Almost Criminal: A Crime In Cascadia Mystery Part 3

"Not here they won't. Our power comes direct from the pole. No meter, no trace."

I shut up and let Skip talk. Randle had electricians and IT people on the payroll. Hydro inspectors. Locating the grow downstairs meant they had control over lighting and temperature, and even the air. They even filtered the air that pumped out of the house.

"When the crop peaks, it's skunky. Everyone on the block would smell it if we didn't have carbon filters on the exhaust," Skip said.

Each grow op had live-in caretakers who managed the day-to-day operations and kept up the appearance of a little home in the suburbs. But we weren't going to meet them. Randle had rules, and one of them was that no one in the business knew more faces than they needed to. The caretakers didn't talk to the maintenance crew - which is what we were, apparently - or the budders, who harvested the buds and leaves.

While Skip was talking, Randle disappeared upstairs, and Skip led me past the cables and ventilation hoses to a wall of storage lockers. In a normal house they'd be for sports gear. The lockers were stacked chest-high with small plastic storage boxes that looked like something from a hospital. Skip slid one out and popped its seal to reveal dozens of dried stalks, each with a half-dozen buds.

"Trimmed and dried, ready for curing," he said. "What do you know about weed?"

"You roll it into a blunt, stuff it in a bong. Light it up."

Across the room, Ivan laughed. He was lying on his back under a rack of plants, fiddling with a bundle of plastic irrigation tubes.

These buds weren't cured, Skip said, and weren't ready to smoke. "This isn't for you, anyways, I hope. This is medicinal gra.s.s. For cancer patients. Not enough buzz for me."

I flashed on Beth, but put it out of my mind as Skip pulled a couple of Easton hockey bags from a locker.

"Pack the buds into the baggies, and tuck the baggies in these." He showed me how to lay them in. "Gently, no crus.h.i.+ng the goods. Money's in the intact bud."

I moved to pick up one of the bags, but Skip stopped me, holding out woven-plastic coveralls.

"First slip this on. No contamination, and no pockets to tempt you to lighten the load. And gloves."

I slipped one leg into the baggy coverall. "Just the two bags?"

"Just two? Dude, do you have any idea? Sure we sell medicinal weed cheap, it's good karma, but one of those bags still brings us twenty grand. Our primo product sells for three, four times that - ask Randle about his White Ghost. Cross-bred it himself. Tested out at 25 to 28 percent THC."

"The nutrients," Ivan called. "The reservoir, it's dry. Check the feed pipe, maybe it leaks."

"That's not possible." Skip frowned and ran to the controller, and followed a water tube from a clicking pump to the rack of plants. No water stains on the floor.

I heard a creak, and saw Randle's feet on the stairs descending from the house above.

"Mother wh.o.r.e," Ivan said, and switched into Russian or Polish. Whatever, it sounded better for cursing. "Who runs this place? This is water only, no nutrients. How long have these plants had no food?"

Skip looked resigned. "No worries, just top up the reservoir. When I was here last week it was all right, or the guy upstairs would have said."

"You believed him?" Ivan cursed again.

"Relax, fill the nutrient reservoir and I'll reset the system. Zero it out and it'll be fine." He returned to the electronic controller and knelt down to its panel.

"Don't touch that!" Randle's voice filled the room.

"The bio-nutrients, we gotta -" Skip looked like a kid caught stealing money off his mother's dresser.

"What do you think you're doing? Don't touch the controller in the middle of a cycle."

Still on his knees, Skip gestured at the control panel. "It's no big deal, you just reset -"

"Shut the f.u.c.k up." Randle wrenched Skip's shoulder, knocking him to the floor. "You think this belongs to you? This equipment, this system?" His face was livid.

Ivan dropped his arms like he was getting ready for Randle to move on him next, while Skip got up and dusted his pants. Wisely, I thought, shutting the f.u.c.k up.

