by Tony D'Souza
"Tell them your stepdad told you to refuse, and don't say anything else. Nineteen grams and under is a misdemeanor, twenty-plus is a felony. So figure out when it's worth it to make two or three trips. Stay away from school zones, never drive around with more than one bag. If they nail you, say it's your stuff—they'll charge you with simple possession. Kate will bail you out and pay your fines. If you ask the judge for drug court, your record will be clean in a year. But the other thing that will happen is your driving days will be over."
"I'm not going to get caught, Jimbo."
"Don't call me Jimbo."
"Then Jim."
"Why can't you just say James?"
After the kids left one night and we were cleaning up the candy wrappers, I said to Kate, "Are you having fun with all of this?"
"Fun? I wouldn't exactly call it fun, James."
"Then what would you call it, Kate?"
"I'd call it a lot of hard work."
"Aren't you enjoying it at all?"
"I'm enjoying the money."
"You know, if we get raided and they find your weight, they'll take away the baby."
Kate made a face at me like she hadn't thought of that.
After another couple weeks of not answering his phone, Russell finally admitted to Mason that he hadn't been arrested. When Mason asked him why he lied about it, Russell told him he'd felt like he had to. When Mason asked him why he'd felt like he had to, Russell told him, "Because, man."
"Because why, man, Russell?" Mason had told me he yelled at him.
"Because I had to, Mason."
"Why did you have to, Russell?"
"Because I sold the weed."
"You sold the weed?"
"Yeah."
"What happened to the money?"
"I spent it."
"You sold the weed and spent the money?"
"Yeah."
"What'd you spend the money on?"
"I spent it on a ring for LaJane."
"Why would you spend our money on a ring for LaJane?"
"I was afraid she was going to leave me."
"You were afraid she was going to leave you?"
"Yeah."
At that, Mason was quiet for a long time. He tried not to let it affect him. He tried to hold in his anger. Then he exploded. "You have to give us our fucking money!"
"I'm going to give you your fucking money!"
"How are you going to give us our fucking money?"
"When I find a job."
"When you find a job?"
"I'm going to start looking just like everybody else."
"You're going to start looking?"
"Yep."
"You owe us eight thousand dollars, Russell."
"Once I find a job, I'll pay it all back little by little."
"Who decided that?"
"I did, I guess."
"Well, that's a bunch of shit."
"Well, that's the way it is, Mason."
"He never planned on paying us, James," Mason told me on the phone as I gassed up in Barstow. "He knew I trusted him, figured he could do whatever he wanted. He's still calling me ‘brother' to this day. I want to kill him, James. I want us to drive out there and kill him."
I was looking at a beautiful SoCal day where I was, knew Mason didn't really mean that. I said to him, "What if I said I wanted to let this go?"
"You want to let this go?" Mason sounded like he was wincing.
"Listen to me, Mason. Why would we want to mess with this when everything else is going so well?"
"Because of the principle of it. He cheated us, James."
I sighed, got back on the road. I holed up for the night at the Red Lake Hostel off the 40, at high elevation in northern Arizona. The hostel was really an old motel attached to a gas station. Once the attendant turned off the station lights and went home for the night, I was alone up there. This was my third or fourth time staying there. I liked it because it was far off the highway, a lonesome outpost in the hills. I didn't get cell reception, so I didn't have to talk to anybody. It started to snow, and I stood outside my room and smoked a bunch of cigarettes in the dark. The falling snow made everything feel even quieter than it was.
Mason wanted the money back, but did I really care? I didn't need that money anymore. It pissed me off that I hadn't read Russell better; I knew I couldn't be any good at this if I ever let that happen again. But what was coming through to me now in Mason's voice was that this was always going to be a problem for him. What was Mason's deal anyway? Why did he always call me about everything?
I suddenly realized I was the leader. The thought of that kind of humbled me. The snow was falling on the darkened lot; the landscape had no lights in it. I had never been the leader of anything before. Did I even want this?
