Susan scooped up the little pig and stuffed him, protesting, back into the box. She and Ashe sidled past Carlo--who was on his way to the door--and put the pig-in-a-box, weeing madly, into the trunk of Susan's car.

"Was that a pig?" asked Carlo.

"That was the butcher getting our approval for Saturday's barbecue," said Sasquatch. "Yummy. You like barbecue?"

"What do you want?" I said to Carlo, in order to shut Sasquatch up about barbecue. I didn't want the Marshmallow Man to think about barbecue and backyard barbecue pits. Could be he'd cop to the fact that we'd low-crawled (or rather peeked over the fence at) his backyard. "We told you we'd call you in a couple of days and let you know where we were going to meet."

"Would you accept another form of payment? Other than cash, I mean?"

"What'd you have in mind?" I said, offensively, "a check?"

"Kruggerands."

"Kruggerands?"

"One-ounce gold Kruggerands."

"What's wrong with cash?"

"Most of my assets are in gold. It'd be easier that way for me, and Kruggerands are untraceable. Better than cash."

"Don't know. Kruggerands? What do you think?" I asked Sasquatch.

Sasquatch shrugged. "Maybe. Tell you what--we'll let you know when we call, okay?"

Carlo nodded.

"Now get out of here," I said, "We've got a business to run, and you're making us nervous showing up all the time. Don't come back here until we call. You're not our only client, you know."

He was, though. And we'd be paying a lot of attention to him. Servicing the customer--that's just the way we did business.

I felt fairly comfortable that we'd skated on the pig issue.

After we closed the shop that afternoon, we drove over to the Agency office to meet with everybody about Stanky Flats, which had very quickly gotten hot. Juba and Juan had met with the prosecutor that morning. We were hashing out the best approach.

"They're most vulnerable when they're loading product on the truck," said Ashe, "and the major players are likely to be around then, since that's when the most money is moving around. We don't have solid evidence that the bud we found necessarily came from the busted bag, and a defense attorney could pick the whole thing apart.

"We'll have to set up nights with some uniform patrol in reserve, and catch them while they're loading the truck. Shouldn't be too hard--the process takes awhile--and we can roll up on them when they're in the act. Afterwards, with dope in hand, we should be able to get a search warrant for the property. Right now, we can't low-crawl the place, because of the "No Trespassing" signs."

"We did some research on the property," said Juan, "It's owned by the Kubarton Land Development Company, LLC. They own farming, ranching, and mining property in three states. Company officers are named--"

He passed around some photocopies.

"Arno Desmond is the listed president. Apparently, he holds sixty percent of the stock. The rest of the company officers are recorded."

"Three states? Do we get the feds involved?" asked Susan.

"I think we have to," Ashe sighed. "Might be some cross-border issues we have to deal with. Who knows how far this goes? I'll call the DEA and get them up to speed--but I'm going to make it clear to them that this is ours, and their involvement is strictly advisory at this point. If we don't, before we know it this will be a federal operation, and they'll hog all the glory. Not to mention that it could be a complete circus, with clowns."

We nodded. None of us had forgotten the crack federal swat team that went out on a raid with us the previous year:

All of us were waiting at the rendevouz point in our vehicles. The swat team clones--too exclusive to hobnob with the rubes--were sitting in their own customized, armored van, locked and loaded with automatic weapons. Wouldn't even share their coffee. One of the swat team elites was fiddling with his cool toy, and had an accidental discharge inside the van. Muzzle-flashes, gunfire. Brrrrrt--brrrrt--brrrrrt. Sent everybody hurtling in all directions--we almost had a firefight right there in the parking lot.

"They might want to come along when we do the deed," said Ashe, "but I'll try to make sure they don't have a swat team. We don't need a paramilitary assault. When we do the truck, we'll probably have most of the big players anyway, and then we can go get a warrant, take our time, and look things over, nice and easy. After all--that's the best thing about a big grow operation--they can't flush two tons of weed."

I've enjoyed scrivening Sasquatch Versus the Marshmallow Man. As those of you who've been following this blog know, I use the blog to loosen up for scrivening the novel that some lower power compelled me to begin writing after New Year's Eve.

It's also been a great pleasure to explore this idiosyncratic community, and to get to know the players here.

I generally scrive in the blog for an hour, and then tackle the novel for another two hours. The stories are completely unrelated, but there seems to be a synergistic weirdness going on between the two--for some reason, the writing in the novel is better after I've followed Sasquatch around for a while.

