Friday, May 20, 2011

A Fishy Tale

"What's in the cooler?" the border guard asked.

"Fish I caught," John answered as he opened the container. The pungent smell of fish filled the small room.

"Close it up," the guard said holding his nose. The drug dogs whimpered at the overwhelming smell. The guard waved him through. John loaded the cooler back into his truck then drove across the border into Texas. By the time he reached Dallas, the fish had defrosted.

He stopped at a deserted building in a rundown section of the city. John messaged his dealers to tell them he had fresh supplies. While he waited for them to show up, he sliced the fish open and removed more than 150 kilos of Mexican cocaine. When the dealers came by to pick up their stashes they dropped off his portion of their sales from the last supply drop.

On the way home, he dropped off the fish at the St. Mary’s Church food kitchen for Friday’s fish dinner. When John got home, he put the money in a safe hidden in his basement then went upstairs to take a shower.

He smiled as the hot water beat against his body and thought about how clever he’d been to hide the drugs in frozen fish. He was so caught up in applauding himself that he didn’t notice the Drug Enforcement Taskforce standing in the doorway.

John turned the water off then reached for his towel. “Freeze,” the lead officer said. “You’re under arrest. Pick up the towel slowly and cover yourself.”

He covered up then turned to face the police. They motioned for him to move to the bedroom and waited for him to get dressed. An officer cuffed him and read him his rights while another placed the fishy clothes into a plastic evidence bag. They led him out of the house then took him to the police station.

“How did you catch me?” John asked the two officers after he settled into a chair in the interrogation room. He was sure one of his dealers had snitched.

“The staff at the church started cutting into the fish and discovered you’d missed a brick. Their security cameras showed you coming and going with the cooler that you left there,” one officer answered.

John smacked himself in the forehead as the other officer said, “I guess what they say is true: no good deed goes unpunished.”

© May 20, 2011

1 comment:

  1. The Twitter fiction that led to this longer piece:

    The patrol waved my smelly frozen fish and I thru. I got to Dallas at 11, the fish and cocaine were defrosted, and by noon I was a rich man.

    ReplyDelete