High-Step, earning his commission, handed the bag to Cordell. It was heavy, felt like twenty pounds. Cordell untied the knot in the trunk of his Z28, pulled the plastic back, looked in and picked up a handful of sappy weed, smelled like it could send you to a far-off galaxy.
“What you think?” Alejo said. “You like?”
Yeah, he liked. Took twenty $100 bills out of his back pocket and handed the wad to Alejo. Alejo speed-counted it and gave Cordell back $200.
“You discount, man.”
That’s how Cordell’s new enterprise had started. He took the weed back to his apartment in West Palm, filled plastic bags and weighed them on his new scale, got twenty lids per pound, four hundred total. At $15 each that was $6,000. It went fast too, Cordell making the rounds in Fort Lauderdale, the Elbow Room, the Student Prince and Penrods, selling to longhaired, pea-eyed hippies who looked like they were already in orbit, and vacationing students who wanted to get there. Everybody interested in a lid of Grade A, no-bullshit Colombian, smoke it, you’d be under the influence of a higher power.
A second market that looked promising was the crowd at the Windjammer, tap into the young rich professionals. Cordell sat at the bar next to a dude in a starched white dress shirt, unbuttoned to his navel, drinking a Salty Dog. Cordell said, “How you doing? Like to get high?”
“You taking a poll, or selling?” dude wearing a gold Rolex said.
“It’s Colombian,” Cordell said. “Sends you up like NASA.”
“When I smoke grass it’s Acapulco Gold,” the dude said, getting all haughty.
“I’m impressed,” Cordell said. “Shit I got makes Acapulco Gold smoke like oregano, man.”
“How much?”
“Thirty dollars an ounce, limit four ounces per customer,” Cordell said and grinned.
“Why is there a limit?”
“Shit’s so good I can’t be responsible what happens to you.”
“Got it with you?”
Cordell sold the whole batch, four hundred lids in a couple days, and was on the phone to Alejo. “I’m out, man. Got more? I’ll take fifty pounds this time.”
“That’s a lot of woo woo,” Alejo said.
“Got a lot of people want to get high.”
They agreed to meet at the farm again. No High-Step this time, just Cordell and the nickel-plate semiautomatic under the seat, in case he needed back-up. He looked in the rearview, tires on the dirt road kicking up a trail of dust, getting the blue Z28 with white stripes all dirty, just had it washed.
Alejo and Jhonny were waiting in Alejo’s black Road Runner when he pulled up next to the barn. The Colombians got out, Jhonny popped the trunk, reached in and pulled out two garbage bags, brought them over to Cordell. He opened them and checked the shit, smelled just like the last batch. Cordell gave Alejo fifty $100 bills, and that was that.
Drove back to his apartment in West Palm and went to work. He’d filled and weighed twenty-five bags when the phone rang. Cordell picked it up said, “Yo?”
“It’s Joyce.” Kinda quiet voice like she didn’t want no one to hear what she was sayin’. Cordell thinking, Joyce. Joyce who?
“I need your help. The Nazi’s back,” he thought she said, sounding upset, talking fast.
Okay, now he got it. “Yo, Joyce, slow down, tell me what’s going on.”
She was afraid, asked Cordell to come pick her up and she would explain everything. Man, this was bad timing, but then he thought, hold on, be cool. He could put her in the guest room, free room and board, she could help with the operation. Bagging and weighing weed you could teach a monkey to do, and Joyce, from what he remembered, was fairly intelligent. Not that he knew her all that well. But they had this connection.
Cordell left everything where it was, drove to Palm Beach and picked her up. She was waiting in the lobby. He walked her out, Joyce all nervous, looking around while Cordell put her suitcase in the trunk. On the way back to the apartment Joyce told him what had happened, and Cordell thought it was hard to believe. He’d seen the Nazi on the kitchen floor with a bullet hole in his chest, and if the motherfucker wasn’t dead, man was a vampire. But he didn’t say nothin’. Joyce helped him one time so he was going to help her back.
Cordell opened the apartment door and knew something was wrong. The green plaid drape on one side of the window had been pushed through the broken glass and was blowing in the wind. Joyce was looking at it too, and then at him, could read his expression, see something wasn’t right.
“What happened?”
“Look like somebody broke in.”
He stepped in the apartment behind Joyce, put her suitcase on the floor and closed the door.
“You don’t think they’re still here?”
Cordell didn’t answer, he was moving into the room, seeing the twenty-five lids he’d left on the table, gone, plastic garbage bags on the floor, gone too. All he could think of was the Colombians. Who else? Followed him from the farm. They had his money and now they had the woo woo. Sell it again to some other dumbass, steal it back. But it didn’t make sense. Okay, they took five grand off him. But could’ve made ten times that or more dealing with him straight up. They had the weed and he had the clientele. Cordell went into the kitchen, got on his knees on the yellow-and-white linoleum, pulled out the strip of wood under the cabinets, grabbed the money, twenty-five grand, and the nickel-plate semiautomatic, thinking, call High-Step, find out where the Colombians was at, settle up. But what about Joyce?
She came in, stood over him and said, “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”
“Colombians stole my weed.”
With that Joyce started crying. “Tell me this isn’t happening.” Cordell got up, put his arms around her and said, “There, there now. Everything gonna be okay.”
Stark phoned early evening, gave Harry the flights Hess, alias Gerd Klaus, had taken.
“Flew Stuttgart-London on Lufthansa, September twenty-eighth. Had a two-hour layover. Flew London-Detroit on Pan Am, arriving on the twenty-ninth, checked into the Statler Hotel downtown.”
“Amazing,” Harry said, writing the information down on a lined yellow pad. “How do you do it?”
“I have friends in high places,” Stark said. Harry could hear him drawing on a cigarette and blowing out the smoke. “Tell me what’s going on. I thought this guy was dead.”
“Well, evidently there’s been an eyewitness account of his resurrection.”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t see how it’s possible. I told you what happened.” Harry assumed Joyce was just being paranoid.
“I remember,” Stark said. “Who could survive that?” He paused. “What’s it have to do with this information I just got for you?”
“Nothing,” Harry said. “That’s something else.”
“But, I suspect, related.”
“Could be.”
Harry hung up, ripped the paper off the pad and handed it to Colette. “Find the locker and you might have your next story.”
“What do you think is in it?”
Joyce called again while they were having dinner.
“Harry, I’m sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a problem.” She told him about the Colombians. “I can’t stay here, Harry.”
“Go to a friend’s,” Harry said. “Go to a hotel till I can get down there.” He paused. “Put Cordell on, will you?”
“He wants to talk to you,” Joyce’s voice sounding faint.
“Yo, Harry, my man. How’s everything in the Motor City?”
“You’re back at it, huh?”
“It’s the only trade I know.”
“I don’t want Joyce involved in this.”
“She ain’t involved. You involved?” Cordell said to Joyce. “No she ain’t involved.”
“Get her out of there, will you?”