Bakersfield police Sgt. Tony Ennis sits in an unmarked car at a strip mall in Delano, a city on the boundary of Kern and Tulare counties, waxing philosophic about meth culture as he watches for a white Chevy Lumina in the busy intersection before him. It's 12:53 on an afternoon in mid-July, and a gentle breeze is keeping the temperature at an unseasonably low 95 degrees.

This is Day One of a weeklong operation by a consortium of cops against a Valley meth maker. It's a sting: Using a confidential informant as a go-between, the cops will offer to sell or trade pseudoephedrine pills, from which meth is made, to the meth maker for cash and/or finished meth and then bust him. With any luck, they'll also take down his lab.

As Ennis chats, his eyes are sweeping the intersection, searching out every white car, hoping for a glimpse of the target: David Malgosa Jr.

Nestled in Ennis' lap, a police scanner crackles with intermittent chatter as more than a half-dozen other undercover narcs pull into nearby streets and parking lots. There is more than 100 years of narcotics-fighting experience on the 15-officer team, the Central Valley's newly formed tri-county High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) team. It's based in Kern County and encompasses 10 local, state and federal agencies. Many of the cops have worked together before, but even the newcomers fall easily into the familiar routine of the dope trade.

Today's go-between -- referred to as "the friendly" on the cops' radio -- is waiting for a signal to telephone Malgosa from a nearby pay phone. The friendly is parked in his own car, identifiable by the anti-drug sticker attached to his bumper. (Most "friendlies" used by cops in drug busts are either being paid or have been busted themselves and want their sentences reduced, says the BNE's Ron Gravitt.)

Malgosa -- "the primary" on the radio -- doesn't waste time. Less than 15 minutes after the the friendly calls Malgosa's cell phone, the dealer zips around a corner and into the parking lot. On the way, he has picked up his girlfriend. The radio begins to crackle again. "The primary is approaching the friendly," intones another sergeant who can't see the parking lot. Ennis falls silent, listening.

Malgosa is 23 and cocky. With a hasty glance around, the skinny dope dealer gives a quick hoist to his jeans and climbs into the friendly's car. The two have spoken on the telephone just once, a day earlier. Malgosa is trying to buy seven cases of cold medicine. Each case contains 144 bottles of pills, 60 pills per bottle, 60 milligrams of pseudoephedrine per pill. It's worth about $28,000 on the street and is enough to cook about 7 pounds of dope.

Malgosa, though, is a little short on cash, so he offers a deal: $13,000 plus 2 pounds of meth for the shipment. The friendly wants to see the dope. Malgosa hops back into his car, dumps his girlfriend, picks up some meth and returns to the parking lot. All the while, he is watched. Cops already know where he lives; they're waiting to see if the drugs are there. They are.

His sample is good. In return, the friendly shows Malgosa two $5.99 bottles of cold pills. Malgosa has specified he wants a brand called "Action," but the cops don't have any. Instead, the friendly persuades Malgosa to take a substitute. He must be getting desperate, the cops figure. Days earlier, Malgosa turned down a deal with a supplier from Fresno because the pills the supplier offered weren't the right brand.

Like Malgosa, most dope cooks are particular about their ingredients.

"We've given them pure ephedrine, and they've come back and said it's no good," says one veteran detective, laughing.

Malgosa and the friendly part company. An hour later, Malgosa is shopping at Kmart with his girlfriend, tailed by task force members. By the time he gets home, the cops have decided the game is over for today. They head back to their office, a tiny square building crammed with filing cabinets and office equipment behind the Kern County Sheriff's Department in Oildale, a community adjoining Bakersfield about 40 miles south of Delano.

By the time they meet again, Malgosa will tweak the deal further. No cash, he'll say. But he'll trade 4 pounds of meth for 10 cases of pills. The friendly agrees, and they set up a place to meet.

It's 11:15 a.m. on dope-dealing day. The case agent is briefing the troops, a collection of 29 men and one woman that includes two paramedics, Kern County SWAT team deputies in camouflage pants and more than a dozen narcs in jeans and T-shirts. It's a casual assembly, but the officers are meticulous about covering every potential problem.

They are well aware of the risks in dealing with armed and paranoid cranksters who often set up their own counter-surveillance operation. Too often, undercover officers parked on the perimeter of a bust have discovered a doper's cronies nearby.

"The goal is that nobody gets hurt -- neither law enforcement nor the suspect," says sheriff's Sgt. Karl Johnson, who waited nine years for a coveted spot in the Kern major-narcotics unit before getting one four years ago. It's a job he loves for its mental challenges. Most major dealers are not stupid, he says. He's seen some extraordinarily smart crooks.

