Black Market
They kicked in my door at three in the morning, four goons wearing camouflage overalls and balaclavas. I was flattered such a force was thought necessary to subdue me, but I would have complied had they called ahead or simply rang the buzzer during normal business hours. I suppose their intention was to look scary. That they were, and frightened I was. Four armed intruders, their wardrobes straight off a movie lot, who wouldn’t be?
The girl who’d accompanied me home from the bar was pushed out the door.
“You’re coming with us,” said their leader. “Bob wants to see you.”
We’ll get to him in a moment.
In the hallway they used hand signals, aiming their M16s or AK-47s, whatever those bloody things were, at imaginary enemies, at menacing spirits and lethal dust motes kicked up from the moth-bitten floor coverings. Perhaps they feared the arrival of Pho, the building manager, who must have been eighty years old and slept under the front stairs. Or maybe the full-court press was for Ipo, the cleaning girl. Those rebellious eyes. Her seductively seditious cheekbones.
I was stuffed into a white van idling in the alley. I mention this only because the vanilla-coloured vehicles were favoured by the much-feared Homeland Defence Agency; they were parked all over the city. I always supposed there were special agents behind those tinted windows spying on enemies of the state, studying blurred footage from security cameras mounted just about everywhere.
The vehicle sped away melodramatically. That time of morning, the stupefying tropical heat, who had the energy for a chase? The van sped into the emerald hills, my masked guardians squeezing their weaponry like new girlfriends.
Soon the lights of the city faded to a lone beacon in the distance. We pulled up to the prison gates just as the sun was rising. He was sitting on the hood of a jeep, smoking.
IT WOULD BE easy, she promised, “a walk in the park.” Advance remuneration was deposited into my account and the plane ticket slipped through the mailbox overnight. My associates, if I can call them that, were Noona and Raku, which I assumed were aliases. She introduced him as her husband, but I doubted that, too. There was something incongruous about the way they played off each other.
There was also the matter of Noona’s orchid blossoms. I later learned it was customary for a married woman to wear one behind her left ear, just as a wedding ring is worn on the left hand. In that part of the world, women wearing a blossom behind the right lobe, as she did, were advertising their availability.
By then, my playing days behind me, the only travelling I did was to Vegas. Most of the time I’d be loaded or high; both, most likely. What Raku and Noona were proffering was quite different: smuggling contraband and rolls of U.S. dollars into a country run by gangsters. By guys like Bob.
THE FLIGHT WAS exhausting: eleven hours, non-stop. I was frazzled by the time the plane bounced off the sun-bleached tarmac. A line quickly formed inside the terminal, as several passengers were having their luggage searched. I was waved through; no one even asked for my passport. It was like the Customs official played for our team. I later learned he did.
I’m not going to identify the country; the reason will be addressed in good time. I’m also going to change things around; no real names, that sort of thing. You might say I’m the one being melodramatic now, but you’ll soon meet Bob. You’ll have an opportunity to look into those eyes. Tell me he doesn’t give you the heebie jeebies.
I TOOK A taxi to a designated hotel. My colleagues were waiting in the lobby. In my room Raku went straight for the U.S. dollars, his long, nimble fingers hungrily peeling back the bills, making notations on a scratch pad.
“You’ve done well,” he said.
We sat on the balcony and drank beers from the minibar. Noona hadn’t exaggerated the beauty of the coast. A flat cerulean sea. Beyond the reef, islands wobbling in the heat, teetering at the edge of the earth. Nearer to shore, dhows roiled in the breaking surf. The beachfront road was congested with clumps of sunburned tourists.
When I left Vancouver that morning, it had been the tenth consecutive day of a cold rain.
WE MET AT Eskimo Joe’s, a bar near the campus. It was only mid-afternoon, but I’d already had several drinks. I can’t remember how we started talking, but she made it easy.
“In my language,” said Noona, who was pretty in a conservative sort of way, my name means ‘blue sky.’”
I told her mine.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
She peppered me with questions over a game of billiards: my family, what I was studying, etc. Evidently I possessed the required profile. I was failing most of my courses and wondering how I was going to make rent on my drafty basement suite. Sure, I had parents, but they had bigger problems.
After hearing my tale of woe she mentioned a friend might have work “for someone like you.” She delivered updates at subsequent meetings, but the friend was always out of town on business or otherwise occupied. I was beginning to think she was a lonely housewife looking for kicks.
