We went up to the fourth floor. Once again, this place continued to surprise me. Just when I thought I had seen it all… We walked into the lobby of an upscale restaurant! Yes, you understood me, an exclusive restaurant!

“It’s called The Grasshopper,” Sherry said as we walked past the unmanned front desk. “And it doesn’t open until four o’clock. It’s a dinner only establishment.”

I thought about asking if the grasshopper lies heavy, but I wondered if Sherry would get the joke. Instead, I said something more stupid like... “You’ve got to be kidding me!?”

This place was bewildering. The floors were stripped down to the original pine boards, but they had been lovingly restored and covered with a beautiful gloss that made them shine despite their age.

The walls were left as their original red brick. They were unpainted, but again they had a thick glossy clear coat covering them that made them actually look good. Yet in spite of the bareness, it did look classy in a strange and touching way. The tables were all round and sat about six. The walls were lined with booths that were more intimate and sat about four.

“I kid you not, JR,” Sherry said as we weaved our way through the tables to the far back wall. “This is, at least I feel personally, to be the most interesting floor in the building. Four nights a week it is a restaurant. That is Monday to Thursday. On Friday and Saturday nights this is a happening night club called the Adrenochrome.”

“Bullshit!” I said in complete disbelief. Yet still I could picture it all happening right here.

Sherry only smirked and said. “There’s a back room where most of the tables and chairs get placed when the night club is open.”

“That seems labour intensive,” I said.

“It is true. We have a lot of employees,” Sherry shrugged. She took us to the back wall where there was a riser and explained further. “This is where the DJ is set up when it is a night club.”

“Is it dark on Sundays then?” Frank asked.

“It is to the general public,” Sherry explained. “On Sundays the place is still in night club mode, but it is only open to the employees and their friends. Think of it as your own private employees only party every Sunday night.”

Before us and behind the riser was the only painted wall in the entire floor and it was splattered with paint. Sherry had purposely brought us here so it must have been important. As it turned out, it was.

“This isn’t just a bunch of paint on the wall,” Sherry assured us. “This is actually a painting by the famous artist Jackson Pollock.”

“Impressive,” Frank said with a nod.

“He painted it in 1954. He was flown out here by the company for that purpose. Mr. Pollock normally worked on canvas, but for this piece, and the price he was paid, he made an exception,” Sherry explained.

“I love it,” Frank declared. “It’s so vibrant! More colourful than some of his other works!”

I thought it looked like a rainbow had thrown up all over the wall, but what did I know about art. I just nodded and stayed quiet. Frank was over the moon about though.

“I had a feeling you would like it,” Sherry said.

“Any other surprises on this floor?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, not,” Sherry replied. “I guess you are both anticipating the fifth and finally floor. The one you will be working on.”

I could not speak for Frank, but I knew I was anxious.

The fifth floor was different, much more subdued that the other floors. It was not supposed to impress anyone because not just anyone was supposed to be up here. The first thing I noticed was there was security. It was the first time I saw actual security guards and they looked scary. Sherry had to sign in once we got there and we were given special pass cards that we would need once we started working.

The first room after security was a large open space that looked like some kind of lunchroom for the employees. There was a refrigerator, a microwave, sink and a coffee maker filled with coffee. The smell permeated the air. There were tables and chairs scattered about the place in clusters. There were actually a few people in here taking a break. They glanced our way but said nothing.

The meth lab was locked down tight. You could not smell even a faint odor of acetone, red phosphorous or anhydrous ammonia all key chemicals that are used in the production of Meth Amphetamine. Chemicals I knew very well. Their smells were hard to mask. The lab had airtight doors that prevented the smells from spilling over into the rest of the building.

“All the chemicals are delivered by the manufacturing companies to our back loading dock. From there a service elevator brings them up to the fifth floor where the drums are them taken to the labs,” Sherry explained all this while we toured the lab.

It was state of the art and the equipment shined. It must have been a constant battle to keep them this clean all the time, I thought. Racks lined the far wall and drum after drum of all the key ingredients sat there.

It was similar to the operation we had in New York, but here everything was that much more precise, cleaned and organized to a degree that made Frank’s mouth water. He was impressed and it showed. It was the lab he dreamed about. They could produce several hundred pounds here a week no problem. Product on this volume was starting to make me a little nervous. It would be more than we made before.

“How much is produced here?” I asked.

“Two hundred and fifty kilograms a week,” Sherry replied.

It was staggering amount, more than five times what was produced in our old lab.

“That’s crazy,” I said more to myself than anyone else, but Sherry had heard me.

“You have to keep in mind that we are supplying two thirds of all meth used in this country, all of Canada and most of Mexico,” she clarified, then she added. “We have recently expanded our distribution into parts of western Europe.”

“Demand for the product is relentless,” Frank said as he walked down the row of drums staring up at them in admiration.

“Aren’t you worried about being raided?” I asked. “Chemical companies coming right to your back door is pretty brazen.”

“I don’t think you understand JR,” Sherry said with a smirk. “This isn’t New York, this is Chicago. The police know all about what is going on here. After all, they are on our payroll. We have nothing to fear from them. They work for us.”