"You work for me," Randle spat. "You are a manager, at best. Fill the reservoir if you have to, but don't f.u.c.k with the controller's data. Take the boy and do your delivery. You're late. Ivan will remain here until he finds the leak or the pinch in the pipe or whatever the problem is, and if he can't find it, you'll both be back here every day, checking the levels until the situation is resolved. The only thing I'm certain is that it's not the controller."

It was past ten and the sky was a moonless, deep-country black. Still, Skip had me put the hood on. Trust only went so far. He was driving the grey Cavalier, and I was bouncing and rolling on the cramped back seat, hunched down, like somebody might spot me and dial 911 to report a kidnapping.

When we'd been on the highway awhile, he lightened up, saying I might be a civilian but what the f.u.c.k. I think he was p.i.s.sed with Randle and wanted to break a rule to get even. But only once he was far enough away. Whatever, I was glad to pull it off and clamber to the front.

I waited a few minutes before speaking, but I had questions. "All I did was stuff buds into baggies. For that Randle paid me a hundred dollars?"

"You're not done yet, bro." We were east of town now, where the road took a gradual downhill to the flatlands of the Fraser Valley. "First you pack it, then you drop it off."

"So we're doing a delivery."

"Correctomundo. You're doing the delivery."

Is that how people talked in the dope business, or was it just him?

"Why does that take two of us?"

"'Cause you don't know where we're going. Randle's rules: you work inside or you work outside, never both. I manage grows, so I work inside. You'll be doing transactions: outside work. You drive?"

"I don't have a licence." I put the emphasis on the last word to hint that driving skill wasn't the issue. Which was not true, but I was touchy about it. Everybody in the country drove, but where I came from you skated or took transit. I was probably the only seventeen-year-old in the valley who couldn't tell the gas pedal from the brake.

We were heading north now, away from the border and halfway to Sardis, it felt like, when Skip turned off at a corner with a gas station, K&S HUSKY, CIGS $5.99, with a corrugated-steel shed behind. Can't help it, I remember details.

"It's about containing the risk," said Skip. "Say I'm in a grow op and I get busted, not that that ever happens, but just sayin'.

I can't finger more 'n my gatherer, that's Randle, and a couple of caretakers. I don't know a single customer and they don't know me. Randle gathers from dozens of grows all over the valley." Skip nodded, impressed with himself and his business. He waved at the darkened hills. "I've been told one in ten houses around here has a grow. And there's all the bush operations out in the woods, farmers with barns.

He turned onto a small two-lane paved road overhung with evergreens. "You and I know what the herb's good for, but it's medical weed that's the Trojan horse for making it legal. Tonight you're delivering weed for cancer. We've got a strain for Hep C, one for AIDS, one for Alzheimer's."

"Bulls.h.i.+t." I couldn't help myself. I read newspapers, and I knew the issues.

"No bulls.h.i.+t, bro. Medical weed's legal in thirteen states. All you need's a prescription. Here too. If the cops bust a compa.s.sion club they're the bad guys. So we've become one big compa.s.sion club."

He slowed, his eyes seeking a landmark under the overhanging cedars.

"Here we are. These folks are expecting the delivery, so get out there and smile. Just knock on the door and when they see the bag, they'll give you the money, easy-peasy."

The car pulled up where a dirt road - two tire tracks - branched off.

"The driveway goes in a ways, but there's only the one place, you can't get lost. When you're done, wait just out of sight of the road. I'm not going to hang around here looking obvious, but I'll be back to pick you up. And no names, not yours, not n.o.body's."

And then I was alone. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the hazy cloud-filtered moonlight, and then I followed a narrow, rutted path past a stack of tires and a dirty yellow tractor that tilted into a ditch. I heard the TV first, laughter from a comedy show, then bursts of blue lit the clearing surrounding a rectangular house. As I approached, a spotlight popped on. A motion detector, I realized, when there was no reaction from inside. The house had brown siding around the foundation and walls of dimpled once-white stucco. A Slumber Queen camper van stood in the driveway with two wheels on blocks, beside a new-looking pickup. From one corner of the house a clothesline was strung with little square flags in sun-bleached red, yellow, and white, covered with Indian or Tibetan writing. Prayer flags. It felt a bit like a used car dealers.h.i.+p.