I also wanted to express my sincere appreciation to the folks who've taken the time to write. Many thanks.

More later.

Sasquatch went home for lunch, and I hung out at the store in case anyone else showed up looking to buy chemicals.

That afternoon, Ashe and Susan stopped by Sky High Chemical Supply to help us reconfigure some of the video cameras and the microphones. We'd been getting some blind spots on the tapes where we didn't have camera coverage. Susan, our electronics whiz, solved the problem beautifully with a pinhole camera mounted in the face of a wall clock--it gave us a panoramic view of the store from a different angle.

At one-thirty, Sasquatch returned. He was carrying a very small pig by one hind leg, and it was squealing like a cheap whistle. It squealed and squealed.

"S'up, Sasquatch," I asked, "You like your bacon fresh?"

Sasquatch hauled the little pig up to the level of his eyes, and regarded it with a feral smile.

"Don't worry, Baby," he crooned, "I don't want to rape you--I just want your telephone number."

"Maybe we should shoot it," said Ashe, covering his ears.

"The hell's the matter with you?" said Susan. "Gimme that pig. Big dumb dork--don't you know how to carry a pig? Gimme it. I grew up on a farm."

She cradled the frantic creature in her arms, talking to it soothingly.

"He just wants his Momma."

She fetched a cardboard box from the back room, dumped in a pile of our old magazines for bedding, and plunked the pig inside, setting it on the floor in the corner. She covered the box with a lid so it was nice and dark inside. The pig began to settle down, and the ear-splitting screams subsided.

"I suppose the obvious question should be asked," I said.

"Yes," said Ashe. "Umm--could you please explain the pig in the room?"

"Okay, so I went home for lunch," said Sasquatch, "And I was sitting in the kitchen eating a tuna salad sandwich. When I looked up, this little guy came trotting through the room. Made me look a couple of times--I thought I'd suddenly gotten big pink rats in my house.

"After I thought for a minute, I realized what the obvious solution was--I went looking for Oldfella. He was in the back, in his room, watching Oprah on television. I fetched him back to the kitchen and showed him the pig. Oldfella didn't say anything, but he smiled. Oldfella smiling is a terrible thing to see, by the way.

"'You nasty fart," I told him, "Why is there a pig in my house? I guess you really are a pig-stealin' bog-trotter, you old bastard.'

"Oldfella didn't say anything, but he kept right on smiling.

"So I brought the pig back with me. Hell of a carnival in the car, I'll tell you. I figured maybe one of you would know how to find out who was missing a pig--and what do you do with a pig you find in your house, anyway?"

"We could call animal control," said Ashe.

"Don't you dare," said Susan.

"Maybe he'll be useful," I said to Sasquatch "Didn't I read somewhere in the bible about how a man was posessed by a demon, and an exorcist cast the demon out of him into a herd of pigs--and then they ran into the river and drowned? Lord knows you're posessed by a devil, Sasquatch. Could be we can get rid of it. Give you some peace down in your soul."

"The Romans used pigs as weapons of war," said Ashe. We looked at him.

"The Carthaginians had elephants. None of the Romans had ever seen them before. They were terrifying and devastating--armed soldiers in howdahs on their backs, the elephants trained to trample and crush enemy soldiers. Like living tanks. Finally, somebody figured out that elephants don't like pigs. After that, whenever the Carthaginians charged in on their elephants into the Roman ranks--and there happened to be pigs around--the Romans would set loose a herd of pigs. The elephants went nuts--running in all directions, flattening anything that was between them and where ever the pigs weren't. The elephants did more damage to their own army than to the enemy."

"I don't think we have any elephants around," I said. "But if we did, we'd be set."

The pig had settled down. The squeals had subsided, and paper-ripping noises came from inside the box as he tore up our celebrity magazines. Brittany Spears was really taking a beating. Every once in awhile, a little pink snout lifted a corner of the box and sniffed at the air.

"So what's the plan on Carlo Quinn?" asked Ashe.

"We're going to set up a buy-bust on him in a motel room," said Sasquatch. "We're working on getting all his stuff from a legitimate outfit out on Sander Road. They didn't really want to help us out at first, but we did some talking. Told them they'd get their stuff right back--it wouldn't ever be out of our control, and they'd be doing their civic duty by helping us out. All that stuff."

"So we take him down, and then what?"

