The Financial Lives of the Poets (18 page)

So young cop gets me coffee. And for the next few minutes, I try not to vomit as I listen to gruff old state cop, Lt. Reese, and grinning young city cop, whose name turns out to be Randy Martinez, explain that: (A) For the past four years, they’ve worked together on a federally funded drug task force charged with infiltrating and breaking up the pipeline of British Columbian marijuana that has flooded the West. (B) Near the end of this very successful four-year tour, they arrested a suspect who, hoping to avoid prosecution, became a CI—a confidential informant—and told them about a quaint little farming town where a local grow-op wunderkind and his skeezy lawyer friend managed to shave off a slice of the legitimate smoke market with their home-grown knockoffs. (C) And while it’s not in the task force’s direct mandate to break up baby grow-ops like this—they would normally just turn such information over to local police—this one was big enough to warrant their attention.

“So here we are, all ready to make a case against this farm,” says young Randy, “and who should come along?”

I’m pretty sure it’s me, but my voice is too weak to contribute to this conversation, and anyway, I’m still half-afraid I might throw up if I open my mouth. My hand twitches around the coffee that Randy has gotten me. I just shake my head.

“Some asshole takes a verbal shit all over our wiretap,” says old Lt. Reese, “bragging that he can sell weed to middle-class fat-fuck hypocrites like himself.”

I don’t remember bragging that, but I’m not really in the position to deny my middle-class fat-fuck hypocrisy.

The young cop reminds me of someone as he puts out his hands soothingly. “Here we’ve been working four years to bust a bunch of kids and…what? Now their parents want in?”

Lt. Reese’s turn: “I just wanted to sweep you up with the other losers, but Randy here says, wait a second, I know this guy. He’s not a bad guy.”

I look gratefully at Young Randy: No! Not a bad guy! Good guy! If only they could get to know me…I used to give so much to United Way.

“Here’s what I said,” Randy jumps in. “Lieu, this guy, he’s no drug dealer.’”

I shake my head no. I’m not.

“I said, ‘In fact, maybe we should talk to this guy. I think he has goodness in his heart.’”

I do. Good heart. Goodness.

Old cop rolls his eyes. “Tell me something. You got kids, Matthew?”

Before I can answer, young cop asks, “What ages?”

And for the life of me, I can’t remember. “Uh. Ten? And, uh…the little one…eight?”

Old cop: “Boys? Girls?”

Young cop: “One of each?”

Me: “Boys?”

Young cop: “Bet they’re cute.”

Wait. I know this one. Nod.

“I don’t know.” Old cop, sighing, turns to his partner: “I gotta be honest, Randy. I’m not feelin’ it. You sure you wanna give this asshole a break?”

Yes, please. Break. Break, please.

“Lieu—” Randy starts to plead my case. Even when he frowns he smiles.

But Reese wants none of it. “It’s fucked up, Randy. This is what’s wrong with our country, this lack of responsibility. Drug dealer dads? Cokehead in the White House?”

Randy looks at me apologetically. “I don’t think Mr. Prior here is interested in our political views, Lieutenant.”

Lt. Reese turns back to me. “Matthew, you have any idea how deep a pile-a-shit you’re standing in?”

I look down at my feet to see the shit and my messenger bag.

Randy puts his hand on Lt. Reese’s arm, maybe trying to lighten him up. “What’ve you got in there, Matthew, two ounces?”

“Three.” My voice is a low death-rattle. Wait—what happened to B. through N.:
coy, quiet, deny, deny, deny, they have to have a warrant? Be quiet.
Wow. I’m bad at this.

Both cops sit back, maybe a little embarrassed. It’s probably not supposed to be so easy.

Lt. Reese shakes his head. “It’s the hypocrisy. That’s what’s so offensive.”

He’s right, of course. I look down. It’s the same move Franklin makes when he’s in trouble, and I picture myself in handcuffs, my boys watching the police haul their father away. My head falls into my hands.

“Hey,” says Randy. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“Give me a break,” says Lt. Reese. “We’re fifty fuckin’ miles from okay here, Randy. Don’t sugarcoat it for this delusional fuck-stick.”

