Almost Criminal: A Crime In Cascadia Mystery Part 7

"The car smells like smoke now. Are you sure about crossing the border back to Canada? Do they have dogs on our side?"

His choked laugh came out as a giggle. "You think they care about taking gra.s.s to Canada?"

Skip had tried to teach me some of the basic varieties of gra.s.s, and I thought I recognized the sweetness. "Is that Purple Kush?"

Randle's eyes lit with amus.e.m.e.nt. "No, this is a Rory Doyle exclusive. Bred for him, outdoor-grown, one hundred percent organic. What do you know about Kush anyway? Kush is heavy and thick, nothing like this. Can you pick up the jasmine? The dark chocolate?"

He seemed to expect a reply, or a comment, but I was breathing through my mouth to fight the oncoming carsick.

"Street names don't mean s.h.i.t, man. Purple Kush, Nuclear Kush, Shiva Kush, all it means is the strain has a Hindu-Kush ancestor somewhere in its history. What weed doesn't? Alaskan Thunderf.u.c.k has Kush in it. The only thing that doesn't is oregano laced with crack. Which is what you're likely to get if you ask for Kush on the corner. Don't get ahead of yourself. Don't play street smart. Young and innocent, that's your game. Stick with it, it works for you."

At last Randle rolled to a stop. It was a residential street, dead-ended at a barricade. Behind the barrier, a couple of docile-looking security guards were sheltered under a gazebo. On one side of the street was a row of suburban bungalows. On the other, a chuckwagon ring of trucks and semi-trailers-the circus-had ripped a soccer field to a thick fudge of mud. A crowd of people and equipment and cranes surrounded a house that glowed summery-white in the lights. I couldn't say whether the street looked like the sixties, but the Mustang on the lawn was a fastback from '65 or '66.

"I'm going to go say hi to the man." Randle said. "Give him a freebie to lighten his mood, and then I'm asking permission to sell this strain to the public. I can't afford to keep it exclusive anymore. And I want to use his name. I'll put ads in High Times, can you see it? 'Rory Doyle's Private Reserve.'"

He zipped up his jacket. "Rory knows me, but his people don't. As far as they're concerned, I'm just another of his old pals who look him up when he's in town. You and I are not connected. While I'm making my social visit, his personal a.s.sistant will come out and find you, and you'll make the handoff."

As he strode to the barricade a wet, hooded woman separated herself from the umbrella-cl.u.s.ter of security guards and waved him away while she poked at a walkie-talkie. Randle met her in the middle of the street, a brilliant smile on his face. Her impatience evaporated and he ducked under her umbrella for shelter. He pointed to the car and she nodded, sharing a laugh about something. Lifting his collar against the rain, he ran back.

"He'll be breaking in ten. Let's get out of their way."

He reversed a half block down the street, and tucked the car behind a huge cube van with a rental company logo on the side. He killed the engine and settled into the seat before tipping a line of weed from the bag in his lap.

"I was a schoolteacher before I got into the business. Had a job, a little house by the lake."

He rolled and lit a joint, then rolled another half dozen while he talked.

"I liked teaching, turning kids on to the grand carnival of life." He turned his head to see that I was listening. "But teachers don't make s.h.i.t, so I had downstairs tenants to help pay the mortgage."

I was feeling more nauseated by the minute and I opened my window wider to thin out the smoke, ignoring the rain that dripped onto my arm.

He learned about growing pot from another teacher, also a war resister.

"I thought he was crazy, getting involved in criminal activity. There was no amnesty back then, so if he was deported he'd be jailed. Anyway, my tenants. They were noisy, they were slobs, and I always had to badger them for the rent. The last straw, one weekend I heard their stereo downstairs, playing Steve Miller, Fly Like an Eagle. Insipid s.h.i.t, but it's their apartment, right? And the alb.u.m repeats. And repeats. After an hour or two of this, I yelled downstairs. No answer, they can't hear me over the music. So I phoned, and I could hear it ringing. There was no one there. Turns out they'd gone camping for the weekend, but I only found that out later. I waited until after midnight, then I thought, 'Fine, fly like a f.u.c.king eagle,' and I went downstairs with my key. They'd changed the lock. That's when I lost it. I grabbed my splitting maul and took the door right out. Put the axe through the stereo and I hauled all their s.h.i.t out of there and heaved it onto the lawn. Every last thing, the sofa, TV, dressers, posters of f.u.c.king unicorns. And then I went back up to the deck and opened a cold beer and sat there in the quiet, watching the sun rise.

