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MONEY WORRIES

and I were arguing. I had no money. I was doing coke every night with Roberto and not sleeping well. Ricardo had left me. And, worst of all, I was facing another prison sentence. I tried to concentrate on working hard to save up enough to be able to pay my lawyer and maybe send a bribe to the judges, but it didn't work. The restaurant business actually began to lose money. Although I never blamed him directly, I suspected that the reason was Mike.

When he took coke only occasionally, Mike was a good friend and the best worker I ever had. When he was back on it heavily, he cost me more money than he made. The restaurant ceased being profitable. I couldn't explain why. We had customers. I had done all the figures and worked out the profit margin on each dish. But the business kept going backwards.

'You're too generous. You give them too many fries,' Mike said, as I ran my finger over the accounts and scratched my head, wondering why I wasn't making a profit. Mike always did the cooking, but I was in charge of deciding on the menu and portion sizes. 'Look at those Bolivians. They are fat enough already. Stop feeding them so much.'

I was no longer in the mood for his jokes. 'Potatoes don't cost anything,' I snapped back, but Mike had an answer for everything.

'True, but the oil we cook them in is expensive. And the gas. Have you factored in the gas? I had to replace that valve, remember?'

'What valve?' I demanded. The main thing that annoyed me about Mike was that he didn't write anything down. Not orders, not money coming in, nor expenses. It was all recorded in his head. He also became angry quickly.

'Are you accusing me of lying?'

'No. I didn't say that. I just think we should write everything down.'

'It's all up here,' he said, tapping his forehead with his wrist because his hands were dirty. 'I haven't got time to write things down and I don't need to. My memory is perfect. Ask me any question.' I couldn't directly accuse Mike of taking drugs since he still claimed to be clean, but eventually we had a falling out over money. I had to get Sergio in to start cooking for me, but even then, the money I made barely covered my living expenses.

With the restaurant no longer so profitable, I needed to find another way of making money very quickly in order to bribe the judges. The most obvious way was to do some negocios with the other inmates.