Heading For a Fall

 With the album nearing completion, and the only thing really holding up the pressing and distribution of the first five thousand copies was a lack of funds for that purpose, I spent the next couple of weeks focusing on trying to track down friends and customers who owed me large sums of money on their drug accounts, and who were doing their very best to avoid paying me, by staying unavailable, or below the radar. I hated this part of the business. It was so different than what I had grown accustomed to for so long, and hassling people felt very uncomfortable to me...and a lot like spinning my wheels, to a certain extent, because most of these people knew me well enough to know that if they chose to rip me off, or walk away from their debts, I was very unlikely to do much about it. Violence had never been in my nature...but because I was a suspect in two open murder investigations, and continued to be involved with highly illegal activities on a regular basis in spite of that...keeping a very low profile, and not doing anything to attract the attention of the police had become a neccessity for me...something that most of my customers were well aware of. Although they also had to fear legal consequences from their activities...I plainly was in a much more precarious legal situation than any of them...or so I thought. There was one person who I had become casual friends with a few years earlier, and had occasionally done business with over that period of time, who proved to be the exception to that rule. Jay was younger than me, who had a very likeable personality, and a way of getting people to relax that got him through many doors, including mine. Although there were times when I frowned on his lack of ethics, his carelessness, and the apparent absence of good sense in some of his business dealings, he had been widely accepted and taken in by most of my Shaboo "family"...so although I had some doubts about the way he conducted himself and his business, I did find him rather likeable...and found many people whose judgment I did trust on these matters...were dealing with him and socializing with him on a regular basis. I guess the lesson here was that I should have trusted my own instincts more...like I always had in the past. Once again, addiction, and my own tunnel-vision had clouded my judgment. About six  months before I began recording the album, Jay had gone to Florida...supposedly to visit with some "friends" for a few weeks. He ended up staying down there for many, many months instead...and after Avalanche's breakup, and my decision a few months later to record the album...I had pretty much forgotten all about him...until he returned unexpectedly, and immediately started requesting me to rekindle our old business relationship, and provide him with products that I had occasionally provided for him over a year earlier. Although there were a few rumors circulating that Jay might have gotten in some legal trouble in Florida, allegedly getting caught up in some smuggling operation gone bad...nobody that I knew seemed to be able to confirm or deny if that was true...and most people I talked with about it seemed to feel that if it were true...then Jay would be in a Florida prison. He seemed to have easily slid back into many of his old circles with very little difficulty, after returning to Connecticut. My need to generate large amounts of cash to complete the album, my shrinking customer base and ever-diminishing market share, along with my total inability to recognize that I was breaking my own rules...and taking a risk that only a year or two earlier would have been out of the question for me to even contemplate...caused me to make a decision that would change my life forever. Although people I was close to had recently had business dealings with Jay that had not worked out well for them financially, due to his inability to keep payment schedules...I ended up fronting Jay product that he should have been able to turn to cash in a few days, but the balance was still unpaid on...months later. As the album's production was now being delayed strictly due to a lack of funds, and because I was also losing the ability to take advantage of new business opportunities myself...due to my inability to pay my sources for products that payment was long overdue on...I decided it was time to apply some real pressure to a number of "delinquent" accounts...Jay's being one of them. I would make a point of being at the houses of people who owed me money every single day, because one thing I had learned about the drug business is...when somebody is in it...they are involved in it every day...and because of that, if I wasn't on top of collecting funds when they were due...they would almost certainly be re-invested on some other product, from some other source...or squandered...and then the waiting would begin all over again. I began dropping in at Jay's place two or three times a day, hoping to "catch" him at home...and I left numerous messages on his answering machine, demanding payments from him, and as I became more frustrated with him, the messages I left on his machine began to sound more and more like meaningless ultimatums to me. One day, out of the blue, Jay called me, and told me he would meet me at my house that evening to discuss the situation. I told him that would be fine as long as he had the money he owed me, and I told him that I had made plans to go to Hartford to listen to some friends of mine who had a band, and were performing at a club there that night, and who had been regular guests at the recording sessions for the album. I let him know that if he wanted to, he could come to Hartford with me to see them perform. We made arrangements to meet at my house that night...and I hung up the phone thinking I was finally going to get paid by him. I almost forgot about the conversation as the day wore on though, because my experience with Jay had been that he would make an appointment to pay me, and then never show up for it. Later that night, as I was getting ready to leave, Jay called again, and said he was on his way...and would be at my house shortly. Since I wanted the money he owed me, I agreed to wait for him, and twenty minutes later Jay was knocking at my door. As I let him in, I sensed an uneasiness in him, but thinking it was about his long overdue debt with me, I didn't think much of it at the time. We talked for a while, and then Jay paid me about half the money he owed me, which I was very happy to get, and as an enticement to him, I showed him some new product that I told him I would make available to him as soon as he paid off the remainder of what he owed me. Then I told him I needed to get ready to head to Hartford, as we were already behind schedule. I took the product I had shown him, some pounds of very high quality Gold Columbian pot, and a couple of ounces extremely high quality Peruvian cocaine which I kept in a thermos, and after putting all of it into a leather shoulder bag that I often carried around with me, I walked out of the house telling him I'd be right back...leaving him with Don, who was home at the time, and was also friendly with him.  I then walked out to my driveway, and put the bag in the trunk of my Mercedes, which, along with my other car, a 1966 Olds Cutlass convertible in mint condition, was where I usually kept most of my inventory. I  had found that by doing that, it prevented me from losing drugs in burglaries, which I had been a victim of numerous times in the past, especially when people knew I was going to be elsewhere (like in the studio, or on stage.) I had been dealing for so long without any legal problems, that I didn't even see what an unneccessary risk it was doing that...carrying drugs around when I didn't need to. I thought losing the inventory and the money it represented in a theft, was a greater risk to me, and to the album...which I believed was my ticket out of that business...than the law was. I also failed to remember that the driveway was plainly visible from the living room loft where I had left Jay. After stashing my bag in the car, I  walked back into the house, and as I got ready to leave, Jay asked if he could use the phone, because he wanted to tell a girlfriend to meet him at the club in Hartford. I told him to use the phone in my bedroom, and as I tidied up the house I listened to Jay on the phone...arranging with his "date" to meet at the parking lot of the club, and how to recognize my car. He hung up, and said he was ready, and as we left for Hartford, I was expecting a very pleasant evening indeed. Little did I know that the phone call he had just made...hadn't been to a girlfriend, as he had told me...but to the Hartford Police Undercover Narcotics Task Force...and that with my own telephone...I had just been set up to be busted.