Oh, they’ll take the money (natch), but they’ll also drop a dime.

(The only dime to slip through their grasping grubby greedy fingers.)

Anyway, the grow house would need more power and would need that power secretly, so there were two ways to get it.

Steal it-which is a matter of drilling little holes in the meter (Google it), but the Gambino family is safer to steal from than the electric company, and Ben had a moral objection to theft.

(“You can’t steal from thieves,” Chon argued.

“They are responsible for their karma,” Ben countered, “I for mine.”

“Can we get ice cream?” O asked.)

So the alternative was a generator.

This was not cheap-the generator needed to power a thousand-plant grow room cost between $10K and $20K and it MADE NOISE

A lot of freaking noise

It practically screamed “Hey, there’s a grow house in here! Hey! HEY!!!! ”

So if they put that generator in the backyard, the neighbors were going to come over-and not to invite them to a cookout. They might have been able to assuage one or two of them with some homegrown product, but it was a drop-dead guarantee that one of the neighbors was going to make the call, not to mention some black-and-white happening to cruise by and hearing that thing rumbling “probable cause.”

No, they had to put that generator down in the basement, and how many basements were there in Southern California?

Some.

Not many.

Ben and Chon went house hunting.

22

For a rental, not a purchase.

(Apologies to Tom Waits.)

For one thing, houses in SoCal-with or without basements-are expensive.

But the other thing the other thing, the other thing is under the tangled bowl of day-old schizophrenic spaghetti that is the drug laws, if the cops bust your grow house and you own it, they can confiscate that $600,000 investment. So not only do you lose your dope and your freedom, you lose your down payment and every mortgage payment you’ve already made, and you still owe the bank the balance of the loan.