Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (25 page)

My pal Bishop offered to broker a peace between us.

“I’ve seen this before,” Bishop said. “I can arrange a meeting between you and Irving so you can work it out.”

“Fuck him.” I said “He’s a fucking cheat and I don’t care if we work it out.”

It was only a matter of time before Irving was given a day pass, which he used to come by the old car lot and tell everyone within hearing distance how he was going to get me. He said he was going to take my house. Take my car. Take my money. And waste me. I came into the garage only minutes after Irving had left one day, and the place was buzzing.

“You just missed him,” said Ziggy, “And man is he mad! You’re lucky you didn’t come in a few minutes ago. He’s been looking for you.”

“I live down the fucking street from him,” I told Ziggy. “If he wants to see me he can come over anytime.”

I was concerned, but I was not smart enough to be afraid. Irving was ten years older than me, and with his bad back the way it was, all the weightlifting in the world would not help him in a fight. I felt I could probably hold my own with him in a scuffle. And if it came to more than that, I was packing my .
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Savage. I kept it fully loaded with one in the chamber so that I could pull it and cock it in a second and it would be ready to fire.

Now that he was getting day passes, I was expecting Irving to come to my house and confront me on the bail issue, and I was ready. I slept with a loaded shotgun beside the bed and kept a constant vigil that had me waking several times a night. One night, the cat jumped up on the hall shelf and broke it free from the wall with a loud crash. It sounded like the front door was crashing in and I jumped up and grabbed my loaded shotgun beside the bed.

“Don’t come any closer! I got a gun!” I yelled into the pitch black night.

That it turned out to be nothing did little to help my peace of mind. During the day I kept a regular routine, leaving in the morning for work and coming home around three or four in the afternoon. I put our house on the market, without a sign on the lawn. My conditions to the realtor were that the house could be seen by appointment only.

One Saturday morning, Barbara and I were doing yard work in the front of the house when a white Corvette turned slowly onto our street. The Corvette suddenly sped towards us and I had a vibe that went through me like an electric charge. I told Barbara to get in the house right away. I turned my back on the approaching car as I followed Barbara inside. The Corvette slowed down in front of our house and pulled into our driveway. A tall, well-built young man of about thirty stepped out of the car and began walking towards me. I was standing in the doorway inside my garage with the garage door open and a loaded shotgun just behind the door. The stranger said he was interested in the house and asked if he could have a tour. With the situation in Quebec the way it was and the Separatist movement stifling house sales, you might have expected me to jump at the opportunity to show my house. I looked him over as he approached with both of his hands in the pockets of his wind-breaker. He did not fit the profile of a guy who’d want my house. He was young and had no children, judging by his two-seat Corvette. He had the same gray eyes I had seen in others of his ilk. If I was casting for the part of a contract killer, I would have picked him in an instant. I told him to stop where he was
and I told him in no uncertain terms that I would not permit him to tour the house.

“Call the agent and make an appointment,” I said.

He paused a moment, and I thought he might make a move to pull a gun from his jacket as my hand rested on the barrel of my shotgun. He stood for a moment, looking me over, before turning away with a resigned shrug of his shoulders. I was not surprised to find out from our agent later that she knew nothing about him, and he never followed up with her after his visit. I took down his licence plate number and checked it out with Luc Lavoie, who still had contacts on the police force. The licence plate was registered to a roofing company and I wondered if it was just a front. I never found out if the guy was on the level, but in retrospect, I am glad that I did not let him into my house.

I phoned Barbara several times a day to touch base after that. I was concerned about her safety, although it was unheard of at that time for underworld settlings of accounts to involve family members. Even vendetta murders were planned to occur away from a victim’s family. I visited my friend Hoss at his car dealership and he warned me to be very careful. He had heard through his underworld friends, Solly Cohen and Allan “Hawkeye” Stone, that a contract was out on me. I showed him my shoulder rig setup but he laughed out loud. “What . . . do you think they’re going to say “draw?” Hoss warned me to stay out of nightclubs and keep my eyes open at all times. “Stay away from downtown and the east end,” he said. “It might be a good idea to move or at least change your phone number.”

I did not need to hear his warning about nightclubs. With a full-time job and a new baby daughter, I had no interest in going to nightclubs anyway. I could have listened to him about moving and changing my number, but that would have looked like running away. Instead, I made certain preparations to protect myself. And the day soon came when my preparations were put to the test.

It was a typical workday and I had dropped my guard a little. Irving had not phoned or visited me, even though he had been
out on several day passes, which I took as a sign of his unwillingness to take a run at me head on. I still carried my .
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automatic everywhere. The weapon gave me confidence and I enjoyed the feeling of power it gave me. I strutted a cocky walk when I sauntered around town, heeled with a gun.

I even found enough confidence within myself to get a different job with a company selling copiers. The manager who hired me was a friend from the printing supply days and he must have known about my importing charges from all of the publicity. He asked me about my criminal charges, which I explained were far behind me, and he hired me on as the photocopier division sales manager. We both had high expectations for my future with the internationally known firm, and I was pleased as punch to quit my job at the word processing firm.

It was an exciting and mood-lifting week at the copier company and even though I still wore the .
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under my jacket, I felt I was finally making some progress away from my life of crime. At the end of that week, I headed off to meet my friend Mouse, who had placed me at my new job through his career agency. I knew Mouse through his drug dealing past and I knew that the owner of his job placement business was a member of a famous Montreal crime family. The crime family bore the surname of McDonald and the youngest of several brothers was Mouse’s boss, who was making an effort to go straight, just like I was. I remember Mouse counselling me after my first few unsuccessful job interviews, “Come on, man. It’s an interview. You have to at least appear to want the job.”

