Baked Page 4

“She wanted my full ten inches.”

  Guillermo laughed out loud. “So she didn’t want your dick? Is that what you’re sayin’?”

  Damon spit on the ground.

  “Shut up and let me tell the story.”

  Shamus looked at Damon. He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t going to encourage him but maybe if he told the story now he wouldn’t try and tell it to the guys from Tijuana.

  “So what happened?”

  “Well you know how that upscale pussy likes to play it. You know? They get you to buy ’em top shelf firewater all night and then they give you a kiss and go.”

  Guillermo looked at him.

  “That’s a great story, man. You should write a fucking book.”

  “No, man. The story ain’t over. I slipped a little gift into her cocktail. Took her back to her crib and banged it out, baby.”

  Damon held up his fist for Shamus and Guillermo to bump. They declined.

  “You gave her a roofie?”

  Damon spit again, his cottonmouth kicking in big time.

  “Shit man, she was beggin’ for it.”

  It was not the first time that Damon had gone out and drugged some woman before raping her. This bugged Shamus. Usually he took a kind of “live and let live” philosophy, but this got under his skin. He thought women, particularly mothers, should be protected. He realized that one of these days he’d have to have a talk with Damon about it.

  …

  A brown panel van pulled into the cul-de-sac and parked next to the SUV. Two men, Luis and Gonzalo, both in their mid-thirties, both dressed like furniture movers, climbed out of the van and stretched. Shamus lifted a hand in greeting as Luis went around to the front of the van and launched a stream of piss into the bushes.

  Gonzalo nodded at Shamus.

  “Hey, Irish.”

  “Nice drive?”

  Gonzalo shook his head.

  “The pinche traffic, man. It took us five fucking hours to get here.”

  Luis came over, wiping his hand against his pants.

  “Next time maybe you could meet us in Santa Ana or something.”

  Shamus nodded.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Luis threw open the back door of the panel van to reveal a hundred brightly colored piñatas.

  That’s how it worked. The border patrol would crack open a piñata or two, looking for drugs. They were too lazy to open all the piñatas and too distracted to notice the false bottom in the panel van that held a cargo of five hundred pounds of fresh Mexican skunk weed.

  While Shamus and Gonzalo went over to the SUV to exchange money, Damon, Guillermo, and Luis popped open the false bottom and began moving the bricks of weed from the van into the SUV. This all happened quickly and with little conversation. Even though they did this exchange once a month—five hundred pounds might seem like a lot but the Compassion Center’s customers burned through it quickly—they weren’t friends and there was no collegial atmosphere. When they were done with the transaction they went their separate ways. They didn’t go out for tacos and chelas, they didn’t socialize. The Mexicans didn’t talk about their lives or their families or the struggles of their favorite soccer team, Chivas de Guadalajara—in fact, Shamus didn’t even know their last names, and he made sure they didn’t know his. The exchange was fast, discreet, and virtually anonymous.

  Medical marijuana co-ops had originally been set up so that each member could legally grow up to ten plants. Then they were supposed to sell the plants to the co-op and that’s how the dispensaries got inventory. With a small, mom-andpop type ganja grocer the plan worked great, but with a chain of dispensaries like the Compassion Centers, demand quickly outstripped the ability of a few members to grow ten plants at a time. So even though the Compassion Centers were legal, they were forced to purchase their cannabis from large-scale, illegal growers.

  As the swap was taking place something caught Shamus’s eye. He turned and saw the artist by the river watching them.

  “We good?”

  Gonzalo nodded.

  “Hasta la proxima.”

  Gonzalo and Luis got back into the panel van, this time with four brown grocery bags filled with hundred-dollar bills stuck in the secret compartment, and drove off.

  Damon and Guillermo got into the SUV. Shamus looked at them.

  “Start the engine. I’ll be right back.”

  Shamus cut through a gap in the fence and walked toward the painter. The artist must’ve sensed he was in some kind of trouble because as Shamus drew near he held up his hands, which held a brush and a color-smeared palette.

  “It’s cool, man. No worries. I didn’t see anything.”

