Smuggler's Blues

by Richard Stratton

  The day my parents delivered me to Kelly’s Landing for the boat trip out to Thompson Island, it was freezing. I was terrified. Boarding that boat for the island, shivering, waving goodbye to my parents huddled on shore—when I saw the pained look on my mother’s face, it broke my heart. I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t show how I felt, not with half a dozen young toughs checking out the new kid. No, I had to suck it up, choke back any signs of weakness or emotion.

  It was all about being tough. As a kid, I wanted to be tough more than I wanted to be smart or popular or good in school. I hated the idea of being thought of as a wimp, a sissy, or, worst of all, a coward. I was determined to be able to beat up anybody who messed with me—or at least give them a good fight. That year on Thompson Island I started lifting weights, I played football, and when the hormones kicked in I lost the baby fat and got strong. I was not the same kid when I returned to the placid, leaf-shaded streets of Wellesley Hills.

  Now here I was standing with Jimmy Bulger, infamous Whitey, one of the toughest, most feared gangsters on the East Coast, accepted by him not as an equal but as someone who had something to offer. And he had just saved my life.

  Top of the world, Ma… top of the world.

  * * *

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU tell me you was with Whitey?” Capuana wants to know when I am summoned into his presence once more, this time at Gerry Grillo’s store in Revere. John Grillo is there, lurking in the corner. Gerry is answering the phone. I’m sitting with Capuana, having coffee.

  “And George—” He calls him by name. “Listen, we can do business.”

  Capuana stops speaking; Gerry waves to him from the counter. He holds a phone with his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Jimmy,” Gerry says.

  “Tell him—” Capuana starts to say.

  “Take it,” Gerry cuts him off. “It’s important.”

  While Capuana goes to the phone, I sit there wishing I were anywhere but here. Men come and go, have hushed, short conversations with John or Gerry. Capuana takes the phone. I watch him. He blanches. “What the fuck?” he says and then huddles over the phone.

  “They killed Jimmy’s brother!” Capuana announces to the room when he hangs up. “They fuckin’ whacked Lee Chagra!”

  A tall, skinny guy comes in and whispers to Gerry.

  “The Feds’re outside,” Gerry says.

  “Fuck them!” says Capuana.

  Our meeting is over. Capuana makes plans to fly out to El Paso, Texas, to see Jimmy Chagra and bury the oldest Chagra brother, Lee, a top-tier criminal defense attorney. Jimmy still has to send someone up to Maine to inspect the ruined tons of Colombian pot so we can settle up. But that can wait. My car is parked a few blocks from Grillo’s store. I walk out, turn the corner.

  And there he is: DEA Special Agent Bernard Wolfshein. I spot him sitting in an undercover car parked across the street. Wolfshein sees me, I’m sure of it; he may even have nodded. Or waved. I want to go to him and plead for protection. Just knowing he’s there is oddly reassuring.

  I turn away and keep walking.

  5

  GENERAL MARIJUANA

  AT THE PLAZA Hotel I am known as Dr. Lowell. I pose as a psychiatrist to explain the eccentric guests coming and going from my rooms at all hours. Whenever I’m flush, I get a suite at the Plaza and spend lavishly. Room service spreads, magnums of champagne—it’s the movable feast. Handing out hundred-dollar tips to hotel staff. Shopping sprees. Call girls—not for me, for the Arabs. Not that I’m too proud to pay for sex. I have a very good, very horny girlfriend in Val. She wouldn’t take kindly to pros trespassing on her territory. Besides, it has never been just about fucking for me. I was never good at one-night stands with strangers. I’m into intimacy, a serial monogamist—almost. As in nearly every other aspect of my life at present, I seem to be pushing the boundaries, seeing just how far I can go, how many girlfriends I can maintain in the wreckage of my marriage.

  The Arabs insist on female entertainment whenever they are in town waiting for me to appear from wherever I am with whatever they want—usually large amounts of money. And there is Dr. Kato, another phony doctor, Jamaican, from Philly, who owns shoe stores and sells lots of weed. Kato is a fiend when it comes to what he calls “laying pipe.” He can employ the services of two or three girls on a given evening and still not be satisfied. It is sport for Dr. Kato, and he is an Olympian.

