The Financial Lives of the Poets (15 page)

I think about the craggy old farmers I used to interview about falling wheat prices—and I wonder if any of them lived in these houses with moonshine basements converted into marijuana tunnels. Perhaps they’ve been growing pot in this maze of basements for decades.

Monte tells me that his brother Chet lives in one of the houses. The other is a rental that he owns and the renters are friends who aren’t allowed access to the basement, which is boarded up and padlocked. Monte keeps the rent low and pays the renters’ high electrical bills. Every electrical appliance in the houses is the highest efficiency and all of the houses have empty hot tubs or RVs parked outside, in case someone starts sniffing around about the high power bills. Managing power bills is the key to the whole industry, he explains. Drug agents routinely look for big surges in the power grid to find grow operations, so Monte disperses the power bills not only between the houses on this block, but also to the two businesses behind his house, on Main Street: the small engine repair place and the camera and watch shop—both of which can hide higher power bills easier than a residential property.

“So you own those, too?” I ask.

“No, no,” he says, “they’re just friendly businesses. We run power lines from their shops to a few of the grow rooms. In exchange, I pay double their power bill every month.”

“Monte keeps them businesses alive,” Jamie says from the doorway. “Dude’s like the last industry in town.”

Monte’s high round cheeks instantly go red; this amateur botanist drug kingpin is so easily embarrassed.

The whole operation is fascinating to me, and yet there’s something about all of this that is bothering me, too—and not what
should
be bothering me, that I’m matter-of-factly taking a tour of a sophisticated,
illegal
grow operation. No, I can’t help wondering something else.

Monte looks back down the dark hallway. “Come on,” he says. I follow him and Jamie back into the rec room. Then Monte closes up Weedland, and we move upstairs.

Dave rejoins us and we sit around the Formica table—Jamie and me on one side, Monte and Dave on the other. Monte’s chair strains beneath his considerable weight.

Chet circles back in, still on his phone, and opens the refrigerator again. “Bullshit…Come on…Not possible…It’s bullshit, that’s why…Come on.”

I glance over at Jamie, who is glaring at Chet through angry, squinted eyes, like a dog about to pounce.

“Chet!” Monte calls. “What’s the matter with you?”

Chet turns to his brother, and shrugs. Then he closes the fridge and moves out of the room onto an enclosed back porch. “Bullshit,” he says on his way out. “Come on, no way.”

When the door closes, Monte smiles. He rests his big red-raw steak-slab hands on the table. “When Dave and Jamie told me about you, I wanted to meet you right away. Nine grand is an impressive first buy.”

“’Course we did a background check on you—make sure you weren’t a cop,” Dave says.

Monte shifts nervously, as if afraid that I’ll be angry at this invasion of my privacy. “We Googled you is all,” he says.

Drug Dealer Dave shoots a glance, perturbed at Botany Monte for popping the illusion of an intensive background search. These guys are worse than Lisa and me, with their glances back and forth, their miscommunications, halting awkward affection for one another. “Anyway,” Monte continues, “we’re excited by your contacts, the new markets you might open up. We’ve always thought there was a…a…”

Dave finishes for him. “A demographic we weren’t reaching.”

Monte glances at Jamie. “I mean, the people we use now are great, but Dave and I always thought there were people outside the usual smokers we know. Older people, people with good jobs and money, people who used to smoke and maybe would again if there was a safe place to buy it. And you’re just the kind of guy Dave says would know ’em: Respectable. Not flashy. No criminal record, no reason for the police to suspect you of anything, no tattoos or drug habits or unsavory associations—”

As much as I wish I could stop myself, I can’t, and at the words
tattoos, drug habits and unsavory associations,
I glance over at Jamie. He is chewing gum, his neck tattoo twitching at every chomp. He pushes his glasses up on his nose and smiles at me.

“—Like I told Dave, if you can come up with nine grand for a first buy? That’s a guy we should be in long-term business with.”

“I appreciate that,” I say. This all seems oddly formal. “But I should tell you: I’m only going to do this a little while, until I get a few things paid off, get back on my feet.”

“Sure,” Monte says. “Sure. But—” And then he leans back in his chair and the legs on the chair splay just a bit, gritting on the old linoleum floor. I worry the old chair is going to snap. “Dave, do you want to—”

And with that, Drug Dealer Dave leaves again. This must be when I get my dope.

