A Tense Night In Tucson
The year was about 1983, and I was on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, a town with unforgiving heat and sun, yet is strangely hypnotic at night. It was very tranquil to look up at the sky at night and see literally millions of bright stars, along with an occasional meteorite.
Actually, I was just sitting around my house with my cousin Duane, who I lived with at the time. He was a body and fender mechanic for a number a years. The telephone rang, and it was from an "associate" of mine who said that he would be stopping over at 11 pm. It was a surprise to me, but Carlos and I had several mutual interests. In short, we were friends.
When Carlos knocked on the door, it was quarter past eleven, and when I opened the door, I noticed that a friend of Carlos, Mikey, had come with him. Carlos was a dark-haired man, about 6'2" and athletically built. He had bronze-toned skin. Mikey was a little shorter, I would say around 6 feet tall, and had lighter skin. We had become fairly good friends in the 3 years or so we had been acquainted. Carlos was carrying a briefcase, which wasn't something he usually did, but in certain circumstances he would. Usually it was for special occasions. I wondered what was the occasion for this visit.
We were sitting around, listening to some Nils Lofgren (I believe Cry Tough was playing at the time) and smoking a joint of some good Mexican sinsemillan, when Carlos posed a question.
"So, Danny... would you like to make $1500 dollars?" he said with no emotion showing. No emotion at all. Mikey and Duane looked on.
"Umm... who do I have to shoot?" I quipped immediately, laughing nervously. The fact was that I had a Colt .45 on my hip, but I was merely being facetious. Shooting someone didn't particularly appeal to me right offhand.
"Funny, Danny. Real funny," Carlos deadpanned, then explained, "No, what we'll be doing is going to a garage about 2 miles away from here. It's not that far," he clarified. "How much reefer do you think that we could fit in your car?" he asked, referring to my trusty '68 Cutlass.
"I have no idea, Carlos. You know that sort of thing better than I do," I told him, remembering the time Carlos took me to one of those rental storage places, and it was filled with marijuana. He definitely had more experience at this than me. Much more. "Umm, how much smoke are we talking?"
"1600 lbs. You got a problem with that?" Carlos said, looking to see me shaking my head slowly as I estimated how much dope that was. "Let's see," he said, calculating the space in the car in his head. "Well, it comes packed in 50# boxes, so I figure we'll be able to fit 14 or 16 boxes in there. Sound about right, Mikey" he asked his close companion sitting on the couch.
"That sounds about right, 'ese," Mikey told him and smiled.
"Come 'ere, Danny... I have something to show you," Carlos said, walking to his briefcase he had leaned on the wall.
I got up slowly, and joined him where he was standing near the wall.
Carlos leaned to pick up the briefcase. He then dialed the combination of the lock on the briefcase, and opened it, studying the contents. He turned the briefcase, and showed the contents to me.
"Wow!" I said, my wry wit temporarily leaving me as I looked at the contents. The briefcase was filled with stacks of 20, 50, and 100 dollar bills. It was quite an impressive sight. Made me nervous just looking at it, even *if* I was wearing a gun.
"Umm... how much, Carlos?"
"Enough... ready to go?" he asked, and when he heard me softly say 'yes', instructed, "And don't take that gun. It's a mandatory additional 5 to 7 years if you're caught with a gun in commission of a felony. And this is a felony, I assure you."
"$1500, huh? I have to think about it for a while," I told him, then quickly said, "Yeah, I guess so," breaking into a wide smile.
"Okay, follow me in my truck. And to be sure you know, don't drive too fast!" he exclaimed in a gentle manner. "Duane, you can ride along with Danny if you want to."
Duane nodded eagerly, and the four of us walked out the door to driveway. Carlos and Mikey got in Carlos' truck, and Duane and I got my old '68 Cutlass, which happened to be missing the left front quarter panel. It was like that when I bought it. For $98.
We followed Carlos' black truck at a reasonable rate of speed, and it appeared that he was taking some desolate roads to a less populated area of the desert (read:money). We only drove about a mile and a half or 2 miles, and I followed the truck into a long private driveway to what appeared to be a double garage. We both stopped in front of the garage and got out. Duane and I talked amongst ourselves, lighting cigarettes while Carlos and Mikey went to talk to their "people".
Now I was beginning to get a little antsy.
Carlos, Mikey, and two other swarthy-looking gentlemen went to the garage. I found out later that their names were Jesus and Juan; I thought to myself, 'How appropriate.' After conversing in Spanish and looking sort of suspiciously at the two white males in their driveway, they called me and Duane into the garage.
We walked into the garage, and as they considered to speak in Spanish(which I don't happen to speak except for numbers and simple verbs, or yo hablo muy poquita espanol, which means ‘I speak very little Spanish’), and I was overwhelmed. Boxes and boxes of 50 pound lots of reefer were stacked high. Everywhere you looked. And this was a two-car garage. In a little bit, Jesus and Juan left, so Carlos could talk to me.
"How's your sense of taste?" Carlos asked me.
"It's okay, I guess; Why?" I answered, thinking that was a pretty odd question to be asking at a time like this.
