“Pick me up at the airport. United.”
Once she was home again, Kathy glanced at her watch. Not much time. Mentally, she went through what was in her purse, tried to remember whether she was holding. She dressed inconspicuously and packed enough clothes for a few days.
Don’t carry anything, she told herself. There’s plenty to smoke down there.
Then she opened the box that held her cash and stared at the money inside it, every dollar she had worked so hard to earn.
Ten grand. Everything she had.
If Danny was wrong—if this was a rip-off—she’d be back on Telegraph Avenue selling lids. And she’d probably have to ask Richard to front her the kilo to do so. Closing her eyes, she prayed for Danny’s wisdom, for her own clarity and the ability to make the right decision. She tried to calm herself. Assured herself it would be alright.
Still, she hesitated.
Maybe a hundred kilos should do. Three thousand dollars is a better risk than betting my whole wad.
On her bed, she began to count out the lesser amount when Larry’s grating voice came back to her. If she wanted to play with the big boys, she’d have to gamble as they did. Did she want to compete?
A sudden image of Alex’s face emerged, his triumphant sneer as he talked Larry into screwing her. For a brief moment, she sat very still, then picked up the full ten grand, wrapped it in a paper bag, and threw it into her travel bag. In minutes, she was in the VW and racing for the freeway, a joint in her mouth, hoping to make the plane.
Two blocks from the freeway entrance, a red light flashed behind her.
“Oh, no!” she groaned, rolling down the window to clear the air of smoke.
Slowly, the Berkeley police officer got out of his car. “Moving a little fast, aren’t you, miss?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered. “But I’m trying to make a 9:30 plane at Oakland airport. It’s 8:35 and I still have to buy my ticket.”
“How far do you think you’re going to get smoking marijuana?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I can smell marijuana in your car. Where’s the contraband, miss?”
I swallowed it the moment I saw your light, you bastard.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, officer.”
“Could you step out of the car, miss. Let’s have a look.”
At that moment, Kathy stopped thinking about the airport, about the time, about what awaited her. She had to focus on what was happening here … especially with ten thousand dollars in cash in a travel bag on the seat next to her.
The officer searched the ashtray and found … ashes. Kathy was meticulous about roaches.
“Would you open the bag, please?”
Her body tensed.
Don’t, she told herself. You’ll give yourself away. Meditate.
Picturing the Buddha in her mind, she wrapped the image around the travel bag and the paper bag of money inside. Her hands opened the zipper. The officer peered into the backpack, touched the brown paper bag with the cash, pushed it aside, looked beneath it … and zipped the bag closed again. Kathy stood transfixed, the Buddha image still binding her mind to the pack.
“Alright, miss. See if you can make your plane. But slow down.”
Huh? Kathy thought, startled. That’s it? No ticket? Just “slow down”?
“Thank you, officer.” She smiled sincerely at him, jumped in the car, and pulled away.
Close to 11:00 p.m., Jacob waited with Danny at the airport gate, close, literally looming over his back. Ever since Danny had seen the warehouse, he wasn’t letting this kid out of his sight. He was hanging to him like glue.
When Kathy finally emerged from the plane, she turned her almond eyes toward Jacob and scrutinized him hard. “So. You’re Jacob.”
Stunned, Jacob did not immediately respond. Finally, he said, “You’re not what I expected.”
Kathy turned to Danny. “What’s the problem?”
He grinned impishly. “I always called you ‘Boss.’”
For a long moment, Jacob continued to stare, wondering whether he should make this sale to a chick and an underage kid. But there was a challenge in Kathy’s eyes, an intrigue. Already the rules had changed, the energy different, the possibility of her body part of the deal. He couldn’t resist.
“You ready to take a look?” he asked.
When they arrived at the stash house, Jacob watched Kathy move around the room and recognized her as one of his own. Her hair flowed freely along her back and fell across her shoulders as she moved from bag to bag, leaning over to take a professional look at what was inside. Her movement was a dance. When she spoke, she was straightforward, warm, self-assured, perfectly at home.
