Amor y Contrabando

The pistol rested on the edge of the coffee table, a reminder of the danger she was in. She’d made it seven years in the business without having to carry a gun around, but in the last few days, everything changed. When they started out, they thought their little business would never be of true interest to the major players of the game. The big boys would continue fighting amongst themselves over control of the international markets, and they, a small independent grower cooperative, would be able to keep the dispensaries in California to themselves. That was how it was always supposed to be, that was all they ever wanted when they entered the business, and for years that was how it was. The cartels waged war against each other and the Mexican government, and they paid off local DEA officials to look the other way as they supplied dispensaries with their product, and shipped some of their product up north to Oregon and Washington. But then things changed, somehow their product ended up in the wrong hands.

The smell had been intoxicating, seducing the lower level carter workers into trying the altered strain, and then, when the first taste had been had, they knew they had to take it home to Sinaloa, where they’d give the drug lord known as El Chapo, a sample. El Chapo had been hesitant, saying he didn’t want to try any of that damn Gringo garbage, but when the container was opened and the scent danced into his nostrils, his eyes darkened with desire and he had himself a smoke. The taste was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. It was smooth, yet potent, far more potent than what grew in his fields, and as the smoke filled his lungs, he decided that every last plant would be his. He would push the product through the entire world, send it into Spain, transport it onto mainland Europe, and shove it down the throats of Latin America and the Asian continent. It was going to make him lots of money. And all he needed was to get a hold of those plants, to claim the seeds as his own, and to have the growers show him how to care for it.

Being a man who detested wasting time when it came to his business, he sent the men back to California to gather information on the growers. He wanted to know who they were, who they worked for, where the sold. Everything business related was to be written down on a detailed file, and their personal information, which consisted of their relationships to family, friends and lovers, was to be put in another file. He needed to know everything he could about them. It was imperative he know their weakness, who they loved most, because if he knew that, and they for some reason refused to cooperate with him, he’d be able to use their loved ones against him. But he hoped they’d be smart enough to take whatever he gave. El Chapo wasn’t the sort of man that people defied. He was the type of man that was used to having his way.

And so his men spent nearly two weeks gathering intelligence on the growers. Their initial step was to visit the family member that had introduced them to the strain, a teenager by the name of Rodrigo. They asked him who his dealer was and if they could have the phone number, but Rodrigo didn’t have a dealer. Not in the traditional sense. There was no person that he called up in the middle of the night to pick up. He went to a state-sanctioned marijuana dispensary, to a building that had set hours of operations and rules that medical marijuana card holders had to abide by. That frustrated the men. They’d hoped the task would be as easy as showing up at Rodrigo’s place and getting the contact information, but they didn’t let their frustration show. They were professionals that were used to hard work, so they scoped out the building, watched when deliveries were made, and in time, were able to find out that the dispensary was supplied by a two individuals, a man by the name of Daniel Turner and a woman named Seraphina Jiménez.

They were surprised that there was a woman in the partnership, usually women worked in the lower ranks, they helped transport and package the drugs, but they didn’t call the shots. No. Only men could be bosses. At least that’s what their machista mindsets allowed them to believe. Since there was a woman in the leadership, they immediately began to think that their boss wouldn’t have any trouble making them do his bidding. How tough could a business be if a woman ran it? Not tough, not by their standards.

Now that they had their names, they contacted the men from the DEA that were on their payroll. They gave them the names and demanded that files be made on them. The DEA agents knew better than to protest. If they didn’t comply then there was a good chance their heads would go missing. So they got all the information that the DEA had on them. The cartel workers learned that both Daniel and Seraphina had graduated from Berkeley with degrees in architecture. They learned that they’d interned at the same architecture firm after college, but with the recession hitting, they weren’t able to be taken on full time due to their lack of connections. After that, Daniel worked at a Safeway and Seraphina worked at a UPS. It wasn’t until two years after graduation, when they were twenty-four, that they began growing. And by the time they were twenty-eight, they had built up a steady network of consumers, and Seraphina had been disowned by her family.

The files went onto tell them that they’d been arrested for possession at one point, but their case had been thrown out, undoubtedly the result of having bribed the right person. They knew that even though they had the file, they still had to do some surveillance work. They needed to know what the houses they lived at looked like, what the security was. They drove all the way up to Trinidad, California, a small city in Humboldt County. Daniel and Seraphina each owned a home there. They’d bought the houses at the edge of the forest, side by side, but Daniel didn’t really stay at his house. That was where their friends, who doubled as security, lived. He had a room in Seraphina’s house. It wasn’t anywhere near the size of the master bedroom at his own place, but he’d grown so used to sharing a space with her, that living on his own felt wrong.

The cartel workers observed their targets for four days. They watched them wake up early, go out on runs, and go around town. They followed them to a warehouse in the middle of the forest, but never entered, the security there was tight, and then they tried to follow them to a piece of land where they cultivated marijuana out in the open, but they were nearly discovered so they had to retreat. They weren’t meant to engage the growers, they were only there to observe. They wrote down everything they saw, and had even taken the liberty of putting in a note to their boss in which they told him that they believed that Daniel and Seraphina were lovers, but on the day before they were set to return to Mexico, a young man arrived.

