2013.09.05 - No Shields for Odame Pt 1

To say that it's a hot day might be an understatement. Mombasa, Kenya lies not far from the equator, and in this region of the world, every day is a hot one. Today is no different. Everyone has their own unique method of keeping cool, and for Dimarco Shields, that involves a half unbuttoned shirt, a tall glass of ice water, and a finely rolled joint perched in his left hand.
Consumption of marijuana remains illegal in this country, and the fines are extremely high. That being said, one can go pretty far in Kenya when the right amount of currency is involved, and the open-air cafe in which Shields conducts most of his business is, shall we say, under police protection. They leave it well enough alone--in many cases, uniformed police officers even hang out here, enjoying a shot of whiskey or a doob of their own during the lunch hour. They're under Shields' protection, and he's under theirs, so it’s something of a win-win for the African American transplant.
"So," says Dimarco, before casually passing the joint toward the man across from him. "Here's where we get down to it, Ullah." He blows the smoke out through his nostrils, taking a moment to revel in its purity while leaning back into the wicker seat that supports his lanky frame. "We can do this right, or we can do it stupid. Stupid way is, you bring the shit here, I pay you four mill, we call it a day. Right way? I pay you three mill... I guarantee it gets here without any bullshit, and then?" He grins. "Your ass gets to ship another day. Y'heard me?"
It wasn't too long ago, this guy Dimarco ran his little operation out of a posh office in New York, surrounded by associates. Dealers, enforcers, all the whores they could ask for. Not to mention some very large retainers paid to some very evil men. Some scattered to the wind, others had the good sense to cut their losses and associations when Mr. Shields' associates started ending up very, very dead-- Dimarco himself? Well, he had the good sense (or starkly realized terror) to flee the States before the Grand Jury wrote up his indictment from the associates who turned to the police for protection-- or amnesty from their own misdeeds. 
Persona non grata within the US of A or not, he hasn't exactly cleaned up his act-- or his product. And the kind of things a man like Dimarco Shields values? They all have significant dollar values attached. Wearing a stark white jacket and suit pants over a half-unbuttoned, crimson shirt, fine Italian leather does little to announce the approach of a third party to this little 'negotiation'. 
"Mr. Shields, isn't it?" A heavy leather briefcase thunks heartily between the two men, punctuating the words. Even if Estacado's eyes remain hidden behind mirrored shades, his face covered in a shadow that's closer to 11PM than five, his expression betraying little... he still screams money. Confidence. Dark and dangerous. "My name's Estacado. You and I have some things to discuss."
"Alright then," answers the Afghani supplier, who reaches across the table to accept the joint. "Three million in U.S. currency for the right way. Though--" And here, he laughs slightly. "I hope you'll be willing to accept the Kenyan equivalent. U.S. currency is frowned upon in my..."
Both men turn to look at their new arrival, each with similarly surprised expressions. However, in the case of Ullah, his right hand darts for something under the table.
"Ullah." Dimarco's voice halts the Afghan's motion. Without breaking eye contact from Estacado's mirrored shades, he slips a hand evenly across the table, dismissing Ullah from this whole encounter. "Time to go."
Drawing back, Ullah ignores the sweat forming beneath the keffiyeh upon his head. "Dimarco..."
Brown eyes filled with hatred spin back toward Ullah, glowering at him. "Now."
Ullah scoots his chair backward and rises, fixing a similarly distrustful glare upon their new arrival. His eyes dance up and down, studying the look of money while drawing the gun in his hand back into his waistband and out of sight. He utters something in Pashtun, most likely an oath of some sort, before moving off and toward the cafe's interior.
Turning his eyes back toward Estacado, Dimarco Shields gestures with no shortage of bitterness toward the chair suddenly evacuated by Ullah. "You wanna discuss something? Have a seat, Estacado."
Jackie waits for Ullah to clear out, though he takes a long, lingering moment to memorize the Afghani's features, making no secret of the study through narrowed brows and intense, focused amber eyes. "You heard the man, Ullah." Estacado doesn't bother to hide the verbal equivilant of Dimarco's glower, before he settles himself with an intentionally less-than-graceful drop into the offered seat, kicking one leg out slightly and draping an arm over the back. 
Outwardly open, relaxed, like he doesn't really have a care in the world being here. Meaning the Italian-American has an agenda that involves his own Aces, or he's just a damned idiot. Likely Shields is no stranger to either prospective client. 
"It's not so much a discussion, Dimarco...." familiar, or less charitably, flippant or disrespectful. ".. as it is an opportunity. I'm here to buy out your Tri-State business. Maybe even step it up, same time. Everything you ship stateside that comes anywhere near the bay." Estacado smiles like the proverbial cat-eating canary, and rests his other arm over the briefcase that's set flat on the table in front of him.
Pensively, Dimarco reaches for a pack of smokes resting upon the table nearby. He withdraws a single cigarette, lights it with a match, then tosses the pack onto the middle of the table in case Jackie wants to have one of his own. His eyebrows slowly rise upward when the 'proposal' is laid out on the table, and he's close to simply assuming this Italian-American is among the idiot variety. In fact, somewhere within the half-baked brain of his, he's considering calling the muscle over to strangle the fool where he sits.