I called Mason from Winslow in the morning, told him, "We're going to give him one more chance. We're going to let him pay us back little by little. You guys were friends, let's see if he lives up to that. If he continues to fuck with us, then I promise we'll do something."
I heard Mason take a hard drag on his cigarette. He sighed and said, "You're right, James. You're always right. We'll give him a chance and he'll pay us back. I just got hurt by this is all."
Through the end of April and into May, Russell kept in touch, telling Mason he was beating the bushes high and low for work. Then spring came in full force on the highways with its wildflowers everywhere, and Russell stopped answering his phone again. The second week of May, Mason heard from a guy in Biloxi that Russell had bought into a Texas hold'em tournament at the Imperial Palace Casino.
"How much was the buy-in?" Mason asked the guy.
The guy said, "A thousand dollars."
Mason called me, so upset he was incoherent. When he calmed down enough to explain what had happened, I asked him, "What do you suggest we do?"
"You know what I want to do," he said.
I said, "Can't you ever take it easy? Text me his number and I'll talk to him."
I was at the Sarasota skate park that afternoon, Romana in her stroller with me, watching Nick and his buddies grind their skateboards down the rails. I'd wanted to stay home, but Nick had dragged me out. Why would I want to sit at home watching Cops all day, he said, when it was so beautiful outside?
Now I called Russell, figuring he wouldn't answer. But he did.
"Who's this?" he barked at me right away in his muddy accent.
"This is James. How you doing, Russell?"
Russell was quiet a second. Then he said in a cautious voice, "I'm fine, I'm fine. How you doing, man?"
"Listen, I know you and Mason are having a problem. And I know you owe him money. I'm calling you to urge you to take care of it. Not trying to threaten you or anything like that. Just calling to say you should take care of your commitments."
"Oh yeah?" he said.
"Yeah."
He was quiet. Then he said softly, in this treacly voice, "Man, I've been trying to talk to Mason about all of this. But you just can't talk to the dude. I keep telling him I can't find any work. If I can't find any work, what am I supposed to do?"
"The thing is, Mason does want to work with you. He's willing to be patient. But you have to get the ball rolling on your end. Send him something. Send him anything. Send him a hundred bucks as a peace offering."
"Maybe I could get my hands on a twenty."
"Put it in the mail tomorrow. How can any of us do business if we don't live up to our commitments, right?"
"You're right," Russell said. "Uh, my girl's here. Gotta go."
I called Mason. "He's going to put something in the mail for you tomorrow," I said.
Mason said, "James, thanks for calling him for me. I know you were a lot more rational about it than I've been. Every time I talk to him, I start screaming. People who go through shit together, I think they should know how to treat each other, you know?"
Out in the skate park, Nick landed some kind of trick. Then he skated up to me. "You see that? Y
ou see that? That's what I'm talking about, Jimbo."
A week passed, then another. No money came from Russell. Mason unloaded himself on me about it the next time we talked: What the fuck were we going to do?
Now I was pissed off, too. I called Russell from my backyard. Kate and the baby were sleeping inside. Outside, it was a thick and sweltering night, the beginning of the brutal Florida summer.
Russell answered. He said, "Who's this?"
I said, "This is James, who you owe money."
"I don't owe you any money, dude. I owe that money to Mason."
"Mason owes me. So now you do, too."
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said in this deliberate voice, "I'll tell you what. I'm getting sick of the two of you. So I'll tell you what I'd tell him—go fuck yourself."
"What'd you just say?"
"Go fuck yourself."
Then he hung up.
By that point everyone owed me money. Not Eric Deveny, of course, he was way too top-of-the-food-chain for that. But at any given time, Mason was in the hole to me for between five and seven thousand dollars, the Sac crew was always in arrears two or three grand. I kept the numbers written down in my wallet, didn't worry about it much, knew they'd pay me as soon as they moved their weight. And they did; money orders from them came in the mail almost every other day. I'd save up a stack, then put on my sunglasses and spend a few hours cashing them in all over town.