Delusional fuck-stick—right. Amazing, how you can misjudge everything, how blind you can be to the truth. The ways you fool yourself. Believing something has shifted, that the world can be benign. No, this is what it means to come apart—not gently unraveling, but blowing out, a tire on the freeway.

I have been wrong about everything.

For instance, I was so sure the older one was going to be the good cop.

S
TARTING TO SEE WHY

Monte wanted to sell me

His bammy business

The Regional Drug Task Force office turns out to be within walking distance of the coffee shop, behind a door marked “R. Thomas—Clinical Social Worker/Therapist, MSS, LICSW,” on the first floor of a nondescript downtown office building overlooking the river, across the hall from an insurance company. We sit in a conference room that looks like it recently hosted a corporate brainstorming retreat, a white board covered in various numbers in columns below the phrases “Potential Funding” and “FY ’09-’10,” and I think this white board could be from any business strategy session, but of course, it’s not. It’s a task force set up to arrest drug dealers.

Like me. My coy strategy gone now, I spill it all…how I’ve been under financial stress, how I found myself getting high for the first time in years, bought a little, then realized I knew other people who would buy weed, how I went out and visited the farm and gave Monte nine thousand dollars, but didn’t get my pot, how Monte tried to sell me the whole operation. The cops don’t say much, but nod approvingly a few times. Then I open my backpack and—hands shaking—remove the three ounces of bud and hand it to Randy, who goes off to weigh and photograph it. I watch him take a small sample, which he seals in a Ziploc baggie; then he puts the rest of my weed back in my messenger bag. During this, Lt. Reese has me initial some sort of requisition form that I probably should read before signing.

“So much paperwork,” I mutter.

“I suppose that shithead had you sign his stupid contracts,” Reese says. “He knows we’re closing in. More nervous he gets, the more worthless contracts he prints up. That’s probably why you only got three ounces yesterday, because Eddie was there.”

I think: who’s Eddie?

Randy says, “He’s doing everything he can to keep this in state court, keep the feds out.”

I shrug. No idea what any of this means.

Lt. Reese is getting tired of explaining things to me. “Three ounces? Well within the state limit for medicinal use? See, you’ll never get weight with Eddie around. The medicinal dodge is bullshit, but it’ll give his lawyer something to argue.”

“Who…is Eddie?” I finally ask. “Do you mean Dave?”

Lt. Reese spews contempt. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you, fuck-nuts?” From another file, he hands me a photocopy that includes a mug-shot of Drug Dealer Dave, identifying him as “Edmund David Waller Jr.,” AKA “Eddie Waller” AKA “Dave Waller.”

My mouth goes dry. Dave is an
Also Known As?
I tend not to have a lot of dealings with aliases. “He…he said he was a lawyer.”

“He
was
a lawyer. For about an hour. Worked for an old hippie firm defending drug dealers. But the bar tends to look down on psychopaths with multiple convictions.”

Psychopath? Multiple convictions? My eyes drift toward the Arrests and Convictions part of this rap sheet. Indeed, Eddie-Dave has two convictions—misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance almost a decade ago and misdemeanor assault—but he’s been charged two other times, once for intimidation seven years ago, a charge that was dropped, and another charge that, according to this sheet, is still pending—vehicular manslaughter?

Drug Dealer Dave? Assault? Intimidation? Manslaughter?

Lt. Reese sees me swallow. “You think this is the fucking PTA you’re dealing with?”

I say, weakly, “He did ask to look up my ass.”

Randy and Lt. Reese make uncomfortable eye contact.

Lt. Reese takes the file from me. “The assault charge was on a twenty-two-year-old female. The intimidation came about when he tried to…convince someone…not to testify against him.”

“And the manslaughter charge?”

Lt. Reese hands me a black-and-white photograph…a roadside somewhere…with a lump of clothes…or—

“Is that…a dead body?”

“It ain’t a pile of leaves. Dave doesn’t like leaving anyone around to testify.”

I think I’m going to be sick. “Wait. He ran over this person to keep them from testifying? Is that what you’re saying? Why…why wasn’t he charged with murder?”

Lt. Reese rips the photo from my hands. “Eddie’s a lot of things, but he ain’t stupid.”

My head’s swimming. “What about Monte?”

“Oh,
he’s
stupid,” says Randy.

“No, I mean, is he dangerous?”

