Grass

by Steve Williams

  “Fine, it’s a shit idea,” Arlo laughed. “Let’s hear something better from you geniuses!”

  “Well,” Sisha said, “Our demographic would probably be familiar with the Zealots who are part of Starcraft gameplay. How about we use the name Fenix—one of the strongest Protoss warriors in recorded history?”

  “Love it.”

  Mya was impressed with how Sisha had rebounded since Garrett Lawrence had left the company. From the timid creature with no backbone of a few weeks ago she had morphed into a confident team player who had just challenged Arlo, her boss.

  They spent the next two hours brainstorming suggestions. “Hitler” was rejected, as was “Attila.” After a while they abandoned the direction.

  “I still like the name card idea and the VIP treatment at the airport,” Mya said. “But maybe we use the finalists’ actual names and we have a striking looking person holding the card. Keep it simple.”

  “Hey,” Leah said, “What about using the three shortlisted models we had from that casting session earlier in the game. They all had pretty original looks. It’d be hard to miss them in an airport.”

  Arlo gave the direction a thumbs up, then after a gaping yawn he suggested they knock off for the night, get some sleep, and come back with renewed energy the next day.

  It didn’t take much arm-twisting. The team dispersed. With the finish line looming, they wanted to make sure they didn’t stumble.

  When Mya finally got home at three a.m. she was disappointed to see that Mitchell’s truck wasn’t in the guest parking. Great, she thought, he’s spooked by my career taking off and all the additional responsibility that’s going to mean. She rode the elevator up to her condo feeling like she was carrying a cinder block on each shoulder.

  Maybe I should gracefully decline Dunn’s offer, she mused. How much money does one person need? She hated the thought of money and career getting in the way of her and Mitchell’s relationship. Even at just two years, it was the longest and most serious relationship she’d ever had. She’d done the industry dating circuit and found it lacking. She’d stopped going to mass, so she couldn’t find a “nice, church-going boy” like her grandmother had once suggested. And other professional guys either seemed put out that she made more money than they did or they looked at her like a meal ticket.

  Mya turned the key to her condo door. She knew she should get some sleep and think more clearly, but at the moment she felt that if Mitchell was truly freaked out about her taking on more responsibility, then Dunn would have to find someone else.

  Stepping inside, she heard a noise. Mya froze. Her pulse rate leapt as she heard footsteps coming swiftly toward the entry way. Just as she was turning to run from the condo, Mitchell appeared, a half-drunk beer in his hand. “Hey, kiddo. Didja hear the Bruins won? Smoked the Habs five to two.”

  Mya’s tension left her body all at once, and she almost fell down from the combination of exhaustion and relief. Mitchell caught her and held her. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “You scared me,” Mya said. “Your truck isn’t downstairs.”

  “Nah, it’s in the shop for an alignment, cooling system flush, and whatever else the bastards can think up to separate me from my cash. Sandman dropped me off.”

  “I’m so happy you’re here. Can you carry me to bed?”

  He scooped her up, then made a humorous attempt to take a swig of his beer while she was in his arms. Mya laughed, took the beer, and held it up to his mouth. She poured too fast, and it ran down his chin. Mitchell tried not to laugh, but that only made matters worse. He spewed a spray of foam onto her suit. He tried to look penitent. “Sorry, that’s probably expensive, right?”

  Mya closed her eyes with a smile and wrapped her arms tighter around his neck. “It doesn’t matter. Like my dad always says, ‘What you are is worth a lot more than what you have.’”

  41

  The Colonel moved silently in the darkness of the warehouse.

  Normally he was a very sound sleeper, but something had awakened him. He walked around the outer wall of the expansive warehouse, checking the perimeter. The moonlight streaming in from the small oval windows in the vehicle bay doors was more than enough for him to see by. He had phenomenal night vision, perhaps from dozens of missions in the jungle. He padded along the smooth concrete floor in his bare feet, enjoying the cool sensation.