  Kato is already checked in to the hotel when I arrive. He left a message to say he’s asleep in his room resting up for the night’s activities. My first meeting is in the Oyster Bar with Biff, a former magazine editor and bookie’s bagman who has been working for me this past year primarily as a money courier, lately coordinating phone calls and meetings in the city. Biff has a big apartment on the Upper West Side, a wife and three daughters, and an overhead that was burying him when his bookie employer let him go. I met Biff through Norman Mailer; they’ve been friends for twenty years. Biff appeared in a couple of Mailer’s underground films and worked on Mailer’s outlandish mayoral campaign. When Mailer mentioned to me that Biff needed work, I shined him on. My experience with even semi-straight people who think they want to get into the dope business has convinced me that not everyone is cut out for a life of crime. Biff prevailed on me. Whenever we would meet at parties or Mailer events, Biff would remind me that he was available should I need help. I always need help. Given my predilection for stretching myself too thin, having someone based in New York City who could receive and deliver money became a matter of necessity. New York is key to the whole operation.

  Biff is good at what he does. He looks perfect, mid-forties, balding, clean-shaven, perpetual tan, in decent shape physically, well dressed. He looks like a mid-level businessman and has the surface sophistication to talk his way in and out of most circumstances. We bought him some luggage, had the bags outfitted with money stashes. He had body-packs made to carry cash strapped to his midsection. Biff went out on the circuit, collecting money from my Canadian partner, Rosie, in Toronto and the Cannucks in Montreal and Quebec City, collecting money from my New York partners, or delivering money to them, picking up money from Val or Kato or Judy or Benny or whomever and usually delivering it to me wherever I happened to be or, lately, to the Lebanese. I kept him away from the product, left him out of the planning stages, the actual logistics of the various smuggling trips, kept him strictly as a money schlepper.

  These past few weeks Biff has been seeing a lot of Mohammed, my main Lebanese connection, and Mohammed’s oldest son, Nasif. He’s been paying them off for the load we spirited out of Logan and getting them down-payment cash for the mega-ton shipment we are planning. Biff and Nasif meet and hang out in various cities around the world. Biff stays in touch with the Lebanese through Hammoud, a gruff New York City taxi driver who hails from the same village as Mohammed in southern Lebanon. Hammoud has been recruited as a driver, errand boy, and translator for Mohammed when he is in New York. Biff takes Mohammed and Nasif out to dinner, he gets them girls. He placates them when I am a day or two late getting to town. It was straight to Biff’s apartment I went after I collected my cash-laden suitcase at LaGuardia. At one point he had over a half a million dollars in cash in a closet.

  My partners and I are still in the early planning stages of what we anticipate will be the biggest hashish smuggle we have ever attempted. Biff is pleading with me for a bigger piece of the action. He’s just returned from meeting with Nasif in Cyprus, delivering more down-payment money. “Nasif’s going to call you tonight,” Biff tells me when I join him at a corner table. He’s wearing his hangdog expression, his sad puppy face: Gee, why won’t you let me in on what’s really going down? I’ve tried to impress on him and on other people who press me for information that what they don’t know can’t hurt them.

  Biff is already a drink or two ahead of me when I order. “Listen, Richard, you’ve gotta admit, I’m the best you got,” he goes on. “You got nobody better than me. I got balls… big balls. You gotta admit, I’
m your guy. I’d go anywhere for you. Beirut. I went to Beirut, man. A Jew, right? In the middle of a fucking war. I wasn’t afraid. C’mon, tell me… What’s happening? What can I do to help? I need to make some real money. My life is…” He stops, shakes his head, it’s too upsetting for him to go on.

  I’m used to these self-pity meltdowns, heard it a dozen times when he’s in his cups, and it irritates the shit out of me. “Have you heard from Val?” I ask.

