|
Haskins and Eddie were not stupid, they weren't even particularly fuck-ups. These guys lived in the ocean: surfing, fishing, spearing, diving, probably spawning. But they just had bad luck. Especially when they got into smuggling dope from Mexico across to San Diego by water.
Which is not, in itself, a bad idea. Apart from whatever moral/legal/financial hang-ups you might have on the subject. San Diego is closer to Mexico by water than by any other means. Imperial Beach and Playas de Tijuana are actually one continuous beach. (Just like Pacific and Mission, but easier to tell apart since they built the huge steel wall that runs right out into the sea at the International Border.) You can't just walk across like you used to could, but you can do an international swim in about five minutes. A half hour if you're doing it at night and don't wish to get hung up in conversations with anybody wearing a uniform. Is this perfect? Talk about adventure underwater.
But Haskins and Eddie just couldn't pull it off. Not, I think you'll agree, due to faults of their own. Their first try, which got them onto that wave length in the first place, was suggested to them by a tuna fisherman who caught down south and sold in "Dago". They liked the idea, bought some mysterious substances in Mexicali, wrapped them up real tight and went out to meet the tuna fisherman at a camp on Isla de Cedros. There they cleverly stashed the incriminating material inside an ice cold tuna, then carefully stacked it where they wouldn't miss it. Except when the boat passed off Ensenada it hit some major weather. Ensenada is weird like that: huge storms ignore the entire coast, but just come in and pound Ensenada to pieces. That particular chubasco didn't pound the brave little fishing boat to bits, but it sure shook it up. And shifted the load all over the damn place. So, naturally, when "Flo and Eddie", as we called them, went below to retrieve their favorite fish, it was like "Sorry Charlie." The entire hold had turned into a fine kettle of "chicken of the sea" and their pet tuna/mule was a needle in the haystack. They tried tearing into a few tuna, but they were all frozen by that time, making it impossible to search them all (and we're talking a LOT of tuna to search, by the way) without thawing them or busting them up. You can imagine how the captain felt about either option. So the boys just had to lose their investment. Haskins grumbled about how some processing crew would get high for months, while Eddie started practically living on locally-canned tunafish sandwiches, just in case. Like I say, bad luck.
Then there was the sailboard thing. They packed their packets into boards they had specially prepared, then sealed them up with fiberglass tape. They put in right in front of the motel there at Playas, very late in the day, and took off out to sea. Panama Red sales in the sunset. They had headed north in the dusk, planning for a non-technical re-entry just above I.B. They couldn't very well miss the entire Silver Strand, and once ashore could just walk out to the highway carrying their swag in backpacks, catch the bus or give a cellular beep to Haskin's musclecar-driving girlfriend. No problemo. Except that when they beached a few hundred yards north of the YMCA camp, and started breaking down their boards to take the stash out, it turns out they had come up right across the dunes from a gay motorcycle gang having a slumber party on the beach. Those not from Southern California (and Imperial Beach in particular) might have trouble with that concept, but believe me, Virginia: there are gay bike gangs, and they are not cream puffs. The bikers--dressed pretty much in soggy condoms, steel-studded leather, and VERY butch helmets--cruised them, figured out what was going on, and took the packages off their hands. Haskins publicly hoped that those assholes snorted so much that they ran amuck, filling the beach with the smell of burning rubber, and giving themselves all a dose of AIDS.
So on their last try, the Phosphorescent Leech and Eddie went to their strength, snorkles. They were doing all this smuggling in the first place just to try and finance an indefinitely prolonged underwater tour of Belize and Honduras. They would cut the crap, skip the boating, and just SWIM the stuff across. What could go wrong with that? It was suggested that they wear dummy SCUBA rigs, using the tanks to carry and hide their bindles, but Haskins shrugged off that sound counsel on the grounds that:
1. Tanks are for pussies, and
2. Tanks are expensive things to cut open and spoil, especially since their capital was running a little low by this time.
They wore black wet suits (which just shows how old they were, in these days of day-glow underwater fashions) and carried knifes, this time. Eddie even strapped on his "Snub Nose" spear gun in it's holster. No bike queers were going to take them off this time. They eased on down by the Playas motel, swam out about a mile and headed north. This time they swam WAY the hell up Silver Strand. WAY away from people who hung out in the deserted dunes doing God knows what sort of perversions on God knows what sort of illegal substances from God knows where. It was a nice night and they got into it, churning along out there watching the lights. They swam in at a place that had no lights at all, halfway up to the Hotel Del Coronado. It was about 4:00 AM by the time they touched bottom. And were almost immediately attacked from all sides by a group of silent, athletic men who were also wearing masks and snorkels and in a hell of a lot better shape than themselves. By the time they were ashore and everything was sorted out, mostly by some very gung-ho types using weird little red flashlights to size them up and search their stuff, they had figured out that they'd bumbled into a SEALS night training exercise. The SEALS had pretty much taken them down just as a matter of form, but on the other hand; what sort of people would be lurking ashore in the wee hours, armed and carrying waterproof packs? One look in the packs cleared up that little mystery and the next people involved in the sorting out process worked for the Coronado Police, summoned by a complicated routing of exotic radio gear. By the time the guys got probation, they didn't even want to HEAR about smuggling, drugs, motorcycles, Navy, or tuna. We keep telling them it was just the breaks, but they don't want to talk about it, and are fairly combative about saying so. You should have seen Haskins go off when somebody gave him a T-shirt that said, "Smuggling: It's not just a job, it's an adventure."
|