I’d spent months tracking the cocaine trade from small-time street dealers to their suppliers, and I wanted to go all the way up the food chain and get the whole story. But all I had come up with so far was a busted head and a pair of borrowed sneakers. What I needed was a different approach.
Thanks to a crash course in undercover work from a cop friend, I eventually was able to pass myself off as an ex-convict looking for some easy money. Over the course of the next three months, I learned a lot about the drug business and could even tell the weight of a gram of coke just by feel. But the hardest part was keeping up with the constantly changing street lingo. It’s not just the names for all the drugs, but I had to know the latest slang for everything from the quantity and price of drugs to ordering a drink. A bartender can hang a jacket on an undercover man faster than anyone.
I got to know most of the dealers and suppliers in Baltimore and bought enough of their wares to convince them I wasn’t a narc-I hoped.
I was just leaving my apartment one chilly night when a supplier named Whitey came up behind. “Word is you’re looking for a payday,” he said in a coarse whisper. “But, hey, ain’t we all? Let’s pull in here for something to warm us up.”
Whitey was about forty years old, blond, and watchful. He had a ruthless reputation that kept his street dealers in line. If anyone ever crossed him, there wouldn’t be a second time.
Even though the weather was cold and windy, sweat ran down the back of my neck as we entered the Komoto Club. I tried to remember anything that might have made Whitey suspicious. Had someone recognized me from my days as a reporter with the old Washington Tribune?
The Komoto was a favorite hangout among Baltimore’s criminal element. Whitey steered me to a corner table in the rear and ordered us both a double Jack Daniels. We waited in silence until the bartender delivered our drinks.
“Yo, what do you know about boats and shit like that?”
Whitey’s question caught me by surprise. That kind of casual conversation just doesn’t happen in the drug world. Strictly business and that’s it. There’s an unwritten law about not asking questions, and no one offers any information about themselves.
I took a thoughtful sip of my drink before telling him I’d worked on a charter boat out of Annapolis before ending up in the state prison at Jessup.
Whitey’s eyes scanned the dimly lit bar for anyone who might be close enough to overhear and leaned toward me. “I got what you might call a situation,” he said. “And maybe you could help me out and do yourself some good at the same time.” He paused. “You know a big supplier named Sketcher?”
I tried to look indifferent even as my heart rate accelerated. But Whitey’s words had triggered a small earthquake under my chair. I reached for my glass, barely able to keep my hand from jerking as I bent to take a drink. Then I shook my head.
“Well, me and him did business together for a few years, until he got greedy and got himself paid off for good,” Whitey said. “Now I got a shot at taking over his operation, and I need somebody who knows about boats to help me move stuff up the bay.”
Sketcher had been one of the area’s biggest wholesalers in the drug trade, and I’d tried to get close to him for a long time. He was to have been an unwitting key source for my exposé on dope smuggling in the bay area, but that hadn’t worked out. Maybe Whitey’s ambition to move up was the break I needed.
Three days later, Whitey and I drove to St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland. I rented a waterman’s cottage on St. George Island, a tiny, two-square-mile community with a few dozen residents. Whitey checked into a motel in Leonardtown where he introduced me to a couple of small-time crooks who had worked for Sketcher a few years back. Whitey explained that when a drug shipment came up the Chesapeake, my job was to collect the drugs by boat and wait at my place for him to come get it. I’d be well paid for one night’s work about twice a month.
Whitey said it would take a couple of weeks to get things set up. He drove back to Baltimore. I began searching the want ads for a used boat, something that wouldn’t draw too much attention.
On my way to look at boats, I drove across the causeway to Piney Point so I could return Bill Newhouse’s sneakers. He seemed glad to see me again, and over coffee told me where I could get a good deal on an old deadrise workboat.
Next day I took delivery. The previous owner, Newhouse told me, built the forty-foot craft in 1949 and used it to dredge oysters and harvest crabs for nearly sixty years. The boat was powered by a government-surplus GM six-cylinder diesel engine still in good shape, but her wooden hull and decking needed some work. I renamed her the Lady Janette and set about making repairs and repainting. I wish it had been so easy to patch up her namesake.
I was washing out paint brushes one sunny afternoon when Whitey called. A shipment of cocaine was coming up the Chesapeake that night and would be stashed in a duck blind along the southern shore of Taylor Cove. My first job.
I put the Lady J through her paces getting to know the area, located the drop point, then headed home for supper. About three in the morning, I took the Lady J out again. Even though the night was clear with a nearly full moon, I had a hard time finding the cache anchored among the reeds and grasses along the shore. The duck blind was an eight-foot flat-bottomed boat with a camouflaged pop-up canopy that blended in with its surroundings. It was an ingenious set-up with a whisper-quiet electric motor so it could be moved from one secluded spot to another.
I hefted the duffle bag from the blind into the Lady J and headed back to my cottage. I covered my illicit cargo with a tarp and some coils of rope and brewed a pot of strong coffee. Whitey was supposed to meet me and take the drugs to a stash house, but by late morning he hadn’t shown. If something went wrong, I sure didn’t want to be left holding a load of coke worth millions.
Repeated phone calls to Whitey went unanswered, so I decided to examine the duffle bag’s contents. Instead of cocaine, I found about forty plastic-wrapped packets of powdered chalk like the stuff used to mark boundaries and baselines on athletic fields. Was this a test to see if I could be trusted or was Whitey being double crossed? Either way, I was in a fix.
I couldn’t think what else to do, so I decided to stay in character and act the part of a pissed-off ex-con. I waited until ten o’clock at night and put the duffle bag in the trunk of my car then drove to a roadside bar where Whitey and his crew often went.
I pulled into the parking lot and backed my Honda up to Whitey’s Mercedes convertible. The afternoon had been unusually warm, and he’d left the car’s top down. I took the bag from my trunk, ripped it open with my seaman’s knife, and emptied the contents into Whitey’s front seat. I took a few minutes to work up my nerve and stomped into the roadhouse like I had a chip on my shoulder as big as a railroad tie.
I spotted my quarry at the bar with his back to me. I scanned the shabby, dimly lit room for Whitey’s thugs and didn’t see them. I made straight for Whitey, grabbed his shoulder with my left hand, and spun him around on the stool to face me. I drew my right arm back, making a tight fist, and unleashed a roundhouse punch that landed solidly on the startled man’s jaw. My hand hurt like hell. I stepped back and let him get up so he’d know who had clocked him. He recovered quicker than I expected and tried to tackle me on the run. I landed three or four hard blows on his head and shoulders before we both crashed to the rancid, beer-spattered floor. I rolled out from under him and started to push myself up on one knee when I felt a jolt on the back of my head, and that kaleidoscope exploded again.