Saturday morning around ten, Sasquatch and I drove past Carlo Quinn's house. Sky High Chemical Supply would open late today, but we didn't care.

All the shades were drawn. The Nissan was parked in the driveway, but the Lincoln was absent. We figured that Carlo was with the Lincoln, so it looked good for a reconnoiter to see what was in the back yard, if anything.

I don't elicit the skittish response that Sasquatch does. In fact, people tend to trust my wise, fatherly charm, or at least I like to think so. Sasquatch says it's because I look as harmless as a Mormon woodchuck. Maybe it's the eyeglasses--I don't know. Anyway, I was the one who knocked on the neighbor's door to the south of Carlo's place in search of my little granddaughter's missing cat.

Yes, Ma'am, Peaches has been missing since Wednesday, and my granddaughter's just frantic, poor little thing. Frantic. She can't sleep a wink, and she keeps running outside calling, "Peaches, Peaches...." It'd break your heart. So if you wouldn't mind--(Peaches likes to hide, see, and we're trying to look in all the hidey-holes she might be using in the neighborhood)--could I take a look for Peaches in your back yard? I promise it won't be any trouble, and I'll just be a minute...

Of course I got into the back yard. You don't want to overdo this sort of thing, and I'd come close. The neighbor lady had offered to help me search, but I insisted it would just take a moment. Best part was, the neighbor lady had a nice, low five-foot fence. I wouldn't have to hop like a kangaroo in order to see into Carlo's yard.

"Peaches," I called. "Peaches."

I got a good long look.

"So what's back there?" asked Sasquatch, when I returned to the car.

"Pretty much a back yard," I said. "He's got some sort of construction project going on--there's a cement mixer and some bags of mortar mix, and a big pile of bricks. Looks like he's building a backyard barbecue, but it's a strange-looking one."

"Yeah?"

"It's about eight feet high and there's a dome on it shaped like a beehive. There are four metal spouts coming out of the sides, and there isn't but a little hole in the front for the hot dogs to go into. Oh, and there's a window in it."

"Window?"

"Yeah, a little round window."

We thought about that.

"Maybe he likes to watch his steaks grill, but the hole in front's too small, so he put in a window."

"I took some pictures," I said.

We drove to Sky High Chemical Supply. Oldfella and his dog were waiting outside. Oldfella was carrying a paper grocery sack.

Oldfella didn't say anything or even look at us, but when we unlocked the door, he pushed past us grumpily and went inside. The dog followed.

Oldfella put the bag on the floor, and pegged determinedly into the back room. Clanging and banging. He stumped back out with a full vaccuum cleaner bag, opened the front door, and flung dirt all over the sidewalk. He came back inside, and turned the paper sack upside down, dumping the contents on the floor. Green leaves. When he finished, he kicked the leaves in all directions and accidentally kicked the dog, who yipped.

That done, he pulled a bottle from somewhere hidden in his old-man clothes and sloshed the contents over the leaves. Water. Oldfella looked around carefully, and nodded, satisfied. The bell over the door jingled when he walked out, down the street, and away.

Sasquatch and I looked at each other.

"Hell if I know," said Sasquatch.

We swept the leaves out of the store, shoved the vaccuum cleaner dirt off the sidewalk, and kicked back at our genteely failing business.

At 11:27 by the timer on the video camera, Carlo Quinn parked his Lincoln in front of the store. He seemed a little nervous--rubbernecking up and down the street. He hesitated before opening the door. I continued to read my magazine. Sasquatch ignored, him, scraping something off the counter with a pocketknife.

"Have you thought about our business deal?" asked Carlo, looking at me.

"Talk to the man," I said, "I'm just the bookkeeper."

Sasquatch waited. And waited. Let the little man bring it up again.

"The chemicals I need, you remember?"

"I remember," said Sasquatch, "and I don't like it. You're asking us to sell you some stuff that's illegal, and it's just not worth it for a few bucks. Now get out of here."

Carlo didn't leave. (Cha-ching.) He clasped his hands behind, and wrinkled his pale, puffy brow.

"What if it was worth your time?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if we could come to some kind of agreement?"

"Like what?"

"How about a thousand dollars up front, in cash, right now? Even before you put in the order for the chemicals?"