“Be patient,” she said. “It’ll be worth the wait.”
Noona didn’t seem like a crackpot, so I was agreeable whenever she suggested drinks, which she paid for. She always dressed well, in business suits and low heels, like the vice-president of something, and she was never without an orchid. If it wasn’t planted behind an ear, it was pinned to her blouse, the bold floral musk lingering in whatever space she had vacated.
SHE LED THE conversation; he sat to one side, observing. Like her, he seemed well-educated, with a fluency in English that suggested foreign schooling. Raku laid it all out for me: Their country was run by a military dictatorship.
“People adapt,” he said. “We all find an angle.”
Noona said, “Everyone who works in an official capacity is on the take. There are opportunities. Do you understand?”
“Not really, no.”
“Most people are poor,” she said, “but there’s a small, rich class that craves consumer goods from the West. They want diamond rings and gold bracelets, and they don’t bicker about the price. They also want things like Scotch whisky and anything electronic. They’re status symbols.”
“Why diamonds and gold?” I asked.
“When members of a wealthy family get married,” he said, “the ceremonies are elaborate, expensive gifts are exchanged. Our country has known much war and unrest, so gold has always served as a backup when currencies collapse. It’s psychological, mostly.”
“The military has its hands in everything,” Noona said. “All these items can be purchased in-country, but at exorbitant prices. Black market smuggling is a national pastime.”
“Why don’t the rich jump on a plane and get these things themselves?” I asked.
“An exit visa is required,” she said. “And locals can’t bring these items into the country without paying taxes or bribes, sometimes both. Approaching the wrong official can be dangerous.”
“Our legal tender is a controlled currency,” Raku said. “It’s worthless everywhere else, so people want U.S. dollars. It’s also why tourists love to visit: Most everyday things are inexpensive.”
“Where do I fit into all of this?” I asked. “I don’t have any of the stuff on your list.”
“Tourists can bring in just about anything,” Noona said. “Expensive items are noted in the passports of suspected smugglers. If they aren’t carrying them when they leave, they’re arrested.”
“You’ll carry two suitcases,” Raku said, “one containing your own things, and one we’ll pack and deliver to you. We’ll also want you to carry some U.S. money.”
Noona and Raku would sell everything I delivered through their network of wealthy contacts, friends, and family members. I’d be paid a fixed but generous amount per suitcase.
“So I’d be your delivery boy,” I said. “A mule.”
“A courier,” Noona said. “You won’t be carrying drugs, I promise. Our country exports them.”
“But the items I arrive with will be noted in my passport.”
“We have people in Customs who will facilitate your entry,” Raku said.
I asked what would happen if I got caught. After all, they weren’t paying me for nothing.
“You won’t be caught,” he assured me.
“But what if?” I persisted.
“You’d go to prison,” Noona said.
“For how long?”
“Like you say,” Raku said. “We aren’t paying you for nothing.”
THINGS MOVED FAST after that night. My life changed; I changed. Once the pre-packed suitcase had arrived, Noona would call again and we’d go through a checklist. The U.S. currency I carried in a waist pack was usually $25,000, but sometimes it was bumped up to $50,000. Did I ever consider disappearing with the cash? You bettcha.
Every once in a while I had to go through passport control without dealing with our guy on the payroll – why, I don’t know. I played it straight and declared the larger items, as some gifts were permitted, but everything else was hidden. Diamonds were sewn into the seams of clothes, and there were more diamonds and gold on the jewelry I wore. I had a fake press pass identifying me as a travel writer, which allowed me to enter the country with as many cameras as I could carry. Photography was a popular hobby of the country’s idle class.
“If our guy at the airport is reassigned at the last minute, if he becomes ill or is involved in a traffic accident,” Raku said, “you’re on your own.”
The more runs I made, the more that possibility concerned me. I began to perspire as soon as the plane entered the country’s air space, convinced the longer I went without getting caught, the sooner I would be. By the time I reached the luggage turnstile my heart would be pounding. It seemed odd to me that others couldn’t hear it.
Back at the hotel I’d toss back a few beers and smoke a joint, whatever it took to settle my rattled nerves. I reminded myself the alternative was another Canadian winter. I had been a lousy student and mildly talented athlete; if it wasn’t for this gig, I might be residing under an overpass somewhere in the Great White North slurping soup from a can and rolling my own cigarettes.
