You don't just turn off a quarter of a trillion dollar economy and not piss a few people off.

Eddie

Tinny's bar was nearly empty except for the dusky fog of humid air that hung thick with old grease, barbecue, and spilled drinks. The faded florescent light cast a yellow tinge to everything that made those not used to it feel confined and sticky just walking in. At the back corner sat another desperate user, trading thirty five bucks he stole from a woman at the bus stop for today's ration of medicine. Eddie took out one of his packs of cocaine, carefully measured and burnt into a solid little rock, and made another trade while his buddies stood outside watching the street for five ohs.

Behind them the TV showed the latest news release of President Zach Webber. His gray temples highlighted his charismatic, chiseled face which beamed with its usual plastic smile, as if he were some gigantic PEZ dispenser delivering yet another candy coated media morsel out of his neck.

Tinny stood, his old skinny frame leaning along the counter under the ancient black and white tube TV. He waited for the junkie to leave then called out, "Yo, Eddie. D'you hear this fuk'n bullshit?"

"... and so it is with great sadness and regret that I must declare that we have lost the war on drugs. This is not a battle that can be won with deeper and deeper pockets. That has been demonstrated. This is not a battle that can be won by simply interrupting the supply. We've been trying that for the last fifty years. The only way to win this battle is to take the money away from the pushers and kingpins, to dry up their capitol by decriminalizing all drugs, making them cheaply available, and to take all the money that once went into the near useless and increasingly intrusive police system and divert it to free clinics and hospitals to treat this national epidemic the only way it can be treated, as the medical problem that it is. Effective immediately, I am granting a pardon to all non-violent drug offenders to make room in our prisons for habitual felons. I am immediately removing the military forces from participating in intervention efforts. I am issuing an executive order eliminating all federal drug screening tests. I am issuing orders to immediately dismiss any federal employee who under the influence causes a disruption of work of any kind. I have asked that congress form a joint commission to quickly pass legislation to decriminalize the consensual use of any substance, abolish the Food and Drug Administration, and repeal the War On Drugs bill of 2002."

"You hear dat, Tinny? We in business now. We in business now!"

Eddie went to the phone and called Li Chan's pager number. A few moments later, Tinny's old phone rang.

"Eddie here."

"Yeah, whatcha need?"

"You hear da news, Li? Money gonna be flowin' like water. Bring it on, my man. Bring it fuck'n on."

"You call me when you need more, not when you got some stupid hard on for trouble."

"You hear da news?"

"I heard it. We knew it was coming."

"Then it's cool? We gonna push it fast."

"You're such a fucking idiot."

Li Chan

Four young men, wearing their colors and signs, stepped through the heavy steel and glass door of the Kwik Mart on North Baxter, tinkling it's little bell. They moved past the display of Twinkies, candy, and coffee that stood huddled in the corner next to the newspaper stand above a floor that was tacky from old unmopped stains. Chan went to stand in line behind the mother who ignored her crying baby to fill in another lottery ticket.

The old, heavy set Italian behind the counter eyed the boys who stood nearby.

When the lady finished giving her tickets to the cashier, Li Chan stepped up close and said, "Hear you're sellin' weed, hash now, shit like that."

The old Italian stood still and didn't say anything.

"Come on, let me see some of it. Is it good?"

He turned and took down a small orange box with black lettering and decorations, one of the new brands, Canniblast.

"You got rock? Crack?"

"You don't get that here."

"You know that's right. You know what else is right? You ain't never gonna get it here, amigo, cause we see it here, you don't got a store no more. You tell that to your boss, and his boss and his boss. Word from Tony."

He looked down at the little box then tossed it back behind the counter as he and his buddies moved on out.

That night, they all paid a little visit to the Kava Kavern down the road. They took a booth and waited for the tight shirted college girl with a freckled face, nose ring, and braces to come over.

Li Chan spoke for the group, "Yeah, we want to try some o' that new coke you s'posed to be sellin' here."

"Uh, okay, like, if you wanna get high, you know, that's upstairs, okay? I can bring you up something else if want, though? You can also get food up there."

"No, that's cool."

The four men went up the stairs to a large room that used to be a Paully's Pinball. It was dark, filled with tables pushed close together. One table had a group of yuppie punks doing lines for their first time. Three tables were taken up by one person each, all smoking crack. A few others just had some folks smoking pot and drinking. When they sat down, a man came over.

"Good evening gentlemen. Have you been here before? No? You can get coke, crack, and hash, but no needles and no LSD. There's a twenty five dollar cab payment that you need to pay up front. You get that back if you hang around at least an hour after your last hit. Or you can just get our cab rider's card for forty dollars that you can hold onto until you need a ride.

