New Year's Shenanigans: Modesta Quinn, #1

1

The sun had set seven hours before, and it wouldn’t come up again for another eight. Apparently that was winter in the Pacific Northwest. If there was any moonlight up there to be had, it was being absorbed by the thick rain clouds and even thicker evergreen branches high overhead. Midnight on New Year’s Day was a hell of a time for Bello Sanchez to be tromping through an old-growth forest by the light of his cell phone, but it was also a great time to pull a job.

Possibly the only time to pull off this particular job, according to Bello’s Uncle Hector.

They—Bello, Uncle Hector, and Bello’s older brother Nic—had left Hector’s beat-up, twenty-year-old Pontiac Grand Am parked in a clearing in the woods at the end of a dead-end gravel road, about a mile off the nearest two-lane county road. The trash left behind in the clearing said it was the kind of place that saw a lot of target shooting, underage drinking, and backseat sex. The empty bottles of cheap beer said Rainier instead of Sol Cerveza, and the shell casings were plastic shotgun shells, not nine millimeter brass, but the logo on the condom wrappers said that there were some things that were the same wherever you went.

To get to that parking spot they’d had to come nearly twenty miles from the nearest highway—though Bello thought it was ridiculous to call that empty stretch of two-lanes-each-way road a highway. Up and down rolling hills they cruised by the dim headlights of the old Pontiac, through thick forest, past an occasional lonely porch light. And now, after following Nic and Hector’s backs through the woods for an hour in the rain, it felt like they were a million miles from anywhere. Bello was a city kid, a Barrio kid, and the drippy silence in the woods around them, which was occasionally broken by the sound of one of them snapping a dead branch underfoot, set his nerves on end.

This job had better be as good as Uncle Hector said.

Hector, in the lead of their little troop, broke the silence. I can’t believe they make you deliver pizza all the way out here, he complained as he picked his way over a downed tree about the thickness of a burn barrel and fifty times as long.

If you come in from the other side of the mountain it’s not so bad, Nic said, pausing to look at the thick green moss on the tree’s trunk before following Hector over it. Only takes me fifteen minutes, and they tip good.

I bet they do, Bello said. They gotta be stoned out of their minds half the time. He attempted to follow right behind Hector and Nic, but his shorter legs meant that he had to swing one leg up and over the trunk, shift his weight forward, and then swing his back leg around. When he did, the moss soaked his jeans right through, making them as cold and wet as his hoodie and his high-top tennis shoes. Now his clothes were soaked to the skin everywhere except where his backpack protected his back.

He was not cut out for this Pacific Northwest crap. I want to go home to L.A.

Uncle Hector laughed, but he didn’t stop walking. "We will, my boy. After tonight, we’re going home in style."

A minute or so later the forest around them changed. It was still dark and wet and full of evergreen trees, but the trunks of these trees shrunk to about half as big around and were growing in straight lines, as if they’d been planted that way. The angle of the ground under Bello’s feet grew flatter overall, but began to roll slightly up and down between the rows of trees. Just like furrows in a strawberry field, but covered in a couple of inches of thick moss.

The old Christmas tree farm, Nic whispered back to them. Bello reached up on his tiptoes to feel the long needles on a bottle-brush-like branch above his head and thought that it had been decades since that tree had been small enough to fit inside anybody’s house.

No more flashlights, Uncle Hector said. We go dark from here.

Nic’s light blinked off.

Uncle Hector’s did too.

Bello hesitated shutting his phone’s light off, aiming it toward the back of Hector’s head instead. What if we run into a bear?

Hector turned and smiled, looking like the grim reaper inside his sweatshirt hood. The expression stretched his mustache wide and pulled the slack, sun-weathered skin around his throat tight and smooth for a change. That neck had earned Uncle the nickname Pavo, turkey, among the Vatos Locos, but Bello would never call him that to his face. Then I guess you’ll just have to run faster than your old uncle, won’tcha?