"Then what?"

"Then I'll pay you twice the value for the chemicals when they arrive."

"Not good enough. Listen--we know you're up to something, so we want a piece of whatever it is. Say twenty percent. How much are you going to be able to cook, do you think?"

Carlo stared at the floor.

"After I get the chemicals, I'll be able to make as much as you'll ever need."

"Maybe we can do business," said Sasquatch, "but I'll have to talk to my partner here. Come see us on Monday, and we'll have an answer for you."

Carlo agreed.

"But first, give us that thousand bucks," said Sasquatch. The whole exchange was on video, and we'd enter the thousand dollars into evidence back at the Agency.

Unfortunately for Carlo, we wouldn't open on Monday. Sky High Chemical Supply would be closed--sorry, Carlo. But that was okay.

Make him sweat.

On Monday, everybody at the Agency would be hiding in the bushes. We'd be busy with the Highway Interdiction Team.

"Try it again."

Susan lunged at Juba, grabbing for his .45. (Juba was a traditionalist--the rest of us carried nines and .40's, but he liked big slow bullets.)

"Ouch. Damnation."

She sucked on a bloodied finger. Got it caught in the slide.

"Nope. Next time cup your hand over the top, push the catch with your thumb, and jerk the whole thing toward you."

Juba was trying to teach Susan his favorite trick before the Friday meeting at the Agency office started. --Say someone's standing right in front of you with a pistol and they're probably going to shoot you--if you performed Juba's trick just right, you could dismount the slide in a quarter-second, and bingo, bango--the bad guy's staring mournfully at half a gun in his hand.

Pretty neat as a theory, but I don't know if it would actually work if you were scared as hell.

"Again?"

"Put that horse pistol away, and let's get started," said Ashe, the SAIC.

Ashe was our surfer boy--big, blonde "Whatever, Dude" looks concealing a lupine intelligence. He could lull some poor cluck into a completely false feel-good sense of amity that ended when the handcuffs clicked on.

When the cluck ended up in the back seat, he always looked dumbfounded and--betrayed. (How could my big blonde buddy do this to me? I'm so screwed....)

The rest of us rode motorcycles, collected firearms, and played basketball on our down-time. Ashe's off-duty interests ran to Renaissance art and rare books. He volunteered with the local Historical Museum as a docent.

"What's going on with Stanky Flats?"

"Stanky Flats" was our nickname for a mystery we couldn't figure out. Down in the farmlands out by Lake Deward, at the corner of County Road 73 and Grape Road, there was a plowed field and three small sheds. Nice, scenic place. Very little traffic. Cows in the pasture across the road. Birds perching on the fence, maybe a hawk circling overhead. But the ground vibrated as if planted in great buried engines and blowers, and the air was thick with the overpowering ropy-resinous stench of growing marijuana. (An unmistakable smell when you've whiffed it a thousand times.) The engine sound didn't come from the sheds, but thrummed relentlessly in your bones and seemed to come from all around. The sheds themselves weren't much bigger than outhouses, so there was no way to account for the thick reek of weed. This was a smell from acres, mountains, universes of marijuana.

"Juba and I looked it over again on Wednesday," said Juan. "No change. We got the names of the owners from the county assessor, but that doesn't tell us much. It's owned by a corporate farm that's been in business for twenty years."

"Well, let's keep after it," said Ashe. "We might ought to put some people on a stationary surveillance if we can figure out where to hide. Better yet, let's mount a pole camera on a telephone pole and see who comes and goes, and whatever else. That way we can free some people up."

"Desperado Housewives?"

Desperado Housewives was our acronym for one of Susan's cases--intel was that the Royal Springs Towne Mall was a hotbed of dope dealing by bored housewives. Allegedly, they'd come to the mall after their husbands went to work and their kids went to school and hang out on the chairs in the kiosk areas, grooving on the mall music, and sell cocaine. The exchange was done with shopping bags--one woman would sit down with a bag (full of money) at her feet, and sooner or later another woman would mosy along and sit beside, placing a second bag beside the first. Both would then get up, each picking up the other bag. (Hey, presto--there's a little baggy in the bottom of my bag now.) We'd had Susan running undercover in a tasteful pantsuit to see if she could scare up some business, but so far, no joy.

