by E. R. Brown
It may have been the THC in his bloodstream, but he wouldn’t stop. He rattled on about Prohibition, which Canada never had, most of it, anyway, and how lots of Canadians got rich selling bootleg whisky to Americans.
“Sam Bronfman was a rum-runner.” He poked me again. “After Prohibition he took Seagrams legit. The Bronfmans own half of Hollywood now. That’s what’s going to happen when the new prohibition ends too. And I’m going to be there. I’ll be ready.”
There was no one nearby, but I wished he’d keep his voice down.
“And don’t say I’m in the drug business. Marijuana’s not meth or MDMA. I’m not in the drug business any more than Glenfiddich is.” He glanced over, clarifying, as if I didn’t know, that it was single malt Scotch, pure and unblended.
I didn’t want to ruin his mood, but before this went any further I wanted him to know one thing. “Whether or not I’m likely to be busted, I’m not going to sell pot on the street.”
“You try and you’ll get your ass whipped. The street scene is locked up tight around these parts.” He turned off the lakeside road into a gravel parking lot. “High school kids aren’t my market anyway. They don’t have the sophisticated palate. And they can’t afford it.”
He killed the engine and turned to look at me. We were stopped in an empty gravel lot in front of Sadie’s Restaurant & Bar, a tired white building between two shuttered B&Bs. He made no move to leave.
“It still sounds like I’m the fall guy.”
He sighed, “It’s your decision. You’re a smart kid, and I don’t want you to do anything you’re not comfortable with. But this is a business proposition that’s not going to be offered twice. You can remain a civilian, or you can take the chance and get into this business at the best possible time. Prohibition’s in its last days. You think weed’s popular now? It’s going to explode. And you have the opportunity to be in the business when it all blows open. Some people would kill for an opportunity like that. And until then the risk is minimal. I’m not a mass producer, I make small quantities of high-quality product. Low quantities mean low risk. High quality means high margins. Very high.”
He pinched the now-tiny roach between fingernail and thumbnail and sucked the last from it, then flicked it to the gravel.
“I make product for people with money. People who drink French wine and go to the theatre. They don’t want a baggie of unknown shit from a high school kid. They want certified organic pot from a brand they can trust. The House of Dreams is that brand.”
He paused and settled back in the driver’s seat, then flicked his left wrist. One linen sleeve fell back, exposing a slim watch.
“You ready?” He popped his door open and put one foot on the gravel.
“For what?”
He pulled a black briefcase from behind the seat. My hands remained in my lap.
His lips thinned. “Tate, this is a peaceful business — we’re in Canada, for Christ’s sake. I don’t even own a gun.” He stood and put one hand on the door. “You’re in or you’re out. If you’re in, follow me.”
Of course I followed him. And it wasn’t only for the money. The money was great — it was helping my family, even though they didn’t know where it was coming from — and it gave me some hope of maybe getting out of Wallace. But Randle, he made me feel important. Essential, even. He shared things with me that no one else knew, not Skip or even Maddie. That’s probably why I’m still alive.
Chapter 7
My stomach was jumpy — nausea from the driving and the smoke, maybe — as Randle cracked open the front door of Sadie’s. Our footsteps clattered in the tiled lobby, with the neon OPEN sign unplugged and tilted against the wall, and peeling posters for Sascha and Summer Dawne — Three days only! Direct from Rick’s in Seattle! It had been a schnitzel house, Randle explained, then a bar, now a strip club, which was closed until the summer season picked up. Randle was steady in his speech and his walk, and showed no visible effects from smoking an entire joint of supposedly primo weed.
We passed wood panelling and carved images of antlered deer, and, on the small stage, a tarnished brass pole. Bleach couldn’t mask the pervasive stench of old beer and cigarettes in the terrycloth-topped tables. As we neared the kitchen, I heard the faint hysteria of a screaming crowd, a thin wash of sound filtered through the speaker of a wall-mounted TV.
The kitchen smelled too, but not of food. It was a close, lived-in male kind of odour that reminded me of gym class.
