Efficiencies
“It seems like you’ve been busy,” said Sasha to Bill. They were driving along in his car, working their way north, through winding roads and detours. By now, Bill had been on many such rides. He knew that their destination was nowhere in particular. He knew that Sasha would make small talk as if they were friends. He knew that eventually they would get to the business at hand. Then Sasha would drive him back to the office, take a copy of his notes, and disappear into his office, or go back out for another meeting.
“I guess I have been busy, yes,” said Bill, his notepad in his hands. He had learned from Jim the ingredients it took to manufacture 2-3 grams of iodine meth. He hadn’t actually seen the process at work; he was relying solely on the representations of his meth chef, Jim, with whom he’d become regular breakfast partners.
It had taken him awhile to understand the recipe and the process. For one thing, it was complicated. The chemical composition of the stuff; the strange way it was made. And for another thing, there was Jim. Quirky, nervous, trying-to-stay straight Jim. Sometimes he got too nervous even to talk and had to go out for a smoke. Sometimes he was depressed and didn’t want to talk: his pay from Sasha was lousy, his girlfriend left him, he wasn’t moving on with his life the way he needed to, something. People needed to be listened to sometimes. Bill sometimes spent whole hours listening to Jim. It was a learning experience for both of them and at some level, Bill genuinely liked Jim and prayed that Jim would find his way in this life.
Jim had taught him a great deal in the weeks they had spent together. Not only about things he’d rather have lived his life never knowing, but about life and how even the smallest choices can ripple through one’s life. Jim had been a chemistry major. He’d gotten interested in making methamphetamine after reading an article about how it was used during World War II to keep infantry men awake and alert. He thought it would be a fund project. He and his roommate had come up with the formula. They tried it together. His roommate never got hooked or strung out on it, but Jim wasn’t so lucky. “I guess I got one of those addictive personalities,” he said to Bill one breakfast.
Through their conversations, Bill picked up bits and pieces here and there about the process, the tools, and the ingredients. He had driven around on his own to figure out how plentiful or scarce certain items were and whether or not Sasha would need to invest in large quantities of one thing or another. He had become fairly well-versed in the art of waste disposal, odor abatement, and other by-product skills of meth making.
Bill’s task had also been made more difficult by recent emergency legislation that had been enacted by the state congress at the request of the Michigan state police. Some of the necessary items needed to make meth were being heavily scrutinized. At one level he applauded the move. It made sense to him and sounded like a reasonable tactic to handle an out-of-control problem. On the other hand, he worried that these roadblocks might someone bring harm to him or his family.
In attempting to synthesize his own notes from the process, Bill wondered more than once how drug addicts could manufacture it without killing themselves. It was a delicate operation, or so it seemed to Bill. Certainly more complicated than manufacturing optical solutions. He also decided that if these kids could make this stuff, then they ought to be in college, because they certainly had the intelligence. Jim: A silly chemistry experiment had ruined his life. Bill could relate, having changed the trajectory of his own life with one bad decision.
“So what do you have for me today. We need to get crackin’ Bill. I have a big order coming up and it would be nice to tap in to some of these cost savings if I can. Whatcha got?”
Bill hated this part the most. The research made him uncomfortable, but he could stomach it. This, this was what made him want to take a shower. Helping a bad person manufacture drugs simply didn’t sit right with him. Though he knew it made no difference – that Jesus was everywhere and saw everything he did – he had stopped going to church in the hopes that maybe Jesus would be too busy with the people who did go to follow him around. He apologized each night before he went to bed. He asked Jesus to get him out of his mess, and if it wasn’t too much trouble, to get his pension back from Dick Grund. His hatred for the man grew with each day. This was his fault Bill was here, when he should have been sitting behind his desk figuring out ways to cut cost on saline solution. He turned his attention to the business at hand.
“Well,” he said, looking down his checklist and ticking things off, “the lye, the hydrogen peroxide, the surgical tubing, alcohol, stuff like that; even the heating rub I think can be purchased in bulk. We can get all that by the case. And of course all the cooking equipment. Not a big deal. But there is the matter of the pseudophedrine or ephedrine, which is essential for your core product,” said Henry.
“Uh huh, yeah, that’s a problem. What did you find?”
Bill had not wanted to find anything. He had thrown up his hands at the last meeting he had with Sasha, telling him that there was no way around the state police ban of large scale ephedrine purchases; that all the stores were complying by limiting the number of cold products you could purchase, and by putting the more popular ones behind the counter. But Sasha had told him that his findings were unacceptable, and he told him in a way that Bill understood to mean he needed to find a way to get around it. He had, though he hated to put someone else out as a sacrificial lamb in place of himself.
“The immigrant stores,” Bill said. “The small mom-and-pop immigrant stores.”
“The what? asked Sasha.
