Border guard : $b The story of the United States Customs ServiceWhitehead, Don
History
Border guard : $b The story of the United States Customs Service
Whitehead, Don
Customs administration -- United States; Smuggling -- United States; United States. Bureau of Customs; United States. Division of Customs
At 10 A.M. the following day, May 27, Polcuch and Halvorsen left their
hotel and took a taxi to San Francisco’s Chinatown. They stepped out in
front of a four-story building which appeared to be a Chinese rooming
house. They walked up three flights of stairs without encountering
anyone. On the fourth floor they saw a Chinese man walking down the
hallway.
Halvorsen said, “Can you help us?” He showed the Chinese the note
bearing the name of Lew Gar Kung Saw. The Chinese pointed to the end of
the hallway. The room appeared to be a clubroom. There were lounging
chairs, a large sofa, and several tables with chairs. At one of the
tables sat an elderly Chinese reading a Chinese-language newspaper. The
man looked up as Halvorsen and Polcuch entered.
Halvorsen handed him the slip of paper and said, “We’re trying to find
this man. We were told to meet him here.” The Chinese glanced at the
name and nodded. He told them to sit down and then he went to a wall
telephone, where he began dialing several numbers. He seemed to be
having trouble locating Lew Gar Kung Saw.
Polcuch glanced at Halvorsen and winked. “Nervous?” he said in a low
voice. Halvorsen grinned for the first time in days. “Yes,” he said,
“aren’t you?”
Polcuch nodded and lit a cigarette. “You’re doing fine. Just keep it up
and everything will be all right.”
Polcuch knew how the kid felt. No matter how many times you played this
game, you never knew what was going to happen next. One false move
and you blew the whole case, often without knowing why. Halvorsen was
old enough to know the dangers. Now that the pressure was on, he was
handling himself even better than Polcuch had reason to expect. His
hands trembled a bit, but that was the only sign of inner excitement
and fear. He hoped the boy would be as steady later as he was now. He
had been coached on what to say and what to do under every possible
contingency--but this was tricky business even for a veteran agent.
Perhaps the best of the agents were good because they had something
of the ham actor in them. Day after day they were called on to assume
false identities and to act the part of an underworld character in the
drama of the hunters and the hunted. The only difference between this
sort of acting and the theater was that this was not to amuse or to
entertain the audience. A part was played to protect the people and the
Treasury of the United States from thieves, looters, corrupters and
chiselers. If you made one false move or spoke one unconvincing line,
then the curtain came down. The play was over.
There was the time when one veteran Customs undercover agent worked
his way into the confidence of a gang of big-time narcotics dealers
whose operation was a multi-million-dollar business. He gave up his
own identity and his own life to play the role of a narcotics dealer.
He played his part so well that he gained the confidence of the man
suspected of being the mastermind of the operation in New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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