PABLO’S BUSINESS PLAN

EVERY WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON I PARK MY VAN IN A DIFFERENT lot somewhere on the beach, arrange my wares on the table inside my camper, set up my lounge chair for optimal tanning, grab a book and wait for the customers to arrive. My location is broadcast by word of mouth. I have a bunch of regulars who always want the same thing—an ounce of this, two ounces of that. They find me and I’m always ready. In the old days, I used to make the rounds and deliver. Time and gas money right out the window. It was actually Ellis’ idea. “Make them come to you,” she said. That girl is a genius. I’ve been running things this way for the last couple of years and it works out really well. I’ve got more clients and I’m moving more product than ever. In fact, if I keep going at this rate I’m going to run out of product before the next harvest. I’ll definitely have to go bigger next season.

I only sell pot, local homegrown pot to the local population. No drugs. What started all those years ago with a little poaching in Dean Graulich’s backyard, when Ellis and I were twelve, has blossomed into a fulfilling career. It’s my life’s work.

“Cartel” is just an umbrella term; you understand that, right? People call it the “Mexican drug cartel” but it isn’t just Mexicans. We got all of Central and some of South America involved up here. It’s a regular United Nations. There’s a bunch of different organizations working these hills alone. They’re real clandestine, you gotta know what you’re looking for if you even want to get close to one of the sites. Here’s a tip: if you see a beat-up old truck, a small one like a Nissan or a ratty Toyota, driven by a couple of Hispanic guys, maybe the tires are a little bald or the tailgate is missing, and the bed of the truck is filled with normal gardening supplies but there’s no lawn mower—bingo. You’ve probably located yourself some low level operatives. There’s never a mower. See, ‘cause they don’t need one. Cracks me up. Maybe I should put out an APB.

I’ve spent my life wandering these hills—my entire life—and so it’s been easy for me detect new activity out in the backcountry. Why aren’t the cops more involved? Dude, to get to these camps you have to walk miles through nasty brush, tunnel through poison oak, deal with ticks and rattlesnakes and all kinds of unpleasant pests and chances are you’re still not going to find anything. The pot farmer is a master of stealth. Most of the entrances to the trails I’ve found are well concealed. They’ll tunnel through some really dense undergrowth, then cut a bunch of brush and form a sort of plug so that if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’d never guess that the pathway was there. The trails usually zigzag you on a wild goose chase and as often as not lead to a dead end. They are real careful. They only come and go at night so you’re not going to just run into them on your morning jog. And these mountains are huge, lot of opportunity, lot of places to hide. Occasionally there’s a bust because someone got stupid. Like one time this Sheriff happened to pull off the road into a rest area up one of the canyons and interrupt a couple of guys loading bags of pot into the back of a delivery van. It was something like two in the morning. Oops. That made the news. But for the most part there just isn’t enough money or law enforcement agents around here to deal with a problem like this so unless someone gets killed or it’s shoved down their throat, no one really bothers about it. Except me. I’m on it. 24/7.

I sell three different kinds of pot because there are three different cartels cultivating this area and they’ve all got very different shit. In the old days it was all pretty much the same stuff. Nice tall Sativas much like what we found in Graulich’s yard all those years ago. Not anymore. We got the Indicas mixed in with the Sativas, it’s hybrid city out there.

I’ve found the ladies like the different brands to have names. Guys just want to know what’s going to get them the most fucked up but the women appreciate the subtlety of specifics. I call this one Pablo’s Blueberry Madness. Blueberry Madness certainly does have a hint of blueberry, especially if you think about blueberries after you smoke it, and there is a slight blue tinge to the bud. My power of suggestion is strong. All my clients swear they taste blueberry when they’re getting high because I told them they would. It’s a mellow pot. More of a daytime, go-to-work-on-it type pot. It comes from this section of gardens about ten miles north of here where they grow this crazy hybrid. It’s a little stumpy plant, maximum of thirty-six inches high and it only has three leaves. Yeah, only three. Thing is, this little plant matures in just ninety days, sometimes less, so they can get two harvests in one season. And it’s an excellent smoke. These guys only grow in that one area because it’s a little hotter up there, little farther inland so they don’t get quite as much fog. Plus they’re separated from the other growers. The cartel guys seem to want to give each other plenty of space. Good thing or there could be a full-blown war going on like down in Mexico. We don’t need that. Anyway I like the Blueberry Madness but I’ve come to hate the guys producing it more than any of the other growers. All the big scale growers use poisons but these people have this rodenticide from Mexico. The box has a picture of a huge dead rat. They leave the empties lying all over camp. It’s all in Spanish. I’ve never seen that shit before but you can bet it’s toxic as hell, lot of dead things in that area. Not just rats, it gets bunnies, squirrels, raccoons, and coyotes. I even saw a dead deer. That poison must really taste good because everything seems to eat it, and everything dies. And you know what happens when an animal eats that tasty poison? They get thirsty so they go find a little stream and drink. Then the poison kicks in ‘cause it’s water activated, and then the animal dies and then the body decomposes and where do you think the poison goes? Yep, right in the water. And where does the water go? Ocean. Yep. Makes me sick actually. Those guys don’t have to do it that way. You don’t have to kill everything. But because they are such assholes, I take a bigger piece of their pie. In fact I make a point of flat-out robbing those guys. Fuckheads.

