The old vinegar factory
In March and April of 85 I slowly began to cultivate a relationship with a minor acquaintance on mine, ‘C’ already mentioned in this narrative unfavorably, but a friend of a friend, met on three or four occasions, who slowly became my new, full time partner in business. He was the ex- husband of my friend’s sister. I might have first met him at a backyard party of mine on Woolsey, or in the Plough, where he sometimes stepped in. He’d told me he had some connections and could sometimes get a little speed. Jim H. and I, with all other avenues exhausted, made the pilgrimage to his place one hot summer day in the summer of 84. It was a miserable effort. We had to wait a long time in his kitchen and the product was cut and short when it arrived, and he had to take his pinch out of it too. We took what was left and decided never to visit him again.
He had a strong New York accent and spoke fast like a lawyer or a scammer. He had a huge ego, boasted much like crazy Mike, and thus had few friends and many enemies.
But the details of ‘C’ and his situation slowly coalesced in my head over that Spring. He lived in a dilapidated house at the very outskirts of town, on a corner near a small, run-down vinegar factory. He had no visitors. His landlord never came by. He took his rent check to an office. ‘C’ had two small children, three and four, delivered to him for a few hours on a Sunday once a month. But he had a deal with his ‘ex’. She could never enter the house (he didn’t want her to see how unkempt it was). So she dropped the kids off at his front porch and picked them up there. He had perfect privacy. His one neighbour in the house next to his was an old, retired policeman living alone and deaf. Behind his house was an empty field and on the other side of the street another empty field and then the small factory, a hundred yards away.
He had one friend ‘M’ and both had a small heroin addiction wherever they got their hands on money, which for the last few years had been very scant, so much so they were generally sober. ‘C’ had no job and ‘M’ worked a few hours a week making deliveries for his father’s nearly defunct chemical supply company in a poor warehouse district of Oakland. Fifteen years earlier it must have been a thriving business. But now the rows of shelves were almost empty, maybe one-tenth filled, and ‘M’ and his old father were rarely even there. The first time I visited this place was just on a spree as ‘M’ had dropped by one day to ‘C’s kitchen when we were sitting around with nothing to do. I mentioned my interest in chemistry and they gave me the tour.
Nothing about anything was said at the time. I let it incubate for weeks. ‘C’s character was abrasive and possibly a problem. But the house was perfect. If you had a choice of any house in the bay area for the perfect place, his was it. The vinegar factory was nearby. But the smell wasn’t. It permeated the area day and night, the one smell that masked my little project perfectly. Only a few employees worked there and couldn’t see ‘C’s house because hedges were in the way.
There was a downstairs unit to this house rented by another man, ‘C’s age, very quiet and almost always away at work, quiet, meek, bald, with no girlfriend, some sort of early I.T. man. He was friendly to ‘C’ and paid half the rent though his unit was half the size, and he was about to move out in a few months. I started dropping by ‘C’s’ about once a week. At first I brought him a little speed to try to sell, then told him I might be able to get an eight ball and front it to him and collect the money if and when he sold it. He was broke and readily agreed. But he was so broke he had nothing. I had to bring him a scale, a triple beam, (all we had back then) show him how to use it, divvy it into quarter grams myself, bag it in the little plastic packets I also provided, doing all the work as he lamely watched, and seal them up ready for him to move.
This was a character flaw he never broke, in a year of much more complex transactions. But he did move a few bags, which gave me the excuse for dropping by more often and meeting ‘M’ more, who also began coming by around noon with a few connections of his own to sell to. The best thing about them was their total anonymity. Lindsey never heard of their existence. Jim at the warehouse knew of him but hated him so much there was no chance he might drop by. And I told no one of my visits. No one had a clue, for six months. At his place, it was as if I’d disappeared off the face of the planet. His ex suspected but had no connections to my friends. Her brother knew but I could trust him with my life to keep a secret.
All these pieces were adding up beautifully and clarified in my mind as my relationship with Lindsey was melting down at a rapid rate. I knew we’d soon be parting ways. So I approached ‘C’ one afternoon with the proposal of using his place as a base of operations. I told him it would be very lucrative for both of us and perfectly safe as long as we could both remain very discreet. He instantly agreed and blurted out that he wanted thirty percent for the use of his house. I was ready to offer him a third and had it on the tip of my tongue. He spoke a half-second before I could. But such if life. In negotiations, never jump the gun.