“Any questions?” Noona would ask before I left for the airport. I had plenty, but I knew better than to ask. The first would have been the one any right-minded person should have posed at the interview: What happened to the guy who was doing the job before me?
I APPLIED FOR and received a resident’s visa. I rented a flat; it was much cheaper and a lot more fun living over there. I returned to Canada once a month or so to reload and check my bank balance; I was paid in Canadian dollars.
I lived in Wonju, the entertainment district. The bars and clubs were like nothing I’d ever experienced. The girls were particularly friendly to foreigners who, compared to them, seemed unimaginably prosperous.
I was careful who I mixed with, and I didn’t let myself get too tight with anyone, as Noona had advised, but I couldn’t refrain from bringing girls back to my place. Sure it was dumb, and dangerous, too, but I was young, and I’d never had that kind of money. Waking up to a couple of beauties in the bed can go to a lad’s head.
I didn’t give anyone my phone number, and I never brought home the same girl twice. Miraculously, I never brought home a social disease either.
DESPITE THE CAROUSING, the girl I really liked was Ipo, who cleaned the flats in my building. She spoke English haltingly, but she was shy, and every time we were together she was scrubbing a floor or doing a laundry. She’d acknowledge me bashfully, but then resume the drudgery. Unlike the others, she didn’t seem to want anything.
Pho, the building manager, was her boss. He noticed my interest.
“Ipo hard worker,” he said. “Big heart, good cook, nice ass.”
His gums were stained red from masticating the leaves of the betel nut, a mild and widely used stimulant. He smiled a lot, and when he did, it looked like he had a mouthful of blood. Besides offering a light buzz, users believed chewing the leaves helped expel wind, kill intestinal worms, and kindle passion. They just made me sleepy.
Once she felt comfortable around me, and me her, Ipo began cleaning my flat last, allowing us to hang out, maybe share a pot of noodles before she headed home. Sometimes while working or hanging out she’d sing children’s lullabies. Of course I didn’t understand the lyrics, but I didn’t have to: She had a lovely voice. I found myself humming the melodies as I went about my business.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked her.
She looked particularly alluring that day. Her hair was elaborately braided. There was a fresh orchid pinned behind the right ear.
She consulted phrase books and dictionaries, finally managing to say, “My family is seeking a match.”
“How’s that going?”
“The search continues,” she said. “And you?”
“I’m doing my own research.”
One day Ipo pulled a pair of skimpy panties from my laundry basket and tossed them at me. I had no memory of who had left them behind.
“You’ve been busy,” she said.
I was getting used to her scrambling nouns and verbs, but I wasn’t accustomed to a girl getting jealous over me. I’m no Ryan Reynolds.
I leaned in and planted a wet one on those delicious lips, an impulse smooch, expecting it to mend the indiscretion. Big mistake. Different strokes for different folks, and all that. She pulled away as though I had violated her, then punched me in the mouth. The blow sprained her thumb and cracked my dental plate, but it was worth it. I’d always wondered if she cared for me. Now I knew.
I FELL IN with a group of expats who hung out at a riverfront bar called Boom-Boom’s. Most of them were Americans, but there were also several Europeans and a couple of Aussies. The membership changed weekly; I was the only Canuck. None of us had any visible means of support nor had to be up in the morning, which meant we all probably worked the market. I learned quickly not to ask personal questions.
The central figure in this little group was Duncan, an American who was married to a local gal and who was several decades older than the rest of us. He wore a headband and an earring, a flower child lost in a time warp. His forearms were plastered with faded nautical-themed tattoos.
“We all have our favourite costumes,” he once said in his quiet southern drawl. “The one we choose to wear is meant to distract from the one we don’t want others to see.”
Duncan referred to people as “cats,” and he “dug” the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, lengthy passages of which he could recite from memory. Someone told me he had fought in the Vietnam War and just never made it home. He was a kitten of a man, Duncan was; I found it hard imagining him fighting a head cold.
Initially our exchanges were cordial but truncated. He warmed up after one of the others (in my absence) mentioned I had played some pro baseball. We both followed whatever sports news we could get in the International Herald Tribune, and we were soon yammering far into the night, as only sports fans can, about pennant races and player stats. Pressed, I told him I’d been decent on the sandlot but released at the conclusion of my second season as a spare outfielder in the lowly Gulf Coast League. It didn’t matter to him that my batting average rarely exceeded my weight.
