Between the thrust our boat could supply with a broken prop and the pulling power of our towboat, we were traveling at about half the speed we should have been. Normally, we liked some chop and a bit of rough weather or even a storm. These events helped lessen the threat of coastal patrols being out here. But that night, if the seas had not been calm and the skies had not been clear, we would have been fish bait. We prayed for calm water.

  After we got the train rolling again, Captain Mike suddenly appeared beside us in his Scarab. I sat back on the huge stack of pot on the bow and breathed a big sigh of relief, rolling a fat joint. I looked up at the stars and thanked my lucky ones and whatever gods were up there as I raised it to Mike, cruising alongside us now. He acknowledged me by raising his own fatty. Man, it felt great knowing that he was there.

  When you’re at sea, far away from the glare of city lights, a billion stars shine above. Except for them, the darkness stretched out in every direction of the compass. With the moon having left us hours before, this blackness became our cloak now. Only the trail of the excited phosphorous churned up by our wake betrayed our presence. The trail faded behind us as quickly as it appeared.

  After all that, we made it back in time to off-load before sunrise.

  And because some bonehead in either Miami or South America had seriously screwed up in estimating the load, I made $80,000 that night, double what I had expected.

  That’s just the beginning of this story.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The next day the bales began their journey to Miami. This was when the good citizens of Chokoloskee Island did their part. I had just awakened after having been offshore all night, and the shore crew was in full swing. I took a stroll across the island to the stash house, and as I rounded the corner, a car engine fired up. One of Danny’s two younger brothers closed the trunk with his wrist so his fingerprints wouldn’t make the journey as well. He gave a quick kick to the rear bumper with his fishing boot, and the driver took off. To those of us living on the island who were aware of what was going on, it seemed that the place was buzzing with the activity of pot smugglers and our helpers. From the point of view of those who did not have a clue what we were doing, it seemed like just another hustling-and-bustling day on Chokoloskee.

  With a load this size most everyone on the island got involved with the haul—even the women. Guys in cutoffs and T-shirts and gals in bikinis and halter tops mobilized like it was a denim-clad Normandy invasion. The bales were moved from the stash houses and were loaded into cars with the backseats removed, hollowed-out vans, and pickup trucks with camper tops. The suspensions were rigged with inflatable airbags, which lifted the vehicles up to compensate for the added weight of the load. Then, after the vehicles were emptied, the drivers simply let some of the air out of the bags and the ride returned to normal for the trip home. This time, we even loaded a Winnebago, which had been stripped of everything below the window line with a chainsaw and wrecking bars. The cabinets, curtains, and everything above the window line were left in place so that if someone looked through a window from outside, everything appeared normal. The RV was loaded from the back to the front and stacked right up to the bottom of the windows with a little over nine thousand pounds of weed. All the seats had been removed, and a makeshift driver’s seat was fashioned among the bales in order to take advantage of all available space. I had to give the guys and gals of Chokoloskee Island a lot of credit. It took guts to drive this barge all the way to Miami. That was one part of the operation that I always told myself I wanted no part of—ever. It was far safer out on the open water with a chase boat at my side.

  The load was ready the next morning at daybreak to be shipped overland to the east coast of Florida, 120 miles across the southern tip, down US 41 through the Everglades. All of these smaller loads were going to a plaza in Kendall, a suburb on the west side of Miami, where our drivers would pull in and park, then get out and go do a little window-shopping. Because the vehicles were sent in staggered intervals, usually at about twenty minutes, one member of our crew, a “spotter,” would be paid to simply stay there all day and point out those vehicles to our Miami partners waiting to receive them as they arrived. Their men got in them and drove them the rest of the way to a stash house, unloaded the bales, then returned the vehicles to our drivers. Our drivers headed back to the Everglades in their empty vehicles—even picking up and delivering another load, time permitting.

  These “dead drops” (a term coined by the government to describe our method) were a safety precaution designed to make sure that our drivers had no idea where the stuff was actually located in Miami. On the other side of the coin, the guys in Miami could have no idea where the stuff was coming from in the Everglades. Trust was ensured by mutual uncertainty.

  But a single shipment this huge couldn’t be delivered to the same place as our typical, smaller loads. There was too much risk and too much money at stake. It needed to go directly to the stash house in Miami for off-loading.

  You could say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then again you could say I was in the right place at the right time. I tend to believe it was the former and not the latter. Either way, Darrel turned to me and asked:

  “Timmy, would you be willing to drive this one to Miami for me and then stick around for the rest of the day? There are several large bags of cash I need brought back to me tonight.”

  I had dreaded this moment. I’d just come by to lend a hand emptying the house when Darrel realized that he didn’t yet have a driver for this behemoth.

  “I need someone with brass balls, and it has to be someone I can trust,” he said.

  “Thanks, but—”

  “If you do this for me, there’s another thirty-five thousand dollars in it for you.”

  That added up to $115,000 for one night of work. That was a big incentive. But in truth, it wasn’t for the money that I agreed to do it. It was the fact that Darrel was saying he trusted me to bring back his three-quarters of a million dollars. I was scared at the idea of it, but I was also honored. It took King Kong–size nuts to do shit like this, and my face was becoming familiar in places where crazy shit like this was happening on a regular basis. I had been involved with every stage of the game up until now.

