Meet the Boss.

He glanced at his watch impatiently; he tapped his foot in rhythm with the vibration of the floor beneath his feet.  She was never on time. She was always late and one of these days they were both going to get killed because of it. She was supposed to drop it off to him and then he was supposed to take it immediately to the boss’s house. They hated when he was late, and sometimes she was so late that no amount of rushing could get him there on time. Last time they had told him that if he were late again, they would shoot him in the kneecaps. He wasn’t very keen on that idea.

They had only partnered him with her because everyone else refused to work with her, and would have shot her the second time she had been late. She was distantly related to the boss, so they wanted her partnered with someone who wouldn’t be so quick to off her. He couldn’t stand her, but he wasn’t quick to anger and as long as he could make up the time from her being late, he didn’t mind working with her.

He stamped his foot one last time and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. Just as he was about to light it, she came around the corner. She looked unkempt and she was wringing her hands. Immediately he noticed that she didn’t have the satchel in her hands. Her hands were empty. As she got closer, he noticed that he lipstick was smeared and she had a run in her stockings. She came to a stop in front of him.

“I need help,” she said.

“I can see that. Where’s the bag? If we don’t make that delivery one, or both, of us are toast,” he replied.

“They took it, before I got into the cab. Just some kids, but they jumped me. They probably thought it had money in it. They punched me, kicked me, worked me over, and then they took the bag and they also took my purse. Mike, I know I am already on thin ice. They’re going to shoot me. I know it.”

“Kid, you’re lucky that they already haven’t,” he replied, “if you worked with anyone else they would have by now.”

“What do I do?” she said.

“We go and tell them, Kid, and we hope for the best,” he responded.

They set off toward the house. It was several blocks away, but they covered them quickly. Along the way he let her know that she should let him do the talking. He would tell them that it could’ve happened to anyone. The package came weekly, and they could find the boss more heroin in the meantime. He didn’t think there was much of a chance of recovering it. Once the kids who stole it realized it wasn’t money, they would just find someone to sell it to.

When they got to the front door, they were patted down as usual. Then when they told the men that they didn’t have the bag, they were taken in to see the boss. He was in the room with a group of women, shooting them up, as he did every day at that time. That was his business. He received kidnapped women from the Russian mob, got them strung out, and then they became his workforce. They worked the streets for money and he got most of it because he had them so hooked on smack that they didn’t care about anything else. That was why it was so important that he and the girl be on time, because he liked them to get their doses at just the right moment. He wanted them to be longing for it, aching for it, but not to the point of having full withdrawal symptoms.

It was a really ugly business and he hated himself just a little for being involved. He hadn’t really known what he was getting into and he had been in on it since he was a teenager. He used to see how the guys who ran errands for the boss flashed their money around and he wished that he had money of his own. He had started hanging around with them, gotten in good, and started running errands on his own. By the time he was sixteen, he had seven shoeboxes with a total of twenty-three thousand dollars hidden under his bed.

He loved it. No one messed with him, he had money, the girls found him interesting, and he was able to help his mom out with the bills. He had respect and it was addicting. He was addicted to the lifestyle. By the time he was twenty-one, he was an extremely trusted courier. He met with all of the deliveries and personally brought them to the boss. He was paid very well for his efforts and this was the first time in nearly ten years that he had failed to deliver a package. Fortunately for him, it hadn’t been lost in his possession and the person who lost it wasn’t a well-respected member of the organization.

As they entered the office they could hear the girls talking, they knew that they must have already gotten their doses because they sounded out there and far away, not jumpy and pained. They sat down and listened to the girls wrap up their talk with the boss and then leave the room out the other side. That was the way that he liked it done because he didn’t want the girls to know what they looked like, he didn’t want them tracking either of them down and hitting them up for drugs when it wasn’t time. After the girls were gone, the boss came in and he did not look even the littlest bit happy.

“Marishka, please explain this to me,” he said, with absolutely no expression.

“Mr. Grady,” interjected Mike, “as the person in charge of bringing all deliveries to you, I think that I should be the one to explain.”

“Fine,” said Grady, as he took a seat at his desk.

“Mr. Grady, Marishka was late to meet me, later than usual, and when she got to me I immediately noticed the rip in her stockings and her unkempt appearance. She told me that some kids mugged her and they took her purse too. I think they saw the bag and saw the way she was dressed. They must have assumed that she was carrying money.”

“I agree with you, Mike, but the fact is that this is the last in a series of failures by Marishka. She is continually late and the other errands and jobs that I send her on are frequently unsuccessful. You waste two hours per week on this meaningless chore that is a waste of your time and value because you are the only one who can tolerate her. It’s unacceptable; I can’t work with her any longer. She now owes me thousands of dollars worth of heroin. We both agree that it’s not something we can recover. She has to pay it back, but she also doesn’t work here anymore. She has six days to pay it back. $17,000 in six days or I put a bullet in each kneecap.”

Mike walked out of the room, leaving Marishka to talk with the boss. He thought long and hard about what he did for a living, what he did with his life. He was a rich man. He lived a nice life. She would never be able to find or come up with that kind of money. He knew that she lived in a dump and that this was her only source of income. It was likely that the boss would make her an offer, to become one of his junkie whores or to lose her ability to walk. Either way, she would still have to pay the money back.

Marishka came out of the office, wringing her hands, with tears in her eyes.

“How much do you have stashed?” he asked.

“About $3,500, I told him I will be back with it later,” she said.

“That leaves you owing $13,500. Is there any way you can make that happen?”

“Not without indebting myself to people who are just as bad as Grady, and probably ending up dead anyways,” she said.

“What if you wound up in debt to me?”

“What do you mean, Mike?” she asked with wide eyes.

“I’ve been thinking of starting my own business. I’ve earned enough, I’ve earned enough respect and I’ve made the connections. I could make more. I could be the boss.”

“You better watch what you’re saying, you’ll wind up at the bottom of a landfill,” she said.

“I ain’t worried about that,” he said.

With that, he turned around and walked straight back into the boss’s office. The next thing she heard was a gunshot. Mike walked out. The men in the adjoining room didn’t come after him; they came with him. There was a new boss in town.