Almost Criminal: A Crime In Cascadia Mystery Part 6

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 quant.i.ty. 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 pickup 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 pa.s.senger side and pointed to the driver's door while he slid to the pa.s.senger 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 a.s.sumed 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 pa.s.sage, 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 c.r.a.pped 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 Mitch.e.l.l, 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 d.a.m.ned impressive. It was one of the enhanced types with the high-security holograms and barcodes that meant you could cross the border without a pa.s.sport. And it was convincingly scuffed and wallet-warped like I'd had it for years.

"Keys," he said, with undisguised disdain, indicating the ring dangling from the ignition, and pointed at the glove box, saying, "Papers." As he opened the pa.s.senger door he looked me in the eye. "Don't be stupid, okay?"

I started to ask him what part of Russia he came from, just to stall him, to get him talking so I could ask for tips about the car, about driving, anything to slow his departure. Maybe if I offer to give him a lift somewhere, I thought, he'll do the driving and I'll be able to watch him at the controls. But he got out, closed the door, and stretched in the sun.

Faced with the reality of driving this thing, I took a slow breath and forced myself to calm down. I checked the controls for anything familiar, and found the speedometer, the gas, and brake pedals, Drive and Park. It's a piece of s.h.i.t Chevy, I told myself, look at the idiots on the road. If they can drive, I can drive.

There was a rap on the window and I jumped, heart thumping. Ivan again. I hunted for the window b.u.t.ton and found a hand crank.

"Watch for him, he will drive past. You follow where he goes." Ivan said, and walked away.

Back to the dashboard and pedals. If I was going to drive this, I figured I'd better get used to a few things while I was waiting for Randle.

The engine turned over at the first try. The radio was basic, but it worked. I looked everywhere for wiper controls - a basic safety device-but could find nothing that resembled the big, obvious k.n.o.b on the Volvo. Could I ask Randle to point it out for me, I wondered, without looking like a complete fool? The sky was mixed clouds and sun, so I'd be all right as long as it held.

I put the car in Drive and felt the entire vehicle shudder as I lifted one foot off the brake pedal. A sharp, nasal beep from the Speedster made me mash on the brake, and the car made a sudden screech, pitching and rocking as it settled. Randle rolled past with his convertible top up - I caught a glimpse of grey ponytail and a fingertip wave - and I made another a tire-squeal as the car lurched forward, following the yellow convertible up from the mill to the main street. I barely weaved at all, but it was a good thing there wasn't much traffic in Wallace. He turned south on Powerline Road - the old highway, locals call it. It used to be the truck route to the States before they opened a larger crossing a few miles west. It goes right past the coffee shop.

At first, all I could do was hold my position between the shoulder and the yellow stripe, and follow close enough to prevent another car getting between us, while leaving sufficient room so I wouldn't rear-end him. Hitting the boss's car seemed a bad idea, and far too likely.

Somewhere along the way we must have pa.s.sed Human Beans, but I didn't notice until we were past the east-west turnoff, which, if you don't turn east or west, takes you south to the old border crossing. It's still in operation for anyone who wants to avoid the main highway's lineups.

By the time I realized where he was leading, I'd pa.s.sed the last of the farms and warehouses and was trapped in the entrance lane to the United States of America. Randle was in front of me, and a flatbed truck loaded with cedar was inches behind my back b.u.mper. I had no time to reflect on what he was doing there or how I'd get across. My new Jackson Mitch.e.l.l licence lay on the pa.s.senger seat.

I don't remember much about the moment when I left Canada and entered the U.S. I nudged forward as the line advanced, trying not to crunch into Randle's back b.u.mper, and when the border light turned green, I was working so hard at not ploughing into the sign or the guardrail that I almost forgot to stop. Then I had to twist and reach out the window as far as I could, while keeping my foot on the brake, to hand the fake driver's license across the gaping s.p.a.ce I'd left between the car and the booth. The border guard zipped the licence through a little device, and I don't remember what she said, but I mumbled something about shopping at Bellis Fair Mall - which is where half the southbound Canadians that stop at the coffee shop are headed - and she wished me a nice day and waved me through.

That was that. I was in the United States.