Bello felt his eyes go wide. He looked toward Nic to see if he was scared too, and was grateful to see that his older brother was smiling the same way their mother smiled when her sons fell for one of their uncle’s tall tales. Shut your light off, Bello. There’s no bears here.

Bears or no bears, it still seemed like a crap idea to turn the light off. Who knew what they were going to step on or trip over in the dark. But Bello did it, for Nic.

Plunged into complete blackness, they had no choice but to follow the straight lines of the overgrown Christmas tree trunks. Bello trailed his cold, damp fingers along the rough bark of one tree after another to stay on track. Ahead, Hector quietly hummed El Mismo Sol. Bello wasn’t sure if he was trying to invoke reassuring memories of the sun, or if he was just holding off his own case of the nerves. Either way, hearing the melody helped as much as the trees for keeping Bello moving in the right direction.

Hopefully they were still heading in the right direction.

Another few minutes later, distant light peeked through the trees directly ahead. Bello relaxed. A little.

As they walked closer to the source, the single hazy glow in the drizzle separated into a dozen individual lights. Bello was still a few rows from the edge of the forest when Uncle Hector reached out and pulled both him and Nic to a halt, motioning for them to crouch down.

The closest pair of lights shone icy blue from the top of a pair of poles at the near corners of a fully fenced, empty gravel parking lot big enough for ten cars. It was pretty clear that the coils of barbed wire on top of the ten-foot-tall chain-link fence were all about security. The fence went entirely around the property, with a huge rolling gate where an asphalt two-lane road disappeared into the trees.

The rest of the lights burning in the dark forest clearing looked and sounded like the buzzing, orange street lights that Bello knew so well from the Barrio. They were mounted beneath the eaves of the biggest wooden barn he had ever seen. Above the old vertical plank walls it had two levels of metal roofing. The center section stood about four stories tall at its peak and ran down the middle of the building. On either side of the center structure, a matching pair of roofs about two stories tall gently sloped away like the shoulders of an old man.

Centered on the front wall of the barn, facing them across the parking lot, was a windowless pair of rolling doors big enough to drive a semi truck through. Four or five basketball courts would probably fit inside the building.

Except for the glow of the lights, the place looked deserted.

This is it? Uncle Hector asked. Bello shared his doubt, because it sure didn’t look like much to him.

Nic nodded and then made a show of drawing a deep breath in through his nose. So did Uncle Hector. When Bello copied them, he got a strong hit of a forbidden yet familiar smell coming from the direction of the barn. Like skunk, but wetter.

That’s a pot farm? They grow pot in there? Bello asked, feeling a little bit of awe now because of the size of the building.

Tons of it, Nic answered. Grow it. Process it. Ship it out by the truckload.

Oh, hell yeah. This job was absolutely going to be as good as Uncle Hector said it was.

What time is it? Hector asked.

Nic pulled out his phone and checked the screen. Five minutes to midnight.

Uncle Hector smiled that smile he always got right before Psichosis, his favorite luchador, took to the ring for a grudge match. Okay. We should get closer to the back gate before the lights go out.

"Vamanos," Bello answered, following Hector and Nic clockwise around the clearing. They kept to the trees, because not only did the building have lights and a fence to discourage the kind of thing they were about to do, it also had a slew of cameras. According to Nic, they covered every inch of ground between the building and the trees. Outside the fence, too.

Around the back side of the pot barn they found a fenced gravel clearing about the same size as the parking lot on the other end. Instead of spaces for cars, it had storage structures around the perimeter. Four of them were fully enclosed sheds, heavily chained and padlocked shut. Five were open-sided metal carports. Three of those were full to the rafters with plastic wrapped stuff on pallets. The other two had stacks and stacks of black plastic pots in various sizes. The biggest structure inside the fence was a large, shingle-roofed picnic shelter with a half dozen wooden picnic tables laid out in two rows of three, with room to spare.

