The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales From a Strange Time

by Hunter S. Thompson

  Why worry? I thought. We've survived the worst. All we have to do now is not miss that plane out there. Once we're across the border, the worst that can happen is a nightmarish fuck-around at Customs in San Antonio. Maybe even a night in jail, but what the hell? A few misdemeanor charges -- public drunkenness, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest -- but nothing serious, no felony. All the evidence for that would be eaten by the time we landed in Texas.

  My only real worry was the chance that there might already be grand-larceny charges filed against us in Cozumel. We had, after all, jumped two hotel bills totaling about 15,000 pesos, in addition to leaving that half-destroyed Avis jeep in the airport parking lot -- another 15,000 pesos -- and we had spent the past four or five days in the constant company of a flagrant, big-volume drug runner whose every movement and contact, for all we knew, might have been watched or even photographed by Interpol agents.

  Where was Frank now? Safe at home in California? Or jailed in Mexico City, swearing desperate ignorance about how all those cans of white powder got into his luggage? I could almost hear it: "You've got to believe me, Captain! I went down to Cozumel to check on a land investment. I was sitting in a bar one night, minding my own business, when all of a sudden these two drunken acid freaks sat down next to me and said they worked for Playboy. One of them had a handful of purple pills and I was stupid enough to eat one. The next thing I knew, they were using my hotel room as their headquarters. They never slept. I tried to keep an eye on them, but there were plenty of times while I was sleeping when they could have put almost anything in my luggage. . . What? Where are they now? Well. . . I can't say for sure, but I can give you the names of the hotels they were using."

  Jesus! These terrible hallucinations! I tried to put them out of my mind as I finished my drink and called for another. A paranoid shudder jerked me out of my slump in the chair. I sat up and looked around. Where was that bastard Bloor? How long had he been gone? I glanced out at the plane and saw the fuel truck still parked under the wing. But they were loading the baggage now. Ten more minutes.

  I relaxed again, shoving a handful of pesos at the waitress to pay for our drinks, trying to smile at her. . . when suddenly the whole airport seemed to echo with the sound of my name being shouted over a thousand loud-speakers. . . then I heard Bloor's name. . . a harsh, heavily accented voice, bellowing along the corridors like the scream of a banshee. . . "PASSENGERS HUNTER THOMPSON AND YAIL BLOOR. REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO THE IMMIGRATION DESK. . ."

  I was too stunned to move. "Mother of twelve bastards!" I whispered. "Did I actually hear that?" I gripped both arms of my chair and tried to concentrate. Was I hallucinating again? There was no way to be sure. . .

  Then I heard the voice again, booming all over the airport: "WILL PASSENGERS HUNTER THOMPSON AND YAIL BLOOR REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO THE IMMIGRATION DESK. . ."

  No! I thought. This is impossible! It had to be paranoid dementia. My fear of being nailed at the last moment had become so intense that I was hearing voices! The sun through the window had caused the acid to boil in my brain; a huge bubble of drugs had burst a weak vein in my frontal lobes.

  Then I saw Bloor rushing into the bar. His eyes were wild, his hands were flapping crazily. "Did you hear that?" he shouted.

  I stared at him. Well. . . I thought, we're fucked. He heard it, too. . . or even if he hadn't, even if we're both hallucinating, it means we've O.D.'d. . . totally out of control for the next six hours, crazed with fear and confusion, feeling our bodies disappear and our heads swell up like balloons, unable to even recognize each other. . .

  "Wake up! Goddamn it!" he yelled. "We have to make a run for the plane!"

  I shrugged. "It's no use. They'll grab us at the gate."

  He was frantically trying to zip up his kit bag. "Are you sure those were our names they called? Are you positive?"

  I nodded, still not moving. Somewhere in the middle of my half-numb brain, the truth was beginning to stir. I was not hallucinating; the nightmare was real. . . and I suddenly remembered the Striker PR man's talk about that all-powerful jefe in Cozumel who had the fuel license.