“Danny, you’re right once again!” she exclaimed. “Amazing. Loose buds!”
“We’re going to sell it by the pound rather than the kilo,” Jacob told her.
“Well, a lot of things are going to be different working with this stuff.” She was still looking through the sacks, thinking, recalculating. “It’s bulky. I won’t be able to hide it in my truck panels while traveling. And the weighing will make sales different.” Then she looked up, a sparkle in her eyes. “But I can tell you, it’ll be worth the extra hassle.”
The back door opened and Jacob stiffened, until he saw it was Matt standing at the kitchen door. Matt cast a startled glance at Kathy, then gave Jacob a hard stare. They had an unwritten law: No women in the warehouse.
“She’s not with me,” Jacob told the surly glance. “This is Kathy. She’s here to purchase the hundred kilos.”
Kathy stopped her rummaging through the sacks to stand and regard Matt. Then, spreading her arms and giving him a brilliant smile, she cried, “Looks like you had a good trip. Great smoke! I can’t wait to get this on the street!”
Matt nodded, slowly realizing that Kathy was the ‘Boss’. Responding to her open goodwill, his tense face suddenly broke into a grin. “How much do you think you’ll want?”
The smile was the first real smile Jacob had seen on Matt’s face in a while. In fact, thinking about it now, he hadn’t seen Matt really happy since he’d split up his partnership with Christian, two years ago. Since that time, Matt had been constantly running keys, paranoia part of the job. He never seemed to be able to relax enough to get off the edge. But Jacob was beginning to get a sense of Kathy’s vibe, her possibilities, a sense that she cared about things. There was something real about her, beyond self-interest. He was rather amazed to see her put Matt immediately at ease.
“I’ve got ten grand,” Jacob heard her say. And he raised an eyebrow, realizing that Matt’s gamble was already paying off. The hundred keys she had originally wanted had more than tripled.
“They’re yours,” Matt told her without hesitating. “Your van’s here. Do you have the money with you?”
Jacob waited while Kathy opened her bag and took out the bills, neatly bundled with rubber bands around each stack of a thousand. Turning to him, she looked into his eyes and put the money in his hands. The energy that passed between them was high, the sale an act of pure privacy, something between only the two of them. Until this point, everything had been conjecture, posturing, bargaining. But now that he’d sold to her, he felt like they’d just made it.
“There’s about twenty pounds to a sack,” Matt said.
Suddenly, Kathy became efficient. “I want each sack weighed before we leave. That way we’ll both know what I’ve walked out with. Danny, you start the weighing. I’ll help Jacob count the money.”
Hours later, the sacks weighed and loaded, Danny slid the van’s side door closed.
“Jesus,” he said, a touch of panic in his voice, “if we’re stopped for any reason, we’re goners. The smell alone will betray us.”
“It’s almost three o’clock in the morning,” Jacob told them. “I wouldn’t suggest hitting the road at his hour. The streets are too well patrolled. Spend the night and start in the morning. The van’ll be safe here ’til the
n.”
Kathy listened to Jacob’s advice, hesitated, and looked at her watch for confirmation. 2:45. She’d been smoking all night and was nearly dead. But she didn’t know these men. What if they took her away and refused to return with her. She’d never find this place again. She’d lose both the van and the bucks. She couldn’t risk it.
“Thanks,” she nodded at Jacob. “But we need to get going.”
But Danny shook his head. “He’s right. We’d be sitting ducks for a pullover.”
She’d already had one run in with the police tonight. Had it been a warning? Slow down, the officer had said.
“Alright,” she nodded slowly.
Matt’s house was only a short drive away, but he drove in circles, doubling back, stopping, until Kathy knew she would never be able to find the warehouse on her own. She closed her eyes, pictured the Buddha again, and put herself into the hands of whatever was to be her fate. When they finally parked in front of a weather-beaten cottage across the street from the beach, she was calmer.
