a hatch that connects to our trench, and we put a plastic tarp over the roof. We’ll have to seal the room up tight, and then we bury the whole thing.”
“What about power?” I asked.
“We can run a line underground from my garage.” He said.
“Well, what if they sell the house? Then you’ve got a weed farm going under someone’s backyard. You think they wouldn’t notice something like that?”
“That house has been empty going on three years now. They took the for-sale sign down last year and boarded up all the broken windows. It has structural damage from the earthquake. I think it’s gonna be empty ‘till they get around to demolishing it. Besides, Taylor’s brother told me you could take a skunk plant to maturity in about four months. If we do it right, we may be able to get as much as an ounce per plant. If we get eight or nine plants, we could make a gang of money really soon.”
“What’s going on man? I thought you were mister nine-to-five. Why you wanna commit a felony all of a sudden?”
“That Kinkos shit is over.” He said, flicking his ash. “I got canned. My shift supervisors all liked me, but the manager didn’t. I gave some girl a bunch of copies for free and the fucker was watching. I didn’t even know he was there. Anyone else would’ve got a warning, but since it was me, and I was on probation, I got fired. I busted my ass there for two years, and they fired me just like that.”
“So the new plan is to be a weed farmer?”
“I’m gonna enroll in the DeVry institute too. I want to get a degree, maybe in electronics or private investigation, I’m not sure. Most of the programs are four months, so by the time I get my degree I’ll also have a harvest, and I can move out of my mom’s house and get a good job somewhere. The weed money could be for a car and maybe a down payment on an apartment, you know? Start up money. By this time next year, I could have my shit all together.”
“How much money is it going to cost to build this thing?” I asked.
“Michael said he can get the lights, I think he’s gonna rip ‘em off from somewhere. Other than that, it’s wood, nails, sealant, tubing, fans, gravel, tarps, different sized pots, and potting soil, and of course we’ll need plant food. All together we figure it should run about three to four hundred bucks.”
“That’s a lot of money.” I said.
“Yeah, but if we all put in a hundred dollars or so, it won’t hurt so bad. Besides, if we can each get a couple ounces out of it, you do the math. Anyway it takes money to make money right?”
“I guess.”
“So, are you in?”
“I think so. I want to get that book and see what we’re getting into first. I don’t know shit about growing plants. If we kill them ‘cause we fucked up the watering schedule or something, we lose all that money. Plus you gotta figure some people are gonna find out about it. If it gets around, we could wind up in jail. Like Don for example. He’s our friend and everything, but he’s not in on it, so he isn’t risking anything by telling someone, and if that person happens to be pissed off at one of us, they could call the cops.”
“That’s paranoid dude, Don’s not going to tell anyone. He didn’t want to do it because he doesn’t have any start-up money. He said he’d be our best customer.”
“What makes you think I have the money?” I asked.
“C’mon, I know you have it. Michael said you’re working the flea markets with his brother. He said you took a guy for a thousand bucks last Sunday. What’s a hundred dollar investment when you can make five hundred bucks in one day?”
His words rang in my ear. Jason ripped off two suckers last Sunday and I was one of them. “Yeah well, I’ll go over to Don’s tomorrow and borrow that book. If it doesn’t look too tricky -I’m in.” I said.
“Oh, I almost forgot to ask. Were you here when all that shit went down over at G’s last night?”
“The explosion? I was here. That shit was loud.” I said.
“Me an’ Michael skated down to see what the fuck happened and the fire department and police were down there. The whole tree was on fire, and Steven’s Camaro was completely wrecked. We figured you missed it or something ‘cause you didn’t come down. Half the neighborhood was there.”
“I came out to see what happened, but when I saw cops I went back inside.” I said.
“Why? What the fuck are they gonna do? Arrest you for trying to see what’s happening on your own street?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t put it past ‘em. You get a bunch of assholes together with guns and uniforms and who knows what could happen? They’re ready to shoot anything that moves when they’re nervous. I mean, they shoot people by mistake all the time. My friend Colin told me about this guy who was robbing a bank, and the cops came and surrounded it. They told the guy to, you know, come out with his hands up or whatever, and the guy comes running out of the bank holding his fingers like a gun and literally shouting ‘bang, bang.’ And what do you think happened?”
