35
SHE FELT stapled to the recliner across from three young diggers on her tattered sofa, beneath which she’d hid almost $14,000. The floor between them was mined with Subway wrappers, Burger King sacks and Pizza Hut boxes, the coffee table an avalanche of grease-stained magazines and unopened mail. Why was her bedroom door wide open, or as wide as it could get without plowing into jeans, bras and towels? Her bed looked ransacked. Had she dozed off? She recalled snatches of conversation, but who with?
There were four of them now, sharing a joint and talking high on the inhale like kids sucking helium. The couch boys looked like they’d survived a dust storm together. Looking closer, she recognized one—Maniac—she couldn’t stand. The clean, older guy on the footstool was familiar, too: Duval. When he pitched forward to load a bong, a pistol grip rose from his coat pocket like an Afro comb.
What time was it, anyway?
When she’d moved in almost two months ago, she never saw the diggers. That was how it was supposed to be. They entered from the rear, had their own toilet and weren’t even supposed to come in for water. Toby told her they were digging a subterranean grow twice the size of the one with all the ducks. He’d move her again, he promised, before a single seed was planted. Meanwhile, he said, just stay clear of the barn; the less you know, the more convincing your innocence. You’re renting the place to be near your sick father and have no idea what, if anything, the owner does in his barn.
But the less Toby was around, the more his rules were ignored, and he hadn’t spent the night since the helicopter fiasco. He’d apologized repeatedly for hitting on her so clumsily and had barely touched her since. But he gave her more work than ever, and she knew it wouldn’t be completely over until he let her quit.
Diggers shuffled in and out now as if she ran a halfway house for construction stoners. It was almost fun at first, having people to play with at any hour, though the crew kept changing. When one of them rotated his shoulders, she noticed the heft and snout of another gun.
“Everyone knows a CIA lab in Laos refined heroin in the seventies,” Duval began, as if answering a question. “Then they used Noriega, of course, to trade guns for coke with the Contras in the eighties. Remember that? And in the nineties, it’s undisputed that the agency supplied the camels to haul opium to labs along the Afghan-Paki border. So why would the U.S. allow the legalization of cannabis when it knows it would forfeit its ability to manipulate the world?”
“But like what does pot have to do with all that?” one of the dust-balls asked. “I mean, ya know, what does—”
“Everything starts with cannabis,” Duval explained. “Everything.”
“Amen,” Maniac said. “She gets too f*cked up.”
Her eyelids fluttered. Who else could he be talking about?
“He needs to either get her out of here or …”
She couldn’t hear what he said next, but then Duval added, “Well, she didn’t get here by keeping her legs crossed.”
By the time her eyes snapped open Toby had sprung through the front door, shadowed by Fisher.
“Let’s go,” Fisher told the diggers, and Toby rummaged around in the kitchen for a clean water glass. “Drive slow.” He wheeled a hand to get them moving. “And stay off Zero.”
The dustballs exited swiftly, as if trying to slip out before Toby finished hand-washing a glass to his satisfaction. He then opened two windows and stood before her, sipping water as if it were gin. “Told you not to party in here, and didn’t I say there should never be any bud on the premises? Could’ve sworn I said that.” He turned to Fisher, then swung back to her. “Or am I losing my mind?”
“You’d know better than I would.”
He stared at her, then strolled to her bedroom, nursing the water, pushing the door and looking down at the laundry. “You better start taking better care of yourself.”
“Or?” she asked, still startled by what the stoners had said. She cleared her throat, realizing she might cry, and held out callused and lacerated fingers. “Who else is gonna grow your goddamn plants?”
He raised a hand of his own, as if to slap her, then just said, “Please.”
Her payouts were half of what they used to be. He blamed a slumping U.S. dollar but, according to Fisher, it had more to do with Vancouver ops getting ripped off, which had only intensified Toby’s mole hunt.
“A little birdy just informed me about something.” He rocked his skull from side to side like a prizefighter. “Your clumsy childhood pal, as you’ve described him, intercepted another load tonight. Imagine that. A big one, too. An important one.”
“Three hundred and twenty thou,” Fisher added, “and thirteen—”
Toby cut him off with an eyebrow, then examined her. “Talk to him recently? No? Well, you might ask what tipped him off because there were no sensors, no cameras, no nothing. We’ve never lost a load through that swamp before. So he obviously got a tip, eh? Or are you gonna suggest it’s just dumb luck again?” He stepped closer, head swiveling, eyes wiggling. “I didn’t realize you’d dated Monty. Some coincidence, isn’t it? Your clumsy pal stumbles upon a smuggler you went out with?”
She glanced at Fisher, who wouldn’t make eye contact, and cleared her throat again.
“Having trouble speaking?” Toby asked. “Get you some water?”
“I haven’t talked to Brandon since that lunch I told you all about.” It was hard not to slur.
Toby shaped his left hand like a pistol and pointed it at her chest. “If your friend’s as unassuming as you say, why not just ask him where he’s getting all his tips? I should think you’d be motivated to help me find that answer.”
“I’ve got a couple questions of my own,” she rasped.
“By all means.”
“What happened to your no-pesticides policy?”
Bruised skin twitched beneath his left eye. In the background, Fisher was patting the air and shaking his head, mouthing, not tonight.
“And what about your no-weapons policy?” she asked. “What happened to that?”
“Let me know what Brandon says,” Toby said after a long stare, then led Fisher out the door.
A half hour later, she braced herself against the kitchen sink and listened to her messages. One from Nicole reminding her of their father’s birthday party. The nerve. Another from Helen at the nursery, wondering if she was still sick. Her father had called as well, “just checking in,” trying not to sound worried. She looked through the window and across the border to where the Crawfords’ and the Moffats’ lights were burning. Beyond them, the Vanderkools’ porch bulb. And was the basement light on too? She splashed her face and chugged water from the faucet, rinsing her mouth and soaking her hair, then walked outside.