Ten feet from the door, I stopped. I let the bag down and ran one hand though my hair and looked up at the black trees. Containing the risk. This was too weird. It just wasn't something I could do. My chest was tight and I could barely breathe. I turned to go, and my foot made a sc.r.a.ping noise in the gravel. A dog inside began to yelp, and the front door b.u.mped as the dog pushed into it, barking with intensity. s.h.i.+t. There were voices inside, and shuffling, and the k.n.o.b turned and a grey-haired woman squinted out from behind an aluminum storm door. She was broad-faced and stumpy, wearing high-waisted pants and a sweater vest. The dog, all floppy ears and a huge voice, tried to shove through the screen.

She grabbed the dog's collar and shook it. "Shut up, you." The dog bayed and strained at its collar. "Is someone out there?"

The porch light flicked on. I sighed and stepped into the circle of light.

She saw the Easton bag, and turned her head, saying "Meg?" and she retreated, her hand wrapped around the protesting animal's collar.

A woman of similar age, but rounder and soft, with brown, oily hair and oversized plastic-rimmed gla.s.ses, came to the door.

"You're new," she said. "Come on in," and she disappeared inside.

I walked up to the door and waited.

"Come in out of the cold, honey," Meg's voice carried from somewhere in the back. "I'm Meg and this is Trudy."

"It's pretty nice out tonight, thanks." I said, half-opening the storm door. The home was very warm inside, with a humid, personal smell.

Trudy, the first woman, sat on a recliner holding the dog, some kind of a spaniel cross, in her lap. Meg reappeared - only a kitchen and a bedroom could fit back there, as far as I could tell - with four rubber-banded rolls of bills. Tucked under each rubber band was a penciled sc.r.a.p of paper. Ten thousand dollars a roll.

Chapter 5.

There were two more delivery runs that week, and three the next. As Skip had explained, I didn't meet any inside workers. He drove while I rode shotgun and then did the scary part, where I was dropped off alone with a bag of product or an envelope of cash, made the solitary walk, and knocked on a stranger's door. The moment when the door opened was the worst - I'd seen the mafia movies - but once I got past that it was always cool, a quick, friendly face-to-face transaction. Weed for money, money for weed.

Randle never let me know when I'd be needed. I'd be skating home and the white van would creep up behind me. Or Skip would park out of sight a few storefronts down from Human Beans and crank the engine the minute I left at the end of a s.h.i.+ft.

When they didn't need me for drop-offs, I worked with Ivan on the plants or in the drying rooms. I'd be hooded and delivered to wherever he was working. It was inside work technically, but we were both in training, and we never saw anyone else. He was getting ready to take over some operations of his own, whereas I knew so little I was just spare labour, probably cheap by their standards, although I'd never seen that kind of money in my life.

Ivan didn't speak to me much except to order me around like a dog - get that, spray this, clip the leaves like this, and shut up - but despite him I learned how to tell when a crop was ready - from the smell, from the dry, almost burned-looking buds - how to check the trichomes, the resin glands. And how to trim the bud for maximum return. When I saw Randle Kennedy next, I was ready to share what I knew.

The House of Dreams paid in fifty-dollar bills - one or two per job, sometimes three if the night went late. I'd always been good at sneaking home without waking anyone, and Beth only communicated with her painting anyway, and didn't seem to notice my new hours. My worry was that my stash of bills was growing large. When the mood took her, Beth would suddenly decide that the house was filthy. She'd pick up her bucket of cleaners and rampage through the house. She'd take rooms apart, scrub the floors with bleach.

If one of her cleaning fits took her, a dozen fifties in my drawer would be hard to explain. I couldn't easily bring it to a bank - bringing big cash to the bank was a formula for getting caught. As a temporary solution, I popped the back off a toy robot from the Lost in s.p.a.ce TV show. The show was off the air before I was born, but that hadn't made any difference to my dad, who'd made a big birthday deal of the stupid thing. I pulled out the batteries and a motor that had never worked, and stuffed it full of bills.

