HDWGH – Story 21 – Supermarket Shuffle
–From The How Did We Get Here Series–
Now: 71 year old grocery shopper Helen Ford is standing in front of the local grocery store in handcuffs. Police have her surrounded and are in the process of interrogating her. She is obviously confused and terrified.
Before: Gordon Hoffman was late for the “drop.” His regular girl Abby couldn’t make it this morning so the daily cocaine drop for the day was left up to a kid named Jordan Wilkerson. The drops were always made in plain site at the local grocery store. So far, no one in his drug chain had been arrested or even questioned. Who would think that drug deals were happening in the grocery store? Gordon thought the whole idea was brilliant.
Jordan looked at the hand written instructions with a bit of puzzlement. He had issues with dyslexia but he often sometimes omitted or added words that weren’t there. To Jordan, the note read “Look for a 71 year old woman. They will be near the cucumbers at precisely 0815. All you have to do is slip the package into the open carry bag that will be around their shoulder.”
What Jordan actually read was “Look for a 17 year old man. They will be near the cucumbers at precisely 0815. All you have to do is slip the package into the open carry bag that will be around their shoulder.”
Gordon Hoffman was still 5 minutes away from the store…so…
On time and on cue, Jordan dropped the drugs into Helen Ford’s purse at precisely 0815. He had certainly got the time and place right. This story would have stopped right there…except for one other thing.
While getting her purse out of her handbag during checkout, the drug pouch fell out and spilled all over the counter. The check out lady was Marcy Walker whose son Gabriel had a serious cocaine problem so Marcy knew instantly what it was, let out a few curse words in Mrs. Ford’s general direction, and called the police.