"Arrest him for conspiracy to manufacture, and follow it up with a search warrant on his house. Find out what he's been up to."

"That'll work."

I nodded.

Uh-oh. As if called up by our mention of him, the Marshmallow Man's green Lincoln pulled into the lot.

Hmm. I looked around, undecided what to do. We'd been caught flatfooted with a pig.

The little pig's snout had lifted a corner of the box lid again, sniffing. Suddenly, he froze. He knocked off the lid and scrambled out of the box, uttering a great war cry. He charged the door, raising seven kinds of pig hell.

"You gotta see this."

Juba waved a DVD. He switched on his laptop, and we all crowded around.

"The good parts from the pole camera at Stanky Flats. I edited out the stuff where nothing was happening. "

"How'd you get it done so fast?" I asked. "We just picked it up yesterday." I drained the last dribble from my first hallelujah cup of morning's coffee. Cafe Latte. I'm one of those latte drinkers you hear tell about.

"Last night. I used the setup in the evidence room," said Juba. "Couldn't sleep."

The screen brightened, and a window opened on a plowed field at Stanky Flats, lit by a lurid sunset. The theme song from "Chariots of Fire" began to play.

"A little night music," said Juba, "to set the mood."

"--This is about a half hour later."

A caravan of lights approached the second shed of the three in the field. The scene was lit by the floodlights of four dump trucks. From the first of the four trucks, a shadowy male figure walked to the door of the shed, snapped open a padlock, rolled up the door, and did something we couldn't make out for a few moments. He went inside.

A few minutes later, a front end loader emerged, and dropped a large pile of dirt into a dumptruck. Returned. Emerged with a second load of dirt. And another. And another. And another. The first dump truck drove away, fully loaded, and a second took its place. It too was filled. And the third. And the fourth. The trucks drove out into the field and dumped their loads.

"This was two hours later."

A flatbed truck carrying railroad ties drove into view. The railroad ties were unloaded by two men, who carried them into the shed. There were a lot of railroad ties.

In the third act--which took place at two-fifteen AM--three cars and a straight-axle truck parked on the road near the camera. Several faces were illuminated in the glare of the headlights. (We could freeze-frame and tweak them later.) The shed was again unlocked, and ten or twelve men began to carry black trash bags from the shed to the truck, where they were loaded. Dozens and dozens and dozens of bags.

It was like the scene in the circus where a tiny car drives into the ring and eight clowns climb out.

Near the end of their labors, when the men were obviously getting tired and had begun to stumble a little, a trash bag ripped open and the contents fell out. Then followed a great deal of frantic ant-like activity as the contents were thoroughly and carefully put into a fresh trash bag.

"Nice," said Ashe. "Maybe they left something behind."

"They did," said Juan. "We went out again around dawn."

He raised a finger, went the the evidence room, and came back with a clear plastic bag containing a fat marijuana bud dripping with resin.

In the final act of the video, at around four in the morning, a tractor drove into the field and plowed under the tire tracks and the dumped dirt.

Juba and Juan had given us something to think about.

Sasquatch and I opened the doors at Sky High Chemical Supply at ten. At ten-seventeen, Carlo Quinn's green Lincoln drove into the lot. Carlo again looked around and hesitated before coming inside.

"Where were you yesterday?" he asked. "I thought we had a meeting."

His puffy face pinkened.

"We went fishing," said Sasquatch. "Didn't catch much, but we didn't throw anything back either."

"I waited for you for hours."

"Tough," said Sasquatch. It was the end of the conversation.

"We'll do it," Sasquatch said. "But not here. We'll call you in a few days to let you know where. Bring your money. We want twelve thousand for the lot. You get a gallon of hydroflouric acid, a gallon of DMSO, ten pounds of thorium oxide, thirty pounds of mercury, forty pounds of phosphorous, and ten gallons of methylamine."

"What about the rest of the chemicals I need?"

"We'll talk about the rest of it if and when this comes off all right. Some of this stuff is illegal, and I'm not going to jail."

"You'll call me?"

"We'll call."

Carlo nodded, and nodded again. He extended his hand. Sasquatch reluctantly took it. I tightened my grip on the nine millimeter I'd hidden in the couch cushions. Carlo didn't make any aggressive moves, but Sasquatch twitched violently when he took Carlo's hand, as if it concealed a whoopee buzzer. He quickly dropped it. Sasquatch's face wore a thoughtful expression.

