I, Death

Brecht: 5

It didn’t take long for Dillon’s gang to split into two factions.

The schism occurred the very next day, in fact.

Word quickly spread through the gang about Dillon’s death and the rift between his two second-in-command men.

Fitz ensured that Brecht’s apparent disloyalty to the gang’s leader also spread; about how the power hungry gang member allowed their leader to be taken down by a single client and a young teen.

By the time the sun came up, every single immediate member of Dillon’s gang were already split in their loyalties between Fitz and Brecht. The word Fitz had been spreading seemed to hold more credence with the majority of the gang members and of the two dozen gathered in the back room of the closed bar on Durham street in downtown Sudbury the next morning at 8:00am, eighteen of them were against Brecht and only six of them were with him.

The division was immediate and quickly turned violent.

Heated argument and discussion about who the next leader should be didn’t take long to degenerate into a fist fight.

By the end of the fight, seven gang members — two from Brecht’s camp and four from Fitz’s group — were dead. The members supporting Brecht fled the aborted meeting after determining they were outnumbered and didn’t stand a chance of lasting any longer.

The four remaining gang members that supported Brecht reported to him later that morning, bruised, bloody, and two of them suffering near fatal stab wounds.

That was when Brecht knew Fitz had succeeded in taking over Dillon’s gang. He held the majority of the gang members under his control. The dozen or so immediate members each had a half dozen lower level contacts and peons, which left Brecht with a substantially smaller group than Fitz had and with only a handful of peons working in the downtown core of Sudbury.

It didn’t take long for the newly rejuvenated gang Fitz led to undermine and thwart any efforts of Brecht’s gang in gaining any purchase in the downtown core, the most profitable concentrated area of operation. This had a ripple effect through the supply chain as well, with contacts in Toronto and larger urban centres neatly severed. The word of Fitz and his gang held more punch, more substance than word of any of the members of Brecht’s gang, and it was difficult for Brecht to maintain any operations with his existing contacts. He was forced to pretty much sever ties with all but two of his existing supply chain contacts in Toronto, and had to forge new ones from scratch.

The whole effort was made doubly difficult for two reasons. The word Fitz had been spreading about Brecht’s betrayal of Dillon was wide-spread and had planted seeds of doubt about Brecht in the minds of many people planning on associating with him; plus the men in Fitz’s gang were also poised to destroy any operations that Brecht and his gang were planning. It was often the case that when Brecht was able to secure a new artery in his supply chain, an attack from a group of Fitz’s gang took it down and out of operation.

The attacks were swift, brutal and had a dual effect. They not only put an entire arm of Brecht’s gang out of commission, but they also served as a warning to others who might be considering going into business with anyone from Brecht’s gang. The message was clear: Join up with Brecht and face annihilation from Fitz’s gang.

The four men who had stuck with Brecht from the beginning of the rift remained loyal and dedicated to the cause. Brecht was appreciative of them, and for their own contacts, because they were what kept him focused and believing that they could return to their former glory, that they could be victorious over the other gang.

Brecht was determined to claw his way back to the top and overthrow the gang Fitz led. In order to ensure a flow of money and the ability to maintain his few loyal close gang members, Brecht focused a good portion of their operations on the areas not controlled by Fitz. They worked more on the outlying, lesser communities which meant harder work, longer hours for less of a return on investment. They required longer channels and more hands exchanging money down the chain which took a larger cut out of profits before it flowed back to the top. But Brecht was able to make it work, following a model of quantity over quality as well as diversification. If the profit made on the sale of drugs was cut down to ⅓ of what he would normally be making, then it just meant Brecht needed to have three times as many transactions to make up the difference.