Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (11 page)

So there we were. We had the way in. We had the way out. We had the Jamaica end down. We had the Montreal end down.

Now all Irving and I had to do was collect up our rewards and spend our money.

I suppose I have always had an affinity for roguish characters. I think that, to some extent, we all prefer the company of people who have a little of the Devil in them over the piously perfect and the politically correct. Rogues and Robin Hoods are far more interesting than their priestly counterparts and their errant behaviour is often forgiven by mainstream society, up to a certain point. Society displays a degree of tolerance for scofflaws who break unpopular laws, like the speeder who uses a radar detector to beat the radar trap or the businessman who cheats the taxman out of his fair share of taxes. These lawbreakers are not held up to the same contempt that we reserve for more serious criminals because the laws being broken are not necessarily popular laws. That is how I saw my situation. Like a modern day Robin Hood who was bucking the law prohibiting marijuana. Irving and I were supplying a product that people wanted and a service that the law arbitrarily decided should not be provided. Weed was a benign and harmless product, if we were to believe the report of the Quebec Ledain Commission into soft drugs. The Ledain Commission likened a toke or two of pot to a drink or two of wine and stated that marijuana and hashish were far less dangerous than tobacco. As far as I was concerned, the only
one who was getting hurt by our activities was the taxman, and I went out of my way to give him his dues. I even invented a legitimate income so that I could pay taxes on at least a portion of my easily gotten gains, just to keep the taxman off my back.

After our first four hundred pound load of weed was taken from the waterfront by Irving’s dock connections and handed over to us for distribution on the street, I hired my friends, Joe Dudley and Bob Bishop, to rent a truck to go down to the waterfront to pick up our replacement crate from Canada Customs. The boys downtown had already replaced the weed crate with a crate containing my stereo and some tables and chairs so that our importing scam would not get blown. But it still took some effort to convince my friends that the crate was clean. I finally gave Joe Dudley and Bishop the customs and excise documents needed to clear the cargo and told them that they could give me up to the Man if there was anything other than my personal effects inside the crate. In due course, Bishop and Joe returned with the switched crate. Joe laughed and said that while they were driving through the customs terminal, Bishop was vibrating so much it seemed like the truck was running even when it was turned off. Bishop sputtered his denials as they both argued playfully, looking happy and relieved to have completed their project without complications. I came to use my two friends many times to repeat the same exercise as subsequent shipments of weed arrived in Canada. My stereo and furniture were sent through customs so many times that the speakers ended up looking like Swiss cheese from all the test holes drilled into the wood cabinets by suspicious customs agents.

The crates we shipped became larger and larger, and then we started sending full containers of weed as our audacity and expertise improved. With each successful shipment of marijuana from Jamaica, the good life became even better, to the point where we became hedonistic. Irving and I had standing reservations at The Steak Place Restaurant in Pointe Claire. The owner of the restaurant, who was named Francois, had been involved in a scam some years earlier when Irving sold him a container load of stolen gin. That mistake landed Francois a heavy fine, after the

RCMP
found a bottle of the stolen swag in his desk drawer at the restaurant office. The fine became even larger after the feds raided his home and hobby farm to find the rest of the shipment of stolen gin in his barn. In spite of, or perhaps because of his previous history with Irving, Francois treated us like royalty. His sumptuous service was rewarded with generous tips and we ate there at least three times a week. We went to The Steak Place so often that when I asked my wife if she would like to go there for dinner one night, she answered, “Not The Steak Place again!”

Can you believe it? You’d think I was inviting her to Burger King.

I bought Irving’s eighteen carat gold pendent and chain from him. It was “legit,” he told me, unlike much of what he owned in life. The medallion was comprised of two Austrian gold coins that were carried in a gold brace which was designed to hold the coins back to back. An eagle with spread wings decorated the faces of the coins which, at .
999
fine, is the purest gold in the world. I also had an eighteen carat gold bracelet made for myself at a jeweler who was a friend of Irving’s. The bracelet featured big chunky links of solid gold and an invisible clasp that made it look as though it was permanently affixed to my wrist. The bracelet weighed a total of five troy ounces and I often wondered if someone might contemplate sawing off my arm for the gold.