He wasn’t involved in the business, his picture wasn’t in the files, but the way Seraphina pounced on him when he showed up, made it clear that he was her lover. That was valuable information. They didn’t wait to find out his name. It was unnecessary. They knew what he looked like, knew that she cared deeply for him, and with that information they returned to Mexico.

El Chapo was pleased with the intelligence they gathered. He went over each of the files several times in order to piece together his proposition for them. It took a few days for him to decide exactly what they were going to do, but when he did, he brought in his godson, Mauricio Gaviria, better known as El Güero. There was no person el Chapo trusted more than el Güero. He was the son he never had, and it was him that he sent out to important meetings. Mauricio was more than happy to represent his godfather. He was being trained to take over whenever his godfather decided to step down or got killed, so going out to talk with the gringos from California was an experience he needed.

The day Mauricio arrived in Trinidad, he placed a letter in the mail, a simple looking letter that looked like every other one that would pass through the post office. And on the very next day, the mailman delivered that letter right to her house. It was a simple letter; there was only one sentence on it. Granted, it was a creepy sentence. Because how can a letter telling someone to expect a phone call at 8 that night, not be creepy? Seraphina was shaken by the letter. Daniel told her it was a joke, probably some prank teenagers were playing, but her boyfriend, Benjamin, didn’t think it was that.

She expected for her cell phone to ring, for the landline that was listed in the phone book, but when her secured line – the phone that only her contacts in Oregon, Washington, and dispensary managers had – rang, she grew fearful. She did her best to hide it. Her voice remained strong as she spoke to the man on the phone, it didn’t waver as he told her that she had to meet him at Trinidad State Beach . She told him that she didn’t have to meet him anywhere, that she didn’t know who he was, but that he was nothing to her and she wasn’t going to play his damn games. Seraphina fully expected him to tell her off, but he didn’t instead he chuckled and told her that it was in her best interest to show up, or else something might go wrong.

The pair had that conversation three days ago, and now, on that cloudy Sunday morning, Seraphina was sitting on the couch in her bedroom, staring at the pistol as she waited for it to be time to go meet him. She didn’t want to go. She’d heard his accent. She knew his voice. It was the voice of Mauricio Gaviria; she’d heard it before on Telemundo when they did a special on the drug wars in Mexico. They had played a tape of him threatening to kill someone over the phone, and when she heard his voice, her blood ran cold. That was why she’d gotten herself the gun, that’s why her boyfriend, the former marine, had been spending hours teaching her how to shoot properly. Benjamin knew she was in danger. He knew that the odds weren’t in Daniel and Seraphina’s favor.

But despite that, he put on a brave face for her. He smiled. He laughed. He did his best to be a beacon of light for her. She had so much going on in her life, so much to worry and sort out that he wanted to be the one thing she didn’t have to fret about, but it didn’t matter how bright he smiled and how many kisses he gave her, all she could think about was whether or not the cartel would target Benjamin. He wasn’t a part of the operation. He didn’t transport drugs or help with the growing or the packaging. He was just a normal guy that worked down at The Water Treatment facility and rented a small house in town. If it hadn’t been for Seraphina, he wouldn’t have been a lawbreaker in the slightest, but he was with her. He loved her, and she loved him.

That was why she was afraid he might become a target if things got complicated at the meeting. Maybe she’d say something wrong, maybe they’d insult either her or Daniel and they’d get worked up, but either way, if something bad were to happen then there was a chance that Benjamin might be used against her. That was how cartels handled business. She knew that was how they worked. Okay, maybe she didn’t exactly know, but she’d watched enough mafia films and enough documentaries on cartels from Latin America to know that sometimes loved ones got hurt in order to persuade a person into doing something they wouldn’t have otherwise done. She feared Benjamin might get kidnapped, tortured or killed. If anything were to happen to him, she’d never forgive herself.

And so she sat there, rosary in one hand, whiskey in the other, praying that things would work out and that if for some reason thing didn’t, that she’d be the only one to lose their life.

“I know I’ve fucked up a lot over the years, but I’d really appreciate it if I didn’t die today,” she whispered softly. “You can do that, can’t you?” she asked God, the version she believed in. “You can stop them from killing me, right? They’re Catholic too. Probably worse Catholics than me, so I should have priority . . . Yeah, I should. I mean I’ve never killed anyone. Knocked a guy out once but that was because he pulled out a shank, but I haven’t done anything like them. No. I’ve been good. Well, as good as I could be, but that should be enough. I'm a better person than them, so please hook it up. I like living.” Her voice cracked. “But I guess . . . if shit goes bad, I’ll be alright with dying, just as long as it’s only me.” She set down her whiskey and rubbed her tired eyes. “Anyway, I know you’ll do whatever’s best. I just hope me sticking around is best. Thanks for listening. Amen.” She did the sign of the cross and then grabbed her whiskey to down the rest of it. “How the fuck did things get so bad?”

