Ride the Lightning

by Dietrich Kalteis

Coming in, sitting on Miro’s sofa, Stax said, “Just got word the Task Force is zeroing in on Northside Stevedoring.” It was one of the last biker operations Artie had ties to.

  “Word from who?”

  “From inside 312 Main.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning we got to wait, that or steer our shit through the shipyards.” Stax said he could put the oil on board the Knot So Fast, the tug owned by the Sanchez brothers, same boat that had run thousands of kilos of Artie’s pot from the mainland out to waiting boats. Stax knew the brothers well enough to know they wouldn’t say anything to Artie.

  “No fucking way we’re waiting,” Miro said, thinking of his lawyer Cobb with his hand out for a ten-grand retainer to fight his impending extradition. Ten Gs would get Miro as far as an entered plea, Cobb having to convince some judge Miro wasn’t a flight risk, no need for an electronic tether. Fat chance after skipping twice in Seattle.

  Stax was nodding, saying he’d take care of it. Miro saying he’d oversee the two clowns hitting the grow house on Bowen Island.

  “The two clowns that couldn’t find Artie’s safe,” Stax said, frowning, having second thoughts.

  “Hey, they’re your guys,” Miro reminded him.

  “Yeah, and I gave them to you.”

  “Okay, so I’m going with them.”

  Stax was still frowning, Miro going on, “Should have seen their eyes when I said more money than either of them’s ever seen. Got them hooked like a pair of carp.”

  “Better be,” Stax said. What bothered him was the two clowns took a grand in cash and the key to Artie’s safe and hadn’t mentioned it to Miro. Artie told Stax it was missing, saying Bennie found a Glock and a shoe outside his place, had to get the gardener to use his pruner with the long handle to fetch a satchel out of his tree, the bag holding his Leica and HandyCam.

  Reading his uncertainty, Miro said, “I appreciate you being sick of standing over the old man while he’s rubbing Banana Boat on his dick . . .”

  Stax grinned, letting it slide. It was just a matter of time before Miro got his ass sent back to a fed pen, leaving Stax with what was shaping up to be a pretty sweet set-up. All he’d have to do was find somebody else to cook the oil.

  “So, how’d he take it—the break in?” Miro asked.

  “Thinks it was punk vandals, fucking teenagers with nothing better to do; still, he wants whoever did it, Artie being Artie,” Stax said, easing back in the seat.

  “You tell him about Karl Morgen?”

  “How about you get me a beer?”

  Things were in play; Mitch and Wally would steal the Bowen weed, Miro would turn it into more oil while Stax dropped Morgen’s name as a hot-shot tracker. Artie would get him after whoever hit his places. Wearing a wire, Stax would catch the conversation between Morgen and Artie. Then when Wally and Mitch turned up dead, Miro would send the tape to the crown attorney. Except for finding the safe, the pieces were coming together.

  He got up and went in the bedroom, Bruna lying on top of the bed, shirt partway undone, a magazine open on her stomach, hands folded under her head. He went to the closet and opened the duffel bag, took out a small vial with a maple leaf on it, and Jeffery’s Python while he was at it. She watched him but didn’t say anything when he left.

  Grabbing two long-necks from the fridge, he came back and sat down, handing Stax a beer and the chrome Python.

  “Good old Jeffery,” Stax said, weighing the piece in his hand.

  “Yeah.” Holding the two-ounce vial, Miro put on a lousy Tony Montana. “Say hello to my little friend.”

  “That’s it, huh?”

  “Fifty a gram on the street. No shake, no trim, just the best bud along with a few of my secrets.”

  Stax laid the Python on the table and made a crack about eleven herbs and spices, twisting the cap off his beer, looking at the vial. “What happened to the Pringles tins?”

  “Better to find some empty cases; Pringles come filled with potato chips. What are we going to do, throw a party? Besides, the maple leaf’s nice and B.C., don’t you think?”

  “Think you been testing too much of this shit on yourself.”

  “A regular Martha Stewart of hash oil,” Miro said, admiring the bottle, adding he had four cases, two-point-four kilos, ready to go.