Irving exceeded my extravagance in jewelry by buying a new gold pendent for himself that was so excessively large that it looked like an Olympic medal hanging around his neck. The pendent was made with the horoscope sign of Libra stamped on it and came with an eighteen carat chain that weighed close to a pound. I used to laugh and kid Irv that the chain looked like a gold-plated dog leash.

In spite of Irving’s warnings to me about showing off, when our moneymaking scam was underway, we both purchased late model Mercedes-Benz cars, completing the picture of our undeniable wealth. Irving figured that because we were in the car business, we could drive the cars without drawing too much heat but I didn’t give a damn which police forces noticed me, as long as I had a nice ride. My Benz was a two-year-old
450 SL
two seat convertible in metallic blue with tan upholstery. It was a beautiful automobile that commanded respect in a way that my Corvette never could. People actually stopped and waved me into traffic in the Benz. When I drove my Corvette it was like waving red flags at a bull. No one ever gave me a break in traffic unless I pushed my way through.

Irving’s car was a brand new
450 SLC
four seat coupe with silver exterior and black upholstery. The car was a dream to drive and afforded him the respect he had so long been denied. Cash money was coming in on a regular basis from the sale of our weed. At first I had so much money that I kept some hidden in my attic and some in my safety deposit box at the bank and I always had at least a few thousand dollars in my pocket.

As my trips to Jamaica increased in frequency, the size of our weed shipments increased as well. On my first trip to Jamaica, I shipped four hundred pounds north which I have already told you was brought into Canada successfully. Then I shipped seven hundred pounds. Then twelve hundred. Twenty-two hundred. Thirty-two hundred. Forty-four hundred. The last load I sent up totaled fifty-five hundred pounds of Jamaican coli. All told, Irving and I shipped eighteen metric tons of Jamaican marijuana to Canada over a five-year period and we never lost so much as an ounce. The boys on the dock took fifty percent after expenses and payouts, and in my opinion, they were worth every cent of their end. Irving and I split the other fifty percent after expenses and payouts.

My old pal Ryan McCann would have been enjoying at least a part of my good fortune had he not pulled his extortion tactics on me in Jamaica. I continued my charade of a friendship with him until Irving pulled me aside after one of our poker games. Irving told me that he could not understand why I was still associating with Ryan after what he had pulled on me. He made me feel like a fool and I had to agree with him. There was no need to entertain anyone I did not like any longer, and after Irving’s words took effect, I called Ryan on the phone and told him not to come around anymore. I told him that I could forgive what he did to me in Jamaica, but I could not forget what
he did. He tried to remind me that he had repaid my losses in weed, but I told him that that was not the issue. His breach of friendship and trust was eating at me to the point that I could not stand seeing him anymore. He was worried about my change of heart until I told him that I was not going to seek revenge on him. But I did not want him hanging around anymore, and I told him that Irving did not want him coming around, either.

I felt good telling Ryan off. It was long overdue, in my opinion. But banishment was only the beginning of Ryan’s retribution for his sins. His real downfall came when he was found out to be a liar and a cheat by his partner, Jean Paul, and it happened in a most peculiar way. Charlie Wilson and Jean Paul were at war at the time, having both survived an earlier shootout over some four hundred pounds of weed. And then something almost miraculous happened. Even though he was close to losing his mind at the time and was running around saying, “Tweet, Tweet,” Charlie came up with a real brainstorm. He called up Jean Paul and arranged a meeting. The last time the two had a meeting they ended up in a gunfight, so it is quite surprising that Charlie took this course of action. It was even more surprising that Jean Paul, who was a suspicious soul to begin with, agreed to meeting his enemy. I suspect that because Jean Paul was working with Irving and selling our weed, his allegiances had shifted away from Ryan and more towards our direction.

