Chapter 27

Jefferson co ga
jefferson city ga
County jail in louisville ga.

I ran my friends and acquaintances over in my mind during my morning walk. To operate the business in my absence, I knew I needed a sweet old lady type, but still someone with a faulty moral compass. I could think of only one larcenous old lady who was still a sweat heart. I decided to offer it to her first, before looking elsewhere.

Before I started the small scale money laundering scam for real, I needed to set up a rock solid operation that would be hard to see and harder to unravel.

I wanted it structured so that it didn’t depended on finding a person who was an exact fit. I wanted the operation to allow for a plug and play operator, so anyone could run the scam when I was gone.

I had pretty much decided who was right as my first fill in employee. Since I couldn’t just run an add in the paper, I continued to search my history in Triboro through my mined. I always came back to the same person to be the first temporary me.

I decided the best person to trust was the very untrustworthy Bitsy at The Haven. I knew Bitsy would try to rob me blind, but she was not a rat. I knew that for sure.

The idea was simple. I had decided that I wanted to begin with someone who looked like everyone’s idea of a grandmother, but one without too much dementia or morals.

I drove to The Haven to discuss it with her. I met my friend from from the days when I lived in The Haven. Her code name was Bitsy and she was almost invisible. She was nearly seventy, but in good health.

My plan was to set up the physical shop in the storage locker which I already rented.

Bitsy could monitor sales from her home computer in the haven, then go to the locker to prepare the sold items for shipping. She should then drop the packages at the post office.

In order for me to resell an item, it needed to be low enough in price, yet hard enough to get for the average buyer, to make it worth the slightly higher price I had to charge for it. A product bought from me would be at his or her door in three days, not two months.

I wanted to keep the volume low, so for now Bitsy wouldn’t have to work too hard. Once I got in front of Bitsy we discussed it. Bitsy didn’t surprise me at all. The sexy grandmother was thrilled with the idea.

“To tell you the truth Ed, I’ve been bored silly this whole year. Save me from this life of boredom please,” she said as he held my arm.

“Let me explain what it’s all about,” I said.

“No, I’ll have my grandson come over and you can explain it to him. He is much better than me with Computers and the internet,” She said.

“That’s fine, but the checks are made out to you,” I demanded.

“Sure no problem,” Bitsy said. “You will at least be the face of the company. Your grandson is not to tell anyone that he works for me. If he does he will risk a prison sentence. He is just doing his old granny a favor, if anyone should ask.

“Of course,” she agreed.

“Don’t worry everything you are doing is legal, so don’t look at my operation too closely.” I demanded.

“Enough already Ed,” she said with a smile.

That was how I started a legitimate business with some questionable money. That and a lot of long nights researching things on Ebay. For most of the items I looked at, Jon would be my the test market.

I left instruction for Bitsy to leave me an email when the first order arrived. One of the services of the storage company was to accept mail for the locker renters. Their agreement stated that they would hold it for thirty days, before destroying it. I gave Bitsy’s phone number as the second contact and mine as the primary contact number.

It was a Monday morning, after my walk around the hood, when I got the call from Joan, the new screen writer. “Ed, it looks like I’m about twenty miles from your place. Can you be packed and ready to leave when I get there,” she demanded.

“If I’m not ready, you can come in and have a can of diet coke, or a bad cup of coffee and wait,” I said in an equally demanding voice. I wanted to stress to her from the start that we were partner, I did not want her to think that I worked for her.

“Would you at least try to be ready?” she suggested in a much nicer tone of voice.

“I will do what I can to be ready,” I promised. “If you will stop at a convenience store on our way out of town.”

“Done,” she agreed. Since I had never seen her, I couldn’t read her state of mind. So I just accepted that she was okay with the partnership plan.

She showed up in another of those Lincoln Navigator type things. It had a ford badge on the back, so I accepted that it was a bastard step child of the Lincoln. It probably had less bells and whistles.

I put all my tools in the large black backpack. Along with both my warm and cold weather clothes. Yes it was that time of the year. I had recently make a purchase of a pair of lightweight high top walking shoes. I packed them in the backpack, since I wanted to wear my canvas slip on shoes for he ride down to Georgia.

I got a quick glance at a girl in glasses and pull over tee shirt. She was wearing the trousers to a fancy business suit. I decided that as I slipped my backpack in the cargo space behind my passenger seat. That was when I noticed the jacket to the suit covered in plastic film and hanging on a plastic hanger.

Oh shit, I thought. Surly the people at Durham County Studio knew better than to send me a clean freak. Then again maybe they did know me well enough to know I was never going to make a good first impression. Since that was likely the case, I let it fly.

“The convenience store is half a mile on the road out to the highway,” I suggested. She just nodded her understanding. I had no idea what the meant either. I couldn’t get a good read on her, so I just gave up trying. She was going to forever be the tight ass chick with glasses, or the T A chick with Glasses to me and my friends.