The waiting was the hardest part of the hustle. After turning the money over to Prop Joe, I didn't have to sell dope anymore, but I still had to make sure the money was getting clean. That meant I had to hang around the car wash, pretending to watch the cars while I was really watching the cash register.
Prop Joe's place was aggressively clean, but the outside of the building was Hunts Point garbage. It was a no-man's-land of grease, broken asphalt, and discarded metal. I was sitting on a stack of old tires, just watching the heat rise off the asphalt, when I saw the two Greeks.
One was Spiros Vondopoulos (mid-twenties), Prop Joe's intermediary to the high-level suppliers. He was wearing expensive shoes that were too clean for the Bronx. He spoke low, fast Greek into a payphone while Joe nodded nervously inside.
The other was a kid, Sergei Malatov (7). He was sitting on the curb, frustrated, trying to put together a little square toy. It was made of cheap, hard plastic, and it was supposed to be six colors, but the pieces kept snagging.
I watched him struggle. The problem wasn't strength; it was mechanics. The internal mechanism was flawed.
Sergei finally gave up. He screamed something in Russian—a primal sound of mechanical frustration—and threw the toy with all his might. It tumbled across the asphalt and slid to a stop right next to my tires.
I picked it up. It was ugly, heavy, and complicated. I turned one side, and the pieces jammed. The geometry was close, but the solution wasn't just in the colors; it was in the physics.
I saw a scratch on one white side, near the corner piece. I used my little finger to wipe away the grime and saw something engraved there—a messy, handwritten signature.
The moment my eye registered the curves of that signature, the world cracked open.
It wasn't a Divine Revelation this time; it was a detonation. I wasn't seeing a clip of a future movie; I was seeing a literal stream of digital data rushing at me: patents, sales figures, and corporate logos from the 1980s. I saw news reports of an inventor, a simple professor in Hungary, whose puzzle had conquered the world.
The data stream was dizzying, but the message was pure and simple: This is the answer.
The shock was too great for my body. I tumbled off the tire stack, clutching the cube.
Spiros hung up his phone and looked over. "Watch the kid," he muttered to Joe in his smooth, thick accent.
I ignored them. I looked at the signature on the cube—a name I didn't recognize, but whose future value I knew with absolute certainty. This wasn't just a flawed toy; it was the key to my freedom.
The money in Prop Joe's wash was just protection. This puzzle was salvation.
I stood up, holding the prototype tight. The six-month wait for clean cash didn't matter anymore. The risk from Nicky Barnes didn't matter. The money was just a tool to get this one, single thing.
I turned the cube over, feeling the cheap, stiff plastic. I gave Sergei a quick wave, which he ignored, and walked away from the car wash.
I gave the cube my best, cocky Chris Rock declaration, even though only the broken asphalt could hear me. "This cube's my ticket, yo—like Spider-Man swingin' outta the Bronx!"
The Cube Rights Fund suddenly had a purpose that was bigger than a spreadsheet. The Laundering Phase was no longer about waiting; it was about preparation.