by Nick Petrie
They walked into a small white-painted concrete-block room, with another double door at the far end and a thick window set into the concrete sidewall. Peter felt the static begin to spark. He stopped himself from reaching for a pistol he didn’t have.
“Bulletproof window,” Lewis said. “Doors, too, I’d guess. A sally port, right? One set of doors won’t open until the other set closes.”
“Yes,” McSweeney said. “What we grow is worth a lot of money. And there’s a big market, legal or not.” He raised a hand to the brown-skinned man behind the glass, neatly dressed in a blue polo shirt with the Heavy Metal logo on the breast. “Morning, Tonio. How are you this morning?”
“Not so good,” said the man behind the glass, his solemn voice filtered through the speaker. “I heard about the hijacking last night. Ms. Hansen sent out an email. Those guys were my friends.”
“Yeah, I’m really sorry about that,” McSweeney said. “The police will probably come by again to talk to you. Just tell them what you know, okay? We want to do everything we can to help.”
“Yessir.” Tonio did something with his hand and the far door buzzed. McSweeney stepped forward, opened the door, and walked through.
They were in a small white changing room, brightly lit, with benches and white metal lockers and a white-tiled floor with a drain in the middle. Peter’s static flared higher. He kept breathing, in and out.
McSweeney opened a locker with his name on it, dropped his trail runners inside and stepped into a pair of Crocs. “We do our best to keep out contaminants,” he said. “Mites, molds, whatever, we don’t want them in the grow. We seed the area outside with ladybugs to help control pests. Should be some spare shoes in that cabinet behind you.”
A tall open cabinet held bins of spotless Crocs and stacks of folded white garments wrapped in plastic, organized by size. McSweeney unwrapped what turned out to be a lab coat and pulled it on. His amused look was firmly back in place.
Peter glanced at Lewis, who nodded. They changed their shoes and put on lab coats, then followed McSweeney’s example by putting on hairnets and sterile blue nitrile gloves.
They went through the next door into another world.
It was impossible to tell that they were in a large warehouse in Denver.
It looked like a garden on the moon.
The space was subdivided into orderly rooms with white plastic paneling on the walls and ceilings. Bright lights and silver cooling ducts overhead, long metal tables connected to nutrient irrigation systems, circulation fans everywhere. Rooms with “mother” plants, sexed and used to produce cuttings for propagation of new plants. Rooms with those cuttings taking root, rooms with rooted plants growing to the flowering stage, rooms with mature flowering plants where bud growth was forced by changing the light cycle. Rooms with harvested plants hanging upside down for curing. The heady smell of the green growing plants was everywhere, but strongest in the flowering rooms. A few workers in scrubs, face masks, hairnets, and gloves walked the aisles, tending to the plants and the elaborate systems that kept them growing, including a young woman who had peeled off one glove and stepped slowly between the rows, touching each plant individually with a gentle caress.
“Nice, isn’t it?” McSweeney said, speaking a little louder than normal over the sound of the air circulation. “Right now, we’re about seventy-five degrees, fifty percent humidity. The plant likes what we like. Regulating the climate is a hugely important part of cultivation. Electricity for lighting and cooling is our single largest expense.”
Peter’s static was starting to crackle nicely, crawling up his brainstem. Lewis glanced at him. Peter nodded, kept breathing, and kept following McSweeney, who was explaining as they walked.
“Everything you see can be washed and sanitized between cycles,” McSweeney said. “We grow organic product in a hydroponic medium, no dirt, no pesticides, so air and water filtration is also very important. We have six unique strains here, with grow cycles running from eight to twelve weeks depending on the strain, and we’re breeding new stuff in the experimental rooms. That’s a big profit source for us, our unique strains. As the market gets more mature, retail pricing is going down. We have to grow product that is in high demand and that sells for higher prices.”
They stepped out of the clean rooms and into a small area that looked more like a working warehouse. Pumps and pipes and nutrient vats, packing stations for the finished product. Peter felt the openness of the twenty-foot ceiling as a kind of relief, although not the kind that walking outside would bring.