What can I get you."

"Is it good stuff?"

"Oh, you bet. Clean."

"So, what do you got?"

He went on to list their various offerings, everything from a small rock to an all night party powder pack. All his prices were no more than ten percent of the same quantity on the street.

"Well, you know what?" Chan said, "I don't think we got the cash for that cab thing. What do you guys think, wanna go see a movie or some shit? You know, that's cool. I think we're gonna just go see a movie. We'll catch you another time."

They all stood up, went back down the stairs, past the coffee drinkers and cheese cake eaters and out into the street where Li Chan picked up a pay phone and called Tony.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, man. It's Chan."

"Done?"

"Just a minute."

He looked back over his shoulder and waited. Thirty seconds went by. Tony said, "Well?"

"Hold on, man."

After another twenty seconds, the pipe bomb went off, shattering the upstairs windows and sending a boom out into the street.

"Got it?"

"Good."

Tony

The table in the basement of Tony's grandmother was covered with cocaine, cash, and the books. It was getting harder and harder to move the product with fifty dollar bags going for $4.99 at any hash house. Their threats had been growing more and more empty after six of his boys had been arrested for interfering with the legal sale of narcotics.

It's not like they could go into business themselves. Nobody with a record could get a tripper license. And no one was buying wholesale either. They all had their own suppliers. Somebody was making out like a bandit.

The door at the top of the basement stairs opened and he heard his old grandmother calling down to him, stretching out his name like they did in the old country, "Tooooni! Tony you come up d' stairs now."

"Shut up, nanna. I'm busy."

"Ah, Hell with you Toooni, you get your ass up here now."

"I'll box your ears old woman!"

"If you could have a real job - respectable - you wouldn't talk to me like that. Nobody want your stuff - my problem? I just say to you..."

"Button it, bitch!"

"You going to Hell for that little bastard..."

"Fuck you, grandma!"

"Oh yes, and fuck you back!"

Footsteps descended behind his grandmother. The old stairs groaned and complained as the weight of three heavy men started down. The first one was tall and massive, six eight, two seventy pounds, dressed sharp as a surgeon's scalpel.

Victor stopped and said to grandma, "It's okay, Mrs. Garbonzo. I'll speak with your grandson down here if you don't mind."

"No, s'okay." She cast a squinty, side eyed glance at her grandson and then went back up the stairs past Victor's two men.

Victor stepped down slowly, one step at a time. He unbuttoned his jacket and came over to Tony. In a flash, his big ham fist landed on Tony's cheek just under his left eye.

"I ever hear you talk like that to an old lady -- your grandmother for God's Own Sake -- I will personally beat you to such a filthy pulp you'll need dental records and blood type to figure out who the fuck you are."

"I'm sorry."

"You sure as hell are. Sit down, Tony, we're gonna talk. We're friends, aren't we, Tony?"

"Sure, Victor. Sure."

"And I've saved your sorry ass more than what - three four times?"

"Oh, at least."

"And where would you be if not for me?"

"I wouldn't be worth much. Not much at all. What do you need. Just name it."

"You run a pretty good neighborhood here. That's why I leave you alone even though, mostly, your an asshole. But you ain't been running it very good lately -- no, that's okay. I understand. It's just that, bottom line, you haven't moved hardly any of the new stuff we sent to you. Still, you can be helpful to me in may other ways. Do you understand me?"

"I don't know. Look, I'm not set up to push that other stuff yet. Who the fuck even does opium?"

"Just remember all the things you owe me. Remember that you don't know me, and you don't know where you get your supply. And remember that I have friends in places where you would least expect them. You do know that, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Just sit tight, Tony."

Tony watched as Victor and his men went back up the stairs. Then he watched out the narrow basement window to make sure they got in their car and left. As soon as the car was out of the driveway, Tony heard the sirens from down the street. He ran up the stairs and through the kitchen, but by the time he was in the back yard, the police were already out of their cars and running around the house. He made it half way down the alley.

He was only seven years old when the neighbor's dog got loose and chased him down. Now that horrid vision and that awful panic came back to him as a very aggressive, well trained German Shepherd chased after him, not barking, not wagging his tail, just running, with those evil, piercing eyes and glinting sharp teeth. The dog jumped in front of him and clamped his teeth around Tony's wrist.

Through a fog of panic as he lay on the ground, prey to the awful monster, Tony cried, "Ow, Ow, Ow! He's hurting me. Oh-Ow. Stop him!"

"Down Gustov. Good Boooooy."

He felt a heavy knee in his back, then the city cop peeled Tony's hands away from his face and wrapped them in cold steel.

