Читать книгу Days of the Trap - Johnny Mitchell - Страница 10

The machete fell clean, sl­icing open the brick like a Saudi sword on the head of an infidel. Hector grabbed the rectangle with both hands and opened it neatly in half, holding out the two white chunks like an ice cream sandwich.

Distribution is a fascinating thing, isn’t it? How a product can zig-zag around the world in search of its customers, and the dizzying array of human connections and cooperation necessary for its arrival.

As I stared at this ice cream sandwich, wrapped snuggly in cellophane with the unmistakable scorpion of the Sinaloa cartel stamped on the front, I thought about how many miles it had to travel to be here — by land, air, and sea — hidden in the hull of a ship, stored in boxes behind the pilot’s seat of a single-engine Cessna, and buried deep inside the panels of an eighteen-wheeler, all while being pursued by the greatest law enforcement apparatus the world has ever known. Now, it was up to me to ensure safe transport to its final destination — the hungry noses of a thousand invisible consumers — thus completing the arduous lifecycle of the Fish.

“Ju see…” he said, pointing to the rigid grooves of the kilo, a yellowish hue tinting the snow-white flakes. “Puro Fishscale.”

After a breathless pause, Brendan looked at me giddily, like a dog about to get a treat.

“Alright, Papi!” he yelled, giving Hector a high five. From the next room, a baby started whimpering.

“Cállate, jüey,” Hector held a finger to his lips, but Brendan could care less.

“You see?” Brendan said, punching me playfully in the arm. “Didn’t I tell you this guy was legit!?”

“Yeah man. Don’t wake up the baby.”

“Ju wan’ it straight up? Or ju wan’ that I cut it?” Hector asked. “For puro , is twelve hundred an ounce, pero if you wan’ me to cut it down, is eight hundred.”

We ran some quick numbers and settled on the product with a little cut. Even at eighty percent pure, nothing else in Eugene would come close. Selling $70 grams, we could double up on each ounce. We’d make more on this one run than I could make in two months selling weed.

After getting stuck by the masked men in our living room, CJ and I went into hiding. We’d been taken for over half our net worth and had therefore been demoted back to small-time shitheads. We asked Kenny and Walt for some consignment, but by that time they’d already sold out of their harvest. With summer fast approaching and the overall supply in Southern Oregon dwindling, the wholesale price of the pound was going up and up.

CJ decided it was a good time to take a vacation, fleeing to Spain to study for a semester. I took quarter in a tiny two-bedroom house on the outskirts of campus, directly next door to our mutual friend Brendan Spader. With cash reserves low, I needed to restructure the business or risk going broke by the time CJ returned from Spain.

Brendan and I settled into the living room couch and let the chef get to work. It was midnight, and we’d just completed the fifteen-hour trek south from Eugene to Los Angeles. I assumed he was full of shit, Brendan and his whole rap about an ese he knew who was getting kilos delivered from the border straight to his door. But when we arrived at the house in East LA and found it guarded by two massive cholos with Uzis tucked into their Dickies, I knew then we were on to something.

A woman, presumably Hector’s mujer, appeared from the back room carrying the sniffling baby.

“Buenas ,” she greeted, then plopped the baby down in its crib next to the couch. “¿ La puedas guardar ?”

“Sí ,” I answered.

A weird fucking day this was shaping up to be.

Moments later, the woman returned from the kitchen carrying two cold Pacíficos . In the other hand, she held a large butcher knife with four evenly sliced helpings of Fish resting on the blade. We each took turns treating our nostrils, sniffing and gulping and gasping. It was pure Fish alright, fresh from the sea — untouched since its conception in a Colombian jungle.

She left a baggie of powder for us to enjoy, then assumed her position as Hector’s sous-chef in the kitchen. They had the recipe down like it was mother’s apple pie: eighteen ounces of pure cocaine were weighed out on a digital scale, then four were subtracted. The fourteen ounces of pure were scrambled with eight ounces of various cutting agents — of what I’m not exactly sure — this is what makes the recipe a secret. Generally, the Fish is known to be diluted with caffeine pills and other GNC products like creatine and boric acid. During the drought season when inventory is scarce, this cut is increased, making the Fish stretch like Silly Putty. But not today. Hector and his lovely assistant were causing a snowstorm in the middle of June.

