Chapter Two
Jonah Cargill hated having to trek so far into the middle of nowhere for these clandestine meetings. The isolated rendezvous point was perfect for his needs though and necessity rendered the annoyance of getting here, which was an infrequent part of his business, mandatory. His family's business was raising chickens by the thousands but his business was something else entirely.
As he leaned against the rickety kitchen counter in the dilapidated farmhouse's kitchen, waiting for his counterparts to arrive, his mind idly thought about the all the difficulty and planning (not to mention the huge expense), it took for him to get this far.
The small farming community of Bethlehem, placid and serene to those few outsiders who wander far from the highways and main roads to unexpectedly find it (as it appears only on the most detailed of maps), would be surprised to find that most of the town was a front for an industry not based at all on the mundane raising of crops or livestock.
Less than a thousand souls live and work in the town's relative isolation, itself part of a sparsely populated county situated in the heavy forests of the Michigan's Upper Peninsula. However quaint and docile the small agricultural hamlet seems to be to the occasional visitors, who are usually relatives who've driven long distances to celebrate birthdays and holidays, there lies a deep corruption just below the thin surface. Though apple and cherry orchards cover many acres of its gently rolling hills, the real source of the town's prosperity comes from another source. Just below the well tended facade lies a nest of criminal activity that has been at the heart of Bethlehem's continued prosperity almost since its inception.
The two lane asphalt road that serves as the town's lifeline to the outside world cuts squarely through the four blocks that composes the small downtown center. Few outsiders note the fact that such a little town boasts its own police force, courthouse and jail while the majority of the other surrounding towns can no longer do so. The economic difficulties faced by the adjoining communities, who have been forced to merge districts and services with the county in an attempt to save precious dollars and resources, seems not to have hit Bethlehem quite so hard. The town leaders like to say that they have always been frugal with public money, unlike the rest of their neighbors who have spent their hard earned taxpayer money without limits or conscience. When there comes obvious shortfalls in the cooked and forged ledgers, which rarely happens, the town's officials pad the accounts with fabricated donations from 'concerned citizens' who supposedly respond to the town's financial woes out of a sense of communal duty. To the state auditors everything appears legitimate and Bethlehem's elected officials take as much opportunity as possible to belittle the outside world with its showing off of how a tight community of selfless individuals can overcome any hardship, although it's all a lie.
The populace of Bethlehem is a close knit community but very few know of how tight those binds that tie them together truly are. While most of the inhabitants suspect there are some shenanigan's going on, it appears to be in the town's interests so nobody complains in the least. Most of the residents are of the opinion that it's actually the moral duty of the Mayor and his team to ensure what needs to be done gets done, even if that means fudging the truth a bit.
The small police force is, and always has been, under severe pressure to keep whatever problem that arises a private affair and they do a remarkable job at it. Not that there are any violent crimes or burglaries here to begin with. Compared to any of Michigan's larger cities, Bethlehem is a sleepy little backwater that would bore most cops to death. Even the state police, whose duties it is to patrol the roads and highways, rarely come through, finding their time is always better spent someplace else. So infrequently does a state police cruiser, with the distinctive 'gumball' on the top of its roof, gets called here on business that few can actually locate the town without the aid of a map or GPS.
It's not merely an external force that applies pressure to the Bethlehem police; they are all complicate to the dirty underside of the town. They keep their mouths shut and strong-arm the rest into doing the same if need be. They pressure the rest of the village, not only to protect others from being exposed and prosecuted, but for their own hides also, for they are as venal and corrupt as any in the tainted community.
The immoral contamination here has been long institutionalized from the beginning with blackmail, bribery and nepotism shoring up the 'Good ol' boy' network that has existed here for generations. Jonah Cargill understands to some extent, this same problem rears its ugly head in every town and city throughout the world, but here it is a way of life.
In Bethlehem, democracy is only something practiced in the rest of America, here a few families rule like dictators, although Jonah likes to think of it as a benevolent dictatorship. Here if one seriously starts to oppose the powers that be, or even mentions exposing but a small part of the town's seedy past or criminal present to outsiders, they can quickly find themselves fertilizing next year's crops from under six feet of sandy loam. Their neighbor's won't help either; a threat to one is a threat to all. Everyone here has a shameful family history and everyone here knows that if the twisted knot of deceit and crime starts to unravel, the whole of the town will suffer.