  Which meant he had. Shamus put two bullets into the man’s chest. The painter dropped, instantly dead. Shamus went over and gave his body a shove, rolling it down the embankment into the river. He turned to leave and then stopped and took a moment to look at the canvas. It was pretty good, really, a depiction of the scene at dusk, the sky a vibrant pink and purple over the jungled-up riverbed. Shamus carefully picked the painting off the easel. It was still wet and he didn’t want to smudge it. This, he realized, would look nice in his living room.

  8

  MIRO SPENT the afternoon getting rejected. The other coffeeshops unaffiliated with seed companies had either already entered a strain or declined to even taste his cannabis based on some kind of anti-American prejudice.

  Miro had even talked to one of the cup officials in the hopes that they would consider his strain without a sponsor. That request was turned down.

  Miro didn’t know what else to do so he entered the coffeeshop called Orange and saw the lanky Dutchman named Guus sitting in the back corner drinking tea and reading a copy of the day’s De Telegraaf.

  Miro walked up to him.

  “Just try it.”

  Guus didn’t look up from his paper.

  “Please.”

  Miro took a small glass jar out of his jacket pocket. Inside was a good-sized knuckle of dense jungle-green bud, the leaves radiant with trichomes and specked with saffron-colored blooms.

  “If you don’t like it, no problem. I’ll leave. But I came to Amsterdam to enter the competition and, for fuck’s sake, just have a taste. I can’t get anyone to even try it. It’s like they’ve all got some big attitude about it because I’m from California.”

  Guus looked over his paper, slightly annoyed.

  “I would hate for you to get the wrong impression of my city.”

  Guus picked up the jar and unscrewed the lid. He sniffed the bud.

  “Tropical fruit?”

  Miro watched as Guus broke off a chunk and crushed it in his fingers, giving it another sniff before putting it in a grinder and crushing the bud into smaller bits. He reached for a vaporizer sitting nearby. Guus packed the ground leaves carefully into a glass container and connected it to the vaporizer’s heat element.

  As the vaporizer heated the leaves, Guus indicated that Miro should sit with him. He took a plastic tube and began to gently draw air into his lungs. He was obviously an expert at this, careful not to suck too hard—too much air and the weed would ignite. That was the point of the vaporizer, it heated the leaves and evaporated the THC in the bud, turning it into a gas without actually burning anything. The theory was that it gave you a pure hit of the active ingredients and it was easy on the lungs.

  A fine mist rose off the heating herb and wended its way down the tube and into Guus’ lungs. Miro watched as the Dutchman held it in for a beat, then exhaled a plume toward the ceiling and looked at Miro.

  He had a curious look on his face—perhaps a reaction to the rollicking scamper of THC rushing into his brain—that caused Miro to smile.

  “You like it?”

  Guus held up a finger, shushing Miro, and took another hit.

  He exhaled and smiled at Miro.

  “Very smooth. Everyone always says to me, Sativa. Always Sativa. They want the energy high. But too much energy is not the answer. I believe
a balance is necessary. This is very nicely balanced.”

  Guus plucked the cluster of bud from the jar and studied it. He took a small magnifying glass out of his jacket pocket.

  “Do you mind?”

  “Please.“

  Under magnification the bud looked like an alien rain forest: dark green mountains covered in spiky spiderweblike trichomes and a sticky coat of resin. Guus put the bud back into the jar and looked at his fingers. A silvery residue coated the tips.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Miro smiled.

  “I have some theories about overhybridization. How if we keep overprocessing and inbreeding the plants we’re going to end up with Velveeta, you know? Like the cheese?”

  Guus shook his head. “Cheese?”

  “Overprocessed and boring. That’s what I’m saying.”