Skip helped me a lot in the early days, from rambling on endlessly about plant management and breeding, to buying bottles of Absolut for me to give Rachel to make up for repeated no-shows at c.o.c.ktail hour. Randle and Ivan tended to beat up on Skip a bit, like fat guys are fair game for teasing and maybe a bit simple too, which he wasn't. He knew as much about nurturing the plants as Randle, maybe more - I never saw Randle doing the hands-on work that Skip did. And for hour after hour driving the back roads I was his captive audience, so I learned a lot in a very short time.

On what turned out to be my last training run, I was up in the hills, miles from Wallace, walking up a rain-furrowed trail with a backpack of cash. Skip had dropped me off a half mile back. From the wheel of a beat-to-s.h.i.+t j.a.panese pickup, he'd pointed me up an unmarked footpath and then driven away. Don't freak, he said, he was confident in me and how I thought on my feet. This client didn't get many visitors, he said, like it was a joke, so don't do anything to surprise him. No fast moves.

Now I was following the trail's lonely turns and dips, past NO TRESPa.s.sING signs, until the path widened and scrub brush became a groomed, impenetrable wall of green, a ruler-straight cedar hedge that extended for hundreds of feet, leading to a heavy steel gate. As I approached, I thought I caught the glint of a camera lens in the bush. Sweat glued the cash pack to my back.

I pressed the b.u.t.ton on the gate and said the prearranged words: "Courier for Mr. Blunt."

A minute pa.s.sed. From somewhere beyond the gate there

was a faint baying of dogs. I backed off and adjusted the pack,

ready to head downhill again, when footsteps on gravel app-roached the other side of the gate. From the sound, there was more than one person.

The gate clicked and rumbled open on smooth, well-oiled runners, revealing a grey-haired, bearded man with round shoulders, thick gla.s.ses, and a studious look. He wore blue jeans, stained at the sagging knees, and a jean jacket with a sweater underneath, despite the early summer heat. He looked like a gardener, except for a sidearm and an a.s.sault rifle hanging loosely under one arm. Behind him was a woman of the same age, with waist-length white hair. I realized that I'd never seen a woman wearing a gun belt before, except policewomen, but my primary attention was on the three Rottweilers she held on thick, short leashes.

No fast moves, Skip had said. Good advice.

The man looked me up and down and raised one hand, wagging the fingers in a come-here gesture. I walked toward him.

"Not you, idiot, the bag." He said. He sounded vaguely Southern, drawing out yew and bayg.

I extended the pack toward him.

"Throw it." Thow et. He spat, disgusted. "You stupid as that dago, Ramon."

Whoever Ramon was, the old crank seemed to be talking to himself, not to me. I tossed the pack to his side of the gate. I wasn't about to challenge a racist with a weapon. The man bent down with a wheeze and tugged at the zipper, then poked a finger inside. He nodded. From somewhere out of my line of sight, a younger woman appeared, maybe twenty or so, pus.h.i.+ng a wheelbarrow of shrink-wrapped packages of compressed weed. Her hair was cut in a s.h.a.ggy blond Mohawk, and she wore a black tank top, loose camouflage pants, and military boots. She rolled the wheelbarrow to my side of the gate and left it, returning without a word, and shoved the gate closed. She hadn't glanced at me, hadn't raised her gaze above the ground.

Back at the road, I was leaning against the wheelbarrow, exhausted from hanging onto the densely packed load as it tried to get away from me on the downhill slope, when Skip pulled up in the old green pickup. My s.h.i.+ns were sc.r.a.ped and bruised from bas.h.i.+ng the wheelbarrow's legs, and a river of grit flowed down my back. Skip waited in the cab while I stuffed the load in under the cargo cap, then he pointed to a s.p.a.ce up the path for the empty wheelbarrow.

After a few minutes we were back on paved road.

"How'd he seem to you?" With his thumb, Skip indicated the woods.

Like a deranged grampa Rambo, I thought, but since he was probably Randle's age, I shrugged.

"Vietnam vet," he said. "Or so Randle says. And he'd know."