"While I waited for my tenants to return, people driving along would stop their cars and take junk from the lawn. I couldn't believe it, they just picked it up, and plunked it in their trunks. I didn't say a thing, just watched and waited with my maul handy. In case the tenants had a different view of things."

He was talking to the windshield now. "But then I thought, what have I done? I have a mortgage to pay. Alimony. Without the monthly rent, that could be my furniture on the lawn in a month or two. So I gave my teacher buddy a call, and he told me how the system works. Introduced me to our buddies the bikers. That was fifteen - no, Jesus, nineteen years ago."

He shook his head. "The first grow cycle made me three times what the a.s.sholes had been paying in rent. And there wasn't a peep from downstairs."

On the set, something had finished. Floodlights switched off, and the surrounding crowd swarmed the set, moving the camera and reflectors and other equipment.

"That's my cue," he said, opening his door. "You're waiting here for Chatri, Doyle's personal a.s.sistant. Give her the package and stay with the car. If some AD or one of the parking drones gives you grief, drive the car around the block, but for anything else, tell them to talk to Chatri."

"I don't know how to shift." I said.

He turtled his shoulders against the downpour. "No mention of what's in the trunk to anyone but Chatri. Understood? I don't want you giving twenty thousand dollars of product to some Teamster."

He waved to the hooded guard and, within moments his smile and fluid grace had won him entry to the set.

I slid behind the wheel and hoped no one would ask me to move. Driving the sedan was one thing, but no way was I touching a manual transmission. What the h.e.l.l am I doing here? I wondered. n.o.body at home even knew what country I was in, and I couldn't call and tell them because, on Randle's orders, I hadn't brought the c.r.a.ppy little prepaid phone he gave me. The cash in my pocket was Canadian, all twenty dollars of it. The credit card had better work if I needed to buy something. And if that wasn't enough to worry about, the driver who was taking me out of here was probably smoking his third or fourth joint by now. Even though I'd tried not to inhale his second-hand smoke, I was sitting in a daze, intently fascinated by the rivulets of rain running down the windshield.

I took some deep breaths to calm my nerves and work the dope out of my system. Outside, beneath a white rain shroud, towers of lights created a midsummer scene. Various flunkies held golf umbrellas over people and equipment. The film crew was shooting again, but without Rory Doyle. They probably didn't need him from this angle.

Like anyone from Vancouver, I'd seen film shoots. Under the camera's gaze, a woman walked toward the front door, then spun and saw the Mustang, which lay tilted in the gra.s.s as if it had careened off the street. A burst of smoke erupted from under the car's hood. Her arms flew up in shock, and she ran down toward the driver. Then she stopped. The director walked over and conferred with her and the actor inside the Mustang, who was probably doubling for Doyle. They waited for the fake smoke to clear, and did it all again. And again.

A knock on the gla.s.s beside my ear woke me with a start. A woman was gesturing for me to open the door. Twenty-something, dark-haired with deep brown skin, she carried a pink umbrella, one of those mini-sized portable ones, and was getting wetter by the second. I let her in.

"I'm Chatri?" she said in a faint British accent. She tsked when I joined her in the pouring rain instead of inviting her into the car, but the goods were in the trunk. When I offered her the box of pot, she looked uncomfortable, and kept glancing back at the security guards. It was fairly heavy, and the cardboard was beginning to soak through. Whoever had packed it hadn't planned on Randle stripping off the plastic wrap for his personal toke.

I took the shreds of vinyl and Mylar and did a loose, sloppy water-resistant wrap, and went to hand it to her. But she gave me a sweet, pleading look, standing there in mud-spattered pumps and black tights, rain streaming off her tiny umbrella, a two-way radio hanging around her neck. I could envision her tumbling in the muddy field, spilling weed everywhere, losing Randle a fortune and bringing a lot of attention to what I'd just carried over the border, so I told her not to worry, and tucked it under one arm. She gave me a relieved, grateful smile, put her arm in mine and pulled me in close to share the umbrella's protection. It was so worth it.

She led me past the guards and through the circle of trucks, to a mobile home with a sheet of paper printed with Doyle taped to the door. There was a limo parked beside it, where she instructed me to deposit the dope, and she ushered me inside the mobile home and out of the rain.

