A Fateful Decision

As it turned out, I wasn’t prepared to jump on both of these deals in that way. After all, I was going to get to sell the stuff whether I invested or not. If the product made it in, I was first in line whether I took part in the smuggle or not. Both teams wanted me to plunk down six figures and I wasn’t going to lay 200k out in these high-risk situations. So I had to choose. Both teams were successful, and I was really tight with each of them... It was something of a eeny meeny miney mo choice but I opted to go with the one that I’d already collected with. Plus, there’s something nice about hashish in large quantities—it’s really small and easy to move around. Hash doesn’t come with sticks or seeds. A single small box (50 pounds) commanded 75 grand and you could pretty much put most of it in an attache case. Also, most of it was being shipped north to Canada and that meant it wouldn't interfere with anything I had going on in the city.

Meantime, I had a long and terrific relationship with the west coast crowd. If their stuff made it in, I would be spending time out there in wine country. While I wasn’t in on the smuggle, I was certainly being counted on at the next levels. My guy Lee out in Idaho, had a scene that included a serious bunch of redneck drivers from Kentucky, Louisiana and other places. These guys had an invisible network of places to stay and roads that bypassed all the hot spots. We used them plenty of times to run stuff in both directions and they never lost anything or anybody doing it. These guys weren’t hippies. Most were Vietnam vets who simply didn’t give a shit. They survived hell in Asia and weren’t afraid of anything that could happen here (including getting arrested).  In fact, my main friend out there had spent his time in-country driving trucks filled with artillery shells.  So a hidden stash of contraband scared him not at all.

So I plopped down the dough on the hash and declined the second offer... and the clock began to tick on both of them. It was something new for me... knowing that specific products were on the way. Up to this point, I had only been vaguely aware of the scams that were in progress. It was a rare deal that arrived with any notice. Usually, we began to hear about this guy or that guy offering a ‘new’ product, and set out to find the most advantageous source. Experience had taught me not to jump in until I saw the bigger picture. New deals inevitably resulted in a period of jockeying for position in the deal du jour. At the highest levels, the circle didn’t have much more than a few leaders and there were probably another hundred (or two) who were always scrambling just below that level. When a deal hit, the smugglers just wanted to get paid and get laid. And that’s was usually happened.

One problem, however, was that the smugglers generally weren’t all that concerned with the quality of the product. Their main goal was to get it in without getting caught. After that, there was a lot of arguing and problems if the stuff sucked. Nobody wanted to pay up front for lousy stuff and the smugglers then had to endure a whole next project in converting the crap to money. And, when the lousy stuff was REALLY lousy, the bad things happened more frequently. People had to take more chances in who they sold to, and the result was product getting ripped off or getting busted. Even if those things didn’t happen, bad stuff was a tough sell. This was on top of the perpetual battle over price. The distributors and their wholesalers all wanted the lowest number while the smugglers naturally wanted the opposite. The most obvious factors (but not nearly the only ones) were the market situation and the quality of the merchandise. After that, politics was a factor as well. Regardless of the quality, if you bought early, you could get burned when the smugglers lowered the price. Then you were stuck until everyone who came after you sold their stuff. And sometimes this meant you were behind the eight ball for an entire season. You might be sitting with expensive product that was only worth the price during a drought. Of course, droughts happened periodically so it wasn’t a long term disaster, but definitely a setback while the market was active with better and cheaper merchandise.

Smuggling is a seasonal business in many respects. Certain times of year were traditionally dry because of harvest times, shipping conditions, weather, etc. The occasional aviation deal was never enough to impact the New York market. And in the mid 80s, when the weather got warm, the boats began descending up and down the entire east coast. Florida, which was the wild west for Colombian, Jamaican and even Mexican weed, became far less of a destination during the summer. Mother ships were dropping things off Montauk, Newport, and as far north as Maine. It’s a lot of coastline and there are a lot of boats all up and down it. The fisheries were fishing for much more than fish (and pulling in a lot more than tuna).