“I’m impressed,” Lewis said. “I don’t know what you’re using for nutrients, but you’re running double bulbs and a five-by-five grid to get the most from your lights. You’re using trellises in the flowering room, which help keep the plants vertically compact but get that extra side growth, grow more buds.”
Peter looked at his friend, surprised again. As far as Peter was concerned, Lewis might as well have been speaking Martian. But that was Lewis.
“Do you still think those hijackings are an insurance scam?” McSweeney asked. “Steal my own money and the insurance company pays the claim?”
“Been done before,” Lewis said. “But that’s not you.”
McSweeney gave him a challenging stare. “Yeah? Who am I, exactly?”
Lewis smiled his widest smile.
“Homeboy, you were in the life,” he said. “Had to guess, I’d say you were working some shitty minimum-wage job, twenty years old and trying to save up for community college. But a couple of your friends were growing dope in their basement or backyard shed or maybe on public land. Pretty easy money for ditch weed, tax free, and it was barely even illegal if you got medical clients on board. So you said to hell with college, rented a two-car garage, and taught yourself from there.”
McSweeney stood listening as Lewis kept talking.
“You’re an entrepreneurial guy, got a lot of energy, I’m guessing you did pretty well. Had some fun, too, right? You liked the excitement, doing deals, dodging the cops. ’Fore long you had two garages, then five. Crazy money for some kid from Bakersfield never went to college. But somewhere along the way, you had a setback. Maybe police problems, maybe the other kind. Lost everything, or almost everything, had to leave the state. But here’s Colorado, voting to legalize. You land on your feet and hit the ground running. You find a backer, get to work, and now you’re a big deal in Denver and it’s all legal.”
McSweeney looked slightly hypnotized. Like Lewis was reading his tea leaves and seeing the past.
“So no,” said Lewis, “I don’t think it’s an insurance scam, not for a measly half mil. You got too much to lose. What’s the economics on weed these days? For an operation like yours, high end, efficient, maybe a dollar a day per square foot? That’s net, after expenses, give or take. Stop me if I’m wrong. That old two-car garage made you about a hundred and fifty grand a year. But this place is ten thousand square feet. Which works out to three and a half mil a year. And you got two of them? You’re making serious bank, for you and your backer. No, a half million isn’t anywhere near enough. You have a much bigger problem.”
Zig McSweeney stared at Lewis, then turned to Peter. “How’d he do that?”
Peter smiled. “He’s kind of an idiot savant. Without the idiot part.”
To Lewis, McSweeney said, “I was actually running a small landscaping business,” he said. “Three guys, one truck. Twenty-eight and trying to finish my dissertation in plant genetics at night. I wasn’t having any fun and I wasn’t making any money and I wasn’t spending any time skydiving, which was why I started the whole thing to begin with.” He shook his head. “Other than that, you’re pretty much right on. I had six garages, then decided to scale up and rented a warehouse in East L.A. But that was a dirt grow, no air scrubbers, you could smell it a mile away. The cops never knew my real name, but they backtraced everything they could find. My house, my cars, all the money buried in the backyard. I got out with my laptop a
nd my seeds and the clothes on my back.”
“What about the bigger problem?” Peter said. “How’d he do on that one?”
McSweeney looked at Peter. “What’s your interest, here? Do you actually work for Heavy Metal Protection?”
“For about four days,” Peter said. “I was in the truck yesterday. I knew the men that died. I want to know why. And who killed them.”
McSweeney shook his head. “I can’t help you with that,” he said. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“It was your money,” Peter said. “What’s going on?”
McSweeney sighed. “This was all so much easier before things got legal.”
Lewis gave him a smile of infinite kindness. “Come on,” he said. “Tell Uncle Lewis your problems. You’ll feel so much better.”
McSweeney looked at Peter. “Why should I tell you anything?”
“You have to tell somebody,” Peter said. “Because the rising tide of shit that was swirling around your ankles is now up to your chest. Pretty soon it’s going to be up to your mouth. And I’m the guy throwing you a shit-proof life preserver.”