"Thank you for lugging that in for me. It's frightful out there. Can't believe that the weather girl promised sunshine." She fluffed her rain-flattened hair and filled two Styrofoam cups from a thermos-pump, handing me one.

The sounds of friendly banter drifted in from the front of the trailer. I heard the distinctive Rory Doyle rumble and Randle's easy laugh. The stink of that special reserve - I still didn't catch any jasmine or dark chocolate in it - blended with wet wool and mud.

In an undertone, she said, "Funny business you're in."

"It's just for the summer." It was tea, not coffee, and was lovely, smooth and warm. My head cleared immediately.

"School's out, then."

"I suppose it is, yeah." I said.

She tilted her head, with a quizzical expression, and I realized. Like everyone else, she thought I was fourteen. So much for making an impression.

Her radio chirped and she banged on the door. "Ten minutes!"

I drained my cup. "Thanks. I have to get back. Do you have a phone I can use?"

I could at least text Bree and give her a heads-up that I might not be there to make supper.

She glanced at the door. "Not s'posed to, but if it's short."

She pulled a flip phone from a skirt pocket and thumbed it open, then palmed it with a click when a heavy hand shoved open the door behind her. The familiar face of Rory Doyle appeared, older and heavier than I remembered.

He clumped past, wisps of smoke clinging to his sweater, and snapped, "Chatri!"

"Right behind you." She followed in his wake, tucking the phone in her skirt, grabbing the soggy umbrella and calling after him to keep his hair dry as he opened the trailer door to the downpour. I was about to follow when Randle elbowed me aside and hurried out without a backward glance. He leaped to the wet gra.s.s with a squish.

"Doyle," he called, "Madison's at ten?"

I couldn't hear the actor's reply.

A river of Gore-Tex-clad people flowed around Doyle's trailer, from tents and trucks toward the hyper-daylight of the set. I waited before climbing to the ground, to allow Randle time to move ahead and keep some separation between us. On the sodden turf, I was disoriented for a moment, surrounded by people all headed in the same direction, then I spotted the grey ponytail moving against the current and away from the set. He moved easily once he was through the security barrier.

I took a different route out, a more indirect path, in case Chatri might think that Randle and I were connected. I cut sideways through the flow and exited past another cl.u.s.ter of guards, keeping a sidelong view of Randle, who was halfway down the block by now. I picked up speed somewhat as I left the set behind, but I kept my pace casual. No need to attract attention.

I was no more than fifty yards from the Speedster when its engine started up. I lifted an arm in a half-wave and watched as it pulled a U-turn and was gone, its distinctive raspy tone muted by the rain, fading with the distance.

I waited outside the set for a half hour or more, disbelieving, feeling angry and stupid as grips and extras gawked at me standing there, a wet rat in a monsoon. Maybe they thought I was some desperate fan who'd do anything for a glance of Rory Doyle. I kicked a traffic cone across the street and took off.

A block away from the set I found a perfect spot, shaded by a tall hedge and a row of trees, where Randle could have waited if he'd wanted to, where I could have easily found him and offered the requisite apologies. I could almost hear Randle's lecture: next time wait in the car like you're told, don't ever be seen in the same room with me. Sorry, I'd say, lesson learned, point taken, I was way too eager to help out a babe with a s.e.xy accent, it was unprofessional and now I felt embarra.s.sed. I'd admit it. It was true.

But there was no yellow convertible waiting, not there, and not anywhere else on my long march through the rain as I retraced the breadcrumb path of rain-soaked TJ signs. Once I made it to a road wide enough to have a yellow stripe down the middle, I made a guess, left or right. I still hoped to find a town centre with an imitation Porsche in a parking lot, and Randle in a nearby restaurant or bar, p.i.s.sed off, but waiting and ready to take me back to the corn stand and the car I'd left behind.

As I walked and farmhouses became mud-and-gra.s.s undeveloped fields, then blocks of tightly packed subdivisions, it sank in that I was on my own. I'd been fired. Sacked. I was angry - with him, for being an a.s.shole and just dumping me - and with myself, for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up. He'd trusted me. Each week he'd given me more responsibility, and more money, and it was all leading up to this. He brought me on a quiet job, covert almost, for a famous and wealthy customer. His instructions couldn't have been simpler: give her the package, stay with the car. I repeated the words as I slumped along, feeling lower with each repet.i.tion.

An hour or more later, I was in a Super Submarine in Lynden, Washington, dripping rain and mud all over the vinyl seat. The sub tasted good, and Randle's credit card worked like a charm.