“Ker-runch! And Pietrangelo’s down. He’s not moving. Hee hee, Dwight King, that’s my man.” A skinny guy tilted back on two legs of a plastic chair. Pasty-skinned and pale, with a drooping moustache and soul patch under the lip, his most noticeable feature was the stubbly temples with big, blurry tats — a horned devil inked above one ear, a chainsaw cutting through a guitar on the other.
If this dude showed up at the coffee shop, Lucas would dig out an old Wendy O tune. But if Luke were here, he’d be like me, freaked and silent, standing like a geek in my coffeeshop polo shirt. The skinny guy took a long pull on a Molson’s bottle, his eyes never leaving the hockey game. He was talking to Ivan, whose eyes had flicked at me for a brief, dismissive moment and returned to the TV.
Ivan frowned. “Look, it’s blood, all down his neck. Gonna be five minutes major.”
An empty bottle rolled precariously on a stainless-steel trolley Ivan was using as a footrest. Randle waited patiently, and I stood slightly behind him, trying not to show how young and clean-cut and out of place I felt.
“No! Two minutes is all?”
“Shouldn’t even be that. A righteous hit. Taking care of business.”
The lights flicked out — for an instant the room was lit by the TV — and back on. I blinked and all conversation stopped.
A high-pitched voice said, “Do we have anything resembling security here?”
A short, muscled blond guy with full-sleeve ink on both arms, a bandito moustache, and a spiky buzzcut stood by a rear door, a sausage-like finger hooked over the light switch. The kindergarten-teacher’s trick for shutting everybody up.
“Am I the only one who notices we have visitors?” He was chewing gum rapidly.
“It is Randle and his child.” Ivan’s eyes hadn’t left the screen. “Two minutes only, I cannot believe.”
“I know who it is. And are you contemplating, how is it that I knew he’d arrived, when I was up in my office? What I did, I looked out the window. And there’s his car.”
He leaned between Ivan and the other hockey-watcher. “The question is, did you know, before you seen him standing right in front of you? We have video, am I right? An alarm system?”
“They score! With their number-one defenceman in the box, of course.”
The television flickered to snow, and the hockey game was replaced with a black-and-white image of the parking lot and the fake Porsche. The blond guy dropped the remote back on the trolley and turned his gaze from the two of them to Randle, with a slow, incredulous shake of the head. He made no indication that he’d seen me. He raised his palms in a gesture of helpless supplication that looked to me like he wasn’t really upset. One arm was wrapped in a flaming devil riding a chopped Harley, The Devil’s Own in gothic script on the gas tank. The other was all vines and snakes threaded through gun barrels and naked women.
The video switched to the lane behind Sadie’s.
“St. Louis against the Kings?” He said, “How can you give a shit?”
“It’s the semi-finals.”
The screen flickered again, showing Skip’s van pulling in beside the Speedster.
“For the conference. Wake me up when it’s down to two teams. Who you for, anyway? Not L.A., they wiped the Canucks’ asses in the first round. Whatever. Time to pay attention to our guests — you know, these people here, who just walked in?” The bodybuilder finally looked my way and reached his hand over the trolley.
“Bullard.”
I shook his hand as Randle introduced us.
Bullard gave the skinny guy a whack on the chainsaw skull-tat, saying, “This is Keech, my chief of security until five minutes ago. You know the Russian.” He gave me a slow up-and-down, and I tried to hold back the flush I felt coming on.
“How old is this one? Where do you find ’em, Randle?”
From behind me, in the direction of the entrance, I heard a heavy-legged run, and the kitchen door slammed open. Skip clattered in, chest heaving, sweating and flushed, a three-ring binder under one arm.
“Sorry, sorry.” He wiped a wet palm down his leg before offering it to Bullard. “I couldn’t get here any sooner.”
“Running on Skip-time, as usual,” Ivan the Russian said, shaking his head.
Skip ducked his head with an embarrassed grin and flipped his binder open, his breathing still laboured. I couldn’t help thinking they were old, the whole lot of them. Even Keech and Ivan, who were treated like the young bloods, were way over thirty.
