Page 58 of Hard Bargain

The officer climbed out, adjusting his sunglasses, and crossed to them with the unhurried walk of a man who had nowhere in particular to be. He exchanged a nod with the supervisor before stopping in front of Mendez. “Everything good?” he asked.

“Like always,” Mendez replied.

A thick envelope appeared from inside Mendez’s jacket. It passed hands with the same casual ease as the paperwork. The officer slid it into his inner pocket without opening it, walked to the container and tapped the side twice with his knuckles. “Cleared.”

He didn’t check the seal. Didn’t ask to see inside. Didn’t pretend to perform any kind of inspection. He simply returned to his vehicle and drove off.

Knox stared after him. “That’s it?”

“That’s the arrangement.”

One of their men stepped forward and cut the security seal. The snap of metal carried in the open air. The container doors swung open, revealing stacked cartons labeled industrial irrigation parts, which matched the paperwork exactly.

“Looks clean,” Knox said.

A blade sliced through cardboard. Inside was another layer of packaging, thick vacuum-sealed plastic. Another cut, and bright pills stamped with a small crown spilled into view.

Knox stared at them.

Ecstasy.

“How much?” he asked.

Mendez didn’t answer immediately. He reached into the open carton and lifted one of the sealed bundles, turning it over in his hand before tossing it back. “Count the pallets,” he said.

Knox scanned the container. “Twenty-two. How many per pallet?”

“Three hundred thousand.”

The math formed in his head before he could stop it. There were six point six million pills sitting in a container that had just been cleared by federal customs without inspection.

He was quiet for a moment. “This a one-off?”

Mendez almost smiled. “Pills? Every week.”

Knox didn’t say anything to that. He wasn’t sure there was anything to say. He was still trying to process the size of what he’d stepped into. He’d seen Dominic’s power up close before—fast, personal, brutal when necessary. But this was different. This wasn’t dominance through fear; it was dominance through structure.

One of the men was already resealing the cartons. Another swung the doors closed and replaced the cut seal with a fresh one.

“You don’t unload here?” Knox asked.

Mendez shook his head. “Cameras everywhere. You don’t unload product in a place you don’t control.” He nodded toward the container. “This gets logged as irrigation parts going to Stockton Ag Supply.” A pause. “We own Stockton Ag Supply.”

“And the Customs guy?”

“Retires in three years with a house he couldn’t afford on salary.”

A freight truck was backing slowly into position at the lane. Knox watched it settle on its suspension as the container locked into place.

“So what happens now?”

“Now it moves like it was always meant to move,” Mendez said. “That truck takes it to a cross-dock facility outside city limits. That building’s ours too. Container gets opened, the pallets get broken down, product moves—some local, some north, some south. Nothing sits long.”

“And customs doesn’t follow it?”

“Customs already cleared it.” Mendez looked at him evenly. “Once it’s out of port jurisdiction it’s just another shipment on the road. Unless someone has reason to look. And no one does.”

“So who sells it? Once it’s broken down?”