The muscles clenched in McSweeney’s jaw.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Then said, “Someone’s trying to take my business.”
“I’m listening,” Peter said. “Although maybe we could have this conversation outside?”
—
“When the recreational law first passed, the medical guys had a head start,” McSweeney said. “They were already in production, had dispensaries open. They actually had access to banks. But they were also mostly small outfits. Idealists, most of them, not really businesspeople. There was no way they could scale up to meet the new demand. It was like a gold rush. Hell, it still is. Everybody’s hustling to stake their claims. I had the skills, I had the seeds, the opportunity was obvious. But I didn’t have the capital.”
“How much did you need?” Lewis asked.
“Two million dollars to start a commercial-sized grow like this. So I found an investor, a money guy in Boulder. That was two years ago. It took six months for permits and legal. Another six months to get the space built out. All the while I’m bleeding money. Then the first crops come in, my three best strains, and I can’t keep up with demand. Customers love it, retailers love it, my product is the first out the door. Clean flavor profiles, highly differentiated effects. Supertasty smoke. Money coming in like crazy. Retailers are telling me to start another grow. I’d be an idiot not to, right?”
“I think I know where this is going,” Peter said.
McSweeney nodded. “I decided to finance the second grow out of the first one. Investing back in the company. Why borrow more than you have to?”
“Plus you liked the risk,” Lewis said. “That’s half the fun for you.”
McSweeney flashed a smile. “Of course. And it was a great idea until we lost a crop to powder mold, and another to spider mites. So cash flow was a problem. I was overleveraged. It was a close thing. The terms with my investor were pretty basic. Double his cash out in two years or he owned everything.”
“Everything?” Peter asked. “You agreed to that?”
McSweeney shrugged. “I had the skills and the seeds and nothing else. So I took what I could get. Like I said, it was close, but I was going to make it. I had to clean out every safe, empty my change jar, check under the couch cushions, and stop paying all my bills to put those last two money runs together. A half million dollars, my final payment. And now it’s gone.”
“What about your investor? Is he pulling the strings on this?”
“That’s the thing,” McSweeney said. “He’s not my investor anymore. He told me he got underwater on a land deal, so he sold my loan to some holding company back East. They sent me a letter a month ago, or their lawyers did, letting me know the last payment was coming due, and reminding me what would happen if I couldn’t pay.”
“When’s it due?”
McSweeney gave a small, pained smile. “Today. Heavy Metal was going to deliver the whole thing to their lawyer’s office today.”
“So who’s your contact at the holding company?”
“I’ve tried all that. I can’t get anyone on the phone. My lawyers can’t get their lawyers on the phone. They sent over the transfer paperwork last week.”
“Do the cops know about this?”
“I told them. But the cops care about murder in the streets. Armed robbery. They don’t care about me losing my business.”
“Who’s your former investor?”
McSweeney took out his cell. “You’re using Henry’s phone, right? His name is Jon Jordan, I’ll send you the contact. I think he actually met someone from the holding company. But he stopped returning my calls weeks ago.”
“What do they get when they take ownership?” Lewis asked. “Cash on hand? Existing inventory? Intellectual property?”
“They get everything,” McSweeney said. “The insurance payment when it comes. The money from the evidence locker. My procedures manual, my nutrient formulas, seeds and seedlings for my proprietary strains.” He sighed. “My life’s work, basically.”
—
McSweeney went back inside. Peter and Lewis walked back to the Jeep. The clouds had gotten closer. Peter could smell the rain in the wind.
“Where’d you learn so much about growing weed?”
“You mean cannabis cultivation?” Lewis kept a perfectly straight face. “We’ve invested in the industry.”
“As in, you and me? We own pot farms?”
“Not the farms,” Lewis said. “Equipment and technology. Lights, chillers, hydroponics, software. Although we could invest in farms, too, if you like. I’m told daylight grows are the coming thing. Greenhouses, that kind of thing. Lower start-up and running costs, lower energy bills, smaller carbon footprint, better for the planet. The local soils give the product a uniqueness, a terroir, like wine. Although it’s harder to get consistent results, if you want to be the McDonald’s of weed.”