Looking back through the town's sordid history, from what Jonah understands, it was prohibition that ratcheted up the level of secrecy and deceit. The few hundred people who lived here then found the prospect of easy money too tempting to resist. What started out as small backyard stills made to produce liquor for the private use of their respective owners quickly became an illicit commercial enterprise. Once the quality of Bethlehem's forbidden bootleg became known to those members of organized crime who were willing to transport it to ever thirsting customers in the cities, a vast amount of money flowed in and greased the palms of any that would otherwise frown upon the endeavor. The town's homebrew found itself with an inexhaustible demand from markets as far away as Chicago and even New York.
While the Great Depression raged and destroyed the lives of whole communities and turned many of the small towns in this part of the state to dust, Bethlehem's quality moonshine easily saw them through the worst of it. The community learned that an inexpensive, high quality product will always be in great demand, regardless of its legality. As the stills became larger, and the majority of the local farmer's crops from their fertile fields found a new market to replace those that had dried up, everyone benefited.
The entire community shared in on the profits, including the police force who wisely (in their minds) decided that instead of upholding the federal laws, however unjust they were, and ruining the economy of the town, it would only serve to put them out of work and they would soon find themselves in the bread lines and starving with so many others. The Gangsters took care of their side of the deal, ensuring that nobody talked if they were caught and the Bethlehem police did the same on their end. Everybody kept food on their families' tables and though some hated the idea of working with elements of organized crime, it was but a necessary evil that had to be done during those harsh and troubled times.
After World War II times changed and demand for their hooch dropped off to the point that the town's inhabitants went back to the more aboveboard pursuits of farming and the raising of livestock, however less profitable they were. Still, fortunes had been made and close ties of shared risks bonded everyone together, leading to an informal society of favoritism and bias.
In the late sixties and especially the early seventies, the sons of those enterprising fathers who had made so much money in their heyday, found a lucrative opportunity that they refused to let pass them by. Marijuana has been around since the dawn of time, and most of the youth here who were now taking their fathers positions of power within the rural community saw it as a harmless weed that was only illegal due to the influence of a few powerful business interests and religious fanatics. Eager for the opportunity to make their own fortunes, plots of the proscribed plant started surreptitiously springing up in some of the more out of the way fields.
Everybody here grew up with, went to school with and married into each other's families and the close relations, coupled with the shady history and culture of secrecy, led to another clandestine endeavor. In the span of a few short years, Marijuana became Bethlehem's largest cash crop and it soon brought in more money than all other crops combined. While the front forty showed row upon row of neat and orderly stalks of corn to the unassuming visitor's eyes, the back sixty acres in most farmer's fields were the deep green of pot and money.
Once again the police worked hand in hand with organized crime and for over two decades nobody was the wiser. Once the war on drugs heated up with serious consequences in the late eighties and early nineties, with helicopters and airborne surveillance becoming an inescapable reality, the town collectively agreed to go back to their less unlawful way of life. The town had shared the profits of their decades long misdeeds, with even those who were not directly involved receiving a yearly stipend simply to help placidly keep their lips sealed. The communal sense of togetherness grew in strength and strangers were never allowed to feel welcome because of it.
There still remains a handful of farmers who toss a few seeds in their fields now and then, but their produce only goes to supply the local demand. They also know that if they are busted by the state or feds and they started talking to try and make any kind of plea as to just what the town had done for its prosperity, they and their families would quickly join the small numbers of other traitors in the silence of the fields.
Jonah knew the history of the town, and its crimes went further back but the details are lost to history and only rumors of those days survive.
For the most part, the residents of Bethlehem today are generally law abiding citizens, viewing the town's past as a colorful secret. But not all, times change and so does the drug of choice. Many of the town's business are fronts that launder money and any serious investigation would uncover a complex nest of interwoven companies. There has come another chance to make a great profit. The cycle of furtive and covert production of a simple to manufacture, high demand and even higher profit commodity has come back to Bethlehem. As a farming community, they have ample reason to legally acquire much of the base materials the manufacture needs. This time though, the risks are much too great for the whole town to participate. What was started long ago by great-grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers is now running in the blood of their sons once again. Today a few trusted families harbor a secret, one that makes much more money than any endeavor that came before.
The only obstacle in Jonah's way was the acquiring of ephedrine in large enough quantities to turn a worthwhile profit. Of course the base ingredient had to come from somewhere and as a community of farmers they quickly came to the conclusion that they should bypass buying it from numerous and closely monitored sources and secretly grow the plant that produces the chemical themselves.
