So Goes Omar

You have to play the game, have to keep the psychological advantage. That’s the tenacity of gangsters. He knows she may be lying but he has to make her believe she’s fooled him. Lies can be magic. Lies are gifts from gangster heaven. Besides, perhaps she was telling the truth.
>>Galloway

Omar was a stick up boy.

Why not? You got to make a fast buck. And that’s one way to.

I liked Omar quite a lot. Not everyone does. I guess since most people are scared Omar will rob them. But I got jack shit that’s worth robbing.

Last month Omar stuck up Prop Joe.

He stuck a gun in his face. Not because he wanted to shoot Prop Joe. Not necessarily. Omar merely meant to discover whether a healthy fear of buckshot in the face would inspire Proposition Joe. Inspire him to act swiftly on his own behalf — do things he would not but for his wish to not die.

Two weeks later Proposition Joe was coldly executed by a local drug dealer’s kingpin’s hired assassin.

So it go.

The new kingpin enjoyed watching Prop Joe die.

Bad kingpin!

13 years ago, when Omar was young — maybe 8 years old — he & his people famously stuck up a middle-aged, working class man for a fast $17 bucks.

“You know what this is?” He rhetorically asked the guy, who was seated at a bus stop.

Omar stuck a pistol in his face.

“Yeah.” He assured him & jabbed the gun a little closer. “You know.”

Stakes were a bit higher, last month, when Omar stuck up Prop Joe. Prop Joe was in his fifties. He sold drugs for a fast buck. Sold drugs Big Time — kingpin big. If you’ve ever bought drugs in Baltimore chances are they came from Prop Joe.

True ‘dat.

Every drug dealer in Baltimore bought their dope from Prop Joe because Prop Joe got the bomb dope.

Good kingpin.

To make the cops think he didn’t sell drugs Proposition Joe fixed clocks.

Omar stuck up Prop Joe in his clock-fixing shop. He walked in. Prop Joe suddenly fell startlingly depressed. He knew Omar. Shit they were friends practically. So Prop Joe knew Omar wasn’t there to get a clock fixed. He was there on Business.

Omar handed Prop Joe a broken clock.

“What’s wrong with it?” Prop Joe asked fretfully.

“Out-a time.” Omar pronounced.

“Ain’t that a shame.” Prop Joe shook his head.

Omar drew his shotgun from behind a large coat and jammed it up in Prop Joe’s face.

Young Omar felt it was wrong to steal the $17 bucks, those many years ago. They robbed chump change from some poor fool while he waited to take a bus home from work? In quick retrospect Omar thought it wrong.

He lodged a protest. Said they should give the money back. Give it back! His friend, older & nearly twice Omar’s height, scoffed & rebuked him. Omar spoke no more of it. Instead the 8-year-old stick up boy stood tippy-toed & raised his arm & cocked the pistol in his coconspirator’s face & simply insisted.

A man got to have a code.

Omar didn’t aim to kill Prop Joe. But that’s just my opinion. I’m not Omar. How could I know for sure?

How for that matter could Proposition Joe.

He thought. Thought fast. One thing Prop Joe could do real good was think fast. Fast enough — most days. Most days Prop Joe — like all gangsters — was at his natural best when literally in front of a gun.

“Maybe we can settle this with a certain…proposition.” Joe suggested.

Omar’s expression didn’t change. His shotgun barrel brushed against Prop Joe’s cheek. But his finger eased off the trigger. Prop Joe was speaking his language.

Omar listened.

He proposed to tip Omar off to the locale & time when Baltimore would receive its’ entire next heroin & cocaine shipment. A wildly reckless move. Cold-hearted people would be murderously displeased with Prop Joe when their shipment, payed for up front, got stolen — but not until Later.

Prop Joe had a Problem. Now not later. Now is what counts.

Just then the stick up boy let Prop Joe live.

Just then that’s what counted.

Omar stuck up the delivery truck.

Then he made a proposition of his own. Omar proposed to sell the city’s entire coke & heroin shipment — for which Joe had already been paid — to — guess who? — Proposition Joe. Prop Joe agreed; he would pay Omar 40 percent of it’s original value.

I don’t know how many drugs were in the truck. Enough that they’re still getting high on ‘em in Baltimore even as we speak. Suffice to say that at 40 cents on the buck Omar got paid heroically.

He promptly retired from the stick-up boy racket.

Prop Joe turned around & resold the whole truckload of their own product straight back to every drug dealer in Baltimore — at a tidily profitable 50 cents on the dollar.

Fast thinker.

Know what I remember best about Omar? The way everyone in his neighborhood - adult & child alike, anyone who didn’t want to get robbed — would warningly scream his name “OMAR!” and skedaddle fearfully whenever he walked down the street.

Except the ones he wanted to catch. They tried to run. But Omar never chased them; they’d get a gun stuck in their face before they took their first step.

Omar stopped into a Korean grocery the other day for a soft pack of Newports. And something else. I don’t know what; I never will. He was about to tell the cashier — when an 9 year-old boy unexpectedly popped a cap in the back of his skull.

Happened so fast I get the feeling the old stick up boy don’t even know he got bagged up yet. Omar saw the boy walk into the store. But paid him no mind — just another 3^rd grader playing hookey. Boy blew Omars brains out of his eye-balls.

Poor Omar never saw it coming.

I get the feeling the boy knew he wouldn’t.

Is that why he killed him — because he could? Just to say he did? For the sake of upward gangster mobility?

Or for less sophisticated reasons? After brooding on it all week, it suddenly struck me. The boy killed Omar, in part, because he wasn’t scared to. He knew he could. But why did he want to?

Boy didn’t like Omar.

Dang.

So it go.

But dang. Boy cold.