by JN Lenz
“Sharks, I don’t give a fuck about how long sharks have been around for, what the hell does that have to do with murder? You’re out of your mind, no way.”
“Listen to you; it’s not like your some angel. Have you forgotten what we have been doing for the past how many years?”
“I don’t think you can compare growing pot to fucking murder Clyde. Seriously, like wholly shit Clyde, I’m a fucking pacifist for Christ sake. I don’t have the stomach to kill a bloody Mocking Bird, I’m sure you remember that.”
“Yaa, I’m fully aware of how much of a pussy you are, don’t worry your hands won’t even get dirty, and I’ll do all the work.”
“Work, almost sounds more like pleasure to me.”
“What happened to the plans of being rich? Let’s take a piece of ours and cash in for a better life buddy. What about all the horse shit you are always rambling on to me about getting ahead and the good life?”
“Are we going to start murdering innocent people to get there?”
“You’re over thinking this whole thing man; let’s face it the whole world is fucked anyway. Everyone’s out for number one, its plain to see. All the vanity is enough to make you puke; everyone is out for number one. Do you think the majority of the multi-millionaires don’t have dirty hands from somewhere down the line? Could be child labor, sweat shops, poisoning the world with chemicals or pollution, the human race has a serious disconnect with the earth. If you can’t beat them join them.”
“You’re just a bundle of fucking happiness and good will, aren’t you?”
“Come on, it’s not like they haven’t already lived a long life man, find the worst ones that are close to death anyway. Just give them a bit of a nudge, that’s all. Your great at being thorough, back check all the files. Find the invalids and the dementia customers, the one who are already in palliative care, what the hell kind of life is that anyway?”
“Christ man you’re talking about murder here, I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life behind bars. How the hell you plan on undertaking this without getting caught anyway?”
“Leave the details to me, besides we all know you won’t be taking part, you just don’t have the stomach for it. I will take care of the details, the where, the when, and the how. You just help me in the selection criteria; I will take care of the rest. As far as the jail time goes I’m not planning on getting caught and if I ever did you know I would never implicate you in anyway”
“Fuck Clyde, I don’t know this is some pretty serious shit. Are you positive you want to do this, you really think it can be pulled off?”
“Like I said, the world is fucking out of whack man. There is no balance anymore, it’s the Lions against the lambs my friend, are we gonna be lambs or Lions? Look we are probably doing the Planet a bloody favor anyway; the place could do with far fewer humans. The same fuckers that make the rules around the world are the same ones breaking every god damn one of them. Following is for schmucks and losers.”
“Yaa yaa, get off the pulpit. Let’s take a look at the files I guess, and go from there.” I began to digest the conversation that had just taken place, there was no question we needed the money badly and quickly.
The two of us spent until four in the morning that night, poring over the files Fred had placed before us hours earlier. The “opportunity” stack was placed in the center of the desk, directly below the brass lamp with the dark green glass shade. The lamps light cast an ominous and sinister glow against the manila files. In our final pile we had identified suitable targets by using the criterion of age, wealth and medical condition. By the end time the sun started to rise the next morning we were left with a pile of twenty six potential candidates. Clyde photocopied each of the selected files from the twenty six we had identified and separated from the complete pile of pre-arranged funerals.
“That’s the last you need to concern yourself about any these, I will handle the rest. If I need your help with anything, I will let you know. Go see how you can make out at the bank this morning to buy us some time, hopefully a line of credit will keep Fred from losing more digits next week.
“I’m heading to bed for a few hours of sleep” Clyde muttered as he gathered the copied files and began to head for the door of the office.
“You positive about this thing Clyde, I’m sure we can find another way out of this mess that does not include murder?”
“It’s done my friend, you take care of the financial shit and I’ll handle this. I’m good at killing remember.” Clyde’s response was calm and cool. His demeanor remained the same as it had throughout the night, dark and dead pan seriousness, as he compared his past animal killings, with that of the humans he planned to kill in he future.
“Christ I hope you know what you’re doing here, our fate is in your hands. I’ll head to the bank in the morning, with any luck I will get some cash for Vito so Fred can keep the rest of his fingers. Never know, maybe I can find another way out of this after meeting with the bank manager.” I offered in one last ditch attempt to change his mind but my words drifted into an empty doorway, Clyde was already gone. I remained in the office and rolled a joint and stepped onto the back step to smoke it. I would remain down in the office for another hour, before retreating upstairs to make some coffee. There would be no way I was going to be able to sleep after that night.
I called the bank as soon as it opened and arranged for a meeting later in the day with the branch manager. The receptionist was able to book me in before two pm; this allowed me the time to prepare all required documents for the meeting. The meeting with the branches manager William Bellmore was partially successful. The manager was willing to grant us a line of credit, but due to the large existing mortgage against the property, the bank would only advance us twenty thousand dollars.