“They shot him?”
“Yup. They fucking unloaded on him and killed his ass for yelling ‘bang, bang.’”
“Michael thinks it was Jessie that did the car. Him and Steven are doing business together, or they were anyway, and Michael said when you and him were over at Jessie’s he tried to sell you dynamite.”
“Yeah, it probably was him, but who knows? I’m sure Steven’s pissed off a lot of people.”
“Shit’s gone crazy around here lately.” Jeremy said. “I mean pretty soon we’re gonna have bloods and crips selling crack and doing drive-bys and shit.”
“Dude, it’s still Altadena.” I said. “I don’t think there’s many crackheads in the neighborhood.”
Later that night I was eating chips in my room, drawing a picture of a goat being roasted over an open fire by two guys in baseball caps when Kate knocked on my door. I closed the notebook and told her to come in. She said she’d been thinking about the car and that she was willing to sell it to me. “I’ve been wanting to get a new one for awhile now anyway.” She said. “And twelve hundred dollars is more than I would get for it if I traded it in.”
“Great.” I said.
“There are a couple of things that I’m concerned about though,” she said, “I won’t give you the car until you have a valid drivers license and insurance in your own name. Insurance can be expensive for a new driver like you, but it’s illegal to drive around without it now. It’s a new law. The police can ask for proof of insurance, and give you a ticket if you don’t have it.”
“Really? That sucks. I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, it was a big controversy a couple of years ago. The other thing is, I can’t give you the car until you’ve paid me nine hundred dollars, not six. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I want to have enough for a down payment on a new car before I give up my old one.”
I told her it was a deal and that I would get her the first payment the following week.
22
“Here they come,” Michael said, “act like we’re doing something shady.” We got close together with our backs to the street and held our hands low, like we were trying to hide a drug deal. The black and white police cruiser slowed down as it approached us. We both looked up as if surprised. “RUN!” Michael shouted.
We tore up the driveway, past a minivan into the backyard. I heard a car door slam behind us. We slipped through a small space between a tool shed and a hedge which put us in the neighbor’s yard. We doubled back and ran across the grass and through the gate in an iron fence that blocked the driveway. We cut close to the house and Michael peeked around the corner to see if the cops were in the street. He looked back at me and nodded. We ran across the street, past the cop car, and hurdled a low stone wall. We sprinted by the house into another backyard.
Without looking back I knew the street hadn’t been clear because I heard a voice behind us shouting to get down on the ground. We kept running.
“Fuck!” Michael spat, realizing our brilliant plan hadn’t worked as we
dodged some lawn furniture. I pulled myself over the back wall as fast as I could, landing in a bush that ripped into my jeans and stabbed me in the thigh. I crashed my way out of it, doing more damage to my pants, and ran along the back of the yard. I heard Michael struggling in the bushes behind me as I ran. When I came to the corner of the hedge I lowered my head and slammed my way in, blocking my face with my arm. I caught a glimpse of the next yard and thought I was safely through, but I hit a short chain link barrier and stumbled badly. It was only about three feet high, and my momentum took me over. I hit my head on something as I fell forward and my shins scraped down the top of the little fence. I stood and saw that I was on a dirt strip between two rows of bushes where the backyards met. Michael had better luck getting through the hedge and he passed me. I followed him down the corridor until our way was blocked by a wooden fence. It was too high to jump and there was a dog barking on the other side. We turned left, running between the fence and a line of thick trees that grew practically right up against it. I was being scraped and slapped by branches and my pant leg below my right knee was shredded.
We came out beside a two-story white house and kept running. We were crossing the street, going toward another yard when the cop car came around the corner to our right. It’s siren went on and I looked up for a second. I noticed there was only one cop in the car, which meant the other one
Spacecraft Page 37