I followed Randle down a series of two-lane farm roads lined with cornfields and grazing cattle. The jitters gradually left and I began to get a feel for steering, keeping the car steady on the road, where to put the wheels when I went into a curve, how to lighten my grip on the steering wheel and let the car straighten itself out. It felt good. It felt great.

I yelled f.u.c.k, just to blow off the pent-up tension, Bellis Fair!

What did Randle want to do in the States anyway? There had to be a job.

The convertible's brake lights went on and he pulled up to a boarded-over roadside corn stand, angling the Speedster precisely into a marked parking s.p.a.ce. I wasn't nearly as accurate in my parking, but I stopped under control.

It was a good time to take a break. Clouds were rolling in and the air felt like rain, and maybe Randle could show me where the wiper switch was. My knuckles were sore from gripping the wheel, and a tingling pain rose up my calves. I realized I'd been wound up pretty tight, although I was light and loose now.

Randle bounded out of the car, all blue eyes and brilliant white teeth.

"Are you cool under pressure or what? I knew that baby-face and freckles would get you through. Hah!"

He opened his arms like he was going to hug me, but it turned into a gesture that I should toss him my keys.

"I'd have driven you, no problem, but we can't be seen together. Cameras everywhere. You understand."

He was right. The American government now had a record of the licence scan, and a video of me crossing the border as Jackson Mitch.e.l.l. That made me pause, but it was too late now.

He bounced on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet. "Today you're going to have fun. You get to deliver to a movie star." He leaned down and opened the Cavalier's trunk. "You know Timejacking? Rory Doyle?"

"Heard of it." I wanted to be nice, but I've never been a good liar and I hoped it didn't show in my face. Truth was, the locally made television show was beyond awful. It was just embarra.s.sing. Doyle, the so-called star, played a time-travelling detective who mugged his way through terrible dialogue, lame plotting and ridiculous time paradoxes. Back when I'd been a pathetically lonely fifteen-year-old, drinking my way through my first and only semester at university, Timejacking was the key to one of my few social skills. Nearly anyone would join me to mock the show for a few minutes at least, and too many would join me in a Timejacking drinking game: when someone spotted the Coast Mountains or a Vancouver landmark, when the show was supposed to be in New York or London or wherever, we'd knock back a shooter. Spotting a power line in the background or a jet's vapour trail in the sky, when the time was supposed to be the 1800s or earlier, meant another shooter.

Randle bent forward and tugged on the Chevy's skinny little spare tire, reaching an index finger underneath. A latch clicked and he pulled up, lifting the tire and a section of trunk floor with it. There was a storage compartment in there.

"Doyle's a connoisseur," he said. "The man knows his cannabis. We met long ago, when he was shooting a mini-series in Vancouver. For this episode, they were originally supposed to be shooting in Vancouver, but the Timejacking scouts found some little street outside of Lynden, built in the sixties and completely unchanged. Just what they were looking for."

"There's s.h.i.t in the trunk?" I couldn't believe it, I'd just carried drugs into the U.S. From the hiding place under the spare tire, he lifted a rectangular container wrapped in milky-looking vinyl. The hairs p.r.i.c.kled above my forehead. He'd made me his mule.

I'd been gullible, stupid - everything I scorned. I turned and walked away - I couldn't let him see my fear, but I was in the States, where drug crimes mean serious jail time.

He put the package down and came after me, taking my arm in his hand.

He spoke gently. "Chill, man, it's all right, it's done now. I couldn't tell you, you understand that? They'd have seen it in your face. But they didn't. You were so cool, I've never seen anyone do it better. And there was nothing to worry about, it was under control the whole time. In fact, I was overcautious. I went first-right in front of you, right? I was the decoy."

I didn't understand. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to hit him in his grinning face. He walked me back to the car.

"In case they had the sniffer dogs. The Speedster's ripe with resins, they'd go berserk." He took the vinyl-wrapped pack in one hand and reached into a pocket for an elegant mother-of-pearl pocketknife. "Of course, it's residual aromas only, there's nothing in my car, not a flake of weed, not a seed, but they'd be so distracted that you'd zip on through. A few minutes later they'd have let me through too. After the usual grilling, of course."

I didn't know what to believe. But I knew the only way to get home was to drive back again, using the same fake ID.

He flicked out the blade and slipped it under a heat-sealed fold. A glint of silver Mylar shone from underneath.

