Growing and Kissing (41 page)

“Six hundred thousand,” Sean and I said together.

Isabella shook her head. “You are wasting my time,” she said. And turned to walk away. I saw her nod towards the men with guns and there were three clean, crisp metallic clicks as the guns were cocked.

It was time for my Hail Mary pass.

“Six hundred thousand for the weed,” I said, “...and something better.”

Isabella took another few steps towards the plane and, for one horrible moment, I thought she was going to ignore me. But then she lifted her hand. No bullets came, so I assumed she’d put the gunmen on hold. “What?” she asked, irritably.

“Me.”

Isabella slowly turned around. “Explain. But do it in the next thirty seconds.”

“I increased the THC content of that crop
at least
thirty percent above normal. I did it through a combination of custom fertilizer mixes, lighting cycles and precise watering. It’s complex, but replicable. Maybe the crop isn’t worth $600,000 to you, but
the value is in the process.”
I offered up a silent prayer of thanks to Stacey. “I can teach your farmers the same method. How much money could you make, if you can grow stronger weed?
Millions.
Tens
of millions, over the next decade. And I don’t even want a percentage: all I’m asking for is $350,000. A one-time fee. Plus another $250,000 for the crop itself, which you already agree it’s worth.” I was ready for her to haggle me down to $500,000, which was the amount we actually needed.

Isabella studied us for a long moment. “Risky way to make an offer,” she said at last, nodding towards the gunmen.

“If we’d just told you on the phone, would you have taken it?” asked Sean. “We had to promise you cheap weed so you’d come here and sample it, see how good it is.”

Isabella stared at him. “I don’t appreciate being tricked, Mr. O’Harra.” She turned to Francisco. “Do you believe she can do it?”

Francisco tilted his head to one side. “I believe it’s worth three-fifty to find out.”

Isabella sighed. “I’d need you in Mexico,” she told me. “You’d have to visit our farms, teach them individually. It would mean several trips.”

I nodded quickly. “Anything. Sure.”

Sean stepped forward. “Me too. I don’t leave her side.”

Isabella sighed again. “Yes, yes, you can bring him.”

“And I want a month, before I start,” I told her. “One month. Then you can have me for as long as you need me.”

Isabella pressed her lips together in a tight line and nodded at Sean. “This one said on the phone that you needed the money to save your sister. That she’s sick. Is that true? Or was that another trick?”

I looked right into her eyes. “That’s true,” I said.

She stared at me for a long time, searching my face for any hint of a lie. I stared right back at her. And at last, after the longest time, I saw the briefest flicker in those ice-cold eyes. “Family,” she said, “is very important.”

Then she slipped her sunglasses back on and she was back to brutal efficiency. “Transfer the money,” she told Francisco. “Load the drugs,” she ordered the men. They scurried to do her bidding. A measured nod of farewell to us...and she was gone, her heels clicking across the runway to the plane.

Francisco pulled out his phone and muttered into it in Spanish. After a few minutes, he scrawled something down on a piece of paper and then passed it to me, pointing to each line in turn. “The name of the bank in Switzerland,” he said, “your account number and your password. Six hundred thousand dollars is in there now. Call them and they’ll transfer it anywhere you want.”

Six hundred thousand dollars.
It hit me that Isabella hadn’t haggled. We had a hundred thousand dollars more than we needed. I took the piece of paper and folded it
very, very
carefully into my jeans pocket.

By now, the men had loaded the drugs into the plane. We watched as Francisco boarded and the steps were pulled up. Moments later, the plane taxied and roared off down the runway, then climbed towards the sun.

I turned to Sean. “Is that...
it?
Did we do it?”

He nodded slowly, then pulled me close. He gazed down into my eyes, dumbstruck.

“What?” I asked, worried.

“Just...you,” he said, brushing a lock of hair from my cheek. “You’re amazing, you know that?” And he kissed me.

Sean

The truck was empty but it still stank of weed and we decided we’d probably used up our quota of luck and then some. So we played it safe, taking the truck to a scrapyard and then buying a couple of cheap plane tickets to LA. For the first time in a long while, money wasn’t an issue.

What was still an issue was Malone. And I needed to deal with that on my terms. Louise had solved one half of our problem with brainpower. Now it was time for what I did best: brute force and intimidation.

Fortunately, Malone was predictable. Every Sunday, he ate lunch at a fancy restaurant downtown. He was driven there and back in a huge, glossy black BMW that I suspected was tricked out with bulletproof glass. But that was fine: I wasn’t going to use bullets.

I’d picked out a spot: the exit of the restaurant’s parking lot. As the car cruised towards the exit, I could see Malone in the back, taking up most of the rear seat. A guard was with him, a second guard in the passenger seat up front, and then there was the driver. All three guards, and possibly Malone, too, would be armed.

As Malone’s driver paused to wait for a gap in the traffic, I stepped out from behind a wall...and, with all my strength, swung the sledge hammer down into the center of the car’s hood.

