Robert Mason - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

“You aren’t a pussy?”

“No, sir!”

“Let me hear it, then!”

“I am not a pussy, sir!”

“What?”

“I am not a pussy, sir!”

I wasn’t humiliated that men made me drop my pants (Army training is good for something). I was humiliated that I’d gotten caught. There was nothing these guys could do to make me feel worse.

I dropped my pants on the floor, pulled down my underwear, and bent over. “Spread your cheeks,” said the marshal. I reached back and pulled my buttocks apart. I looked at the man behind the desk, the man in charge. He looked down at his desktop. The room was silent as the marshal checked me out. I think this was a kind of staring match: the marshal stared at me, and I, I presume, stared back. I think I was supposed to break down with embarrassment and tell them what they wanted to know. Moments later, the marshal said “He’s clean” to the man behind the desk.

I stood up and faced the cop behind the desk.

“You can pull your pants back on, Mr. Mason,” he said. He pulled a cord, opened the Venetian blinds behind him as I pulled up my pants. The ten o’clock sun was blazing down on a parking lot. We were in a government building near the federal court building in Charleston. A woman, dressed in the kind of professional clothes for women designed to mimic men’s suits, was leaning into her car to put her briefcase down. I zipped my fly.

“Have a seat,” the man said, nodding toward a chair in front of his desk.

I nodded and sat down. The guy looked at papers on his desk. He and the rest of the cops were dressed in business suits. I was wearing salt-stained, stiff, smelly jeans, two crusty shirts, and a pair of damp running shoes. I hadn’t washed for days. The freezing weather had made bathing impossible. I needed a shave.

“Says here you refused to cooperate with the arresting officers,” the head cop behind the desk said, looking up from the papers.

“I didn’t refuse,” I said. “I told them I wanted to cooperate. I still do. I just think I’d be smart to have an attorney with me when I do.”

“Bullshit!” said the Treasury agent, standing up to hover over me. “You don’t want to help us. You’re protecting your friends. You’re a lowlife drug smuggler; and now, when we give you a chance to prove you have a conscience, you continue breaking the law by protecting other criminals.”

“All I know is that the three of us were definitely on the Namaste . I have no idea where anybody else was. That’s the truth.” And it was, technically. I did know where the shore team was supposed to be, but that’s all I knew. Where were they actually? I hadn’t a clue.

“Okay,” said the head cop. “Let’s say that’s true. Tell us who was in the shore team.”

“I don’t know. I was just a crew member. Nobody told me anything.’’

The Treasury guy nodded. He looked frustrated. I presumed he’d heard this before; they’d already interviewed John and Ireland. “How did you get the money to the Colombians?”

“I don’t—”

“Give us a break, Mason!” the Treasury agent yelled. “You know plenty. You know enough to help us. Do you realize how much money is being sent to these countries by guys like you? Do you?”

I shook my head.

“Millions of dollars every day. It’s a disaster. U.S. currency is being drained from circulation and poured into the pockets of organized crime.”

I felt the urge to tell him that if we didn’t have such ridiculous drug laws, this weed we now pay millions for would be effectively worthless and nobody’d be smuggling it; or if they let American farmers grow it, we could tax it and keep the profits here. The law and drug smugglers have one thing in common: neither wants marijuana legalized. But this wasn’t an after-dinner political debate. This was a routine post arrest interrogation. These guys had probably tried pot themselves; they probably thought the laws were stupid, too. They were just doing their jobs. “That’s a shame,” I said.

The Treasury guy glared at me and turned to the head cop and shrugged. The head cop looked at me and then at the marshal and the state cop, the same guy who’d brought me here. Everybody was shrugging, saying, Well, we tried. It isn’t like the old days, you know, when they could beat the shit out of you and you would talk. Now they can only try to scare you. Anything you say without an attorney is a gift for the law. The head cop looked at me and said, “Mr. Mason, you’re going on trial soon. Now, unless you change your attitude, I will report in your arrest record that you were totally uncooperative. You will be charged with smuggling marijuana, possession of marijuana, and possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute marijuana. Three major felonies. You’re looking at forty years, and that’s just the federal charges. The state wants you, too, for all the same charges.” The cop stared at me for a second. “You sure you want your record to show that you are unrepentant, uncooperative?”

“You can do what you want. It’s your record. I’m not talking about this without an attorney. I can’t believe you don’t understand that. I’ve never been in this much trouble in my whole life. I’m amazed you think I should just spill my guts without legal counsel. You’d demand to have an attorney present if you were sitting here.”

The cop nodded slightly and said, “You can go.” He looked at the cop who’d brought me in. “Okay, Fred. Take him to the holding tank.”

Fred nodded and I walked to the door. He opened it and I walked out into a hallway. Fred pointed ahead and we walked.

“Man, you really stink of marijuana,” Fred said.

“Wow,” I said. “I wonder how that happened.”

Fred laughed. Just a regular guy.

Fred drove me a couple of blocks to the federal court building. We walked in the front door, Fred dressed for work, me dressed like a street bum who’d been sleeping in these reeking clothes for two weeks. We walked by some people getting their mail at the first-floor post office and climbed the stairs to the third floor. Fred escorted me down the hall to a cage set off the hallway like a coffee-break room except with bars on the door. John and Ireland sat on benches inside the cage.

They looked terrible. No wonder people think criminals are a dirty bunch. If I hadn’t known them, they would’ve made me nervous.

A deputy came up to us and Fred told him to let me in.

As soon as the door closed, John asked Fred, “Do you smoke?”

“Naw,” Fred said.

“Damn. I got to have a cigarette, man.” John jerked his head toward me. “Bob, too.”

I nodded.

Fred shrugged. “Okay, give me some money and I’ll buy you some.”

John jammed his hand into his pocket and immediately laughed. “Nice joke—ah, what is your name, anyway?”

“Fred.”

“Funny, Fred. You guys took all our money.”

Fred smiled. “Okay, I’ll lend you a couple of bucks. I mean, I can see you’re a trustworthy bunch.” He turned and walked away.

John and I chain-smoked a pack of Salems, the brand Fred figured everybody smoked. Ireland sat slumped on a bench, trying to nap. He’d been complaining about his stomach.

I sat next to Ireland, tired but not even a little sleepy, watching John pace back and forth in the eight-by-eight-foot cell.

“So what did you tell them?” John asked.

“I told them Bob and I were crew members on the boat, you were the captain.”

“That’s it? I mean, you tell them where we came from, anything like that?”

“Nope. Nothing else.”

He turned to Ireland. “You didn’t say anything, right?”

Ireland grimaced and clutched his stomach with both hands. “No, man.”