On this deal, an undercover officer will pose as the friendly's cousin and bring in the pills once Malgosa produces the drugs.

By 2 p.m., the friendly is in place and the officers are staked out throughout Delano, keeping watch on Malgosa's home and the parking lot of an eatery where the deal is supposed to happen. About 75 feet from the friendly, five SWAT officers crouch in a tiny hiding place, cradling rifles just in case the deal goes awry. Already, a judge has issued search warrants for Malgosa's home and the home of an associate, and he stands ready to add additional sites to the warrant if officers call.

The plan is to let Malgosa go and hope he brings the pills to his cook. But the deal never goes down.

The friendly calls Malgosa. In a nearby van, Ennis and the lead agent on the case are electronically eavesdropping on the conversation. Malgosa doesn't know it, but he's up against some formidable opponents.

Ennis, 52, is a former Vietnam helicopter pilot who was shot down and later wounded in the line of duty. He has been with the Bakersfield Police Department for 25 years, 13 of them working narcotics. A bright man with a dry wit and a keen ability to read people, he is divorced and childless, married to his job. He is one of two sergeants on the HIDTA team.

The lead agent, who asked that his name not be used to protect his family, is 44, the married father of four. He has been with the Kern County Sheriff's Department for 23 years, 13 of them as a narcotics detective. A first-generation Californian -- both his parents were born in Mexico -- the detective is the middle of seven siblings, five of whom work in law enforcement or corrections.

After several telephone calls, which are abruptly ended by Malgosa, Ennis gets on the police radio. "The crook is sounding paranoid," he tells the troops on the perimeter. "The  is doing a good job, but the crook is losing it."

After a few more minutes, Malgosa leaves his home, drives to a friend's house several doors down and parks his car. He gets into a van and drives across town, then zigzags back to his house, taking side streets to avoid traffic. The officers take care to stay out of his sight. But when the friendly calls again, Malgosa still says he's too afraid to come out. The deal is over. Unmarked cars start heading down Highway 99 to debrief at headquarters.

"This is not unsual," says Sgt. Johnson as he points his pickup toward home. "That's why some of these cases take months to happen. There's so much at stake -- years and years in prison. Finally, when the trust is built up, he takes that step. And he gets arrested."

Fifteen minutes later, the friendly, now on a freeway outside Wasco, gets another call from Malgosa, who is agitated. OK, he says. Let's deal. Right now.

The lead case agent refuses. It is too dangerous to try to put undercover agents back on stakeout in Delano at this point. But the friendly is eager. An hour later, as the team assembles in its Oildale office, the agent's pager goes off. A flash of intuition warns him not to identify himself when he returns the call.

"Huh?" he grunts into his cell phone when the connection goes through. It is Malgosa.

The friendly has returned to Delano, met up with Malgosa and together the two are trying to persuade the narc to deliver the pills. The startled officer's eyebrows shoot up, but his reaction is purely in character.

Posing as the friendly's supplier, the detective explodes into the telephone, cursing Malgosa for backing out of the deal, telling him that he's selling to someone he trusts.

The friendly gets on Malgosa's cell phone, pleading with the officer to make the deal happen.

"He's got 2 pounds," the friendly says. "Right here."

The officer hangs up, shaking his head at the friendly's recklessness in meeting with Malgosa without police covering him.

"That crazy S.O.B.," he says.

Ennis, ever the wisecracker, pipes up: "If they haven't found him in an orchard somewhere by Monday, we'll know he's OK."

Until now, the plan had been to make another run at Malgosa in a week, but he's easy pickings now. They'll go back at him tomorrow morning with the same plan.

This time it works. Malgosa hands the friendly 4 pounds of meth wrapped in a plastic grocery baggie and drives off with 10 cases of pills. Half go to the home of a friend down the street and half stay with him. The cops wait, hoping to go to the cook site. But a steady flow of cars to the two homes forces their hand. They can't afford to lose any of the pills to the streets.

Forty minutes after Malgosa picks up the pills, the cops burst into his home. He is sitting with his girlfriend and another friend, hastily pulling the caps off pill bottles and dumping the pills into blue garbage bags. It's not uncommon to find hundreds, if not thousands, of sliced-open or emptied pill bottles in plastic baggies at abandoned meth cook sites.

The task force begins picking through Malgosa's untidy home, a converted garage behind his landlord's home. On a closet shelf, neatly stacked in two shoeboxes, they find nearly 4 more pounds of meth wrapped in Ziploc baggies and Saran Wrap for sale.

"That's a week's work," Ennis says.

Postscript: After weighing the 8 "pounds" of meth they seized from Malgosa, the cops are amused to find it actually weighs only 7 pounds. He had been "short-weighting" his product.

You just can't trust some people.