Peter had thought he’d eventually stop being surprised by Lewis. His voracious urge to learn, and his capacity to hold that knowledge in his head. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He looked at his friend. “You’re still the most dangerous man on the planet.”
It was a reminder of Lewis’s favorite quote, something Malcolm X had said. Lewis gave Peter his full-on grin. “Black man with a library card.”
“So what do you think,” Peter said. “About McSweeney.”
“You know he’s not telling us everything.”
“I know,” Peter said. “But he’s all we’ve got.”
“Let me guess, we not gonna make your meeting with the cops.”
“We might be a little late,” Peter said. “Depends how fast you can make it to Boulder.”
“I guess we gonna find out.” Lewis grinned as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Hey, you never saw what I got for ordnance.”
Peter lifted the cloth bundle from the floor, a threadbare old bath towel turned gray from gun oil. He unwrapped the folds and saw a pair of antique revolvers.
“Colts,” Lewis said. “The Single Action Army, .45 cal. Also called the Peacemaker.”
“I know what they are,” Peter said, taking one in his hand. The revolver was huge and heavy with a long barrel. He could feel the age in it, could see it in the machining. Definitely not a reproduction. The aggressively curved walnut grip felt more comfortable than he expected. Compared to a modern handgun, the SAA looked like a dinosaur, primitive and atavistic. If it was a dinosaur, though, it was a velociraptor. An ancient but refined killing machine. “The cavalry model, right?”
“That’s the one. And take a look in the back.”
Peter turned in his seat and lifted the edge of a Mexican blanket laid on the rear seat. Beside the 10-gauge shotgun and three boxes of shells, he saw a Winchester 94 with the lever cock mechanism. The same rifle from every Western movie he’d seen as a kid.
“What happe
ned, you rob a museum?”
“Short notice, motherfucker. My Denver contact stopped selling hardware, said he makes more money with his YouTube channel on historical firearms. This was the only stuff he’d part with. Told me they were made in the fifties, quality stuff, came from a retired rancher who used ’em on rattlesnakes and coyotes. But he promised they’d shoot straight.”
Beside the Winchester was a black metal combat tomahawk, elegant and deadly. He’d known a few special ops guys who’d used tomahawks instead of knives. Effective, and more than a little scary.
“My guy threw that in with the guns,” Lewis said. “I think it embarrassed him.”
Peter turned to Lewis, a big Colt in each hand. “So who are we supposed to be, Wild Bill Hickok and Billy the Kid?”
“Well, we can’t both be named Bill,” Lewis said reasonably. “I figured you’d be Annie Oakley.”
Peter wrapped the guns in the towel, then put on his seat belt as Lewis hit the on-ramp toward Boulder. “You are a piece of fucking work, Lewis.”
Lewis grinned and punched the gas. “Takes one to know one, Jarhead.”
25
McSweeney’s initial investor, Jon Jordan, was a former Wall Street guy who’d gone west to enlarge his fortune. He ran an investment fund in a newer four-story mixed-use block, just off the Pearl Street pedestrian mall, across the street from a coffee-shop-slash-bookstore.
Old Boulder was nice. Tree-lined streets and old houses, a funky business district full of restaurants and head shops. The tang of pot smoke floated through the Jeep’s open windows in a kind of ambient hippie potpourri. And to the west, visible on the hills and in gaps between buildings, the vast angular slabs of the Flatirons tilted up toward the Rockies like unused building blocks of the gods.
When they got out of the Jeep, Peter looked down at himself.
The sweat from his long morning run was dried into his wrinkled clothes, which hadn’t been particularly stylish to begin with. His shirt was itchy from the salt, and he had to resist the urge to scratch. The side of his head still ached from the impact with the window in the crash. His eye sockets felt scoured from lack of sleep, and the caffeine was definitely starting to leave his system. He could feel his brain grinding to a halt.