The Fish had me gone alright. My ticker was thumping fiercely, and my head felt like it was floating away on a hot-air balloon. I looked over at Brendan, his beak was feasting on the white earthworms like a seagull on the beach at low tide. He looked back at me, beaming, his glassy green eyes dancing wildly with excitement.

“We’re gonna take over the town with this shit, Johnny Boy,” he said, rubbing the powdered sugar into his gums. “Just watch — next time we come down here, we’re gonna cop a whole fucking kilo!”

I like Brendan, known him since freshman year when we were both wannabes running around campus selling reefer sacks. He’s a San Diego surfer bro with a nasty hustle — plus, he’s connected — better suppliers and bigger clientele than me or CJ. Trouble with Brendan is, he’s a cowboy, a livewire — moving at Lamborghini speed with the headlights off. Also, he ain’t family, and in the Trap, the most dangerous thing a man can do is go into business with someone who ain’t family.

Still, as I stood on my stoop that day, listening while he pitched me his new hustle, I realized it was the last hope me and CJ had for saving our floundering enterprise.

“Don’t be a putz, Johnny!” he chuckled, passing me the trippy-stick. A garrulous fuck, he could talk a cat down from a fish wagon. “You were moving all that weed, and for what? A couple grand a month? Chicken feed compared to what I’m talking about.”

“That chicken feed was keeping us full,” I said, coughing on the stick. “The Fish is a different animal. It’s too risky.”

“Too risky? What do you call getting robbed at gunpoint? With coke, you can move a quarter of the quantity for double the profit. We’ll never even have to wholesale, just move it rock for rock.”

He was right, retailing Fish was more lucrative than wholesaling weed, and if we sold only to users, we’d reduce the risk of another invasion by bandits or the cops.

“Why’d you come to me?” I asked. “There’s plenty of guys out there with money who’d go half with you.”

“It’s not just about the money, it’s about balls. This business takes big fucking balls. Most people in this town either don’t have ’em or won’t use ’em. But me and you do, and that’s why we’re gonna win.”

He was slick alright, getting me tree-top high while he gassed my ego like a Chevron attendant. I hit the stick one more time, staring off into the distance.

“Let me talk to CJ,” I said, though I already knew his answer.

“Yeah, you talk to CJ, then call me tomorrow. We go to LA next week to meet the connect.”

He grinned at me, the way a car salesman does when he knows he’s roped a sucker.

“There’s easy money to be made, Johnny. You’d be stupid to pass it up.”

And there it was: hook, line, and sinker — the number one immutable commandment of the Trap.

The baby whimpered again. I adjusted its pacifier and tickled its little foot with my finger. It was a girl I assumed, from the earrings and the pink jumper. She studied me curiously between rich, dark-brown eyes, like an alien who appeared from thin air taking in the strange creatures of her new planet. I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. Baby smell is so wonderful, so pure — like stepping into a brand-new car for the first time. Tragic how quickly this new smell dissipates as the stench of life seeps its way under the skin.

Brendan shoved more candy under my nose — sniff, sniff. My jaw was glued-shut and paranoia on code red. I’ll take another one, if you don’t mind. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was making you want more and more without knowing why.

Baby girl kept on staring at me, making my palms sweat. What did she have on me? Hopefully she can keep a secret.

It was almost three in the morning by the time the cake was done baking. After running it through a strainer, Chef Hector stuck the white square into the microwave. Ten minutes to let it air out, and then he weighed the finished product — just over twenty-two ounces. Wrapping it tightly in plastic, Hector handed the block to Brendan, who passed him a stack of bills. A quick check, $14,500 — all accounted for.

As we turned to leave, I looked back one last time at the baby girl. She was still staring at me, unblinking — a witness to the evil of man before she was even able to speak.

We shook hands with Hector.

“See you next month,” I said.

A week later, we were back in his living room.