Almost Criminal: A Crime In Cascadia Mystery Part 16

His brow knotted in sympathy and he inhaled again, slowly, then let the smoke trickle out.

"This is wicked." His voice seemed to come from deep in his chest. "Flavourful. I don't think I can do the whole thing."

A large raindrop splatted in the asphalt, then another, followed by a threatening rumble.

I said, "That'll be it for walk-ins today. Kill the roach if you've had enough. You can have the other one too."

"I will not say no. You are a gentleman and I thank you. What is this sweet green anyway?"

"Some kind of sinsemilla," I replied vaguely, inventing the name of a grower somewhere up the valley. "He's a friend, and I was curious if it's all he made it out to be. He's proud of it, organic this and that. But he's got his gatherer, you know how it works."

Lucas nodded. "It's a light smoke. Perks you up, in a very mind-opening way. Subtle, but very strong."

A long moment pa.s.sed in which Lucas did not move or even seem to breathe, until his head snapped up and he blinked both eyes. "Very strong. This friend -"

I got up off the step and brushed off my pants. Making a sale is all about timing, they say.

"Would there be any more of these samples around? For sale, I mean. A small purchase. You being his friend and all."

I gazed upward, watching the dark clouds churning overhead. Don't sound eager. "I suppose it's possible. Not as a formal arrangement, but once in a while. He's not set up for small sales, like, grams and ounces. Not what he does."

"But you think -"

"I think yeah."

"That would be -" Lucas gazed at the embers in the joint. "Nice doobie, dude, very generous." He took another long hit.

"A warning, though, he's exclusive to the one gatherer. So this is just between you and me. If anybody asks, you got it in the city, from some kid on the east side."

"Understood," Lucas nodded, "Totally."

I hoped he did understand. "Keep the Menzys out of it."

"Of course, dude."

The drizzle was steady now, and I was getting chilled. I opened the door to the shop. If Randle could have a profitable sideline, so could I. It served him right for hiring stoners who couldn't weigh their bags within a half pound's accuracy.

Chapter 18.

Another night alone at Randle's. Another morning of listening to an empty house. Rachel didn't pick up her phone, so I left a message, a brief attempt at reconciliation and I called Bree, who said she was fine, that Beth was staying with her agent Eleanor in the city a few more days.

Beth had been calling, probably trying to make the first gesture, but I wasn't picking up. She had enough going on, and making her wait wouldn't hurt. Once she returned, I did want to make peace and get back to living at home, even if it was only for a week or two before school started.

On Maddie's computer I checked Craigslist. Wherever Randle was, he'd posted a job for gre3n.

"Why does this not surprise me?" Jeannie let out a hearty guffaw.

Of all the strange moments - and there had been a few lately - this was up there. I'd sat patiently outside Human Beans holding a fat packet of money, watching Jeannie work alone at the till. I wondered why she was there, and where Lucas was. And if Randle's money-laundering arrangement was with Lucas, what did that mean for the half-pound of weed I'd slipped him on the side?

After a long wait, I'd walked into the shop and delivered the line about a delivery from Mr. Blunt. And she had laughed.

"Toley, come and meet our new connection." She leaned on her forearms, freshly orange hair spilling over her face. "It should be a shock, it really should. But something told me. First he began hanging around and then you started calling in sick. You're a match, you two. Stubborn, bull-headed, and full of yourselves, and totally obsessed with getting every little detail right. And I don't believe that you've been sick a day in your life. Hangovers excepted, of course."

So Jeannie knew Randle, and not just as a regular customer. She knew about the business. If I was a shock to her, this was more of a shock to me. She should have known Ramon, the front man, not Randle. That is, if the House of Dreams was a secure as Randle claimed.

Randle hadn't warned me that Jeannie and Anatole would be any different from any of the other money-launderers - and I'd swapped money for cheques with several familiar faces in Wallace, but everyone else had kept up the poker face and pretended they'd never seen me before. One had asked about Ramon.

"Hey, kid, keepin' out of trouble?" Anatole strode in from the kitchen.

"You're supposed to be retired."

He threw his hands in the air, as if it wasn't his choice. I wondered whether Lucas knew. Who faked the books? Jeannie, Anatole, or was it the new manager, Lucas?

"He's working for Randle Kennedy, Toley. Can you believe it?"

"Good man. He runs a quality outfit."

She mentioned Randle by name, with customers not ten feet away. My concern must have shown on my face, like everything does, and she barked out another laugh while she plucked the envelope from me and slipped it in the register, under the cash tray.

"I know he likes to think he's the man of mystery, but everyone knows Randle and what he's up to, if they've been living here long enough. Toley and I, we brought him to Wallace in the first place."

She was relaxed, even cheerful about it, while I was keeping an eye on the highway, on the lookout for Ivan's pickup. Every delivery I made these days, I quivered with fear every time a motorbike approached.

