9/11

     I remember that day very clearly. I had just gotten home from night shift at the hospital. I could tell fall was just around the corner. The cool air was as refreshing as a cold shower.  I was tired from the 12 hour shift and still wound up. I could not sleep.       Something was wrong.  I could sense it.  I turned on the TV to watch the morning news. The cameras were trained on the Twin Towers. One tower was smoking like a chimney.

     No one really knew what was happening. They were saying a possible malfunction of an aircraft until the second plane hit.  Then it dawned on everyone we were being fiercely attacked. 

     I got in touch with my landlord saying loudly, turn on the TV.  Such a human tragedy was unfolding on live TV. People were jumping to their deaths rather than being burned alive. I remember a woman with a billowy dress trying to make it into a parachute as she plummeted to her

destruction. The images remain etched into my psyche.
     That night, I had to return to work. I walked by the corner gas station.  One of those all night places right next to St Mary's Hospital was doing a booming business.  The Muslims were gassing up their cars preparing to escape to Canada.

     These were doctors who worked at the Mayo Clinic. They were from the Middle East fleeing the wrath that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
      Life changed for me that day.  I signed up as an informant. I brought down many drug rings that are part of the distribution network of hard narcotics.

    In the 50's and early 60's most, if not all, the heroin came from the Middle East.  Many professional travelers were involved with smuggling dope from that region.             The poppy fields of Afganistan was the source of the raw material to manufacture heroin in places like Marsalis, France. This is the home of mafioso labs and families who engage in that sort of business.