by Nick Petrie
Dixon was well aware of his own hypocrisy. It was part of why he needed the tequila.
He glanced back through the windshield at the motel room. Leonard remained in his chair. The girl lay still on the bed.
Dixon pressed Play.
The video quality wasn’t bad, given the hidden cameras. A half dozen people sprawled on plush couches and comfortable chairs in some kind of grubby retail space, a few with hand-rolled joints, another with a bong, the rest with a kind of electric pipe, what Dixon later learned was called a vaporizer. They had odd little smiles on their faces, trying to sound coherent while talking to a sleek man with a computer pad about what he called “Sample Eight.” He was asking the smokers about possible names for the product. They seemed to like Green Zombie and Smile Factory.
The first time Palmer had showed Dixon these few minutes of footage, Dixon had shaken his head. America was already a nation of couch potatoes, high on Cheetos and reality TV. Legal marijuana would only make things worse. He definitely hadn’t understood Palmer’s enthusiasm.
Dixon wasn’t stupid. He knew the legal market was just getting under way, and the growth potential was huge. Nobody ever lost money by underestimating the moral fortitude of the average American. But the state regulations were too different, and the federal government was keeping its foot on the brake with the bank laws. There was no national policy plan in sight. All the big players were staying out. Dixon couldn’t imagine Palmer’s exit strategy.
He couldn’t be planning to run an actual business, especially one that was basically farming and retail. Palmer didn’t have the attention span for that. Palmer lived to buy low, sell high, and move on to the next kill.
When he’d said “I don’t get it” and reached to turn off the video, Palmer had told him to keep watching. Then the video jumped forward in time.
It showed the same room, with the same people on the same furniture around the same oval coffee table, but wearing different clothes. The light was different, too. Earlier in the day, Dixon thought. Maybe lunchtime. The table held a lacquered tray with four clear display jars of cannabis and a variety of smoking paraphernalia. The boxes were numbered nine through twelve.
A big bearded man in a paint-spattered sweatshirt sat forward on a worn leather armchair. “Where’s that Sample Eight?” he asked. “I’d love some more of that. I’ve been having the best dreams.”
“With the little gold flecks in it?” asked a middle-aged woman wearing a pink cardigan sweater and a wide pink ribbon in her well-brushed hair. “I dreamed I could fly. Oh, it was wonderful. I’d like more, too.”
“Definitely Sample Eight,” said a third man with sculpted hair, a bright orange T-shirt, and distressed jeans. “I haven’t had a cigarette since smoking that good shit, like, a week ago? So I’m here for that.”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have that variety today,” said the man with the computer pad, sleek as a seal in his snug green hoodie, looking generally pleased with himself. “I do have some new varieties for you to try today, with extra to take home and share with your friends.”
“Yeah, I don’t want anything else,” the big bearded man said. “I want that Sample Eight. Can I get more? Can I just buy some today?”
“Me, too.” The woman in the pink cardigan stood from her chair, took her pink wallet from her purse, and walked right up to the sleek man. “I want Sample Eight. I have had the best week, maybe of my whole life. So whatever you’re charging, I’ll pay.”
A man in kitchen whites stood next. “What she said. Sign me up.”
“Absolutely,” said a woman in a gray designer suit with her hair pulled tight in a bun. She stood and began to hunt through the gray leather purse hanging in the crook of her arm. “Please tell me you take credit cards.”
“Hang on,” the man with the computer pad said. “I’m offering you four other varieties, all of it excellent stuff. You’re telling me you don’t want free cannabis?”
“We want that Sample Eight.” The big bearded man climbed painfully to his feet. He towered over the sleek man with the computer pad, but his voice was plaintive. “You gotta have some around somewheres, right? Please?”
Now they were all standing, trying to get closer to the sleek man with the computer pad, bumping the coffee table with their legs. The lacquered tray with the smoking paraphernalia and the clear display jars of inferior product were jostled to one side, then fell ignored to the floor. The talk got loud enough that the microphone couldn’t pick out individual voices from the clamor.
The sleek man tucked his computer pad under his arm, pulled a slim silver cigarette case from his pocket, and began handing out machine-rolled joints.
As the others scrambled for the disposable lighters scattered on the floor, the sleek man turned toward the camera with a broad smile on his face.
Then the video ended.
—
One of the reasons Palmer had pulled Dixon deeper into his organization was his experience as the executive officer of his Marine battalion. Along with his leadership and strategic and tactical abilities, he had the administrative skills required to oversee battalion operations. He was as familiar with complex budgets and balance sheets as any top-level corporate vice president.
The grower’s proposal was far simpler.
It called for an investment of fifty million dollars in exchange for a ten percent nonvoting ownership stake. A half million square feet under cultivation within a year of signing. Detailed cost and revenue breakdowns were included. The grower’s initial investor would be bought out with current cash flow, leaving the business unencumbered.
The indoor farm would be set a few miles off the interstate in Colorado farm country in a building twice the size of the biggest Walmarts. Although it would take a year to get up and running, expected net revenue for good-quality hydroponic cannabis in year two was two hundred million dollars.
