Friday, July 08, 2005

The port of entry at Douglas had been built long enough that the main building was deemed historical and remained pretty much untouched when the new port was built around it. Now dust blew in through the 1930 windows and all over the new floors and the the computers. The old guard were reaching retirement age and had pretty well been ignored by the young inspectors for some time. Immigration and Customs did not get along which was a turf war at most any port along the border north or south. There had been threats to unify the two but the fact that they held such different responsibilities pretty much kept that from happening. The one thing that Immigration and Customs had in common at Douglas was that their agencies suspected a large number of inspectors there of being corrupt. Many were from the local Douglas area and had friends and family on both sides of the line. An outsider would look at that an immediately draw that conclusion because the special agents who were the watchdogs of such things would assure them that there was evil there.

When Eric Simmons transferred in from Laredo, Texas he would get it from both sides. The locals would suspect him of being an Office of the Inspector General plant to spy from the inside while the agents from O.I.G. would suspect him of being corrupt because why would he want to come to Douglas? Eric had worked for the I.N.S. for twelve years and he knew the games. He already had a file with O.I.G. complete with pictures of him in a whorehouse in Nuevo Laredo. The agents always laughed because they saw what they thought was a fool waving into the informant's camera. He laughed because he knew the picture would end up in the file. He always wondered if the breasts of the two whores has somehow been covered when the picture was placed in the file. He never asked because he didn't want them to know he knew. Even after he was called in for an interview when the informant was found dead and the film in his camera was developed to show pictures of the man begging for his life before being shot to death.

Comments:
I just came across your blog--Very insightful musings you have here.
 
Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]