How to make an honest buck in Meldene on a Thursday night

Thabo took the R10 taxi from Orlando West to Melville with his R5 bag of weed. If he was lucky, he’d be able to sell it for R50 to some white guys in the Melville party zone.
And he knew the place too. The Meldene parking lot, just behind the clinic. He’d sold weed there before, when he was still a kid, working for Farouk. But that had just been selling sticks for three, four, five bucks. Dried-up crumbs of zol wrapped in brown paper.
This time he had quality weed. If he found the right buyer, he could triple, quadruple his money. Times it by ten! That’s why he had spent the last of his money on the taxi fare.
He got into Melville around 8pm. Right in the middle of weed-buying time. The guys seemed to like a smoke after dinner.
Before approaching the parking lot, he cased it from the back stairs of the Boulevard Centre down the road.
Crap! Farouk was still there. Thabo could make out the lumpy outline of his cap on one of the three figures squatting beneath the tree at the back of the lot. Farouk still had a post there. That made it his turf.
There were a couple of other parking lots Thabo could try – the one across the road from the Reggae Bar, the one behind the second-hand shop… Or he could go lurk in a doorway on the restaurant strip and whisper, “Swazi! Bankies!” at passing pedestrians. But the people who bought in such places were only looking for R5 sticks. He wasn’t going to find a bankie customer there.
His best bet was to lurk half a block away from the entrance to the Meldene parking lot and then try to get the attention of a driver approaching the lot before he actually got to the turn-off. And he had to do this without Farouk noticing.
Thabo carefully selected a niche in the vibracrete wall just outside the bottom entrance. If anyone slowed to turn in, he would be the first person they saw there. He just needed to make the smoking sign, and the customer would stop immediately.
Then hopefully he could make a quick deal before Farouk noticed and came down to this end of the lot to sort him out.
This Merc might be just the ticket.
As the headlights flashed in his eyes, Thabo frantically toked on his thumb and forefinger, nodding knowingly into the light.
The car stopped so quickly it wasn’t even out of the road properly. That was enough to attract police attention already…
Thabo ran up to the driver’s-side window. “Ganja?” he and the client chorused with sublime synergy.
“What you got?” a man’s voice asked.
“Swazi bankies,” Thabo replied in his confident business voice.
“How much?”
“Sixty!” he quoted, betraying no emotion. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed people stirring under Farouk’s dealing tree.
“Okay,” came the order after a moment’s consideration. “Give me five.”
“That’s three hundred!” Thabo almost lost his composure.
“Fine. Just hurry up! I’m half in the road, here.”
“Sure-sure.” Thabo placated him as he leant in the window and took the three bills. “I’m here now.”
There was only one thing for it. He had to ask Farouk for stock.
He strode purposefully up to the three men approaching his end of the parking lot. They met right in the middle, near where the security guard sat dozing in his tiny pine hut.
“You?” came Farouk’s voice. “You selling at my post?”
“No, I’m bringing this guy to you,” was Thabo’s line. “I met him on Seventh street. He wants to buy four bags. How much is it?”
There was a beat of silence as Farouk made up his mind. And then…
“Fifty rand a bag.”
Thabo accompanied Farouk and his sidekick to an ivy bush behind the guard hut, where the henchman dug out a plastic shopping bag and produced four bank bags, bulging with weed.
Thabo handed over two hundreds, secreting the third in his sleeve.
“Enkos’”
As he trotted back to the Merc, the driver had his lights on and was already revving to go. He fished his personal bag of weed out of his crotch as he leant into the window for the last time and said simply, “Five”
The Merc was doing 80 up Third avenue by the time Thabo was upright. He immediately sprinted up the road behind him.
There would still be Soweto taxis leaving from Kingsway.