Last Wednesday, the day before food stamps hit, a grungy stolen food vendor walked in with a grocery store manager. The retail food management uniform is basically dark slacks, white dress shirt, and tucked in tie. I’m looking at a carbon copy of the late 40s retail food tyrant I once was, walking in non-gay partnership with a scrounge ball skinhead food fence of the type my co-manager and I used to tackle on the parking lot.

They avoided me like the plague while I glare at them and considered calling Duz on the phone so he could drive over here and beat their asses by the pool tables while I pounded back a cheap beer.

Duz is a famous Baltimorean hard ass. [In The Logic of Force he is pictured in the shirt that says ‘Shuck me, suck me, eat me raw’.] He was once run over with 20 K in cash under his arm by a Buick while the thug on foot with the gun lost ground in the foot chase. The would be getaway car was totaled and the cash caught up in the wheel well. Duz trained with me that night, his big polish ass immune to automotive assault.

One time three Baltimore City pigs came into the store flashing badges and demanded that he cash a fourth party check. He answered, “No.” The pigs waited for him to get off work and followed him to the bar. They bought him beer, after beer, after beer, trying to get his block-head protected brain pickled, not realizing that immunity to alcohol was one of his superpowers. When the bar closed, with Duz a case deep into their pork pay, they followed him outside to make a DWI arrest, and he waived them off, “Thanks for the brewskies, I’m walkin’. You can follow if you like." [He had a pit/boxer mix named Chico who ate cats whole and was trained to attack anyone but me, Corky, and babes on sight].

But Duz really came into his own when it came to thieves who sold in bars. One night we were drinking tequila with two babes when he said, “Go look in the freezer.”

I was shocked to discover $100 worth of steak from a competitor. He explained to me that he was slamming back brews at the Pub when some ‘low life’ came in selling our steaks. Well, he actually robbed the guy in front of the bar tender and patrons; taking his money, the packs of Walmart underwear, and the steaks. He chuckled as we got into his hot tub with the floatation devices of the night, “I was so drunk I couldn’t even read the label. Go figure. You’re the philosopher. Does that make me a thief?”

“It makes you just in a world without justice, a vigilante.”

He then toasted me, “With steaks on the grill!”

Well, I decided not to call in a Duz strike on the suit and the trash and just took out my notepad. After they left I asked their customer, Reggie, who ‘placed an order’ with the men before they left, “What’s up with the store manager? You mean to say he’s in on it too? He must be the CSM or Co. The top guy makes too much for this shit, even if he’s on coke.”

Reggie said, “Nah, Nah ma man. Listen to me. I don’t mean ta be racist. Da fact is, he got da complexion fo da protection!”

I got it immediately. “He’s impersonating the new district manager, coming through on inspection. The staff runs and hides from these dudes, and the store managers have off on Wednesday, and he [the manager] is the only company employee—the only person at store level—who really even knows who works out of the district office! He’s even got the standard bad pasted comb-over.”

Reggie, apparently pleased to meet a streetwise and management wise man, said, “Ya see you gotz the complexion fo da protection—could work dat shit yo own self!”

And so it goes, in the ghetto.