Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (12 page)

But before Jean Paul’s American killer could arrive in Jamaica to meet Sammy and complete the hit, Robby received a warning telephone call at the villa. There was speculation that the call came from Ryan who had caught wind of Jean Paul’s plot. Or that it came from my pal Manny, who was working at Jean Paul’s furniture store and dealing Jean Paul’s weed and hash on the side. However, I eventually heard that the tip came from a
CIA
agent named Sid. Sid was the guy who ran the other video and slot machines around Jamaica that were in competition with Charlie’s. I once saw Sid riding a moped scooter through town, when he stopped to collect his winnings from the slot machine in Hopewell’s general store and bar. Sid was a slim fellow. He was middle-aged and nondescript. He looked like a tourist. I never would have made him for a
CIA
agent if my Jamaican friends had not clued me in. After the call came from Sid, Robby wisely evacuated the villa that same day, escaping certain death just in time. The last I heard of Robby, he had moved to Vancouver Island to start a new life and, like Ryan, he was never seen again in the Montreal dope scene.

After missing Robby, Jean Paul’s hit man left Jamaica and took on a contract for an Arizona judge who was feared for his harsh sentencing. He was hired by a Montreal drug smuggler and a Texas marijuana smuggler both awaiting trial. The hit man was caught after killing the judge and wounding the crown prosecutor, and I was surprised to learn that the guy was Charles Harrelson, actor Woody Harrelson’s father. Harrelson senior got several life prison terms for the killings in Arizona. His son bankrolled an appeal, which failed, and Charles died in prison in
2007
of a heart attack. I saw a television interview with the American hit man, some years after he was jailed, and I was chilled by his calm demeanor and his intelligence. He seemed too damn smart to be doing what he was jailed for and I figured he was typical of many of the criminals and social deviates I have come to know. They are all in it for the rush more than the money.

With revenge being a dish best served cold, I should have been happy that my enemies were vanquished. Robby and Ryan were out of the game and Jean Paul had done my dirty work for me, while my conscience remained clean as a whistle. You would think I would be forgiving of Jean Paul who had done the right thing in many people’s minds. But I was still uncomfortable around him and I let Irving deal with Jean Paul exclusively.

A strange though unrelated occurrence that same summer saw me looking through the want ads for a gun. It was late in the summer and the fields around my dead-end street house were motionless in the still night air. I had been out playing poker that night when I made my way home at around
1
:
00
a.m. I parked my Mercedes in the driveway and started walking to my front door. The entrance was only a few steps away, on the side of the house, facing the surrounding fields. Suddenly I heard the sound of a gunshot go off that seemed to be right beside my ear. I know gunshots when I hear them and I instantly dropped to the ground with my heart racing. I scurried around my car on hands and knees and then ran into my house. Once inside, I realized that I had nothing for protection other than a machete and a spear gun. I waited for hours inside the house, unable to go to sleep while I wondered if the shooting was random or if it was a murder attempt that had failed. I did not call the police, who would have asked too many embarrassing questions and I was walking on eggshells for a week until I read in our local papers that some kid had been apprehended for running around our neighbourhood firing gunshots. But by then I had already found and purchased a gun of my own. It was a .
30
caliber deer hunting carbine like my father used to own. As there were no children around my house, I felt it was safe to keep the rifle loaded in the hall closet. The purchase of the rifle was timely, because although I did not know it at the time, I had good reason to have one. I was successful at dodging the cops and Canada Customs but what I did not know was that someone else was stalking me. A crew of young American guys who were hanging out in Montego Bay and Kingston had successfully strong-armed some of the west end wannabees who were trying
to run their own dope scams out of Jamaica. The Americans had already put the west end kids on the arm in Jamaica and had even followed them to Montreal to coerce more money out of them. The Americans must have thought that all Montreal men were meek and mild, because they actually had the nerve to approach Big John Miller and me when we were sitting at a fashion show in the Pegasus Hotel in Jamaica. One of these clowns recognized Bob McTavish, who was sitting at our table, and came over uninvited to talk to him. I could not believe my ears when Bob leaned over to me to announce that the American wanted a piece of our action. It was not a request. The little goof was trying to put us on the arm. I was disappointed by Big John’s response when I whispered Bob’s message to him. He just laughed like I had told a joke and went on watching the fashion show. I looked at Bob McTavish and said in a voice loud enough for his American visitor to hear.