  “You got it here?”

  “At the warehouse.”

  “Then I’ll call the JayMan,” Stax said. “This the bubble hash?”

  “Honey oil.”

  Stax nodded, downing his beer. He didn’t get what all the fuss was about, looking into the vial. Why smoke this shit when booze was cheaper and legal? It was purely business for him, kept him in decent cars and with the right kind of women.

  “When’s he making a run?” Miro asked.

  “Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. You got a figure in mind?”

  Miro worked the math in his head. “Fifty grams at twenty-five per, dozen in a case . . .”

  “In English,” Stax said.

  “We make sixty Gs, we’re laughing.”

  Stax pulled out his cell, punching in a number, figuring out his share of the net. “Hey, JayMan. How’s tricks?” He watched Miro go and shut the bedroom door, saying into the phone, “Gonna swing by, take you to lunch, get one of those heart-cloggers you like.” The two of them speaking a language they had worked out long ago, Stax letting JayMan know he had two-point-four units he’d let him have for sixty.

  JayMan said he could scratch up forty, Stax saying to scratch harder, JayMan going to forty-five, Stax telling him to go fuck himself, forgetting the code. JayMan said to call back when he got the concept of negotiating and hung up. Stax called back a few minutes later, and they settled on fifty. Hanging up, Stax told Miro the price, Miro throwing his beer, a shower of suds and glass against the wall.

  “Time for a Valium, sport?” Stax asked, unimpressed.

  “Fuck that.”

  “I got to explain the concept of negotiating?”

  “Fuck me.” Miro sat back down, looking up as Bruna came from the bedroom, looking at the beer all over the wall, then at him like he was nuts.

  “How about you clean up?” he told her.

  “How about you fuck yourself?”

  Forcing a laugh, Miro watched her go back in the bedroom all pissed off, then said to Stax, “You say you can get more PVC and butane?”

  “I’ll get one of the hangarounds to get it. Drop it off when I bring your cut.” Stax looked at the dark liquid in the vial again, saying, “Got this guy Vince I want you to meet.”

  “We don’t need another guy.”

  “Facing extradition not enough for you to worry about?”

  “Just saying—”

  “Trust me,” Stax said.

  “It’s not that . . .” It was that, but Miro let it go. His eyes traveled to his balled Levi’s jacket, the Vaquero under it, thinking it would be dumb to leave it out of reach from here on.

  “They get a taste of my oil back in Seattle, they’ll be crying for more.”

  “You say you’re the Martha Stewart of hash oil again,” Stax pointed his finger at him, “I’m going to hit you.”

  “Nice to be appreciated.”

  under the radar

  Darkly tanned, rail thin, and naked, Artie Poppa sat on his beach blanket, the old man looking like he owned the whole beach. The guy standing over him today was Bennie, pure muscle under his T-shirt and jeans, dumb as a stump.

  “You boys down for some sun?” Artie asked, squinting past the shields at Dom and Luca, two pasty-faced detectives hovering in their cheap suits, both of them sweating from taking the stairs down the escarpment, Dom taking off his jacket, showing the holster and sweat-stained shirt.

  “Got a few questions,” Dom said, looking Bennie over, sure he had a piece hidden somewhere.


  “Four hundred and seventy-three stairs,” Artie said. “Could have just called my cell.”

  “All part of the service.” Dom felt his legs burning and his knees wobbling. He looked around at the pink bodies up and down Wreck Beach, the nudity making him uncomfortable.

  “Shoot. I got nothing to hide.” Artie grinned, his butt on the terry blanket, his legs wide in front of him, his jewels like a furry rodent curled up and napping. The scar from his heart surgery angry and red against his tanned skin.

  Bennie grinned too, like he just got it.

  “Want to know about the body we found at your grow house in North Van.” Dom looked at his notes. “One Jeffery Potts.”

  “Like I told the narcs, don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But you knew Potts?”

  “Potts—maybe, maybe not.”

  “Worked for you for twelve years.”

  “Not good with names, probably my age.”

  “What about Wolfgang Klinger?”

  “That a Kraut name?”

  “Tell us about him.”