Lt. Reese leans in. “Wake up, fuck-stick! Who do you think these people are?”

“Come on, Lieu,” Randy interrupts. Then to me: “Monte has no violent priors.”

After a second, Lt. Reese sits back and nods. “Yeah, Monte’s a tool. Mildly autistic. Does whatever Eddie tells him to. Parents died in a car wreck when he was fifteen, lived with his crazy old grandfather, raised that dipshit little brother of his. This whole deal is really Eddie’s; he uses poor Monte like a shield. That’s what Eddie looks for—people to insulate him. Everything’s in Monte’s name. Monte does all the work, takes all the risk. But now he wants out. That’s why Eddie wants you in. ’Cause he needs a new shield.”

Randy steps in. “When we finally arrest him, Eddie will try to pull out his contracts and claim he never was around more than the medicinal amount…that he never had it in his possession, that he simply worked as Monte’s lawyer.”

I look back at Eddie-Dave’s rap sheet. “I had no idea.”

“See, this is what pisses me off!” Lt. Reese stands up, his face red. “You old pot-head baby-boomer shit-bags thinking,
it’s just marijuana. No one gets hurt. Let’s smoke a reefer and go bomb the ROTC building!
Well, fuck you!”

I start to say that I wasn’t going to bomb anything, but before I can—

Lt. Reese waves me off and stands. “I gotta get some air.” He storms out of the room, although something about his eruption seems vaguely Arthur Miller-ish.

“Okay,” says Randy quietly. He leans forward, and I think maybe his smile means no more than a dog’s does. “Let’s figure out how we’re going to get you out of this.”

Wait. I know this: Mark Akenside, the salesman at the Nissan lot! Lisa and I had gone in to buy the more modest Altima but Mark kept glancing over at the sleek, gunmetal Maxima, with its sunroof, spoiler and heated seats. We can’t afford that, I said. Sure, Mark said, and
why should you spend more…after all, the Altima’s a great little car…but what if I could get you the top-of-the-line Maxima for virtually the same price?
Then Mark wrote a number on a sheet of paper that was definitely
not
the same price as the Altima.
But,
I said,
that’s a much higher price
and Mark turned the paper toward himself and wrote a slightly smaller figure, and he kept doing this, coming down a few hundred bucks each time, saying,
Work with me here
and
I’m doing all I can for you here
until
here
was only two thousand higher than the Altima and Lisa and I would have confessed to being domestic terrorists to get out of that room. I said,
Fine, we’ll take it,
and Mark dragged us into a room with his manager, whose job was to close the deal as Mark went out
for some air,
just like Lt. Reese did—though less angrily—and the manager did everything he could to pump that number back up (thus my redundant service contract and winter floor mats) and we left having paid more for the Maxima than the first number Mark wrote down.

Randy slides a piece of paper in front of me. It has a seal and a chart and what appears to be a mission statement on it.

“We are a federally funded task force working in conjunction with the DEA,” Randy says in perfect loan-closing voice. He takes the page back before I can read it. He replaces it with a page that has a graph with FEDERAL SENTENCING GUIDELINES. “Because of that, our mandate is a little different than, say, your local drug unit. We’re about big fish, so our focus is on intelligence-gathering as much as enforcement and prosecution. But that doesn’t mean we turn our backs on dime-bag buyers. Make no mistake about it; we
will
take down the little fish. Like you?” He runs his finger past the steeper crimes and sentences until he arrives at mine. “Three ounces? Intent to deliver? You’re looking at a year and a fifty-thousand-dollar fine. But sometimes…” He pretends to look up to make sure Lt. Reese isn’t in the room. “We can let a little fish wiggle off a hook if it means getting a bigger one. Now, you’re probably thinking…what constitutes a big fish?”

I nod as if that’s what I was thinking.

He points a few slots up the sentencing guidelines to 100 kilos or 100 plants. Then his finger goes to the mandatory sentence: twenty years. “I’d guess right about now you’re thinking: Gosh, these guys have me over a barrel. Well, ask yourself what would happen if we’d waited and arrested you tomorrow, when you had, what, two pounds?” He points to a column that ends with five years in prison and a $100,000 fine. “So ask yourself, why would we do that? What do we gain by keeping you from becoming a big fish?”

Small fish make better bait?