Instead, Monte hands me a small pipe and lighter and I fire one up, feel that first hot burn in my throat and then the sweet smoke. Ah yes. There it is. Two hits and I set the pipe on the table. I feel better already.

Monte holds out his hands.

I take the envelope of money from my pocket—and feel a tug of regret (there it goes). Monte doesn’t count it. The money just disappears in his coat. Then Monte rises, goes to a kitchen drawer, opens it and takes out a quart Ziploc bag (Stoned stock analyst side-note: Watch for SC Johnson and Sons—makers of those popular Ziploc bags—to go public) with a big cigar-sized roll of rich green buds in the bottom. He also removes a baby scale, which he puts on the kitchen table. He sets the baggie on the scale and I see that it’s three ounces. Then he hands me the baggie and takes his chair again.

“I need a little time to get the rest of it together,” Monte says. “You can’t just pull two-and-a-half-pounds off the shelves. And I needed to make sure you actually
had
the money.” He shrugs apologetically. “Tomorrow night, you pick Jamie up, come out here and get the rest. That’s a little taste. Three ounces. I’ll take it out of the two-and-a-half.”

“Just enough for your glaucoma,” Jamie says, and laughs.

I’m a little confused, and feel stupid that I let them take my money. I wonder if that’s why he had me smoke first—to loosen me up. And why’d they have me all the way out here if they were only going to give me three ounces? Why couldn’t I wait and pay him tomorrow? I shift…there’s a hole in my side where that big stack of money sat.

Monte holds the pipe up. “You good?”

I say that I am and he puts the pipe away in that giant file cabinet of a parka. “Put that away,” Monte says, and so I put the three ounces of weed in my messenger bag. Then Monte yells, “Dave!” and Dave comes back in with his briefcase again and I think, Oh great, more contracts, but instead he pulls out an envelope that is red-stamped
Confidential.
He slides it across the Formica table to me. “I trust you’ll keep this between us.”

“What is it?”

“A kind of…prospectus. A business plan. The real reason we wanted you to come out here tonight. Now, obviously, you can’t take this with you. You have to just read it here.”

A prospectus? What kind of drug dealers have a prospectus? I glance over at Jamie. He is unflappable, never looks confused, but also never seems to entirely grasp what is going on around him. Maybe he
should
be a writer.

I look at Dave, and then back at Monte, who has that same tentative, eager-to-please look on his round, red face. He runs bratwurst fingers through his side-parted hair. “Everything you’d need to know is in there.”

Then, as I’m still trying to understand, Chet comes back through the room, eternally talking on the phone: “No fuckin’ way.” He opens the refrigerator and grabs a beer.

“Chet!” snaps Monte again.

“You gotta be kidding,” Chet says into his phone, waving his older brother off. “No fuckin’ way. You gotta be kidding.” And then Chet is gone. I’m actually starting to wish Jamie
would
crack his skull.

I turn back to Dave. “Why do I need a prospectus to buy weed?”

Dave pokes Monte in the big parka. Nods at him.

“There’s something I’d like you to consider,” Monte says. And he looks at Dave again. “I’m looking for someone…I mean…Ask yourself this: why go on buying milk when you could have your own cow?”

I look from Dave to Monte. “Because…I don’t want a cow?”

Dave puts a hand on Monte’s arm. “What Monte’s trying to say is that you should think about buying the farm.”

I laugh. But they’re serious. I look from Monte to Dave, to Monte again. Yes. They are serious. “I really just want a little milk. I don’t want a cow.”

Dave shakes his head. “Look, that wasn’t the best analogy. But you really should consider this…it’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer.”

And I don’t know what makes me ask this, maybe the bowl I’ve smoked, maybe simple curiosity: “How much?”

“Well,” Monte says, a little embarrassed. “I’d like to get four million.”

“Dollars?” And I laugh again.

Dave sits back, crosses his arms. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously, Slippers.”

“No,” I say, “I’m certainly
not
taking it seriously. No way I’m going to buy a four-million-dollar drug business.”

Monte looks hurt again, those cheeks venting pink. “It’s worth a lot more than that.”

And, as I’m thinking of the falling value of my own home, Dave taps the prospectus in my hands. “After costs, Monte nets upwards of a million a year. You’d recoup the entire purchase price in four years. With his old buyers, you increase the market even a little? You could do two million a year…pay it off in even less time.”

I have no idea what to say. What do you say to an offer like this? You go in to buy a Chrysler and they try to sell you the whole lot, the whole company? “This is why you had me out here? To try to sell me your drug business?”