  There was no obvious point of origin for the noise. He returned to his bunk, listening to the varying pitches and frequencies of his men’s snoring. No guilty consciences among them, he thought. They were killers, certainly. But they were professionals.

  He often had to weed out sadists from his unit when they had served together back in his country. His version of a dishonorable discharge was simply to tell the man that his services were no longer required, and that he could choose a nominal military pension or a bullet in the back of the head. Most took the pension.

  The Colonel was very pleased with the outcome of their two split missions. Once again their superior planning had kept them a step ahead of the sentries at the grow houses. One of the pot crops was so lush it barely fit in the van. The other, however, was quite immature. Ramon had wanted to leave a card inscribed “we’ll be back,” but the Colonel saw no reason to antagonize their adversary further. They had taken what they could, but the rest was pointless.

  He had checked the contents of their war chest online. The covert offshore account contained 42.5 million US dollars. By his reckoning, they needed another eleven million. The intelligence they had extracted from Terence weeks ago was now very dated. And the kid they had awakened in bed with his girlfriend didn’t know enough about the operation to be useful. As a commander, the Colonel put a premium on fresh intel, but there was not much more he could do. They did not want to purchase elaborate eavesdropping equipment, which would be hit-and-miss anyway. Nor did he want the exposure of trying to cultivate a mole within Otis’s organization. Having an inside man had its risks, as Otis would no doubt agree. His unit was too close to its objective to risk losing one or more men.

  They had enough ordnance for many more missions. But his preference was stealth and deception. A firefight might be inevitable, but he would try to avoid it. It was bad enough to have Otis’s organization looking for him. He didn’t need the added inconvenience of heavy police surveillance.

  As he started to drift off, he thought of the news they had been seeing from their country since the billionaire Ptushko had secretly financed the military coup. Violence and torture were now facts of life. The government’s security forces imprisoned anyone opposing development and employment in Ptushko’s mining operations.

  Wages for the workers were pitiful. One entire village—home to three prominent labor organizers—had been wiped out, to provide an example to the others that resistance would not be tolerated. The only media reports allowed out of the country said that the government had wiped out a rebel base.

  The Colonel knew that his country needed him urgently. But he could not allow that urgency to affect his judgment in planning and executing these final raids. Otis and his men would be alert, and like the old man who had gunned down the religious missionaries on his doorstep, he would err on the side of violence.

  He slipped away into a dark, dreamless sleep.

  Mitchell dragged his butt into the squad room just before nine a.m. Mya had dropped him at the dealership so he could pick up his truck after its maintenance. The guy at the service counter had been relentlessly cheerful about prying $417.32 from Mitchell’s checking account.

  He went to the coffee machine and poured a cup, smelling it first to try to ascertain what kind of indignity he was about to inflict on his taste buds. “Shit, that’s not bad. What’s up with the coffee?”

  Ryerson turned and shrugged. Nelson got up and walked over with his own cup. “I stopped at Emilio’s on my way in this morning. Got a butter tart and a pound of organic Sumatran.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Sandovan asked, queuing
up with his own mug.

  “Last night I stayed over at Lindsay’s. I finally tried the ‘Hernandez Hallelujah’ in the sack with her.”

  Hernandez suddenly listened in from his desk. “And?”

  Nelson blushed.

  Sandovan looked puzzled. “Why is it called the Hernandez Hallelujah?”

  Hernandez looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “Try it and you’ll know why.” He turned back to Nelson. “And?”

  “And I think she wants to get married.”

  Ryerson laughed. “You think?”

  “Well she proposed.”

  Hernandez turned back to his computer. “Don’t do it, kid,” he said over his shoulder. “Now that you’re a G-spot Jedi, you can’t take yourself off the market. You have a responsibility to use your powers for the greater good.”

  Mitchell slapped Nelson on the back. “Well with this pot of coffee I feel like we all shared in the victory. Nice going kid.”

