When I was piece working for myself sometimes I cleared 3-4grad a week. Of course, I paid quarterly taxes and carry own insurance.

Still, you’re clearing 2 or 3k. I couldn’t get unemployment when a job ended so I had to stay on top of what was going on. In one situation I had to chase a guy home and threaten one of his relatives to get my pay. Another situation I had to meet a guy that carried a gun when he was trying to dick me out of money. A couple of these guys, we worked with, Martin and Miguel, a couple Mexican friends of mine they did work for this guy, got paid some money and got fucked over.

This particular guy, Mike Palmer—You could put his name in because I care less about him—my Partner will was talking to him about framing sheet rock in this house in Canton. We were all working for this company, doing this on the side. we said we want half up front and the other half when the project is done. We sheet rocked it and were having trouble getting a four-grand check out of him and I kept calling and calling. He was a foreman for this company we all worked for—this was a side work arrangement, and so I asked one of the bosses’ if I could use his phone so I could call Mike’s company phone and he answered cause he thought it was a boss man.

I said, “I ‘m coming down that job tomorrow and I’m getting my money one way or another, I don’t care if I go to prison or what happens.”

“I don’t give a fuck what Wayne—the Big Boss—says, I need that money.”

He said, “Can you meet me at the Bank of American on Harford Road?”—cause he lived up this way too.

We set up a time at the end of the day and he shows up. This guy, cause all the people he fucked over, he carried a pistol with him. I had a .38 revolver in my back pocket so I can get to it quick. If he went for it I was going to pump his ass full of lead.

I met him alone.

I told my buddy, Will, “I promise you I will get this money.”

I was very close to him, a brother to me and I didn’t want him to get involved in this potentially explosive situation. I wanted the money for him and also I didn’t like being played for a fool. I knew this was going to happen going into it with this guy.

This guy was scumbag, was running a side business and would order extra material on the job where he was a foreman and then steal it and use it for his own business.

[The author once stopped a theft of materials at a grocery store that was undergoing construction, by a subcontractor who snuck onto the site with his men late at night to steal from the general contractor’s supplies.]

They eventually caught this guy with 400 feet of dry wall and hundreds of metal studs and 2-by-4s and hundreds of bundles of insulation. They checked surveillance footage and had him and a guy loading up a straight truck with all this shit. He got fired from there and has a fairly successful construction company right now.

Stocky, dark hair, combed back, about 5’ 11, 230, about 50 at the time. I was about 30-31.

We meet there. He pulls up in his truck and says, “It’s fucked up to get the company involved” and I say, “Mike, go get my money.”

He’s taking about other things and I said, “Mike go get my money.”

I was chewing tobacco and leaning up against his truck, spitting it in the bed of his truck—Red Man—while he was getting the four grand he owed me.

I don’t know if he had a gun on him—he did carry one a lot. He come out and handed the money to me and it was banded. I was flipping through it and he says, “It’s all there” and the fuckin’ guy asks me if I want to do more work for him!

I just walked, got in my truck and left him talking like a dumbass. I left his dumbass there. A short time after that, he got fired from making 100 grand a year working for this company and he blew this job stealing a few hundred dollars worth of material.

I went over to Will’s house on Henry Avenue and gave him his half of the money. He said, “I can’t believe you got that out of him.”

I could have cared less about the four-grand, but I couldn’t let this guy get away with punking Will out of his money.

I’m lucky he didn’t pull that gun, casue I was so mad I’d a been taking a trip to the Poconos for a few decades.

Round that time we were working for Mike he split up with his wife because he come home and found her sucking some guy’ cock out by the fire pit in his back yard—walked right in on her. Maybe Karma is real.