He was about five four, real stocky, a tough, tough dude from Highlandtown, carried himself like he was seven foot tall. He got out of prison and came to work with the company I was with. He told me how he got into prison. He was living out Joppa Town and him and his buddy would go out to the crack spots and jump out [of the car] and beat the shit out of these dindu drug dealers. They would take their drugs and money off of them and speed away as quick as they could. They’d go to all those apartment complexes around Edgewood. These guys were smoking crack and that’s how they were supporting their crack habit, robbing these drug dealers.

They were out late one night drunk and they couldn’t find any crack dudes and they found this black guy waiting on the bus after work with four dollars in his pocket and they beat the shit out of him and robbed him and he already had all kinds of trouble backing him up: warrants, parole violations. He did his time and come out and worked for us. There was this other big Highlandtown guy named Russel and his son, Lumpy, two fat guys from Highlandtown, father and son, the father a huge guy. Mean Gene stole a little bit of copper and set it by the dumpster. Russel found it out there and was putting it in his truck and Mean Gene comes out there with a length of pipe ready to split his wig, he said, “I’m gonna split your fuckin’ wig.”

This is a good-paying job and this guy is ready to kill over a little bit of coppers.

Russel was a big Teddy Bear guy. He was a fatherly type, good spirited. His son was there, I wasn’t going to see him get hurt. I was ready to fix Gene—to puta foot up his ass. Him and his son were two big, happy go lucky guys and I was going to go over there and put a foot in Mean Genes ass. I liked Gene too but I was going to put a stop to this shit-wasn’t going to let him put a pipe in Russel’s head. But Russel took care of it and said, “Here you go, I just found it by the dumpster, if it’s yours you can have it.”

Gene quit and joined the union and worked on that job where they built the Giant over there in Waverly. That’s what I mean about low I-Q. This guy has a good-paying job—like 26 dollars an hour, in the union 32 an hour—and it didn’t matter, he was willing to hit a guy in the head with a weapon over 15 dollars in copper. That’s just how a lot of these guys think.