Originally Posted by Truestoryteller
Diabeetus
Let me see if I can get this story back on track. To be honest, the first few months of 2016 were a little hazy - I was a pill poppin' animal. Nicole and I would fight constantly over ridiculous things at the condo. I did let her back in, and I knew that deep inside was someone that loved me deeply. She would do anything for me and her unconditional loyalty was something extremely rare from my experiences in Florida. I knew in the end she was a keeper, consciously or not. She was a very caring person who because of her past had to deal with some insecurities in the present. It did eventually come out one day as I was going to the pool. It was a warm winter day, and I needed to get myself out of the condo, which was just video games, Netflix, and the hum of the AC. She was always laying out at the pool, but for me to go out there, or go in the pool period, but this day was going to be different.
As I lay out there, ready to get in, I see a bunch of the full time residents, women in their late 40s to early 60s all whispering to each other and looking at me. I give them a look as if to ask if they wanted to talk. I walked over and one rather rotund Italian woman approached me to talk.
"Liam, your name is Liam right?" I nodded and told her that yes, Nicole and I rented unit 58 from my friend.
"I hate to meet you like this, but my daughter's bike is missing, and Camille says she saw your girlfriend on it. Can you explain what happened to it?" I was a little bit shocked - I had seen this bike before, and it was a used Wal-Mart cruiser that was barely roadworthy. These people that lived here year round were usually single, a few of them single parents living with their teenage kids in a one room 240 square foot studio. They tended to have inherited these or lived in them when the real owner, a relative, wasn't around. They were quite the gossipers, and it felt sort of like one step up from a trailer park community at times.
"Maybe Nicole can explain this," I said, very angry but positive that she had not taken it. We had two bikes of our own - one was a custom built Litespeed racing bike my dad gave me from his bike shop up north, the other was her cruiser which was pretty nice, and we had access to three other bikes that my friend kept in the bike rack, all nicer than the rusty bike that she was accused of stealing. We walked over to her and I gently nudged her, waking her up and she was clearly startled by the group hovering over her.
"These people think you stole one of their daughter's bikes. Did you?"
"No". That was all I needed to hear.
"Come with me, maybe we can solve this." We walk through the gate to the pool back into the walkway and the parking lot. My bike is sitting on the rack on my car, and hers is laying up against the wall next to the entrance to the condo. "This is her bike, this is what she rides around. We also have access to the three bikes on the end of the rack, and I proceeded to point to them and show them the bike lock key. They appeared to be content. One of the ladies just blurted out "Well.....maybe you took it then since you seemed so urgent to clear this up." My blood started to boil.
"So you see this bike here, yes?"
"This is your bike?" They asked, as if a bike sitting on a rack on my car might note otherwise.
"This is my bike. The frame alone is 3700 dollars. Do you think I decided I wanted to take a risk and steal YOUR daughter's rusty bicycle instead of riding this? Do I look like a thrillseeking thief to you?"
"Well, you and your girlfriend are out and up at all hours of the night and are here all day. What do you even do?" This one lady just wouldn't stop going, she wasn't even good friends with the lady who had lost her bicycle.
"I'm a stripper, she's my bodyguard." Shocked faces were everywhere.
"Are you a GAY stripper?"
"I do both, but gay pays much better." They didn't know what to say anymore, but my point was made. I managed to shock them into stopping their interrogation. I would rather them not know my real job, because I didn't know what to call it either.
This became even more true when the dynamics of the game started to change over the next month. Fish's game was great at first, but it started to fizzle a bit - his players were a lot like the PLO players in Boca Grande, great action but not looking to be regulars. You need a couple dozen legit degenerates to run a successful underground game, as there has to be a bit of shadiness to the event that would attract such action. I remember the game was on its last legs when he ordered a UFC fight with MacGregor (I forget which, would have been late winter 2016) and it ended up not coming through in HD on Comcast, so in a frenzy he ordered it in standard definition. This did not come in either, and over a hundred dollars later, the game had stopped while he screamed at the Indian Comcast operator that stood by the notion that everything was okay. Fish being half Colombian and half Italian from Queens, you can imagine the Latino fire that was heard in the house that night, while the game fizzled out around the lack of entertainment. These weren't poker players, they were just guys that wanted to get together and have a game to play while the game was on. As a result, no UFC fight, no action. Just as angry as Fish was Rad - he was hellbent on burying Tim's game to no avail.
