I took the two thousand five hundred dollars and put it right next to the $500 in my security socks. Mama Sofia noticed the new pair of shoes and figured I was growing. I was growing, alright. I was growing a bank account.
Stringer was a solid asset, but he was slow. He wanted to sell nineteen bags a day, every day, like a slow drip. That was the long road, and the long road gets paved over by Robert Lucci or another gang. My Cube Rights Fund needed to hit $35,000 Net before the end of the year, and we were months behind.
I needed to make up the $8,000 shortfall—the difference between what we thought we needed and what we actually needed to cover Prop Joe's greedy 25% fee.
On a cold Tuesday morning in April, I found Stringer next to a pile of burning tires. The air tasted like cheap rubber and desperation.
"You look stressed, String," I told him, using my best Tom Sawyer innocence. "You look like you're waiting for the school bus to take you to a bad test."
Stringer snapped a pencil against a tally sheet. "We short, shorty. Nicky Barnes is getting nervous about the supply chain. Said the docks are tight. If we don't move volume, we lose our piece."
"That's because you're looking at today's calendar," I said, leaning in. "You gotta look at the whole timeline."
I closed my eyes for a second, and the fire went out. It was a Divine Revelation. I wasn't in the Bronx anymore. I was in a grainy, muted movie clip. The title flashed: American Gangster(2007). I saw men talking about smuggling heroin, but the focus wasn't on the money; it was on the pipeline. The supply chain was fragile, easily broken by outside pressure. The clip showed a specific point of weakness on the East Coast docks.
The clip snapped off. I was back in the smoke.
"Yo, dope's dryin' up faster than my sippy cup, String!" I announced, using my sassy voice. "The big boss's pipeline is about to be dry for a month. You can't sell what ain't there."
Stringer's eyes narrowed. "How you know that? Nicky said it's tight, not dry."
"Nicky's still using the abacus; I'm using the future," I said, dismissively. "You got six days to stockpile everything we can buy. You empty the inventory. You beg, you borrow, you put your whole cut back in. When the docks freeze, our price quadruples, and we sell it all in three days."
Stringer saw the risk. "That's everything we got, shorty! If the pipeline doesn't break, we lose the lot!"
"You lose the lot if you don't take the shot," I countered, giving him my best Chris Rock grin. "This ain't slow business; this is arbitrage. We use my tip, we hit the $50,000 Gross target in one go, and then we are done with the street hustle. We move straight to the Laundering Phase. Now tell me, String: You a hustler, or you a chump?"
Stringer looked from the smoke to my face, seeing only the unwavering certainty of the future. He didn't see a toddler; he saw a guarantee. He spent the next week moving every single dollar of his and Avon's working capital into inventory. They stockpiled exactly 2,800 bags of heroin.
And exactly one week later, just as I predicted from the Divine Revelation, the docks were locked down by federal pressure. The supply froze solid. The price of heroin on the street exploded.
Stringer sold every single bag in three days.
The commission was immense. Eli's final cut for the strategic win was a lump sum of $42,000.
I didn't cheer. I didn't smile. I just looked at the stack of cash and felt the immediate danger of it. I had my money. I had secured the entire Cube Rights Fund and the Escape Surplus.
I was done with the hustle. Now came the hard part: getting clean.