It was 1986, Billings, Montana, was living there month of April, migrated there all the way from Florida. Chernobyl just happened. In fact if you’re awareness is great, you might know that Chernobyl had more effect/affect on reality than is perceived. That power plant blowup there caused a wave of planetary psychic right on to mental electrochemical in the human brain. It’s the reason leaving Florida am aware of now. That’s another story so back to Billings.
After settling in, renting an efficiency house size apartment, obviously scouted around for work. Of all things seen an ad in a flyer paper distributed in the area. All it said and I’m going to fictitious the store name for privacy, it may even be out of business now: “Truck Work. $1000 Behind Gabe’s Foods.” Knowing where this was from doing day labor a few of the area, I checked it out.
From where I lived was close enough to walk, mostly walked everywhere while there, so to the place I walked. Went around the back walking the access road that was large enough to handle tractor trailers in and out, seen a long truck trailer where four guys were unloading boxes. There was a big car, like a Lincoln over from that, two guys there, one setting in the car using what looked like a mobile phone of the times. The other man had what appeared to be what I’m aware of now a satellite phone. It was large almost looked like a military walkie talkie with a long large knob on on the earpiece end. The dude almost had to handle it with two hands.
That dude with the big phone deal seen me, walked up to me real fast, said, “Are you here for truck work?” I said, “Yeah.” He responded back and get this, pay attention, he took out a roll of money, pulled a bill off, handed it to me, a one hundred dollar bill, “That’s yours to keep, do the job, you’ll have a thousand dollars at the end of the day.”
Semi-stunned from the cash in hand, I said, “okay.” Didn’t have to ask anymore and knew better than that, I just made a hundred bucks walking up the driveway. Walking over to the trailer where the dudes were, all I said was, “Guys where do you want me?” One spoke up, “Up there in the middle. We need someone to roll the boxes down.” Inside they had a wheel box roller that stood on legs with wheels to move it set up. I got up in and simply proceeded to move the boxes down the roller to the end where two guys were unloading them onto a pallet. There was guy setting there with a forklift waiting as well.
Inside at the box end towards the cab two guys were unstacking putting these boxes on the roller. When it became too distant for them, we would attach another roller, move the whole thing cause it had handles that moved down to put the wheels down, we’d roll the whole deal closer to the guys unstacking inside. That’s all I did, just shove the boxes down to the end, many as we could at a time. The boxes were not heavy, no bigger than two foot by one foot by about the same. It was easy.
I knew something was up with this cause nobody was talking. I kept my mouth shut as well, and noticed the two guys outside eyeballing us as well while we worked. About two hours went by we were done. Those four guys left after meeting with the two men, the one that greeted me with the big phone came over, “Come back tomorrow same time” he said, and handed me a stack of cash that was wrapped in a paper band.
Not to flash that money around and didn’t count it, just put in the pants pocket out of sight, walked away back to the residence. After getting there took the money out, counted it, fifteen hundred dollars! Right then I knew something was up, and, that the phone man must have liked it me there, cause he slipped in an extra five hundred dollars. Needless to say I was back there the next day, same all over again, don’t talk, just work. A thousand bucks. For pushing boxes down a roller conveyor.
This, job, to this day no one knew what was in those boxes, it had to be drug related. This was the Miami Vice days, the eighties. All of us that worked there the months it lasted made a tiny fortune. It ended up a guy crew of about ten or so, we all found on the job where who liked what and was best at. Two guys or three unstacking in a walk rotation, me with two more pushing the boxes down, three unstacking at the trailer end, and the forklift guy.
We had other guys show up after I was there, some of them would not stay quiet as they worked, well, at the end of the day that phone man would single him out, say something like, “We got enough here, thanks for your time.” He’d hand him his cash, and then he’d hand him another thousand dollars saying, “Thanks for your trouble coming here, don’t say anything about this to anyone.” When someone hands you a lump of money like that, money talks and it keeps you quiet as well. It worked. Nobody questioned anything, even the guys that were turned away.
Don’t know how much money I made doing this work, it was a big bunch of money in a hurry. The job finally ended one day, phone man told us, “We’re done guys” simply that on a Friday afternoon, sort of a cloudy day. He gave us our cash. Mine when I got back counted it. Five … thousand … dollars. Almost passed out, and I recounted it five times, couldn’t believe it.
The man in the car always on the phone never spoke to us just to mention here, he never said a word to us. It was always the satellite phone man, and I never knew his name or anything. Both men were on those phones constantly while we worked.
That’s it and I still wonder what was in those boxes.