"Well, amigo, there are 5 different kinds of reefer here. I'm going to let you pick which one you want. You know, just take two or three hits, get a feel for the smoke, and go to the next batch. You can probably eliminate a couple of them by looking at 'em. They keep all kinds: real good, good, and medium. Come here. How do you think this looks?" he asked as he tore one of the large egg boxes open.
"It looks okay... but I'd like to taste it.”
We went around to the others, and I evaluated them until only two were left. Carlos quickly rolled a joint from each batch as we went along. I took about three hits from each one, sticking the joints that I put out into my box of Marlboros. I decided which variation I wanted, basing it what I knew to be popular on the East Coast, where the profit margin was much higher. For example, I'd buy 10 pounds for $5000, and I'd send them back to the Coast at $1300-1500 a piece, depending whether or not I liked them. I had to run all over to different post offices to do it, simply so I wouldn't be recognized, but to me a one thousand dollar profit was worth it. If I'm not mistaken, that's over a 200% percent profit. I was, shall we say, "satisfied" with that.
Anyway, here's where the work came in. We had to load 1,000 lbs.into Carlos' truck, and another 800 lbs. into my car. Back and forth we went from the garage to his truck and my car. I was pretty surprised to find that 800 lbs. fit easily in the back of my car. Carlos was right.
"Okay Danny - I know you're not stupid, but make sure that you stay well within the speed limit. You may think that's a no-brainer, but there's been more than one case of someone being nervous with a 1000 lbs. of dope in the car, trying to make it to their destination as quick as they can, and they get busted," he said. "So stay within the limits, Ace."
"Okay... see you at the house," I told him as I climbed into the car. Immediately, the adrenaline was running. I was definitely on edge. Biting the head off a chicken on edge. I followed Carlos out of the driveway, and Carlos told me that it was 12:30, so I figured that there wouldn't be too much heat around, considering the time and the deserted road.
Following Carlos out of the driveway, I was just getting adjusted to my lane when I discovered that I was wrong. Dead wrong. A Pima County sheriff’s car was right fucking behind me. I started praying silently that he wouldn't pull me over for a faulty taillight or something, while concentrating on keeping the car on the straight and narrow.
'You could go to prison, not jail for this, you stupid motherfucker... for at least 10 years... I bet your asshole'd be pretty fucking big by then... What the fuck were you thinking," I berated myself silently, desperately hoping that we didn't get stopped.
We had about a mile left to go to our turn, and it was very difficult to not just stare mechanically at the rear view mirror. As we approached the turn, I had an overwhelming sense of dread that the officer would make the turn with us, and then pull me over. Of course, I was pretty high, so that really didn't help any. I made the turn, holding my breath and forcing myself not to look in the mirror. When I dared to look, he was no longer in my rear view. I sighed audibly, and Duane started saying things like how lucky we were, while my cocky self miraculously returned .
"Fuck those cops!" I said out loud, still silently thanking whatever gods there happened to be looking out for me.
We finally arrived at my house. and we unloaded my car, and stored about 800 pounds of somewhat recently harvested Mexican sinsemillan in my walk-in closet in the bedroom (I received 5 pounds for my trouble; I kept the dope there for something like 4 days, and 5 x $1500 = $7500; tidy little sum). After we had the marijuana packed away, we sat down and smoked a couple of celebratory joints, and Mikey and Carlos complimented me on my cool head in a tight spot. I thanked them, then thanked Carlos as he counted out $1500 dollars into my hand.
"Hey! I thought you said two grand!" I joked, and we all had a pleasant chuckle, partly due to the high, and partly due to the extreme relief from it being over.
After Carlos and Mikey left, Duane decided to go to bed, as he had to work in the morning. I still had jolts of adrenaline running through my body. I was hoping a joint would help, rolling one up, and luckily for me, there were a couple of Beck's that I had bought earlier in the refrigerator. I've always had a certain predilection for German lager.
I took the joint and the beer into my bedroom, and even though the closet doors were closed, you could still smell the pleasant aroma of the green marijuana.
'There ain't no hiding eight hundred lbs. of marijuana', I thought to myself, and lit the joint. As I was holding the smoke in my lungs, I took a healthy drink of the German lager. I looked down at the .45 on my side, and remembered that Steely Dan tune. "I shot my old man down in Hollywood... don't take me alive."
“I was going to try to take somebody with me; I ain't fucking going to prison for 20 fucking years." I thought to myself. Finally, I started to calm down, thanks to the beer and the joint I had smoked.
I took my gunbelt off, but before I laid down, I removed the gun from its holster. As my head hit the pillow, I put the safety on the gun and put it beneath the pillow. That's how I slept. Because if I did my math correctly, I was sitting on $400,000 dollars worth of reefer. And that was wholesale. Retail, it could probably bring in at least 800 thousand. At least. I wouldn't swear on it, because I'm not all that familiar with the retail side of the equation. And had no desire to acquaint myself with it. No desire at all. It didn't take me long to drift off to sleep, but just before I fell asleep, I superstitiously made certain the gun was there and ready. I remember that the last thought that crossed my mind was 'Lots of people would do lots of things for that kind of money.'
Lots of people indeed.