Victor

"...And earlier, on the city's South West side, a major victory for the police as another illegal drug dealers was taken out of business. Senator Carpenter spoke of the incident at a fund raising dinner earlier this evening."

"While it's clear that President Webber's plan seems to be having a positive effect on the use of some drugs, the understandable reluctance of responsible businesses to carry hard drugs like Heroine, like Opium, like Blue Steel, enables the underground to continue. And they have the added incentive to provide additional, far more dangerous mixtures than anything that a licensed distributor would carry. The substances found just this afternoon, for example, demonstrate that we still need a reasonable degree of control rather than this insane free for all, this irresponsible nation wide Meta-Rave that the president seems so much to enjoy. But considering his college days, I guess we should have expected as much..."

Victor turned away from the television and walked over to the window that looked out into the small warehouse. Already large sacks were being loaded onto the truck to be taken to the RJR drug refinery, thanks to another amendment that was silently moved through congress with the help of Senator Carpenter. The amendment simply appended Nafta 2005 to name KoKo, Inc. as an official wholesaler for controlled substances. Tony's bust was enough of a payoff to open the door just a little bit. Of course now RJR would have to be paid in favors and soft money to open that door even more.

"What a sight," he said to the tiny, empty office. He shook his head with a small laugh. Imagine shipping cocaine around in broad daylight in a semi truck. After the truck was loaded and on its way, the first of many he hoped, Victor drove down for a business meeting at the Holiday Inn by the lake. This was more like it.

He knocked.

The door opened and, without comment or ceremony, he was let in. On the bed was a pile of five suitcases, each filled with part of the evidence from Tony's bust, Heroine, Opium, and a large bundle of the latest blend of Blue Steel. He looked it over, then handed out payment to both of the men inside, 300 $50 bills each. They helped him carry the bags out to his car and he left.

Victor picked up his car phone and punched quick dial number three, which used to connect him with Tony's cell phone until he had reprogrammed it.

"Yeah."

"Too bad about Tony."

"Who the fuck is this?"

"You don't know me, Mister Li. Let me just say that there's now a position that needs to be filled and that Tony spoke very highly of you. I'll be in touch."

He cleared the number and then pressed quick dial number seven.

Drake's man answered.

"Thompson printing."

"It's Victor."

After a moment, Victor heard the line click over and then heard Drake's cell phone ringing.

"Hey, my boy! Well done. Your papa would be proud. Very proud."

Drake

Soft Celtic music played in the background as the waves rolled in under a deeply blue sky. Drake Mandrake sat comfortably in his fifteen thousand dollar imported leather sofa across from Judge Ellsworth Tanner.

"We need three things," Tanner explained. "New legislation, public opinion, and judicial review. Carpenter's got the first two underway. Now we need the law to be tested in a friendly environment."

"Your court?"

"If it comes to that, yes. But I was thinking of Maine. They're sick at the very thought of Webber's plan. We may not even have to do anything."

"We don't want to go too far. I had to go through Hell to pay our way into this coke gravytrain. I need at least four, five months to get our operation ramped up in Europe. Damn it's tough, and I'm just a small fish. Shit, it's not enough that Carpasian's was first to get into the legal US market. Now he's already up to his dick in Russia and he's got a goddam good head start breaking into South Korea and Singapore. Shit, I'll probably get going in Germany and then Amster-fucking-dam will try to go full open on us too."

"You've got Europe and I've got to find a way to get Webber to sign the new bill."

"He'll sign it. If he still wants to keep funding the rebels in Iraq off the books he'll need back his cash flow that he's drying up with his new policy. Besides, you don't just turn off a quarter of a trillion dollar economy and not piss a few people off. He'll go along with us, especially if we can get some friendlies on the oversight committee."

"God, Drake. If you pull this off, you'll have Carpasian and every other family in the Western Hemisphere ready to kiss your ass."

"Don't kid yourself. Carpenter's not smart enough to come up with this political issue on his own. We've just got a piece of him. Shit, half the congress by now is in somebody's pocket one way or the other, and the other half hates Webber anyway."

Ellsworth

Ruling on the hearing for appeal of case number 1938 of the Lower Springfield District-25

... therefore, considering the greater public good, the local community standards, and the ability for those of this country to pursue life and liberty, this court finds that Mister Antonio Garbonzo's unlicensed drug business poses a clear and present danger to his community and this state, and therefore the motion to retry the case at the state level is denied...

Outside the courthouse, perky young Connie Calloway stood in her neatly pressed navy blue blazer and waited for the entourage of feds, media, and the prisoner to emerge. She pressed her hand against the ear piece through which she listened to Anchorman Bob back at the station.

