I have moved millions of dollars worth of merchandise, all of it illegal and dangerous, but I had never moved something as big as the velvet gloves before. It arrived the way of most of my merchandise, in the back of semi truck late at night. I waited for the shipment standing in the freezing cold waiting for the truck to arrive. At least I got to be inside the warehouse and out of the snow. Too bad there was no heating unit in the place. It was a half hour late, another ten minutes and I would have assumed the law had gotten on to us and fled the building. The battered truck rolled up, the diesel engine spitting out noxious fumes and making way more noise than I wished.

I gave the driver a glowering look that would have boiled an egg right in its shell. I motioned for him to back the truck up to the loading bay and motioned for the forklift guy to get ready. No one wanted to be out here in the cold unloading goods that could cost you five to seven years; if it was your first time getting caught. No one took to kindly to gun runners these days, tougher laws were meant to keep me and my kind behind bars longer. Of course we learned our trade and made our connections in prison. Most of us didn’t start off as smugglers, we started off as petty crooks who got caught, sent to prison and learned a new trade. You have to love a system that rehabilitates you from one crime and educates for a new profession.

The truck smacked back into the rubber padding and came to a stop. I took a key that had been mailed to me a week earlier that fit the lock. Walking briskly I approached the door and and put the key into the lock. I hesitated prior to turning the key, McPherson had not said what the contents of the truck were, only that he needed to get them out of his warehouse and somewhere safe for a few weeks. I wasn’t so much worried about the law, I was worried about the cargo being dangerous to me. McPherson had never endangered me yet, so I unlocked the lock and flung the door up. I shone a flashlight into the dim interior of the truck and saw four long pallets loaded in. Somehow I expected a larger cargo to come. I walked over and inspected the first pallet, it was a little over twelve feet long and five feet tall. The markings identified it as Canadian.