Hauling Alcohol

Hauling Alcohol

       Doug Diddly Doug

Normally, the shipment would have arrived at Emerson Customs at about three o’clock, been checked through by three-thirty, and gotten to Grand Forks two hours later. Here it would be stored in a Seagrams warehouse in the industrial area near the bus depot and the train yard along with a thousand other truckloads of whiskey. Distribution to parts of the USA occurred physically from this warehouse but the paperwork was done in more sumptuous offices downtown near the good restaurants and hotels.

       The absence of truckload Reimer Express 4DA2002 was first noticed by warehouse maintenance personel. A truck was supposed to arrive at a certain hour in the afternoon, and his job, Ronnie’s job, was to have the doorway area empty, for when it honked it had to be admitted immediately. That was the policy. The doorway  must not have in it boxes, flats, machinery such as the forklift, nor the personal effects of workers. The forklift must stand ready to receive, unload and deliver barrels of whiskey to their designated storage compartments in the various corners of the building, but it must under no circumstances interfere with the truck’s arrival and entrance.

       Ronnie had done his job. The floor stood ready and clear. The clearance papers were in a folder under his arm. The shelves for receipt of the barrels had been checked and approved. The only thing left was the arrival of the truck. It did not arrive at five-thirty. Ronnie wished to be home for supper at six. It did not arrive at six. Nor was it there at six-thirty. By now Ronnie had gone from expecting some sort of mechanical problem to suspecting foul play. Suddenly, he knew what he needed to do. He walked to the red phone by the office door, a phone to be used only in emergencies, and pressed the button that would alert the Seagrams manager.

       The manager arrived within fifteen minutes. Ronnie and he conferred. The manager called customs. They confirmed within a few minutes that the three-thirty had not been through. Customs notified the RCMP. They sent out a cruiser from the Emerson and one from the Winnipeg detachments. Local constabulary in Altona, Gretna, Morris, St. Jean and St. Agathe, as well as Steinbach, Winkler, Morden, Horndean, Plum Cooley, Vita, Letellier, and Portage la Prairie were also requested to assist in what was increasingly beginning to look like a crime.

       Laurence Dyck was the driver of the truck. He had been hired by Seagrams to do some roofing on one of their storage facilities at their distillery near Gimli. Roofing there, he had noticed that trucks were often driven by a single male without a guard or second driver. He also noticed that the destination for the shipments was always Grand Forks, and that shipments left daily at a predictable time. Laurence’s father was a prankster. His brothers were practical jokers, too. Rural by nature, laconic by habit, friends with animals and their habitats, enjoyers of beer and whiskey, they all, the Dycks, felt that the government took too much from ordinary people such as themselves. Any chance to make a bit on the side, or to keep a bit of the government’s share for themselves, was felt to be an opportunity richly deserved.

       Thus it was that Laurence waited at the rear of the semi for the driver to approach. He had with him a potato sack and a rope. When the short, small fellow rounded the corner of the trailer, Laurence stepped up behind him and put the bag over his head and shoulders. He held him and whispered in his ear that if he shouted he would be severely injured by the hammer his “friend” had at the ready. The man did not struggle. He stood quietly while Laurence talked to his friend who was not there, and also while Laurence tied the ropes that bound him and the duck tape over his mouth. Laurence opened the cargo doors of another semi nearby, put the unfortunate inside, told him to remain quiet and no harm would come to him, and then drove off.

       Laurence took the perimeter around Winnipeg, drove past St. Agathe and St. Jean, through Morris and past Letellier, then turned the rig off the highway and headed east toward the bush land in the direction of Vita. He drove fifteen miles to a farm yard he owned, a stretch of non arable scrub and poplar where he raised cattle. On it he had twenty-seven old semi trailers purchased to store feed and straw. These did in place of a barn. He had acquired them over the years as cheaply as he could. Now he added a twenty-eighth and piled straw bales over it with his farm tractor. This took an hour. By six o-clock he had the Seagrams tractor near Gimli. He walked back to the roofing job, got in his car because it was quitting time, and drove home. Over the next week he finished the roof and left the Seagrams yard for good.

       Needless to say, Laurence did not tell his brothers, father, uncles--nor any of the women he had accompany him to his farm—about the whiskey or the recent addition to his trailers. That would have been a huge mistake. He did, however, always serve himself, and now and then others of his guests, very fine and old whiskey as frequently as he wished to.