  He takes out his list of things to do, stares at it for a minute or two as though he can’t read his own writing. “Yeah… She’ll be in tomorrow morning. Taking the red eye… from ah… San Fran. Nasif’ll call you tonight. I told you that. What else?”

  “Doctor Kato. What did he give you?”

  “Oh, yeah, Kato… I haven’t seen him yet.”

  “Why not? He’s supposed to have money.”

  This is what pisses me off. Biff wants more responsibility, a bigger stake in the action, and he can’t even attend to the basics.

  “Well, I ah… He just got here and—”

  “No. He’s been here all afternoon. I got a message from him. He was waiting to hear from you. He’s upstairs, asleep. He’s got money. You know how it is with Kato and money—anything can happen. You were supposed to pick up the fucking money. What happened?”

  He changes the subject. “Norman wants to see you.”

  “I’m having dinner with him tomorrow night. What’s wrong, Biff? You okay?” I already know the answer.

  “I’m…” He shakes his head, looks like he’s about to cry. “My life is over.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “I’m the best you got! The best. I got big balls.… You treat me like I’m a fucking kid.”

  Now I know he’s loaded. He’s into his maudlin, repetitive routine, singing the blues. Too far gone to trust with Kato’s money. I feel like snapping at him: What the fuck do I need you for if you can’t even take care of something as simple as picking up money from Dr. Kato so he doesn’t blow it on coke and hookers? You’re not the best I’ve got; Val is, and she fucks up. Everyone fucks up. Look at me. Busted in Maine on a fuckup. Busted in Boston on sheer stupidity. But that’s not the point. The money goes to everyone’s head. Protect the money. The lifestyle is insane. Most of the people you deal with are crazy. This is no nine-to-five gig with a weekly paycheck and benefits. This is criminal activity. There are the Bernie Wolfsheins and the Mike Capuanas and Jimmy Chagras and the Whitey Bulgers of the world out there waiting to pounce when you slip up. The point is to keep your mouth shut and do what you’ve got to do or get out of the way before you cause even more problems.

  “Go home and go to bed. I’ll deal with Dr. Kato.”

  “No, no, I’ll take care of it.… I’m good for you… the best you got… I can handle anything.”

  “Is everything all right at home?” Again, I already know the answer. Now I’m just trying to change the subject.

  He shakes his head. He’s got that stunned look on his face I know that comes after he’s had too much to drink. And it doesn’t take much. Three drinks and he is incoherent.

  “She caught you fucking around—again?”

  He shrugs. He is having trouble putting words into sentences. He blurts out something about his oldest daughter going off to college and he needs money for her tuition. Then there’s the house in the Hamptons, the apartment on Riverside Drive. He shakes his head—poor me. He sees all that money we appear to be making, though I explain this is a cash business, a lot of that money is just passing through our hands.

  “Take it easy, pal,” I tell him. “You’ll be fine.”

  What’s unsettling about meeting with someone who is fucked up is that it reminds me how fucked up I am.

  I’VE GOT ANOTHER meeting, and it is time for Biff to go home. I don’t want him doing anything for me in the shape he’s in. We walk out onto Fifty-eighth Street. A homeless-looking guy—filthy rags for clothes, and also drunk—staggers up and almost bumps into Biff.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Biff barks at him. “Get away from me!”

  It’s the first intelligible statement he’s made all night but not a good move. The homeless guy looks like a Vietnam vet: tattoos, crazy haircut, scars, and blood on his face. My sense of him is, drunk or not, he’s nobody to mess with, and he’s got a bottle in his hand. Biff turns his back on him, dismisses him. I hail a cab, step between them, and give the guy a twenty. Now he pushes up on me and spits on my shirt.

  “Fuck you… keep your money,” he says, but he holds on to the twenty and moves away less unsteadily. Biff misses the whole play.

  “Fucking scumbag,” Biff mutters.

  “I shouldn’t have to be picking up cash from Kato,” I tell him, keeping one eye on the drunken homeless guy as he meanders along the sidewalk. Now I’m pissed, having been spat on and let it pass.