“Well, I’ve been doing a little driving around and it looks like the drugstores and small mom-and-pop stores that are owned by immigrants might be an option. The Czechs, the Indians and so on. They don’t seem to understand the trouble they could get in if they sell you things on the list. I . . . I bought 6 boxes of Contact without a problems, which is 6 grams of meth.” Bill reached into his briefcase and put them in the well between the driver and passenger. “Unless you have a medical connection, like a doctor or a sales representative with lots of samples, I think your best bet is going to the little drugstores.”
“Uh huh,” said Sasha. “Sounds good. What else?”
“Well, I see your guys are buying coca-cola and using those jars to manufacture. This means that they can only manufacture what they consume in coke. Instead, you can get an unlimited supply of coke bottles at the recycling center and not have to worry about your cooks finishing off drinks before they begin.”
“Good.”
“And instead of using surgical tubing like a siphon, which depends upon the cook to make sure it’s done correctly, you should invest in cheesecloth. That way you can pour off most of the liquid from the recipe without worrying about saliva or other contaminants getting into the product. It may add an hour to the process, but it increases the quality of the product and decreases the likelihood that someone will get hurt.”
“I like it. Tell me more.”
There were other little cost saving measures that Bill explained, like getting red phosphorous from sources other than match boxes. Match boxes were cumbersome and accounted for some of the injuries and the explosions because one had to use acetone to remove the necessary chemical from the strike pad. Online it could be shipped to Canada and then driven down. Bill suggested staggering the cooking methods which would not only help alleviate the odor, but would also keep people busy throughout the production line. Currently, they were making 1 batch at a time. Given the size of any location, Bill believed that one could stagger up to 4 batches with little increased risk. Using mason jars instead of regular glass would allow them to deposit the waste in a recycling area where it would be ground up. Trashing jars with chemicals was problematic on a number of levels and could leave a trail for the police.
To avoid the tell-tale rotten egg smell that results in the last stage of distilling, Bill suggested that they rent only houses with chimneys. Sticks of incense could be set up in the base and lit during the final process. Jars could be opened in the chimney which would diminish the odor as it traveled through to its outlet.
They rode for what seemed like forever, Bill talking Sasha through his findings, Sasha nodding and asking questions. There was more to be done, Bill explained, to streamline the process. He’d heard of different methods that might have less waste, and he still had not figured out how to get rid of the waste, but he was quite certain that dumping it into running streams was not a safe option.
“Well, find me a better one,” said Sasha.
“It doesn’t bother you that fish and aquatic life are dying? Those products are really toxic,” said Bill. Bill was a hunter and avid fisherman. It offended him that people would contaminate his backyard food supply.
“What do I care? My water comes from the tap. Anyway, what else.”
Bill didn’t have much more to give Sasha. In fact, he could have made lots of changes has this been a legitimate business, but Sasha explained to him early on that this was not the kind of business one wanted to sink a whole lot of investment in; you needed to move quickly and leave behind anything that was big or problematic.
In one of his meetings with Jim, Jim had gone painstakingly through the process, which involved pirex baking pans, like the ones his wife made sheet cakes in. The were used to dry the meth powder. They used electric skillets, microwaves, and stoves. Major cost savings could be had simply by purchasing industrial capacity equipment. He had made this suggestion at one of those early meetings and quickly learned this was not an option in the drug business. If Bill could figure out how they could produce more than two grams at a time, that would be great, but no one was ponying up big dollars only to have to dump the stuff a week later. It would be better if Bill could concentrate on getting cheap disposable things.
Bill had created a comprehensive list of things for each “kitchen” where the meth would be cooked. This recipe produced roughly 3 grams of crystal meth, which, according to Jim, got the highest price on the market. If one staggered the cooking times appropriately, one kitchen could produce about 15 batches in a day, which was close to 45 grams or $4500.00. If Sasha had 3 kitchens, he could move quite a bit of product. The entire kitchen could be packed in a suitcase and shuttled from place to place, so long as there was a stove of some sort. A microwave was helpful, but not mandatory. He showed the list to Sasha, and then read it to him. These were all the things that he would need before beginning.
1 Case Pint Mason jars
2 Boxes Contact 12-hour
3 Bottles of Heet
4 feet of surgical tubing
1 Bottle of Rubbing Alchohol.
1 Gallon Muriatic Acid
1 Gallon of Coleman's Fuel
1 Gallon of Acetone
1 Pack cone-style
1 Electric Skillet
4 Bottles Iodine Tincture 2%
2 bottles H2O4
3 20 0z soft drink bottles
1 Can Red Devils Lye
1 Pair of sharp scissors
4 cases book matches with brown strike pads
1 pyrex baking dish
1 Box single-sided razor blades
1 digital gram scale
2 gallons distilled water
1 Roll Aluminum foil
“What about delivery and pick-up,” asked Sasha. He had wanted Bill to consider less risky ways to transport the meth. The product itself wasn’t flammable or problematic, but Sasha felt that live exchanges were trouble. Instead, he wanted Bill to consider drop-off locations that might work.
