Free The Lotus Crew by Stewart Meyer

The year he went to prison he read that President Nixon had granted executive clemency to a racketeer named Jimmy Hoffa. Later Nixon was granted clemency in turn by President Ford. Rafael felt himself to be in good company as a criminal. Crime makes the world go round. Perhaps one day he too would make history and be granted executive clemency.
    Rafael had another gift besides subjective observation. He had presence. He could speak, smile, glare, frown, and strut with an air of absolute power, of graceful and naive self-confidence. He had life by the balls. Even if he was occasionally shot at. His hard face exuded command.
    The L.A. blancos ate it up. Had they been familiar with Manhattan pimps, they might’ve snickered. Instead they mythologized him and his dope. He was Sportin’ Life, and his stash was Happy Dust. His veneered presence fit right into the Hollywood Hills, Venice, Westwood scenes. These people did not distinguish between graceful and slick. They hardly distinguished between honest and lookin’ good.
    Rafael moved as much heroin and cocaine as he could get his highly financed and hyperconnected hands on. He took a small but well-placed estate in the Hollywood Hills, doing business from a living room looking out on miles of lights, landscape, and lesser players down there running around like ants: rows of blue-collar bedrooms fenced in by highways and arteries. Conduits of electricity pulsing away actively, in sharp contrast to Rafael’s languid inertia as he sat back on the sofa to nod with his head full of heroin and his ears full of Chicano bebop. He mirrored the walls, commissioned a rosewood table with platinum inlay, and placed upon it a solid gold antique gunpowder scale. It was the shrine of his religious worship, turning brown powder into green dinero.
    He made his own special bags. Nonporous papers, a painfully fancy fold, covered with plastic and shrink-sealed. Each package had a red sombrero logo and the word Siesta stamped on it. Fifties, hundreds, two-hundreds, four-hundreds. But he wasn’t dealing in no school yard, poppa. The fours went fastest.
    Then suddenly things got weird. It started with small details, but soon affected everything. A distant associate got busted. No one Rafael did steady bizz with, but his name was in the dude’s address book. There was much talk of heat. Rafael’s heroin chippy flared into a raging Jones from worry. One of his steady sources lost a shipment. They made up their losses by selling weaker dope. Rafael refused to buy it; he became an unreliable dealer because he often had no stock. When his suppliers re-upped strong shit they refused to front him because he hadn’t helped them recoup. The strong material went to those who did, on credit. Rafael had to pay cash for weaker shit.
    He lost customers. They cleaned up or found other scores. One by one the props went. Cars, motorcycles. The house was next. A few accounts owed him cash—people he’d partied with just a short while ago—but they weren’t coming through. He’d never bothered to save a nickel. Lots of cake passed through, but most of it went up his arm or through his nose. Ayyy caramba!
    Then he had a visitor, an Italian dude he dealt coke to. He knew the man only as “Dino.” One of the few who paid on delivery. The guy was having a cash-flow problem. Dino owed an Italian coke factor one hundred grand. The man told him if he didn’t pay up in one week he’d be dead. Since Rafael knew both men, maybe he could lay some reason on the matter.
    Rafael had a better idea.
    â€œTell j’what, amigo. J’owe’m a hunred. I keel heem f’feefty.”
    The man smiled and told Rafael he’d have the cake for him in two days tops. Muchas gracias.
    It was Rafael’s first plunge into really quick money. Dealing was profitable, but you had to work, scheme, sweat, even socialize. Mayhem better suited his temperament.
    A new,