Chickenhawk: Back in the World

“Give us a break, Mason!” the Treasury agent yelled. “You know plenty. You know enough to help us. Do you realize how much money is being sent to these countries by guys like you? Do you?”

I shook my head.

“Millions of dollars every day. It’s a disaster. U.S. currency is being drained from circulation and poured into the pockets of organized crime.”

I felt the urge to tell him that if we didn’t have such ridiculous drug laws, this weed we now pay millions for would be effectively worthless and nobody’d be smuggling it; or if they let American farmers grow it, we could tax it and keep the profits here. The law and drug smugglers have one thing in common: neither wants marijuana legalized. But this wasn’t an after-dinner political debate. This was a routine post arrest interrogation. These guys had probably tried pot themselves; they probably thought the laws were stupid, too. They were just doing their jobs. “That’s a shame,” I said.

The Treasury guy glared at me and turned to the head cop and shrugged. The head cop looked at me and then at the marshal and the state cop, the same guy who’d brought me here. Everybody was shrugging, saying, Well, we tried. It isn’t like the old days, you know, when they could beat the shit out of you and you would talk. Now they can only try to scare you. Anything you say without an attorney is a gift for the law. The head cop looked at me and said, “Mr. Mason, you’re going on trial soon. Now, unless you change your attitude, I will report in your arrest record that you were totally uncooperative. You will be charged with smuggling marijuana, possession of marijuana, and possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute marijuana. Three major felonies. You’re looking at forty years, and that’s just the federal charges. The state wants you, too, for all the same charges.” The cop stared at me for a second. “You sure you want your record to show that you are unrepentant, uncooperative?”

“You can do what you want. It’s your record. I’m not talking about this without an attorney. I can’t believe you don’t understand that. I’ve never been in this much trouble in my whole life. I’m amazed you think I should just spill my guts without legal counsel. You’d demand to have an attorney present if you were sitting here.”

The cop nodded slightly and said, “You can go.” He looked at the cop who’d brought me in. “Okay, Fred. Take him to the holding tank.”

Fred nodded and I walked to the door. He opened it and I walked out into a hallway. Fred pointed ahead and we walked.

“Man, you really stink of marijuana,” Fred said.

“Wow,” I said. “I wonder how that happened.”

Fred laughed. Just a regular guy.

Fred drove me a couple of blocks to the federal court building. We walked in the front door, Fred dressed for work, me dressed like a street bum who’d been sleeping in these reeking clothes for two weeks. We walked by some people getting their mail at the first-floor post office and climbed the stairs to the third floor. Fred escorted me down the hall to a cage set off the hallway like a coffee-break room except with bars on the door. John and Ireland sat on benches inside the cage.

They looked terrible. No wonder people think criminals are a dirty bunch. If I hadn’t known them, they would’ve made me nervous.

A deputy came up to us and Fred told him to let me in.

As soon as the door closed, John asked Fred, “Do you smoke?”

“Naw,” Fred said.

“Damn. I got to have a cigarette, man.” John jerked his head toward me. “Bob, too.”

I nodded.

Fred shrugged. “Okay, give me some money and I’ll buy you some.”

John jammed his hand into his pocket and immediately laughed. “Nice joke—ah, what is your name, anyway?”

“Fred.”

“Funny, Fred. You guys took all our money.”

Fred smiled. “Okay, I’ll lend you a couple of bucks. I mean, I can see you’re a trustworthy bunch.” He turned and walked away.

John and I chain-smoked a pack of Salems, the brand Fred figured everybody smoked. Ireland sat slumped on a bench, trying to nap. He’d been complaining about his stomach.

I sat next to Ireland, tired but not even a little sleepy, watching John pace back and forth in the eight-by-eight-foot cell.

“So what did you tell them?” John asked.

“I told them Bob and I were crew members on the boat, you were the captain.”

“That’s it? I mean, you tell them where we came from, anything like that?”

“Nope. Nothing else.”

He turned to Ireland. “You didn’t say anything, right?”

Ireland grimaced and clutched his stomach with both hands. “No, man.”

“Good,” John said.

“Yeah. Great, John,” I said. “We have them exactly where we want them, eh? I mean, the only evidence they have on us is a fucking boatload of marijuana.”

“It could be worse,” John said, without much conviction.

“Shouldn’t we be getting a lawyer?” I said.

“The team’s probably figured it out by now,” John said. “We’ll be contacted.”

I nodded. Right, the team. The same idiots who spent six weeks watching that canal, except for the night we came in. That team.