  Of course. A man with that kind of leverage would have connections all over Mexico: police, airlines, Immigration. It was madness to think we could cross him and get away with it. No doubt he controlled the Avis franchise, too. . . and he'd gone into action the minute his henchmen found that crippled jeep in the airport parking lot, with its windshield shattered and an 11-day bill unpaid. The phone lines had been humming 20,000 feet beneath us all the way to Monterrey. And now, with less than ten minutes to spare, they had ambushed us.

  I stood up and slung the seabag over my shoulder just as the waitress brought Bloor's glaucoma. He looked at her, then lifted it off the tray and drank the whole thing in one gulp. "Gracias, gracias," he mumbled, handing her a 50-peso note. She started to make change, but he shook his head. "Nada, nada, keep the goddamn change." Then he pointed toward the kitchen. "Back door?" he said eagerly. "¿Exito?" He nodded at the plane about 50 feet below us on the runway. I could see a few passengers beginning to board. "Big hurry!" Bloor told her. "¡Importante!"

  She looked puzzled, then pointed to the main entrance to the bar.

  He stuttered helplessly for a moment, then began shouting:

  "Where's the goddamn back door to this place? We have to catch that plane now!"

  A long-delayed rush of adrenaline was beginning to clear my head. I grabbed his arm and lurched toward the main door. "Let's go," I said. "We'll run right past the bastards." My brain was still foggy, but the adrenaline had triggered a basic survival instinct. Our only hope was to run like doomed rats for the only available opening and hope for a miracle.

  As we hurried down the corridor, I jerked one of the press tags off my seabag and gave it to Bloor. "Start waving this at them when we hit the gate," I said, leaping sideways to avoid a covey of nuns in our way "¡Pardonnez!" I shouted. "¡Prensa! ¡Prensa! ¡Mucho importante!"

  Bloor picked up the cry as we approached the gate, running at full speed and shouting incoherently in garbled Spanish. The Immigration booth was just beyond the glass doors leading out to the runway. The stairway up to the plane was still full of passengers, but the clock above the gate said exactly 11:20 -- departure time. Our only hope was to burst past the cops at the desk and dash aboard the plane just as the stewardess pulled the big silver door closed. . .

  We had to slow down as we approached the glass doors, waving our tickets at the cops and yelling "¡Prensa! ¡Prensa!" at everybody in front of us. I was pouring sweat by this time and we were both gasping for breath.

  A small, muscular-looking cop in a white shirt and dark glasses moved out to head us off as we stumbled through the doors. "Señor Bloor? Señor Thompson?" he asked sharply.

  The voice of doom.

  I staggered to a halt and sagged against the desk, but Bloor's leather-soled Mod boots wouldn't hold on the marble floor and he skidded past me at full speed and crashed into a ten-foot potted palm, dropping his kit bag and mangling several branches that he grabbed to keep from falling.

  "Señor Thompson? Señor Bloor?" Our accuser had a one-track mind. One of his assistants had run over to help Bloor keep his feet. Another cop picked his kit bag off the floor and handed it to him.

  I was too exhausted to do anything but nod my head meekly. The cop who'd called our names took the ticket out of my hand and glanced at it -- then quickly handed it back to me. "Ah-ha!" he said with a grin. "Señor Thompson!" Then he looked at Bloor. "You are Señor Bloor?"

  "You're goddamn right I am!" Bloor snapped. "What the hell's going on here? This is a goddamn outrage -- all this wax on these floors! I almost got killed!"

  The little cop grinned again. Was there something sadistic in his smile? I couldn't be sure. But it didn't matter now. They had us on the gaff. I flashed on all the people I knew who'd been busted in Mexico; dopers who'd pushed their luck too far, gotten careless. No doubt we would find frie
nds in prison; I could almost hear them hooting their cheerful greetings as we were led into the yard and turned loose.

  This scene passed through my head in milliseconds. Bloor's wild yells were still floating in the air as the cop began pushing me out the door toward the plane. "Hurry! Hurry!" he was saying. . . and behind me I heard his assistant prodding Bloor. "We were afraid you would miss the plane," he was saying. "We called on the P.A. system." He was grinning broadly now. "You almost missed the plane."