If that was as far as things went, the return on investment was forty percent in the second year, and every year after that. Better than the best hedge funds, better than most private equity firms.
After seeing the video, Dixon thought things would go quite a bit further than that.
Klondike Gold would create its own market, and the grower could charge a premium for his product. The proposal laid out plans to double cultivation with a second farm in year three, and double again with two more farms in year four. ROI in year four alone was a hundred and sixty percent, eighty million dollars. Over time, more states were sure to sign on to the cannabis tax revenue juggernaut. There was too much money to pass up. Demand would only increase. It was possible the operation could double in size each year for a decade.
The grow facilities needed a lot of manual labor, but that was also a plus. Jobs would make the farms attractive to rural communities that might otherwise not want a pot farm nearby, and it was clean work compared to slaughterhouses or private prisons.
Palmer had already unleashed his lawyers to confirm the numbers and the product itself. If anything, the lawyers reported the grower was too conservative. Costs would likely be lower than estimated, and revenue higher. It was an attractive proposal, even without Palmer’s special methodologies.
But it wasn’t enough for the deal to pencil out as proposed. That wasn’t how Palmer operated.
For Palmer to win, someone else had to lose.
Dixon’s job was to exploit the weaknesses.
—
Palmer told his lawyers to look into the grower’s early investor, a small fish in Boulder. A Seattle corporate security firm got hold of a copy of the investment agreement. The terms were generous, which indicated how desperate the grower must have been to get started. If the grower defaulted, the early investor owned everything.
So Dixon had his fulcrum.
For the lever, it was a simple matter of finding the investor’s weakness. He had a few. Colorado was booming, and most of the investor’s money was tied up in a land development deal outside of Denver. His deadl
ines were coming up fast, and he was overleveraged, just like banks before the last crash.
Palmer’s lawyers arranged for quiet payments to a few members of the local board of supervisors. Questions came up regarding the water rights, and the development’s permits were denied pending a new and expensive environmental impact evaluation. The investor’s development partner had a weakness, too—a second wife in Utah. Rather than get two divorces and a prison term for bigamy, he agreed to sue, and the investor was forced to sell his position in the grower’s operation.
At the same time, Dixon plugged Leonard into the grower’s security firm. Soon enough, the grower was in trouble, couldn’t make his last payment. The legal wheels were in motion, and the grower’s business was all but gone.
The grower, though, wasn’t stupid. He’d felt the invisible hand of Palmer’s manipulations. Maybe it was Leonard running Jordan, the investor, off the road. Dixon had thought it was a bad idea. Leonard had needed to speak to Jordan personally, to convince him to sell. The man was on the verge of arranging new financing. In the end, Leonard had threatened the man’s wife and he caved. Palmer had gone to Leonard directly to tie up the loose end.
The grower hadn’t figured out who was behind his problems, though. Palmer’s lawyers were too devious for that. But the grower knew what his new strain was worth. He’d arranged to get the seeds to a safe place.
Dixon had arranged to take them away.
The Marine had changed the equation.
Dixon was changing it again. But he didn’t like it.
He looked through the windshield at Leonard. Had he gotten closer to the girl?
This was going to go bad. He could feel it. The heat of hell on the back of his neck. His immortal soul starting to burn.
Dixon wondered exactly how far he was willing to go.
—
His incoming phone rang.
“Status report.” It was Palmer.
Dixon sighed. The man was a walking irritant. Human itching powder. Every conversation made Dixon want to take a shower.
“We have the girl,” he said. “We’re working on the seeds.”
“Work faster. I have a dinner meeting in Singapore tomorrow.” Palmer’s voice got a little whiny when he got impatient. The man had the attention span of a fruit fly, but he wasn’t wrong about the timing. Unlike the third world, where bribing the cops was as easy as calling up the local police chief and negotiating terms, it was hard to buy large-scale police corruption in the States. Two armed hijackings had gotten everybody’s attention. The clock was definitely ticking.
“It might get ugly,” Dixon said. “These people are no joke.”
“If you’d done your job, we’d be gone by now. Get me what I need. I don’t care if there’s blood in the fucking streets. You read me?”
“Loud and clear,” Dixon said. “I’ll be in touch.”
He heard another voice in the background.
“Do it soon,” Palmer said. “My pilot tells me the storm is getting closer, and the tower is predicting lightning. I don’t want to get grounded.”
“It’s your plane,” Dixon said, goading the man, just a little. “Don’t you get to take off when you want?”
“I should,” Palmer said. “You’re right. It is my goddamn plane. Why can’t we take off?”
Dixon heard the pilot murmur again.
“Some shit about highly variable winds in a storm,” Palmer said. “But we’re fueled up and ready to go. This baby has a seven-thousand-mile range. I’ll drop you in San Francisco, isn’t that where you people go?” Dixon closed his eyes. It only made the smirk he imagined on the man’s fat face more vivid. “As soon as you bring me those goddamned seeds.”
In the motel room, Leonard moved again. He put his hand on the girl’s leg.
“I have to go,” Dixon said. “I’ll be in touch.”