“Well, I believe you will have some luck using the copper mines that are scattered about in this part of the country,” said Bill. “It’s not a total solution, but it’s a partial one.”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t those private property?”
“Yes, in a sense, but they’re not used anymore and you will likely have notice if they ever ar used. Except for the few that are scattered around and used for tourist viewing, most of them are never used. See, the copper companies discovered that it was cheaper to buy copper from other countries than it was to mine it up here. Anyway, instead of selling the land, they’ve let a lot of it be used as park land, but retain the ore rights underneath. There are literally hundreds of cave entrances and a network of tunnels that could be used to store and pick-up product. You can get a map at the university and other sources. You’ll want someone who knows the business to track them down. I’m afraid I would only get you in trouble. But that’s the deal. The caves are a good place to store product undisturbed, too.”
“Hmm. Very good there, Bill. You’ve really risen to the task. What about distribution? Anything on what we discussed?”
The last time the two of them met, Sasha had wanted to know whether his reach ought to be beyond Michigan and the Midwest. He wanted to know if he could get his product past a 500 mile radius and if so, would it be profitable. At first, such a request seemed impossible for Bill to deliver on, but some Google searching coupled with some advice from Jim had actually given him the answer. In a strange way, he had actually felt good about finding this particular needle in the haystack.
“Well, if you continue to produce a high quality product, well, it’s like any product; there will be demand for it. You could move outside of your current area, but you won’t want to move west. Out west, the stuff is cheaper by about $100.00 per gram. Your best bets are cities, because the product is harder to manufacture there, so demand is higher. In New York, for instance, you can get up to $240.00 for a gram. Of course, you don’t want to go to the inner city, because it’s not a black drug. Blacks prefer cocaine and marijuana, generally speaking.”
“Hmm, yes, that all makes sense. Good. Good.”
Each time Bill came across an efficiency or an answer to one of Sasha’s problems, or a piece of helpful information, he had been torn about providing it. Why he should affirmatively help a man who probably wouldn’t know the difference if he couldn’t get an answer for something, he toyed with daily. He could easily have misled Sasha, or simply omitted certain information. He would lie awake nights trying to figure out if he could lay a labyrinth that would trip up his rival and get him arrested, but all of his fantasies ended with his wife getting sliced open or his daughter being raped. The cost was just too great.
He thought about simply being incompetent at his job, not being able to find anything. After all, Sasha wasn’t his boss back and Grund and wouldn’t know whether he was good at his job. But he worried that some of the questions Sasha posed were merely ‘tests;” questions Sasha already had the answer to and was waiting for Bill to stumble intentionally, or set him up. Jim had warned Bill on more than one occasion that he should treat Sasha as if he were surrounded by land mines; that any information he provided Sasha could potentially be a trigger from one of those land mines. Again, the cost was too great.
So he had done what Sasha asked with as much energy as he could muster for a job that he felt would send him directly to hell. He worked to keep Sasha happy, and he did it because he was too stupid to outsmart anyone, and too frightened to stand up to anyone. He had done what he was tasked to do and done it well, at least as far as he knew. It was time to go.
Bill swallowed hard. He had been thinking about what he was going to say all day. This was the time if there was any time. He steeled himself. On the one hand, he didn’t want to make his host angry. He had not forgotten their initial conversations about the safety of his family. On the other hand, he felt he needed to speak his mind. God surely would help him through this.
“Sasha, I think I’ve done all I can do for you,” he began, his voice shaking just a bit. “I mean, we’ve already discuss that there are certain economies that you can’t take advantages of. I’ve pretty much exhausted my abilities here, and I think under the circumstances, I’ve done a good job for you.” He stopped and waited for Sasha to say something, but nothing was forthcoming.
“What I’m trying to say is that I would really like to continue to pay you back, you know, every penny, at the same rate I’m doing. But I’d like to stop working for you, now. I . . . I don’t think I’m an asset to you any more.”
“I still need you, Bill. I’ll say when we’re through,” said Sasha, matter-of-factly. “If that’s OK with you, of course.” Sasha looked over at Bill briefly. Bill could see the sarcasm in his face and he heard it in his words. He didn’t push it further.
“Sure, sure, it’s OK. I was just trying to help you, you know, save some money.” He made a feeble attempt at a joking laugh. “Get me off the payroll and all.”
“Not just yet.”
Sasha drove around a little while longer and then dropped Bill back at the office, reminding him to stop by the Subway and start working on their efficiency issues. He still needed more information from Bill and wanted him to revisit his own notes on the subject after they had implemented his changes. Sasha would tell him when that was. It wasn’t today, and they had to get through a rather larger order for a big weekend, which would be where Bill’s rubber would hit the road. After that, he would talk to Bill again.
Normally, Sasha got out of the car with Bill and headed to the office with him. Today, the motor stayed running as they pulled up to the office park and Sasha didn’t pull up to a space.