  Darrel handed me the keys along with a two-meter radio so I could keep in touch with the road crew.

  “Good luck.”

  I got into the houseboat on wheels, crawled across the sea of bales to my makeshift driver’s seat, cranked the ignition, and took off down the road.

  I must admit that in all my years of hauling pot I was never so fucking freaked out as I was that day behind the wheel of that $4 million rolling block of weed. The two hours it took to make the trip felt like a hundred years.

  But once I got onto the highway, my fears diminished. I became fully focused on the task at hand. And there was a small level of comfort in knowing that there were other guys on the road, too. They were ahead of me and behind me, watching out for highway patrol or any other signs of law enforcement. Nobody ever traveled alone.

  But it was definitely a small level of comfort. If for some unlucky reason I should happen to get tagged by a cop, I was sure as hell not going to outrun them in this motor hotel. I had two options: One, I could just give up and say fuck it, you got me. Two, I could grab my radio, climb over the bales to get to the door, jump out, and haul ass.

  As I lumbered down the road in the laden Winnebago, I decided that if it came to it, I would choose the latter. I’d take my chances in the swamp rather than just give up, I told myself.

  But that option wasn’t very good either. There were a lot of obstacles to safety with that choice. They included, but were not limited to, alligators, crocodiles, water moccasins, rattlesnakes, pygmy rattlesnakes, black bears, panthers, bobcats, wild boar, black widow spiders, fire ants, and, of course, swarms of mosquitoes so thick that I would not be able to breathe.

  If I managed to survive the Wild Kingdom of Death, I would still have my radio so I could contact my buddies and tell them where to come and find my ass.

  If I had been driving one of the smaller cars, there might have been a third option. The guys and gals driving cars, vans, and pickup trucks were all equipped with raised trailer hitches. If they were stopped, they could simply back up into the cop’s car and puncture its radiator, which would set off the air bag in the police car. With the cops disabled, they could haul ass down the road until they met up with a spotter. Then they could jump out, leaving the bales and the vehicle on the side of the road as a prize for the cops while they disappeared. Then it was a simple matter of reporting the vehicle stolen.

  But that strategy was off-limits to me in this traveling museum of felonies.

  I cranked up Pink Floyd as I put it all out of my mind and cruised into Miami.

  Run, Rabbit, run …

  Dig that hole, get the sun.

  Two hours later, I’d made it.

  I arrived at the turn to the stash house, and the road meandered through an old orange orchard that had obviously been neglected for a few seasons. The house finally appeared, and it seemed strangely out of place. Where you might have expected to see a split-level, Southern-style estate home and Spanish moss draped over live oaks, you found a behemoth—a fifteenth-century medieval-castle-looking thing. A couple of Cuban dudes were there waving me up to the side of the house next to a double set of cellar doors. I put that big bitch into park and climbed over the bales and jumped out. As their crew began the unloading process, the guys who were in charge invited me in for a cold drink, something to eat, and a friendly game of poker. One of the dudes, whom they kept referring to as Flaco, which in Spanish means “skinny man,” led the way through a side door that took us straight into a huge kitchen. Adjacent to the kitchen was a large dining table that easily seated twenty. It reminded me of the one Errol Flynn leaped across with sword drawn to rescue the lovely Maid Marian from the would-be ravages of that prick sheriff. And just beyond the table was the lounge area where I spent the rest of my stay, relaxing on plush tucked-and-rolled leather sofas, sipping on sweet tea. (I didn’t touch the hard stuff on a job. Too much money was at stake for me to get hammered.)

  The rest of the deliveries continued coming in, and as we sat there, I noticed the way these guys were treating me. It was almost as if I were a celebrity.

  It got me thinking: These guys didn’t have the balls to do what we did on a daily basis. That would explain why we were the ones moving all this shit for them and the fact that we were moving it virtually unmolested.

  I was flattered by their curiosity. A guy asked me what it felt like to take that kind of a risk out on the highway, risking my life, driving a Winnebago full of weed.

  “It feels like I just won a one-hundred-and-fifteen-thousand-dollar jackpot,” I said.

  * * *

  Later that evening, they gave me a car to drive back to Everglades City with five bags of cash in the backseat.

  If I thought driving a Winnebago full of marijuana to Miami was terrifying, driving back with three-quarters of a million dollars in cash right behind me had me shitting my pants the whole way home. But I made it, and Darrel was grateful to the tune of thirty-five grand.

  From that day forward, if I wasn’t on the boat offshore unloading freighters, I was in Miami being the “spotter,” pointing out our vehicles as they entered our dead drop location for our Cuban partners, whom I soon got to know pretty well. And they got to know me, too.

  To them, and everyone else involved on their end, I was a man who was trusted—by both sides. I appreciated our new relationship. I also had no idea just how quickly these new friendships would be a boon to my career.