How do I know so much about the camps and the layouts? I spend the winters doing recon. Once the sites are harvested, the growers take off until spring. I wait until early December, just to be sure that everyone is gone, then hike into all the different areas and assess the situation. I know exactly where they’ve dug their latrines, stored their food, sleep, bath. I figure out where they plan to have the nursery the next year and what they’re going to use as entries and exits. Everyone has emergency escape routes. I’ve seen trails that lead to little burrows where they can hide until trouble passes. It’s a good idea. While I’m out there figuring out their plans, I also work on some of my own secret trails to the outer parts of the gardens for trouble-free poaching. I’ve got my own set of emergency exits. By the time they’re back in the spring, I’ve got my strategies in place and I’m ready to roll.

This pot here is called Pepe Le Pew. Yes, you got it. It’s very skunky and strong. For some reason this weed really fires the appetite and it’s for that reason that I generally steer the ladies away. It’s a nice giggly high, great for sex. It’s actually my favorite but I love to eat. The fancy ladies, who buy from me, tend to hate food, or at least they hate to eat the food. But for everyone else it’s great. It comes from that area off Bulldog Ridge. Different group of growers, I can tell because those guys use this strange kind of stoves that they don’t sell anywhere around here. I’m sure they brought a bunch up from Mexico and they’re fueled by these weird butane gas bottles—it’s all in Spanish. Also, they hand water. The other guys use drip lines but these guys just have a bunch of hose hook-ups and a few rain-birds. There’s a much more laid back atmosphere in their camps, almost sloppy, probably because they’re smoking their own shit. Whole lotta napping going on over there. It’s a breeze to poach from those guys. And because they make it so easy, I’m very conservative in what I take. Good karma and all that.

Before we go any further I think we need to have a discussion about marijuana. Did you know that it is one of the few therapeutically active substances known to man for which there is no well-defined fatal dose? Did you know that? I read a report that said a person would have to smoke 100 pounds of grass in 15 minutes if they wanted to kill themselves. Not a single death has ever been credibly attributed directly to weed in the entire 5,000 years that man’s been getting high. How’s that for you? Sure as shit can’t say the same thing about alcohol or even aspirin, can you? So don’t go getting up on your high horse about how pot is illegal. It’s a stupid law and you should change it.

“PBJ” is my bestseller and kind of my trademark. Pablo’s Blitzkrieg Jungle. Why? Because crawling into those sites the first few times reminded me of something out of Vietnam, total war. That particular cartel cuts crazy trails with all kinds of false leads that would put you on the edge of a cliff with no where to go or lead you up some steep mountain where one false step could mean the end. Very treacherous. They made noise booby traps out of twine and jingle bells and strung trip lines all over the trails so you had to watch your every move. It was scary as hell figuring my way around their traps because all these guys are armed and more than willing to shoot. Blitzkrieg Jungle summed it up. The PBJs are definitely the best organized. They moved in right after 9/11 and set up a series of gardens running along the western side of this range. Most grow-sites are small, many of them close together so that one guy can tend to several areas. The water source for the beach community is on the other side of these mountains and so there are big pipes running all throughout the range. Cartel guys just drill down and tap the line. The city knows people steal water but it would cost a lot more money than it’s worth to try and track down the offenders so they just let it go. In some areas of the mountains, where there isn’t easy access to a city line, the PBJs will tap into private property. No one seems to notice.

PBJs use black plastic hose, miles of it running up and down the crop rows, with spaghetti tubes that branch off to the individual plants. It’s a slow drip system with shut-off values in every section. In the old days before they figured out about the city lines, they used to tap into the small spring-fed streams that run in some of the canyons. I saw irrigation hoses run for over a mile to a single site. They’d dam up the stream up above the grow-site, stick the end of the hose in a coffee can, poke some holes in the can, put the can inside a nylon stocking, so the line didn’t get clogged with mud, and throw the thing into the little pond. Gravity keeps the line flowing—no need for a pump. A 3X3 foot pond could provide enough water for 10,000 plants—I kid you not! I was a little shocked when I saw how little water it took to grow the stuff. It is, after all, a weed. Once they figured out about the city lines they tripled the operation.

So why don’t I just grow my own? Avoid the danger? Too much trouble, plus I like the excitement, the adrenaline. I’ve got my routine down. I skim off the top, just take enough to keep the program going and leave all the heavy lifting to the big boys. True, the big boys would kill me if they could catch me but like I said, this is my territory, my home, and nobody knows it as well as I do. I’ll never get caught.

I try to make my rounds about a week before the various organizations harvest their crops. They bring in outside help for the cutting and I like to be long gone when that happens. I go in at night and cut plants on the outside rim. One good plant can yield about a pound of bud. So on my nightly runs I try and nab a couple plants here, a couple plants there, cut the plant way down at the root and sneak ‘em out. Nobody ever knows the difference. I’ve got a secret drying spot up at the top of these hills. No reason for anyone to ever go there. It’s remote and there’s no water but I’ve got it all set up so I can hang my plants and let the buds dry out slowly. Yeah, I get about thirty to forty pounds a season and that’s plenty. But, like I said, business continues at this rate, I’m going to have to up my production next season.