about the way he talked to her that I thought he was a whack job. So did Maya. After she turned him down, a friend of ours came over and said, "Do you know who that is?" As soon as she heard who he was, Maya saw dollar signs. She immediately went back over and started sweet-talking him. She really knew how to work people. We were having a great time until Allen showed up. Someone he knew must have seen me and called him to tell him I was there. He knew people everywhere we went.
Allen didn't say a word. He just walked right over to me, picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and walked out the door. I was screaming for him to put me down and banging on his back with my fists. He barely even noticed. He walked me right past a cop who knew who he was. The cop asked if he needed any help, not if I did. Allen said no, threw me in the passenger seat of his car, and drove me home.
It pissed me off when Allen did things like that to me, but at the same time, I understood why he had to keep a firm grip on things all the time. A lot of people in his line of work were like that. Besides, he came from a big working-class family, and the money he made helped take care of all of them. He took his responsibilities seriously, and he completely understood the fact that getting busted and getting killed are risks that go hand in hand with dealing drugs. Maya's boyfriend, Tito, in particular, was playing at a dangerously high level, and a lot of merchandise passed through his hands. He was always talking about balancing risk and reward. He laid it out for me this way one day: "One point five kilos of cocaine can earn you anywhere from $30,000 to more than $250,000, depending on how you work it and on how many chances you're willing to take."
How is it possible for one quantity of product to translate into such different dollar amounts? "It all depends on how you divide that product up for sale," he explained.
If you sell the product all at once to a single buyer, then you're not going to get much more than $30,000 for it. But if you take that 1.5 kilos and sell it to, say, four different distributors, you might get $20,000 from each, for a total of $80,000. If you divide it even further and dole it out to street dealers, well, you can make quite a bit more. And finally, if you wanted to sell all that coke on the street yourself, it would take you a long time, but that much product has a street value of $250,000 or more.
"It's like a ladder, and each guy at each level has to make a profit, so the price just keeps getting jacked up more and more," Tito went on. "Ultimately, the guy on the street who wants to party has to pay not just for the product but for the work that has been done to get it to him and for the risk that has been taken by a whole lot of people."
That much made sense to me, but since I considered myself a businessman too, I wondered why he wouldn't just eliminate the middlemen. Not all of them, of course, because I knew he'd never stand on a street corner to sell anything, but some of the distributors maybe, so he could make a bigger profit.
The answer was obvious when he said it. It's all about risk. One big sale means one moment of risk: when the transaction takes place and the product is exchanged for money. If you're distributing to several or even hundreds ofpeople, then you risk getting caught each and every time an exchange takes place.
I realized eventually that things aren't so different in my business. The girls who work for me and even my clients are at a much greater risk of getting caught than I am, because I'm nowhere near when money changes hands and the actual sex takes place. I'm safely tucked away in my apartment or hotel room or wherever I happen to be at the time, far from the scene of the crime. When I ran the brothel in New York, I was often there looking after my business while transactions were taking place, and every minute I spent there, I was putting myself at risk of getting arrested. But no
Allen didn't say a word. He just walked right over to me, picked me up, threw me over his shoulder, and walked out the door. I was screaming for him to put me down and banging on his back with my fists. He barely even noticed. He walked me right past a cop who knew who he was. The cop asked if he needed any help, not if I did. Allen said no, threw me in the passenger seat of his car, and drove me home.
It pissed me off when Allen did things like that to me, but at the same time, I understood why he had to keep a firm grip on things all the time. A lot of people in his line of work were like that. Besides, he came from a big working-class family, and the money he made helped take care of all of them. He took his responsibilities seriously, and he completely understood the fact that getting busted and getting killed are risks that go hand in hand with dealing drugs. Maya's boyfriend, Tito, in particular, was playing at a dangerously high level, and a lot of merchandise passed through his hands. He was always talking about balancing risk and reward. He laid it out for me this way one day: "One point five kilos of cocaine can earn you anywhere from $30,000 to more than $250,000, depending on how you work it and on how many chances you're willing to take."
How is it possible for one quantity of product to translate into such different dollar amounts? "It all depends on how you divide that product up for sale," he explained.
If you sell the product all at once to a single buyer, then you're not going to get much more than $30,000 for it. But if you take that 1.5 kilos and sell it to, say, four different distributors, you might get $20,000 from each, for a total of $80,000. If you divide it even further and dole it out to street dealers, well, you can make quite a bit more. And finally, if you wanted to sell all that coke on the street yourself, it would take you a long time, but that much product has a street value of $250,000 or more.
"It's like a ladder, and each guy at each level has to make a profit, so the price just keeps getting jacked up more and more," Tito went on. "Ultimately, the guy on the street who wants to party has to pay not just for the product but for the work that has been done to get it to him and for the risk that has been taken by a whole lot of people."
That much made sense to me, but since I considered myself a businessman too, I wondered why he wouldn't just eliminate the middlemen. Not all of them, of course, because I knew he'd never stand on a street corner to sell anything, but some of the distributors maybe, so he could make a bigger profit.
The answer was obvious when he said it. It's all about risk. One big sale means one moment of risk: when the transaction takes place and the product is exchanged for money. If you're distributing to several or even hundreds ofpeople, then you risk getting caught each and every time an exchange takes place.
I realized eventually that things aren't so different in my business. The girls who work for me and even my clients are at a much greater risk of getting caught than I am, because I'm nowhere near when money changes hands and the actual sex takes place. I'm safely tucked away in my apartment or hotel room or wherever I happen to be at the time, far from the scene of the crime. When I ran the brothel in New York, I was often there looking after my business while transactions were taking place, and every minute I spent there, I was putting myself at risk of getting arrested. But no
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