Don Winslow: The Kings Of Cool

If they weren’t actually selling property, they were financing the mortgage, doing the title or the assessment, consulting on getting the property ready to show.

Others were involved in “creative financing,” aka “fraud.”

The entire economy then was based on swapping real estate around, boosting the price with every pass. Everyone was living off the ginormous Ponzi scheme that was the real estate market in those days, hoping they wouldn’t get caught with the hot potato in their hands when the whistle blew.

People were using trash financing to buy three, four, five houses that they hoped to flip, so people had houses they needed to rent and there were real estate agents who specialized in rentals.

So finding a Realtor was no problem.

Finding the right Realtor was.

Because, generally speaking, Realtors hate dope growers.

You see, most dope growers don’t have Ben’s social conscience.

They trash a property out.

They rip it open and put in cheap, dangerous wiring that often sets the place on fire. Their power needs cause neighborhood brownouts. They tape plastic sheets over the windows to hide their nefarious activities. They have people coming and going all hours of the day and night. Their generators make noise; their dope smells. They not only take the value of a particular property down, they lower the value of the whole neighborhood.

They’re dirtbags.

Rental Realtors and property managers properly shun them.

So Ben and Chon had to find one who was blissfully unaware.

The OC wife category was problematic because Chon had slept with probably half of them.

This is what Chon did between deployments-he read books, played volleyball, and fucked trophy wives, many of them (of course) real estate agents.

So he, Ben, and O went through the listings of Realtors.

“Mary Ingram,” Ben read.

“Chonned,” O said.

“Susan Janakowski.”

“Chonned.”

“Terri Madison.”

Ben and O looked at Chon.

“You don’t know?” Ben asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“My man, ” O said.

They gave up on the OC wives and moved on to the surfer category.

“Here’s our boy,” Ben said.

He pointed to an ad for Craig Vetter.

“Is he a surfer?” Chon asked.

“Look at him.”

Sun-bleached blond hair, deep tan, wide shoulders, vaguely vacant look in the eyes.

“He’s been hit in the head a few times,” O concluded.

They called him.

Craig assumed that they were a respectable gay couple.

A little younger than the usual Laguna Beach life partners, but Craig was your basic “whatever floats your boat, dude” dude.

Dude.

Duuuuuude.

“We need a basement,” Ben told him.

“A basement.”

“A basement,” Chon affirmed.

Craig took a look at Chon and figured this was a dungeon sort of thing.

“Soundproof?” he asked.

“That would be good,” Ben said.

Whatever floats your boat, dude.

Craig showed them five houses with basements. The gay guys rejected all of them-the neighbors were too close, the living room too small, there was a school nearby.

At this last thing, Craig got suspicious. “You guys aren’t on one of those lists, are you?”

“What lists?” Ben asked.

“You know,” Craig said. “Sex offender lists.”

He’d hauled these two guys all over Laguna, Dana Point, Mission Viejo, and Laguna Niguel and they couldn’t find a place they liked. He almost didn’t care if he lost them now. Besides, the last thing he needed was neighbors picketing one of his properties.

“No,” Ben said.

“We just hate kids,” Chon added helpfully.

“You don’t have something more rural, do you?” Ben asked.

“Rural?” Craig asked. Like farms and shit?

“Like maybe out in the East County,” Ben suggested. “Modjeska Canyon?”

“Modjeska Canyon?” Craig repeated.

The lightbulb came on.

“You guys are looking for a grow house.”

They smoked up on the ride to Modjeska Canyon.

Ben and Chon of course would not confirm that they were looking for a grow house, but now they and Craig had an understanding.

He showed them a fixer-upper on a cul-de-sac. Neighbors separated on each side by small strips of trees and brush. No sight lines. Single level with a basement. Below-market rent because the place was kind of a mess.

“Will the landlord be coming around?” Ben asked.

“Not for five to ten,” Craig answered.

“Drugs?” Ben asked.

He didn’t want to start his operation in a second-generation drug house that the cops already knew about.

Come on, Craig.

“He robbed a bank,” Craig answered.

“Okay.”

“In Arkansas.”

Perfecto.

There was a lot to do to get the house ready.

Especially if you were Ben.

“ Solar panels? ” Chon asked.

“Do you know how much energy we’re going to be using?” Ben asked. Solar energy would supplement the generator and therefore use less natural gas.

“Do you know how much solar panels cost?” Chon countered.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

Because they cost a lot.

Worth it to Ben-convictions are easy if they’re cheap. Also, Ben wasn’t going to trash out the house or the neighborhood.

On this topic, Ben and Chon had your Vulcan Mind Meld.

Ben had ethical concerns, Chon had security concerns, but they came to the same conclusion-do not make the grow house look like a grow house.

Chon did his due diligence as to what cops look for:

Condensation on the windows, or — the windows covered with black plastic or newspaper.

Sounds of an electric hum or constant fans.

Bright interior lights left on for long hours.

Local power failures.

(You cause a brownout while the wife next door is TiVo-ing The Bachelorette, she’s going to turn your ass in.

“I would,” O affirmed.)

Smell-a thousand marijuana plants smell like a Bard College dorm on a Friday night.

Residents in the home only occasionally.

People coming in and out at odd hours and staying only a few minutes.

“This is all handle-able,” Ben said.

First they put in the solar panels to supplement the energy. Then they soundproofed the walls in the basement to cover the noise from the generator.

Then they went CGE. This came from Ben’s research and it meant

Closed Growing Environment.

“I like the ‘Closed’ part,” Chon said.

Indeed.

What CGE does is basically control the flow of air in and out of the grow room. It ain’t cheap-they had to install aluminum and sheet metal vent pipes connected to a five-ton air-conditioning system fitted to forty-gallon coconut carbon charcoal filters.

“So the neighborhood is going to smell like coconuts?” O asked.

“It won’t smell like anything,” Ben said.

O was a little disappointed. She thought it would be fun to have a neighborhood that smelled like suntan lotion and drinks with umbrellas in them.

It’s an article of faith with Ben that problems generate solutions, which generate more problems, which generate more solutions, and he labels this endless cycle “progress.”

In this case, the five-ton AC unit solved the cooling and odor problem, but created another.

AC units are cooled by either air or water, and a lot of it.

If it’s the former, it’s pulling the air out of…

… well, the air… and it makes a lot of noise.

If it’s water, the water bill goes way up and you have the same utility-company-as-snitch problem.

The boys pondered this.