I was still using my credit card to pay for the flights and one-way rental cars, hadn't figured out a way around that yet. I didn't like it, but didn't know what else to do. I knew I'd have to come up with a story in case anything happened, figured I'd just keep my mouth shut, let whatever lawyer I'd hire tell me what to say. I was staying on my regular schedule for Deveny all of that time, had made so much money that even in an hour in the counting room at the Vault, I couldn't get through it all. It was two hundred thousand, then a quarter of a million. Sometimes I'd feel so overwhelmed by the sight of it I'd start laughing.
Other things had been happening, too. Back in early March, I'd bought a new car for Kate, to tell her exactly how much I loved her. Or was it just to keep her quiet about us ever getting out of the business? We went to the dealership with the baby on a Wednesday afternoon. Kate had picked out a Suzuki Crossover because it was ten thousand dollars cheaper than what she'd really wanted, a fully loaded white Subaru Forester with a retractable moonroof, $27,000.
"You sure you don't want that pretty Forester, Kate?" I'd asked her on the lot after she'd made her final decision.
She'd shrugged and said, "You know I do. But aren't you the one who's always saying we need to be careful about our money?"
We went into the office with the salesman, haggled with him briefly, then he and I stood up to shake hands on the deal. But before we did, I asked, "Still have that pretty Subaru out there?"
"Yes, we do."
"Then I want you to give it to her."
I turned around and looked at Kate. I'd never seen her so happy.
I told the salesman we'd pick up the car the following week; I had a contract to finish before I'd have the money. "What kind of business are you in?" he asked me, concern written all over his face. He'd mentioned that 2008 had been horrible so far, nothing moving at all. I knew he was worried we wouldn't show up and he'd lose his commission.
"Import-export. We deal with a lot of cash. Any problem if I give you the down payment that way, too?"
"Not as long as it's American cash," he said and smiled.
Before taking me to the airport that Friday morning, Kate had hurriedly stuffed money into my pantyhose, told me as she did, "You know I always want you to make it home safe, don't you? But please really make it home safe this time."
The following Tuesday afternoon, I did. We hustled to the dealership, and I put nine thousand-dollar bundles of tens and twenties from the fifty Eric Deveny had given me that morning on the salesman's desk, a small pyramid of rumpled drug currency, just under the amount that would trigger the filing of a Currency Transaction Report. Everything had been happening so quickly that I hadn't put any thought into how to clean up our money; it felt good to get rid of that big stack. At the same time, what could the salesman be thinking with so much filthy cash piled before him like that? But he slid it aside with his forearm, as though he hadn't noticed it at all, and passed me the pen. The good thing about selling Subarus, he'd told my wife as he gave her the keys, was that it was a repeat business; the bad thing was that the damn things were so reliable, he knew he wouldn't see us again for at least ten years.
As she sat behind the wheel and drove us up the Tamiami Trail with the moonroof open, her long hair whipping in the wind, Kate said, "They know we're drug dealers, don't they?"
"I don't think they care."
"Everybody just wants the money?"
"Everybody just wants to get by right now."
"I can't believe you really bought me this."
"I want you to know that your Mr. Big-Time Drug Dealer really does love you."
"I'm sorry I ever called you that."
"Just enjoy your car, Kate."
Then, in early April, we had ourselves a new house. Ever since I'd made the comment to Kate about the baby being taken away if we ever got raided, she'd been quietly looking for a safer place for us to live. She'd searched Lido Key, Longboat Key, had found a dozen different condos and waterfront houses she'd loved. The rental agents had told her they'd have to run a credit report; she'd have to provide references, sign a lease. Finally she'd found something on the north end of Siesta Key, a spacious white three-bedroom Florida-style bungalow on a canal with the beach four blocks away. The old guy who owned it had recently remarried, was in a rush to get it rented and didn't need any of that. It was secluded under old-growth oaks, jacaranda, and frangipani. The crushed-shell driveway was lined with pampas grass, and there was a colonnaded patio with a screened-in swimming pool out back. Would he take the rent in cash? Kate had asked him as they stood on the patio. He'd said, "As long as you don't mind that I'll keep homesteading it."