"Nothing yet," she said.

"Sky High Chemical Supply?"

"Goose egg, except for one guy," said Sasquatch, looking at me. I nodded at him to go ahead.

He passed photocopies of a driver's license photo around--a little man with a coifed pompadour, copper-red.

"The plates on the Lincoln we spotted come back to Carlo Quinn. We don't know much about him--arrived from out-of-state about six months ago--no previous record. He doesn't have a job that we can find. We did a drive-by of his address, and saw the green Lincoln in the driveway, along with a tricked-out road-racer Nissan, candy-apple red, that also comes back to him. The address is on a cul-de-sac in the Marchmont subdivision--good cover for a stationary surveillance if we want to do one."

"Okay," Ashe said, "What else?"

"He's supposed to be coming back on Saturday. He wants to buy phosphorous and methylamine, but he also wants some other weird stuff, some of which we had to look up--hydroflouric acid, used to etch glass. Radium, for crying out loud. Thorium oxide--a radioactive compound, sometimes used in radiology. DMSO--that's strange stuff--if you smear your hands with DMSO and handle a raw onion, you can taste it. It helps other compounds permeate your skin and go directly into your bloodstream. Mercury--a metal that's liquid at room temperature, sometimes used in mining--it dissolves gold, and is used to extract gold from ore. Sodium metal. You have to keep it immersed in oil, because it ignites if it's exposed to water and air."

"Any idea why he'd want this stuff?"

"Well, the phosphorous and methylamine are possible precursors to meth, of course, but your guess is as good as mine what he wants the other stuff for. I don't have a frickin' clue."

"Maybe we can find out," said Ashe, giving us a significant look. You'd better.

"Anybody know what 'lee-preea-kchan' means?" I asked.

"Come again?"

"Lee-preea-kchan", I said, putting a lot of spit into the last syllable.

"Why?"

"Oh, nevermind," I said.

I glanced from the magazine I was reading, looked at Sasquatch, and gave a millimeter's shrug. Sasquatch snorted--which could have been a laugh.

The little man clasped his hands behind like Napoleon Bonaparte and strolled idly to the shelves, histrionically looking things over, as if to say--"Hmm. I'm looking things over, now."

The bell over the door jingled. Oldfella and his horrible dog tottered in.

Oldfella lived in a room in Sasquatch's house. I never knew why or how. He wasn't a relative--wasn't a friend. Sasquatch had simply picked him up somewhere along the way, and before Sasquatch knew it, he was living in Sasquatch's house and eating Sasquatch's food. I don't think Sasquatch liked Oldfella very much, and I'm certain that he didn't like Oldfella's nameless, farting dog, but somehow Oldfella stayed on. I'm not sure it occurred to Sasquatch to ask him to leave.

Oldfella was eighty-eight years old. That much we knew, because he told us once, and he looked it. One morning he'd turn up his toes in Sasquatch's house, rumpled and stiff in bed like a dead bird.

Anything else about Oldfella was a guess. We believed he was Irish, from the old country, because he said many incomprehensible things in a cooing, sing-song, half-familiar lilt--but we didn't know for sure.

This time Oldfella said nothing. He lowered himself, precariously, onto one of the worn-out chairs like a senile magpie. He flung his cane to the floor.

The dog waddled to his master's side in a syncopated "pad, pad, pad, tap...pad, pad, pad, tap" rhythm. The dog was more-or-less Australian Shepherd with blue ticking. He had three good legs and one wooden one carved from a broomstick.

Oldfella didn't bother to look at us or at the dog, but he found something mildly disgusting in the middle distance, and gummed toothlessly at his resentment.

Sasquatch shook his head.

How Oldfella figured out where we were and what we were doing was a complete mystery, but he often did. He'd ride the bus (no one dared question the presence of the dog) to wherever we conducting a stakeout, or operating an undercover, or doing a sting, and just--show up. He usually didn't stay long and he never spoke to Sasquatch or to me or to anyone else from the Agency. He acted as if we weren't there. Then he'd leave.