The picnic shelter looked to have been the recent site of one muther of a fiesta. Empty cans and bottles sat on the tables and overflowed a large plastic trash can that gave off a sour smell, even at this distance. Christmas lights draped from the thick rafters blinked red and green. A hip-high stack of pizza boxes wilted in the far corner, half under and half out of the shelter, catching hollow drips of rain from the overflowing gutter above.

And there, under it all, was the subtle yet unmistakable smell of pot smoke. Almost, but not quite enough to get a contact high.

Uncle Hector whistled low. "These vatos know how to party."

Nic checked the time. Two minutes.

A breeze came up and pressed Bello’s wet hoodie against the back of his neck. The drizzling rain had stopped, so he dropped the hood to get it off his clammy skin.

What are you doing? Idiot. Put your hood back on. Uncle Hector smacked Bello up the backside of his head, then he looked at Nic and said, Damn kid acts like he’s never been on a job before.

Bello complied, and then rubbed the spot on the back of his head where Hector’s large silver skull ring had connected. I’ve done jobs before. And I’m not a kid. He might only be seventeen, but if they got nailed doing this job, the law would absolutely treat him like an adult, just like Hector.

Before Uncle could say anything more, the clock struck midnight and the lights on the outside of the barn went dark at the same time as the little red LEDs on the security cameras. Without the low humming of the lamps, the night became completely silent. Then Bello heard two clicks.

The first was an emergency lamp coming on under the peak of the barn’s eaves, giving them a bit of light in the darkness.

The second click was the electronic lock on the gate in the nearby corner of the chain-link fence. As if opened by a ghost trying to escape, the gate swung outward without making a sound.

Hot damn, Hector said. "The little bruja did it."

Bello objected to Uncle Hector calling his friend Libby a witch. They owed her too much for him to say that. Besides, Bello liked her. If it wasn’t for Bello’s friendship with Libby, Hector would never have let him take part in the job, and they wouldn’t even be able to get inside the barn. Without Libby’s computer smarts, they’d never have gotten past the cameras and the security system.

Because of Libby, they could just walk right in.

And that’s exactly what they did. Bello first, then Nic, and then Hector. Nic gave the stack of pizza boxes a little kick as he walked by. The pile slumped over like wet leaves.

Bello paused at the back door to the barn and crossed himself before trying the door. The knob turned. Thank you, Libby, Bello said quietly to himself as the door opened inward without setting off an alarm. He stepped inside, comfortably warm for the first time that night, finding himself in a huge, dimly lit hallway. He scooted to his left, his backpack scratching against the wall, to let Nic and Hector come in behind him.

The inside of the barn looked just about as shabby as the outside. There was a long, wide white-washed wood hallway with a polished cement floor that ran from the back door they’d just come through all the way to the big doors they’d seen from the outside at the other end of the barn. Four cheap rectangular plastic tables, the kind you can get at K-Mart for twenty bucks, filled the near end of the hallway. There were lots of fine-tipped scissors sitting on top of the tables and lots of orange plastic buckets stacked beneath them; some had been overturned and used as stools.

Though there were light fixtures mounted to the low ceiling every few feet, the only light in the hall seeped under and around the large sliding doors along both long walls. The six on the left leaked more of the same icy blue light as the parking lot outside. The orange light leaking around the cracks of the three doors on the right side was so glaring that it looked like someone had tried to lock away part of the sun.

The lights were the first real sign of life in the building, and seeing them gave Bello pause. He listened carefully, catching only the whir and buzz of an army of fans and air conditioners. What if someone’s here? he asked Nic.

No way. Not possible, Nic answered. I dropped those pizzas off just after midnight last night. The party looked like it was just getting started. No way anybody was coming in today.

Good, Hector said and walked over to the first door on the left. He pulled hard and it squealed open a few feet. A wash of even warmer, moist air flowed out along with bright light and the smell of soil and fertilizer. Squinting, Bello checked it out.

The