As Ken' s pick up crossed the Florida-Georgia line northbound on I- 75, a slight relief came over Ken. But he knew the relief would never be complete until he delivered the Adidas bag sitting beside his own bag on the floorboard.

"I need you to do me a favor," Ortega had asked back in Miami.

"Si," said Ken. "What is it?"

"I have a little bag of merchandise that needs to be delivered in Atlanta."

"Have one of your guys do it."

"I need an honest, white face like yours," had said Ortega. "Cops are too suspicious of us, more if we are driving expensive cars, or rental cars."

"Get yourself an old car."

"It' s good money. Easy work."

Ken took the job, but it wasn' t for the money. He had plenty of that. This job gave him the opportunity to pack his things and leave town without suspicion, for good. The good part Ken kept from Ortega as Ken didn' t want to get in an argument with him, like Sonia did.

Ken didn' t want Ortega chasing after him either, so he would do as told, deliver the bag, collect the money and deliver it to Ortega by FedEx, and then disappear for good. No hard feelings.

Ken slowed down as he looked for the right house. The maples aligned on the street made it hard for him to seethe numbers over the porches. A blue house with white trimming, Must be that one. He slowed down because a delivery van in front of him had stopped in front of the blue house, blocking the road.

Ken was ready to blow the horn when the van' s side door opened and a S.W.A.T. team rushed out and stormed the house.

"Police! Police!"

The house’ s door went down and cops burst in. It was over in seconds. Ken found himself surrounded by flashing red and blue lights that had poured from every alley and side street. The cop driving the van came out and motioned Ken to go around the parked van. Ken smiled, maneuvered his truck around the van and waved to the cop as he drove away. His hands trembled and his butt hole strained, ready to pop. Enough of this shit.

"I have a message for Mister Ortega," Ken said from the pay phone. "He needs to call me at this number." Ken gave the pay phone number to the old Cuban guy on the other side of the line, wondering if the old cog understood a word he said. Ken repeated the number in his mauled Spanish. "It' s important, im-por-tan-te, O.K?"

After three hours of waiting in his truck parked beside the phone booth, the phone rang. Ken reached across the window and picked the receiver up.

"Hello."

"Ken! So happy to hear from you!" came Ortega' s voice across the hissing line.

"Hey Mister Ortega, that little place of yours… it' s out of business, you know."

"Yeah, shit happens, you know."

"I got your stuff. What do you want me to do with it?"

"Let me make a couple of calls and I will call you right back, O.K.?"

"I' m at a pay phone, middle of Nigger town."

"Don' t worry. I' ll call you right back." The line went click.

Ortega didn' t own a phone, too risky he said. He used a network of pay phones and friends' phones scattered all over Little Havana. He had an almost psychotic fear of wiretaps, and he relied on his men to deliver his messages around town, or to make calls for him from pay phones. So Ken knew he would be sitting in his truck for hours with a bag full of coke while black faces looked at him with mistrust.

Two hours later the phone rang.

"Hello."

"Ken, I want you to take the stuff to this guy, and get my stuff from him," said Ortega without hissing noises on the back ground this time.

"Ortega, I' m not a muscle man to be delivering this crap and collecting your shit. Jesus, they are going to roll me."

"You' re all I have, so just do it."

"Fuck no! Listen, I' m giving this shit back to you. Better, I' m gonna dump it somewhere and your guys can come and collect it," said Ken without any sense of carefulness left in him. "I' m out of this business! Almost got busted this morning, you know!"

Silence came from the other side of the line. Ken heart was beating to break from his chest. Ortega' s voice came again, smooth and jovial.

"Hey Ken, I think it' s in your best interest to help me out. After all, your dad in Youngstown, and that dog of his, what' s his name? Rufus? Yeah, Rufus, cute little fellow." Ortega let his words sink in. "He needs the money as much as you do, you know, to pay for the new pick up and to finish fixing up that old house in Maple Street."

Ken stopped breathing and his face turned white. Fucking bastard. "Let my dad out of this," said Ken in a whisper.

"Hey, we are all family, and I don' t want to see anything bad happening to the old man."

"Fine, what the hell do you want me to do with this crap?"Ken’ s heart ran near red line.

Ken jotted Ortega' s instructions down and hung the phone with a loud bang. Fucking bastard. Ken called his dad and go this answering machine. Shit. "Listen dad, very carefully…" and Ken had to explain in short minutes what he thought he would never be able to explain in a lifetime.

The Atlanta map showed the way to Tech wood, by North Avenue. Ken drove up there and didn' t like it. Damn Federal housing project; fucking place looks like Beirut. He parked his truck in front of a building whose first floor looked like it had been fired bombed. Trash drifted in the wind and new black faces followed him and the bag into the building. A white face also watched him, keenly, from inside the building.

Ken had it figured out. Drop the stuff, pick the cash, get his cut, and drop the rest in a rental box at Harts field, then mail the key to Ortega with a nice fuck you note. Fe Dex would be too easy, let the bastard sweat it out for a few days. End of the story.

Ken knocked on the door, his knuckles white with apprehension. Soon it would be over.

"Come on in," a white voice with a twang answered from inside. Ken opened the door and saw a white guy and a white girl standing behind a table with a briefcase on it. He stepped inside and checked around with a nervous gaze, trying very hard to look cool, but not doing a very good job of it.

"Howdy," said the white guy.

"Hi," said Ken. He looked at the girl, and his jaw dropped. Debbie winked an eye and said," Hi stranger."

"You got… got… the money?" Ken asked with a nervous voice. For once in his life he wished Ortega' s men were at his back, or Tony with that square looking gun. But here he was, practically naked in front of this guy with the crooked smile, and Debbie. Ken couldn' t make any sense of what was happening. He placed the bag on the table and looked at Erich who kept on smiling.

Erich pushed the brief case to Ken; Ken reciprocated by pushing the bag to him. While Erich inspected the merchandise Ken opened the briefcase. He saw a bunch of money, but he had no intentions of counting it. He wanted out of there, soon. Debbie and he changed stares across the table, and Ken replicated Debbie' s aloofness.

"This is good shit," said Erich.

"It sure is," said Ken, closing the briefcase.

"But I will keep the money anyway."

Erich pulled his gun from behind his waist and pointed it to Ken, and laughed. "Good bye, sucker." Erich had observed that Ken had no back up and no gun.

Ken put the briefcase in front of him as Erich fired the first shot. The shock sent Ken backwards onto the floor, the bullet lodged into the money. Debbie jumped over Erich' s arm holding the gun and bit him on the hand as hard as she could.

"You bitch!" Erich screamed in pain and punched Debbie in the face with his free hand, over and over, but Debbie wouldn' t let go. Erich looked up just in time to see Ken coming over the table ready to swing the briefcase in his face. He tried to shoot again, but his shots went into the table instead. The briefcase landed on his face with a numb thud and split open.