Baked Read online

  This was the big time. Although there were plenty of dedicated professional cannabis growers in Los Angeles, only a few branched out and tried to create hybrids, and those that did stuck to tried and true combinations, spinning out variations of Santa Cruz Kush. All the others had become home-grown skunk weed supermarkets, specializing in a kind of standardized hydroponic product that was solid, but nothing special. The gangs that had moved into weed sales were more like Wal-Mart or Costco—what they offered was cheap and plentiful, but it wasn’t the highest quality and some of it was outright crap.

  Miro had built a clientele of smart, well-to-do people who appreciated the finer things in life. He could claim professional athletes, rappers, record producers, studio executives, movie stars, and a whole cast and crew list of directors, editors, and screenwriters as fans of his cannabis. They were the same people who paid top dollar for artisanal cheeses, heir-loom vegetables, single-malt scotch, Cuban cigars, and organic wines. They were well-heeled hipsters who wanted to know that they weren’t just smoking weed, but were enjoying a rarified, singular experience. Humboldt County Sensi might be good enough for most people, but Miro’s fans considered themselves cannasseurs, pot snobs, ganjaficionados. And because of California’s humane and liberal laws, all they had to do was claim a medical condition—general anxiety or restless leg syndrome—flash their prescription cards at the door of one of the cannabis clubs that carried his brands, and they could purchase his delicious, exotic cannabis legally.

  But there was one glitch in his plan. Miro needed a coffeeshop to sponsor him. He couldn’t just sashay up to the judges and tell them to check out his weed. He needed someone to represent his cannabis, and he needed them by midnight tonight.

  It wasn’t as easy as it sounds. The well-established coffee-shops had affiliated seed merchants like DNA Genetics, Sensi Seeds, Barney’s, and Greenhouse Seeds, whose booths were piled with photos, info, and samples of their world-famous Cup-winning hybrids with names like Big Buddha Cheese, Hawaiian Snow, Great White Shark, Super Silver Haze, Super Lemon Haze, Chocolope, and Martian Mean Green. These were Hall of Fame names in the cannabis business and, all combined, these growers and coffeeshops had won dozens of Cannabis Cups. It wasn’t in their interest to help someone who might sell to—or worse, become—a competitor.

  That left Miro with one or two unaligned coffeeshops who might, if they liked his strain, sponsor him. That’s why he’d come to Amsterdam. There was one coffeeshop in particular he’d heard about that had caught his eye. Miro had been paying attention to rumblings across the internet, postings on various Web sites, and discussion groups about some beautiful and obscure strains available at a small coffeeshop outside the central district. The coffeeshop went by the name Orange and had two strains of hash entered in the competition.

  Miro found a folding table in the far corner of the exhibition hall. A small, laser-printed sign read ORANGE COFFEE-SHOP, NETHERLANDS.

  Sitting upright behind the table, almost at attention, was the owner of the coffeeshop, a tall and lanky, blond-haired and blue-eyed man in a black leather jacket. A line of six perfectly arranged Pyrex beakers filled with precisely cut samples of hashish stood on the table. He looked more like an avant-garde architect or a neurosurgeon than a coffeeshop owner.

  “Guus van der...?” Miro hesitated. “I’m sorry, I can’t pronounce your last name.”

  The man reached a long, thin, perfectly manicured finger up and adjusted his designer eyeglasses, pushing them up his nose. He blinked at Miro through what had to be the thickest lenses Miro had ever seen. Miro smiled.

  “It’s van der Gijp.”

  Miro extended his hand and the Dutchman shook it.

  “I’m Miro Basinas. From LA. I sent you an e-mail?”

  Guus stared at Miro without blinking for what seemed an impossibly long time.

  “The Californian.”

  “Yes.”

  “Call me Guus. No hard ‘g.’ Guus. Like an owl talks.”

  Miro blushed. “Your English is perfect.”

  “As is my Italian.”

  Miro nodded, he shifted from foot to foot, unsure what to say. Guus tilted his head forward and looked over his glasses at Miro. Miro noticed how blue the Dutchman’s eyes were; they were almost periwinkle.