“Another triumph of our security technology.” Bullard laughed derisively.
In a smooth move he took Keech’s collar in one hand and kicked the chair out from under him. Keech’s chin caught in the collar and he hung, strangling, the colour draining from his face as Bullard dangled him above the floor.
“What you will do now is this. You will switch the alarms on, you will test each camera and you will not come back until you are certain the system is fully functional.” He opened his hand, dropping Keech to a wobbly landing. “We don’t want any more visitors, do we?” Keech left, coughing and humiliated.
Bullard ushered us into the empty strip bar and indicated a yeasty-smelling table with a cloth surface. He reached over to a cutlery-filled beer mug and pulled out a fork, which he used to idly scratch the back of one hand.
The Devil’s Own Motorcycle Club. Don’t think of them as a biker gang, Randle had said in the parking lot, they’re bankers. They give you loans, they insure your business. Without them you have no protection. You might not like them, but they’re a business necessity.
“First, there’s this,” Randle said, passing the briefcase to Ivan, who disappeared into the back.
Bullard and Randle observed each other for a long moment. Randle spoke first. “Tate, Mr. Bullard is my business partner.”
“Mister Bullard.” Bullard palmed the fork, and rolled his shoulders as if he’d just finished a workout. “Nice.” He gave me another head-to-toe glance.
“Business is good?” Randle asked.
“Excellent.”
Another pause. Randle said, “The world is changing. In the city? They’re selling it over the counter, like it’s candy. Must be five, six stores on Commercial Drive.”
“They’re going to get slammed. Too much profile, too soon.”
“No one’s complaining. Over in Grand Forks, the mayor’s a grower. Medical, of course, but he wants to make it part of the area’s economic development plan. It’s a groundswell.”
Bullard pushed out his bottom lip in a gesture that said he disagreed, but couldn’t be bothered.
Randle leaned on his elbows. “I know it’s not your territory, but —” he pulled back, grimacing at the damp table.
While Bullard waited for Randle to say more, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the fork. His fingers encircled the shaft while his thumb bent the two of the tines back and forth, back and forth. He didn’t seem to be aware that he was doing it.
“You wanted to meet me,” Bullard said. “Must be more than just a deposit.”
“Yes, two things. There’s Tate here —”
I pulled my gaze away from the fork.
“— he’s done a few jobs for me. Casual work, but never alone. I’d like to make him permanent, give him street protection, so he can do pickups and deliveries of all kinds, work with the cleaners.”
“If that’s what you want, fine.” Bullard’s eyebrows jumped as one of the tines snapped. “And?”
“And Skip will be opening two more operations.”
He nodded at Skip, who snapped the binder rings open and extracted a couple of pages, sliding them across the table to Bullard. Skip showed Bullard, and then Ivan the addresses, the caretakers’ names, and the various costs.
Skip said, “I have the gear and the setup crew, just waiting for your go-ahead.”
“Except for one change,” Randle said, “I don’t need the club’s financing. I can pay for these myself. You’ll still receive a share of revenues, of course, that’s what I want to discuss.”
“Got to try a new path sometimes, right?” Skip leaned forward eagerly, “Break the pattern. Innovate.”
Bullard’s head moved slowly back and forth.
Randle’s lip curled downward and he sighed through his nose. “As you wish.” Under the table, I felt his leg twitch.
“We invest on a fifty-fifty basis.” Bullard spoke quietly and deliberately. “And share a fifty-fifty return. It’s a simple arrangement.” He used his hands to shape and punctuate his phrases. He looked down at the binder and up to Skip. “These costs, they assume that I am not involved?” He held Skip’s eye until he received a quick, nervous nod in return.
Randle’s voice was low. “Your returns would be significant under the new arrangement, and there would be no risk.”
It was as if Randle hadn’t spoken. “This means you are in a position to open four operations, since you now require only half the funds for each. I give you permission in advance for four. Let me know when they’re ready.”
Skip ducked his head. Randle was making a visible effort to calm himself, inhaling slowly through his nose, and exhaling evenly through thin lips.
