“Which is not part of my program,” she continued. “What I do is I compartmentalize. Put everything into boxes. Big as shipping containers or as small as thimbles. A place for everything and everything in its place. But I can’t fit you into any of them. On less of a stoner’s note, I spent more time getting ready for you today than I have for any appointment in recent memory. I didn’t take a puff or a nibble because I was afraid I might miss something here. I felt as if I was preparing for something important. An audition. I’ve never felt that before, so strongly. And I feel good right now, sitting in this room with you. All sober and present. It’s very unusual. For me.”
Another long gaze from her. She fiddled with the lighter again, both hands this time, squaring it up before her, just so.
Time went by in the quiet of her office. She cleared her throat in an exaggerated way.
“The eleven o’clock is here,” she said. “Stay and watch. It’s fun.”
Eighteen
She entered something on her cell phone, waited a moment and entered something again. Waited a beat, eyes on the screen. Then pushed back her chair and walked toward the wet bar. Made a hard-right turn to one of the Outlaw safes, pushed a combination into the pad, turned the wheel and swung open the door. With her back still to me she held up a pistol in each hand, fingers competently outside the trigger guards, waved them back and forth, then set them atop the big black box. Stepped away and turned to me with a game-show gesture to the safe.
The gun racks had been replaced by simple shelves as deep as the safe itself, about eight inches apart. All shelves except the top one solely occupied by bundled bills of varying heights. The top shelf flush-full except for the weapon bays.
“Kind of saw that one coming,” I said.
“Another hunch of yours?”
“You don’t need a hunch for cash the banks won’t touch.”
“Can’t touch.”
“How much?”
“Guess. Fifties on the top shelf only, twenties on the next three down, then one each of tens, fives, and ones.”
I knew the values from my deputy days. Because counting bills costs traffickers too much time, they just weigh them. All U.S. bills weigh one gram. So, a pound of twenties is worth $9,080, a pounds of tens $4,540, and so on. The bundles looked fifty strong.
“I need a calculator.”
Tola smiled, her face filling with pride.
“Five hundred forty thousand, six hundred and twenty dollars,” she said. “The shelves aren’t completely full, but almost. This is my central bank for all five Nectar Barns. Banks can’t take it, the freebooters are too expensive, so I keep it here. Easier to defend one branch than five. Three armed guards here, round-the-clock. Good ones. I pay them small fortunes. I contract with two security firms. God knows what happens if they both show up at once.”
Another knock. Tola pressed a code into the lock pad and the door slid open.
Under the solemn gaze of the door guard, two more uniformed men wheeled a cart with a strongbox on it into the office. One guard was very large and one very small. Both Natives — all muscles, guns, and radios. The door slid shut.
“Good morning, Ms. Strait,” they said in near unison.
“My Strait Shooters! Feeling lucky today?”
“We’re always lucky to be here, Ms. Strait,” said the small one. “Sorry we’re late. Hit a checkpoint on Highway 78, bomb dogs and National Guard, courtesy of the president himself. Everyone edgy about the bombers. Seeing those masks on TV.”
I thought of Mike Lark’s confidential tip on the Ramona FedEx being the point of origin for The Chaos Committee’s second attack — on the county building in downtown San Diego. As of last night, had lightning struck twice from Ramona? Ramona was just down Highway 78 a few miles from here. Thus the federal roadblock. If last night’s Encinitas bomb had arrived by mail, then The Chaos Committee was sophisticated enough to make a bomb either timed to match their Local Live! studio takeover or designed to be set off remotely. Both possibilities sent a cold tickle to the boxing scar on my forehead.
I also couldn’t help but note the odd geographical proximity of the first two Chaos Committee mailings — both likely made by the woman wearing the big sunglasses — to key locations in the lives of the Strait family. Such as Fallbrook, where Dalton had first told me about his missing wife. Such as Ramona, where Natalie grew up and that Dalton now represented as part of the 82nd Assembly District. Such as Valley Center, also only a few miles from the Julian Nectar Barn, where Ash Galland last saw Natalie at breakfast. Such as the mountains around Palomar — also close to here — where Tola Strait grew some of her marijuana under armed guards… and her once fratricidal and felon brother, Kirby, was now encamped with a young woman. Such as sprawling Escondido, just twenty-seven miles from here, where Natalie sold BMWs. Such as Tourmaline Resort Casino, wedged between Fallbrook and Valley Center, and where Brock Weld, unappreciated observer of Natalie Strait, worked security. And how about the Julian Nectar Barn where I now sat with Tola Strait and over a half million of her dollars?
She had taken up her phone again. A moment later the bolts within the strongbox hummed and the door opened one inch. She pulled it open, hinges wheezing open with stiff pneumatics.
She gave me an odd this is what I do look, then unloaded two handfuls of bundled bills onto the digital scale on the wet-bar counter. Pushed a button and turned to the guards.
“Thanks, men,” she said. “Good work and see you later.”
The big guy pressed the lock keypad and the door slid open. It closed on them a moment later, followed by the hum of steel sliding into steel.
She turned to me. “We’ll have a one o’clock, a two o’clock, and a three o’clock today,” she said. “Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.”
“Business is good,” I said.
“And it’s about to get a lot better.”
“How so?”
“Direct mail, baby,” said Tola. “These stores will soon be quaint tourist attractions. Shipping will do for cannabis what Amazon did for everything else.”
“Interstate, the feds won’t allow it,” I said. “Even with the Indians backing you.”
She entered information on her phone, then set the bundles in the safe.
“One state at a time, Roland. How about California? Biggest pot market in the nation, not even close. Hand me some of those bundles, would you?”
I did. While I thought of Tola’s late-night consorting with Heath Overdale, of Kimmel, Overdale & Schmitz, public relations consultants and lobbyists for the freight and direct-delivery industries. Direct mail, baby. And the craggy-faced older man whom I’d seen in the FBI’s San Diego field office? Who did Tola Strait think he was?
“What are you going to do with even more cash?” I asked.
“Put it in the bank.”
“Over the FBI’s dead body.”
“Got that covered, too. Almost. No dead bodies necessary.”
Again I thought of the older FBI agent she had been late-nighting with in Sacramento. Was Tola working the agent or the other way around?
After the scale was turned off and the cash stacked, the guns put back, the safe locked, and the cell-phone notifications made, Tola Strait led me into the cavernous, high-ceilinged Nectar Barn.
The interior was rustic-hip, all distressed and antiqued lumbers, exposed crossbeams and metal joints and metal industrial lampshades. Sections for clothing — heavy on Nectar Barn — logo flannel shirts. An aisle of cannabis-helpful kitchenware — blenders, grinders, utensils, recipe books. Closer to the registers were the impulse buys: shelves of pipes, bongs, vaporizers, papers, clips, lighters. Drink holders and key chains, mouse pads. Skylights allowed a warm and glowing sunshine down upon it all.