  “Remind me. Why are you here?”

  Miro took a deep breath, told himself to relax; he didn’t know why he felt like this was some kind of job interview and then realized that, in a way, it was.

  Miro had a simple business proposal. If Orange would sponsor Miro’s cannabis, he was willing to give them a one-year monopoly on the strain, in Europe.

  “I have a few hundred seeds. So you could grow them here and, obviously, make as many clones as you like.”

  He watched as Guus considered his proposal. Finally the Dutchman looked at him.

  “It’s a generous offer, but my coffeeshop is known for hashish. We have the best in the world, that is not disputable.” Guus shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it will work with me.”

  “Don’t you want to try it? At least have a taste.”

  Guus adjusted his glasses.

  “I’m sorry. Like I said in my reply to your e-mail, any cannabis would have to be very special to interest me.”

  “It’s the best.”

  “Every grower thinks his cannabis is the best.”

  With that Guus turned away from Miro, leaving him standing there. Miro walked off, losing himself in the crowd on the convention floor.

  7

  SHAMUS NORIEGA was only half Salvadoran. His father was an Irish merchant seaman turned construction worker turned bartender turned Latina impregnator turned deportation victim who was sent back to Cork when Shamus was only five. He’d promised to send for his family but once he was gone, he was gone, like he’d fallen off the face of the Earth. Shamus and his mother—a twenty-three year old from San Salvador—never heard from him again.

  That left her to single-parent young Shamus in the tough east-side LA neighborhood of Highland Park. While most of the boys his age got into gangs like the Highland Park Aves or the Toonerville Rifa—even the fucking Filipinos had the Pinoy Real—nobody wanted to have anything to do with a redheaded freckle-faced kid named Shamus.

  It was, in retrospect, a mistake. Unwanted by the gangs and unsupervised by his hard-working mother, he did what any kid would do, he became a complete fuck up. A gang-banger without a gang.

  He liked to think of himself as a Ronin, a samurai without a master, the ultimate freelancer. He wasn’t afraid to take on the cholos, the cops, or anybody else that got in his way. He got his ass handed to him on more than one occasion but by the time he dropped out of high school he was, by all accounts and general consensus, a 100 percent genuine badass and a thorn in the side of the legitimate criminal operators on the east side.

  As Shamus gained a rep and started to carve out a mini east-side drug-selling empire, the gangs took notice. At first they just wanted a cut, a little taste of the business. But Shamus knew that if he showed any weakness, if he paid any commission, tax, or tribute, they’d bleed him to death, so he politely told them—all due respect—to go fuck themselves.

  After that, it wasn’t like the gangs needed to convene a board meeting to decide what to do. The Toons tried a classic drive-by ambush, but this attempt backfired, leaving a couple of dead Toons splattered along a residential street in a funky part of the city called Frogtown. Shamus wasn’t the kind of kid to run and hide, so he responded by impaling the head of the Toonerville jefe’s brother-in law on top of the jefe’s mailbox in Atwater.

  Shortly thereafter, a compromise was worked out between Shamus and the local gangs and Shamus became the controlling force in the east-side marijuana market. He left all other drugs, gambling, immigrant smuggling, extortion, and prostitution alone and in return the gangs allowed him to import weed from Mexico and wholesale it to a network of dealers.

  When the laws changed and medical marijua
na outlets began to spring up all over the city, it became essential for these stores to have a reliable stream of affordable cannabis. Shamus—who had educated himself by reading books like Who Moved My Cheese? and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People—decided that the smart thing to do was to align himself with this new, legal, operation. That’s how he became a major supplier for a chain of medical marijuana dispensaries called Compassion Centers. The guy who ran the Centers was a pendejo, but he paid really well and the work was almost legal, like the real job his mother always wanted him to have.

  …

  Shamus caught his reflection in his living-room window and couldn’t help taking a moment for some spontaneous grooming. He ran his hand across his tightly shaved head. It was smooth and hard. Just like him. He ran his fingers down the sides of his reddish goatee, flattening the loose hairs. He smiled and checked between his teeth for any signs of debris, any loose strands of carne asada that might’ve gotten stuck in his grill.