Under Jonah Cargill's' family poultry farm lies an underground greenhouse that stretches for almost two acres in size. The plants are grown in long rows and tables that are stacked upon each other in an ingenious design of layered tiers that yield just over four acres of continuously growing plants that produces the hard to get raw component by the gallon. On top of the subterranean hothouse is the chicken farm itself, the heat of the rows of lamps the plants need provides the heat for the stupid feathered reptiles above. Even if one of those heat sensing DEA planes flies above his farm, looking for the telltale signs of hidden grow houses they had the perfect cover-up. The clucking and constantly squawking birds need warmth to survive the harsh northern Michigan winters and the coops have to be heated.
Jonah had sunk the remains of his family's fortune, mainly collected during the town's pot growing days, into the yearlong construction of the underground hothouse that started almost four years ago. Other's, including the Sheriff himself, have invested money into the endeavor as the plant is finicky and took them over a year to establish in its new environment. On top of that it takes two long years for the plant to properly mature and only now can they start producing the drug in quantities that make the risks worthwhile.
Jonah stretched his legs and noted that his allergies were getting to his nose, as it always did this time of year, making it tickle and he frowned thinking the ramshackle old farmhouse didn't help one bit with all of the moldy wood that was rotting around him.
There was no other place within the small town's jurisdiction that their privacy could be assured as well as at this abandoned property. The overgrown plot of land had once been a flourishing cherry orchard. It was isolated and ensured no one could observe or spy on them, even from afar. The farm had been abandoned over a generation ago when the last of the Jensen family had died off. Since the once fruitful cherry trees, with their beautiful blossoms, had been then at the end of their lifecycle, no buyers had been found that were willing to bear the expense of pulling up and replacing the acres of dying trees and then waiting another decade before the costly, newly replanted orchard matured enough to even hold the possibility of turning a profit again.
It took a mile of walking from the main street down the remnant of what was once a private dirt road, which served only the orchard, with the extra hassle of it having been long reclaimed by Mother Nature. Really, only an observant eye would notice that a road of any sort had once cut through here. To either side of a twenty foot wide path, filled with relatively young and fast growing trees, stand ancient and gnarled maples and oaks. The neat and orderly row of dead and dying trees that once proudly lined the road was now interspersed with the disorderly chaos of unattended nature. The wild expansion of the woodlands onto the abandoned orchard lands provided a natural barrier against being surreptitiously recorded or monitored from any distance, which is why this particular location had been chosen for the face to face meetings.
He, Sheriff Miller and Officer Peterson had all driven here in the Sheriff's police car, as this was actually (though unofficially) town business. The Sheriff and he had left the vehicle behind and traveled on foot to the ruins of the old house, leaving Officer Peterson to stay behind and await their guest's arrival.
All three of them were complicate in the town's new endeavor, just as their father and grandfathers were complicate in their own illicit activities before them. The main difference in this money making scheme and the ones that previous generations engaged in was that this particular activity would never be accepted by the majority of the town. This venture had to be kept behind tightly closed doors that sealed out all but the most trustworthy, and greedy, of families and individuals.
Sheriff Miller stood with his bulky frame leaning tiredly against the crooked doorway to the farmhouse's dilapidated interior, visibly straightening himself when his radio clicked twice, the signal that their guests had arrived. He waited, hand on the butt of his service weapon, as he listened for the sounds of men trampling through the brush of the overgrown road that would herald the close approach of the group. As soon as he caught sight of the three men officer Peterson was leading towards him, he resolutely and intently scanned them, looking for signs of anything unusual that his twenty-two years of police work had honed instinctively in him.
"Hold on." Sheriff Miller said authoritatively, holding out his left arm with his large palm facing outward in the universal sign for stop, his right hand tightly wrapped around his pistol.
The three men stopped as they were told and Miller could tell the men were indignant seeing Peterson come up behind them and start patting them down.
Peterson started with the man in front, the obvious leader of the group.
Sheriff Miller had known the man in the Armani suit, confidently speaking to him while being almost intimately searched, since the town's involvement in its marijuana growing days. The man's name was William Theodore Trent but he went by the street names Wily Willy or Wily T.
"You have to do this every time?" The well dressed Wily asked. He was obviously the result of a mixed marriage and he set down the black travel bag he carried with him, even as he raised his arms to submit to the pat down he felt was unnecessary.
"Every time, you should know the drill by now." Sheriff Miller said a bit gruffly as Peterson gave the man a thorough search.
"My mother never even touched me in those places you're so rudely smacking around now." Wily said, directed at Officer Peterson and his rough pat down of his thighs and groin.
Officer Peterson said nothing in return, continuing his pat down, only stopping to uncover a small revolver strapped to his detainee's ankle.
"That's for my personal protection."
"That's fine. I don't care about that unless you try to draw it on us. We'll let you hold it; we just have to make sure you're not wired." Miller told him, nodding at Peterson.
