Pimp Read Free Page B

because he was crashing from his high and desperate for his next fix. He was damn serious—he’d kill the grungy drug addict, rip the punk’s fuckin’ head off if he didn’t cough up the shit.
    But Sage was going, “I’m not giving you shit, bruh. I’ve been doing some research on you on Google. That’s right, I googled your fat, saggy ass and I know who you are. Your name’s Fisher, Max Fisher. I know everything about you, bruh. I know about the people you killed, about your drug dealing, and I know about Attica. You’re fuckin’ homicidal, you’re fuckin’ crazy.”
    If he’d still been soaring on PIMP, Max would’ve taken all of this as a major compliment. Down, he liked being called homicidal, but fat, saggy ass?
    “You callin’ me fat, saggy ass?” Max asked, glaring empty and psycho like DeNiro at the mirror in
Taxi Driver
. For full effect he repeated, “You callin’
me
fat, saggy ass?” Let it hang there, then added, “FYI, where I come from, back east, all the players carry some extra baggage. Why do you think Tony Soprano had all that street cred? Why did Phil Hoffman get all the great roles? And why was I the CEO of a drug empire? When you’ve got meat you’ve got power. It’s called being large and in charge.”
    “Come another inch toward me, I’ll waste you.” Nerdy white guy trying to be all
Menace 2 Society
.
    Half wishing he’d taken out this asshole on that bathroom floor when he’d had the chance—but not really, ’cause then where would he get more PIMP?—Max said, “Okay, let’s say I am who you say I am, though I’m not saying that. But if you really think I’m Max Fisher why aren’t you turning me in? I mean, I’m on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. You get a reward, what, hundred grand if you turn me in? You gonna tell me you’re allergic to the green and white?”
    Sage didn’t say anything, but it clicked for Max.
    “It’s the PIMP, isn’t it? If you rat on me, then I rat on you.” Max smiled. “Well, looks like we have a situation here now, doesn’t it?”
    The ol’ businessman Max Fisher was back in play, and he did what he did best—negotiated a deal. A seventy-thirty split in his favor. Sage would produce the shit and Max would market it. Powder form or pill, user’s choice. And as far as ratting on each other went—well, they’d make that risk work for them. Like the U.S. and Russia in the Cold War, they’d each hold something over the other’s head. Sage would write down the formula for PIMP and the history of how he’d invented it and sold it to barflies and businessmen all summer, and put this in a sealed envelope; Max would do the same with a confession detailing his crimes; and they’d send the two envelopes to a neutral lawyer, Nathan Schneermesser, Esq., Counselor-at-Law. For a fee, Mr. Schneermesser, Esq., would sit on the envelopes, with instructions to release one or the other in the event something happened—Max’s confession if something happened to Sage, Sage’s if something happened to Max. A perfect stalemate. Business relationships had been based on less.
    With that out of the way, it was time for marketing.
    Max had seen
The Social Network
, and knew if you wanted to start a trend, you had to get college kids hooked first. If it worked for Facebook, it would work for PIMP.
    He distributed freebies at dorms, bars, off-campus parties, clubs. The kids called Max “Red” ’cause of his beard. The name helped hugely—not Max’s, the drug’s. Walking past the juice bars of Portland, Max heard, “Gotta get me with some PIMP, yo.” Kids were fucking Facebooking and Tweeting about it; PIMP was going viral!
    Max, at his core, was a marketing guru, and he knew it didn’t matter what you sold, it mattered how you sold it—fuck, look at Amazon. Bezos started with books, cockamamie books, and now people were buying toilet paper from him in bulk—there was a lesson in there somewhere, and your last name had to be Bezos, Trump