Once inside, his body slumped and exhausted, Matt threw himself into a chair. “There’s beer in the refrigerator, if anyone’s interested.”
“I’d rather have tea,” Kathy answered, “if you have it.”
“Come on,” Jacob told her. “I’ll show you where the pots are.”
Water was heating on the stove, the only sound the humming light fixture overhead. Jacob looked as if he were trying to find something important to say to her, something to break the silence of the room. He was shuffling his feet, shifting his weight, when Kathy said, “Jacob, I’ve been thinking. What do you intend to do with the rest of the weed you have?”
He looked at her as if the question were stupid. “Sell it.”
“In Berkeley?”
“Some of it. Why?”
“Why not let me sell it for you? If you bring it up, what would the price be?”
“I hadn’t thought about that yet.”
“After I sell my stuff, I’d like to try and off the rest of this load. I know you’ll raise the price, but I think people will pay more for this kind of smoke.”
“How long have you been doing this?” he asked, pulling a chair out from the table and straddling it, thinking about the offer.
“About a year.”
“You’re not doing bad.”
“How about you?”
“Four years. Maybe you’d like to come by my house in Berkeley?”
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
Kathy carried the cup of tea to the front room and took a seat on the couch. From the French doors, she could see the surf, a dull gray in dim moonlight. The roll of the water soothed her. The cup was warm in her hands.
“You must have been copping from someone before,” Jacob said to her.
“From an old friend. But your price is better. Where’s this load from?”
“Michoacán. Near Lake Chapala.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, she felt wistful, small. “I knew someone staying there once, but it was a year ago. Jim Barnes. We went to school together.”
“Jim Barnes?” Matt asked. “Sort of sandy-blond hair? The guy I’m thinking of everybody called a ‘politico’?”
Kathy’s eyes widened. She sat up. “Yeah … yeah … maybe.”
“The federales came through the American camps at the end of last summer. They arrested all the men on vagrancy and drug charges. Then sent the women and children back to the States. The officials always expect the women to pay huge fees in American dollars to get the men out. Most of them were released right away, but Jim and one or two others spent a couple of months in jail.”
Jail? He left Louisiana so he wouldn’t have to go to jail.
“Apparently, they couldn’t raise bail for a while. But he’s out now. He’s somewhere in the States.”
Kathy walked to the French doors and glanced toward the ocean once again. Waves sprayed along the sand, first a violent rush, then a peaceful calm, until the next wave. Abruptly, she was moving, picking up her jacket. “I think I’ll take a walk. I just need to think for a while.”
“Want some company?” Jacob asked. “I can be quiet.”
The sand was cool and damp on her bare feet. A breeze pushed at her hair. A wave washed up, curled over her toes—cold—and ebbed away. As it fell back into the ocean, all the longing she had felt for Jim fell back with it, disappearing into the vast black sea.
I don’t love Jim. I never really did. He’s only a memory now. A dream belonging to the past. A part of the first frightening steps of my own independence. I fulfilled his prophecy. I’ve outgrown him.
“You’re smiling,” Jacob told her.
Kathy laughed and reached out to link her arm through his as they walked. “I just learned something about myself.”
“Want to sleep in my bed this evening?”
The question did not take her by surprise. What surprised her was the certainty of her own answer. She chose clearly, consciously. Jacob was a good match for her. They were equals.
Still laughing, she leaned a bit closer to his ear so he might hear over the rush of the waves, and in the moment before the next crash of surf, said softly, “Yes.”
Once Kathy was back in Berkeley, the roughly seven hundred pounds of weed she’d gambled on in San Diego went quickly. And when her original purchase was gone, Jacob agreed to let her sell what she could of the larger load. In fact, he was curious to learn just what she could do.
