about it. Don’t get me wrong, I think Arizona is beautiful and all, but I really didn’t want to have to come out here to deal with this. I’ve got problems enough of my own.”
“Arizona’s a steaming pile of shit, bro. Do you think I actually like having to live here. I mean I can’t even go for a drive without having some yahoo cop pull me over because he sees a Mexican behind the wheel of a Mercedes. I want to be back home in Juarez with my wife and kids. But, you know, you’ve got go where the money is, and Arizona’s where its at right now.”
The bruiser was really starting to loosen up and my bladder was going back down to its normal size. But now I was going to have to get into the hard questions.
“Do you know what Juan was looking for for Junior?” I asked.
“Of course, I know everything my men are up to 24/7. He was looking into the emeralds.”
“Is that what you call it. In Chicago they call it Leprechaun.”
The big man laughed, “That’s figures with all those Irish motherfuckers in Chicago. Naw, man, we just call it that because that’s what it looks like.”
“So you have nothing to do with it.”
“I wish, man. That stuff is scarce, and from what we can tell it’s kind of like PCP, meth, and molly all rolled into one. Plus, we got our hands on a little taste a couple of months back and had some our nerds try to reverse engineer it from what we had. As far as we can tell, nothing in it is illegal at this point. Can you imagine the kind of money we would be making if our guys on the street were doing was selling that stuff. The cops couldn’t do nothing when they roll up and pull a search.”
“So you know what it’s made out of?”
“Kind of, man. There’s something in the mix that we weren’t able to identify at all. So what we basically made was nothing more than this kind sour candy that made all of our testers barf their guts out for 24 hours and not get high at all.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, we were pretty disappointed and we needed up having to hack up the nerd who put the formula together. Freaking shame, too, he was good cook.”
I guess there wasn’t really anyway to leave the cartels alive.
“Is it any of your competitors, maybe? Do you think they’re just keeping it under wraps and trying to corner the market.”
The bruiser smirked.
“What competition, man. We’re it, and if anybody steps out of line or decides they want to start their own enterprise, well, we bring ‘em here and spend a few hours setting pieces of them on fire.”
Well, that explains the burnt hair and gasoline smell.
“Naw, maybe there’s a pot grower who works for one of the medical pot facilities who decided to fool around with some chemicals, but I doubt it. Most of those guys are all about the natural high thing.”
“Medical pot?”
“Yeah, you don’t know about that?”
“I’ve never really been a weed kind of guy.”
“Pot’s practically legal out here, bro. All you need is a medical marijuana card and you can buy as much as you want, and they give out those things to everybody, not just the people who actually need it like cancer patients. Pretty soon you’re not even going to need a card.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Times are changing, man. But my bosses, they just aren’t getting it, and they’re still expecting me to bring in the cash we’re losing because of the dispensaries.”
“That’s tough, because you’re business seems pretty cut throat.” I eyed the machete when I said cut throat.
“You have no idea, man. But what can you do? It’s either this or I’m picking oranges for some rich white guy who’s only paying me three bucks an hour. So you got any other questions before you head out of here?”
“Only one. Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”
“Ah, man, we don’t got a bathroom. You’re going to have to hold it until you get back to the liquor store we picked you up at.”
“That’s kind of a long drive. Don’t you think I
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