Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: BookBaby
ISBN-10: 1543917658
Type: Fiction
Pages: 298
Copyright: December 21, 2017
ISBN-13: 9781543917659
Price: $6.99 (eBook)
Although the Mexican cartel largely abandoned Marijuana cultivation and distribution business after the legalization of MMJ dispensaries by the Los Angeles City Council, I wrote the novel to describe the avaricious miscreants that still dominate the Los Angeles MMJ market. Drawn to the immense potential profits in MMJ, these MMJ street thugs make used car salespeople appear to be paragons of virtue. To this day, I’m astonished at the magnitude of violence, intimidation, police abuse, and illegal trafficking.
Recently, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the “Cole Memo,” an Obama-era rule that enacted how U.S. attorneys should enforce federal marijuana laws. Serendipitously, I just published a novel concerning my legal Medical Marijuana (MMJ) dispensaries and ancillary firms in Los Angeles County -- the largest MMJ market in the world. Because marijuana usage and legalization is currently such a hot topic in social and political circles, I wrote the novel, ‘Mayhem, Murder & Marijuana’; subtitled ‘The Los Angeles Marijuana War’ for all interested in one of the most contentious contemporary subjects. It’s a true thriller
Excerpt
Downtown Los Angeles
The Gegamian brothers, Arat and Zakaria, hung out in the least desirable parts of Downtown LA. This area was bordered by four crisscrossing freeways. It was almost like civilized society created this area, and said, “Keep your dirty little secret of drug-infested poverty within these four corners. Far removed from my safe hometown.” Aside from the pervasive decay and crime, everything was old and rundown. The streets east of the Civic Center, between Main Street and San Pedro Street, were crumbling and had potholes. Day or night, it didn’t matter, the traffic in the area always seemed congested.
Numerous buildings and small strip malls east of downtown had been vacant for more than a decade—abandoned and boarded up. According to the LAPD, this despised part of the greater Los Angeles Metro area was relatively safe during daylight when drug- gies were sleeping it off. Safety in the locale was another story after 10 p.m. It was best to keep your doors locked after midnight. That’s when tweakers would come out to do their Christmas shopping in June, or whatever month of year it was. The Gegamian boys and other tweakers kept stealing and stealing to pay for their ugly synthetic habit.
The Gegamian Brotherhood (or G-brothers) was an offshoot of Armenian Pride, the largest Armenian street gang in Los Angeles with hundreds of members. Arat Gegamian could have written a book called Ten Alternatives to Wasting Your Time in College. The books Table of Contents would have included a chapter on each potential alternative income source, including: drug trafficking, murder, assault, fraud, identity theft, illegal gambling, kidnapping, racketeering, robbery, and extortion.
South of downtown, south of the 10 Freeway, is the garment district, or known in the trade as “the schmatta business.” For the past twenty years, most major schmatta firms had moved their
manufacturing offshore to China, or followed GUESS Jeans to Mexico. The once thriving area now had a scattering of Korean and Chinese sewing contractors, and an abundance of unoccupied industrial buildings. The residential neighborhoods that were formerly African American, now were occupied with recent Latin American arrivals.
Middle-class black families had departed the crime-infested area in the 1980s for safe affordable housing in what was called the Inland Empire—San Bernardino and Riverside counties. That primarily left the elderly, or the most impoverished blacks residing south of the Santa Monica Freeway—those who couldn’t escape to a better life.
Both Gegamian brothers were balding, had excessively hairy muscular bodies, and their arms and shoulders were tattooed with Armenian symbols. The G-brothers found it too boring to reconnoiter buildings to rob, so they had Arat’s girlfriend, Natalie, cruise the area east of USC, near Jefferson and Broadway for possible hits. Arat’s instructions were straightforward: “Real garment contractors have Hispanic or Asian employees. Look for young Caucasians driving flashy cars. They don’t belong in the area. Landlords there are greedy and desperate for money. They now rent out their buildings to marijuana growers. That’s our target to hit.” Arat rightly assumed a female would be less conspicuous in the area than a brassy gangbanger.
Years ago, Natalie Demirjian met Arat Gegamian at Christ Armenian High School in Los Feliz. He was immediately smitten with her, and called her his turd cutter—he appreciated large asses. Since she was not beautiful, bright, or appealing, Natalie decided that “Arat the Tweaker” would have to do.
To avoid the monotony inherent in her scouting mission, Natalie’s friend, Yeva Hagopian, accompanied her on the hours- long scouting mission. Tired of driving, Natalie and Yeva parked on Broadway in front of a fire hydrant and lit up. Yeva gestured to two white men exiting a clean white BMW. A security fence was automatically closing. The mistake the two men made was not placing a canvas tarpaulin over the gate. Every move they made could be viewed from the street. Natalie said, “Look at the roof. Too many air-conditioning units for a garment building this size.”