"But they didn't have the dogs." He sounded almost disappointed, but his mood improved as he peeled layers away to reveal a cardboard carton. From where I stood it looked like it would fit four loaves of bread. If it was packed tight, there was a serious amount of weed in there. Pulling one end open, he examined its contents.

"Even if they stopped you at the border, you had nothing to worry about. This was vacuum sealed and then the exterior was ozone-washed, and the sedan's d.a.m.n near sterilized." He extracted a slim cloth sachet from the package, and placed the rest of it in the Speedster. "Get in, we have a delivery to make."

I couldn't help myself. I wanted to shut down his smug, self-a.s.sured grin.

"You think you run a tight operation? You're getting robbed and you don't even know it."

It worked. He stopped, confused, and jerked a thumb at the Speedster. "Tell me about it while we drive."

"Spill it," he said, when we were on the road again.

"Skip's grow."

"Which one?"

"The first one I visited. Bas.e.m.e.nt of a house - you were there. The Cavalier back there, it was in the garage. I don't know the address, I had the hood on when Skip took me there." I reminded him how it had run out of nutrients. "You swore it wasn't the controller's fault and you were right. It was because there were too many plants on the feed line. I saw right away that the numbers were wrong, but I a.s.sumed you knew, that you had some extras in case a plant died or something. But none of the other grows have any extras. That's the only grow with more plants than the system was intended for. Somebody slipped in a few more.

"Not possible."

"Sure it is." I described the layout, eight plants per bin, two bins on a shelf, and so on. And if you had an eye for patterns, something in that grow was wrong.

"Everything's in groups of eight, except on some shelves there's an extra plant. Just one more here and there. Two little plants where one should go, or one tucked under the overhanging leaves of another. It's a big room, right, with dozens of plants, who's going to notice?"

Except me. I can't help but notice patterns, and if a pattern is broken - like by a row with nine plants where eight were supposed to fit - my eyes are drawn to it. At a thousand dollars return per plant, more or less, I could see why a caretaker might want to stretch the system, but if only half the rows had an extra plant, that would account for six percent more draw on the fertilizer, and the system would compensate automatically and run out of nutrients that much earlier. If the caretaker remembered to top up the reservoir manually, n.o.body would be wiser.

"You're saying Skip's skimming me." It felt good to see his lips thin with anger, to know that he was feeling what it was like to be fooled by someone you trusted. But it wouldn't have been Skip, he wasn't that stupid.

"Skip wouldn't let it run dry right in front of you. The people upstairs are more likely. They could top up the reservoir when no one's there, and they could slip the extra plants out of there before the budders arrive."

He nodded to himself, "Resourceful, those boat people."

We drove in silence. Fat raindrops splatted the windshield and thunked on the cloth top. His euphoria was gone, and so was my anger, and I watched the farmland roll past while he pulled out a rolling paper and flattened it on his leg while holding the wheel with one hand.

"Bullard. What did you think?" He pulled the House of Dreams sachet from his pocket and tipped a line of weed onto the paper, and did a neat little one-handed roll.

What could I say? That I was having trouble with the idea of an old peace-and-love hippie working for a biker gang? "The Devils are in the valley. I've never had a Harley pull into the coffee shop. I don't see any vests. I see bikes on the road, but they could be anybody, just dudes on bikes."

"They like bikes, but when it's time for work they drive a truck like anybody else. The Harleys are for ceremonies, like when they deliver toys to sick kids and make everyone think warm fuzzy thoughts about bikers. Or to make a point. If you see Bullard on a bike it's time to watch out."

He lit the joint and spoke through one side of his mouth. "You saw his one percent tattoo?"

I thought back. "Yeah. What's that?" Bullard at an Occupy protest? No.

"Nothin' to do with tea parties or rich b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, it's older than that. Some politician once proclaimed that ninety-nine percent of motorcyclists are law-abiding citizens. Immediately, every bike gang called themselves the other one percent. They've got one percent badges, tats, the whole thing. Proud to be on the other side of the law."

"You said they're bankers. That you have nothing to do with them except loans and protection and stuff."

He exhaled smoke with a grunt of agreement.

"What about Ivan? He's one of them, but he's working with us."