  He turned to go back to his desk and saw Captain Ramsey filling the doorway. “Mitchell, what the fuck’s with the back slapping? You getting all misty toward your fellow officers? Is it that time of the month?”

  Mitchell decided to grin and bear it. “No sir, not for another week. But Nelson here might be getting married.”

  “Fucking awesome. Nelson, you have my sympathies. Enjoy the honeymoon, then when the inevitable happens, make sure you escape with at least one functioning nut and the Crockpot so you can make big batches of chili.”

  Ramsey turned to address the whole squad room. “Listen up you slackers. Looks like the dope thieves aren’t out of business after all. We got an eyewitness who saw another grow house get hit. Same fucking MO as all the others. This time the van was an exterminator. So I would love to see fewer asses on chairs and more rubber on the road, if you don’t mind. Sandovan, maybe you should run behind the car. Looks like you need to burn off a few burritos.”

  Sandovan looked down at his waistline. “You’re kidding, Cap. I just got one of those Christie Brinkley Total Gyms. You mean to say it’s not working?”

  “No, Sandovan, it’s not working. Christie Brinkley still has bigger pipes than you do. Now fuck off outta here.”

  Mitchell sighed. “I guess my dream of catching up on the paperwork will remain a dream. Hey Sandman, you wanna see if Emilio’s got any of those butter tarts left?”

  Nelson interrupted. “I got the last one. Unless you want to pay for the one with the Virgin Mary’s image in it. But Emilio says the bidding is up to a hundred and ninety-six thousand.”

  “Yowser,” Mitchell said. “He’s going to need security around the clock until he ships that thing. Oh well. Let’s get out there and interview the latest eyewitness. Maybe poke around the crime scene.”

  Sandovan stood up and swung his sportsjacket over his shoulder. As he did he flexed his right arm. “You think Christie Brinkley has bigger pipes?”

  Mitchell headed for the door. “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got bigger boobs.”

  He ducked as the stress ball whistled over his head.

  Mitchell drove. They decided to forgo a visit to Emilio’s, since Nelson had said the butter tarts were sold out and the latest grow house crime scene was in a different quadrant of the city. Sandovan looked up at the sky as they headed east. “Looks like it’s going to be nice all week. Get a tee time this weekend?”

  Mitchell nodded. “You know it. We’re off at seven o’ nine on Sunday.”

  “I should be able to get back to the house just in time to make pancakes for the brood.”

  Mitchell smiled. He and Sandovan were almost the same age, but had taken divergent paths in life. Sandovan had gotten married right after a hitch in the military. Mitchell had never been in a hurry to settle down. He went right into the academy after graduating from college.

  Both men had benefited from the Salento mayor’s “war on crime,” which had created one hundred new positions in the Salento Police Department a decade ago. As part of the same graduating class at the academy, they knew each other by sight. Then they were put in the same foursome at a police department charity golf tournament for the Salento Children’s Hospital and discovered their mutual fanaticism for the game.

  During that golf tournament, Sandovan—a natural athlete despite the bulk he had put on over the last ten years—had gotten a hole in one. The prize on the hole was a brand new BMW. Sandovan had shocked everyone in attendance at the banquet by standing up and announcing he was putting the car up for auction and would donate the entire proceeds to the Children’s Hospital. Mitchell had watched in amazement as Sandovan played auctioneer and raised an additional $38,000 for the hospital.

  When Eddie returned to their table he shrugged it off. “What the hell am I going to do with a two-seater convertible anyway? Claire and I already have one kid, with another on the way. We’re minivan people.”

  Ever since, Mitchell and Sandovan had been best friends, united by their lack of pretense and love of golf. Through various means they had ensured they would become partners once they both made detective. Their professional chemistry was as obvious as their friendship. They amassed an enviable arrest record despite an irreverent style and occasional disdain for procedure.

  They pulled onto the street where the latest grow house had been hit. The crime scene tape was already flapping in the breeze. A uniform came to greet them and showed them where the swarm of wasps had been fed into the house via a clothes-dryer vent.