Kate had taken me over to see it. What would we tell my mother? I'd asked her on the way. But as soon as I saw those high-ceilinged rooms, the Mexican tile, and the white carpeting, I knew we'd come up with something. The old guy chucked Romana's chin as he walked us around, then asked if we would be interested in taking the furniture, too, because his new husband didn't want it at his place. Yeah, we'll take the furniture, too, we told him. What about the utilities? he asked. I said, "Can't we pay you those for now?"
The next morning, I flew out to Sac, came back in a red Charger with Texas plates five days later. I'd lost a day because of a freak snowstorm in northern New Mexico, had crawled along for hours, semis jackknifed around me like great carcasses. "You're losing a G late fee on this," Eric Deveny told me on the phone when I called him and explained what was happening.
"Even for snow?"
"You're the mule. I'm the money. It's not my problem, my man."
Kate was waiting for me when I pulled in. She grabbed a chunk of the latest round of Deveny's cash, hurried through town and across the bridge to Siesta Key. Had the extra day lost her the place? she asked the old guy when she ran in. He accepted the money from her, first month, last month, security deposit, $10,000 total, and said, "Not in this awful market, my dear." We had chestnut leather couches now, a walnut sleigh bed. We brought over the baby's crib, and we never stayed at the 8th Street house again.
After Romana went to sleep in her own room that night, Kate and I spent the evening on the patio, enjoying our view of a flock of white ibis stalking with their curved beaks as they foraged in our yard. We sipped a Napa Sangiovese, the 2006 Altamura; Darren had sent me a case of it via Billy in Sac when we'd made the switch. "He's thinking of you over in Thailand," Billy had told me in the motel room when he'd dropped the case on the bed. "He wants you to know he appreciates everything you've rolled our way, hopes you won't be too put out that his n
umbers have to go up for a while."
Darren and I hadn't spoken in almost two months. I was finally established, and the mentoring part of our relationship had come to an end. I said to Billy, "His numbers have to go up?"
"It's almost summer, dude. The numbers always go up in the summer, until the harvest starts coming in. A lot of his stuff is in bunkers—he could keep his prices flat if he wanted to, but he's a businessman before anything else. You'd be wise never to forget that, James."
Anger had shot through me. Yeah, I'd known from the start that Darren was a businessman. But I also knew Deveny wouldn't pick up the costs on this and I'd be down a couple Gs a load for now. Then again, did I really care? A thousand dollars had become like a hundred to me; I knew I'd still be making huge money. So I'd let the anger go, uncorked one of the bottles with Billy's Swiss Army knife. We slugged the warm wine together in the motel room, celebrating how much money I was making for all of us. Were he and I friends? He'd said, "You going to remember us when something else comes your way?"
"When something else comes my way?"
"Moving the kind of weight you've been? Tons of people would love to meet you now, James."
I was on my way to rolling Darren Rudd half a million dollars from something that hadn't existed six months before. I was aware of it, thought about it all the time. What kind of windfall had it been for Darren? I knew exactly what kind of windfall it had been for me. A life changer. The chance to become the person I'd always known I was meant to be. Sitting on the patio sipping wine with my wife that late-spring night, I let the success of what I'd done settle into me for the first time. I'd never lived in a place as nice as this one. I knew my parents had never had as much. Kate and I were doing so much better than everyone else out there right now, and I knew there was something tragic about that. Were we going to miss out on some kind of collective pride everyone was going to feel for having survived this worsening economy at the end of the day? And how bad was it going to get? At the same time, we'd already gone through plenty of it ourselves, and I'd worked hard for what we had. A thought passed through my mind like a whisper: You're risking your life. But the night was lazy and wonderful, and I put that thought away.