“Bill, you’ve done a good job for an asshole who got himself in a lot of trouble. Jim tells me you’re a good student. It’s too bad old Dick Grund didn’t keep you on at Grund Optical, because I think you really are a good, efficiency expert, but that old bastard wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Thank you,” said Bill.
“Jim also tells me that you’re not the type of guy to go to the police, and that’s good, too. You seem smart, like you wouldn’t do something that would jeopardize your family. But you church-going bastards, well, I just don’t know. Your consciences bother you or something and you snap overnight. I’ve had it happen before. Don’t snap on me Bill. You get my drift?”
“I . . . yes.” He didn’t really understand why Sasha was telling him this right now. He didn’t need to. Bill had never “snapped” in his life. He was the one everyone counted on. He was a steady player.
“Alright, then. I’ll see you later,” said Sasha, motioning toward the passenger door.
Bill got out of Sasha’s car and walked back to his own beat-up Ford. He watched Sasha head out to the end of the parking lot and stop. A very tall, muscular, black man with pink scarf around his neck got in the passenger seat where Bill had just been sitting and the two of them drove away. It seemed that Sasha was busy getting ready for the big order he had. He wondered briefly who the black man was, but decided he didn’t care. Sasha had so many businesses that he could have been anyone: a cleaning man, a franchise worker, a drug dealer.
It was time to head home. For the moment, it seemed, Bill no longer had to concentrate on methamphetamine. They would test his methods and figure out whether they were efficient and get back to him. For the time being, he could help the Singh family weigh sandwich meats and crunch numbers related to the amount of cleaner in water and other such efficiencies. He could go home and actually tell his wife something concrete about his work, rather than lies he had to fabricate to make himself credible. To him own wife he had to lie. This was a sad state of affairs for Bill. Until he had visited Bobby C that day, he had never lied to his wife. At least not big lies.
He often thought of Dick Grund. Sometimes he’d have visions of meeting Dick Grund in a coffee shop and showing him a few numbers he’d crunched relating to the optical company. One look, and Dick would see that shutting down the plant had been a bad idea. Bill would be responsible for saving the company and brining back Grund Optical to Portage. He would be a hero.
Sometimes his visions were not terribly nice. In them, he burns Dick’s house to the ground or punches the man in the nose. That, sir, is for forcing me into a life of crime, Bill would say in his fantasy. For it wasn’t Sasha, but Dick who had done this to him. Besides, it was just too dangerous to think about ways in which to take down Sasha. Sasha would kill him. Dick Grund was an overgrown frat boy. Bill could take him. Dick didn’t have ties to the Russian mafia who would go after his daughters.
Ironic, Bill thought, that it was Sasha, this otherwise seedy drug dealer, who had given Bill a job. Sasha had said it best the first day they met. He was a business man, but he understood what having a wife and kids meant. He had given Bill a job at his franchise so that his wife would be protected from the knowledge that her husband was in the drug trade.
It was a strange mix of feelings, and although Bill knew that in part the Subway job was as much a cover for Sasha as it was for Bill, it was a gesture that Sasha didn’t have to make. Whether Sasha set Bill up with a legitimate job was probably of no consequence to Sasha in the end; Sasha still would have had Bill over a barrel. Like the captive who slowly begins to identify with his kidnapper, Bill had credited Sasha with saving what tiny bit of his dignity was left him. Sasha was doing the same for Jim, too; providing the man with a means to stay out of prison. Sasha, for all intents and purposes, was his private relief effort. What he was doing wasn’t right, but he was giving at least two people a job.
Dick Grund, on the other hand, in one fell swoop, had taken out an entire town. He had gutted – at least figuratively – entire families, many of which were never able to regain their stability. Dick Grund had destroyed hundreds of families and never thought to give a single person any dignity. And for what? This wasn’t about the financial health of the company and everyone knew it. It was Dick Grund’s way of being able to use an over-funded pension and avoiding liability to the families – many of them three generations deep – who had committed their own livelihoods to keeping Grund Optical operating.
What Dick had done to them wasn’t illegal. But now, looking at his own life and those of his friends who were worse off than he, it was certainly criminal. But Dick wouldn’t get arrested any time soon. Private shareholders were applauding him, in fact. And no one cared that Bill and workers like him were literally drowning because of what Dick Grund did.
Bill had just read in the local paper that Dick was one of the sponsoring names for one of the boats on the Race to Mackinac. His particular donation was $150,000, all of which would go simply to getting a boat from the shores of Chicago to the shores of Michican. That was two-and-a-half times what Bill made at Grund. He could have lived for 2 ½ years on that! It was surely criminal. At night, his blood boiled.
Bill made his way to his house and pulled into the driveway. He was ready for a nice meal and some conversation with his wife. As he always did, he made some notes in the car about what he would tell her he did that day (if she asked. If she didn’t, he would use the story the next time she asked). He took a look in the mirror and smiled once, just to make sure he could do it. His wife would be expecting it.
