The call with Sev is upsetting but it makes me even more determined to push through with the plan I have. I’m relieved we have these good numbers, and while money is nice, even more important, I feel like my idea is gaining traction. Still, I never thought I would worry about Sev, but he sounded really bummed. I told him I was going to be in town next weekend and we should get together for a little while. I even offered to buy the drinks.
CHAPTER 15
I’m seeing Rocky quite a bit now, nothing too crazy, just studying together or walking around campus or going to some lame party. We talk on the cell a lot, too; the girl gives great phone.
We go out to eat a few times too, including one date at a nice restaurant. The dinner is great. Just to be able to afford expensive food makes it taste much better. I order a nice 2001 Brunella di Montalcino. We have a good laugh from the fact that I even know how to order a bottle of wine, but the truth is, I learned how to do it from C.W. Wellington’s father.
Buster Wellington would go through the whole deal, smelling the cork, swishing a small sip of the wine around his cheeks and examining the label. Mr. Wellington would talk wine for as long as anyone would listen, so I got a little bit of a wine degree from my time at the Wellington School for the Insanely Affluent. The thing that always surprised people was that Buster actually had the balls to send shit back every now and then. I’ll never know if he really tasted the difference or if it was a power thing. The point is, Buster knows his wine and he knows how to work a room.
Whether I’m thinking about Rocky or C.W., the last thing I need right now is the distraction of a girl. What I really need to do is focus on Balducci. I need to think about finishing that job every minute of every day. Yet, sometimes things just happen. Rocky Campbell is in my mind now and I can’t help it. Frankly, I don’t want to help it. But the question isn’t why I’m this interested in Rocky. The question really is, why does Rocky care about me?
It’s definitely not the money or danger; I can tell she doesn’t give a shit about that stuff. I might be naïve but I think she really likes hanging out with me. She gets on really well with Loot and Carey, too, which means a lot. Why is she interested in me and not some wannabe lawyer, banker or hot-shit lobbyist? It’s what all the other girls are looking for. What does she see in me that no one else does?
I figure I’ll really show her what’s under the hood and see if she runs. Shit, why drag it out? If she bails, at least I could focus completely on Balducci, which is what I should be doing anyway. But I don’t want her running for the hills and I’m really not sure if I can handle her blowing me off again. Letting her in on some of this stuff is plain risky; this operation is more than just dope and gambling. It’s a lot more, when you throw Balducci into the mix. Anyone involved with me is looking at jail time or dead time, and if I really care about Rocky she should know what’s involved. It’s got to be her choice to stick around.
It was easy telling Loot and Carey because we’re willing to drive through walls for each other. Don’t get me wrong; they enjoy the money here, but they know what this means to me and they want to help me get the bad guy. There’s plenty that think I’m a low-life, drug dealing, bookie hood. To some I’m a guy who’s hustling to stay in school. Nobody except Loot and Carey know about Balducci and what he did to my father.
Rocky and I are studying in my apartment when a good-size shipment of Arizona sensimilla pot arrives. It comes in three boxes that are pretty innocuous. I know this shipment is being delivered today, but I didn’t tell Rocky because I didn’t want her to have any preconceived notions.
I sign for the package, which is a pretty unbelievable thing if you think about it. Here’s 15 pounds of pot being delivered right to my door, and I sign Kevin Davenport like I am signing for the dry cleaning. I always figure that if I get busted I can claim I didn’t know what was being sent to me. “Officer, I wasn’t expecting anything. I got a package and I opened it and there was all this weed. It must have been sent here by accident.” Now deep down I know that’s not going to hold water, but that’s the only mindset you can have. You show me a dealer who thinks he’s gonna get caught. I guess I can sign a fictitious name, but why add forgery to the list if I do get busted?
“Weed shipment,” I casually say to Rocky. “It looks like I gotta go to work.”
“Oh, does that mean you need me out of here?” she answers with casual surprise.
Well, she doesn’t seem freaked out by the whole thing. “Loot and Carey are out. Do you mind giving me a hand?” I ask.
“I guess it’s okay. What do you need me to do?”
I ask her to go to the kitchen, locate a clear spray bottle, fill it with water and bring it back to me. She complies and returns as I am slicing through all the tape on the box with a knife. “The guys in Arizona did a pretty good job in sealing the box so that there’s no place for air to escape. I’m glad they’re thorough, but it’s a huge pain in the ass getting through all the layers.”
Inside there are layers as well; layers and layers of t-shirts that must have been bought at a thrift store or stolen off the back of some kid with bad skin and braces. I mean really lame t-shirts that have pictures of the Incredible Hulk or Harry Potter. Occasionally you might run into a cool college t-shirt or a pro sports team, but for the most part these shirts are only good for disguising pot. We sift through all the shirts.
Hiding the potent smell of herb is a coating of talcum powder generously sprinkled on top of the last plastic cover that separates the pot from all the other nonsense. The powder rests on plastic wrap thicker than the cellophane Zog wrapped around my face. Beneath that layer are airtight bags, each containing a half-pound of pot.