"And what does this ruling mean for the few remaining drug dealers who refuse to obtain the legal license?"

"Well, Bob, the focus of the decision was more related to the particular substances, and not the license. It seems the court system just isn't ready to sanction these more serious drugs..."

Judge Ellsworth Tanner watched the reports from his chamber for a few minutes then hung up his robe, opened his briefcase to check once again that his plane tickets were with him, then he went down to the staff garage and drove out to the airport.

He met Senator Carpenter at the Sycamore, overlooking the Potomac river behind M street near Georgetown University. As he cut up his tender swordfish steak, Tanner said to his old college friend, "As I understand it, various friends of you campaign are quite eager to give you whatever support you need."

"That's very kind of them, but I want them to understand that this is a matter of principle to me. Webber is wrong."

"Of course, of course. We just want you to understand that your goals and our goals, let's say, intersect. What's the status of the recriminalization bill?"

"The majority leader is holding it up."

"Can someone in the House introduce it?"

"It needs Webber's support. He's got a pretty tight lock."

"What do you know about operation Desert Rat?"

"Rumors. CIA stuff."

"Ask Webber how it's funded. Ask him what invisible force keeps the details off the web casts. I think you'll find that if you can open the door a little bit, you will find sudden and fierce support."

Carpenter smiled, "One of these days, El, I'm going to ask you how you know that, but right now, I don't want to know."

"I think you do."

Senator Roy Carpenter

The political tug and pull always seemed to extend into even the most banal rituals, like making a member of the opposing party wait an extra forty five minutes after the scheduled appointment. Finally, the door opened and Senator Carpenter was shown into the Oval office.

The president stood behind his desk and waited for the senator to come over to him. Then he extended his hand warmly and said, "Good morning, Roy. Come, have a seat."

They sat down facing each other at the sofas that sat in the middle of the room.

"What's on your mind?"

"I'm here to request your support for the introduction of a new bill. The majority leader..."

"The recriminalization bill?"

"Yes."

"Why should I? I specifically asked Mister Sams to keep that nonsense away."

Roy Carpenter started to speak. He was prepared to speak in the normal mode of veiled intents and shades of meaning and slowly make his point clear. He had rehearsed in his mind the slow trickle of clues and suggestions that would make the president increasingly somber and attentive.

All that evaporated from him and he found himself speaking plainly and directly.

"You have an illegal operation underway in Iraq to assassinate three heads of state in the area. It's funded off the books by members of various South American drug families who are hoping to take their business into the area. If you cut off the drug money, you cut off your operation and give them a very good reason to spam the accounts of your operation on web casts from Peoria to Portugal."

"Not assassination. I never said assassination."

"What do you think 'Take care of' means to men like Agravar and Limon?"

At the mention of those two names, the president became immediately sober and still.

Carpenter continued. "The public is glad to have coke and crack out of their hair, but they're not as comfortable with some of the new genetic drugs like Blue Steel and Cold Ice. You can't possibly have intended that that sort of smack be sold the same way you can pick up a fifth of vodka or a bag of hash. Help the bill through, and sign it. If you don't, your foreign policy will be in the shit-house, you'll have no more invisible money, and you will see such a public campaign against you that everyone is going to know about your bastard child with Carla Smithsonian that you paid to have aborted during your last year of college."

There was more, but already Carpenter was feeling sick and filthy for playing it this way. He stopped and let his words fade and sink into the plush grandeur of the room until all that was left was the sound of air blowing through the register on the ceiling and a faint ringing in his ears.

Webber looked all of his sixty three years at that moment. He sat forward with his head down and elbows resting on his knees with his hands thrust out in front of him clasped together with interlocking, white knuckles.

"Get out," he said feebly to the carpet.

President Zach Webber

President Webber stepped up to the microphone in the Rose Garden to announce the signing of the Recriminalization bill.

"Good morning. We have taken another step forward this morning in our national struggle against drug use and ruination of young lives that it brings. The free access to drugs has cut drug related crime to a tenth of what it was before. Access to new medical and community outreach programs has helped thousands of Americans begin to turn their lives around and away from drugs. Since the repeal of the drug laws, I have been made aware of medical evidence, particularly concerning newer genetic drugs which instantly and irrevocably alter a person's nervous system and brain, and under such influence, a person becomes instantly ruined, beyond rehabilitation, and an immediate threat to his or her community. These and other, more addictive and serious drugs, must not be allowed to infiltrate into our every day lives. I might as well declare that it is legal to practice rifle marksmanship on playgrounds, schools, and on the highways, for surely the only purpose of these types of drugs is the same sort of killing for sport..."

In Tinny's bar, the phone rang.

Eddie picked up the phone.