Click Here for Chapter 13
“I guess I have been busy, yes,” said Bill, his notepad in his hands. He had learned from Jim the ingredients it took to manufacture 2-3 grams of iodine meth. He hadn’t actually seen the process at work; he was relying solely on the representations of his meth chef, Jim, with whom he’d become regular breakfast partners.
It had taken him awhile to understand the recipe and the process. For one thing, it was complicated. The chemical composition of the stuff; the strange way it was made. And for another thing, there was Jim. Quirky, nervous, trying-to-stay straight Jim. Sometimes he got too nervous even to talk and had to go out for a smoke. Sometimes he was depressed and didn’t want to talk: his pay from Sasha was lousy, his girlfriend left him, he wasn’t moving on with his life the way he needed to, something. People needed to be listened to sometimes. Bill sometimes spent whole hours listening to Jim. It was a learning experience for both of them and at some level, Bill genuinely liked Jim and prayed that Jim would find his way in this life.
Jim had taught him a great deal in the weeks they had spent together. Not only about things he’d rather have lived his life never knowing, but about life and how even the smallest choices can ripple through one’s life. Jim had been a chemistry major. He’d gotten interested in making methamphetamine after reading an article about how it was used during World War II to keep infantry men awake and alert. He thought it would be a fund project. He and his roommate had come up with the formula. They tried it together. His roommate never got hooked or strung out on it, but Jim wasn’t so lucky. “I guess I got one of those addictive personalities,” he said to Bill one breakfast.
Through their conversations, Bill picked up bits and pieces here and there about the process, the tools, and the ingredients. He had driven around on his own to figure out how plentiful or scarce certain items were and whether or not Sasha would need to invest in large quantities of one thing or another. He had become fairly well-versed in the art of waste disposal, odor abatement, and other by-product skills of meth making.
Bill’s task had also been made more difficult by recent emergency legislation that had been enacted by the state congress at the request of the Michigan state police. Some of the necessary items needed to make meth were being heavily scrutinized. At one level he applauded the move. It made sense to him and sounded like a reasonable tactic to handle an out-of-control problem. On the other hand, he worried that these roadblocks might someone bring harm to him or his family.
In attempting to synthesize his own notes from the process, Bill wondered more than once how drug addicts could manufacture it without killing themselves. It was a delicate operation, or so it seemed to Bill. Certainly more complicated than manufacturing optical solutions. He also decided that if these kids could make this stuff, then they ought to be in college, because they certainly had the intelligence. Jim: A silly chemistry experiment had ruined his life. Bill could relate, having changed the trajectory of his own life with one bad decision.
“So what do you have for me today. We need to get crackin’ Bill. I have a big order coming up and it would be nice to tap in to some of these cost savings if I can. Whatcha got?”
Bill hated this part the most. The research made him uncomfortable, but he could stomach it. This, this was what made him want to take a shower. Helping a bad person manufacture drugs simply didn’t sit right with him. Though he knew it made no difference – that Jesus was everywhere and saw everything he did – he had stopped going to church in the hopes that maybe Jesus would be too busy with the people who did go to follow him around. He apologized each night before he went to bed. He asked Jesus to get him out of his mess, and if it wasn’t too much trouble, to get his pension back from Dick Grund. His hatred for the man grew with each day. This was his fault Bill was here, when he should have been sitting behind his desk figuring out ways to cut cost on saline solution. He turned his attention to the business at hand.
“Well,” he said, looking down his checklist and ticking things off, “the lye, the hydrogen peroxide, the surgical tubing, alcohol, stuff like that; even the heating rub I think can be purchased in bulk. We can get all that by the case. And of course all the cooking equipment. Not a big deal. But there is the matter of the pseudophedrine or ephedrine, which is essential for your core product,” said Henry.
“Uh huh, yeah, that’s a problem. What did you find?”
Bill had not wanted to find anything. He had thrown up his hands at the last meeting he had with Sasha, telling him that there was no way around the state police ban of large scale ephedrine purchases; that all the stores were complying by limiting the number of cold products you could purchase, and by putting the more popular ones behind the counter. But Sasha had told him that his findings were unacceptable, and he told him in a way that Bill understood to mean he needed to find a way to get around it. He had, though he hated to put someone else out as a sacrificial lamb in place of himself.
“The immigrant stores,” Bill said. “The small mom-and-pop immigrant stores.”
“The what? asked Sasha.
“Well, I’ve been doing a little driving around and it looks like the drugstores and small mom-and-pop stores that are owned by immigrants might be an option. The Czechs, the Indians and so on. They don’t seem to understand the trouble they could get in if they sell you things on the list. I . . . I bought 6 boxes of Contact without a problems, which is 6 grams of meth.” Bill reached into his briefcase and put them in the well between the driver and passenger. “Unless you have a medical connection, like a doctor or a sales representative with lots of samples, I think your best bet is going to the little drugstores.”
