Harrison’s beady eyes scanned the room. He noticed the big bottle of Jack Daniel’s sitting on a table in the corner, went over, opened it, and took a big swig. Townsend watched him with an ironic grin. “Help yourself to a drink, Mr Harrison,” he said. Harrison belched, walked over to Townsend, and sent his hand down to Townsend’s right hip. The holster he found hidden under the jacket was empty. “I requested no weapons, Mr Harrison,” said Townsend. “I kept my part of the bargain.”
“Good thing you did,” Harrison grunted. He took another pull at the bottle. “So you’re Townsend, huh? You the one who had to pull Cazaux’s plug, right? You probably think you’re hot shit now.” He turned to look at Bruno Reingruber. “This the fucking German?”
“Major Bruno Reingruber, my deputy commander and senior officer.” Reingruber stood at parade rest beside and slightly behind Townsend, his square jaw held high, his chest inflated. When he heard his name, he snapped to attention and gave a Nazi salute.
“Heil fucking Hitler,” Harrison said, his voice filled with disgust. “You guys are pretty, real fuckin’ pretty. You must all be pretty stupid dumb-asses too.” Then Harrison’s eyes rested on Reynolds. “Hey Bennie, you tell your friends that if I ever catch your ass out on my streets again, you’re dead.”
“I advise you to listen to these guys, Sandman,” Bennie said. “They mean business.”
“Oh, I’m sure they do,” Harrison said, talking to Bennie but facing Townsend. “I’m sure the Angels, the Riders, the wetbacks, and the slopes meant business too. But they’re not in control around here either. The Brotherhood is in control of this state.” He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, limey. First you kill two of our brothers and steal our chemist, then you off one of our recruits, then you set up meetings and want to be the big boss. We don’t need no foreigners trying to muscle in on our operation.”
“You are going to produce more methamphetamine in one month than you previously could in a year, Mr Harrison,” Townsend said. “Easy, safe, and guaranteed to make us all rich in a very short period of time.”
“And this deal includes hosing off a couple of cops, Townsend?” Harrison asked angrily. “You cost us plenty with that holdup of yours.”
“I see Mr Mullins felt free to talk about our operation with you,” Townsend said, his confident smile dimmer. “It seems our decision to terminate Mr Mullins’s miserable life was a sound one.”
“Mullins was a Brotherhood recruit, asshole,” Harrison said. “He was one of ours, and you knew it. He gave us plenty of access to businesses, warehouses, and events. Killing him was like attacking all of Satan’s Brotherhood. You owe us.”
“Mullins was a weasel who would sell his mother to make a dollar,” Townsend said angrily. “He did the Sacramento Live! job for five thousand lousy dollars. How much was he supposed to pay you out of that?”
At Harrison’s blank face, Townsend added, “Or perhaps you didn’t even know he was doing this inside job? The latter, I suspect. So Mullins was cutting the Brotherhood out of your share of his action. He was a lying, cheating bastard. You should have had him killed long ago.”
“Maybe so, Townsend. But I got one message for you shitheads: Get out of town now, and stay out, or we’ll fuck you over real bad. Capish?”
“Aren’t you even interested in my proposal?” Townsend asked.
“Does it involve you making or selling meth?”
“Fortunately, no,” Townsend said dryly. “Manufacturing drugs, especially methamphetamine, seems to be a very hazardous undertaking, best left to you and the Mexicans.”
“If I find out you doin’ any deals with the fuckin’ Mexicans, asshole,” Harrison said, “I’ll kill every last one of you myself. Your hard-ass German friends won’t be able to help you one fucking bit.”
“Major Reingruber would like nothing better than to go to war with you, the Mexican cartels, the police, and anyone else who opposes us,” Townsend said sternly, affixing his one good eye squarely on Harrison. “But I prefer cooperation to war. Since we have somewhat similar political and cultural views, shall we say, we prefer to work with you.”
“But you got Bennie the Chef,” Harrison argued. “That means you’re cooking. You cook crank in Brotherhood territory, you die.”
“Mr Reynolds is serving as my technical expert and adviser to streamline methamphetamine production,” Townsend said. “We have devised a means to manufacture meth in vast quantities with safety, security, and profitability in mind-but we do not wish to do it ourselves. We will leave that up to you. Care to see what we have in mind?”
By this time, Harrison’s curiosity had taken over. He nodded his assent. Townsend led the way into the barn behind the house, which was guarded by four heavily armed soldiers. There, lined up like barrels in a brewery, were twenty black steel drums, mounted on small trailers. “What the hell’s this, Townsend?” Harrison asked. “This your idea of a joke?”
“This is the core of my new operation, Mr Harrison,” Townsend replied. “These are meth hydrogenators.”
“Say what?”
“Hydrogenators,” Townsend repeated. “Thirty gallons each, with built-in agitators, pressure monitoring, leak detection, air filtration, and product-purification apparatus. The trailer contains a power unit and vacuum-pressurization equipment.”
Harrison still looked confused, so Bennie clarified it for him. “Big bucks, Sandman. We’re talking two, three hundred thousand dollars a day from each one of ‘em. Fully portable, fully self-contained-you can practically set one of these things up in your backyard next to your barbecue grill and no one would know you’re cooking. It’s as easy to use as a Suzy fuckin’ Homemaker oven.”
That kind of information Harrison understood. He walked over to one of the units and ran his hand over the dull black steel surface. “Cool. I’ll take ‘em. How much?”
“They’re not for sale, Mr Harrison,” Townsend said. “But you can have them. All of them, if you like.”
Bennie looked thunderstruck. Harrison’s bearded face broke into a wide grin. “Wrap ‘em up, limey.”
“All I ask is that you pay my organization a modest sum of one thousand dollars a pound for every pound you produce,” Townsend said. Harrison’s grin vanished as he tried to do the math in his head, so Townsend did it for him: “That’s twenty percent of the wholesale price but only eight percent of the retail price per pound. You can buy the chemicals and catalysts from us if you wish, or you can supply your own. We even provide the security for each unit, courtesy of the Aryan Brigade.”
“But I get the cookers for free?” Harrison asked incredulously.
“Absolutely free,” Townsend said. “Each unit reports every time a hydrogenation cycle is completed.”
“Does this asshole ever speak plain English, Bennie?” Harrison complained.
“What he means, Sandman, is that the unit can tell us when somebody cooks up a batch,” Bennie said, falling back into his prerehearsed script even though he was still in a state of shock. “The colonel gets paid by the pound you cook up. Just so everyone stays on the up-and-up, the unit tells us how much you cook.”
“Precisely,” Townsend replied. “The unit can tell us how much was made, and when. Each cycle can produce up to thirty pounds of product. You pay us thirty thousand dollars every time you make a full batch, and whatever else you earn is yours to keep. We even provide maintenance for the units-if they ever break down, we will fix them without charge. We will become the Microsoft of the methamphetamine trade.”
“The what?” Harrison grunted, still running his hands lovingly across the surface of the hydrogenator.
“Never mind,” Townsend said. “Is it a deal, then?”
Harrison was clearly impressed. “I’ll take this deal to the chief,” he said. “I think he’ll like it.”
“Good,” Townsend said. “Then you’ll be off.” Again Harrison looked at Townsend as if he were speaking a foreign language, but when Townsend headed for the door, he understood the tour was over.