INSIDE HIGHRISE, NEIGHBOUR SMELLED TROUBLE

There was the pungent aroma that seemed to seep from the walls in the
hallways, described as smelling "green and grassy," a bit bosky.

There was a constant orange glow that cast its flush across the patio
of the corner apartment, bleeding out between the drawn curtains.

And the men, with their dolly cart, pushing large boxes along the
corridor. Mirna Aguilar remembers them -- a nod, a curt hello, one of
the fellows asking her for a light once in the elevator.

"Ironic, huh? Him asking me if I had a light for his
cigarette."

The 29-year-old graphic designer was recalling yesterday the odd
comings and goings of her mysterious neighbours on the 12th floor of a
Jane St. building. They weren't around much, these men, at least not
at normal hours. Mostly Aguilar encountered them around 3 a.m., when
she would often drive her brother to work his graveyard shift.

Aguilar was concerned and curious enough that she took her complaints
- -- mostly about the odour -- to "Julie" the building's rental manager.

"That was in September. She told me she would go to the police, ask
them to check the stairwells more often because kids smoke drugs back
there and the cops hadn't been around in a while. But the police never
came. At least I never saw them."

The rental manager also told Aguilar that she'd taken a look inside
one of the two suspicious units. "She said there was nothing in there
except a bed."

"Julie" is the wife of Daniel Wallace, the building's superintendent.
And Wallace, 47, has just been charged with conspiracy to commit an
indictable offence, this in connection with what police say was a
massive marijuana grow-op in the modest, white-bricked apartment
building, located just north of the Sheppard Ave. intersection. Two
others, Tat Thang Nguyen and Dinh Pham were charged with multiple
marijuana (or 'marihuana' as the police release insists on spelling
it) production offences.

A cannabis crop worth at least $7 million; possibly all the way up to
$20 million, depending on its quality. Spread out over 17 two-bedroom
apartment grow-houses and one drying unit, from the fourth to twelfth
floor.

Perpendicular pot for the highrise horticulturalist with a thumb for
the green -- as in American currency -- if the long and vending
trafficking route is to be believed, although this is only one
scenario: From the Jane-Finch corridor to the world, and back again.

Thousands of plants, probably all female, four-foot stalks stretching
toward the warmth of thousand-watt lights -- plugged into the stove's
220-volt outlet -- leaves luxuriating in the controlled climate,
thriving, blossoming, plump buds ripe for reaping after a couple of
months, spread out to dry in another unit fitted for the purpose.

A passerby, catching a glimpse inside the open door, would have seen
only a domestic facade -- microwave oven on the counter, parquet
floors, blond furniture, TV set, pictures on the walls, even shoes
lined up in the entryway closet. It was all window-dressing, like a
stage set, trompe l'oeil for the sophisticated nursery enterprise.

"If someone's walking by, it just looks like people are living in
there," said drug squad Det. Sgt. Dave Malcolm, who headed the police
investigation that took only a few weeks between information received
and raid launched. "It's basically dressing a room to make it look
like it's as normal as it can be."

The details are not being revealed, but Malcolm insisted there was no
link between this case and a fire in the same building last April,
which exposed another, single, grow-op unit. All the vegetative
evidence in that case burned up.

"I saw a lady a couple of times, an Asian lady, going in there,"
recalls a tenant on the 10th floor, just down the hall from a unit
rousted by police Thursday night into Friday morning, crime scene
investigators wide-eyed as their original warrant targets expanded,
amazed by the extent of this operation.

"I'm the kind of person that stays to myself and doesn't mind other
people's business. But I did notice that, when I walked by her and she
had her key in the lock, she waited till I moved past before opening
the door. She made sure of that."

Yet this resident sniffed nothing out of the ordinary -- and ordinary,
to her, meant marijuana fumes in the stairwell. How was she to
distinguish between the two, especially with the pot harvesters taping
cardboard over the mail-slot in the doors to prevent the sweet smell
from escaping, aluminum-shrouded ventilation pipes fumigating the
environment, fans pushing air out the window, ridding the rooms of
chemical spray and fertilizer odours, timing units that automatically
turned the basking lights on and off, as if the plants were hatchlings.

"I'm just shocked, like everybody else," the resident continued,
declining to give her name. "My God, this was happening right next
door to me."

The operators went to great lengths to keep their venture concealed,
plywood nailed across most windows with drapes on the outside. But
they were sloppy, too, with wire coils strewn about, fertilizer dumped
down the drain, spores and mould creeping up from the baseboards. The
soil-based grow-op could have gone boom and chemically hazardous at
any minute, if not so already, which is why investigators wore
protective clothing as they bundled the apartment contents.

Marijuana, a hearty plant, doesn't need much cultivating in the wild.
But pushing the flowering cycle -- a three-month crop turnover --
that's methodical and exacting, requiring tender husbanding. The
gardeners would likely have had to come by daily and were allegedly
doing so for an entire year.

"It's like any crop that you're growing, your lovely bunch of tomatoes
at the side of your house," said Malcolm. "They're going to be feeding
them in the morning and there's going to be a watering system and
there has to be fertilization. You've got the timing boards, so the
lights are going to be going on and off. There's going to be people
coming and going at all hours of the day and night. But there's not
going to be a lot of traffic. It's not going to attract a lot of attention."

To irrigate the plants, hoses were hooked up to the shower and kitchen
sinks, then filtered through "a chemical sludge of fertilizers and
pesticides and herbicides," said Malcolm.

Property manager Harry Birman told the Star he'd suspected nothing,
had noticed no spike in Hydro consumed and fielded no complaints of
strange smells -- though those would have gone to the
superintendent.

Birman hired Wallace three years ago, even though the man came with no
recommendations. "It was Julie who had all the good recommendations.
She was a terrific rental agent. Danny came with the package, a
husband and wife team."

He's also flummoxed by the dawning realization of faux tenants in
those units. "We check everybody's background, proof of income, photo
IDs, social insurance numbers. Only two out of 10 applications get
approved. How much more are we expected to do?

"Maybe they're false names, but they were real people."

Or ghost tenants, gone in a puff of toke.