Chapter 3

I spent the next several months building my business and home. During that time I installed the small amount of furniture I had stored in Lynne’s garage rafters and on the floor. I also bought bits and pieces of old style, and some new furniture.

Since shiners liked to work in the backwoods, I also bought an older cheap Korean SUV. I developed a special relationship with a small time mechanic to keep my two rides running. Since my number one tool of choice was subterfuge, the art of appearing to be something different from what I really was, I didn’t need high performance vehicles.

I did invest in a high performance real time video drone. The plan was to work with dead drops to collect the shine. Then take the shine to my house to repackage it into spring water bottles. I drove the cases of bottled water to the delivery site in an out of town location. I used the drone and the police scanners to check for cops staking out the dead drop, and road blocks in route, and stakeouts at my delivery site. Everything was working pretty well by the time the weather went all to shit.

I even began to have people calling me on my ‘business’ phone to buy product. I just hung up on them. I didn’t deal with cold callers. A new customer had to be introduced to me by an existing customer or supplier. Even with an introduction I was very careful who I sold to. The supply of good liquor was smaller than the demand. By good, I mean liquor that had been tested for its safety.

The first summer I handled liquor made in the mountains of Appalachia and the bayous of Mississippi. Mostly it was corn and rye grains used in the manufacture of the shine. Toward the end of summer I began thinking about what I was going to do next. The summer shine season definitely pumped up my cash supply, which was a good thing. I did need a year round income that I could report so that my life style could take an upgrade.

I had a bank transfers for my mortgage, car payment, utilities, and most of my online purchases. The deposit in that account was from my pension, so on my books I looked to be living almost hand to mouth. What that didn’t show was the cash income from bootlegging. That money got spent on things that couldn’t be traced back to me.

One of the things I planned to buy was a sorta large fishing boat. I didn’t really like to fish, but I was interested in moving product by water. I planned to do a great deal of research before I put a boat into the Yazoo river.

One of the really good things about bootlegging is that it paid well, and in cash. Another plus was it didn’t take a lot of my time. The second vehicle and the drone were not essential. They were both more for convenience.

The basic operation by the end of the summer went like this. I paid for the product and took delivery at a dead drop. I loaded it into the SUV, then drove it home after being sure I wasn’t followed. I parked the car in the drive and waited for daylight.

After breakfast I unloaded it and dragged all the liquor into the tall open space under the house. I had built a clean room inside that space. In the clean room, which was no more than a large wooden box the size of a small storage building. Inside that box I repackaged the load into smaller water bottles. Which I bought from various retailers and in different cities all over both states where I operated.

Walmart was always good for a few cases. Once the load was ready I got on the phone to set up meetings with interested buyers. I had been able to switch transaction from a buyer driven narrative, to a seller driven one. Usually I had a list of interested buyers that exceeded my supply. I wasn’t greedy for one thing. I only bought from people I trusted, and only sold to buyers I knew, or were known to a trusted partner. I was in the game for the long haul.

When Lynne justed showed up at the door the first time, I had been in the one room house a month and there had zero visitors. I also had two cases of ‘bottled water’ in the clean room downstairs when she knocked on my door, so I freaked out a little. Since I knew damn well the new front gate had a padlock on it, She had obviously walked in around it. Something had to be done about that.