Have Glove, Will Travel_ Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond - Bill Lee [26]
The crisis occurred during the first week in December: we ran out of pot. I had entered the country with a small stash—two dime bags—in the pocket of the plaid shirt I had worn during our flight. Customs officials did not even look. So many drugs come out of Venezuela, it never occurred to them that anyone would bring any in. The country was like Mexico in that regard. I could have walked through the checkpoint sucking on a joint with Pam wearing slabs of hash as earrings without attracting attention.
You did not have to look for hard drugs in Caracas. Dealers sought you out. One afternoon a slender middle-aged man in a tailored suit, tasseled loafers, and Foster Grant wraparounds approached me outside the ballpark. The Rolex on his wrist looked so heavy, I was surprised he could lift his arm to shake hands. He might have been an Anglo or one of those fair-haired, blue-eyed upper-crust Venezuelans. Could have been from anywhere really. His speech was unaccented, uninflected. A drone without a country. His business card introduced him as an importer of “fine objets d’art from the Orient.” In Venezuela that could have meant anything. Whatever he did, it must have kept him indoors much of the time. He was the only person walking around the city without a tan.
The gentleman had once lived in Montreal and introduced himself as a close friend of my former tenant Alex. Which meant he had something to sell besides jade Buddhas—a pound of top quality cocaine for $10,000. I asked why he wanted to unload his product for less than a quarter of its street value. He explained the coke came from a kilo he had planned to send to New York until the seal on its container broke, making it impossible to ship. Many small-time drug dealers operated in Caracas. They did not wear tailored suits, or thick Rolexes, or tasseled loafers, or Foster Grants. They did moonlight as informants. He feared the police might hear about his stash if he did not transact a sale soon.
Curiosity did not move me to find out why he couldn’t repair the seal or replace the entire container. His story sounded too fishy, and he looked CIA. Anyway, what would I want with a pound of coke? With a stash that large, I would be up and wired every evening, and there is just not that much to do in Caracas after a certain hour. The nightclubs held no allure for me. Had I wanted to party past dawn, we would have stayed in Montreal. All the TV shows broadcast in Spanish without subtitles. The only diversion left at five in the morning was watching dogs screw in the alley behind our building. How long could that keep anyone entertained? I guess quite a while if you’re one of the dogs, but the act gets old quickly when you are only a spectator.
The dealer suggested I could sell the coke to my teammates at a hefty profit. Wasn’t interested. When it comes to drugs, I am a consumer, not a retailer. Besides, I was trying to get back to the majors and wanted to keep my mind and body sound. Hard drugs, most hallucinogens, and liquor, except for the occasional beer, were out.
I excluded pot from my abstinence program. I needed the occasional joint to slow down the thoughts racing through my brain, to relax after a frenzied game. To help maintain focus. I asked one of my teammates where I could acquire a few bags. He recommended two young men who grew marijuana on some land just outside the city.
The next morning I rented a car and drove deep into a canyon and up a short hill until I reached a bluff overlooking the ocean. I found a small farm with only two buildings: a four-room shack and an empty barn with gap-toothed walls. The pens on the property needed new planks and wiring, and although the air carried a whiff of dried manure and urine, I did not see any animals.
A Mutt and Jeff team worked the place. The tall one with the long inky hair pulled back into a ponytail beneath his baseball