Yeva smiled. She knew the payoff for successfully scouting was their choice of gold baubles at the Gegamians’ father’s jewelry shop in the Glendale Galleria. The next tell the scouts noticed was the enormous new stand-alone electric transformer in the parking lot. Again, too much power for a 7,500-square-foot garment building.
“This is it,” announced Natalie. “Arat is going to be so happy, that is whenever he wakes up today. You know, Arat and I’ll never have a child. All he does is sleep all day. He wakes up around nine at night. Gets fucked up on all his drugs, and . . .” She turned to Yeva and looked extremely serious. “Don’t you dare repeat what I’m telling you. Arat and I never have sex anymore. All he does is his drugs, gambles, and robs. What a way to live. Living back in Yerevan might be better than this.” She shook her head.
Their scouting expedition was now complete. Hungry, they sped north to Beverly at Rampart for a Tommy’s double cheeseburger, a side of chili cheese fries, and a cola. They enjoyed the
All-American diet of excessive fat, salt, and sugar.
Late that night, after the G-brothers woke up, Natalie explained the location to the brothers and showed them photos of the building and the surrounding area. Planning the robbery didn’t require any magical tools or incantations. Arat simply directed the women to go back tomorrow. They should wait across the street from the grow site, and were instructed to take notes on the following: how many people worked at the site, their hours, any noticeable guards, is there a camera system, barbed wire, a dog? Natalie had done this so many times, she had created a laundry list to check off every item.
Although enthusiastic that a new grow was attainable, the brothers were never in a rush to rob. Arat preferred taking his time and analyzing all the possible options. The problem at the moment was this building was on turf ruled by a Hispanic gang. Arat got along with blacks, Russians, and Israelis. But Hispanic gangs were a problem. The Gegamian Brotherhood was constantly in territorial disputes with them—alliances were impossible to form. He said, “Zakaria, you know those bastards are going to find out that we hit a building in their territory.”
Zakaria was more basic than his older brother, and had a simple response: “Fuck ’em.”
The Gegamian Brotherhood had one thing in common with every other small tweaker gang—they started out with relatives that they could trust. Related by blood or marriage, they could be called “tweaker thieves-in-law.”
Four days later, assured that they were well positioned for a quick hit-and-run heist, two cars filled with G-brothers left their dirty space in a vacant building. Zakaria followed in their twenty- two-foot truck. The stench of urine and garbage filled the air as they drove south on Main Street. At that hour, the street was busy with a few lot lizards wasting their time trying to sell their bodies to penniless vagrants. Cardboard box homes lined the street as they passed 5th Street, two blocks from the Los Angeles Mission.
Arat had to keep the loud cheering of the excited zombie tweakers to a minimum so as not to attract unwanted suspicion. As whacked-out as the G-brothers constantly behaved, before a robbery, Arat would sit with his brother, smoke a cigar, and drink Armenian ArArAt-label brandy. Together, they carefully staged the approach for each stage of the heist.
For the Broadway break-in, Arat had his cousin, who sold real estate in the Glendale-La Crescenta area, run a property search on the ownership of the building. The title search indicated the three brothers from Northridge owned the industrial building, plus five houses in Porter Ranch.
Arat sent Zakaria to eyeball the Valley houses, and the report was what he anticipated. The Valley houses were wired to steal electricity. For further verification of the obvious, Zak inspected the trashcans. They were filled with packaging for light bulbs, fertilizer, and auxiliary marijuana cultivation supplies. Smart growers pack up their trash and haul it to the dump. They were definitely below-the- radar growers. The three brothers owned well-located homes. Each owned more cars and trucks than they could use. Two brothers were single, and partied nightly in Hollywood or downtown. The youngest brother recently married a former porno star that went by the stage name Jasmine St. John. Jazzy was all of 5’1”, and was proud of her absurdly huge silicone implants. Due to photos disseminated over the Internet, she consistently embarrassed her prim-and-proper family back in Cartagena, Columbia.
Following their careful review, the G-brothers knew the industrial building owned by these unsullied Valley boys were the perfect target. Over the years of being a tweaker-robber’s companion, Natalie had skillfully learned to prepare summaries that were irreproachably accurate. She knew that these growers never employed fewer than five workers at that site, all trusted men from Honduras. Every night one of the Hondurans slept in the building armed with one gun. The key fact was he worked all day, and slept in the building at night. Sleeping isn’t guarding. Otherwise, there was no security guard, no cameras, no vicious dog, no barbed wire.