36
Peter sat in the Jeep with Lewis, trying to keep his breathing deep and even, trying not to think about what June was going through. Light rain speckled the windshield. To the west, the clouds were coming together into a single low dark mass.
When Henry’s phone rang, Peter answered before the first ring had finished.
Steinburger said, “Sykes is on the line with their vehicle recovery people now. They just pinged the car. It’s in a hotel parking lot near the airport.”
Peter put the phone on speaker. “Give me the address.”
“A tactical team is gearing up,” Steinburger said. “You need to wait.”
“We’re not waiting. What’s the goddamn address?”
“This is a police matter—”
“Steve,” Lewis’s voice was low and calm and dangerous. “You’re in deep now. No way out but through. Tell us where she is.”
“You really don’t want to get in the way of the tactical team,” Steinburger said. “They’re not known for their subtlety.”
An aggressive team with machine guns and body armor would not be good for June. Peter felt the static flare. His head filled with electricity, his voice like a clap of thunder. “Give me the motherfucking address.”
Steinburger made a strangled sound.
Then gave them the address.
—
Peter found it on the map as Lewis drove.
It wasn’t far. Just off the freeway, part of a modern development wasteland designed so you’d only have to get out of your car to use the bathroom. And they were probably working on that, too.
The street number showed a chain hotel in a group of three buildings surrounded by access roads. It stood at the edge of the larger area of warehouses where the fake trooper’s car was burned and abandoned.
Lewis cruised the road that curved around the complex at exactly the speed limit, Peter’s head on a swivel looking for the car, looking for June, looking for the owner of the voice on the phone. The big Colt Peacemaker heavy in his hand.
He found the bright blue Mustang convertible parked on the far side of a weedy gravel strip, in the back corner of the lot with its top down in the rain.
The back bumper was pushed inward, badly misshapen, the taillights cracked and fallen away. “That’s it,” he said, and pointed.
Lewis turned to look. “They’re not here,” he said.
Peter nodded. “I know.”
If they were still using the car, they’d have left the ragtop up. And no pro would ever have chosen this four-story fake-Spanish hotel, with its restrictive lobby entrance and long narrow hallways, as an operations base. They’d have found something low, with direct access to the room and parking immediately outside.
“You think they’re watching it?” Lewis slowed at the intersection, looking at the Mustang.
“No,” Peter said. “They already have June. They’ll use her to get us where they want us.”
“They had a signal blocker on the Heavy Metal truck,” Lewis said. “They could have used another one on the rental if they wanted to. Maybe they’re letting us find it.”
“Maybe,” Peter said. “But I think that’s too complicated. How would they know we’d be able to find the car? Anyway, this whole thing doesn’t feel like something they planned. They’re improvising now.”
Lewis nodded and cranked the Jeep around the corner and into the parking lot, where he rolled up to the blue convertible. The front bumper was also banged up, although not as badly.
They left the Jeep’s doors open and walked over to the Mustang, Lewis scanning the hotel windows, the road, the traffic. The rain was light but cold through Peter’s thin T-shirt.
The car keys lay on the damp driver’s-side floor beside a slim rectangle wrapped in tinfoil. Droplets beaded up on the dull metal.
Peter leaned in, picked up the package, and unwrapped the foil. A nearly new smartphone.
Peter touched the button with his fingernail.
The screen lit up with a photo of June’s father looking shyly into the camera, half-hidden behind his long white hair.
“Motherfuck,�
�� Lewis said.
Peter felt the static rise up hard. The taste of copper in his mouth as he grabbed the Mustang’s keys and took three quick steps around to unlock the trunk.
The rush of relief that it was empty.
He sagged against the side of the wet car and ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.
He needed more coffee. He needed to find June.
He needed to sleep for a week.
After he found June.
And maybe killed some people.
At this point, what was a few more?
Jesus Christ.
—
“Hey,” Lewis said. “You said the guy who called, the guy who sent you the video of June, sounded familiar. Did you ever figure out who he is?”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “I think he was the XO of my old battalion, a major named Daniel Dixon. Most of us thought he’d end up a general.”
Peter had some history with Dixon.
In Peter’s eight years of active duty and innumerable missions of varying success, a single unauthorized operation stood out as the mission Peter was most ashamed of. It had probably also done the most good for the most Marines.
Dixon had discovered it, then covered it up. For the same reasons.
It meant Peter hadn’t ended up sentenced to life in Leavenworth or death by lethal injection, but it also meant he’d stayed a lieutenant, boots on the ground, leading a platoon, watching out for his guys.
Which was just fine with Peter.
He hadn’t really wanted to be a captain anyway.
“I don’t know why Dixon would be involved in this,” he said. “June told me you have a contact at the DoD. Can you make a call?”
Lewis murmured into his phone for a few minutes, listened for a few minutes more, then found a pen and paper in the Jeep’s console and scribbled down a few lines. “She’ll get back to me on Dixon,” he said. “She already pulled the service jacket on Leonard Wallis. It was heavily redacted, almost nothing there but basic service information. But I think I know a guy who used to be in Wallis’s unit, now a cop in Atlanta. Maybe he’ll remember something. I hope he’s still got the same number.”