  Damon, a chunky Caucasian with a shaved head, sat on the black leather couch, rolling a joint.

  Damon looked around. It wasn’t much of a place, really. There was the couch, a glass coffee table, a couple of black leather chairs, and a couple of floor lamps—all of it taken from a furniture warehouse in the middle of the night. No rug. No pictures on the wall. It was like a living room in Sparta or some shit.

  Shamus made a face, his expression a mix of horror and disgust, as Damon licked the papers, running his tongue up and down the joint like it was some kind of baby-back rib and he wanted to get every last drop of sauce.

  “What are you doing?”

  Damon looked up at him.

  “Rollin’ it tight, man.”

  “Can’t you use a machine?”

  Damon just shrugged. “Nobody ever complained about my rolling before.”

  Shamus sighed and shifted his legs.

  “It looks like you’re suckin’ the motherfucker off, cabrón.”

  Damon sniffed, defensively. “You’re welcome to roll your own.”

  Damon fired up the joint, inhaled, and held it out to Shamus. Shamus grunted and walked out of the room toward his bedroom. Damon took another hit off the fatty and then called out to Shamus.

  “What the fuck’re you doing, man? Don’t you want any?”

  Shamus didn’t answer, so Damon followed him back into the bedroom. Damon had only been back there once before, to help him move the dresser around. It was the only room in the house that had a picture on the wall: a framed poster of the emerald Irish countryside with the words “County Cork” printed across the bottom in faux-Gaelic type.

  Shamus stood in front of his closet, buttoning his shirt. He waved the joint away.

  “Not before business.”

  Shamus was wearing khakis and a pale-blue dress shirt, looking like he’d just stepped out of a Macy’s ad. He glared at Damon.

  “Why you gotta dress that way?”

  Damon checked himself in the mirror.

  “What way?” Damon thought he looked sharp, rockin’ a powder blue Puma tracksuit with immaculate Paul Rodriguez Hat Rod Nike SBs and a big chunk of bling dangling from his neck.

  “You look like a drug dealer.”

  Damon didn’t look Shamus in the eye; instead he fidgeted with his necklace, a hunk of 21-carat gold shaped like a marijuana leaf with his name “Damon,” scrawled out, in the middle in a curlicue of canary diamonds.

  “Fuck, man. I am a drug dealer.”

  Shamus shook his head.

  “You really want to look like a dealer, start wearin’ an orange jumpsuit that says ‘county’ on the back.”

  Shamus was trying to school his helpers. He couldn’t even call them assistants because, like, they offered little in the way of fucking assistance, but they did lift shit for him and drive him around, so “helpers” seemed right. He wanted them to be a little smarter, to not look like poster boys for probable cause.

  The doorbell rang. Shamus opened it to reveal Guillermo, a muscular twenty-two year old. His other helper. Shamus liked Guillermo. He had potential. He wasn’t as stupid as Damon but Guillermo also dressed like he was some kind of member of a hip-hop posse or character on Sesame Street. Like Damon, he was Caucasian, but he had hard-looking, deep-set eyes and close-cropped black hair that made his face look like a flocked skull. Guillermo wore a chunky nugget of gold and diamonds shaped like a giant letter “G.” Maybe that’s how they could tell each other apart.

  They bumped fists as Guillermo strutted into the house. Damon gave a nod and held up the burning joint.

  “Want a hit? Diamond Kush.”

  Guillermo shook him off and looked at Shamus.

  “Time is tight. You ready?”

  “Almost.”

  Shamus walked into the kitchen, opened a cupboard, and pulled out his gun—a .45 caliber Glock 30—and stuffed it into the waistband of his jeans behind his back, draping his shirttail over it.

  “Vamanos.”

  …

  The three men walked out into the evening side by side, rolling in a kind of slow-motion strut, all menace and flow, Shamus in the middle, like how gangsters are supposed to look. All they needed was a soundtrack.

  Damon beeped the white SUV open and they piled in.

  Shamus was proud of his car. Riding high above the traffic, snug in his hand-tooled leather seat, screened from the world by tinted windows and air conditioning, with a bass-throbbing, beat-kicking track blasting from the five-thousand-dollar car stereo, Shamus felt invincible. It was even better that he didn’t have to drive. Damon took care of that.