“You were a pro is what matters,” he said, “every kid’s dream. Far fucking out, man.”
HE URGED ME to learn the language. He had, and after a decade or so, he could speak it better than some of the natives.
“It’ll make your life here a lot easier,” he said. “People will appreciate the effort. But don’t let everyone know you understand the lingo. You’ll be surprised to hear what’s being said about you.”
I took his advice and picked up some books and language tapes. Ipo felt bad about my dental plate and offered private classes. In return, I taught her English. For our first lesson we made a grilled cheese sandwich, the national dish of Canada’s working class. It was pretty obvious she wasn’t impressed.
I GOT MY first glimpse of Bob in Boom-Boom’s. I gather the military divided the spoils, as he extorted the bars and restaurants in Wonju without competition. He reminded me of General Manuel Noriega, the late Panamanian strongman: short and stocky with a pockmarked face.
“Over here,” said Duncan, “every neighbourhood has a Bob.”
It was a busy night. Four or five of us expats had just shared a bong on the patio when Bob and his boys barged in through the front doors. They pulled the plug to the jukebox and switched on the lights. Patrons started screaming; everyone was ordered back to their seats. The loudest bar in town became so quiet you could hear water slapping the hulls of the taxi dhows lined up along the riverbank. Bob circulated, randomly demanding documents.
“If he asks, give him what he wants, but look away,” Duncan said. “Looking someone like him in the eyes represents a challenge to his authority.”
Bob gave our table a pass, though he scrutinized each of us. He acknowledged Duncan with a nod before continuing on into the kitchen. When he left, there was a thick brown envelope stuffed into his back pocket. The lights were dimmed and the jukebox reconnected. Boom-Boom’s was back in business.
AFTER ABOUT FIVE years on the job it occurred to me that the suitcases I was bringing into the country every month had room for more contraband. Why not monetize the empty space? And why tell Raku and Noona? Wasn’t I taking most of the risk? I had gotten to know a lot of people by then, all of whom wanted something from the West. Marlboro cigarettes, an eight-slice toaster; I’d been compiling a list.
On my next trip back to Canada I put the word out to a fella I knew, and in no time I was getting calls from people wanting to sell their jewelry. Many were divorcees trying to unload wedding rings and necklaces, but most were professional thieves, and most thieves are junkies. I’d arrange to meet the sellers in a public place near a shop where I’d have the merchandise appraised; I tipped the owner to keep his evaluations favourable. Much of what I purchased was sold for ten times what I paid. It sure beat working for a living.
About two years into my little scheme, disembarking for my monthly delivery, I noticed our teammate in Customs wasn’t fielding his position. I was instructed to place my luggage on a table and step back. The substitute officer ran his hands along the insides of both suitcases and examined a few items of clothing. It had never gone this far previously.
“Okay,” he said.
That’s when he noticed my duty-free bags on the floor. There were three boxes containing 26-ounce bottles of Johnny Walker Black Label, all perfectly legal. One was a gift for Pho; the second was for Ipo’s father. I planned to keep the third bottle for myself.
“Put the bags up here where I can see them,” the officer said. His words carried a sharp edge.
In one of the boxes – I didn’t know which, as they were identical – I had strapped about a dozen watches around the bottle, the most expensive timepieces I could find. If they were discovered, everything would be confiscated, including the U.S. currency. The watches I had strapped from my ankles to my knees would be found, and then the gold bracelets that ran from my wrists to my elbows. This would lead to a second forage through my luggage. They’d shine a flashlight up my bum.
The officer removed the first bottle and upended the box: nothing. He did the same with the second: nothing. Tourists behind me in the lineup were beginning to grumble. The Customs officer didn’t bother looking inside the third.
“Enjoy your stay,” he said.
AT THE PRISON, Bob waved me through a sliding steel door; a couple of his flunkies, one of them older than me, the other younger, followed. It was like time-travelling to an earlier century, a bastille with poor lighting and a crushing humidity. I could hear a bedlam of screams and sobs. The whack of a bamboo cane across some unlucky bastard’s back.
The guards carried rifles and wore ammunition bandoliers. Bob led, the heels of his boots striking the stone floor like cracking walnuts. As we marched the length of the cellblock I could see the noses and fingers of inmates poking out from door slots. One of them was an expat Brit I had met at Boom-Boom’s; Nigel, I think his name was. We’d all wondered what had become of him.
