by Captain Lee
Still, for a while, that time difference had helped me when I was in the restaurant business. I’d get a call from the club’s food and beverage manager telling me that they’d closed their operations, locking their doors when the clock struck 11:00, and that I should expect a busload of customers because it was only 10:00 where I was. Five miles away, one-hour time difference, and a world apart. Still, the Canadians and the French seemed to love Turks and Caicos, and that’s why Alex had wanted to get involved in the hotel. The way he bought in? Cash.
One of the nice things about island living was a streamlined approach to regulation. There just wasn’t a lot of oversight. In most places, if you wanted to make a cash deposit at a bank for over $10,000, the bank was required to ascertain the identity of the depositor and report the deposit. That wasn’t the way it worked in Turks and Caicos. Whether it was greed or naïveté, banks didn’t discourage people from making large deposits. You could bring a half-million dollars in cash inside a suitcase, and the only question you might get asked was the brand of the suitcase.
Of course, that kind of relaxed attitude had a tendency to attract the wrong kind of people. And that kind of people had a tendency to attract the Coast Guard.
I wondered if the Coast Guard cutter might just pull alongside our boat and lay a gangplank across to us for boarding, but they were more militarily efficient. The cutter stayed at our aft, guns trained on us the entire time, while a small Zodiac inflatable launched from their boat loaded with sailors.
“Ahoy there!” the lieutenant in charge of the boarding party said to us.
“Ahoy yourself,” I replied.
“Catch our lines,” he said.
“You need directions or something?” I responded.
“Just making a standard safety inspection,” he said.
We caught their lines and tied them off to the lee side of our boat. Didn’t see as we had much choice. He hauled himself on board.
“You want a tour of the boat?” I asked.
“Actually, it might be easier if we have everyone up on deck. We can find our own way,” he said.
I nodded.
A half dozen Coast Guard sailors boarded Southern Nights, all looking loaded for bear. Flak jackets and M-16s.
“Anybody carrying any weapons?” the lieutenant asked.
We all had pocketknives, but that wasn’t what he wanted. Nobody was armed.
Sure didn’t sound like the kind of thing that you’d ask during a routine safety inspection.
The lieutenant directed four sailors to watch all of us, then he went down below with a couple of his men.
“Think this’ll take long?” I asked the sailor watching me. “Watching” wasn’t quite accurate; “guarding” may have been more precise. The guy was big, over six foot, and though the flak jacket added some bulk, I could tell he probably tipped the scales at over 200 pounds.
He shrugged his shoulders in reply.
“Hey, Al,” I said to the oldest guy that I’d been working with, “this happen to you a lot for this kind of job?”
“No talking,” the sailor in front of me said.
This was looking less and less routine.
It only took a few minutes before the lieutenant returned topside.
“You boys are in a lot of trouble. You know you’ve got a concealed compartment on board?”
Just a simple little weeklong cruise was now: we were fucked.
Note to aspiring sailors: when a platoon of armed Coast Guardsmen boards your boat, you know you got your tit in a wringer.
For a guy with tons of spare cash, with enough scratch to afford such a beautiful boat and an amazing house and the medical science that helped perfect his wife, Alex had apparently gotten us into this mess because of his cheapness.
The man hadn’t been content with just one gorgeous boat—he wanted to buy another one. There was a 55-foot Sea Ray that he had his eye on. He made it clear that he wanted to make an offer, so the owner of that boat called in a surveyor.
A surveyor is an expert at determining the value of a boat. Basically, a surveyor is an appraiser. The owner of the Sea Ray wanted to know how much he should be asking for it during any negotiations with Alex, so he contacted the guy he wanted to use, flew him in to Turks and Caicos, and had him do the job. Simple.
But not quite so simple.
Alex wanted to get Southern Nights appraised, too. That’s something you do for insurance, or in case he wanted to try to sell it, and so on. And the surveyor that his friend had originally hired was good, too. Maybe too good. He was so competent and knowledgeable that, when inspecting the boat, he knew every inch of what that Formosa was supposed to look like. He knew every board, every line, every hatch. So, when he inspected the forward head, he knew there was supposed to be a bathtub there. That’s what that kind of sailboat was supposed to feature. But instead of a bathtub, he only saw a mirror. And, to that surveyor, that didn’t make much sense.
