(This is the second part of a slightly fictionalised account of a real Jamaican drug smuggler.)

Invoking the name of the Boss, Herbie made a number of phone calls to the ‘posse’ before going to bed. His last act was locking off his cell phone to prevent disruptions.

Nothing was urgent, nothing important was his bedtime mantra.

When he woke, he began cleaning the apartment, stopped for breakfast, continued for about an hour, then then went out to do a minor shopping.

Anyone who saw him wouldn’t look twice. There was nothing special about Herbie.  When he return ‘home’, he made lunch, then relaxing in front of the televion, switched on his cell phone. Every corner of “The Bosses” kingdom was reporting in.

Bigga was dead, five members of the Shower posse were dead, three of his guys were dead, random others were shot, wanted by the police or otherwise. The cops were going crazy.  Without warning a major gang war had erupted in Brooklyn.

No phone call made to Herbie could last more than fifteen seconds. Herbie watched the counter. His callers knew that. They knew to say “Bigga pick up corn, five showers vanq, three breddren gone, Babylon on fire” , and hangup or were cut off.

If they had more to say they were to get another phone and make another call.

Herbie knew he wasn’t under investigation, but he knew his guys were stupid. Their stupidity could get them dead and in the drug business, death was contagious.

The phone number his minions used belonged to a phone owned by a dummy company. All calls to that number were forwarded to the cell he currently used.  Shortly, he would set it to foward calls to a different number.

Herbie scanned missed calls on his cell, returned a few, using another disposable cell. Then he rang up Joanie. She knew how to talk. In a thick Jamaican accent, using the rawest patois, the words slurred, an untrained ear would hear; “Dibablon ave seashwaran, nafinutin abex, mia andaldem.” Meaning that the Police, equipped with a search warrant, had arrived at the flat in Vanderveer, found nothing, and she had behaved the way one could expect from a loud mouthed, no morals gal.

As Herbie was never in the same flat as an illegal item, save his gun, which was always on him, there would be nothing to find in apartment 6G, 1406 New York Avenue.