We stopped outside a cell door. The lead guard looked at me and jerked his head; he wanted me to look inside.
It was dark, but I could make out water streaming from a faucet high up the wall, filling the cell like a bathtub. A man was riding a stationary bicycle mounted atop an elevated platform. The prisoner was pedalling frantically, bent forward. I couldn’t see his face.
Bob began speaking, but in a dialect I had trouble understanding. The young guard translated.
“This man is a black marketeer. Each revolution of the wheel activates a pump, so he must pedal to stay alive. He refuses to identify his colleagues. My men are searching for his family now. If we can’t find a sibling, we’ll arrest his parents. If they’ve gone into hiding, we’ll find an uncle, a distant cousin, whatever is required to flush the pond and find the fish.”
Bob stepped forward and raised his hand. The young guard stopped talking.
“There’s always someone, sonny boy,” Bob said in reasonably good English, his pitted mug so close to mine I could smell the garlic he’d had with breakfast. “A girlfriend, maybe?”
I was careful not to meet his eyes.
We moved to the adjacent cell. It was filled with water; the bicycle was half-submerged. I could make out a body, a woman’s, floating face down. Strands of hair had come undone, coiling around her skull like eel grass. A lone orchid blossom drifted nearby. My knees began to wobble. I was too frightened to weep. How I didn’t piss myself I do not know.
The guard resumed the translation: “As long as the cyclist continues pedalling, the water drains. In these temperatures, everyone tires.”
We reversed course. As we passed one of the cells an inmate reached through the bars, trying to touch me; it might have been Nigel. The older guard rushed forward and pounded the poor bugger’s wrist with the butt of his rifle. I thought I heard a bone crack.
“You will continue carrying goods from Canada, as before,” the translator said. Bob was facing in the opposite direction, whispering into his ear. “You will receive a list of items, but you will not deliver them to your associates. You will deliver them to me.”
At the end of the corridor, a cell door swung open.
“As you can see, sonny boy,” Bob, facing me, said, “we have a vacancy.”
I BOOKED THE first available flight home, piling into a cab on a dreary Vancouver morning. The streets were slick with rain. My career as a smuggler was over. At an all-night drugstore I took one of those do-it-yourself blood pressure exams. I showed the results to the pharmacist, who recommended I visit the closest emergency ward.
I did return to the country, but for the first time in many years, without contraband. In my hasty exit I had left things behind. I wanted to settle my affairs and say my goodbyes.
At my flat the dishes were stacked in the sink and my clothes hadn’t been laundered. Pho was usually asleep on his futon under the stairs by sundown. Tenants avoided rousing him unnecessarily. I couldn’t wait.
“Pho no see her few days,” he said. “Pho much worry.”
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
I USED THE money I’d saved to buy a car, return to school, and put a down payment on a condo. If you can believe it, after graduating I became a marketing rep. My costume was an off-the-rack suit. My life in every way was unremarkable. I got married. We had kids.
I often think about those years; how couldn’t I? The person I have become can’t believe I was once so reckless. That I was such a royal asshole.
I still have nightmares about those days, a kind of after-charge, I suppose, for my transgressions. All these years later I can smell the garlic on Bob’s breath, and I’ll see her limp body bobbing in the fetid pool. I’m sliding along the corridor, trying to grab onto something. The cell door opens, and in I go, swallowed by the abyss.
The therapist I talked to said time would take care of the problem. My doctor prescribed a sedative for when it didn’t. Sometimes I had the impression they both thought I was making this shit up.
“These memories,” my doctor said, “will probably leave like migrating birds.”
But like migrating birds, bad memories sometimes return to the same feeding grounds. When I have the nightmare, I begin to shake. The cell door swings open, I cry out. On nights I can’t get back to sleep, my wife will rock me in her arms. If that doesn’t work, she sings me a lullaby.
On winter weekends when it is too cold to go outside, we like to put on the old 78s and turn up the volume on the record player and listen to Paul’s deep voice fill the house. My father sits there on the couch, clenching his fists in a militant way. My own son plays on the floor with his marbles, quietly taking it all in. When the music is finished, we put the records back in the cardboard album with the autograph pasted in the front, and my son puts his collection of marbles away in an old purple bag.