Task number one: get across the border. I asked the girl behind the counter, but she thought Vancouver was near Portland. No, I was looking for Vancouver, Canada. The city of three million that you could drive to in half an hour from here. Trying to be helpful, she pulled out a paper placemat with a cartoon-style tourist map of the Lynden region.

According to the placemat, the U.S.Canada border was a couple of miles north, and the nearest crossing was at Sumas, maybe a dozen miles away. I could call a cab to get me there and simply walk across, then get a Canadian cab from the other side. But had they recorded Jackson Mitch.e.l.l crossing the border? Would they want to know where my car was? I couldn't cross as Tate MacLane because I didn't have an ID that border guards would accept. They'd probably have to call my mother. That would be something to see.

I took my chances on a longer, more anonymous route. I used Randle's credit card for a $68 taxi to Bellingham, and took a Greyhound bus from Bellingham to Vancouver. As one of a couple dozen bus pa.s.sengers, the customs people didn't give me or my bogus driver's licence a second look. I was in downtown Vancouver before five.

The ride - once I was past the border - had calmed me down. I was out of the weed business. I was a n.o.body again. When people looked at me they saw what I was - a kid, kind of short and pretty harmless. I could smile to myself about what they didn't know.

When I walked out of the bus terminal, I didn't scan the ceiling first, looking for the telltale security-camera gla.s.s globes. I didn't give a heads-up look for police or security guards. There was no need.

The bus to Wallace didn't leave until eight, so I had a few hours on my hands. I wandered the neighbourhood, looking in shop windows, drifting up Main Street. I realized I was only a dozen blocks from the old house. I don't think I'd had any particular purpose in wandering up there - I'm not sentimental about places or things - but I was nearly there. I'd lived in that house for as long as I could remember, and then we'd left in a panic after a week's rushed packing. I figured, why not walk down the street and really say goodbye. See how it feels.

It felt awful. The house was dark and empty - no one's home anymore. It was being gutted. The yard was gone, half dug out and ringed with orange safety fence. Tarpaper flapped, and where new, larger windows would be were now gaping holes. My old bedroom window was a square of plywood. This is what you can do when you've got money. I wished I hadn't come.

I sneaked around back for a peek in the kitchen, where I'd taught myself to cook food that Beth could keep down and that Bree wouldn't leave on the plate. I was certain I'd see stainless steel and granite going in where the painted plywood cabinets used to be. Beth used to get all political when the working-cla.s.s houses were torn down or renovated, which I thought was weird, coming from someone who sold paintings to millionaires and corporations. The instant my foot touched the back stairs, spotlights clicked and a thin siren wailed. Motion detectors. I backed off, but not quickly enough for old Mrs. Stephanados, who still lived across the lane and was still a nosy pain in the a.s.s. Her porch door opened.

"I call the police!"

I waved to her, since I'd never be heard above the siren, but she scurried inside and came back waving the cordless phone like a weapon. I'd have thought she'd know my face, but things must look different when the place is lit like a prison yard.

I backed to the laneway between our place and Mrs. Stephanados's, where a Dumpster was filled with what used to be our kitchen cabinets and walls. This would be my memory of the old place: an overflowing bin of trash.

People with money. I hiked over to a bank and cashed out the credit card before Randle had a chance to empty the account on me. Call it severance pay. On the way to the bus depot I picked up a decent pair of jeans, and the first really nice skate shoes I'd ever owned. I also found a decent gift for Rachel's grad: a nice charcoal-grey shawl with tiny Czech crystals woven through. The salesgirl convinced me it would go with whatever she chose to wear.

The cab driver robbed me, $75 for a half hour's ride from the bus depot. By the time I got home Beth and Bree were asleep. They didn't seem to have noticed I'd been gone.

Chapter 9.

"So this is the dopemobile." Rachel giggled, nibbling a chipped black fingernail. "It's pretty rancid-looking."

"Fits right into the neighbourhood."

The pickup was where Skip had said it would be, on the shoulder of a logging road that paralleled the river and the tracks, caked with red-brown dust from the rigs and trains that rumbled by. Last time I'd been in it was the Grampa Rambo run. It was deep, dirty green with tinted windows, with a tall, bulbous cargo cap, in that nauseating yellow colour that urine has when you've stuffed yourself with vitamins after a night of puking booze out of your system. A Mitsubishi Mighty Max, according to a bright orange decal, and it stank of ripe weed.