  “Gotta give these guys credit,” Sandovan said. “They have more firepower than the Special Forces, but they seem to prefer deception rather than going in guns-a-blazing. Wonder why they’re hesitant to pull the trigger.”

  Mitchell looked at the container that had held the wasps, duct-taped to the dryer vent. “They wouldn’t want to go in shooting. They need time to load the crop from the basement into their truck. If they can breach the house without waking the neighbors, it makes it a lot easier.”

  Sandovan took a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and cut the container free of the duct tape. He handed it to the uniformed officer to be taken for fingerprinting. She took it back to her car as Mitchell and Sandovan entered the house.

  The bomb squad had already been in to defuse all the explosive countermeasures the grow house had been armed with. Nonetheless, they moved carefully in case the sniffer dog and the bomb techs had missed something.

  “Do you know if they checked the back door for booby-traps?” Sandovan shouted to Mitchell, who was preoccupied with swatting a stray wasp in the side window.

  “As far as I know there’s no explosive matter left anywhere in the house. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be something mechanical. Hang on a second.”

  Mitchell went to the front closet and found a broom. Then he joined Sandovan in the kitchen, where the back door entered the house. “Okay, assume if there is something, it’s meant to get someone on their way in to the house,” he said.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Sandovan retorted. “You assume that.”

  “Fine, chickenshit.” Mitchell put his hand on the doorknob. Slowly he turned the knob. Nothing. He pulled the door open slowly. They looked through a metal screen door into a neatly kept back yard.

  “Hmph,” he said. “Gimme the broom.”

  Using the broom, he touched the spring-latch on the screen door. As he pushed it open there was a rushing sound like a freight train. In the blink of an eye, a steel grate of nine-inch spikes shot up out of the floor to waist height, snapping the broomstick in two.

  “Jesus,” Sandovan gasped. “Glad I didn’t just walk out into the yard like I was going to.”

  Mitchell looked at the spikes, which had been smeared with something nasty looking. “Yeah, that looks lethal.”

  They went to the basement, carefully avoiding the empty step in the middle of the staircase, which had been a spring-loaded explosive plank removed by the bomb squad. Once in the basement, they walked past the empty pots where the plants had once thrived
. At the back of the basement, under the kitchen floor, was the infrastructure for the spiked gate.

  “Check it out,” Sandovan said. “There are two switches. That’s slick. It means a neighbor or a kid could come to the screen door and open it with no harm done. See the catch there?” He pointed to a metal clip. “It would re-set every time.”

  “That’s smart,” Mitchell said, following his logic. “There’s a similar switch for the main door. So someone in the house could open that and talk to someone through the screen without the trap springing.”

  “The only way the spikes spring up through the floor is if both doors are opened, triggering both switches. You’d get someone in mid-stride as they stepped over the threshold. Looks like this canister of compressed air is what shoots the grate up through the breakaway bottom section of the door frame. Damn, Mitchell. That thing would’ve sprung right through one of my femoral arteries. I could be up there on the floor bleeding out right now if we weren’t so paranoid.”

  Sandovan sat down on a bench and put his face in his hands. Mitchell sat down next to him. “So here’s to being paranoid. Shake it off, Sandman. Remember what Sean Connery said to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables?”

  Sandovan shook his head slowly.

  “You just fulfilled the first rule of law enforcement: make sure when your shift is over you go home alive. Here endeth the lesson.”

  42

  “Oh my God,” Mya said softly. “Is Eddie okay?”

  Mitchell tried to twist the cap off a beer from Mya’s fridge, then realized it was an import without a twist cap. He rooted in the kitchen drawer for an opener. After liberating the beer, he took a long swig.

  “I think he was pretty shook up. The lab guys said the spikes were smeared with an anti-coagulant, so even if one of us had tried to contain the blood flow, it wouldn’t have worked.”

  Mya shook her head in amazement. “What kind of people think of stuff like that?”