25.

  Johnny took a much-needed hot shower to get ready for Hector’s arrival. The shower was hot, very hot. Johnny stood before the stainless-steel goddess and felt her love radiate over him. It was a cleansing baptism of hundred- and twenty-degree water that washed over him as if it could purge him of his sins. He ran his hands through his hair. He didn’t use soap or shampoo, he just let the water take him. Take him away from all this nonsense he had gotten himself into. He had seen what he had seen, and he had seen enough.

  Johnny got out of the shower and dried himself off. His body was still stiff and tired. He rubbed his towel on his brown hair and then slicked it back with the bit of water left on it. He still needed to look presentable, he was still a businessman, for now at least. He wrapped the towel around himself and went to his room. He picked out a nice button-down shirt and some comfortable khakis and put them on, then walked out to the living room where Tabby was waiting.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Tabby asked.

  “I’m fine,” Johnny said, he reached into his pocket and took his keys out of them. “Go somewhere,” Johnny said, tossing his car keys to his sister.

  “What do you mean, go somewhere?” Tabby asked.

  “I mean go somewhere, somewhere that isn’t here,” Johnny said, “I’m not going to lie to you sis, I’ve gotten in a little bit over my head on this one, I need to finish this, and I don’t want you here,” Johnny said, showing genuine concern for his little sister’s safety.

  “Where do you want me to go?” she asked.

  “I don’t care, your friend’s house, McDonald's, hell, go to Brian’s for all I care, just get out of the house long enough for me to finish this,” Johnny said.

  “I guess I could say hi to Rebecca,” Tabby said, taking a deep breath as she took Johnny’s keys, “You never let me drive your car, you love that thing,” Tabby said.

  “I don’t care,” Johnny said, “I don’t think I care about anything,” Johnny said, giving a remorseful smile to his sister.

  “When is it going to be okay for me to come back?” Tabby asked.

  “Give me,” Johnny looked down and did some estimative math in his head, “Give me five hours, but you have to leave right now, they could be here at any minute,” Johnny said.

  “Fair enough,” Tabby said as she walked out the front door. Johnny followed her, watched her get into his blue mustang, and pull out of the driveway. As Johnny watched her leave, he saw two low riders passing her by. One of them he recognized, it was Hectors, Hector was in the driver seat. The other had two men in it, one shaved head, the other and wearing a Dodger's hat with arms covered in tattoos. Johnny noticed the second car slowing down a bit when they passed his mustang. He saw them both turning their heads to check Tabby out as she pulled out of the neighborhood.

  Johnny walked up his front lawn and waved the two low riders into his garage as he typed in the opening code to lift the door up. The two cars pulled in, and Johnny hit the code again to close it. He quickly ducked under the door and entered the garage as the door closed, and the three Latinos exited their cars.

  “This gringo got our shit?” the one covered in tattoos asked.

  “Yeah, he’s got it, right, Johnny?” Hector said, with much more intimidation in his voice than he usually had when Johnny saw him in third period.

  “I got it, no funny business, right Hector?” Johnny asked his classmate.

  “The deal you’re giving us, no need for funny business,” Hector said.

  Both men were pretending, pretending to be things they weren’t.

  “You got my money?” Johnny asked, shoulders high and chest out.

  “We got your green gringo, you got ours?” the man with tattoos said pulling out a stack of several thousands in hundred-dollar bills.

  “All right, wait here,” Johnny said as he went into his house. He went to his room and grabbed an old gym bag from his closet and started to fill it with the copious amounts of weed he was also keeping in his closet.

  “God damn this is so fucking much, how did I ever think I could sell all this,” Johnny said to himself. He finished packing up the gym bag and threw it over his shoulder to carry it out to the garage. “Here you go,” Johnny said, holding the bag out and open for the Latinos. The bald one looked over the bag, then to Hector, giving him a nod.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “I take that to mean we have a deal?” Johnny asked.

  “Don’t push your luck Gringo,” the man with Tattoos said.

  Hector interjected, “Yeah we have a deal,” he said, getting between Johnny and his cousin, “Give him the money,” Hector said to the bald man. The bald man tossed the wrapped cash to Johnny, and Johnny made a catch that felt better than anyone on his school’s god damn baseball team ever could. He slipped the money into his pocket and approached the tattooed man. He held the gym bag up and kept a straight face and stiff upper lip as he made the handoff to him.

  The man with Tattoos looked into the bag and took a deep scent of it, then laughed, “Lot of shit for a Gringo to have,” he said, “Let’s go,” he said tossing the bag to Hector. Hector loaded the bag into the trunk of the other low rider.