"It was in '69," Anatole said. "Or '70? We crossed the border in the summer of '68, right after I got my draft notice. The year of the Tet Offensive."

Jeannie finished his thought, "- and we moved to the valley in '69."

Organic farming had been the original plan, but a few months on a back-to-the-land commune was enough.

"It was on the flatlands outside of Aga.s.siz," she said. "Not much there in those days, believe me, and it didn't take me long to discover I'm not made for communal life. Then Toley heard about a Chinese restaurant for lease, and luckily we had enough money left to turn it into this."

"There were resisters all around the valley," Anatole said. "Still are. Down in Vancouver there were meetings for guys who'd just arrived, like orientation sessions to let them know it's a different country here, and what's different, what's the same. At one of them, we met this Berkeley dropout with hair down to here and a Jesus beard."

"And those Robert Redford eyes," she added. "He's all grey now and the beard's gone, but those haven't changed."

"He had the business in mind the whole time, I think. He'd crossed over with bags of seeds, ready to start cultivation. The border was a lot looser back then. He slept on our sofa until he found a place in the woods. He planted his first crop and that was that."

I was feeling dizzy. One moment I'm playing spy games, and then I'm listening to tales of draft dodgers and dope.

"I thought he was a teacher," I said, trying to piece the history together.

She shook her head, "He's never had a job, not that I know of. After a couple of years he moved to one of the islands."

"Hornby." Anatole nodded.

"Lasqueti."

"Right, Lasqueti. Where B.C. bud began. Lasqueti Haze was one of his varieties. Of course everyone grows it now." Anatole had a look of dreamy reminiscence.

What had Randle's how-I-got-into-the-business story been about? If I had to choose Randle or these two, I'd believe Jeannie and Anatole.

Jeannie said, "You know he's never gone back home, Toley? Not even for a visit."

"He has his reasons," Anatole said. "Me, as soon as Jimmy Carter pa.s.sed the amnesty, I was stateside. You wouldn't understand, kid, but you know, all that c.r.a.p you hate about home? You run away, but it's still there. Time pa.s.ses, you start to miss things. It's worse if you're not allowed to go back, then you can start to obsess about it. Have dreams about the things you left behind."

He pulled off the fisherman's cap and ran a thumb around the rim. "Your mom is always your mom. Your dad's your dad, even if he calls you a traitor. When you're eighteen and burning your draft card, you don't realize how final it all is." He paused, pensive. "I couldn't go to my father's funeral."

"Toley, get the chequebook for Tate here. Randle was gone for years, and then one day, fifteen years ago or more, he walked in and ordered a coffee, like it was still 1970."

"Not a macchiato?"

Anatole returned with the cheques. "No one knew what a macchiato was back then. n.o.body made one before you came along."

She said, "He'd moved back, and his business with him. He wanted to know if we had a spare room. Or a garage, somewhere we could put in some plants. He wanted to share the wealth." She laughed again and handed me the cheque. "A nice thought. But could you imagine me growing anything? I do not have a green thumb."

"- but we're mostly a cash business here." Anatole finished her thought. "So this contribution fits our skill set better."

"We're happy to do our part," she said. "Neither of us has needed his medicinals, knock on wood, but I know those who do."

Anatole added, in a serious tone, "Our business is in the toilet since they put in the new border crossing. We get no traffic. We'd have gone bust without the extra we make from," he took the cheque and held it at arm's length. "Kaya Property Management. That guy - kaya is Jamaican for pot, you know that?" He brightened. "Speaking of coffee, how about making me one? I don't want to hurt Lucas's feelings, even in his absence, but his latte's not the same."

Chapter 19.

"You remembered the sample case?"

"In the back." I'd rolled down Randle's driveway to find him waiting for me, blue eyes shining in antic.i.p.ation. He ran to the truck, waving me out of the driver's seat. This was our first trip to the city, pitching product to compa.s.sion clubs, cannabis cafes and seed banks. He'd made the arrangements but as always, I was putting my face in front of the customers, hoping they weren't police plants or bikers affiliated with the Devils. If sales went well, I was in for a good bonus.

He tapped his ball cap. "You have a hoodie, or do you want me to get you a hat?"

I showed him my sweatshirt, slung over the seatback. I wanted to get away from the valley, and outside the limits of Devils' territory, as quickly as possible. Until Randle had started this under-the-radar business I'd never fully appreciated the confidence that protection gives you when you're driving a truckload of marijuana.

There were no Devils in Vancouver, he a.s.sured me. Independent gangs ran the street trade and no one had a monopoly. Back in the spring he'd operated a regular schedule of city deliveries, but the demand was too strong, so he'd had to put it on hold until he had enough grows on line. Now, without the Devils' supply chain to feed, it was time to renew old acquaintances and pick up where he'd left off.