  “Klinger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell either.”

  “Found his prints at your grow house.”

  “Told you—”

  Dom put up a hand. “Turned up dead in a Port-O-Potty.”

  “Look, fellas, aside from some investments, I own a UWager site, and I import mushrooms from China; you guys want shiitake, maybe I can help you out.”

  “What about Danny Arlis, goes by Stax?”

  “That one works for me.”

  “Yeah, what can you tell us?”

  “See him if you want mushrooms.”

  Bennie grinned again.

  Dom checked out Artie’s scar, the strange cross around his neck. “Been with you since before Google Earth sent all you boys indoors?”

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Busted him coming through a corn hedge around one of your pot fields back in ’85, not me personally, but some of the Grand Forks boys,” Luca said. “Christina Lake, wasn’t it?”

  “Boys been doing your homework,” Artie said, reaching for his Coppertone, squeezing out a palmful.

  “Now he runs your pipeline, taught the border guards at the Peace Arch to wave when he drives by.”

  Artie smiled and shook his head. “Thirty thousand grow-ops in this province, double the number you guys guesstimate, and you’re busting my balls.” He held up the Coppertone to Dom, indicating his back. “You mind?”

  “We’re homicide.” Dom took the tube, thought he should toss it to Bennie, instead dropped it in the sand and stepped on it, lotion squeezing on the sand. “We want the guys that took out Jeffery Potts, dumped the load of gravel on Wolf Klinger.”

  Artie shrugged, the smile still there. “Like I said—”

  “Where’s your boy Stax now?”

  “Boxing up shiitake. Look, fellas, prison’s no place for an old man with a heart run by a gadget. I’m clean.”

  Dom flipped his notebook closed, glancing toward the mountain of stairs. He took out a business card and held it out. “You ever think you need a change of scenery . . .”

  The smile broadened. “You boys got more leaks than a Vancouver condo.” Artie ignored the card and spread lotion on his arms, rubbing it in. “I ever get the urge, I’ll relocate myself.”

  Dom flipped the card on the blanket. He wasn’t ready to climb all those goddamned stairs. “You think of something you want to say . . .”

  “Yeah, you’re blocking my sun,” Artie said.

  Dom and Luca walked into the Bean, Dom grabbing a table that looked clean, a dozen other tables occupied, Luca getting Vince to pour a couple of fortes. Dom sat thinking about the new piece to the puzzle: the bumper found out front of the grow house matched a van reported stolen from the construction site where Wolf Klinger was killed.

  Luca came with the coffees. “Damn naked people must be super fit. I’m dying here.”

  “No shit,” Dom said, feeling the burn in his legs and the sand in his shoes, fixing his coffee, then talking low. “What I don’t get is Artie’s got the tax boys sniffing up his ass; Indos, Chinese, Vietnamese, Guatemalans circling like Walmart around a mom-and-pop’s; everybody wanting a piece, and he just sits there with his sack in the sand.”

  “On account he’s set to bolt.”

  “Think maybe he did cut a deal?”

  “With who?”

  “Drug Squad, Task Force, take your pick.”

  “Think it would trickle down.”

  “These guys give up shit these days, every department wanting the glory,” Dom said. “Way I hear it, some mystery-man informant got that shit-storm going over in Nanaimo—town where folks were using suspiciously high amounts of hydro. Something like a dozen arrests out of that raid, old church somebody turned into a grow house. Way I hear it, the same source gave up the Sabers’ clubhouse in Salmon Arm, one that got expropriated by the crown. That new proceeds of crime legislation.” Stirring a plastic spoon around his cup, he said, “Those assholes wear their colors, they’re in violation of some new ordinance, painted with the same brush as the fucking al Qaeda.”

  “Looks good on them, but what’s it got to do with Poppa?”

  “Maybe he’s the snitch, known to have biker ties, sitting on his nudie beach, pointing with his dick.” Dom looked at Vince wiping the next table, straightening a tent card. Sipping his forte, he thought the guy was listening in. “You burn the beans today, Vince?”

  Vince looked over, surprised. “Something wrong with it?”