I stared back at her in disbelief.

“This company has very deep pockets and the lab is our biggest revenue producer,” Sherry explained. “With the volumes we do, we couldn’t hide it forever. So, we did the next best thing. We paid off the right people.”

Frank brushed past me. “I told you. You’re going to like this place!”

Frank and sat across from each other at a well know steakhouse in downtown Chicago.

“I swear we are living in a dream right now,” I stated. It was a damn good steak and I carved it up like a butcher. “This is too good to be true. There is no way this is all real.”

“You’re so cynical,” Frank pushed my trepidation aside.

“Look at it this way,” I expounded. “Starting Monday, I work in a futuristic lab type setting creating new wonder drugs. I make a quarter of a million dollars a year, legitimately I might add, which is better than we were doing before! Oh yeah, and I got a massive apartment for five hundred a month and I can move in tomorrow! How can that be real!?”

Frank just smirked. “Why are you always so dramatic? Our future is bright. Why judge it!?”

“Because there is more here than meets the eye, Frank,” I protested. “Nobody has it this good, this easy! That wasn’t an interview! They gave us the jobs no questions asked. Has that ever happened to you before because it sure as hell never happened to me!? Sherry never asked me a single question about my skills or reliability.”

“If they questioned our reliability we wouldn’t have gotten through the doors of that place,” Frank said dismissing my fears. I would not let him get away with it that easy. I had some other things for him to consider.

“So, they had a few security guards on the top floor, so what!?” I countered. “We had much more than that in New York and look how that fell apart.”

“This is The High Castle Corporation that we are talking about here. They don’t leave anything to chance. They don’t make mistakes. Trust me, they had a lot more security. You just didn’t see them, that’s all,” Frank reassured me.

My approach was not working. Nothing could break through his iron clad believe that this was the perfect place. That this was destiny or fate. Well, I do not believe in destiny. Every other stripper in a dance club is called destiny, that’s how useless and used up destiny has become. If I am going to believe in something, it has to be tangible. On the other hand, he may have been right. I hoped that he was right. But I would have to try another approach to get through that wall of warm fuzzy feelings he had created.

“Their drug lab was pretty sweet,” I commented, skillfully redirecting the conversation.

“That’s an understatement,” Frank replied.

“They had quite the product line up,” I said. I tried to recall everything we saw on that last floor. They were a lot more than just a meth lab. There must have been a half a dozen separate labs producing different drugs. They produced large quantities of ecstasy, LSD, DMT, PCP and a bunch of other letter combinations that were new and unfamiliar to me. They even had a small grow room where they experimented with cannabis and plants that produced opioids.

“Research assistance,” Frank said pointing at me. “That’s a good job for you. You could learn a lot about the production of new drugs. You could quickly become the lead in your own lab producing something new that takes the world by storm.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said finishing my beer. I found a waitress and ordered a second one. I changed the subject again. “I thought the part of town the company was located in kind of odd.”

“They couldn’t run something like that downtown,” Frank said shaking his head. “Even if the police and the mayor’s office are on the take, they would want the place out of the way where few people would know about it.”

“Yet they run a night club and a restaurant out of the same building,” I countered. “That seemed really bizarre if you ask me.”

“True,” Frank conceded. “But it’s not advertised. It’s all word of mouth.”

I sat back in my seat and thought about how to get to Frank and show him that we are only seeing the surface here.

“Relax JR, they have thought of everything,” Frank tried to put me at ease. “They have been around for years. This isn’t some fly-by-night company. I know this company. They are well established. They are the real deal.”

“That doesn’t worry me,” I said.

“Then what does?”

“The competition.”

“What competition?”

“The lab we use to work for.”

“We had a distribution deal worked out. Our old employers only supplied New England down to Pennsylvania. That was our territory, our peace compromise,” Frank pointed out.

“Yeah,” I said. “And what kind of distribution deal does The High Castle Corporation have with its rivals.”

“A company this size and this powerful doesn’t have rivals,” Frank replied confidently.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“They out lasted our old bosses and now we work for them!” Frank stated.

“And isn’t that convenient,” I replied. Frank had fallen into my trap. “Do you think they will move into our old New England territory now?”

Frank looked startled. “What do you mean?”

“How long ago did they try to recruit you?” I questioned.

Frank shrugged. “I don’t. Maybe three months ago.”

“And you said no.”

He nodded.

“And here we are, three months later. Working for them!” I pointed out.

“And you think they called in the raid?” His expression revealed that this was a thought that had never occurred to him until now.

“I’m saying it’s something we should consider.”

Frank did actually think about it in silence for about ten minutes while we finished our meals, finished our beers and ordered dessert. Finally, he said. “Look, whatever they may have known or done, it doesn’t matter now. We work for them, and they are being generous with us JR don’t deny it. They are indeed. We have to trust that they know what they are doing and that they have our best interest in mind.”

“You had damn well better be right,” I said soberly. “Because otherwise, we just crawled into the belly of the beast.”

You can bet your ass, that I gave him something to think about that night!