Drug Deals

Over the weekend, I watched what I’m fairly sure was a drug deal going down in the parking lot by my girlfriend’s apartment.

A man I’ll call the Smoking Man had been lingering outside the apartment building in his truck, doing nothing more than smoking a cigarette. Then a van showed up in the pay parking lot adjacent. The Smoking Man pulled out of the stall and advanced up the alleyway, now electing to park illegally in the alleyway behind Chapters. He turned off his engine, got out of his truck, and approached the van. I later saw the van drive down the alleyway eastwards. I assume the Smoking Man was inside it, buying drugs, but the tinted windows prevented a good view.

While he was gone, a security guard approached the Smoking Man’s truck, now vacant, and jotted down its license plate. About thirty seconds later, Smoking Man reappeared, running up the alleyway from the same direction in which the van had headed earlier. He gave a rueful smile to the security guard, then jumped into his truck and sped away – not without, of course, adding that delightful touch of machismo that grows in popularity daily – that spin of the wheels along the gritty pavement as you accelerate as fast as you can.

These elaborate manoeuvres are sure signs of suspicious – i.e. illegal! – activity. I like to think I’ve got a trained eye for these kinds of things in light of my three years’ residence just east of China Town. That neighbourhood, while at first glance seeming fairly innocuous, was nevertheless a Mecca for prostitutes and crack dealers. My friend Matt and I would occasionally sit on my balcony with a six-pack of beer and just watch the deals go down. It was a really good time.

You don’t get the flavour of a place only by walking around it; sometimes it is enough just to sit still and let the place move around you.