Page 100

Kensington, Philadelphia

Monday, November 17, 3:30 P.M.

Ricky followed Héctor out the back door of the row house. As they walked toward a gate—the same razor-wire-topped chain-link fencing that surrounded the three backyards also separated them—he noticed that there was another heavy smell in the air, a different one, not quite as metallic as earlier.

On the other side of the gate, Ricky saw the large-gauge electric power cables, more or less concealed, running to the center row house from the PECO meters of the houses on both sides of it. He followed Héctor past the enormous air-conditioning unit, a new one that

had been spray-painted in clouds of black and gray so it would not stand out, then onto the small wooden back porch.

The industrial smell was getting stronger. Ricky turned toward it and saw where it was coming from. A sheet-metal hood, bowl-shaped and also spray-painted with gray-black clouds, was mounted outside a rectangular hole at the foot of the back wall. It covered what had been a small window to the basement. Ricky visualized the four-inch-diameter vent tube behind it. The tube went down to the heavy steel lid that was cinched tight to the top of a 110-gallon drum, a ring of flames from a gas burner flickering under it.

Héctor, approaching the back door, saw him looking at the vent.

“Another day and then that’s done.” He shrugged. “Bigger ones take a little longer than usual.”

Héctor slipped a key in the door’s dead bolt, turned the knob, and swung it open. When they stepped inside, Ricky saw that there was another curtain of floor-to-ceiling clear plastic. Immediately beyond it, at the top of the stairs that led down to the basement, there were two cardboard boxes, their sides labeled “Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads.” One bulged with women’s clothes. The other, half full, contained shoes and purses.

“All that,” Héctor said, “is to get incinerated.”

Ricky nodded.

Héctor pulled the plastic curtain aside, and they entered.

Héctor grinned and made a sweeping gesture toward what was the main floor of the house. It held a giant tent made of the plastic sheeting—inside which was a small forest, two long rows of bushy green plants six feet tall—and what looked, at least by comparison to the old house, like a space-age array of hoses and wires and tubes supporting the tent.

“My controlled growing environment,” Héctor said, waving Ricky inside the tent. “This is much better than what I started with in Miami. And soon we start another one in the first house.”

Héctor had stripped the interior shell of the house bare. Then a framework of two-by-four studs had been added, and between the studs thick fiberglass insulation installed.

The entire room was then outlined in the tent of heavy plastic sheeting. Industrial-sized sheet-metal vents brought in the air-conditioning while other sheet-metal boxes drew the air out of the tent, sending it to activated carbon charcoal filters that removed odors and contaminates, then routed the scrubbed air back to the air conditioner. The complete volume of air in the tent was refreshed once an hour. The recirculated air was augmented with carbon dioxide created by burning natural gas in what once had been the kitchen and in the basement.

The forty plants were in two neat rows of twenty. They grew in plastic pots that sat on wooden racks built two feet high, allowing warm air to circulate around the roots. A web of black irrigation lines, on an automated pump system, regularly fed the plants a solution of nutrients from a sterilized stainless steel reservoir that resembled an oversized hot water heater.

Hanging a few feet from the ceiling were two rows of fluorescent light fixtures, each with ten one-thousand-watt lamps. The ropes passed through pulleys mounted to the ceiling, allowing the lights to be raised as the plants grew. Wall-mounted fans, above and below the height of the lights, circulated the air, as did big box fans, some set up to push air through the thick plant leaves while others pulled the air.

While it had been chilly outside the tent, the air now felt very warm and, with the high humidity, almost steamy.

And there was the strong, distinct smell of marijuana.

Ricky remembered what Héctor had told him when he first started the project. It sounded like another language.

“When the plant terpenoids evaporate, there is produced a chemical. It has an odor that is organic and heady. It smells the same as pot when it burns. If that gets to the outside, word would spread and we will have a rip-off. Or what happened to me in Miami—the cops come. So I will create a sealed space.”

“These plants are healthier than our first ones,” Héctor now said. “With more air flow, their stalks grow bigger. And with bigger stalks, the nutrients can travel better. And with more nutrients, the yield is bigger and better.”

Héctor showed him the bank of monitors.

“This is the perfect growing environment,” he said proudly.

Ricky saw that the readouts showed:

TEMPERATURE: 78 DEGREES F

HUMIDITY: 50 PERCENT

CO2 (PARTS PER MILLION): 1,500

“And see these leaves?” Héctor went on. “No webs of mites, no bugs, no nothing but perfect formation.”