Paradise Skies

It All Starts With Garbage

Standing in the parking lot of the T and T grocery store on Cherry Street JT was telling Gayle the details again, saying, "This Greek, he's going to tell you his life story, how he started out with his momma's Impala clearing the garbage out from behind the restaurants on the Danforth, how he got the Gardens contract - that is kinda good - and how he built it up into this empire of garbage."

"I see the trucks around," Gayle said, "Blue Island Recycling. But it's still garbage."

She didn't look too happy about it, but still JT was glad Gayle was taking the lead on this. She'd been running the legit businesses for her husband Danny Mac and a couple of the other Saints of Hell for years and now they were bigtime and Danny was the national president Gayle was running more of everything. JT said, "Look at all those condos, I think a new building went up since we've been standing here," and Gayle nodded and said, yeah.

"So come on," JT said, "every one of them, every unit in every building is throwing out garbage."

"Yeah, garbage."

"Every fucking day," JT said. "Imagine, fifty bucks a month from every unit in every building. For fucking ever."

"Yeah."

"Shit," JT said, "we're going need garbage trucks to take all the money out of this city."

"If we get in on this."

"The Greek sells and you do the deal with the Italians, we're in."

Gayle turned and looked at JT and said, "Just like that?"

"No," JT said, "not just like that. How long we been working this?"

"A couple of weeks?"

"Not the garbage," JT said, "the city. It's been how many years we went national?"

"This is different."

"Yeah, this is bigtime legit, if you can believe it. This is your territory. Every new garbage contract, the condo fees go up, they won't even notice."

"I'll notice," Gayle said. "I've got a condo."

Yeah, JT was thinking, actually you have five, you count the ones the girls are working out of. He said, "What are they gonna do, they're gonna pay."

Gayle said, "Yeah," and then JT's ringtone went off, something Gayle didn't recognize and he said, "Just a sec," and stepped away.

Gayle looked past the T and T down Commissioners Street to the Blue Island Recycling lot, just past the big movie studio building and she was thinking too bad there wasn't a way to get legit in the movie business and make some money. Then she realized they'd probably have the garbage contract, that might get her invited to a party with George Clooney and then she laughed thinking she was going to turn fifty in another couple of months, way too old for Clooney.

"This is funny," JT said putting his phone in his pocket. "One of the boys up in the jungle says a guy is trying to sell a video of the mayor."

"Hookers again?"

"No," JT said, smiling. "Smoking crack."

"You're kidding."

"You couldn't make this up," JT said. He was enjoying it. "They're trying to sell it to a newspaper. This could be good."

"What does this have to do with the garbage contract?"

"If the mayor resigns? Maybe delay the privatizing of the east side, that's not such a big deal, hardly any condo buildings yet, still too many houses but he has to stay long enough to get the LRT turned into a subway. This could work for us."

"Yeah," Gayle said, "how? We don't get any construction."

JT said, no, "But our friends in Woodbridge with that tunneling machine want it to be a subway not an LRT and the mayor's been helping with that. If we keep the video out of sight and they don't have to get involved, they'll appreciate it."

"We can do that?"

"Those are our dealers in the jungle, we can talk to them. This is good," JT said. "It'll help with this deal."

Gayle said, "Yeah, this garbage."

"It starts with garbage, Gayle, it goes from there. We just need to make sure we get a seat at the table."

Gayle said, "You're right. Okay, let's go talk to this Greek, work out a deal."