It was a slightly comfortable ritual. Oldfella added an authentic, homeless cachet to whatever was going on. We hadn't thought of any way to keep him away, in any event--but we figured no one would bother to shoot him if something bad happened.

"Do you have any thorium oxide?"

"Excuse me?" said Sasquatch.

"Thorium oxide", the little man said.

We didn't know what that was.

"No."

"Can you get it?"

"Maybe."

"I need it. I need thorium oxide, americium if I can get it, some radium but that's probably not available...and I need mercury, sodium metal, hydroflouric acid, DMSO, and phosphorous."

"Phosphorous?" Sasquatch almost smiled.

"And some methylamine."

"Man, I don't know," mused Sasquatch, stroking his beard, "that stuff's illegal, methylamine, unless you're a taxidermist or something and have a permit for it."

"Yes--yes I do taxidermy."

"I just don't know. I don't know--maybe. I'll have to think about it. We don't usually handle that stuff."

Besides, we'd have to look up half of the things he'd asked for. We'd never heard of them. But methylamine and phosphorous--oh yeah. Precursor chemicals.

"Come back and see us tomorrow or the day after. We'll let you know."

"Yes, yes, I see. You're wanting to be cautious, and I appreciate that. Until Saturday, then? I hope we can do business," he said, anxiously.

He hurried out the door, and into an old sixties Lincoln with suicide doors. I looked out the window and wrote down the plate number. We had everything on video.

"Lee-preea-kchahn," said Oldfella, with a guttaral rasp on the last syllable. He spit on the floor.

"Don't spit on the damn floor," said Sasquatch.

"Lee-preea-kchahn," Oldfella said again. He spit.

We didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Sasquatch's confrontation with the Marshmallow Man began about a month after I took a class from the DEA on how to grow marijuana.

Like any crop, a good result starts with the best seeds, or superior clones. The DEA gave us solid tips on how to wire up your lights, (best do it right, because if you don't, you'll set your house on fire), how to put together a drip irrigation system, growth media, control of photoperiod, how to promote flowering, the pros and cons of injecting carbon dioxide into the growing room to stimulate vegetative growth--lots of stuff. When your harvest is ready, if you do it right, you get plants that are about two feet tall, with buds a foot long. This is ideal, since you get more marketable product and less waste.

At the end of the week, I got a certificate with my name on it. It was very nice. Gold scrollwork arabesques and decorations in a wooden frame. I still have it on my wall.

Sasquatch and I took the class at the same time. I think he enjoyed it as much as I did. The Feds surely did put on a good show--they even fed us crab newburg with a nice vinegarette salad at lunch on the last day.

"So I've been thinking about a sting," Sasquatch said, spooning up the final tasty morsels of crab.

"Stings are good," I told him.

"Yes. I like stings." He brushed crumbs from his splendid ZZ Topp beard and wiped the last bits off his reeking leather vest. One-Percenters, motorcycle trash, never clean their colors. "Skull Crew", the vest read--a wolf skull with bat wings, rampant.

"What we do, is we rent a little storefront and put up a sign that we're a chemical supply company. I think we should call it 'Sky High Chemical Supply'. Out front we'll have a few sample things like jars of sulfur, and dry-cleaning fluid, and liquid wax and stuff like that. But we'll be bent, see?"

"Okay."

"We'll get quite a few people in who want ordinary stuff, and we'll either fill their orders, or not, and we'll weed the legitimate people out right away because our followup and our customer service will suck. We'll look wrong, you know, 'cause we're kind of funky looking, you'll have to admit. We'll be a little rude, and they'll get tired of us and won't come back. But then we'll get the ones who come in looking for something that we don't have on display."

"Precursors," I offered.

"Precursor chemicals. Stuff to make crystal meth, stuff to make LSD, maybe--although that's a long shot--there aren't but a half-dozen cooks in the country who make LSD. It's too hard, and you practically have to be a chemist. But meth can be cooked by any moron with a recipe and a bathtub.

"We'll tell them, 'Man, I don't know. That stuff's illegal, you know, and it's hard to get, besides. I don't know, man, I'd really have to think about it.' If they're what we're looking for, they might come back a time or two before they make us an offer."

"Uh-huh."

"What do you think?"