After Carlo left, I turned to Sasquatch.

"What?"

Sasquatch shook his shaggy head.

"When I shook his hand, it felt just like I'd squeezed a bag of marshmallows."

And so we began to call Carlo the Marshmallow Man.

The coyote returned for a third time, and resumed his digging.

"Chipmunk for dinner."

"Yeah, but there's a badger hole about twenty yards away. Mr. Badger's liable to object. That'll be droll."

"I think that's an old badger hole."

"What? With an old badger in it?"

"With no badger at all."

"Reminds me of a country and western song."

"Everything reminds you of a country and western song."

I turned down the volume on my hand-held radio. Quiet afternoon. Not much for the five of us from the Agency to do but watch the coyote fling dirt. We were scattered over the canyon walls on either side of the highway, dressed in desert camouflage, concealed under camouflage netting.

The state patrol's Highway Interdiction Team had selected their trap carefully--narrow shoulders on the road with signs that warned "No Stopping"; divided highway going up a steep hill with one emergency turn-around lane in the center; a long curve before a driver coming up from the south entered the Hot Zone. The driver would have no time to react until he saw the first sign.

The first blaze-orange sign said: "Police Checkpoint Ahead".

Two hundred yards on, the second sign said: "Drug Interdiction in Progress".

The third sign said: "Drug Dog in Use". At the top of the hill were four state patrol cruisers waiting in a gravel pit. There was no police roadblock.

We were fishing, out here in the desert.

We waited under the camouflage netting, equipped with binoculars and four or five video cameras to record the behavior of people in cars as they entered the area we officially called the Hot Zone, but unofficially referred to as the "Cone of Death".

Now--if a car with drugs in it arrived at the "Cone of Death", the driver had a decision to make very quickly, and there were only a limited number of decisions he could make: He could use the emergency turn-around illegally, and go back the way he came. Or he could throw his stash out the window. Or he could stop to think for a while. Or he could act as if nothing was wrong, and keep driving the speed limit--not flinching, not slowing down, not rummaging around under the seat. Just staying cool. That last was the right answer, because nothing would happen to him if he kept on driving--but a decision to keep going took nerves of steel, and most fairly normal people with drugs in the car had nerves of noodles.

After the spotters described and recorded those noodle-nerved persons who failed the little exam by choosing one of the three wrong answers, a patrol cruiser would shoot out of the gravel pit, run the failed examinee down, and ask him a series of uncomfortable questions. The whole thing was great fun.

"Blue Camry entering the Zone," said Susan. "Looking around."

"Got him", said Juba. "He just spotted the first sign, and he's slowing down."

"Roger that." Ashe said. "Got an eye on him?"

"Rolling", I answered. I put the camera on the Camry.

"Windows going down."

The occupants of the car hurled stuff out the windows in all directions.

"State, they ditched it. We've got a line. Number one car pursue when he gets to the top of the hill. Number two, come on down our way and we'll direct you to it."

"10-4."

"He's stopped," said car number one, a few minutes later.

We directed number two to the area where the Camry's driver had thrown out the stuff.

"Got it. Couple of ounces of weed and a bong."

And now a difficult and lengthy discussion with an unsmiling state patrolman lay in the Camry driver's immediate future. Another victim of the "Cone of Death".

The next victim did a high-speed turnaround. When stopped, he tried to convince the patrolman that he'd just remembered that he'd forgotten his shoes in Lardo, and he had to go back for them. He consented to a search of his car (the dummy) and consequently ended his day in the graybar hotel.

The most dramatic moment of the day occurred when the driver of a jacked-up Dodge pickup stopped right below Sasquatch's hiding place in a clump of sagebrush. He attempted to bury his stash--in order to come back for it after dark I guess. I managed to record the furor on video when Sasquatch rose out of his lair like an evil, bearded prophet and yelled, "Pick that up."

We kept after it until it was too dark to see. We ended up with a fairly successful day--but no major hits.

On the way back to the office, the five of us stopped out by Stanky Flats to change the tapes in the pole camera. After we dropped the others off, Sasquatch and I drove over to Carlo Quinn's house. We'd deliberately missed our meeting with Carlo that day, and we wanted to see if there was anything going on with Carlo, now that we'd made him worry a little.

We saw a dim flicker of flames reflected from Carlo's back yard.

"Doesn't look like he's too worried," said Sasquatch, "I think he's barbecuing."