  “So, what about the Cartel?” Hector asked Johnny.

  “Cartel, that’s funny Gringo,” the bald man said, laughing.

  “You guys can do whatever you want, sell to everyone in the school for whatever price you want,” Johnny said.

  “School, whys this esse talking about a school?” the man with tattoo’s asked.

  “We ain’t selling in some piss ant high school, we’re selling in our neighborhoods, we don’t need a bunch of white teenagers spending the allowance their parents give them,” the bald one said as he closed his trunk.

  “You got your money Gringo, You look like you got a nice life, what’s a kid like you doing selling this much Verde?” the tattooed man asked.

  “Same reason you do,” Johnny said, “I need more money,” he tried to stand chest out to the two gang members.

  “No, no Gringo, you don’t need more money,” the bald man said as the tattooed man and Hector got into their cars, “You just want more money,” the bald man said as he got into the driver’s seat of his low rider.

  Johnny walked up the stairs of his garage and clicked the door opener. The low riders pulled out of his Garage and Johnny walked down his driveway to see the two cars pull away and safely leave his neighborhood carrying enough evidence to put Johnny in jail for at least five to ten years. Once they were out of sight, Johnny took a deep breath and let out a sigh of relief.

  Johnny went back to his room and collapsed on his bed. It was over. It was finally over. He was out. He was clean. Brian could call a swat team on him today, and they wouldn’t be able to find anything. His parents would probably be coming home any day now, and Johnny wouldn’t have to worry about them seeing any evidence of the mini-criminal empire he had been running out of their house in their absence. They wouldn’t see anything, but they might smell it.

  Johnny stuck his head up and took a deep breath through his nose, then a deeper one, his room, probably the whole house, still reeked of the skunky relaxing odor of Marijuana. Johnny jumped out of bed and ran down the hallway to the closet. He looked inside and found two bottles of Febreze. He took them back to his room and using two rubber bands and two marbles, held the valves of the bottles down so they would continuously spray in a bug bomb like fashion. He left them both face up in his closet.

  Johnny ran back to the closet and grabbed his house’s Swiffer broom and switched out the pad on it. He took a bucket of water and dumped it over the linoleum of his kitchen floor where he spilled the acid. Going over it repeatedly until he was sure he had cleaned all trace of the hallucinogen from the floor.

  He took the tablecloth off the kitchen table and tossed it in the washing machine with two extra strength tide pods. Then he collected any piece of clothing from his room he could find that had a trace of weed scent of them and overloaded the dryer before throwing in a handful of scented fabric softener sheets.

  He ran around the entire house and opened every window he could find, and turned on every ceiling fan. He even got an electric fan from the garage and put it in his room to push its scent out of his window.

  Johnny then went to his parents closet and found the stockpile of candles himself and Tabby gifted their mom every Mother’s Day for the past ten years. He positioned them throughout the house, equidistant from each other and away from any fire hazards and lit them all, filling the house with a mix of lavender, lilac, vanilla, and chocolate chip cookie aromas.

  There was one last thing to take care of. In the event his house was raided, and thousands of dollars in cash he had was found, it would surely be seized by the police. Johnny needed to find a hiding spot for his newly acquired nest egg, and it needed to be a good one. Johnny went back to his room, now thoroughly coated in a thin mist of Febreze and the scent of vanilla. He flipped his mattress up and examined his box spring, then he found it, a small tear in its material. Johnny leaned over and stuck his finger in it, tearing it open just a bit more, then stuffed the money in it. He then flipped over the box spring before putting his mattress back on it and remaking his bed tighter than an army recruit in basic.

  Johnny, exhausted but satisfied with the fumigation process he was putting the Vincent home though, slumped on the couch and rubbed his eyes, trying to relax. He grabbed the remote and turned the television on.

  “Please be anything but the 38 o’clock news,” Johnny said to himself.

  It was the news. The six o’clock news, Carmen Montalvo Rodríguezes-Jones sat behind the anchor desk next to Rex Habbernath.

  “In political news, the ballot is really heating up, in addition to Republican Chester Markway throwing his hat in the ring for Governor today, our own state of California has approved another referendum to be added to the ballot, Proposition 4-22, for the second year in a row California will get the chance to legalize recreational Marijuana, polls are showing that after the defeat of Proposition 4-20 last year, the up and coming youth vote should prove to be big enough to turn the small margin of voter population to get the drug legalized by this time next year,” Carmen read off the teleprompter.

  Johnny laughed, he thought of his first class with Mr. Bergman, “Got to know to when to sell out,” Johnny said to himself.