Why would you remove a bathtub, and the space it occupied, to install a bulkhead with a mirror on it? It was a red flag, for sure. If an owner modified his boat in a way that did not enhance its value, then that was suspicious. And this surveyor had incentive to be suspicious.
One of the Coast Guard’s mandates was fighting drugs. They’d run patrols and monitor air and sea traffic, but they also wanted to get regular citizens involved on their side, so they made people an offer. If someone were to turn snitch and report something suspicious about an asset, something like a car or a house or a boat, then that person was entitled to 10 percent of the value of that asset (after sale at auction). That beautiful Formosa was valued at about a half-million dollars, even in 1985. That meant that an enterprising surveyor could earn himself an extra $50,000 just by making a single phone call. And that’s exactly what he did.
Which meant that me and my three crewmates were nose-to-muzzle with a boatload of Coast Guard sailors because our boss decided that he needed to save a couple of hundred bucks on a plane ticket. He didn’t have to put himself, or his boat, at risk. He could have just made a call to a surveyor that he knew and trusted and said, “Hey, get down here to Turks and Caicos. I’ll double your fee if you sign off on the dotted line without inspecting too closely.” It happened all the time. Bribes, kickbacks, generous gratuities—whatever you wanted to call it—it would have still been a hell of a lot cheaper for Alex than losing a boat. But some guys liked to cut corners. Some guys liked the thrill of trying to play an angle. That’s probably why he decided to convert Southern Nights into a drug boat in the first place.
He probably thought he was being really clever. The swabbies from the Coast Guard told us how it worked. There was a tiny hole behind the toilet paper in the head, which, when probed, would release magnets that would open the secret compartment. It was a great place to stash some Mary Jane. All very smart and clever. Had it not been for the surveyor, they probably would never have caught it.
And because of all that cleverness, my crewmates and I were now looking at twenty years in jail if they found anything in that compartment.
“You guys find anything down there?” I asked.
“Not yet,” the lieutenant said.
“Maybe the guy just used that to store his porn,” I said.
“Could be.”
“So, you didn’t find anything. Does that mean we can go now?”
“Nope,” he said, nodding his head toward his cutter. A team of sailors was lining up to come on board Southern Nights, carrying crowbars, knives, and chainsaws. “It just means that we’re going to start looking a little harder.”
Damn.
Drugs were a problem on the island. On the one hand, there was plenty to do: swim, fish, sail, explore. But there was also a lot that you couldn’t do. In 1985, there wasn’t a lot of television. The most sophisticated gaming devices stateside were Ataris and Commodore 64s, and besides what they lacked in advanced graphics, they also lacked in not actually being on the island. So, after swimming and f
ishing a bit, some people enjoyed the sun a bit more or had a bite to eat, and some people tried to stimulate themselves in other ways. Even in paradise, things can get old.
It was, in many ways, kind of miraculous, because on Turks and Caicos, if you couldn’t find drugs, they would come to visit you all on their own! One time, there was some treetop flier, some dope runner bound for Florida or Jamaica or some other place, and he got chased by a Coast Guard interdiction jet. Those drug planes weren’t made for speed, so this ace just dropped his load and tried to get out of there, and that meant that a bunch of bales of plastic-wrapped cocaine ended up washing onto the beach in Turks and Caicos.
For a lot of islanders, Christmas came early (or late—time was, as always, relative on the island). People grabbed as much cocaine as they could carry and buried it in their yards. It wasn’t really considered a horrible taboo to do drugs, but it also wasn’t something anyone wanted to just flaunt, and as a result, people started using it openly, but subtly, by stashing the cocaine in empty canisters of nasal spray.