“Tell your friend to fuck off, unless he wants to get hurt.” I felt confident with Big John at my side and a sharp buck knife in my pocket. I expected a problem in the parking lot later, but the American must have thought better of his idea because he left with his buddies. I found out a few weeks later that the Americans were preparing to kidnap me and hold me for a ransom in Montreal. Not only that, but they were going to use my friend and ex-partner Ross to set me up. Ross, if you remember, was the driver who ferried the Ali Baba weed from New York to Montreal in the back seat of his father’s car. Ross was still my friend . . . or so I thought, until Bob McTavish clued me in. Bob was supposed to be in on Ross’s scheme but then he told me that he had changed his mind. Bob was a strange guy like that. I found out once that he was hanging out with the federal Crown prosecutor in the west end and was going to parties with him. I was invited to these parties by Bob on several occasions and in a more than casual way. “Come on to the party,” he urged me one time. “It’s a celebration for this guy who just got out of jail. Everyone is going to be there.”

Yeah right, Bob. Just what I wanted. A party with a Crown prosecutor, a bunch of lowlifes I did not know and some heat
score who just got out of prison. Many years later, I read a tell-all book that described how a stoolie came out of jail and started working for the Montreal
RCMP
. He wrote about a coming-out-of-jail party that he threw on behalf of his
RCMP
handlers and how he snagged a Montreal Mafioso and put him away for a long time. It was the same party that Bob had invited me to in the west end and I thank my stars that I hadn’t gone. I heard from Bob after that party that the Crown prosecutor would be attending another party and that he was very interested in meeting me. I can only speculate as to why. Maybe he was expecting to hear some unwise bragging or a confession perhaps. Since I didn’t go, I will never know. After Bob told me about the kidnap scheme, I called Ross over to my house for a little talk. He brought his girlfriend along and a bag of acid which the two were popping like vitamins. I suspect he wanted the security of the girlfriend in case I had something nasty planned for him. He denied his part in the whole kidnap story, of course, while admitting that the Americans were in fact planning to do just that. He had no answer as to why it was Bob who came to me with the warning and not Ross himself. I warned him that if anything happened to me, my partner Irving and his gang would kill him and his American flakes and not to forget it. Then I told him to fuck off and never come back into my life. He and I were both very fortunate that I didn’t know about him making moves on my wife when I was in the U.S. federal detention centre. If I had known that, Ross would possibly be dead and I would be damned to hell for doing it.

In spite of this small hiccup, my life was going as well as I could ever have expected. I had an endless supply of money and all of the backup I could want with my growing list of acquaintances in the underworld. There was just one little problem that remained to be dealt with. You might remember that when Irving and I started our business arrangement, he sent me down to Jamaica behind Charlie Wilson’s back. Irving never actually told Charlie that he was dissolving their partnership and starting a new one with me. I felt like a two-timing whore between my loyalty to my new partner Irving and my friendship with his business partner Charlie.

However, I did not allow my discomfort to interfere with my responsibilities. Some time after our second or third successful load of weed was smuggled into Canada Charlie came by my house with a friend. His visit came a few weeks after a
Twilight Zone
type of meeting between us on an Air Canada flight. I was flying down to Jamaica to ship off another load of weed for Irving’s contacts to grab, only this time I had my father along as a front for the shipping arrangements. It would not make sense for the broker to see me shipping another load of personal effects so soon after the first load without arousing his suspicions so my father was going to be my front for the broker. You might wonder how my father came to be helping me out on an importing scam. I can’t really answer that question except to say that later in life I became closer to both of my parents, who seemed very supportive of my chosen career. To my parents it was all about a harmless drug called marijuana and after all, didn’t the Seagrams and the Bronfmans make their fortune by smuggling liquor into the U.S.? The only negative comment I can remember my mother making was, “Whatever you do, son, don’t get caught.” I suspect she was more concerned about what the neighbours thought, than about the right or wrong of the situation.