“Uh huh,” said Sasha. “Sounds good. What else?”
“Well, I see your guys are buying coca-cola and using those jars to manufacture. This means that they can only manufacture what they consume in coke. Instead, you can get an unlimited supply of coke bottles at the recycling center and not have to worry about your cooks finishing off drinks before they begin.”
“Good.”
“And instead of using surgical tubing like a siphon, which depends upon the cook to make sure it’s done correctly, you should invest in cheesecloth. That way you can pour off most of the liquid from the recipe without worrying about saliva or other contaminants getting into the product. It may add an hour to the process, but it increases the quality of the product and decreases the likelihood that someone will get hurt.”
“I like it. Tell me more.”
There were other little cost saving measures that Bill explained, like getting red phosphorous from sources other than match boxes. Match boxes were cumbersome and accounted for some of the injuries and the explosions because one had to use acetone to remove the necessary chemical from the strike pad. Online it could be shipped to Canada and then driven down. Bill suggested staggering the cooking methods which would not only help alleviate the odor, but would also keep people busy throughout the production line. Currently, they were making 1 batch at a time. Given the size of any location, Bill believed that one could stagger up to 4 batches with little increased risk. Using mason jars instead of regular glass would allow them to deposit the waste in a recycling area where it would be ground up. Trashing jars with chemicals was problematic on a number of levels and could leave a trail for the police.
To avoid the tell-tale rotten egg smell that results in the last stage of distilling, Bill suggested that they rent only houses with chimneys. Sticks of incense could be set up in the base and lit during the final process. Jars could be opened in the chimney which would diminish the odor as it traveled through to its outlet.
They rode for what seemed like forever, Bill talking Sasha through his findings, Sasha nodding and asking questions. There was more to be done, Bill explained, to streamline the process. He’d heard of different methods that might have less waste, and he still had not figured out how to get rid of the waste, but he was quite certain that dumping it into running streams was not a safe option.
“Well, find me a better one,” said Sasha.
“It doesn’t bother you that fish and aquatic life are dying? Those products are really toxic,” said Bill. Bill was a hunter and avid fisherman. It offended him that people would contaminate his backyard food supply.
“What do I care? My water comes from the tap. Anyway, what else.”
Bill didn’t have much more to give Sasha. In fact, he could have made lots of changes has this been a legitimate business, but Sasha explained to him early on that this was not the kind of business one wanted to sink a whole lot of investment in; you needed to move quickly and leave behind anything that was big or problematic.
In one of his meetings with Jim, Jim had gone painstakingly through the process, which involved pirex baking pans, like the ones his wife made sheet cakes in. The were used to dry the meth powder. They used electric skillets, microwaves, and stoves. Major cost savings could be had simply by purchasing industrial capacity equipment. He had made this suggestion at one of those early meetings and quickly learned this was not an option in the drug business. If Bill could figure out how they could produce more than two grams at a time, that would be great, but no one was ponying up big dollars only to have to dump the stuff a week later. It would be better if Bill could concentrate on getting cheap disposable things.
Bill had created a comprehensive list of things for each “kitchen” where the meth would be cooked. This recipe produced roughly 3 grams of crystal meth, which, according to Jim, got the highest price on the market. If one staggered the cooking times appropriately, one kitchen could produce about 15 batches in a day, which was close to 45 grams or $4500.00. If Sasha had 3 kitchens, he could move quite a bit of product. The entire kitchen could be packed in a suitcase and shuttled from place to place, so long as there was a stove of some sort. A microwave was helpful, but not mandatory. He showed the list to Sasha, and then read it to him. These were all the things that he would need before beginning.
1 Case Pint Mason jars
2 Boxes Contact 12-hour
3 Bottles of Heet
4 feet of surgical tubing
1 Bottle of Rubbing Alchohol.
1 Gallon Muriatic Acid
1 Gallon of Coleman's Fuel
1 Gallon of Acetone
1 Pack cone-style
1 Electric Skillet
4 Bottles Iodine Tincture 2%
2 bottles H2O4
3 20 0z soft drink bottles
1 Can Red Devils Lye
1 Pair of sharp scissors
4 cases book matches with brown strike pads
1 pyrex baking dish
1 Box single-sided razor blades
1 digital gram scale
2 gallons distilled water
1 Roll Aluminum foil
“What about delivery and pick-up,” asked Sasha. He had wanted Bill to consider less risky ways to transport the meth. The product itself wasn’t flammable or problematic, but Sasha felt that live exchanges were trouble. Instead, he wanted Bill to consider drop-off locations that might work.
“Well, I believe you will have some luck using the copper mines that are scattered about in this part of the country,” said Bill. “It’s not a total solution, but it’s a partial one.”
“I don’t understand. Aren’t those private property?”