In the meantime, I had been getting word that Tim's game was once again on fire. Willy had somehow found a whole pool of younger action players he had met through his new girlfriend that he had recently knocked up. She was from the country, and I wasn't sure how she had met these businessmen types. Fish understood I was there to make some money. My neck was on fire, but just when I was accepting that I couldn't deal anymore, I was able to get through half a night if I was pretty well medicated on Lortab. Though Tim and Willy had been fighting, these new players managed to lube him back into the dealer's seat, and Tim was understanding that Willy's new kid was going to be quite the expense. I had to show up though, at the time it was my only option.
Though it had been months since I had set foot in the original house of the home game, it felt like yesterday. Tim's parents greeted me, I never found that odd that a 40 year old man was living with his parents and in turn had started to have his 15 year old daughter learning how to deal. No one else even mentioned anything about it either, and just writing this now made me think twice that it was a little bit odd. I sat down to play and as usual, I never had to throw any money on the table - my credit was good there, and Tim and I had the same deal. On the other side of the table were 4 or 5 new faces - they all knew each other and were neck deep in Miller Lite. Willy was dealing and his girlfriend was there interacting with them almost like an escort. A few hours into the game, one of them received a phone call and suddenly half the table was gone - Greek was there and was pissed because he was stuck and no one wanted to buy any weed from him. Willy walked out with the guys and it was just a bunch of chips and 3 players sitting at the table.
"Who are these guys?" I asked Tim, curious where one suddenly comes upon a whole table of action players who suddenly disappear after a phone call.
"They are relatives of Janie, you know, Willy's girlfriend? They have this business where they go and buy diabetic test strips in a big group then sell them and make like 5 grand a week. It's sick, I am going to get in on it when I have some money saved up. They use their credit cards and max them out every month then make the profit and pay it all back."
Apparently one of them had found a huge wholesaler in West Palm Beach who would buy every test strip he could get his hands on. He would buy at a fixed price and everyone would pool together their money to meet the wholesaler's needs. There was a 10% profit margin almost guaranteed every week, so 50K would net 5k in revenue. They would have to drive all this stuff to West Palm and meet the guy at a truck stop where they were paid cash. The whole thing sounded ridiculous to me but if it kept the game going with money then I was all for it. One look at these guys and they were not what you would consider entrepreneurs - something else had to be going on.
"You want to jump in the box? Willy hasn't been paying attention to the game and slowing it down with all this diabetes talk.
"You mean diabeetus?"
"What's that?
"Nevermind."
Tim probably had type 2 diabetes with his 6'3 380 pound frame, pounding XXL Monster energy drinks and sucking on Skittles (he was basically toothless), maybe this was his calling. I got in the box and I can see why Willy was not getting many hands in - these guys determined how fast the game was going to run, and to any casual poker player, it was like pulling teeth to get their attention, and definitely the slowest game I have ever dealt or been in to this day. I figured if these guys weren't going to let me do my job, maybe they could let me in on how these testing strips made them so much money. As the game winded down and people were cashing out, I approached them about their "business".
"Bro if you are interested, we can make you 10% on your money, guaranteed." I had heard this many times during the night, and it just made me more curious. I asked them how it worked, trying to see if I was dealing with multi-level marketing, or this was just code for something more sketchy.
"Why don't you come with us the next time we drop off the testers?" I told them sure, why not - I knew the way to West Palm as good as anyone did on the West Coast and even told them I would drive. Willy was going to come with us and it was going to be his first sale as well. My name had been dropped as a possible investor, and with this garnering their interest, I became more hesitant about this being anything but legitimate. Curiosity had the best of me though, and I was determined to see what these guys were up to.