  We were almost to San Antonio before I got a grip on myself. The adrenaline was still pumping violently through my head; the acid and booze and fatigue had been totally neutralized by that scene at the gate. My nerves were so jangled as the plane took off that I had to beg the stewardess for two Scotch and waters, which I used to down two of our four reds.

  Bloor ate the other two, with the help of two bloody marys. His hands were trembling badly, his eyes were filled with blood. . . but as he came back to life, he began cursing "those dirty bastards on the P.A. system" who had caused him to panic and get rid of all the coke.

  "Jesus!" he said quietly, "you can imagine what a horror that was! I was standing there at the urinal, with my joint in one hand and a coke spoon in the other -- jamming the stuff up my nose and trying to piss at the same time -- when all of a fucking sudden it just exploded all around me! They have a speaker up there in the corner of that bathroom, and the whole place is tile!" He took a long hit on the drink. "Shit, I almost went crazy! It was like somebody had snuck up behind me and dropped a cherry bomb down the back of my shirt. All I could think of was getting rid of the coke. I threw it into one of the urinals and ran like a bastard for the bar." He laughed nervously. "Hell, I didn't even zip up my pants; I was running down the hall with my joint hanging out."

  I smiled, remembering the sense of almost apocalyptic despair that seized me when I heard the first announcement.

  "That's odd," I said. "It never even occurred to me to get rid of the drugs. I was thinking about all those hotel bills and that goddamn jeep. If they'd nailed us for that stuff, a few pills wouldn't make much difference."

  He seemed to brood for a while. . . then he spoke, staring fixedly at the seat in front of him. "Well. . . I don't know about you. . . but I don't think I could stand another shock like that one. I had about 90 seconds of pure terror. I felt like my whole life had ended. Jesus! Standing at that urinal with a coke spoon up my nose and suddenly hearing my name on the speaker. . ." He moaned softly. "Now I know how Liddy must have felt when he saw those cops running into the Watergate. . . seeing his whole life fall apart, from a hot rod in the White House to a twenty-year jailbird in sixty seconds."

  "Fuck Liddy," I said. "It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy." I laughed out loud. "Liddy was the bastard who ran Operation Intercept -- remember that?"

  Bloor nodded.

  "What do you think would have happened if Gordon Liddy had been standing at the gate when we came crashing through?"

  He smiled, sipping his drink.

  "We'd be sitting in a Mexican jail right now," I said. "Just one of these pills" -- I held up a purple acid tab -- "would have been enough to drive Liddy into a hate frenzy. He'd have had us locked up on suspicion of everything from hijacking to dope smuggling."

  He looked at the pill I was holding, then reached for it. "Let's finish these off," he said. "I can't stand this nervousness."

  "You're right," I said, reaching into my pocket for the other one. "We're almost to San Antonio." I tossed the pill down my throat and called the stewardess for another drink.

  "Is that it?" he asked. "Are we clean?"

  I nodded. "Except for the speed."

  "Get rid of it," he said. "We're almost there."

  "Don't worry," I replied. "This acid will take hold just about the time we land. We should order more drinks." I unbuckled my seat belt and walked up the aisle to the lavatory, fully intending to flush the speed down the toilet. . . but when I got inside, with the door locked behind me, I stared down at the little buggers resting so peacefully there in my palm. . . ten caps of pure-white amphetamine powder. . . and I thought: No, we might need these, in case of another emergency. I remembered the dangerous lethargy that had gripped me in Monterrey. . . Then I looked down at my white-canvas basketball shoes and noticed how snugly the tongues fit under the laces. . . plenty of pressure down there, I thought, and plenty of room for ten pills. . . so I put all the speed in my shoes and went back to the seat. No point mentioning it to Bloor, I thought. He's clean, and therefore totally innocent. It would only inhibit his capacity for righteous anger, I felt, if I told him about the speed I was still carrying. . . until we were safely through Customs and reeling blindly around the San Antonio airport; then he would thank me for it.

  San Antonio was a cakewalk; no trouble at all -- despite the fact that we virtually fell off the plane, badly twisted again, and by the time we got our bags onto the conveyor belt leading up to the tall black Customs agent, we were both laughing like fools at the trail of orange amphetamine pills strung out behind us on the floor of the tin-roofed Customs shed. I was arguing with the agent about how much import tax I would have to pay on the two bottles of prima tequila I was carrying when I noticed Bloor was almost doubled over with laughter right beside me. He had just paid a tax of $5.88 on his own tequila, and now he was cracking up while the agent fussed over my tax.