"If we can sell it and get it funded, let's go for it."

"My man."

We were in business. Sasquatch managed to get the Agency to come across for three-months rent on a little storefront in a strip mall. We didn't bother with a professional-looking sign, because we're just starting in business, you know, and our clunky hand-lettered sign set just the right tone. We wired the place up to the walls with video cameras and microphones. Out front we had a counter we could stand behind, and a couple of worn-out chairs for customers to sit on, with some old magazines so our clients could amuse themselves while we fiddled around and waited on them when we were good and ready.

Our customer service sucked so hard, it could have sucked a golf ball through a hose. It was terrible. After a couple of weeks, we had hardly any customers at all--the word had gotten around to most of the legitimate commercial businesses that needed chemicals of one sort or another that we were awful and kind of scary, and they quit bothering us. We spent a lot of time leafing through old magazines--I learned quite a bit about celebrity divorces. Every once in awhile, we'd get a few lookie-lews, and a few nibbles, but nothing bit.

Then one Thursday, an odd little man came into the shop. He was around 5 feet 4. He had a tall, coifed pompadour--bright copper red, six gold rings on his fingers (celtic knots and dragons), and a lavender shirt open to the third button revealing the palest of hairless chests. Obvious elevator shoes. Overall, he looked sort of--puffy.

And Juan and I didn't shoot, because we were too busy untangling ourselves from an angry barn owl. They're big, too.

Anyway, we managed to pucker up and push inside to secure the building. We found nothing but a nest of mice in a pile of moldy hay.

...Into the cornfield, south toward the river.

Susan, Juan and I walked in a line--a slow line. At each row of corn, we stopped to shine our 4 cell flashlights up and down the row. The wind masked any sound of movement we might hear. We paused a long, reluctant moment at each row before stepping into the next. At the rate we were going, we might make it to the river by sunrise, but there was nothing else to do that we could think of.

Step--shine the lights around--breathe--step--lights--breathe--step.

When Susan shouted, "Hey", I was so startled that I tried to climb stairs in the air. When I landed, I turned my light in the direction she was looking. A woman and four children stood less than ten feet away. The woman had her hands up, and the children began to cry--and scream.

"Get down, get down. Keep your hands in sight. Don't move, don't move."

Juan put cuffs on the woman, and Susan and I did our best to round up the children, who continued to scream--and scream. It didn't make sense. We'd stop them and try to hold on, and try to calm them down, but they fought us as hard as they could.

We finally managed to get them to walk back to the car with us, but the children sobbed all the way. We put the kids in the back seat.

Juan talked to Maria, the woman, for several minutes in Spanish. When he finished, he looked more sad and bleak than anything else.

"Their father left them behind, because he said they were too slow."

I nodded.

"Before he took off, he told them to hide from the police. The mother finally decided to give herself up, because it was cold and the children didn't have coats on."

Juan shook his head.

"Before Eduardo ditched them, he told the kids to hide from the police, because the police would kill them if they were caught."

The screaming...

Susan and I walked over to the car, where the kids were still crying in the back seat. She spoke to them softly, soothingly, while I went around the back and opened the trunk. I took out four of the teddy bears that we keep in the back in case we have to comfort a traumatized child. It happens.

I handed each of the kids a bear. I think they were finally beginning to realize that they were going to live. The biggest boy was sniffing, fighting tears, holding his bear. I asked him in English what his name was.

"Alejandro".

"Alejandro, I am very glad to meet you. Everything will be all right."

"Where's my mom?"

"She's right over there with Juan...see?"

He saw. Things were maybe a little better.

"Where's my Dad?"

"You speak English very well, Alejandro. I'm sorry, we don't know where your Dad is, but we're going to try to find him. We'll be careful not to hurt him."

He nodded.

But we never did find out where Eduardo was.

As nearly as we could figure, and as far as the dogs we brought in later could determine, he'd walked clear down to the river, where his trail ended. We believe that he tried to swim the river to escape--but the river was strong and large, and the current was swift. He may have drowned. No body was ever found. And although we kept track of Maria and the kids for a couple of years after, so far as we've ever known, Eduardo was never seen again by anyone.

Some nights, the only thing in the world that makes sense is a teddy bear.