“Yes, in a sense, but they’re not used anymore and you will likely have notice if they ever ar used. Except for the few that are scattered around and used for tourist viewing, most of them are never used. See, the copper companies discovered that it was cheaper to buy copper from other countries than it was to mine it up here. Anyway, instead of selling the land, they’ve let a lot of it be used as park land, but retain the ore rights underneath. There are literally hundreds of cave entrances and a network of tunnels that could be used to store and pick-up product. You can get a map at the university and other sources. You’ll want someone who knows the business to track them down. I’m afraid I would only get you in trouble. But that’s the deal. The caves are a good place to store product undisturbed, too.”
“Hmm. Very good there, Bill. You’ve really risen to the task. What about distribution? Anything on what we discussed?”
The last time the two of them met, Sasha had wanted to know whether his reach ought to be beyond Michigan and the Midwest. He wanted to know if he could get his product past a 500 mile radius and if so, would it be profitable. At first, such a request seemed impossible for Bill to deliver on, but some Google searching coupled with some advice from Jim had actually given him the answer. In a strange way, he had actually felt good about finding this particular needle in the haystack.
“Well, if you continue to produce a high quality product, well, it’s like any product; there will be demand for it. You could move outside of your current area, but you won’t want to move west. Out west, the stuff is cheaper by about $100.00 per gram. Your best bets are cities, because the product is harder to manufacture there, so demand is higher. In New York, for instance, you can get up to $240.00 for a gram. Of course, you don’t want to go to the inner city, because it’s not a black drug. Blacks prefer cocaine and marijuana, generally speaking.”
“Hmm, yes, that all makes sense. Good. Good.”
Each time Bill came across an efficiency or an answer to one of Sasha’s problems, or a piece of helpful information, he had been torn about providing it. Why he should affirmatively help a man who probably wouldn’t know the difference if he couldn’t get an answer for something, he toyed with daily. He could easily have misled Sasha, or simply omitted certain information. He would lie awake nights trying to figure out if he could lay a labyrinth that would trip up his rival and get him arrested, but all of his fantasies ended with his wife getting sliced open or his daughter being raped. The cost was just too great.
He thought about simply being incompetent at his job, not being able to find anything. After all, Sasha wasn’t his boss back and Grund and wouldn’t know whether he was good at his job. But he worried that some of the questions Sasha posed were merely ‘tests;” questions Sasha already had the answer to and was waiting for Bill to stumble intentionally, or set him up. Jim had warned Bill on more than one occasion that he should treat Sasha as if he were surrounded by land mines; that any information he provided Sasha could potentially be a trigger from one of those land mines. Again, the cost was too great.
So he had done what Sasha asked with as much energy as he could muster for a job that he felt would send him directly to hell. He worked to keep Sasha happy, and he did it because he was too stupid to outsmart anyone, and too frightened to stand up to anyone. He had done what he was tasked to do and done it well, at least as far as he knew. It was time to go.
Bill swallowed hard. He had been thinking about what he was going to say all day. This was the time if there was any time. He steeled himself. On the one hand, he didn’t want to make his host angry. He had not forgotten their initial conversations about the safety of his family. On the other hand, he felt he needed to speak his mind. God surely would help him through this.
“Sasha, I think I’ve done all I can do for you,” he began, his voice shaking just a bit. “I mean, we’ve already discuss that there are certain economies that you can’t take advantages of. I’ve pretty much exhausted my abilities here, and I think under the circumstances, I’ve done a good job for you.” He stopped and waited for Sasha to say something, but nothing was forthcoming.
“What I’m trying to say is that I would really like to continue to pay you back, you know, every penny, at the same rate I’m doing. But I’d like to stop working for you, now. I . . . I don’t think I’m an asset to you any more.”
“I still need you, Bill. I’ll say when we’re through,” said Sasha, matter-of-factly. “If that’s OK with you, of course.” Sasha looked over at Bill briefly. Bill could see the sarcasm in his face and he heard it in his words. He didn’t push it further.
“Sure, sure, it’s OK. I was just trying to help you, you know, save some money.” He made a feeble attempt at a joking laugh. “Get me off the payroll and all.”
“Not just yet.”
Sasha drove around a little while longer and then dropped Bill back at the office, reminding him to stop by the Subway and start working on their efficiency issues. He still needed more information from Bill and wanted him to revisit his own notes on the subject after they had implemented his changes. Sasha would tell him when that was. It wasn’t today, and they had to get through a rather larger order for a big weekend, which would be where Bill’s rubber would hit the road. After that, he would talk to Bill again.
Normally, Sasha got out of the car with Bill and headed to the office with him. Today, the motor stayed running as they pulled up to the office park and Sasha didn’t pull up to a space.
“Bill, you’ve done a good job for an asshole who got himself in a lot of trouble. Jim tells me you’re a good student. It’s too bad old Dick Grund didn’t keep you on at Grund Optical, because I think you really are a good, efficiency expert, but that old bastard wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Thank you,” said Bill.