She’d been asking herself that for days, but she couldn’t understand how it was that her drugs had gotten on the radar of the Sinaloa Cartel. They didn’t export to Mexico or to the other states in the US. The only place where their drugs had a strong presence was in the dispensaries and up north with some friends of theirs that ran little operations from their homes, but that was it. Even then, they weren’t pumping marijuana into the market like the cartels did. They didn’t have as much land or manpower. They were just a small operation. But her marijuana had ended up in Mexico, and now she and Daniel had to suffer the consequences.

Seraphina remained on the couch until a quarter after six in the morning when Benjamin woke up. He usually slept in later, but he had to go pee really badly so he bolted out of the bed and ran into the adjoining bathroom. When he walked back out, he fell back into bed, fully expecting to feel her body next to his, but when he realized the bed was empty; he bolted right up and started looking around for her. It was then that he saw her lying on the couch, head resting on the arm as her arms dangled off the each. He thought she might have fallen asleep there, but no, she was wide awake. There were dark bags and she looked exhausted, but she was awake.

“Why you up so early?” he asked.

She shot him a look.

“Right, stupid question,” mumbled Benjamin. “Did you at least manage to get any sleep last night?”

“Think I got like two or something, but I really couldn’t sleep.” She sat up. “Not like it matters though, I feel fine.”

“Why you have to lie for?” He took a seat beside her. “You haven’t slept well since . . . well, since they called. And don’t say you have, because I know you haven’t.”

“I know. I know, but I just haven’t been able to sleep. I'm too stressed out.”

“Sleep’s good for getting rid of stress. How about you take some Nyquil and go on a mini nap? I’ll wake you up in an hour, you’ll be fine.”

“I'm not gonna take fucking Nyquil,” she snapped, abandoning her place on the couch. “I don’t have time to sleep! I don’t have that luxury. I'm trying to take in being here as long as I can before I have to go to that damn meet up and see what the fuck they want with me. I just want to enjoy my house. Because I don’t . . .”she covered her face with her hands.

He’d never seen her cry before. He’d seen her tell someone off for fucking up an order, but he’d never seen her cry, at least not from sadness. There’d been a few times when she laughed so hard that she let out a few tears, and she’d cried from joy once, when he got her some old vinyls she’d been wanting. But from sadness he’d never seen her cry, and it hurt him to know he couldn’t make it better. So he did the only thing he could do, he walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her back into his chest.

“Sorry,” she eventually whispered. “I just . . . sorry . . .”

“Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to apologize. You’re under a lot of stress.”

“That doesn’t mean I can be a bitch to you.” she turned to face him, breaking their embrace. “I hate this, all of it. Everything was fine and then they had to fucking show up. I don’t even get why they want to meet up. We’re not a threat. We don’t deal in Mexico or to other countries or to even this country. We just have some spots on the west coast. That’s it! But no they’re coming in and they’re trying to do . . . I don’t even know what they’re trying to do! It’s so fucking frustrating to not know what they want. We’re walking in blind to that meeting! They didn’t even have the decency to tell us what they want.”

“It’s a penis thing.”

“What?”

“Them not telling you guys, it’s a way to say they have a bigger penis and call the shots. That’s how guys do. They exert power like that.”

“There’s no point for that. Do they really think we’re stupid enough to think we’re more powerful? They have an army that takes on the Mexican army daily. We have a dozen ex marines. That’s it.”

“Thirteen.” He said.

She shook her head. “We already talked about this.”

“But I can help.”

“I know you can, but I don’t want you to. And we’re not discussing this. This isn’t up for debate. You’re not helping out. And that’s that. I’ve got enough to worry about without freaking out over whether you’ll get shot for being at one of the greenhouses.” She let out a heavy sigh. “That reminds me, Jay’s gonna look after you.”

“Wait. What?”

“He’s gonna follow you around, make sure you’re safe.”

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter. I can take care of myself. Plus, it’s not like they’re interested in me. I don’t even think they know about me, and even if they did, I’d get them before –”

Her eyes narrowed in contempt. There was no way in hell she was going to let him mess up his life by doing something stupid.

“You’re not getting anyone. You hear me? I'm not gonna let you get your hands dirty with this.” Her voice was firm, authoritative.

“But I –”

“No! You’re the only part of my life that doesn’t have anything to do with drugs. And I don’t want to fuck that up. I don’t want you to get mixed up in this. You have to be that one person that I can fixate all my dreams on. And I know that’s asking for a lot, but right now, that’s what I need. You have to be my light. You have to.”

“And I will be.” He cupped her cheek. “But I don’t want anyone looking after me. That shit’s emasculating.”

“Fine then, but if things get out of control, I'm gonna have people following you. Won’t give a damn if you don’t want me to,” she said. “I'm not taking any risks. I’ll whack someone before I let anything happen to you.”

He knew better than to push the subject any further. She was set on having him protected, and even though his pride wouldn’t let him accept the protection, he decided not to argue so as to not add onto her stress. He just hoped that the meeting would go well. That they’d be able to go back to the quiet life they’d been leading together, but something told him things weren’t going to be that easy. Cartels didn’t fly out to America for just any reason. Whatever they wanted to discuss had to be important. It had to.