These nasal sprays were small containers that people would traditionally use to clear clogged and congested nasal passages when suffering from colds, flus, or allergies. And while cold and flu season on a tropical island wasn’t quite as long as in places like Minneapolis or Chicago, you’d have thought that the entire island was in the midst of some kind of outbreak from the number of nasal sprays being deployed on every street. People would fill their little bottles with coke and then, when they wanted a little toot, just take out their nasal spray and do a bump right there. Though, in all fairness, it probably did help clear blocked nasal passages, I’d guess.
I even once saw a guy at a bar carrying a baby’s bottle full of cocaine, where he’d cut the top off, and just sprinkled coke right on the bar to do lines. That kind of brazen use was unusual, certainly, and if done by an expat would have resulted in a rapid one-way trip home, but this is to say that drugs were an issue on the island (as I’d experienced firsthand with my old business partner during my days as a restaurateur), and smugglers were a problem. But I wasn’t a smuggler—I was just a guy working a job for a little cash.
I just wasn’t sure the Coast Guard knew that.
The first few hours, there was nothing to say, and the boat was divided into two crews. One group were the Coast Guard sailors working belowdeck, ripping it to pieces, slicing through mattresses, cutting through bulkheads, prying out fixtures looking for contraband. The other group was topside, a set of armed men keeping an eye on me and the other three guys hired to sail the boat to Nassau. Action below, inaction above. We could hear the sounds of the crowbars, the creak of wood before it splintered apart, and every sound was terrifying, since every creak, tear, and crack told the story of another piece of the ship ripped apart to reveal . . . something. Maybe nothing. But if they found anything, then it would mean the difference between us being treated like dumb lackeys and us being treated like known drug smugglers.
As they were ripping it up, I thought it was a shame that they’d have to destroy all of Alex’s personal things, all his photos and keepsakes. But the more I thought about it, in those hours as they tore it apart, the more I realized that I hadn’t seen anything like that. No pictures of Alex holding up a 50-pound tuna. No photos of Alex and Louisa posing for the camera in front of a beautiful island sunset. No images of any friends or family enjoying the day on a gorgeous boat. For a guy living the life, he was pretty camera shy. This was not a man who wanted people to know his face. And yet, this boat, Southern Nights, was where he’d lived for the first few months in Turks and Caicos while he was having his house built. This was his home. But it was a place that seemed as clean as it was anonymous, as immaculate as it was empty. No fingerprint smudges on the hand-polished wood, and that was apparently for good reasons.
After a few hours of work below, silence above, they took a break, and the sailors brought out food from their galley for everyone. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was good; sandwiches and something to wash it down with.
“What was the name of the guy who hired you?” the lieutenant asked.
“Alex,” I said. No use protecting the guy. I wasn’t part of his posse, I wasn’t some foot soldier for his operation sworn to silence. I was just a guy hired to do a job by someone who didn’t explain the whole story, and who brought a lot more risk to the table than I was prepared for. All for $50 a day.
“Alex? Nah, that’s not right. This Alex is actually Marty,” he said. That made sense. He looked like a Marty.
“Where were you headed?” he asked.
“Nassau,” I said.
He nodded. He knew the answer before he asked the question. He wasn’t trying to get information from me; he was just trying to see if I was holding anything back. I wasn’t.
“We’re not involved in this,” I said, gesturing to the other guys.
“Not for me to say,” the lieutenant replied, taking a bite of his sandwich.
“We’re just taking the boat from one island to another island.”
“Okay.”
“We’re not drug smugglers.”
“You know how I know if you’re drug smugglers?” he asked.
“How?”
“If we find any drugs on board, then you’re drug smugglers.”
I thought to that day on the island where every native was walking around with a nasal spray bottle full of cocaine. Guys would just keep one of those in their pockets, like they were Tic Tacs. What happened if Alex/Marty had something like that? A little, insignificant bottle hidden away in the medicine cabinet or the first aid kit and forgotten? What if they found something like that?
“How many years if you find something?” I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not a lawyer. But at least a year. As much as ten for a first offense, I’d think. So far, it looks empty, but we found one hidden cache, so there’s no reason there can’t be more.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Where are we headed?” I could tell we were moving west, but there were lots of places in that direction.