“Jim also tells me that you’re not the type of guy to go to the police, and that’s good, too. You seem smart, like you wouldn’t do something that would jeopardize your family. But you church-going bastards, well, I just don’t know. Your consciences bother you or something and you snap overnight. I’ve had it happen before. Don’t snap on me Bill. You get my drift?”
“I . . . yes.” He didn’t really understand why Sasha was telling him this right now. He didn’t need to. Bill had never “snapped” in his life. He was the one everyone counted on. He was a steady player.
“Alright, then. I’ll see you later,” said Sasha, motioning toward the passenger door.
Bill got out of Sasha’s car and walked back to his own beat-up Ford. He watched Sasha head out to the end of the parking lot and stop. A very tall, muscular, black man with pink scarf around his neck got in the passenger seat where Bill had just been sitting and the two of them drove away. It seemed that Sasha was busy getting ready for the big order he had. He wondered briefly who the black man was, but decided he didn’t care. Sasha had so many businesses that he could have been anyone: a cleaning man, a franchise worker, a drug dealer.
It was time to head home. For the moment, it seemed, Bill no longer had to concentrate on methamphetamine. They would test his methods and figure out whether they were efficient and get back to him. For the time being, he could help the Singh family weigh sandwich meats and crunch numbers related to the amount of cleaner in water and other such efficiencies. He could go home and actually tell his wife something concrete about his work, rather than lies he had to fabricate to make himself credible. To him own wife he had to lie. This was a sad state of affairs for Bill. Until he had visited Bobby C that day, he had never lied to his wife. At least not big lies.
He often thought of Dick Grund. Sometimes he’d have visions of meeting Dick Grund in a coffee shop and showing him a few numbers he’d crunched relating to the optical company. One look, and Dick would see that shutting down the plant had been a bad idea. Bill would be responsible for saving the company and brining back Grund Optical to Portage. He would be a hero.
Sometimes his visions were not terribly nice. In them, he burns Dick’s house to the ground or punches the man in the nose. That, sir, is for forcing me into a life of crime, Bill would say in his fantasy. For it wasn’t Sasha, but Dick who had done this to him. Besides, it was just too dangerous to think about ways in which to take down Sasha. Sasha would kill him. Dick Grund was an overgrown frat boy. Bill could take him. Dick didn’t have ties to the Russian mafia who would go after his daughters.
Ironic, Bill thought, that it was Sasha, this otherwise seedy drug dealer, who had given Bill a job. Sasha had said it best the first day they met. He was a business man, but he understood what having a wife and kids meant. He had given Bill a job at his franchise so that his wife would be protected from the knowledge that her husband was in the drug trade.
It was a strange mix of feelings, and although Bill knew that in part the Subway job was as much a cover for Sasha as it was for Bill, it was a gesture that Sasha didn’t have to make. Whether Sasha set Bill up with a legitimate job was probably of no consequence to Sasha in the end; Sasha still would have had Bill over a barrel. Like the captive who slowly begins to identify with his kidnapper, Bill had credited Sasha with saving what tiny bit of his dignity was left him. Sasha was doing the same for Jim, too; providing the man with a means to stay out of prison. Sasha, for all intents and purposes, was his private relief effort. What he was doing wasn’t right, but he was giving at least two people a job.
Dick Grund, on the other hand, in one fell swoop, had taken out an entire town. He had gutted – at least figuratively – entire families, many of which were never able to regain their stability. Dick Grund had destroyed hundreds of families and never thought to give a single person any dignity. And for what? This wasn’t about the financial health of the company and everyone knew it. It was Dick Grund’s way of being able to use an over-funded pension and avoiding liability to the families – many of them three generations deep – who had committed their own livelihoods to keeping Grund Optical operating.
What Dick had done to them wasn’t illegal. But now, looking at his own life and those of his friends who were worse off than he, it was certainly criminal. But Dick wouldn’t get arrested any time soon. Private shareholders were applauding him, in fact. And no one cared that Bill and workers like him were literally drowning because of what Dick Grund did.
Bill had just read in the local paper that Dick was one of the sponsoring names for one of the boats on the Race to Mackinac. His particular donation was $150,000, all of which would go simply to getting a boat from the shores of Chicago to the shores of Michican. That was two-and-a-half times what Bill made at Grund. He could have lived for 2 ½ years on that! It was surely criminal. At night, his blood boiled.
Bill made his way to his house and pulled into the driveway. He was ready for a nice meal and some conversation with his wife. As he always did, he made some notes in the car about what he would tell her he did that day (if she asked. If she didn’t, he would use the story the next time she asked). He took a look in the mirror and smiled once, just to make sure he could do it. His wife would be expecting it.
Click Here for Chapter 13
posted by Someone with a camera at 9:17 PM
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