  “You tell me.” Dom took another sip.

  “Roasted them same as always.” Vince straightened, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, seeing the black Mustang drive past the door.

  dead weight

  The two of them came in and stood on the other side of the oil stain, Ike sitting by the door, above them the bare fluorescents. Stax asked Miro how he could stand it in here, said it smelled like somebody had been cooking road tar. Then said, “This is Vince, guy I told you about.”

  Miro nodded, said, “Hey.”

  Vince did the same.

  “Guy makes a decent cup of joe,” Stax said, smiling at Vince, having a little fun, pulling an envelope from his pocket.

  “That right?” Miro said.

  “Just got to call it a forte, eh, Vince?” Stax said.

  “Call it what you like.” Vince pasted on a smile of his own, looking at the envelope, the fucking pit bull by the door, then over at the pans, jars and cases on the workbench, wishing Stax would just pay him so he could get out of there. Or maybe he had something else he wanted done, like maybe this guy Miro. One thing for sure, there was no love lost between the two of them, Stax and Miro getting into bitching about Artie Poppa, Vince just standing there.

  “The lay-up after the heart surgery’s got him sitting with his ass in the sand,” Stax said. “Meantime the Sabers patched over and the 4Play got shut down. New fucking ordinance, and we got bikers looking like yuppie businessmen, driving Beemers with their hair smelling nice, golf shirts with little alligators. They show their colors, they’re in jail. A five-million buck pipeline goes to shit, and Artie sits on the beach, acts like nothing’s wrong.”

  “Still say he’s doing more than acting?” Miro said.

  “Like?”

  “Like he’s talking,” Miro said.

  “Somebody is.” Stax went to the door, patted Ike, told him he was a good boy, looked out through the barred sidelight, checked the latch on the door.

  Miro moved over to his jacket draped on the tool chest, his revolver under it, not sure where Stax was going with this. Uneasy with Vince and that crazy dog in the same space.

  “Our boy with the money-laundering unit thought he sni
ffed out the rat, this trucker in Winnipeg, does a little work with the RagTag crew.” Stax stepped around the pooled oil, getting closer to Miro. “Turned out it wasn’t him.”

  Miro put his hand on his jacket, the Vaquero underneath. Two seconds, he’d have it out. “Got to be Artie.”

  Stax shrugged, lightened up again, saying, “Last week Artie tells me his wife turned her Escalade around, getting halfway to Robson before realizing she left her wallet on the dresser. Walks in on him on their bed with the housekeeper’s hand going like a power tool.” Vince laughed at that, Stax reaching a Paslode nail driver from the tool bench, checking it out.

  Miro forced a grin, eyes on the nail driver. “Right under the archangel, huh?”

  “Broad packs up the matching Louis Vuittons and takes the kids on a one-way back to Seoul.”

  Miro’s hand slid under the jacket.

  Stax absently flapped the envelope against the nail driver, turning his back on Miro, looking at Vince. “Artie got hold of her yesterday, gave her the moment-of-weakness spiel, how it meant nothing, how it was only a hand.”

  Vince laughed. “So the broad’s coming back?”

  “Probably figures Artie’s ticker’ll quit; why dole out for some divorce shyster. But you could be right,” Stax said to Miro. “But to rat out his own operations . . .”

  “There something else you need me to do?” Vince said, looking at Miro, holding his hand out for the envelope from Stax.

  Stax stepped around the oil stain, offering it to him. “There is one thing . . .” He handed it to him, watched him open it, then grabbed Vince around the neck, clamping his other hand over his mouth, firing the Paslode once, twice, three times. He let go, Vince falling into the oil stain, three inch nails sticking from his head, looking like a pincushion. Ike was up, snarling at Miro.

  Backing up a step, Miro said, “What the fuck was that?” Staring down at the dying man, the big pistol in his hand.

  “That, my friend, is what I call a good fucking tool.” Stax bent and retrieved the envelope.

  “Jesus Christ.” Miro looked at Vince lying on the oil stain, blood leaking from his head.

  “Different than killing a sheep, huh?” Then he told Miro not to point that thing at Ike.