Bullard continued, “You’re fortunate, because we’ve been friends for a long time. For new partners the arrangement is sixty-forty.”
He paused and looked at me, his head cocked at an angle. “This little man does deliveries? He can see over a steering wheel?”
“He has his own truck.” Randle said, the muscle in his jaw working.
What truck? I kept any reaction off my face. Randle had to have a reason for claiming I had a truck. Maybe he wanted Bullard to think I was older than I was, so he’d treat me with some respect. If so, I appreciated the attempt.
Randle slid his chair back and stood. Skip and I followed him out the door. I kept my eyes low.
In the parking lot, Skip tried some reassuring words before leaving: “Chill, Randle, it’s not so bad. Stick with what works, man. Tried and true.”
The wave of Randle’s wrist meant two things: that Skip should shut the fuck up and that he should take care of driving me wherever.
Chapter 8
Over the next days, I worked out a few things about the system. Randle was somewhere in the middle of a big pyramid. He was a gatherer. He ran a supply network that delivered product to Bullard and the Devils. The bike club in turn had connections that got product across the border to the U.S. They, or a larger bike gang (I couldn’t be sure), shipped in quantity. They had trucks with secret compartments. They had helicopters and planes. The Devils had a local monopoly over everything from growers and gatherers to street sales.
The reason Randle explained some of the system to me, in hints and clues, was that he actually had more going on than Bullard, or the biker organization knew about. And I was one of the few that he trusted with the secret.
Before noon next day I was back at the pickup spot by the sawmill. I’d walked. My skate deck was probably waiting for me in the Speedster’s front trunk, and as soon as Randle showed up I’d get it back.
It was a quiet side street near the loading docks, with all the attributes that working with Randle was making me aware of: there was no bank, corner store, or gas station in sight, or any other business that might have surveillance cameras mounted. After only a few weeks, I was beginning to think like him, to see the world from a different perspective than a civilian.
No Speedster this time. Instead, the grey Chevy Cavalier sat where Randle had parked the day before, behind a picku
p with a flat tire. The car Skip liked for its anonymity, the same one he’d driven on my first delivery to the ladies in the woods.
Water puddled from the wheel wells like it had just left a carwash. Without its usual coating of grime, the car’s doors were rippled with parking-lot chips and dings.
Someone was in the driver’s seat, and I ducked to check out who it was before I got too close. Ivan, or as Bullard called him, The Russian. Stooped like a question mark, his head still grazed the roof. He saw me headed to the passenger side and pointed to the driver’s door while he slid to the passenger seat. I took the seat behind the wheel, hoping that today’s job would begin with a driving lesson.
Ivan shrugged, “I only deliver the vehicle. I don’t know where you are driving.”
“I don’t have a licence, you know. If that’s an issue for you guys.” I’d told Skip the same thing, except I hadn’t let on that my driving experience consisted of go-karts and one drive around the block in the Volvo. Out here in the rural heartland everyone assumed you could drive. No one walked, and skateboarders seemed to be an alien breed, to be run off the road at any opportunity. Personally I’d never seen the attraction of driving. I had no money for a car, and I’d missed out on high school driving lessons, the usual teenage rite of passage, because I graduated a few years too early. Beth made it clear that no one was permitted to touch her beater Volvo. Didn’t want to be responsible, she said.
The one time I’d borrowed it out of curiosity, when she was in the hospital, the red oil light had flashed on as soon as I turned the key. I didn’t want to be behind the wheel when the thing crapped out completely, so I took it around the block and that was that.
Ivan sighed and pulled a card from his pocket. “Now you do.”
A driver’s licence. For a Jackson Mitchell, nineteen years old, living in Harrison Lake. The unsmiling black-and-white photo was from my Human Beans file. I’d never seen a licence before, not this close up, so I couldn’t tell how good it was, but it looked pretty damned impressive. It was one of the enhanced types with the high-security holograms and barcodes that meant you could cross the border without a passport. And it was convincingly scuffed and wallet-warped like I’d had it for years.