“The four million includes equipment, property, plants, everything,” Monte says. “And two weeks of transition and training.”

“And you’re not just buying a business.” Dave says. “You get all of Monte’s knowledge, his accounts, access to markets. You get an experienced lawyer—me. And Monte will agree to a noncompete clause so you don’t have to worry that he’ll just go start up another operation somewhere.”

I stare at them. They’re serious. “Look, guys. Even if I
was
interested, which I’m definitely
not,
I don’t know what makes you think I have four million dollars sitting around.”

Dave has a quick answer for this. “Monte would carry the contract. I’d arrange it through a foreign bank. You put something down as good faith, say fifteen percent, and after that, Monte gets a percentage of your sales until you pay it off. It would be like making payments, like any home purchase, except rather than paying your mortgage off in thirty years, you could pay if off in four or five. And make a sweet living in the meantime. Tax free.”

“If it’s such a sweet living, why is he selling?”

I think Monte might cry. He shoots a quick glance at Dave and then says, “I’m tired,” his voice cracking. “I’ve been doing this six years. It wears on you. It’s a young man’s game.”

Dave puts a hand on Monte’s arm.
Don’t mess this up.
“It does wear on you…but while you’re enduring the stress, you can make a lot of money. We’ve managed to put away well over a million dollars for Monte’s retirement.”

It’s quiet in the kitchen, long enough for the irony to register: I’ve been working in the “legitimate economy” for twenty-some years and my retirement amounts to four hundred bucks in the bank and the two-and-a-quarter pounds of knock-off weed I have to come back here tomorrow to pick up.

Monte nods. “I’m going to Mexico. I’m freaked out by the direction of the country. I think we’re headed toward global socialism. This isn’t the America I grew up in.”

I just stare. The high is descending on me like drawn curtains. I smile. What do you say to a drug dealer afraid of socialism?

Monte shifts in his big parka. “I want to spend the money I’ve made but I don’t want what I’ve built to fall apart. I’m proud of it.” He looks at the door. “Chet wants it, but he’d be in jail two weeks after I left.” Monte leans forward to confide in me. “He’s kind of a moron.”

Jamie laughs.

“Why me?”

“Monte has wanted to get out for a while,” Dave says. He shrugs. “He has some stress issues, anxiety attacks.”

“I can’t sleep anymore,” Monte says, and his eyes tear up. “I had a nervous breakdown.”

Perfect business for me.

Dave goes on: “So when Jamie told us he met a businessman who could buy real weight, we talked about it, and I said, ‘Hey…maybe this is our guy. He seems perfect for it.’”

It makes me realize just how low I’ve sunk in my unemployed funk, that it’s actually flattering to hear that I’m perfect for something, anything—even a drug operation. “First of all, I’m not a businessman. I was a business
reporter.
Look, I never made more than sixty thousand a year in my job.”

Monte and Dave look at one another; slight winces.

“And I don’t even have a job right now.”

“You’ll find something,” says Jamie. “You’re smart.”

I laugh and rub my brow, sort of touched by Jamie’s confidence in me. “Shouldn’t you guys…I don’t know…sell to criminals?”

“You can’t just look up the Russian mob in the Yellow Pages,” Dave says. “And you can’t put something like this on craigslist. And most of our customers—” He glances at Jamie “—aren’t the kind of people who could come up with that kind of money.”

I look from red face to red face. Fat Monte: confused, a little paranoid, flushed. Pocked Dave: intent, brewing, scheming. Jamie: chewing gum.

And I think of…Lisa. She loves to shop for houses we can’t afford. On weekends she used to like going to open houses for two- and three-million-dollar homes. We’d park down the block so they couldn’t see we were driving a Nissan and we’d try to look like BMW people, and then we’d walk through these big, grand homes and pretend to be considering whether the indoor lap pool was big enough for our kids (when they came home from boarding school); whether the subzero refrigerator and double Viking commercial oven would work for the gourmet meals our staff prepared for dinner parties with our country club friends. (I’d occasionally crack from the pressure and say something stupid: “I like the double oven; we could put fish sticks on one side and crinkle fries on the other.”) Lisa was the master at looking these shit-for-sure real estate agents in the eye, conveying,
You bet your ass we belong.
In fact, she always looks like she belongs. Maybe I just miss her, but I find myself wishing she was with me on this conversation, helping me seem as if I can afford a four-million-dollar grow operation.