Jack Blunderbuss and The Giant Weed-Stalk Conspiracy

It was plain to see I wasn’t making any headway on the "Little Red Case." Too many dead ends, too much blood, and a town that had collectively agreed to shut the hell up. The whole place smelled like damp moss and unresolved trauma.

So when the call came from California’s Emerald Triangle—a place where the weed grows higher than a billionaire’s offshore tax evasion—I took it.

Jack met me in the main foyer of the newly remodeled estate, which smelled like citrus, leather, and Ganja so potent I could hear it. The place was massive, an obnoxiously expensive combination of tech billionaire aesthetics and stoner playground design.

There was a full-sized indoor skate park on one side, a 24-hour bodega in the middle of the house ("We take turns playing cashier, it’s a whole thing," Jack would later tell me), and a massive stained-glass window depicting a weed leaf in a biblical renaissance style.

I took one look at it and made peace with the fact that I would die happily here, if the opportunity presented itself.

Jack, dressed in a velvet robe, board shorts, and slippers with tiny golden weed leaves embroidered on them, took a massive hit from a custom glass bong the size of a toddler.

"Welcome to paradise, my dude."


---

I wasted no time. "Tell me about the cow."

Jack exhaled a lungful of mysteriously lavender-tinted smoke, nodded, and gestured for me to follow him to an obscenely luxurious conversation pit lined with Moroccan pillows and built-in teak weed trays.

"Alright, so picture this: My mom is kind of a bitch, right?—this snooty, trembling-with-political-anxiety type. She’s like if Lucille Bluth and Joseph Stalin had a love child. Anyway, she had one final asset. A genetically engineered cow, gifted by the Prime Minister of India."

"A diplomatic bribe?" I asked.

"Something like that," Jack shrugged. "Anyway, this thing was the Fusaichi Pegasus of cows."

I asked for clarification. Jack informed me that it was a racehorse that sold for 70 million dollars in 2000.

"She was a genetic marvel, man. Belgian Blue muscles so jacked she looked like she could outbench a Venice Beach bodybuilder, and Nelore genetics that made her immune to heat, stress, and possibly assassination attempts."

"And your mother named her…?"

Jack grinned. "Beatrice Montagué."

"After?"

"Her best friend, publicly. Her biggest nemesis, privately. Said it was because she was ‘magnificent,’ but shook her head every time she said it because Beatrice was also kind of a ‘bigger lady,’ ya know."

Jack, a bigger guy himself, seemed oddly sensitive to his mother's body-shaming of both cow Beatrice and human Beatrice alike.

Then came that deep, laugh of his, he has the kind of laugh that sounded like someone was having trouble starting a gas lawn mower.

"So let me get this straight," I said, rubbing my temples as my brain adjusted to the pure lunacy of Jack’s story. "Your mother tasked you with selling a four-million-dollar cow to keep your family from financial ruin, and you—stoned out of your gourd—listed it on the dark web?"

"Correct."

"And?"

Jack sat forward, too excited, hands moving animatedly as he explained.

"Three best offers. First guy wanted to trade me for a brand new Rolls-Royce Phantom—six times what B was worth."

"And you said no?"

Jack scoffed. "Dude. You ever seen the resale on a Rolls? The second you drive that thing off the lot, it depreciates. Plus, look at me. I’m more of a van-life kind of guy."

Fair point.

"Second guy offered six million in crypto."

"And you turned that down because?"

Jack grinned. "What kind of man buys a cow for that much money on the dark web? Not a good one. A guy like that probably gets off to jars of farts and feet pics. Beatrix deserved better."

"And the third guy?"

Jack leaned forward dramatically.

"Oh man. Dude was unreal. Dressed in this purple and gold embroidered robe, had a beard that made Gandalf look like a prepubescent teen. Gave off ancient wizard but also probably microdoses LSD and DJs on the side vibes."

"And what did he offer?"

"Six magic weed seeds. The Last of Their Kind. Grows anywhere, never dies, and gives you the most perfect high of your life."

"And your mother…?"

Jack grinned.

"Lost. Her. Mind."


---

"Picture this," Jack said, gesturing wildly. "She’s in our massive Italian marble kitchen, drinking merlot so expensive they don’t even sell it in stores. I tell her about the deal, and she hurls a thousand-dollar Murano glass lamp at my head."

"Did it hit you?"

"Nah, it shattered next to me. Very dramatic though."

"And what did she say?"

Jack cleared his throat and launched into a perfect impression of his mother’s trembling, outraged voice—kind of like hearing Seth Rogen impersonating Moira from Schitt’s Creek.

"‘JACK! That cow was a GIFT FROM THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA!’"

"And you said?"

"‘Ohhh. Like… India, India?’"

"And then?"

"She screamed."

Somewhere between Jack’s retelling of his mother’s complete meltdown and my third hit of this ungodly strong weed, the edges of reality started to blur. The Moroccan pillows seemed to be breathing.

"Anyway," Jack said, stretching luxuriously, "she got wasted that night and rage-planted the seeds in the backyard."

"And?"

Jack gestured to the massive glass window overlooking his estate.

I turned my head and saw it.

A colossal, twisted, emerald-green stalk stretching so high into the sky that it disappeared into the clouds.

Jack grinned proudly.

"And now I’m the Jeff Bezos of weed, my friend."


---

Somewhere in the plumes of smoke, Instagram models, and infinity hot-tub bubbles, Jack hit me with a new lead.

"Hey man, you ever hear about that club down in Miami? CandyLand? Some German foreign exchange college students, Hansel and Gretel, burned it to the ground, and the owner—just known as ‘The Witch’—is looking for blood."

I exhaled.

It was time to move on.

_ _ _

If you enjoyed this tale, check out the first installment of what I suppose is turning into a series:
"Little Red and My Last Bad Trip"