The place was a warehouse at some point. Or a workshop, maybe. A drone hive? Who knows. But right now it's a hangout, and a party spot. The music is bone-rattlingly loud bass thumping with distorted voices and screeching guitar over the top. It smells like spilled booze and sweat and smoke. People are making out or passed out on the ratty couches, and the catwalk overhead creaks ominously as those atop it stomp in time. Strobe lights and lasers play over the shouting punk crowd, and a woman with a metal jaw and elaborate goth outfit is using black spray paint to cover the graffiti-covered walls and floor with vaguely demonic words and symbols- Satan, sacrifice, pentagrams, summoning, circles, devil heads, and more.
"God. Fucking Cinci," he says in a way that he hopes is either authentic or at least sounds like it's trying to be authentic while coming from a location that is not Hell. "Anybody going up to try to talk him down or is it just rubbernecking?"
"Looks like someone is."
He points.
It's Roland the 'garage owner', coming up the fire escape? It's probably Roland. Same gaudy glasses, same Sinzil coat in dark blue, same hairdo.
He approaches the guy, arms spread wide. Whatever they're saying is too quiet to make out clearly, but there's snippets. "-DON'T have to-" "-FUCKING-" "Never again!" "Get better? GET BETTER?" "-NOT gonna-"
And then Roland rushes the guy and they have a brief scuffle, right there on the roof.
It barely lasts ten seconds. Roland gets him into an arm hold and whispers something. Then shoves him away- Away from the edge. The guy bends over and screams in frustration. Roland rubs a hand through his hair. Then gets out and lights a cigarette.
...gosh. Cam will have to ask him about that later, maybe.
He putters back to the neighborhood to meet his dudes.
The crowd disperses, mostly pleased with the show.
And his driver pair are there, parked in a sorta out of the way spot! They come over all smiling and hand him a duffle bag.
"We already took and split the thirty percent. Good run. Tranq guns are in the truck, no shots fired. I'm sort of worried we'll get fucked up if you only sell to one of the three big fuel concerns though- I think you honestly want to negotiate with them before someone decides to get Tower to negotiate for them. 'Suspicion of stolen goods', like."
He turns the result of this calculation toward the guys. "Did you have to pay a bribe or something on the way back?"
"Have to? No. But it's a good idea to. We passed right by a Tower patrol and they were looking annoyed at the size of the truck so I got out and handed them a hundred bucks."
"I have no problem doing that out of my own pocket if it don't count as an expense. Your cut is extremely generous." The younger one pulls out a hundred and proffers it.
"Sure thing."
"Uh, head, I think you're underestimating how much money this is for us. This is - big drug deal type money. I don't think we should be making this much."
The other guy is staring at him like 'what are you doing?!?'
"More I think about it, the more nervous I get. You're not going to suddenly say we owe you twenty grand for all the gas, start demanding criminal shit to keep the dough rolling, anything like that? I mean, I feel silly asking, 'cause of course you're going to say 'no'. I'm just saying, this is too good to be true and it's making me look for the catch. I might want to duck out before it comes along, even, two grand in an afternoon is enough to keep me going for weeks."
"There's nothing like that, I just had no idea what market rate was and made a wild guess! For all I knew you were going to tell me 'fifty fifty or no deal', or want an hourly rate instead of a percentage."
"Thirty percent is, like, the cut for a whole crew, a whole operation. From guys gathering info and watching out for possible trouble, drivers, a crash team standing by, everything. Of course we weren't gonna negotiate down, but going forward, like... Yeah. You need more guys in on this distribution thing. Split that thirty percent more ways, that's fine if we have a backup plan. When shit hits the fan- And that's a when, not an if, in Cinci- Having more than just two dudes involved will minimize the mess."