“Miami. Get comfortable.”
It was about 180 miles to Miami. At the pace we were going, another two or three days at sea while they ripped the boat to pieces looking for evidence to use to send me to jail for a decade.
I kept eating my sandwich, even though I didn’t have much of an appetite.
It was slow going. The cutter could move faster than we could, but they weren’t about to give up their prime position behind us to try to tow us in. They were just guys doing their jobs, and I understood that. At the same time, I got a bit of a kick knowing that their boat was one lousy ride. Coast Guard cutters don’t ride worth a shit. They’re built for speed, built to knife through the water. To reduce drag and weight, they’re built long and narrow, which meant that they keep stable by going fast. When going at a snail’s pace to keep up with us, that boat had to be rocking and rolling all over the place. The sailors on board had to be pissing and moaning the whole way to Miami. Suck it up, cupcake.
The more time they were looking, and finding nothing, the more relaxed I started to feel. These guys weren’t missing anything, judging by the sound of the wood cracking and metal popping. They were thorough. Since they weren’t hitting pay dirt, we relaxed a bit, and that helped the tension ease some more.
One sign that things are going in the right direction: when the men put in charge of holding you at gunpoint start talking shit about the boss. The CO of the boat spent most of his time on the cutter, but every now and then he’d visit Southern Nights and check in. The lieutenant would call him “Charlie Oscar,” since he was the CO. So, I started calling him Oscar Mayer. It got a good laugh, at least when the CO had left. He wasn’t a hard-ass, but he was the boss, and everyone’s sphincter would pucker a bit more when he was on deck. He wouldn’t linger, and when he’d return to his boat, everyone’s posture slumped about two degrees.
“He riding you hard?” I asked.
“Not too bad,” the lieutenant said. “Though he doesn’t always go by the book.”
“That right?”
“You know, back when we were patrolling the US Virgin Islands, we used to make a special stop at St. Thomas, just to replenish the supplies of his favorite ice cream.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. The man just loves his Butter Brickle.”
The Coast Guard patrolling the Virgin Islands makes special ice cream stops to appease the CO’s sweet tooth? No wonder the navy likes to make fun of them for being soft.
Still, it was nice to know that they weren’t hanging us from a yardarm or preparing to keelhaul us, or whatever the Coast Guard typically did to guys they really think were guilty of drug smuggling. I let out my breath in a sigh. We might make it out of this yet.
It took three days for us to get to Miami, and we finally pulled into port at daybreak. I spent the night trying to rest, but having trouble making it happen. It’s kind of hard to sleep when you know that nothing good is coming around the corner. Every little thing wakes your ass up, but you’re in the middle of the ocean. You can’t just go to the front desk and change rooms. The Coast Guard didn’t find any new caches, didn’t find any illicit nasal spray, so they didn’t slap the cuffs on. It was an uneasy passage, but not torturous. We got three squares a day as we made our way, bacon and grits in the morning, sandwiches for lunch, burgers for dinner. It was better than what we had stocked in our galley. Though, to be honest, I’d have preferred to avoid the whole situation, even if it had cost me a few good meals.
They took us to the Miami Coast Guard station for interrogations, three investigators doing the work. I’d expected heavyset guys in bad suits and aggressive mustaches, but the Coast Guard didn’t work that way. Instead, the investigators all wore khaki uniforms with razor-sharp creases. I’d seen enough detective shows to expect some version of good cop/bad cop, but that’s not the way that real interrogations work. They weren’t trying to trick us into a confession. They made no effort to goad us into some kind of confrontation. They just wanted to get us talking. So, they asked me how I knew Alex/Marty, how I got hired for the job, how we all made our way toward Nassau. And after I told them my story? I’d have to retell it. Over and over and over again. They were looking for inconsistencies, things that I might screw up if I was making things up. Lies can be easy to tell, but hard to keep track of. The truth might sometimes be plain, but it was a lot more memorable.