Rocky observes me as I meticulously collect ten half-pound bags from each box. I make three piles: one pile is about 20 worthless t-shirts, and another has three t-shirts that are keepers: Cold Play, San Diego Chargers and Sunrise Surfboards. The third pile is the 30 half-pound bags of pot stacked like bricks. I ask Rocky if she wants any t-shirts, but she passes.
I carefully weigh the pot on my scale to make sure I’m getting what I paid for. “Listen, Rocky, if this is making you uncomfortable in the least.... ” She says it’s not a problem, and I believe her. “Well, I can certainly use the company,” I say sincerely. So she’s not motoring out of here yet. I’ve already told her that I move pot, so that’s not a surprise, but the sight of 15 pounds of boo can make a strong impression. So far, though, it looks like she appreciates the situation as an amusing curiosity.
The 30 bags weigh in correctly. It looks like I’m in business.
“How are you going to sell these?” Rocky asks.
“That’s done already. I got some loyal customers who paid half up front. I sell this for more than double, so if the ridiculous happens and the customer who laid out the money doesn’t show, so much the better.”
I start spreading out newspaper. In between the kitchen and our three bedrooms the narrow hallway acts as the perfect place to start leveraging. I meticulously spread the newspaper so that none of the wood floor is showing. Rocky wants to know where I get all my customers, so, as I’m spreading the paper, I tell her briefly about my connections. I pick up a few buds and examine them. The buds are almost day-glo green with a few red fibers wrapping around the buds like protective vines. There is hardly a seed in sight. I smell the bud and recognize the pungent odor, and for a moment, I am Buster Wellington examining a bottle of wine.
“Does it meet with your approval?” Rocky asks.
“Indeed it does.” With that I flip open my cell phone and when Joel answers, I instruct him to be here in 45 minutes. I look at my watch and say into the phone, “No kidding, Joel, I got somewhere else to go. Be here before 4:20.” I hang up the phone, look at Rocky and say, “We’ve got to hustle now. I got to get this stuff back into those half-pound bags it came in.”
“So the stupid question I am compelled to ask is, why did you take it out of the bags in the first place?”
“Joel is going to be here in 20 minutes. I am going to temporarily turn 3 pounds of pot into 3 1/4 pounds of pot.”
“You’re a magician too?”
“Yes, boys and girls, right before your eyes, watch the magic weed.” I continue to spray water. “The trick is to make it moist but not wet. When we put the pot back into the half-pound baggies there can’t be any water drops or condensation on the plastic. We need a light mist that’s just enough to add weight, but not really detectable.”
“That’s some skill,” Rocky comments.
“I think of it as an art.” I carefully begin filling each bag, and when it reaches what should be around half a pound, I measure again on my scale. I continue to tweak the contents of the bag, sometimes adding pot from the newspaper and sometimes subtracting, but when I close that ziplock, the bag weighs half a pound.
“By my calculations,” Rocky says, “there should be a quarter pound of pot left over on this newspaper. Is that right?”
“Uh-huh.” I smile.
“What happens when it dries up and these guys figure out they were shorted?”
“Joel will buy 3 pounds that will be weighed right in front of his eyes. By sundown, these bags will be broken down into many forms, and between all the sample hits, transfers and lack of business acumen by the stoner community, I don’t anticipate any issues. I haven’t had a problem yet. And I’ve been buying for free for a while now.”
“Buying for free?” Rocky asks.
“Buying for free. It was an important lesson I learned. The 15 pounds I received today will yield 16 pounds. There’s one extra pound for my own retail distribution. But even more than the money, there’s buying for free and that’s beyond business; it’s an attitude. I need to get knee-deep in it.”
“Okay,” Rocky says and pauses, “I have a couple of questions.”
“I was hoping you would ask. Shoot.” I might sound like I’m joking, but talking to Rocky about this is very liberating.
“What do you consider retail distribution and what does buying for free mean?”
“Well, take Joel. He buys wholesale so he can sell it retail, just like in the real world. While I’m making a nice chunk, I have to give him a chance to make money. He’ll break this up into ounces and dime bags, and possibly he’ll sell a quarter pound somewhere. He’s selling it to the dorms and frats. I have other guys here in the Lakes who hit the lawyers and lobbyists.” I tell her that I try not to send someone out onto someone else’s turf. If I have an idea where its going, I can prevent the dope from winding up in an elementary school playground.
“I see,” Rocky says. “You sell in bulk to Joel, but give him a chance to make money.”
“You got it. Joel is buying this for $1,200 but by the time he’s done retailing it he will bring in $2000. So he’s got $800 profit and all the weed he can smoke.”
“If Joel is buying it for $1,200 a pound, are you able to make money?”
“Yep. I’m buying it for $700,” I answer. I’m glad she’s interested. I think this is going well but we are going to get into some murky water soon.
“So you have 15 pounds and you earn $500 a pound...that’s $7,500, right?”
I remind her of the pound of pot I “bought for free.” By wetting this down I’ll end up with an extra pound, I tell her, which I can retail for $2,000, just like Joel.
