A SMUGGLER’S TALE
BY RICHARD STRATTON
Lebanon was in the throes of civil war. For weeks I had been a virtual prisoner in
my penthouse apartment. The concrete walls of the bedroom were gouged with
bullet holes from stray machine-gun fire. Americans were snatched off street
corners and held hostage by the armies of the intifada. The Holiday Inn had been
reduced to a blown-out shell and massive rubble heap. Like a battleground, the
streets stunk of death and something alive — fear.
V., my girlfriend and partner, fled Beirut when the building we were staying in
was hit by an Israeli rocket. Had she not convinced me to take our chances and
go to the movies to see The Shining, we probably would have been killed. I like
to say Jack Nicholson saved my life.
But I couldn’t leave, not yet. I had a load of hashish sitting in a warehouse waiting
to be smuggled into the United States. The profile was tight. Our cover
merchandise — a million pounds of Iraqi dates — I bought using a letter of credit
from a legitimate import company. The dates were trucked from Baghdad to
Beirut and repackaged with seven and a half tons of connoisseur quality hashish
from Lebanon’s embattled Bekaa Valley.
Lebanese hash is graded by number: Number One, the top commercial grade;
Zahara or zero, above the best; and Double Zahara, dealer’s choice, the fine
resinous nodules shaken and gathered from freshly harvested female plants.
This load was all Number One and better; it would wholesale for a thousand
dollars a pound, more for the Zahara. Plus I had fifty gallons of honey oil, pure
amber-colored hashish oil at twenty thousand a gallon. In all, the load was worth
fifteen million dollars wholesale — if I were able to get it into the States. If I failed,
it was worth fifteen years in prison.
It took seven sea/land containers to conceal the contraband. Four of the
containers held dates; the other three were packed with dates and hash, the
redolent hashish packed into sealed tin boxes, placed inside cardboard cartons
and covered top and bottom with a thick layers of dates. Cartons containing hash
were strapped with red plastic bands to distinguish them from those with only
dates.
At last the Greek freighter carrying my goods was at sea headed for port in New
Jersey. I holed up in the funky Hotel Chelsea waiting for my ship to come in.
Creature of habit, I chose the Chelsea when waiting for a load. Once the load
landed and cash started to flow, I would relocate to the Plaza, where I was
known as Doctor Lowell and I posed as a psychiatrist to explain the odd guests
coming and going from my rooms (room?) at all hours. What I liked about the
Chelsea pre-load was that cops or feds would not go unnoticed there, (seems
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either a semicolon here or new sentence beginning with what follows) the help
knew me and of my aversion for agents of the law. They would tip me if anyone
came around asking questions. Freaks, artists, writers, dope fiends and dope
dealers peopled the rooms. Terry Southern wandered the halls talking to himself.
I fit in. The Chelsea was a place of good luck for me, and I was as superstitious
as a medicine man.
“Bro, we got a problem.” It was S., (I’d start a new sentence or go w/a semicolon
here—probably best to go w/new sentence or S., whose father owned…since a
semi would look pretty funky)his father owned the trucking company and bonded
warehouse where the containers were to be delivered.
All day I paced, I watched the news. No reports of massive loads of hashish
busted in New Jersey. Stratton, I told myself, you’re insane. Only a madman
would do this for a living.
Even though I had done everything according to the book, Customs flagged the
shipment. They would escort the containers from the docks to the warehouse
and do a secondary inspection. S. wanted to leave the load at the docks, not pick
it up.
“We can’t do that,” I said. “If we don’t pick it up, they’ll know we know it’s hot.”
I gave him identification numbers on the containers, told him to call Customs, say
our trucks couldn’t get down to pick up the shipment until late Friday afternoon
when the agents would be thinking about going home for the weekend. “Then
pick up three of the clean containers, let Customs inspect those. Maybe we can
finesse it.”
When I walked into the warehouse in Jersey City Friday evening, the
unmistakable smell of hashish mixed with the sickly sweet smell of dates
permeated the air. There were cartons with the red straping (straping?—should
be strapping, right?) on the loading dock. One of the containers I had told S. not
to pick up was backed up to the loading dock half unloaded.
I had a sudden, overwhelming rush of paranoia. I imagined the warehouse
surrounded with DEA agents waiting for me to appear before they made their
move. This had to be a set-up. We were all about to be busted.
“You picked up the wrong container!” I freaked, grabbed one of the cartons with
the red straps, plunked it down on a table and ripped it open. “Red straps. What
does that mean?”
S. grinned. “It means we got the load. Or part of it anyway.”
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At the rear of the warehouse in a fenced-in yard were three more containers.
One of them I knew by the numbers on the outside also contained hash.
“They wouldn’t let us choose what containers we were gonna pick up.” S. filled
me in. (should it be: …we were gonna pick up,” S. filled me in. “They…? ie.,
comma instead of period) “They put seals on the doors and escorted the
containers here. Then they opened the one inside and started inspecting.”
Customs agents had opened a dozen cartons, all of them containing only dates.
Right next to one of the cartons they opened and inspected was a carton with red
strapping. “Finally they got tired and went home, said they’d be back Monday to
finish the inspection.” (who is talking here, S.?...since it’s a separate graf, might
want to provide an attribution)
With welding torches we cut the hinges holding the doors on the rear of the
sealed container, hooked a tow truck winch to the sealed door, lifted it up and off
the back of the container, guiding it by hand so as not to break the Customs seal.
It took all weekend, working through the night Saturday and well into Sunday
night to remove the boxes of hash. The hardest part was finding paint on a
Sunday to match the orange of the container so we could replace the door and
make it look like it had never been touched.
By dawn Monday we had ten thousand pounds of hashish and fifty gallons of
honey oil safely stored in a stash house. There was still one more container to go
and the Customs inspection to get through. If they found the remaining five
thousand pounds in the container still at the docks, we would be busted, but at
least we’d have the income from five tons of hash to provide for our families while
we rode out the bust.
I was asleep at the Chelsea when S. called.
“Relax, bro. You’re a rich motherfucker.”
Monday morning Customs called to say they were satisfied with their inspection.
Break the seals on the containers in the yard and come get the rest of the
shipment.
Time to move to the Plaza, Doctor.
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