Over the next few weeks, she and Danny weighed and transported as fast as orders came in. More than once, there were repeats. People who usually bought five kilos a month came back a week later for five more, then ten more. Others, who took ten, went home and gathered enough bread for twenty. Kevin took a hundred. David, fifty on the first buy, a hundred on the second. Andy introduced her to a few friends from back east and hundreds of pounds left the city, the buyers anxious to shop this new product around New York City, Detroit, and Chicago. By the time David finally told Richard that it was Kathy who was dropping loose buds into the scene, he’d come to her hat in hand, only to be politely told that she was sorry, they were all sold. And they were.
Jacob had transported most of the load to Berkeley, and each time she came back to him, he raised the price. First by ten dollars a pound, to forty dollars. Then to fifty dollars—obviously experimenting to see what the market would bear. The price finally held steady at sixty dollars a pound, about a hundred and twenty dollars a kilo, an enormous figure when pressed kilos had sold in quantity for between thirty and fifty dollars a brick, but the idea of loose, powerful buds covered with resin had caught on. By the time the load ran out, Kathy had helped move most of the ton. A lot of her effort had been long hours of tedious work, but when it was over, she knew with certainty that she could play with the big boys. Now she had the capital to match any of the old-time dealers from Haight Street.
All due to Danny. Eager and alert for new outlets. Lifting and weighing and sweeping the shake. Delivering trunk loads of buds.
It’s time he became a full partner, she knew. Danny, I really owe.
The day after the last kilo was sold, Kathy stepped into a phone booth and dialed the old Tucson number she knew by heart. Time to bury the past, and her anger with it, for what was the past but a stepping-stone to what you could become. Hadn’t that been the lesson of Jim? Anger was a dark cloud, heavy with ego, and an uncomfortably barbed load to carry.
“Kathy!” Larry said over the phone. “Where the fuck you been, lady?”
“I’ve just been busy.”
“I heard. Richard called me.”
Kathy wasn’t going to rub it in. “I’m thinking of going to Mexico for a week. I thought you might like to come with me. My Spanish skills could use some practice.”
The week with Larry in Mexico stretched to ten days, and finally into two weeks. After exploring Guadalajara, they rented a car, driving south to Lake Chapala, then north into the mountains, and finally west to the ocean and
Puerto Vallarta. The beach at Mismaloya was salty green water, surf, and tide pools, the days long and lazy, a time for taking acid in the sun, lolling in the surf, and pure ecstasy, their lovemaking different, relaxed, exploring each other in untried ways, sweat and wetness mixed with balmy tropical smells and the odor of fresh Mexican weed.
“We could run away,” Larry said to her as they lay on the beach covered with suntan oil. “We could just disappear and never go back. Stay here. Do you think anyone would ever miss us?”
“Probably no one.”
“Too bad I left my fortune in Tucson.”
“Too bad.”
“I’d share the ranch with you.” His voice was suddenly serious.
“You’ve already got an old lady.”
Larry said nothing.
“Larry,” Kathy turned to look at him. “When was the last time you and Carolyn tripped together?”
“Carolyn’s never taken acid.”
Stunned, Kathy lifted herself up on one elbow to look at him.
“You know,” he said quietly, “I think I’ve been living in some mystic dream.” He lay on his back, covering his eyes with his arm as if he were actually watching that dream behind closed lids. “When I was in San Francisco, it was ‘the earthquake’ that would destroy the city, and we were the chosen people who would carry on. Or, maybe it was going to be nuclear war, and we’d survive because we’d gone back to the earth. Maybe some biological or chemical warfare accident would do everyone in. Since the world was going to end, it didn’t matter much how we lived. It was day by day. But lately, I’ve begun to realize something.”
“What’s that?” she asked softly.
“The world’s not going to end,” he said matter-of-factly, as if his pronouncement made it so. He sat up and looked at her. “I’ve got a lot of money, and I don’t even know what to do with it. I want to start thinking to five years from now. I want children.” Then almost sadly, “The business is getting old. The paranoia. Wondering who to trust. Asking yourself how long you can go on doing this. Sooner or later, you’re hot and they come for you. That reminds me … you haven’t copped from me in eight weeks.”
A Nation of Mystics - Book II: The Tribe Page 11