This would still leave us forty thousand short on the sixty thousand we required to eliminate Fred’s tab with Vito. Undeterred by this set back, I drew out the full amount of twenty thousand dollars and headed off to the city to meet with Vito. Fred had provided me with directions and instructions on gaining access to the backroom of the Liberty Pool Hall. The Pool Hall was where Vito operated his book making and loan sharking enterprise from. I arrived at the front of the Liberty Pool Hall shortly before six in the evening; the building was located in a rundown section of the city.
The front windows of the Pool Hall had been painted black some years earlier it appeared to me, a small wooden sign with its letters peeling and faded read Liberty Pool and bar. The sign hung precariously from a pair of rusting chains at the front of the building. Pushing the solid black door open, my eyes tried to adjust to the poorly lit interior. The entire place was illuminated only by the single dome lights which hung above the six pool tables and a couple of pot lights directly above the bar. The large bald bartender asked what I wanted to drink, as I placed my foot against the bar rail and leaned against the counter.
“Nothing, looking to watch the game out back” I responded with the phrase Fred had said would be required to gain access to the rear room and Vito.
“What are you drinking” the bar tender replied, it appeared that the purchase of a drink is also required to gain access to the backroom
“Give me a Bud, no actually give me a shot of whiskey instead” maybe the whiskey would calm my nerves I thought. The glass shook slightly as I raised it to my mouth; it was at this point that I realized how nervous I was, and how bad I was in these situations.
“I’ll buzz the door when you get to the back” said the bartender as he began rinsing the glasses he had just removed from the bar.
“Let’s have one more of these first”
“Thirsty for a guy that didn’t want anything to drink” he groaned as he topped the glass off and turned around to ring the cash I had placed on the counter into the register. The whiskey helped, after tossing back the second shot I walked toward the door directly in the center of the back of the pool hall and bar.
A small woode
n peephole door opened within the door opened seconds after I walked over to the closed door. I could hear a buzzer going off behind the closed door. A set of dark eyes filled the small opening in the door before the small peephole door slammed back shut. I could hear the door being unbolted and slowly opened inward into the room. The unbolting of the door could be heard faintly through the door, it was solid and heavy looking.
The opening door gave me a view inside of the drab room with a pair of well-worn couches, and a pair of wooded mate’s chairs sitting in front of a large old Maple desk. One couch was occupied by a portly large headed man with bad teeth and very little hair. The face behind the peek hole emerged from behind the closing door; he was the largest black man I had ever seen towering a full six inches above my six foot frame. Wholly fuck! No wonder Fred had the shit scared out of him; this guy looks like he could pop my head right off without breaking a sweat. I wonder if he was the dude that sliced Fred’s pinky off.
“I don’t know you, who do you know?” the voice behind the desk barked, his cigarette lodged in the corner of his mouth bounced as he yelled. Bald with poor greasy skin he looked all of five feet tall; his shortness was evident even as he sat there with his chair propped to its maximum height. Hardly the image I had expected, I guess guns and big henchmen can make anyone a person to be feared.
“I am here on the behalf of Fred Shackles, the bird flies higher.”
“On behalf of fast Freddie! I did not realize that Fred had people acting on his behalf. If it is for wagering, cash will be required; if it is a payment, cash will be required.”
“I am here for a payment and yes I have cash”.
“What, is he having a hard time counting the money out that he owes me, he needs you to come and do it for him?” Vito erupts in laughter; the other two men in the room quickly follow the boss’s lead.
“My partner and I now own the Funeral Home and don’t need your henchmen showing up cutting fingers off. I have twenty thousand of the sixty thousand dollars that is owed to you, we will have the remaining forty thousand as soon as possible”
“See boy that is where you are already wrong! I was owed sixty thousand dollars two days ago, now I am owed sixty five thousand. This twenty thousand does not cover four weeks interest on that sixty grand, which was due in Full two days ago. So it’s like this, in five days you need forty six large to make this go away. Seven days after that, you need fifty five grand, you starting to understand the math boy? After the twenty is gone and I don’t see more payments, he’s losing some more digits. If it climbs back above sixty, Fred is going to lose a hand, Capich?” Vito stuffed the cigarette butt hard into the full ashtray that sat on his desk; he continued to stare directly into my eyes.
“Yaa I got it” I answered almost sheepishly, this guy was one prick that was clearly evident. I stepped towards the desk reached out and left the stack of hundred dollar bills in front of Vito as I turned to leave Vito quickly retrieved the cash and began to count.
” You a betting man, care to place a wager on a game while you are here? What you like, baseball? ”
” I think I’ll pass thanks” was my reply. Turning towards the door the large black doorman who had said nothing, I waited for him to release the lock as the door.
” You remember what I said about the money Freddie still owes me errand boy”
“You’ll get your money; you just stay away from my business.”
“You pay me my money boy and you will never see me again, now fuck off.”
I thought better than returning the compliment, as I passed the puffed out body guard who had released the dead bolt and opened the door.
Driving back from the city to Largo, my thoughts focused on how we could dig our way out of this mountain of debt Fred had created. I was hoping to find a way to prevent Clyde from going on a murderous rampage. Clyde and I had originally contemplated that with the ownership of the Funeral Home this year’s pot harvest would be the last. That may no longer be possible with the additional debt load against the Funeral Home. As I drove past a billboard for Walt Disney World and the Epcot Center, I recalled the conversations Clyde and I had a couple years back with an old friend of ours named Dory.