As Peterson pulled his guest's pants leg back down around the weapon and moved on to the next of the three men, he wasn't worried about the twenty-two caliber revolver he had exposed. Both he and the Sheriff were quite sure they could easily kill all three men before they could get their weapons out to do them any harm. The real threat to them was surveillance equipment hidden on their bodies.
As the second of the three men received Officer Peterson's unwelcome and almost rude attentions, Miller scanned the first man with a radio frequency monitor. With the advances in technology he knew it was possible to fit a mic or camera into something as small as a button and have its signal relayed twenty miles away via the airwaves. The hand held device he waved around would react to any transmissions and if it went off he wouldn't hesitate to make a false yet well prepared exhibition of being attacked before murdering the three of them in a supposed show of 'self-defense'.
If the meet did turn ugly and there was a shootout, even if the three escaped, which was unlikely, they would never reach the outside world. They would never get past the town's boundaries. The other officers of the town's police force are waiting in strategic intersections and if they saw the three men trying to leave the village, without the Sheriff having given the Ok signal, his men wouldn't bother to try and stop the car before they unloaded their clips into it.
While everybody here was by nature paranoid and distrustful, they all realized that there was a lot of money to be made, way too much for any betrayal, violent or otherwise.
Peterson's second search subject was a huge man, as solid and thick around as one of the old trees surrounding them with skin the color of a shadow in darkness. The man was a truly imposing figure who could strike fear into anyone with a single glance. Peterson knew him from their previous meetings, the dark skinned man went by the name of 'Big D', short for Demetrious, and was Wily T's body guard and enforcer. The man's size, coupled with his natural fierce appearance, surely kept a lot of the situations his boss found himself in on a civil foundation.
Peterson's pat down exposed a semi-automatic nine caliber hidden and tucked into the waistband of 'Big D's' pants located in the small of his back and Peterson covered it back up at the Sheriff's nod.
"Who's this?" Sheriff Miller demanded as he stared hard at the third man and spent an extra amount of time scanning the airwaves around him with his monitoring device, holding it almost threateningly close.
"That's Lucas. He's my new capo. Lemont had to be forced to take an early retirement from the game." Wily said mater of factly.
Sheriff Miller understood that statement to mean Lemont had come to the end of his usefulness, for whatever reason, and had been put to death. Obviously it was a private matter between Wiley and his crew so Miller didn't question him further, besides he really didn't care to know the details.
Lucas thrust his chin in the Sheriff's direction in a rough acknowledgement but remained silent as Peterson exposed his nine millimeter.
"He stays out here where Peterson can watch him. He won't be joining the parlay until we know him better and he earns our trust." Miller told Wily in a voice that would brook no discussion of the matter.
"Fine. Lucas, you stay out here and keep a watch on things with Officer Peterson."
Only once the search and inspection of all three of their guests was complete to his satisfaction did Sheriff Miller allow the two men inside the ruin of the farmhouse to meet with Jonah.
The familiar duo finally entered the kitchen, the sheriff behind them at their backs and blocking the exit, much to Jonah's pleasure. Jonah had waited over three years for this part of his plan to come to fruition and he was eager to get the ball rolling. Without a word he set the backpack he had carried with him on the worn table in the center of the room as Wily's enforcer did the same with their travel bag.
Wordlessly they reached out and took each others offerings under the Sheriff's steady gaze. Each of them opened and inspected what they had exchanged and satisfied everything was in order they gave each other the faintest of smiles.
"I know you didn't invite me all the way out here to the middle of the hillbilly boondocks just to make a hand off." Wily said to Jonah as he handed the backpack to his associate.
"Can you handle more of the product?" Jonah inquired.
"I'll take every gram you can make. Just how much more are you talking about?' Wily asked with an obvious interest showing in his eyes.
"Going from our current twenty pounds at sixty-five percent purity to two hundred pounds at ninety percent." Jonah said with a wide toothy grin spreading across his face.
"Hmm..." Wily muttered, his eyes momentarily widening at the thought of such a large increase in product and profit.
"Is this real or something you're hoping you can pull off?" Wily continued, his eyes narrowing as he intently thought about all the work and hazards that would come from moving that much meth. Of course the risks were equal to the profits and here was a chance for him to get in the game bigtime and grab two million tax free dollars every single month.
Jonah knew he would have to display proof and was prepared. From his pocket he pulled a Ziploc bag filled with rough crystals and tossed it lightly on the wooden table before his counterpart.