  Miro took a big hit off the vaporizer and almost immediately felt the effects. His eyes glazed and everything in the coffeeshop became a little shinier than it had been before. He realized that he hadn’t paid any attention to where he was; he had been so intent on convincing Guus to sponsor him that he hadn’t noticed the coffeeshop at all. But now, as Guus ground up some more of the bud and began rolling it into a joint, Miro looked around. The coffeeshop wasn’t like the others he’d been to. It was groovy. Not hippie groovy but that kind of retro-fifties groovy that was popular in the seventies. Danish modern furniture mixed with odds and ends, bowling-pin-shaped lamps and skeletal room dividers and goofy advertising billboards like the kind they put on bus benches. Brazilian Tropicalismo music floated in the smoky air.

  Miro watched some hipsters on the other side of the room passing a massive spliff. He turned and saw an attractive young woman behind the counter. She was laughing as she brewed a pot of herbal tea. Her teeth were white and seemed to sparkle as she smiled. Her eyes were an intense hazel. She was looking at him.

  Guus held up an expertly rolled joint.

  “I want to see how it smokes.”

  Guus lit the joint and took a long, luxurious inhale. He released a plume of smoke and looked at Miro.

  “I think you are a little bit genius.”

  Miro shrugged. He felt good, not overly stoned, lucid yet filled with a sense of general all rightness with the world. Then there was this gleaming quality in everything he saw. Miro moved his neck and felt his shoulders. He realized that he was deeply relaxed, almost as if he’d popped a muscle relaxant.

  “Why do you say it is like cheese?”

  “It’s not like cheese. Well, maybe it’s like an artisanal cheese from France or something. It was just a metaphor.”

  Guus handed the joint to the young woman with the hazel eyes and sparkling teeth.

  “I was referring to processed cheese. There’s too much inbreeding going on. The hybrids they’re selling here in Amsterdam, they’re like the little retarded cousins of the original plants.”

  Guus stared at him intently, as if he couldn’t tell if Miro was joking or not.

  “Stop talking about cheese.”

  Miro nodded, suddenly feeling awkward, as if he’d insulted the Dutchman.

  “Sorry.”

  Guus smacked his hand down on the table with enough force to cause a nearby bong to wobble.

  “You are correct about one thing. A lot of the cannabis they sell at the other shops is inferior. That’s why I don’t sell it. They have nothing as good as this.”

  He pointed to the remaining bud in the test tube. “This is something special.”

  Miro leaned forward, excited. “I wanted only wild, Land-race strains. So I went to Northern Thailand. It took me a few weeks, but I eventually found a small community of farmers near the Cambodian border who grow potent cannabis for their own uses. It was undiluted, pure, old-school Thai sativa.”

  As Miro was telling this, the girl with the hazel eyes and sparkly teeth took another hit.

  “Ce goût de mangues.”

  Guus laughed. Miro looked at him.

  “What did she say?”

  “She says it tastes like mangoes.”

  “Exactly.“

  Miro smiled at the girl, then continued. “I took some seeds back to my laboratory and grew the wild Thai plants.”

  “This is wild Thai?”

  Miro shook his head.

  “I took a similar trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. Do you know it?”

  Guus shook his head. “I’ve never been to Hawaii. But I like macadamia nuts.”

  Miro nodded. “They are tasty.”

  The girl flashed Miro a thumbs-up.

  “You like it?”

  She nodded. “Wow. Wowee.”

  Guus laughed. “She likes it a lot.”

  Miro smiled.

  “So, on the Hilo side. The rainy side. I isolated a strain of wild Hawaiian Indica. Someone must have left it growing in the national park since, I don’t know, the sixties.”

  Guus thought about it. “So that’s what this is? Wild Thai and wild Hawaiian crossed?”

  “Not quite. First I crossed them, creating an F1, then I crossed the F1s to create an F2, and so on until I had grown a perfect F6 mix of my wild plants.”

  Guus took a sip of tea.

  “Although the taste and quality of buzz was there, it still wasn’t performing as I’d hoped, so I went back to create an unstable F1 and crossed that with a Haze and Brazilian F1 I had experimented with to increase the trichome content and give it some stability. Then I used my F6 as a parent and began again.”

  Guus nodded. “What’s it called?”

  Miro sat back and smiled.