Dory had visited the Epcot Center in Florida shortly after it had opened, he mused to us about the Epcot Center and how they had these vast rooms with these amazing greenhouses. Each location was full of plants that grew not in soil, but a type of cloth in a system fed by a series of irrigation tubes. The tubes nourished the plants with a combination of fertilizers and water. The plants were also not dependent on natural sunlight, but instead received the light they required to grow from numerous high intensity grow lamps, these lamps hung directly above the growing plants.
This new growing system was referred to as Hydroponics grow system by the Epcot Center. The hydroponics plants would grow quickly, the grow lights and constant stream of nutrients speeding up the growing process. The whole process was truly amazing, Dory claimed.
“Wouldn’t that be awesome, doing the same thing for pot?” Dory would lament to us on the possibilities of transferring the same technology to the growing of marijuana.
Dory was right, why not move the growing inside, that way production could take place year round. I had been reading about the emergence of just such grow houses, which had begun to appear in America. I had discussed the process a couple of times with Junior; he confirmed that many of the long time growers he knew of were already using this new technology. The result for them of bringing their operations inside would greatly increase their yields.
There would be many advantages for Clyde and I if we could somehow make the transition, from growing out in the open fields to inside. Police were using more and more planes to scout for outside growing operations; we had even seen them around Parsons last summer. Moving everything inside would eliminate that risk from the sky, plus it would allow for multiple crops in a single year, resulting in a big increase of revenue.
But where would we locate the building and who would tend to the crop? There was no way we would have time for that now, not with owning and working at the Funeral Home. So far anything I had read about hydroponics listed a need for constant care and maintenance to produce consistent viable crops. Not to mention that many crops would require countless hours of drying, clipping and trimming after harvest time. There was no way Clyde and I would have the available time to accomplish all of that, along with running the Funeral Home.
The potential payoff though would be huge. Instead of producing one crop a year, with a value of fifty or sixty thousand dollars, we could triple that amount or maybe more. That kind of steady cash would allow us to be debt free at the Funeral Home in a few years and would maybe even facilitate the growth and expansion into purchasing additional Funeral Homes. I decided to talk to Clyde immediately when I returned to bounce this new plan off him, he would not be the only one with ideas on increasing our revenue.
That evening after Clyde and I had retired to the upstairs apartment for dinner, I laid out the idea of continuing to grow pot after this year’s harvest. I went over my idea of moving our future crops to an inside hydroponics set up while completely abandoning any planting outside. Clyde was in favor of the plan right from the start.
“Junior mentioned that very same idea last year, I never gave it much thought because I liked having the crop outside. Now having the Funeral Home to take care of moving the crop inside makes a pile of sense, I guess some of Junior’s other suppliers had already reverted their operations to hydroponics over the last two years. Junior claimed each ones production had tripled on average, and the consistency of the product had shown dramatic improvements.”
“So you’ve come around to the whole idea of moving the grow inside, that’s good but we can’t do it ourselves?” I knew Clyde enjoyed his time spent in the fields planting and nurturing the pot plants, watching his creations grow and flourish. I swear he had one foot in the furrows, like a misplaced farmer in some w
ays.
“There is no way we could manage a grow house and this place, besides I’m gone five days a week for the next two years remember. There’s just No Fucking way.”
“First we need to make it to the fall harvest, but we can’t even use the crop money or I don’t think our little buddy is gonna have any fingers left. Until you get your license we need a funeral director to run this place, it would be nice if it was a guy with fingers.”
“That’s my point exactly, who the hell is going to do all the work? It takes a lot of time to grow and process that much pot, the two of us won’t have time for that. We need to get on with my plan to increase our cash flow immediately. We need that fall crop money to invest in the equipment for a grow house, you’re the money guy Jack. Tell me we’re not sinking fast, this fucking place is nothing but debts. The twelve per cent interest charge is costing us sixty six grand and that’s just interest not a nickel of principal”
“You don’t need to tell me the bloody numbers, I know exactly what is coming in and what needs to go out, it’s still fucking murder you’re talking about here Clyde.
“Murder, schmurder. Shut the Hell Up. You have any better ideas? Seriously unless are you going to start pulling golden eggs out of your ass just Shut Up about the whole murder thing, I’m doing it. News flash, we are broke.”
“I know we are broke. Keep your voice down for Christ sake. You don’t know where Fred is, or if someone else has walked into the building. Fuck Clyde if we are going to go ahead with this plan of yours, we need to be twice as careful as when we grow pot. This is going to take some very careful and precise planning, let’s keep the discussion around this to a minimum around here.”
“Your right Jack, better to discuss this when we are together in the car alone or somewhere completely private. I know Fred is up in his apartment, I just came from there and all the doors are locked. You know I’m not an idiot Jack, sometimes I don’t even realize my voice is getting louder. I’ve been thinking about a few of those pre arrangement files in particular. I have decided who will be our first; it’s going to be old lady Preston.”