  “I’ll take care of it.” Biff is about to cry. The cab pulls over. “I’m the best you got…”

  “Look, this trip—the one we’re putting together now—is going to be a serious payday for everybody. Just do your job, Biff. Keep your fucking mouth shut. Help us with this and I’ll give you a bonus…” I search for a number. “Two hundred and fifty grand. But you’ve got to be there for me. No more fuckups. No more getting shitfaced and missing meetings.”

  “Who’s fucked up? The best… the best you got,” is all he can say.

  “Go home. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Two hundred and fifty grand?” There is a glimmer of appreciation.

  “But you’ve got to be on it, Biff. You can’t be getting loaded and leaving a guy like Dr. Kato in a hotel room with a lot of cash. You know that. I don’t need to tell you that.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. Just go home.”

  We shake hands, I open the door to the taxi. He hugs me, kisses me. “Ah, man… bro… you’re the best.”

  “We’ve got to make it happen first. There’s a lot to do. And no guarantees.”

  The look on Biff’s face as he sits in the rear of the cab is crestfallen but with the hint of a smile at the corners of his slack mouth. I know exactly what’s working through the alcoholic haze in his brain: two hundred and fifty grand. He’s already spending the money as the cab pulls away. The homeless guy is half a block down the street. I head back in the hotel to change my shirt. Just another evening with Dr. Lowell dealing with a couple of patients.

  MY NEXT MEETING is with Sammy Silver. He picks me up in a rental. Sammy is young, rich, has a mansion on Todt Hill in Staten Island and a trucking company he owns and operates with his father in Jersey City. He hands me a fat joint of some hydroponic weed he’s growing in a Brooklyn warehouse. “Fire it up, bro,” he says and pulls out into traffic.

  Sammy drives fast through the city streets. He’s heading to a Japanese restaurant in the East Forties, one of his favorite haunts. Riding with him is like being in some virtual video game where you’re fighting for every inch of road space as if it were enemy territory. Kamikaze pedestrians dart off curbs and dash across the streets. Huge potholes and bumps and trash in the street are all part of the obstacle course. The enemy knows no rules. They far outnumber us in their bright-yellow cars. They honk their horns and shout curses at Sammy in foreign tongues. He laughs and gives them the finger. He’s a better driver than they are, has quicker reflexes even with all the THC in his bloodstream. He knows the streets and loves the game.

  “Bro, check it out.” Sammy nods toward the stairs up into the semi-private dining area reserved for big spenders.

  We’re sitting on the floor before a low table, sipping green tea, sampling from long, narrow plates of raw fish when Mick Jagger and David Bowie ascend the steps and take a table near ours. Sammy orders sake. He doesn’t need to order food. The people in this restaurant know him well for his prodigious appetite for sushi. The owner gave him his nickname, Lord Toranaga, after a character in Shogun, the novel by James Clavell. Sammy drops th
ousands in this place each week and has the girth to prove it. With the weight he’s put on, he’s living up to his nickname, and his face has taken on an Asian cast.

  “Those last slabs, those were the kind, bro. We need it all to be like that,” Sammy says, referring to the recent load of Lebanese hash that we brought in through Logan Airport and almost had to give up to Mike Capuana. “The market is flooded with some dog-shit Leb. This has gotta all be primo, or we’re never going to get our price.”

  I nod in agreement.

  “When do you leave?” he asks.

  “Good question. The war is bad. Americans’re getting kidnapped every day. They’re not giving visas except for emergencies.”

  “Is this gonna hold us up?”

  “We’ll see. I’m working on another way to get in, through Syria.”

  “Don’t get kidnapped,” Sammy says and rummages in the large leather shoulder bag he carries. He pulls out a US Customs manual and hands it to me. “Here’s what they look for. I studied the whole profile. Our goods need to be paid for using a letter of credit from a legitimate, established company. No cash. That’s a red flag. That trips the computer and causes Customs to give the shipment a secondary inspection. Plus what we’re shipping needs to make sense from a business standpoint. Why would this company be importing these goods from this place at this time? Know what I mean? You don’t want to be carrying coals to Newcastle.”