The fingers of his free hand twitch, lifting up into the air. The various 'muscle' lingering around the cafe begin to move from their posts, but in the blink of an eye, Dimarco's fingers move into a vertical position, causing aforementioned muscle to hold where they are.
"So... here's the part where I bitch and moan about how this is all I got left, and how there ain't no way you're gonna make it worth my while, and how I oughta off you where you sit." He motions toward Jackie with the cigarette-wielding hand. "Then, you say the part about how, if I don't snatch the goose in that briefcase and run for country, there's a sniper on some roof or a bomb somewhere or some other line of bullshit. That's what you think is gonna happen here, huh?"
Dimarco takes a drag of his cigarette, then rests an elbow upon the table while leaning forward. His voice drops considerably, eyes fixated upon Jackie's shades with an altogether disrespectful, hate-filled glare. "No one buys an operation like mine." The fingers pinching his cigarette tap the table twice. "No. One. You got some play? Hmm? Lay it out before one of my snipers adds some red to that fancy white shit you wearin'."
"You want to have me shot, Dimarco?" Sitting in the middle of Shields' holdings, exposed in a cafe where he has no fear of exposure himself, most men would at least quietly crap themselves. Estacado? "Feel free. I'll spare you the details and contingencies, but you're right in figuring that if I don't leave here alive, you don't leave here alive. And if that starts seeming like a fair play? Well." Jackie just smirks. "Fair warning that death doesn't want anything to do with me. We've met a few times now, but here I am." He just shakes his head, like it's kind of mystifying. On a level beyond 'this guy must be batshit crazy'. 
"You got the pipeline, you got the product. Cheap as shit, and in much higher demand. I've got the muscle, the connections on the street, and with or without your supply and skills... soon enough, mine's going to be the only game in town. Consider this a... ground floor opportunity in a venture that's already high as the sky." That humorless smile returns, dark and self-assured. "Besides, I didn't come here with a briefcase of money for the buyout." 
The case is spun around, slid latch end towards Dimarco. "There's a half a mil in there. Untraceable. Mixed currency. All it buys is a meet. Details on your product. A real good reason why you're the best choice for my business. Play this smart and you write your own check. Or deal with this the hard way, and have me on your ass until you -do- manage to put me down." It's not as threatening at face value as Estacado seems to think it is, no. Still, that's two free warnings more than Shields is entitled to, from where Jackie's sitting.
A particularly loathsome sneer forms on Dimarco's face as he blows two clouds of cigarette smoke out through his sizeable nostrils. He listens to Jackie's proposal with no shortage of negative body language, ranging from the way his eyes glower at the man seated across from him, to the sideward lean of his body and the way he nearly scoffs at the briefcase. 
He's got one hell of a poker face, that's for sure. It's a wonder the man ever lost his ground in the tri-state, a market so high in demand the suppliers have an extremely difficult time trying to fulfill that need. They have the hipsters of Bushwick, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Harlem and now Queens to thank for that.
They say every generation has its signature narcotic. For the hipsters, its heroin.
It's that crazy, almost mystified nature that throws Dimarco off, just so. It's enough to break, if for a moment, that loathsome poker face to show that he's at least growing interested. One brief flicker of thought before he's turning aside, motioning for one of the sunglassed brutes to come over.
"Take it inside," he says, with a lazy, cigarette-wielding gesture toward the briefcase. "Have Delano count and verify."
The brute moves in, his blacked out stare locked upon Jackie as he reaches for the briefcase. Assuming there's no move made to prevent the exchange, the brute will walk off to the cafe's interior with the briefcase in tow.
Turning back to Jackie, Dimarco takes another drag of his cigarette. "Delano will make sure there's no fakes. Hope you won't mind hanging out 'til he's done, huh?" He reaches for the bottle of expensive whiskey, shoving it across the table toward Jackie. "Here. Drink. Good for ya' core body temperature, y'know'm sayin'?" He takes another drag before leaning toward Jackie, fixing the man with his signature glare. "So, tell me. Estacado." He gestures around a bit, before narrowing his eyes. "How'd you find me? Huh?"
Call the 500k an investment. The cost of doing business. Or maybe just a sum Estacado is certain he can double in short order, one way or the other. It may be a precarious, dangerous proposition in a thousand different ways, and it's not like a lion has never been torn apart by hyenas... but Jackie holds his own unflinching air. It's hard to call it a poker face, with that darkly amused, knowing grin that shows off pearly whites rather often, though. "I only do business with a clear head." Jackie notes, semi-politely refusing the bottle. 
Estacado doesn't seem to object to the taking-and-counting, but the attitude? "If I'd come here to fuck you, I'd skip the scintillating sitdown." He posits. Not entirely sincerely, no, but he's been doing this his whole life. "Far as who I am, and how I know you? Those stories come with the other terms. Talkin' out in the open about associations like ours is a quick way to -get- fucked. You may have the MPD in your pocket..." but this is international business. With powerful players. 
