I had one more crazy adventure in Upper Lake that came very close to ruining my whole life.
It started with ‘A’. In retrospect I saw that it was the reason of his luring us up there in the first place. I would visit him occasionally at his rented home, a nondescript ranch house on the outskirts of Ukiah. He was living with Michelle (my friend from warehouse days and still owing me the book I lent him, Murger’s ‘La Boheme’). They were both sober and near broke. Michelle had been living with him for almost three years. He was with us at ‘A’s ranch house in the woods when we did our last business there and he was a great help in various ways, almost like a servant, but never getting more than pocket change from ‘A’ and a free place to stay. This left him feeling used and abused, which was exactly the case.
‘A’ told me one day that he still had all his old equipment hidden, and enough stuff to make one small batch, which we could do at his house and split the profits three ways, giving Michelle the money to get back to France, where he was eager to return. All they needed from me was a little help with my expertise and my contacts to move the stuff, as they had none.
I saw little risk in this, they doing all the work and me just dropping by every other day for a few hours, so I agreed. It all went perfectly smooth and we each had eight thousand dollars in hand two weeks later. Michelle thanked me profusely for my largesse and disappeared. I never did get my book back. He said he must have lost it. Maybe the nymphomaniac has it to this day. I still wonder. It was a rare, dog-eared 1870’s cheap French edition of the work, the real thing, probably read by real bohemians in Paris shortly after publication. I’ll never find another. It was my bible.
Goodbye to the Hills.
About a month later, after Dale had left, ‘A’ visited me with a strange new friend of his, older than us by ten years, bald, over-friendly and chatty. He brought him by because he had a gun for sale, a standard issue Japanese police pistol, untraceable so he claimed, with a holster and case of ammo, for the suspiciously low price of one hundred dollars. He said he was in bad need of cash so I naïvely I bought it. I used it a few times for target practice, shooting beer cans.
A few weeks later they returned unexpectedly with another proposition. With ‘A’’s equipment and some newfound supplies and my house in the middle of nowhere, could I do one last job there, in my empty basement. I was still happy with the last money so easily made, covering the whole years’ rent. Once again, not thinking the matter through clearly, especially the presence of a stranger in the mix, I agree.
They bring their stuff over and leave, not to revisit until everything is done. On the seventh day I notice something is amiss. The reaction’s not right. One of the final ingredients must have been tainted.
That evening I get a call from an elderly neighbor who lived on the highway at the bottom of our hill. We’d stopped by his place several Sunday afternoons, seeing them on their front porch, just to say ‘hello’. This retired couple loved our company and child and we talked for a few hours drinking the wine they offered, relishing company in a place it was so rare. He said there were ten cop cars parked at the beginning of our dirt road, lights flashing, apparently waiting for something, an order to proceed.
I realized in a flash this whole thing was a set-up. ‘A’s so called friend must be a police narc, even the gun he sold me a plot to get me into deeper trouble. The police must have busted ‘A’ and put him up to this treachery as some sort of plea bargain.
I thanked the neighbor for his help, told Sanita to take Will and the car right away and drive to an empty lot we’d seen two miles further up the dirt road, turn out the lights and just sit tight for two hours. Then she would slowly coast down the hill and from a distance peer through the trees to see if there was any activity here or police cars. If there were she should drive back to the lot, stay the night and drive to her friend’s house in the morning. I helped her load up some blankets and food and gave her a large sum of cash. If she saw no activity, no cars, she would return here. She did as I told her, extremely nervous and scared, almost crying.
With her gone I rushed downstairs and begin feverishly dismantling everything. There was a back, hallway door only a few feet away leading outside and into a thicket of shrubs and trees not ten feet from that door, on the steep incline below our deck.
I ran into this bush, arms full of bottles, dumping everything, not in one spot but many, throwing some even further down the steep hill.
After the bottles were gone I began with the glassware and stands, hiding different pieces under thick bushes, fanning out every direction. Then every other item there, heat pads, burners, electric cords, until the room was empty. This took about twenty minutes and still, thank god, no one was banging at my door.
Then I went upstairs, trying to calm myself, thinking if I’d missed anything. I remembered the gun. I ran upstairs and hid it and the ammo in my safe, which was cleverly hidden under a board in a basement closet, pretty hard to find. I didn’t want to risk opening doors anymore, letting light out. In fact I turned out all the lights except the kitchen’s, where the phone was, and since nothing happened I called the neighbor to see what was up.
To my huge relief he said that all the police cars had dispersed a half hour earlier, some going one way up the highway, the others in the opposite direction. Obviously, they’d been collected from all the towns around. A little later Sanita returned. We put Willy to bed, turned off the last lights and crept into our own, whispering for hours about what had just transpired.
It was plainly obvious. I was set up for a drug bust but the police needed a judge’s signature for the search warrant. They were all set to go but when the sensible judge read the details of the report, that I was given all the equipment and supplies by someone else, a police narc, along with the gun, it was a blatant set-up that any cheap lawyer would get me out of, a bogus case and waste of the court’s time and money, besides an embarrassment to the whole legal system. So the judge nixed the ‘go’ order, the search warrant, saving taxpayer dollars and much grief for me.
The next morning I gave Allen (I’ll name him now as I don’t care) a fuming call and told him to drive up here right away with his truck but without his ‘friend’. He came and pleaded ignorance to everything. I made him scour the hillside beside me for hours and when we had it completely cleaned up, everything accounted for and loaded in the back of his truck he drove off, never to be seen by me again. Two weeks later we loaded up our camper and moved into a Spanish-style house in Piedmont, to a normal, middle class life.
In retrospect I figure he was busted over a year earlier. He’d sold his house to smoke more speed and crack every night with his girlfriend. He was so short, (like Dave), about five foot one, that he never could score a decent looking girlfriend except through the allure of an endless supply of free drugs. She moves in, supplies the sex but over time and way too much overindulgence they lose health and sanity and tempers till everything melts down to a final 911 call.
That’s what happened to Dave’s first partner and his pretty girlfriend, high for months, (as Dave told me the whole story). She stabbed him deep in the thigh in their parking lot one afternoon with a bowie knife, sitting in their convertible after having an argument. Then there was the inevitable trip to the hospital and the police report and follow up, with their garage of supplies discovered and Dave swiftly off to Amsterdam for a year.
So my unfortunate, chance meeting with Allen a year earlier at the warehouse party must have set the stage for his plea bargaining, promising to bring in a real big fish. His continually solicited us to move up North, speaking by phone to Sanita mostly, the easier prey, then the fake, smooth run with Michelle, to lure me in for the set-up at my house, confirmed this plot. But they couldn’t give me all the right stuff as that would put the police in the compromised position of helping me make the real thing and providing everything to do it. So they slipped in one dud, only to be discovered on the final day, the day of the desired bust.
This scare ended forever my relationship with any form of chemistry, any semblance of it, any book, any glassware, stand, scale or cylinder. The closest I came to chemistry after that was making a milkshake in a blender, if you can call that ‘chemistry’. Even the process was slowly forgotten over time, as I put it totally out of my thoughts, and I was never foolish enough to write anything down. If anyone askes now: 'how is it done?' I can honestly answer, with a smile on my face: 'I don't know.'