"He's a prospect, not a member, can't wear the patch yet, that's why he works so hard. He's like an intern, I get him for free. One of these days he'll start his own grows, run his operation, but it'll be under Bullard. s.h.i.tweed for export."

"Not Skip?"

"As if." Randle snorted. "No, Skip's all mine, unfortunately. But you don't need to worry about Skip anymore. You're on your own now. You've made it on to the list.

"The list?"

He laughed and patted me on the leg. I think it was supposed to be a rea.s.suring, fatherly kind of gesture.

"You've got to do something about that face. I can see everything you're thinking. If you're on the list you're protected. Trust me, it's better to be on Bullard's list than off it."

He turned left, then right, and then headed at a crazy speed, driving over the centre stripe on a road that was so narrow it ought to have been one-way. He seemed to know where he was going, and twisted his wrist to check the time.

"And when you're on the list, you're on the payroll." He leaned over and popped the glove-box door, pulling out a Visa card and a card from Esso. "Prepaid cards for your salary and gas money. I don't want you waving cash around, Wallace is a small town and people notice. Be sure to clear the cards out by the end of the month. Spend the money, take cash advances, whatever, just use the money or you'll lose it."

"I get a salary?"

"And the truck. Thirty-five a month. Plus bonuses, depending."

"The truck -" I'd wanted to ask about that, but the money-I could make tuition by the end of the summer, maybe have some left over.

"The truck's ready. You could have had it today, but it's not clean enough to cross the border. But don't go quitting the coffee shop job. I need to know where to find you."

"What if - what if I just want to make a few bucks? You know, get in and get out." This was moving too fast, and I couldn't get the Cavalier's trunk out of my mind. That cavity was cut and welded by a pro. And an enhanced driver's licence wasn't something that the average home grow op could just whip together. Randle and the Devil's Own had connections. In my head I heard a news report: the suspect had ties to organized crime.

He placed his hand on my leg again. It was too intimate, but the car was too small for me to pull away. I popped the window open a crack and leaned into the damp, clean slipstream.

"They're not so bad, the bikers. I know - with the vests and patches, they're like Boy Scouts in drag, or bad-tempered Shriners. But they work for me, not the other way around. And they're secure. The cops don't infiltrate bike gangs. Just getting a patch takes years, and a dirty deed or two."

"He takes half of what you make."

"Half of what he knows about." Randle said through a grey cloud, his gaze fixed on the damp pavement ahead. "The House is growing. I'm selling seeds online, shipping them all around the world. I haven't told the Devils about that side of the business. They've got no idea about my private customers. Rory Doyle's only one of them. And I'm selling in the city, in the dispensaries, the cannabis cafes. They're in somebody's jurisdiction, but not his. I'm telling you, I'm not waiting for Bullard's permission, I'm building my brand. When legalization comes, I'll be ready. And the goons will be out of luck."

It felt like he was showing off to me. Maybe I'd insulted him about the bikers as if I thought he wasn't in charge. Or he was trying to make his business look bigger and better, like it would make up for what he'd done to me at the border. It worked, in a way-I'd had no idea about the size of his business, with his rules and all, and I was flattered that he was letting me in on these secrets. But instead of comforting me, or impressing me, it made me worried. I only wanted to make some quick money and get out. I didn't want to know his secrets. The more I knew, the harder it would be for him to let me go.

Randle slowed as we entered the village, or town or whatever it was. "That's why I need new people, smart people like you, who stay cool and who know to shut up. And it's why we're doing a private delivery."

Randle slowed as we entered a residential area, and the damp hiss of the tires deepened to a rolling splash as the clouds let loose. With another joint pinched in his fingers, Randle pointed through the slanting downpour at a streetlight, on which was taped a dripping cardboard arrow with TJ printed in large black letters. A sign for the film crew.

"This way to the circus."

He followed the crew signs right, then left.

"When I met Rory Doyle, I was doing a face-to-face business. I wasn't as careful as I am now. So he knows my name and my face, and he loves the star treatment, so every time he gets a shipment he likes to see me, pat me on the back, and tell me how wonderful I am. It's a bit much, frankly, but he pays me well."

I got the strong feeling Randle didn't mind.

I had to open the window all the way-something in the dope turned my stomach. Or maybe it was the car's rough ride along with the smoke.