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but it s defective. Tell him I want to talk to him now.
Defective? What do ?
I ll tell him. I m only going to explain it once.
Hold on.
Snake waited what seemed like a long time before the guy came back on the
line. He is not here right now, but he is on his way in. He says to give me
your number and wait there. He will call you back as soon as he arrives.
Snake read off the number on the phone and hung up; then he sat back and
waited. He calmed himself. No snarling during his next conversation. He didn t
like Carlos Salinas, didn t trust him, and wouldn t be working with him if he
thought he had a choice, but you didn t snarl at a guy who had his fingers in
most of the drug trade east of the Mississippi.
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21
It stank in here. Carlos Salinas could barely breathe in the thick, wet,
sulfurous air. And the glare from the overhead bank of 600-watt sodium lamps
spiked his eyes through his sunglasses.
And yet, Carlos Salinas was impressed. Deeply impressed.
He d come to this tiny apartment in Southeast D.C. to inspect a business
opportunity. Instead he d found& a miracle.
Behold my own dwarf hybrid, said their host, a thin, bearded, middle-aged
ex-hippie who wore a cowboy hat and referred to himself only as Jeff. Carlos
knew he was really Henry Walters, age 45, who lived off Dupont Circle and had
been an independent drug dealer strictly hallucinogens for most of his adult
life. I call it Lizard King Indica Hybrid. Look at those buds, will you? I
cloned out these babies barely six weeks ago and you could start your harvest
right now.
Carlos stared at the sea of green Jeff s term and marveled. The entire
front room had been taken over by eighteen-inch plants with serrated leaves
and hairy tops calyxes, Jeff called them waving back and forth in the gentle
breeze from a trio of oscillating fans. They clustered in children s plastic
swimming pools that in turn sat on metal platforms. Shades, duct tape, and
heavy drapes sealed the windows. Rubber tubing snaked from plant to plant,
supplying water and fertilizer; heaters warmed their roots from below while
the sodium lamps above bathed them in artificial sunlight twelve hours a day.
A large metal tank kept the air rich in carbon dioxide for maximal growth.
And the beauty part of the operation, Jeff said, is it s all computerized.
The whole room is rigged with sensors that monitor light, temperature,
humidity, CO2, and water levels. The computer s modem allows me to keep tabs
on every one of my seas of green from a phone booth, and a smart interface
lets me make adjustments over the wire. I ve rigged the place with motion
detectors so I know if someone s broken in. And last, all my computers are
infected with Deicide, a virus that wipes out the hard drive should the wrong
dude try to access it.
You appear to have thought of everything, Carlos said.
Inside his suit he was bathed in sweat. A man of his weight should not
frequent jungles, even indoors. Yet despite his discomfort, he was almost
mesmerized by the gentle swaying of the leaves and calyxes. They seemed
almost& happy. Where had plants ever been treated so well?
A wave of nostalgia engulfed him for an instant. His first brush with the
drug trade had involved marijuana. Many moonless nights on the beach west of
Cartagena, transferring bale after bale of Colombian Red from trucks to
trawlers bound for the Gulf Coast of the United States. The square groupers,
as they were known, were the most profitable catch for those crews in the
early seventies when America s domestic marijuana was so poor.
Smuggling& it was in his blood. After all, he was a paisa. His ancestors had
left the Basque regions of Spain in the 1600s and settled in the Andes, in
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Antioquia Province around what would later become the city of Medellin. When
Spain fixed the price of gold in Colombia, his forebears smuggled it out to
Jamaica where they got the higher market price. Down the centuries it became
an Antioquian tradition: Sneak out coffee, emeralds, and quinine; smuggle
electronics, appliances, and perfumes back in past the rapacious import
duties.
True to another paisa tradition, his father had kicked him out at age
sixteen, telling him: If you succeed, send money; if you fail, don t come
back.
He had succeeded.
Yeah, the technology s great, Jeff was saying, drawing Carlos back to the
present, but it s the plants that are truly awesome four pounds of top-grade
sensemilla per hundred. This ain t no Maui Zowie, you know what I mean? The
stuff I started smoking in the sixties was maybe one percent THE. Lizard King
is connoisseur stuff, man tests opt to fourteen percent. An absolutely
bodacious high. Brings down a minimum of five hundred bucks an ounce.
How many plants in this room? Carlos said.
Two hundred.
Carlos glanced at Alien Gold, his lean and lupine chief bean counter.
Alien?
Gold stood near the door, his arms folded across the front of his Armani
suit, the sodium lights reflecting off his blond hair and the wire rims of his
glasses. That s sixty-four thousand per crop, he said without hesitation.
At roughly eight crops a year, figure half a mill per room per year.
Carlos looked at Jeff. That is a good living. Why do you need me?
I want to expand, Jeff said. Look. Grass is a thirty
something-billion-dollar industry. I can t produce it fast enough to keep my
customers happy. I m ready to move up to warehouses. He extended his arms
over his tiny jungle as if blessing it. Imagine it, man. A twenty
thousand-square-foot sea of green. Cosmic!
You are not afraid of President Winston legalizing your crop?
Never happen. This is a growth industry, and I need a banker somebody with
connections& you know, for security and such. You re that guy. Gold s cell
phone beeped before Carlos could reply.
He saw a troubled look steal over the young MBA s features as he muttered
monosyllables into the receiver. Everything is all right? he said as Gold
turned toward him.
It s Llosa, he said. He just got a call from your new contractor saying
something about the package being defective. He insists on speaking to you
right away.
Defective? Carlos felt a sudden tightness in his chest. Had something gone
wrong? Had the child been hurt? He prayed not.
Have Llosa tell the contractor to give a number and wait. I ll call him from
my office.
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As Gold passed on the instructions, Carlos turned toward the door. We must
go, he said.
That s it? Jeff said. I took a risk bringing you here, you know.
We will be contacting you.
I d like an answer soon, Jeff said. After all, I ain t getting any
younger.
You must be patient, Carlos said, giving the man s shoulder a gentle
squeeze. Otherwise you could be worried about getting older, eh?
Jeff blanched behind his beard. Hey, I didn t mean any
You will be contacted, Carlos said, smiling grimly as he walked out into
the cooler, fresher air of the dirty hallway. He didn t like to be rushed.
22
Any details from our friend that you didn t mention? he said to Gold when
they were seated in his Lexus and his driver was gliding them back to
Georgetown.
Gold shook his head. No. Pretty damn enigmatic. His voice took on a whiny
tone. Just like the rest of this kidnapping thing. If you d let me in on the
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