  But for now there was just the money. More of it than a twenty-five-year-old knew what to do with. I bought gold and diamond jewelry, new cars, new boats, new trucks—even houses—and I still didn’t know what to do with all of it. Sometimes I would take an exotic vacation to a destination picked out by simply blindfolding myself and pointing at a map of the world. I would often bring friends with me and pay their way just to have someone along for the ride. Pissing away sixty grand or more at a time was a common occurrence. Many times several of us would take twenty grand each into town and buy drinks and cocaine for everyone in the bar until most of the money was gone. Then at closing time, we’d tip the bartenders and waitresses a couple hundred bucks each to unload the rest. Go home, pass out, and get up and do it again. It just kept coming and coming and coming.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Lights-out.”

  The disembodied voice boomed from the front of our prison unit. I tossed my cards down on the bunk.

  “I’ll tell you more about it another time,” I said to George. “Goodnight, my friend.”

  The lights went out as I made my way back to my bunk.

  Well, one more day down and only several thousand to go, I thought.

  The next morning, I awoke to another day as an inmate and got myself ready for work. My original assignment was working construction within the prison, but I quickly decided, to hell with this horseshit. If I have to work, I may as well work smart and not hard.

  One of the first guys I met when I got here was Rolando, Rolly for short. Rolly was already into his fourth year and had another twelve to go on a counterfeiting charge. He was half American Indian, half Puerto Rican, and was born and raised in the Bronx. He was in his early thirties and was already balding and sported a dark mustache. At first glance, you’d swear he was Wally Cox, a TV actor who used to play nerdy roles and who was a regular guest on The Hollywood Squares in the 1970s. Rolly had himself transferred to the library in order to further his education. He and I became friends and workout partners.

  We were spotting lifts for each other on the weight pile one day when he said to me, “There’s an opening for another con in the law library where I work. Do you want the job?”

  “Damn right I do,” I told him. “Get me in!”

  That afternoon he took me down to the lower compound into the education building and introduced me to the head con in the law library. His name was Dennis, an older guy probably in his midfifties. He was a perfect Captain Kangaroo look-alike. At first glance, I could see that the years had really taken their toll on this guy. Twenty-two years of prison life had chiseled away at his face, and it would be another thirty years before the sculpting was complete.

  Dennis had been given fifty-two years for bank robbery. At the time, this ridiculously long sentence was listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as being the most time given for this particular offense. He was the pilot of a small Cessna aircraft that was used to fly away the two guys who pulled off the robbery. Even though he didn’t actually rob the bank, he was charged for it as if he had been there and given a huge sentence. As for the other two fellows who had actually robbed the bank, one was sentenced to nine years and the other got twelve years. According to Dennis, the reason he had gotten so much time was because, for many years prior to the bank job, he had been flying rather large quantities of cocaine from Mexico to Nevada. All the years he was doing this, he had been under suspicion but never caught. When the federal authorities finally had something to charge him with, they decided to make up for all the lost time spent trying to catch him with cocaine. So they hammered him with fifty-two years for this one bank robbery.

  Anyway, he took a long, hard look at me. He asked me my name and how much time I had to do. I told him my name was Tim and that I had a “dime,” which meant ten years, and I wasn’t interested in doing my time building this goddamn prison. He laughed.

  “Hell, you’ve got the job, Timmy.”

  He liked me right away.

  The next day, paperwork was sent through assigning me to work with Dennis and Rolly. It was a pretty easy gig. I spent my days studying law and helping other cons do research for their own cases. It was, for the most part, an out-of-the-way place. A con could work alongside civilian teachers and other vocational instructors (male and female) from the outside. More important, he could be left alone. For the entire educational center, two guards were assigned, roaming the halls to keep an eye on the cons who were taking classes.

  The educational center was a safe place. It was totally night and day from anywhere else in this prison. Like the rec yard, for instance. There, it took very little provocation to get your ass kicked by any number of different cliques.

  I came to realize that the library job was a rather prestigious spot within the prison hierarchy. If you were the only guy who a con could turn to for help with his case, guys were less likely to try to kick your ass over stupid shit. Because if you messed with me, you were also messing with about a hundred other cons—guys whose cases would not be taken care of now because of your bullshit. Not only that, most of the cons had already paid for my services. Yeah, that’s right, they were paying for my expertise. I wasn’t about to give this lawyer shit away for free. Everyone in the joint had some kind of hustle going on to try to make an extra buck. You were either working in the kitchen selling sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, or anything else you could get your hands on or you were doing other cons’ laundry for them. And there were those who wouldn’t hesitate to be the “punk in your bunk” for a new pair of tennis shoes under theirs. This was just the way it was and still is. There really wasn’t any way to survive in prison making a lousy six cents an hour working a prison job, and that even was after a couple of raises. If your family or your friends were not putting money in your account, then you had to rely on yourself and learn to hustle. We were allowed to have a maximum of fifteen dollars in change on us at any one time, so I would just tell the cons who owed me money to have someone on the outside deposit it into my account. Then I used that money at the commissary to buy things that helped make my life just a bit more comfortable. I could buy things like a new pair of tennis shoes or new socks, new shorts and shirts, or a couple of dozen packs of cigarettes to pay for stuff on the prison black market. I could even treat myself and a few of my pals to a pint of ice cream when the commissary was open once a week.

 

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