For the entire drive to Vancouver, Randle droned on about legalization and the hard-a.s.s Conservatives while I watched the mirror for Harleys. All I wanted was to get through the day and count my money. The better the bonus, the sooner I'd be gone.

East of Vancouver's downtown core, the north end of Commercial Drive was a strip of two-storey storefronts populated with bars, restaurants, hole-in-the-wall shops, and the occasional Legion Hall or medical building. I knew it well - Caffe Napoli, where I'd learned the coffee trade, was a few blocks south.

Since April, two stores, Da Kine and Cafe 420, had been selling gra.s.s openly on the Drive. Pick it up or smoke it on site, they had weed, hash, brownies, cookies, and more, from ten in the morning to whenever they could push customers out. They operated with business licences, paid their taxes, and spoke to every journalist with a microphone. Success breeds imitation, Randle said, pointing down the street to freshly painted awnings that read Rasta Roll and Silly Blunt.

"We're delivering there too?"

"Only 420 for now. I'm still negotiating with the others. Pull up that hoodie and take the wheel." He slowed to a stop in the middle of traffic and opened the driver's door. Up that lane, he said, beep when you get to the green door. Then he was gone.

It was the easiest, most low-stress delivery ever. A stocky, bearded dude met me in the lane, introduced himself as Dan, and waved me into the delivery s.p.a.ce. Four eager a.s.sistants then swarmed the truck. I didn't have to carry a thing. He was as loose and casual as his clothes - made of hemp, he explained. For sale at the counter.

Cafe 420's street-facing window was painted with a Buddhist mandala design that filled the s.p.a.ce with colour like a stained gla.s.s window. Above the huddled tokers, prayer flags lined the ceiling. The door was continually held open by a line of eager customers, letting in a welcome breeze that fought the haze within. A circle of smokers in one corner held an animated conversation over cups of tea, while at a plain wooden table, a woman in a pinstriped jacket bent over a laptop and nibbled on a brownie.

Business was unhurried. Gra.s.s was measured from dozens of tins. Cannabis-laced cookies, brownies, and granola bars were on offer under the gla.s.s countertop, and, along one wall, an array of paraphernalia: rolling paper, scales, bongs, pouches, and grinders. Artificial urine that guaranteed a successful drug test, and a Whizzinator, a rubber p.e.n.i.s for delivering the artificial urine into a test jar. n.o.body in line seemed to take it any more seriously than I could.

Dan reappeared. "Are you subbing for Ramon?"

At last. "I never met him. Don't think he's around anymore." I gave a making-conversation kind of shrug before casually asking, "His last delivery was in April, I think, right?"

Dan nodded.

"I've been working up in the Fraser Valley 'til now," I said. "Love your place. I'd heard of it, but seeing it is something else." Ramon's job had ended just before mine began. Maybe because he turned eighteen.

"Thank you." He nodded and spread his arms, palms to the ceiling. "The revolution is here."

Cafe 420 was about recreation, not cancer or AIDS or glaucoma or any of the compa.s.sion-club claims. On the wall behind the cash register hung an official-looking plaque from the Marijuana Party of Canada, and a handwritten sign that corrected the many, apparently misunderstood, meanings of 420.

420 is not: - a police code for marijuana.

- the misdemeanour code for pot.

- the number of active chemicals in a pot plant.

- a biblical reference 420 is: A sacred phrase! For a group of high-school friends in San Rafael, CA, called the Waldos, 4:20 p.m. was toking time at the statue of Louis Pasteur. The pa.s.sword: 420 Louis.

From outside I heard an approaching rumble, the distinctive throb of a Harley, and my knees went liquid.

"You get bikers in here?" I asked, and began to move toward the back door.

Dan's lips curled, tolerant but amused at my obvious anxiety, and he waited for the sound to fade. "Not generally. But they're a reality of doing business."

The bike's throb rattled the painted gla.s.s until the engine coughed and died. The biker was right outside the door. He was coming in. Now I knew why Randle had left me alone. Dan put a hand on my arm as I tried to move away, expecting a biker goon with a tattooed head to appear any second.

"We've come to terms with our suppliers." He pa.s.sed me a handful of envelopes, each with a faint pencil mark indicating an amount, in thousands. "I prefer to deal with people like you."

I hoped he couldn't see how badly my legs were shaking. Through the lineup at the front door I could just catch the curve of bike tire, and I shifted for a better view of a shaved-head biker with a black leather club vest. He was deep in conversation with Randle, who had a friendly hand laid on a vested shoulder.

The clutch shuddered under my wobbly foot as I backed out of the loading dock. Randle had known the biker, so there was nothing to worry about, but still I could barely breathe. I'd never been so scared. I was not up for this kind of s.h.i.t, not even for one more week.