  “I named it Elephant Crush. You know, after the elephants in Thailand. But if you enter it in the competition we can call it Orange Crush after your coffeeshop.”

  Miro was startled when a lean gray and white cat suddenly leaped up on the table. The cat glanced at Miro, then purred and allowed Guus to scratch its head before it slunk over and sniffed the vaporizer. Guus smiled. “Even Viola likes it.”

  Guus looked at Miro. “She keeps the mice out of the hash.”

  The cat began to groom herself. Miro looked across the table at Guus. The Dutchman was stoned now, his face screwed up in a warped expression of whimsy. He had come to a decision.

  “I like the Elephant Crush. Viola likes the Elephant Crush. So I will sponsor you.”

  Guus leaned in conspiratorially. “And I think we will win.”

  9

  IT WAS AFTER service at their local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that Daniel asked to have a meeting in private with the bishop. He didn’t want to talk to anyone but a combination of guilt and Collison’s insistence that he needed help gave him no choice. Collison was happy to wait; there was a Mutual—a social mixer for teenagers—taking place in a meeting room, and the promise of ice cream and pie was enough for him.

  Daniel followed the bishop, a tall handsome man with gray hair and steel-blue eyes, into his office. The office was spare and utilitarian, like the office of a high school guidance counselor. A few plaques and diplomas—and the American flag in the corner—imparted a reassuring authority to the folding metal chairs and linoleum floor.

  The bishop pointed to a chair.

  “Have a seat.”

  Daniel sat down and looked at his hands. The bishop settled into his chair, all high-backed and comfy looking leather, and looked at Daniel.

  “This is about sex, isn’t it?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “Have you been touching yourself?”

  Daniel shook his head. Being here, talking to a stranger about sex was the last place he wanted to be.

  “Good.”

  Daniel cleared his throat.

  “It’s just...”

  For some reason his voice cracked.

  “It’s just that when I wake up in the morning, well, there’s like... some kind of goo in my underwear.”

  The bishop smiled.

  “That’s as it should be.”

  Daniel was confused
.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The Bishop leaned forward and folded his hands together, ready to do his job, to give spiritual guidance to a troubled young person.

  “You have feelings. Sexual feelings. Don’t you?”

  Daniel nodded.

  “When you see a young woman, do you feel the sap rising within you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is as it should be. Think about a tree. Tall and strong. It is filled with sap, that’s the tree’s blood, its life force.”

  The bishop pointed at Daniel.

  “You have the same force within you. The force of creation. It’s a powerful force.”

  Daniel nodded again. “I’ll say.”

  “But you must control this force and wait to use it at the proper time.”

  “I understand all that. I just wonder if the goo is a sin.”

  The bishop smiled.

  “No. Not at all. Your body is like a machine. A goo-producing factory if you will. Every now and then the factory produces a little too much. So while you’re asleep it does a little practice delivery to get rid of the excess inventory.”

  “So it’s practicing for a time when I’m married?”

  The bishop nodded.

  “But don’t practice the delivery yourself. You’ve got to cherish your sap. That’s what makes you strong.”

  10

  THE FOOD WOULD not stop coming. Just when he thought he couldn’t eat another bite, a new dish would appear. Guus had wanted to eat a rijstafel to celebrate getting the Elephant Crush entered in the competition, so here they were, in a sleek and modern Indonesian restaurant being presented with course after course after course. Miro and Guus had already devoured fried crabs, a fragrant lobster soup from Java called bobor kraton, sizzling grilled lamb sate with some kind of peanut sauce, fish in a sweet-sour jackfruit sauce, and a pungent beef stew called dendeng. Now they were presented with a blazingly spicy prawn soup called udang blado. The names of the dishes conjured up images of characters from Star Wars movies, not the original trilogy, but the crappy ones that came later.

  Not that Miro wasn’t enjoying the food, it was delicious. The spices excited his cannabis-enhanced taste buds, warmed his stomach, and made his nose run. A bottle of crisp Sancerre was perched at the ready in an ice bucket like a cool French fire extinguisher. But there was so much food, he could’ve hosted a dinner party.