The G-brothers watched silently as their man, Farhad, wearing a backpack, climbed on top of a large closed trashcan. He carefully moved right to the drainpipe, and shimmied up the gutter pipe to the roof.
Every secure site has at least one vulnerability. Old industrial buildings often had glass skylights. Street-level windows were normally covered with iron bars to prevent a break-in. Entering through the ceiling was considered improbable, and the skylights rarely had bars. Why waste money in a garment building? Fortuitously for the G-brothers, this building didn’t have iron bars on the skylights.
Farhad never hurried. Entering through the roof was a difficult task. His predecessor worked so quickly that he died falling through a skylight, landing on top of the shattered glass.
Farhad delicately pried open the dormer. Next he pulled a rope from his backpack, and secured it tightly to the air condenser. The interior was well lit by LED lights, and directly below appeared to be a safe drop spot. Except for a Spanish-language radio station playing music softly, the building was quiet. Nothing stirred below. Feeling satisfied with his progress, Farhad carefully descended to the floor. Noiselessly he approached the Honduran.
Sticking a small-caliber gun to the sleeping man’s head, Farhad pushed the sleeping man on his shoulder and said, “Wake up.”
The man couldn’t believe it was morning and said, “Leave me alone, Juan.”
“Shit, man. Juan is in your home fucking your pretty wife.”
The tired man turned over, rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, and opened his eyes. He said, “Que es esto?”
“No Spanish,” Farhad said. “Speak English. Now get up slowly. Remember to move slowly. Show me your hands.”
On that warm summer evening, the man only had a sheet covering him. He slept naked, and his useless gun was on a table about five feet away.
“Dammit, man,” said Farhad. “Cover up. I don’t want to see your ugly body. Now stand up.”
After he was dressed, Farhad shoved the man forward. He stumbled once approaching the door. He opened the door, and Zak raised his flashlight and struck him. The man fell, unconscious.
Arat said, “You couldn’t wait till he was further inside? Now you drag him inside and tie him up. You sit with him to make sure he’s quiet.” Before allowing Zak to move him, Arat searched the man’s pocket, and found the building keys. He walked over and grabbed the gun on the table plus a gate opener. Arat threw the keys to a pudgy man and handed him the gate opener. “Tell them to move the cars inside, and back the truck up to the loading dock. The lights are to the left of the door. Turn them on.”
There was an abundance of unopened boxes. Replenishment of supplies in a cannabis grow was constant, and these supplies would soon be used. All the supplies were placed in a corner of the building, and had been purchased at Green Thumb hydro store. Arat directed the men to load the boxes on the truck. Next he had them cut the hundred or more grow lights throughout the building and load them on the truck. He knew they would sell quickly on eBay or Craigslist.
Of the nine G-brothers working that night, seven worked to load all the items onto the truck. Two men had experience working in growhouses, and Arat directed them to chop down all the cannabis plants that were within two or three weeks of harvest. They wrapped their “harvest” with Velcro rope ties, and neatly placed them in a pile to be carried to the truck.
One of the G-brothers, Armin Petrosyan, loudly called out, “Arat, come over here.” Pointing to a little cart on four wheels that looked like a small woodchopper, Armin said, “This is a real find. You know what this is? This is an automatic leaf trimmer. Must cost around $15,000. It makes trimming so much faster and easier. It does almost all of the work. This is great. I’ll roll it over to the loading dock for the boys to put it on the truck.”
Never satisfied, Arat said, “See if you can find the guarantee for the trimmer. It should be around here someplace.”
Now with their latest free gift, the G-brothers could quickly prepare their take for sale. Six or seven days after the plants dried, Armin and his crew would cut off all the large buds. Then they would place the rest of the plant in the automatic leaf trimmer. The canna- bis would tumble in the trimmer and come out ready to sell after drying—or ready to smoke.
Tweakers intrinsically moved at the speed of light—the only benefit of their addiction. Still their brainless consciousness caused them to return to locations of items they had already moved, and stare dumbfounded at the empty space.
When the G-brothers had loaded every last piece of booty into their trucks, Arat told Farhad, “Now paint our marker.” Farhad reached for his pack on the ground and lifted out a can of black spray paint. He sprayed the Gegamian Brotherhood symbol on a wall— the Los Angeles City Hall building gripped in Arat’s hand, with “G Brothers” printed below City Hall. The building Superman used to jump over now was Gegamian property.
Time was an overriding factor in a heist. Do it quick. Do it quietly. And split. The G-brothers left the Honduran worker tied up. With his usual theatrics, Zak announced to an empty ware-
house, “Men you did a good job. We’ve finished our work here.” Arat pushed him out the door and looked around the building
one last time. Satisfied, he said, “Time to move on, boys.”
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