Years ago, when he had started out on this venture he had resorted to having front companies and a small team of individuals traveling the state and even entering into Canada to acquire the ingredients the drug required. After years of meticulously planning and building a clandestine grow house, he was finally able to find and figure out how to grow, from seeds, the plants that provided the main ingredient that the whole recipe was centered around. Now his cooks didn't have to go through the laborious and risky business of buying, mashing up and distilling the chemical from tens of thousands of pills as they had before. It had taken two years for the plants to mature and they needed a dry desert soil that took him far too long to duplicate. Now everything was up and running and the only thing that would hold him back was the distribution end. Wily and his thugs ran that end, just as his gang of thugs had done years ago with the town's secretive cash crop his father had grown.
With a raised eyebrow Willy took up the plastic bag and opened it, inspecting the contents with a professional eye. Motioning to his mountain of a companion he handed it over and watched as his bodyguard's brute fingers deftly took out a small test kit from his pocket and delicately placed a small sample within it. After shaking the small tester, one that Sheriff Miller and all professional law enforcement officers are familiar with, in moments there appeared a rich, deep color change that proved the drug's strength and made both Demetrious and Wily smile.
"I don't think we'll have any problem moving any amount of crystals with this quality, this stuff's so good it'll grow legs and sell itself. That is, as long as the quality stays consistent." Wiley said, glad now that he came out here.
"It will. I want to move to two hundred on the next up. Now we need to talk about an increase in payment to reflect the increase in quality." Now it was time to get to the heart of the matter Jonah thought, happy of how the discussion was going so far.
"I got no problem with that, but just so you know it won't be until after the next up that I can give you a bump in the price."
Jonah frowned sourly at that. Wily saw the look in Cargill's face and didn't want to blow the deal so he explained further.
"Look Jonah, I'm going to be real for a minute to let you understand my position. I got expenses too. Profits from twenty pounds of regs don't cover the price jump I have to cover to buy two hundred pounds of primo. I'm not complaining, I'm happy to do it but also I'm gonna to have to expand my customer and distribution base and that means muscling in on others territory. That's going to take men, money and guns my friend. Until word on the street gets out about your crystals, it's going to take some time for everyone to make your product the product of choice."
Jonah was unhappy with Wily's words and he said nothing, letting his distributor continue to speak his side. He knew some of what the well dressed man across the table from him spoke was the truth but it wasn't going to be as difficult as he was letting on. There was no way he was going to leave the negotiation without getting a better price, he had struggled too hard not to. This new stuff was worth at least a hundred bucks a gram on the streets compared to the old products value of maybe sixty greenbacks per gram.
"Look, Jonah, work with me here. Gimme the first up of two hundred pounds of your new product at our current price of thirty bucks a gram and on the second up I can drop a ten percent increase on ya. On the third I'll drop another ten percent for a total of twenty percent increase in price and then we can discuss it further and do more negotiating after that if you want. That's the best I can do."
Jonah was inwardly pleased with the bump in price Wily promised him, along with the possibility of further concessions, but it wasn't enough. The minimum he was looking for was forty greenbacks a gram, fifty would be better. Outwardly he needed to look as if Wily were getting the better end of the deal and let him be able to save face by getting a big chunk of the initial profits for this gigantic expansion Wily was now going to have to pay for. The game had rules and everyone here had to maintain face. He simply scratched his chin as if he were idly trying to decide.
"I know this stuff's worth a hondo per gram on the streets and I want to keep the fifty/fifty ratio going by the second up, not just agree to negotiate on it." Jonah steadfastly said.
"Yeah, ideally it would go for a hundred, but I might have to push it at eighty retail. The best I'm going to offer is our even split on the third but only if the quantity and the quality stays the same, and that's gonna depend on how much I can get for it on the street." Wily said, shaking his head in a definite no to show Jonah that was all he would agree to.
"Yo J, if you don't like what my man is tellin' you to yo face then good fuckin' luck findin' someone's else to pimp yo crystals." Demetrious said, intervening himself into the conversation for the first time.
Even though there was the hint of anger in the big man's voice and he saw Sheriff Miller's knuckles start to turn white on the handle of his revolver, Jonah wasn't upset with the ultimatum at all. In fact this was exactly how the game should be played. It was all part of the dance.
"Agreed then." Jonah said, reaching out his hand after a moment's hesitation to Wily with half a grin on his face.
Wily had just agreed to pay him an increase from the current two hundred and fifty thousand bucks a month to almost four and a half million dollars a month (plus or minus the difference in what the street value would prove to be) after three months and Jonah and the Sheriff were inwardly very happy.
"Always a pleasure." Wily returned with a wide grin, grasping Cargill's hand in a firm handshake.