I was on some kind of probation. Not that anyone had said so, but it was obvious that I'd been given another chance, and that there wouldn't be many more. For more than a week I'd waited, pulling coffees and watching the window and wondering whether it was really over. Was he just going to leave me alone, with what I knew? Apart from three or four names, I knew a lot of addresses, and faces, and all about Bullard and the Devil's Own. Did Randle remember bragging about his secret side businesses, or had he been too stoned? And was weed like booze, where you forget what you said when you were wasted?

At the end of the week, I was walking home from Human Beans - Randle still had my skate deck - when Skip's white van rolled up beside me. He told me when and where to pick up the truck for my day's work. "It's yours," he said. "It's protected, just like you, as long as you stay in Bullard's territory. The cops know the truck too, some of them, and they won't stop you unless you drive like a dipstick."

I'd brought Rachel along because I remembered the truck had a manual shift. It was a calculated risk - I was definitely not supposed to let a civilian in on what I was doing - but the alternative was to go grinding gears all over the valley, and maybe breaking the transmission or getting into an accident. Not recommended in a truck filled with weed.

I circled the pickup, running a finger through its coating of dust. A faded sticker on the tailgate was from Orick Ford of Redwood County, Giant Trees and Giant Deals. The driver's door had a foot-shaped dent, and one fender drooped.

I checked, again, with Rachel, "You're good with this? Before we go any further."

She laughed. "What, the bud business? My uncle Ralph grows weed on his share of the family farm. My dad acts like Ralph's the family shame, but even he pitches in to harvest the crop. We used to have a big corn spread, he and my dad got half each. Dad said it wasn't big enough for profit, so he leased his half and moved into town. Uncle Ralph found a way to make it pay. It looks like a cornfield from the road, but there are rows and rows of weed. You got keys for this thing?"

I reached under a front fender and found them on a tire, as expected, and tossed them over.

"At home we don't talk about Uncle Ralph's money, or his winters in Baja, not when Dad's around. Whoa, that's funky," she said as the driver's door sagged into her hand. She reached over to open my door.

"You can drive this thing?" I asked as I slid into the pa.s.senger side.

"I was driving a tractor when I was ten."

Her competence never failed to impress. She twisted to find the seatbelt in the cramped cab, and as she leaned over to slip a hand into the vinyl bench, a soft nipple brushed my arm. I twitched at the touch, and she busied herself with the tangled seatbelt while the tips of her ears turned red.

As she adjusted the seat and mirrors, she adopted a businesslike tone. "Your friends couldn't just leave the truck in front of the coffee shop?" she asked. "Not that I mind a five-mile walk on a hot day."

"Not a chance. You can smell the load a mile away, and anyone who saw me get in would make the connection. Just about anywhere in Wallace is too public. A shopping mall parking lot, a gas station, they've all got cameras. Believe me, I've had the lectures."

"You never learned to drive?" She steered the pickup onto the road. "Everybody wants to drive."

"Not Beth's Volvo. No one wants to drive that." I didn't even like the idea that she drove it. "You have to hold the ignition bracket with one hand and turn the key with the other. And remember to park on a hill in case the battery dies."

"I was in for my test the day I turned sixteen," she said. "Pa.s.sed it first try."

"What you think of this?" I reached into my wallet and handed her the fake driver's licence.

She glanced at it as the truck came out of a curve, and frowned. "Jackson Mitch.e.l.l?"

I told her how it had appeared, unearned and unrequested.

"Nice people you work for." She made a slow blink of exaggerated surprise. "Well then, your first lesson is to watch my feet while I shift."

I was not a natural. The truck was small, but in the wing mirrors it looked like a semi trailer stretched out behind me. I had trouble with its sluggish steering, and a harder time with the clutch. Reaching the pedals was hard, and I either stalled the engine or hit the gas too hard, spinning the rear wheels in a drag-race shudder that nearly slewed the tail into the ditch and spun dirt and rocks across the road as I whipped the wheel back and forth. Rachel was patient, and I got better, but not much, and the only way to do the day's work was for her to drive. I hoped the tinted gla.s.s would hide her.

For Sale signs lined the entrance to the three-storey Tudor-style apartment building on the northern outskirts of Soowahlie. I guided Rachel to the parking entrance around the side, then down to the bas.e.m.e.nt garage. The security camera was conveniently shattered.