Whatever the reasoning behind their actions, Charlie went to Jean Paul’s house and sat down for a coffee and some conversation. Charlie told Jean Paul about his four hundred pounds of weed that went missing in Jamaica. He accused Ryan and Robby of a double-cross that led to the shootout with Jean Paul and himself. Charlie came armed with some facts to back up his side of the story. He gave Jean Paul the phone number of the caretaker of his Jamaican villa and repeated the story that the caretaker told of a white man with curly hair taking Charlie’s suitcases of weed. With the Jamaican maid’s phone number in his hands, Jean Paul called Ryan over to his house on a pretext of business. When Ryan arrived, Jean Paul began to question him
in the kitchen while Charlie hid in the hall closet to listen to Ryan’s answers. Robby was called over to Jean Paul’s as well, but fortunately for Robby, he was in Jamaica at the time. Jean Paul had his future brother-in-law, Rene Lemiuex, on hand as backup. Rene held a shortened baseball bat under the kitchen table while Jean Paul sat listening to Ryan explain how he had invested Jean Paul’s money in buying their last load of weed. When asked by Jean Paul if that was the same four hundred pounds that belonged to Charlie, Ryan denied any knowledge of Charlie’s missing weed and added that he was told by the maid at Charlie’s villa that some black Jamaicans had stolen Charlie’s weed. Ryan painted himself into a corner that day and Charlie stepped out of the closet to call him on his bullshit. A phone call to the maid in Jamaica confirmed that it was a white man who stole the weed. A white man with curly hair. Ryan’s partner Robby had curly hair. And Ryan himself was known to possess a curly haired wig. It became clear to Jean Paul that Ryan had not spent the loan shark’s money on weed. Ryan had spent Jean Paul’s money elsewhere and then stolen Charlie’s weed to ship north to Montreal.

It must have been a cold, sobering moment for Ryan when he realized he was caught in a fistful of lies and deception but there was little time for him to ponder his bad fortune. On a given signal from Jean Paul, Rene swung the baseball bat across the table catching Ryan across the temple and knocking him to the floor in one blow. Then Jean Paul carried Ryan’s moaning body and dropped it over the railing to the lower floor of his split level home so as not to get blood on the living room’s wall-to-wall carpets. Ryan’s beating continued in the laundry room with blows from the baseball bat that were interspersed with questions. The vicious attack continued until Jean Paul was satisfied that he knew the complete truth. When he was finished his interrogation, the loan shark cleaned Ryan’s face with a damp towel and dropped him at the Laval Hospital emergency ward with a warning about what would happen to him if he ratted. Ryan survived the beating, but just barely. The doctors at the hospital said one more blow to the head would have finished
him. When he recovered enough to leave the hospital some weeks later, Ryan and his wife quietly vanished from the Montreal scene and moved to Toronto to start a new life.

If Jean Paul had had his way, Robby would have paid an even steeper price than Ryan. Jean Paul never did like Robby, who passed himself off as a bored and petulant college student and displayed a calculated arrogance in his every move. That Robby felt superior to Jean Paul was obvious but it was not personal: Robby felt superior to everyone. Robby was a college dropout who had been the former president of the Sir George Williams University’s student union. He drove a Corvette that was fully paid for, and he came from a well off family in the west end. Robby had come down from a level of society that Jean Paul was still trying to reach up to. There was no doubt in Jean Paul’s mind that Robby was responsible for the theft of Charlie’s weed in Jamaica. This shifting of the majority of blame to Robby from Ryan was convenient for the psychopath who did not really want to kill his onetime friend. The blame shift was reinforced by Ryan during his baseball bat-inspired confession, but the truth was that Jean Paul hated Robby and was looking for any opportunity to hurt him.

Jean Paul was hanging around with a new friend at the time. The friend was an American visitor to Canada who was said to be a psychopathic killer who enjoyed torturing his victims. After dropping Ryan at the hospital, Jean Paul contacted the American hit man and gave him a contract to get Robby down in Jamaica. Jean Paul did not care about the expense, as the cost of the hit man was covered by the money that Jean Paul no longer had to pay his ex-partner Ryan for the last load of weed. A silenced .
22
caliber pistol was smuggled down to Jamaica by Sammy Polanski to do the hit. Sammy was a small-time Montreal hoodlum with a penchant for publicity. When a newspaper crime reporter named Jean Pierre Charbonneau published a book called
The Canadian Connection
that had all of our names in it, most of us were choked about the exposure. Sammy on the other hand went around telling everyone which page he was on. Sammy was to set up Robby by offering him a free stay at a villa in Jamaica. Jean
Paul gave Sammy the money to rent the villa. Robby had taken him up on his offer and was staying at the villa with his girlfriend, Paula.