  "What's the hells's wrong with you?" I snapped, glancing back at him. . . Then I noticed he was looking down at my feet, fighting so hard to control his laughter that he was having trouble keeping his balance.

  I looked down. . . and there, about six inches from my right shoe, was a bright-orange Spansule. Another one was sitting on the black-rubber floor mat about two feet behind me. . . and two feet farther back was another. They looked as big as footballs.

  Insane, I thought. I've left a trail of speed all the way from the plane to this beetle-browed Customs agent -- who was now handing me the official receipt for my liquor tax. I accepted it with a smile that was already disintegrating into hysteria as I took it out of his hand. He was staring grimly at Bloor, who was out of control now, still laughing at the floor. The Customs man couldn't see what Yail was laughing at because of the conveyor belt between us. . . but I could: It was another one of those goddamn orange balls, resting on the white-canvas toe of my shoe. I reached down as casually as I could and put the thing in my pocket. The Customs man watched us with a look of total disgust on his face and we hauled our bags through the swinging wooden doors and into the lobby of the San Antonio airport.

  "Can you believe that?" Bloor said. "He never even looked inside these damn things! For all he knows, we just came across the border with two hundred pounds of pure scag!"

  I stopped laughing. It was true. My big suitcase -- the elephantskin Abercrombie & Fitch job with brass corners -- was still securely locked. Not one of our bags had been opened for even the laziest inspection. We had listed the five quarts of tequila on our declaration forms -- and that was all that seemed to interest him.

  "Jesus Christ!" Bloor was saying. "If we'd only known."

  I smiled, but I was still feeling nervous about it. There was something almost eerie about two laughing, staggering dopers checking through one of the heaviest drug check points on the Customs map without even opening their bags. It was almost insulting. The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. . . because that cold-eyed nigger had been absolutely right. He had sized us up perfectly with one glance. I could almost hear him thinking: "Goddamn! Look at these two slobbering honkies. Anybody this fucked up can't be serious."

  Which was true. The only thing we slipped past him was a single cap of speed, and even that was an accident. So, in truth, he had saved himself a lot of unnecessary work by ignoring our baggage. I would have preferred not to understand this embarrassment so keenly, because it plunged me into a fit of depression -- despite the acid, or maybe because of it.

  The rest of th
at trip was a nightmare of paranoid blunders and the kind of small humiliations that haunt you for many weeks afterward. About halfway between San Antonio and Denver, Bloor reached out into the aisle and grabbed a stewardess by the leg, causing her to drop a tray of 21 wineglasses, which crashed in a heap at her feet and ignited rumblings of bad discontent from the other first-class passengers who had ordered wine with their lunch.

  "You stinking, dope-addict bastard!" I muttered, trying to ignore him in the burst of ugliness that surrounded us.

  He grinned stupidly, ignoring the howls of the stewardess and fixing me with a dazed, uncomprehending stare that confirmed, forever, my convictions that nobody with even latent inclinations to use drugs should ever try to smuggle them. We were virtually shoveled off the plane in Denver, laughing and staggering in such a rotten condition that we were barely able to claim our luggage.

  Months later, I received a letter from a friend in Cozumel, asking if I were still interesting in buying an interest in some beach acres on the Caribbean shores. It arrived just as I was preparing to leave for Washington to cover "The Impeachment of Richard Nixon," the final act in a drama that began, for me, almost exactly a year earlier when I had bought a News from a newsboy hustling the porch of the Bal-Hai in Cozumel and read John Dean's original outcry about refusing to be the "scapegoat"

  Well. . . a lot of madness has flowed under our various bridges since then, and we have all presumably learned a lot of things. John Dean is in prison, Richard Nixon has quit and been pardoned by his hand-picked successor, and my feeling for national politics is about the same as my feeling for deep-sea fishing, buying land in Cozumel or anything else where the losers end up thrashing around in the water on a barbed hook.