The Swordfish In The Trunk
Back in 2004, I moved from the Gramercy area of New York City to The South Street Seaport. I bought a lovely penthouse apartment on Beekman Street with a large 1,700 foot terrace. It had the distinction of actually being within the Seaport blocks and was thus part of the Seaport. In 2004 the Fulton Fish Market was still an active part of the South Street Seaport even though the City had recently finished the new Hunts Point Fish Market in The Bronx. The facility for the Fish Market in the Seaport was very old (1822) and historic, but was antiquated and severely out-of-date. The way the Fulton Fish Market operated was that it began at about 10pm from Sunday through Friday and then busily continued until about 10am the next morning. Fresh fish sales were a business of the early mornings and the old cobblestone streets were the platform on which it all happened, with forklifts and wheeled carts rushing here and there with boxes and tubs filled with fish of all sorts on ice. If you didn’t know better you could be excused for thinking the item being sold was crushed ice since it was all over the place, melting into the streets and gutters along with bits and pieces of fish. The smell of the place was unmistakable with the center of the odor being on South Street where most of the transacting took place between the old shack of a building on the water side and the much larger and newer, but still aging building on the west side of South Street, with its stalls and loading docks. From that street, like all active markets, there was a sprawl that wandered up for a block or two, but no more. I know this because my apartment building entrance was two short blocks from South Street and the fish guts in between the cobblestones did not quite extend up that far, but was in clear evidence a few hundred feet east.
When I first moved into my apartment, it was mid-summer and one could smell the fish quite ripely during the mornings and the combined effect of the daily dousing of disinfectant to the streets and the natural breezes that pass through the canyons of downtown New York, kept the odor more localized than not to the physical spot of the market. The funny thing was that the City had mandated the move of the Fish Market to the new Hunts Point facility in early 2004 and the operative union, Local 379 of the United Seafood Workers, decided to simply ignore the mandate. They were not happy about the move to The Bronx even though it had been known and in the works for years. I’m sure there were simple commutation reasons why the older members of the union didn’t want to go to the new facility, but local knowledge was that there was a far more significant reason for the refusal. That reason was that much of the income pocketed by the union workers was purported to come from fish that “fell off a truck”. In other words, the union workers were known to pilfer lots of fish from the antiquated inventory control methods and security systems. They knew how to work the systems and didn’t want to relearn how to keep their program going in the new, more secure environment, despite all the other workplace advantages represented by the new and modern facility.
In those days, I was in the habit of taking a power walk with a trainer every morning. I would walk up to the Manhattan Bridge and down to the Staten Island Ferry building before coming back home to Beekman Street. New Yorkers are used to walking with the traffic in that we cross streets as the opportunity exists rather than being dogmatic with any route. But any way I walked, I had to come in either south or north of the Fish Market in operation. I would tend to walk at 6am, so the commerce was usually still underway and the daily cleanup was just beginning. I once stopped to ask a fish market worker when the market was moving to Hunts Point. He looked at me quizzically and said, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” When I earnestly referenced the planned facility move that was in the news every day and the worker looked at me with complete and apparent annoyance and said, “I said, I don’t know nothing about it!” It was clear that denial was the party line.
Once, my trainer and I were walking to my home after our walk and were in a parking lot adjacent to the market building. There was a police car there next to a late model Cadillac with its trunk wide open. The trunk was lined with plastic and there was fresh shaved ice several inches thick on top of it. On top of the bed of ice was a large swordfish with its pointed bill and head removed the way they decapitate tuna carcasses. The police were talking to the car owner, who had clearly been caught in the act of filling his trunk with Fish market contraband. What I heard sounded very familiar.
“What fish?”, “I have no idea how that got into that trunk.” What trunk?” “Oh, that trunk?” “Yes, that’s my car, would you like to see the registration?” “The trunk?” “Yes, that trunk belongs to that car, I think.” “The fish?” “No, that’s not my fish.” “The ice?” “No, that’s not mine either.” “The plastic?” “I have no idea how that got in my trunk.” “No, I didn’t open my trunk.” “Maybe somebody else has a key to my trunk.” “Yes, that would upset me because how did they get my trunk key?” “I don’t know, maybe the trunk key does start the car, I would need to check.” “Do you want me to check?” Well, officer, if the fish is evidence, maybe you had better take it out of my trunk.” “Could you take the ice and plastic too, please?”
The purity and ease of the dialogue from the member of Local 379 of United Seafood Workers seemed very well practiced and completely genuine if unconvincing. It was actually quite laughable in its simplicity. The organized crime gangs has long used the “I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’” defense for every manner of offense, but it was especially amusing to see it happen with a swordfish sitting in the open trunk. It was reminiscent of Steve Martin in My Blue Heaven when he steals, among many other things, a whole swordfish (with spiked snout attached for effect.)
What brought this to mind today were administration and Congressional Republicans trying to pretend that there had been no win for Biden/Harris. Passing through the halls of the Capital, they were being peppered by journalist all on the topic of the Biden victory and had no qualms about reciting their version of “I know nothin’ about nothin’” retort. The best was Mike Pompeo, who when asked about the transition planning said that The State Department is fully prepared to transition to a second Trump Administration. He should teach the Fish Market workers how to claim that the fish belonged in his trunk. That is a whole new level of fishiness.