  Damon reached into the compartment between the seats and pulled out a DVD entitled Saffron vs The Fuck Machine. The cover featured a topless woman holding boxing gloves in front of her breasts and the words “Full Contact! No Holds Barred!”

  “It’s too early for that shit.”

  “It’s never too early for pussy, dude.”

  Shamus reached for a different disc and fed it into the dashboard system. The machine whirred and suddenly a scene of Al Pacino, his nose caked with pure Peruvian marching powder, his hands holding a huge assault rifle, appeared on the dashboard screen and on little TV screens embedded in the backs of the front seats.

  Damon groaned.

  “Oh man. Fuckin’ Scarface. We always watch this.”

  “I got Dawn of the Dead, the original version.”

  “No.”

  “Shaun of the Dead? It’s funny.”

  “I hate zombies.”

  “Godfather II?”

  “Forget it.”

  Damon sulked. Shamus glanced in the rearview to see Guillermo calmly checking the load in his Beretta nine millimeter.

  “This okay with you?”

  Guillermo looked at the screen. Al Pacino was still raging.

  “Yeah. Whatever.”

  Shamus didn’t like to watch porn before a meet. Porn was distracting. It got your hormones pumping, it made your body and mind hot when you need to be cool. You find yourself in a tight situation, when you need to be on top of things, and all you’re thinking about is the girl-on-girl action you just watched in the car. That’s the kind of thing that could get a motherfucker killed.

  Sometimes it was okay, like when you’re kicking back, drinking beer with your friends and all you’re gonna do is stretch out on your bed and let some chica suck your cock. Then it’s fine. It’s appropriate. But when you’re on your way to buy a few hundred pounds of dope from some ferocious Arrellano Félix cartel-style culeros, well, it’s better to stay in the moment.

  You’d think that after years of being in the business he could relax. But Shamus didn’t trust the cartel. Why should he? Someone might put a bullet in him just because they wanted to impress somebody. The vatos were always trying to impress each other. Always vying for promotion. Who was the baddest, the most loco. Shamus didn’t have time for that brand of bullshit. School, prison, jobs, gangs, it was all about following the fucking rules and doing w
hat some asshole told you to do. Life was too short. Even working for the Compassion Center was a drag sometimes, but at least he didn’t have to go to an office.

  …

  They pulled into an out-of-the-way cul-de-sac near the LA river in Frogtown. The barrio wasn’t called that because a lot of French people lived there; it had earned the name because when it rained, thousands of little frogs would come hopping out of the river onto the streets. Perhaps this sign of the apocalypse was what kept the area low density—filled with light industry and car-repair shops—perfect for drug drops, executions, and other activities that required a discreet yet urban environment.

  Shamus scanned the area; there were a few homeless people camped out in nylon tents and huts made out of cardboard boxes and shopping carts. The usual. Not far away, he saw a man with an easel and canvas, working on what looked like a painting of the LA river at sunset. Shamus wondered if the artist would put in the old tires, beer cans, dead dogs, and assorted plastic shit that floated around in the river or if he’d paint some kind of idealized version.

  Shamus admired the LA river. The city had taken something wild and paved it over in the name of flood control; they had sterilized it, buried it under tons of smooth concrete, and turned it into just another freeway in a city of freeways. They thought they’d fixed it, but the river had other ideas. It didn’t just lie there, it fought back. Shrubby trees had sprouted in cracks in the cement and forced their way up, followed by bushes and reeds, and soon all the native plants had returned. The plants brought back the frogs, turtles, ducks, cranes, herons, hawks, and eagles. It was a real river again. It was nature’s way of saying “fuck you” to the city.

  “I fucked this chick last night. Tight little pussy.”

  Shamus turned and looked at Damon. “Yeah?”

  Damon nodded. He was stoned, mouthing off.

  “I was at this bar in Hollywood, man. And she was fine, really west-side you know what I’m sayin’?”

  Shamus heard Guillermo snort.

  “What’d she want with you?”