The whole car sank on its suspension a few inches and an airbag went off inside. The hood caved in and the engine died instantly as it took the full force of the blow.

It took the men in the car a few seconds to react. Their first instinct was to open the doors, but the restaurant entrance was narrow: a concrete wall blocked the doors on the driver’s side. And just as they started to open the other set of doors, I slammed the hammer into the pillar between front door and rear door, caving it inward enough that the doors couldn’t open. Another airbag went off and the men inside shied away from the doors, coughing and choking on the smoke the airbag released.

“Shoot him!” I heard Malone yell. Two of the guards drew their guns.

“Good plan,” I snapped. I nodded behind the car. There’d been a line of cars waiting to leave the restaurant behind Malone’s car, but now their owners were panicking and screaming and clutching their cell phones to their ears as they called the cops. “The cops arrive and I’m lying here dead...and you’re sitting there holding the murder weapon.”

The guards hesitated, looking at one another. They were starting to realize that I’d turned their safe, secure car into a prison...potentially, a tomb.

I jumped up onto the hood of the car and swung the sledge hammer again, aiming for the very front of the roof. It bent down and the windshield shattered. Another swing did the same at the back. The men huddled together in the center of the car as the space inside got smaller and smaller. When I jumped down behind the car and looked through the hole where the rear window had been. Malone was twisting around to glare at me...but there was panic in his eyes. He wasn’t sure whether I was going to just keep going and flatten the whole car like a pancake, with them inside it.

I leaned close to him. “Here’s what’s going to happen, if you touch one fucking hair on Louise’s head,” I growled. “I will come and I will
fuck. Your. Shit. Up.
Every business you’ve got an interest in. Every house you own. That boat you keep in the harbor. Every one of them: destroyed. And then I’ll find
you
and do the same to you. I’ll smash you bone by bone, you fucker, and I won’t put you out of your misery for a good long while.” I indicated the car. “I can get to you. Remember that.”

He scowled at me...but he was scared. For years, he and people like him had thought he could control me: I was a dangerous attack dog, but they held the leash. Now I’d slipped my collar and that terrified him.

There’s nothing scarier than a man with a big hammer.

I knew it had worked. I could see it in his eyes. We weren’t going to have any more problems from him. But he couldn’t back down completely. “You’re finished in this business,” he spat. “No one’s going to hire you again, not after
this!”

“Fine by me,” I said mildly. “I quit.” I tossed the sledge hammer onto the roof of the car, making him flinch...and I walked away.

Louise

We were nearly too late. While we’d been away, Kayley’s condition had worsened and Stacey had rushed her to hospital. I ran up the stairs and burst into Dr. Huxler’s office just as he was telling Stacey something about
keeping her comfortable right up unto the end.

“Louise!” He looked up, startled. “Sit down. We should talk. It’s...time.”

“You’re goddamn right it is,” I panted. “I got the money. We’re going to Switzerland.”

When I pulled out my phone to organize everything, though, I started to panic. It hit me that I hadn’t considered all the things that could go wrong: what if it took days of paperwork to organize the treatment? What if the clinic in Switzerland didn’t have space for weeks? Everything we’d been through might be for nothing.

Fortunately, I’d completely underestimated the yawning chasm between the world of the super rich and the rest of us.

When I dialed the clinic, the phone was answered on the first ring—despite it being the early hours of the morning—by the most efficient woman I’d ever met. The conversation went like this:

Hello. My name is Stephanie. Please let me know if you would prefer me to speak in French or German. How may I help?

Um...hello. I need to arrange treatment for my sister at your clinic. I’m in Los Angeles.
I gave her a brief history of Kayley’s leukemia.

We will require a fee of five hundred thousand Swiss Francs, payable in advance.
She gave me some bank transfer numbers and I scribbled them down.
Would you like me to arrange flights for you?

Flights? Um...yes. Yes please. You mean today?!

(The rattle of a keyboard) Can you be at LAX by 3 p.m.?

The entire conversation took less than four minutes. I called the magic number Isabella had given me and asked them, in a disbelieving tone, to transfer the money to the clinic. Moments later, Stephanie called back to say she’d received the money and gave us our flight numbers. I sat back in my seat, stunned.

Sean, Kayley, and I barely had time to pack our bags. I was about to call a cab to the airport when my phone rang to tell me that our limo had arrived. I winced, thinking of our rapidly-diminishing funds. Then winced again when we got to the airport and were told that we were flying first class. Of course the clinic’s clients would be the sort of people who would
always
fly first class. But when I saw Kayley’s face as she sank into her huge leather armchair and cued up a whole list of movies to watch, it was difficult to stress about it too much.

When we landed, there was another limo to whisk us from the airport to the clinic. The place was nothing like the huge, bustling hospital in America. It was neat, compact, and, like Stephanie, very, very efficient. Kayley was examined and tested within an hour of our plane landing. Two hours, and she’d started her first round of treatment.