Jackie takes a cigarette off the pack on the table, and lights it with an old silver zippo. He takes one haul and appends, "Remember the scam your boys ran into Bayview?" One of Frankie Franchetti's capos owned that con. Prison guards on the take, made guys inside arranging dealers rather than dirtying their own hands.. it was perfect. And incredibly profitable.
The words, 'what's so funny?' are close to slipping free from Dimarco Shields' mouth, but he holds tight.
"No, let me tell you somethin', Estacado," he answers cooly, though with a silently building menace growing in the undertones of his voice. He leans forward, pointing the cigarette Jackie's way. "Everybody gets fucked in this business." He leans back smoothly. "One way or another. You either get fucked in prison, fucked by a dealer, or fucked by a 'business proposal'."
Now, when Jackie brings up the Bayview scam, Dimarco's blood runs cold. That was the beginning of the end for him. It was part and parcel of what ran him into the mid-level dope market, and that's what ultimately got him tied up with Michael 'Slee' Slean. Slee's downfall was the beginning of a horrible few months for Shields, culminating in the downfall of his own New York Empire at the hands of Odame, one of Slee's former thugs.
Ever since Bayview, it was a quick downward spiral for Dimarco. However, this whole situation just seems... too strange. It feels wrong. It feels like a trap.
The cigarette dangles between two fingers as the former NYC narcotics kingpin glares at Jackie for a few long, silent moments.
"What the fuck do you know about Bayview, mother fucka?"
Oh, there's no shortage of hostility in Shields' voice now. Seems the muscle has noticed, and their hands aren't exactly free anymore. Large, silenced pistols have come out from hiding places on each man, held at ease before their belt buckles and in plain view of everyone around.
"Here?" Jackie says it like, even as the guns come out, wanting him to explain it is about the /stupidest/ thing he's ever heard. The Italian-American spits to the side, and then lets out a momentary peel of laughter. Maybe he -is- crazy; but it's hard to chalk it up to -just- being crazy. The humor dies in an /instant/, and Estacado's amber eyes flare with some inner light, barely perceptible in the afternoon sun... but hard to chalk up to hallucination. 
"I /run/ the people who /ran/ the guy who /ran/ the operation your boy supplied, Stunade. You're right that we all get fucked. But -everyone- who fucks me is chum, motherfucker. You fuck us, your boys all lose out to their third fucking cousins." 
Estacado just leans forward, eyes narrowed on Dimarco, and taps the table with one fingertip-- and the bottle of whiskey -explodes- in a loud report, its origin suppressed amongst the surrounding cityscape, as shards of glass spatter everywhere in a shimmering shockwave... Jackie doesn't even move, or shield his face. A bloody line is drawn by an errant shard along his cheek. 
It's not like the organization he's talking about has any shortage of history to support his threat-- and the capital to back up his alleged plan. "You want the chance to get rich, or to wave your fucking dick around some more?"
When the bottle blows, Weezer plays.
Dimarco shields his face with a quick upturn of the arm, catching stray shards of glass and the stinging pain of liquor in fresh wounds. The muscle flinches, but they hold steady, waiting for Shields to decide whether a shoot out is about to go down.
It does wonders to the cafe crowd, for sure, but they were all on Dimarco's payroll, anyway.
From within the cafe comes the same brute, briefcase in hand, shades still perched above his thrice-busted nose. He walks out into the patio quietly, seemingly immune to the energy in the air that bounced between Shields and Estacado. He settles the briefcase upon the whiskey-stained table and says, "Checks out. Clean."
Dimarco is ready to burst. Odame was a goddamned meta, and clearly this bastard is too. The skin around his eyes and mouth is so contorted, it looks as if he's about to murder Jackie with a single word. Instead, he snatches up a napkin and begins wiping off his arm.
"Fine. Deal's on." He tosses the napkin down, then levels a finger across the table. "But if you ever call me stunade again? I'll be waving your dick around by the barrel of a fuckin' 45, you got that? My n-gga?"
The racial slur is spoken with more than enough weight than may have been necessary, but then again? Dimarco Shields is pretty sore about all of this.
"See?" When Shields decides to stand down, Estacado relaxes back in the seat, draping one arm around the back once more, and nodding to the smuggler. "Maybe I -was- wrong about that, after all." Maybe Dimarco -isn't- quite as dumb as he looks. Jackie grins wolfishly out one corner of his mouth, and slowly, obviously, with an open palm out reaches into his jacket and plucks out a cheap prepaid phone, which he tosses on the table, a slight spin and slide carrying it nearly in front of Dimarco. 
"There's a number in the address book. Leave the time and -secure location-.." he stresses this, just in case Shields -is- stupid as fuck, after all... "for the meeting /tonight/ at that number. I'm a busy man, Dimarco.. don't make this a waste of my time." A very costly breakdown very nearly came about, right here. Jackie rises, puffs on his cigarette, and nods to Shields, moving to take his leave. Until later.
Dimarco Shields merely nods his head while reaching to take the phone in hand. "See you tonight, Estacado."
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