He touched the part in his hair.
“So it gets left to people like me, people with influence, with some infrastructure of their own, people with money, it gets left to us to, hell, to make sure something is, something is left. That’s not right. That’s not my job. No one elected me. But hell, it’s got to be done. Someone has to do something. We can’t just walk away from the table, throw up our hands, say, ‘I’m out.’ This is what’s fallen to me, this is my duty, and I won’t shirk it.”
He turned the empty glass in his hands.
“Sorry. It’s late. I’m tired. Sometimes the frustration just comes out. It’s. It’s hard to look at the world and. It’s hard.”
He set the glass on the little table next to his chair.
“We were talking about Junior. And his interpretation of business. Long story shorter, I should have paid more attention, trusted my gut, said no. He turned it into a game. That crazy distribution, the caches, making people, sleepless or their family members or friends, stumble around town with RFID scanners looking for hidden bottles of Dreamer. Like it was a damn Easter egg hunt. And of course he lost interest, anyway. Just let someone else run the whole thing for him. Supposed to turn the money around, put it back in, buy more Dreamer, put it on the market, take his margin and do whatever he wanted with it. Put it in that sad club. I don’t know. But he didn’t. None of that money came back, not to pay the advance I gave him to acquire the first pallets, not to buy more. It was a small loss in terms of A-ND, but it needed to be covered. I did it out of my own personal accounts. On principle. It was my mistake. I paid for it. And I confronted the boy, told him to return what hadn’t been sold. Make good his debts. He offered me a spreadsheet of GPS coordinates. Told me he wasn’t even getting paid for most of the Dreamer. He was trading it outright for goods to equip his gaming teams. Bartering for ‘character art.’ Other things I didn’t understand. To my shame, I slapped him. Never did that before. Don’t believe anything good comes of striking your flesh and blood. And, well, that was that. It didn’t matter much what he was doing with the Dreamer once I covered the loss. His distribution method is slow, inefficient, and cruel, but you are correct, it’s nearly invisible. I asked some people in law enforcement to keep an eye on the streets, told them that some Dreamer might have leaked from the system. They understood. Set something up so they’d know if rumors started spreading, make sure the general public didn’t find out. Word got out that my son was dealing Dreamer, half the country would likely get burned down by the other half. We’re just that close to the edge of what people can understand and endure without running mad in the streets. And. And that’s about it. Pathetic is how it sounds. When I say it all aloud.”
Park stared at the man.
“The murders.”
Senior nodded.
“The murders.”
He shrugged.
“I never met the people Junior was in business with. But they were doing the nuts and bolts for him. Maybe they stepped on another dealer’s turf without realizing it. Started selling to sleepless south of the Santa Monica. We supply some very aggressive Dreamer franchises down there. Very protective of their clientele. And very traditional in terms of how they deal with competitors. Gangland sound like their style. Maybe it wasn’t even about Dreamer. That gold farming, if the numbers Junior showed me are real, that’s serious money. Could have been a competitor in that space. But Junior? Pulling the trigger? Or having those two ex-SEAL supermodels of his do it for him? No. He’s a, a difficult boy, frivolous, but there’s no killing in him. I may not be best friends with my son, but I know him that well. That well, at least.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
Senior looked at the empty snifter again.
“I keep telling myself I may as well have another, but I hear my wife saying that one is enough.”
Park was slumping slightly, his elbow coming to rest on his thigh.
“Sir. SLP.”
Senior kept staring at the glass.
“No, you’re wrong about that. I wish I could tell you we poisoned the well. That there was a reason for it. Greed. It could be undone. But there is no peace of mind to be had there.”
He looked at Park.
“We did it, all right, people, I mean. We did it, but it wasn’t about greed. It was about hunger. Are you certain you want to hear this?”
Park didn’t move.
Senior closed his eyes.
“Not enough food. The people who were paying attention, they knew it was coming. No shock to a lot of us when the price of corn and beans and rice started to jump. Too many people. Not enough food. Poor distribution for what there is. The hungry getting hungrier. At its root, yes, it was market exploitation, seeking to take advantage of a massive demand, but it was also plain necessary.”
Park had straightened.
“What was necessary, sir?”
Senior opened his eyes.
“Know anything about transgenic plants, Officer?”
Park shook his head.
Senior nodded.
“GMOs?”
Park shook his head again.
Senior looked once more at his glass.
“Well, you’ve eaten a load of them. Genetically modified organisms. Unless you’re hooked up with an organic shared farming operation, you’ve eaten plenty of transgenic maize. Genetically altered corn. High-yield corn. More specific to this discussion, pest-resistant corn. Heard of a thing called a European corn borer? No, no reason why you should unless you’re a farmer. Far back as 1938, in France, they were spraying corn with something called Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt. A naturally occurring biotoxin that kills beetles, flies, moths, butterflies, and the European corn borer. Problem with a spray is, it wears off the surface. If you could get the stuff inside the corn, then you’d be set. Corn borer eats corn with Bt in it and it ends up with holes in its digestive tract. Dies. Bt, it contains two classes of toxins: cytolysins, or Cyt toxins, and crystal delta-endotoxins, or Cry toxins. Those are the ones that kill the corn borers. Smart people, they identified the genes encoding the Cry proteins.”
Park licked dry lips.
Senior picked a new thread from his bathrobe.
“Yes, proteins; it’s all about proteins. Cry9C is a pesticidal protein, a naturally occurring product of Bt. But it can be produced as a designed material. And introduced to the genetic code of regular old-fashioned corn. And it was. There were a few fusses about it, fears that people were reacting to the Cry9C, allergies, but nobody died, the fuss faded. And what people didn’t realize was that it was far too late to go back anyhow. Hell, by 1999 thirty percent of all corn, globally I’m saying, was Bt-modified. Sure, there were concerns around the turn of the century; Cry9C corn was supposed to be limited to nonhuman consumption. But if you use it for feed, and humans eat the animals, well, proteins don’t die. They don’t wear out. They just are. By 2008 it was all moot. Between world hunger and ethanol, the market for corn was booming. In August ’08 the FDA proposed eliminating all safety limits on Bt toxins in transgenic foods. And soon after it was so. Even if they hadn’t, the horse was out of the barn. In 2001, down in Mexico, transgenic artificial DNA had been found in traditional cornfields. It was spreading, cross-pollinating. Anyhow, Cry9C wasn’t the issue. It was Cry9E.”