Then a new page appears, a spreadsheet that reminds me of Monte’s business prospectus. “You were a reporter,” Randy says. “So I’m gonna be straight with you. There’s an institutional side to all of this.” He points to the bottom line, the
operating budget
on this spreadsheet: $1.18 million. “We’re at the end of a four-year budgetary period, and the lieutenant and I are charged with coming up with a budgetary proposal and rationale for why, with all the cuts we’re facing, regional drug interdiction remains a priority. We’re setting goals for the next biennium, and our primary target, the trend we’re seeing out there…”

And now he looks at me. “…is indoor domestic grow operations. So you’re probably thinking, ‘That’s all fine, Randy, but where do I come in?’”

I don’t mind someone telling me what I’m thinking. It’s nice.

Randy’s budget disappears and taking its place is a flow chart of drug prosecutions for the last two years, in both state court and federal court.

“Those big fish I talked about, they end up in this pond.” He points to federal court. “The little fish we just turn over to local police and prosecutors. That puts us in a unique position. We can…overlook some of these cases. See, Matthew? We’re not compelled to turn over all of our little fish.” He holds up my file folder. “These files can remain sealed. They can even just…go away. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I nod.

He smiles gently. “Good.” He takes a deep breath. We are apparently through some number of steps. “Now, it probably feels like you don’t have any choice here.”

I nod.

“I hate that. I always ask the Lieu, why do we back people into a corner this way?” He shakes his head, as if he’s sorry for all of this unpleasantness. “I mean…what’s the point if we don’t give people a choice? By the way, I like that name…Matthew. It’s Biblical.”

I nod. Don’t tell him I’m named after my dad’s drunk-a-day brother.

“Listen, Matthew,” Randy says. “Do you know Jesus feels the same way, that he doesn’t like backing people into corners either?”

“Jesus?”

Randy nods. “Why else would He give us free will? He could make us robots. But He wants us to
choose
to be good. Our good works are empty if we don’t choose them.” Then Randy looks up at the door, to make sure his lieutenant hasn’t come back into the room. It occurs to me that he might be off-script here. He speaks quietly: “Remember, before, when I talked about big fish and little fish? Do you know who else was a fisherman?”

I take a stab: “Jesus?”

The Up-With-People smile returns. “That’s right, Matthew. Metaphorically, Jesus was a fisherman. And his disciples were
actual
fishermen, many of them plying the seas of Galilee. They all came to work for that great fisher of men, Jesus.”

Oh. My good cop is a born-again Christian. Sure. Randy nearly whispers: “Matthew, have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

“Well,” I say weakly, “…I’ve been thinking of becoming Catholic.”

Randy looks stung. “I’m afraid that’s a false doctrine…not His true church.” He puts his hand on his heart. “But at least you’re looking for something deeper. If your heart is genuinely open, Jesus will find His way in. Don’t worry. Now watch closely. I want to show you something.”

And he suddenly raises the slender criminal file he’s created on me—the sample of weed and whatever form I just signed—higher and higher it goes above the conference table…and then he tosses the whole thing into a garbage can, which I hadn’t seen before, but which seems perfectly placed for this display. “Those are your sins, Matthew. How does that feel?”

“Uh…” I stare at the garbage can. “Good?”

“Did you know it can be as simple as that?” He leans in, practically whispers. “Jesus doesn’t want anyone in heaven who doesn’t want to be there. And we don’t want anyone on our team who doesn’t want to be
here.”

I stare at my file in the garbage can. For the first time in my life I understand the power of religion. What if you could take all of your trouble, put it in a file folder and throw it away? Maybe the Catholics have a big sin Dumpster outside the Vatican.

“Matthew, don’t you want to choose to do the right thing, on your own, without being motivated by the threat of punishment?”

“Yes?”

“Excellent. So tell me, which do you choose? The darkness? Or the light?”

“The…light?”

“Yes.” He smiles beatifically. “Good,” he says. “Good. I thought you might say that. I told the Lieu I had a good feeling about you.” And then he pulls my file from the garbage can, smiling—as if we both know he couldn’t
really
throw my file away. He puts the folder on top of the conference table, and he pulls out a little tray and a sheet of paper from below the table, and says, “Welcome to the righteous side, Matthew!”