Anyways to get back to my story about the Twilight Zone incident, my dad and I were sitting in the middle of Air Canada’s economy class, or the cattle car as I call it, when the strange coincidence with Charlie Wilson began. I could see that the plane was completely full as we boarded in Montreal. My dad and I were practically the last ones on the plane. It was not hard to find our seats as there were three empty seats by a window and all of the rest of the seats in the aircraft were full. For a moment I thought that I had lucked out, with an empty seat between my dad and me, but then I saw a briefcase lying on the window seat. It was a black Samsonite briefcase, like the one that Charlie the Weasel carried with him wherever he went. It was identical, right down to the distinctive decal of a Tweety Bird from the Tweety and Sylvester the Cat cartoon. What are the odds that someone else had a briefcase exactly like that, I was wondering, when Charlie came back from the washroom and
slid past my dad and me. He excused himself as he sat down beside the window and did not even recognize me at first. Charlie was as amazed as I was about the coincidence of our sitting together on the same plane, side by side. After introducing the two I told him my dad was coming down to buy some land in Jamaica. Charlie accepted that without argument and after that it was an interesting ride. I heard all about Charlie’s problems with his gaming machines that he had set up in Jamaica and the problems with his attempted dope deals. “No more dope deals,” he said. The Jamaicans were too corrupt and the dope dealers in Montreal were too dishonest and unreliable. The car business was no good, either. And his partner Irving was no good. It was an interesting ride, but I was only too happy to see the last of Charlie when I left him in the terminal at the Montego Bay airport, while I headed on to Kingston with my father.

Three weeks after that plane ride, Charlie was at my door telling me that he had a friend in the car who he wanted me to talk to. Talk is often a euphemism for much more than just words in the underworld, so there was no way I was agreeing to that. I could see that Charlie was agitated. He told me the guy in the car with him was Robert Lavigne. I did not know the name at the time but I heard later from Robert’s own partners that Lavigne was a very dangerous man. I was firm in telling Charlie that I would talk to him but I would not let his friend into my house, and I took comfort in knowing I had the loaded rifle in my hall closet. It took thirty minutes to convince Charlie that I was not his enemy, while Robert Lavigne waited outside in the car.

“Yes, I am working with Irving,” I told Charlie, “but I was instructed by Irving not to tell you or anyone else what we were doing. It’s just business. It’s nothing personal. You would have done the same thing in my shoes,” I told him. “If you have a problem with Irving because he dropped you from your scam, work it out with him. I’m not the one you should be mad at.”

I reminded Charlie that he had already stated his intentions to quit the drug business and I suspected then as I suspect now that he was angrier about being left out of the loop than anything else. He must have heard that Irving had a load of weed in
town. Everyone in Montreal was selling the Jamaican weed and everyone was talking about it. Now that he realized that Irving had pulled off their scam without him, Charlie was understandably angry about it. But if he had any idea how much weed Irving and I had actually brought into Montreal, I have no doubt he would have been much angrier than he was. When he started with Irving they were trying to ship off four hundred pounds of weed and Charlie could not get the job done. Now Irving and I were shipping entire containers full of weed to Canada on back-to-back runs. Charlie told me he was pissed off at Irving for going behind his back and that he was pissed off about Jean Paul ending up with his four hundred pounds of weed that Ryan and Robby stole from him in Jamaica. Before he left my house, he said he was going to get his pal Robert Lavigne to take care of both Irving and Jean Paul.

“You don’t know this guy,” he said pointing to Robert who was waiting in the Porsche outside. “You think Jean Paul’s tough? This guy will eat Jean Paul for breakfast.”

When they left I immediately phoned Irving from a cool phone. He seemed unfazed by the news of Charlie’s visit and his threats. Irving acted like Charlie was a pussycat and told me not to worry. He said that he was going out of town to Ottawa for a few days to take care of the house of a friend who had recently gone to jail. He gave me the phone number there and told me not to call him unless it was an emergency.