ago.

At the end of the night, I walked out with Jeff and when we were out of ear shot of the other guys, I called him aside and said to him “Jeff, can you keep a secret ?”

Jeff shuffled uneasily while looking at the ground a bit and nodded “Yeah Dave, I can”

I took him to where my car was parked and asked him to climb in, we took a drive to the motel that I was staying at (I banked a fat portion of my money from the hydroponic weed gig so I could bankroll my next venture and kept a small chunk for spending which had started running low, so I resorted to cheaper digs)

When we arrived, I produced what I knew would bring a smile to his face, Crystal Meth.

Jeff looked confused.

I spoke softly, quickly and convincingly, telling him how I had scored a dealer who was apparently making the finest Meth ever and I was looking to make a fortune from it, however not having ever tried Meth, I had no idea of the quality, hence why I approached him. Jeff thought about it and asked me how I knew he liked Meth, I looked at him as though he were stupid and reminded him of some time one night a few months back when he told me that Meth was his weapon of choice.

“You said those EXACT words Jeff, ‘my weapon of choice’, I liked that saying thats why I remembered it.”

Truth is that he often used that saying, but just not in the context that I said.

I was so convincing I started wondering if he actually HAD in fact told me, but I remembered that it was the first thing I noticed about him, the teeth.

He grinned his yellow and black toothed grin, and happily dug out a glass pipe from his pocket and got stuck into the Meth.

I’m not entirely sure what the fuck happened next but I was instantly Jeff’s best friend.

Within an hour I knew all I had to know.

And it was I was hoping for.

Cocaine.