At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. “We have a little fun with our extra bag. If we wanted, we could sell it without even leaving the apartment complex. Loot and Carey take some and act like Big Men on Campus and turn people on. They’ve gotten to be buddies with the Gorilla basketball team mainly because of this excess supply. Loot and Carey believe the players respect them because they, too, are good ballplayers and fun to be around. I suspect, though, that if the dope supply dried up, Loot and Carey would be a lot less fun to hang out with.”
Finally we finish filling the last half-pound bag. We have three pounds of pot. There is a fair amount of weed still left on the newspaper that I carefully put into a separate bag to be weighed later, but I suspect I’ll have my typical quarter pound extra. There’s not a crumb left on the newspaper. It’s good to be a pro.
We have about 10 minutes before Joel arrives for his three pounds. So I guess these 10 minutes are as good a time as any to roll the dice. We start crumbling up the newspaper from the hallway, dispose of the pile and open the window so the smell can escape. “Hey, Rocky, you have a minute to talk about something?”
“More serious than 15 pounds of pot? Sure, I’m all ears,” she says.
“Look, I’ve really enjoyed spending all this time but.... ”
She interrupts to ask, “Are you breaking up with me?”
“No. Hell no,” I say. “Look, these things I’m involved in, I told you that it’s something I’m doing now, but I have no desire to continue with it after school. Right?”
“Yes,” she says, “to get you through school and help out at home.”
“I appreciate, you know, staying with me and giving me a chance,” I say gratefully. “I know you wouldn’t want to be involved in this stuff long-term, so I appreciate you giving me some leeway here.”
“Well, it’s been my pleasure,” she says with a smile.
“Rocky, I don’t want to freak you out, but there’s something I have to tell you because it’s important.” She looks at me seriously, her brown eyes large and intense.
It’s always difficult to speak to anyone about my father’s and sister’s deaths and the effect they’ve had on my mother and me. Speaking to anyone about this always causes that awkward silence and those uncomfortable comments meant to console. People ask what happened to your father, but the truth is, people do not have a lot of experience hearing about someone being murdered. I haven’t heard a good response yet. Rocky’s silent attention is such a relief that I hate to unload the rest on her. But I do. I tell her about my job at Kosher World and how I discovered Jimmy Balducci’s buying for free and his involvement in so many killings, most importantly, my dad’s.
“What about the police?” she asks. “Have you told them?”
“Rocky, my father was the police. He was the district attorney, and there were people inside who sold him out.” I tell her about Georgie Skolinsky cooperating with the police and then getting his head cut off. “Believe me, working with the police and wearing a wire is not the way to go. So right about now, you may be wondering why I am telling you this.”
“Kevin, why are you telling me this now?” she asks seriously.
“When I told you these money-making activities are temporary, I left out the fact that I’m really not using these transactions to pay my college bill. The truth is, I would have been able to scrape by without all this, but I need real money to stop these guys. They’re killing people. They’re ruining families, and no one knows how that feels more than me. I have an idea how to stop them, but I need to build up a presence. Getting Balducci is the least I can do for my father.”
I know that Rocky’s mind must be racing. To distract herself, she grabs her auburn hair and fits a band around a newly created ponytail. I can sense that I’m losing her. “Rocky,” I say, “I didn’t count on having feelings for you. Not like this. I care about what you think and I don’t want to see you hurt. The truth is, anyone involved with me could get hurt.”
“That’s why you
’re telling me this? You don’t want me hurt?” She pauses to look at me, tilting her head. “Is this some sort of elaborate breakup line?”
“Rocky, that’s not what I want to do. I know I just dropped a bomb on you. There are so many normal situations for you here. I don’t want your time wasted and, more importantly, I don’t want you physically hurt. I didn’t want to get too serious too fast, but damn, I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Any shot you let this Balducci stuff drop?”
“I can’t. It’s what I was put on this planet to do.” Rocky is staring at the floor and nodding in acknowledgement. “Everything seems to have a purpose. I used to caddy on golf courses, deliver pizzas, sell on the telephones and work in the meat factory. I thought I was doing it to get enough money to get through school so that I could launch some career. I thought I was doing it so I could get into the social circuit around here. But that’s not the case. Everything I’ve done has been put in front of me to get Balducci, to finish the job my father started.”
“All right, let’s say you get Balducci, let’s say this works. What then?” she asks.
“Baby, I don’t know. I can start living my life, I guess.” I sure as hell don’t need this shit. There’s no way this can be done for any length of time without getting nailed at some point. I might last another year, at best, before I run out of luck.
“It wasn’t long ago that swinging this kind of money around was all I was dreaming about doing. It was just something I seemed to be missing. Everyone seems to have money; everyone seems to be having fun. I thought that’s what I cared about, but now I know better.”
The doorbell rings. Joel has arrived. “Coming,” I yell. Then I turn to Rocky. “I have to take care of business. I hope we can talk later, but I understand if you don’t want to have anything to do with me. You know, good people can be put in bad situations. I didn’t ask for this; it happened to me and my family. You have choices, and even though I’m crazy about you, I want you to have those choices and not be ambushed by my cavalier behavior.”
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