Towards the end of my first week, I drove out to Lachine to buy a chunk of hash from Mouse and celebrate my new job. I reached Mouse’s house at about five o’clock in the evening and stayed until almost seven, smoking hash with him and his wife. I knew Barbara had gone shopping with her sister and I expected her to be home later than usual. I called home every thirty minutes or so from Mouse’s house and received no answer.

At about seven, with still no answer from home, my radar went off and the hairs on the back of my neck started tingling. I called my brother-in-law, Pierre, at home and he too was waiting to hear
from Barbara or his wife Brandi. I toyed with the idea of having Pierre go over to my house and check if our wives were there, but I thought better of it. I finished my drink and my pipe full of hash and thanked Mouse for his hospitality before I drove off into the night with a premonition of danger.

I thought of calling the police and having them check on my house but decided against that. I was only a few minutes from home and I could get there faster than any police vehicle. The night was dark and still with freshly fallen snow on the roadsides as I made my way through the quiet streets of the West Island of Montreal to my home. The snow was melting as it hit the ground and the winter tires on my big Lincoln made a squishing sound on the bare, wet pavement. The radio was off and my senses were on keen alert as I pulled into my driveway. I stopped and waited. The sensor-driven coach lights at the end of the driveway were on, but the house lights were off. It was seven o’clock. By this time of night, the house lights should have been on. The dog was not barking and Barbara was nowhere to be seen.

I held my position for one or two minutes and then backed my car down the driveway as if I were leaving. I was looking for a reaction. If it was an ambush, my leaving might provoke a move. I stopped at the end of my driveway and looked around. Nothing moved but I could sense by the hairs on the back of my neck that something was definitely not right. I thought again about calling in the cops, but I was already there at that point. I took my handgun out of its shoulder holster, cocked it and then pushed the remote garage door opener. When the double garage door creaked open, the overhead light clicked on and I saw nothing out of sorts inside the garage. I scurried on all fours around the front end of my Lincoln, which I left idling at the end of the driveway. The Lincoln was bathed in the amber glow of the coach lights, as I took a breath and quickly ran up to the house in a running crouch. I entered the garage and cat-walked through it to the inside door entrance to the house. I opened the door, half expecting to be shot in the face as I peered into the darkened hallway with my gun cocked and at the ready. I cursed the little gun I was carrying and I was hoping the Savage automatic wouldn’t jam on me, as it had in practice after every three or four shots. But three or four shots might be all it would take
if I could get them off quickly and accurately.

I looked to the left first, towards the bathroom at the closest end of the hall, which is where I would have hidden if I had wanted to pull off an ambush. When I saw that no one was there, I crept to the right and Indian crawled into the darkened kitchen.

“Hello? Is anybody here?”

“We’re downstairs.”

I recognized the voices of Barbara and her sister speaking in unison.

“Come upstairs,” I called back.

“We can’t. We’re handcuffed to the post.”

“Handcuffed? Who handcuffed you?”

“Two men,” answered Barbara “They’re gone now. We heard them leave. They stole Brandi’s car from the garage.”

“Hang on. I’m going to check around upstairs.”

“No, please come and free us from these handcuffs. I have to pee so badly.” It was Brandi speaking.

“I’ll get my handcuff key and I’ll be right down.”

As I spoke, I retrieved a loaded .
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caliber handgun that I had hidden in the hall cupboard next to the garage and added it to my weaponry. With a cocked and loaded gun in each hand, I made my way through the darkened upper level of my house, checking for intruders. I let our young dog Tania out of the upstairs bathroom, where she had been locked up by the home invaders. I remember wishing I still had my last Doberman, Max, who had died after a dogfight with a neighbour’s Malamute. No one could have come into our house and locked Max in a bathroom. I checked each room and saw that the upper level of the home was clear.

“Where are you?” came an impatient voice from downstairs. “My bladder’s going to burst!”

“Let me talk to Barbara,” I called down from the top of the stairs.

“I’m here,” she replied

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m alright.”

“No one has a gun on you?”

“No. I already told you. They’ve left.”

I found in Barbara’s voice the tone I was looking for, which told me no one was prompting her with a gun. Nevertheless, I peeked around the corner of the top of the stairwell, with both hands holding a cocked and loaded weapon. I slowly walked down the flight of stairs and peered around the corner at the bottom of the stairwell.

I saw that the playroom was just as I had left it. The basement was pretty much empty except for a couch, a chair, and a coffee table with a ping-pong table in the centre. The ping-pong table stood beside a carpeted structural support pole in the middle of the spacious basement. My wife and her sister, Brandi, were handcuffed to that pole, while our one-year-old baby daughter played innocently at their feet.

“Get me out of these handcuffs,” Brandi groaned. I checked the rest of the basement rooms for intruders before I came back to the issue of the handcuffs. When I returned to the support pole, I stood staring helplessly at the handcuffs, my mind clouding with anger and rage. I was momentarily numb as my mind went blank.

“I don’t have a handcuff key,” I said helplessly. “The police took my handcuffs and keys when they raided the house last year.”

“Use a bobby pin,” Barbara said, reminding me of a trick I had once shown her that I was too adrenalin-rushed to remember. I quickly ran upstairs and found a bobby pin in our bedroom. I returned downstairs and opened up the bobby pin, then slid the pin up and along the handcuff ratchet of Brandi’s restraints until the handcuffs slipped open. Brandi bolted for the washroom while I repeated the same process with Barbara, who immediately picked up our baby daughter and held her close.

When Brandi returned from the washroom, we all went up to the kitchen where the story came out in breath-filled rushes that were mixed with sighs of relief. As I stood in the kitchen listening to their story, I could feel my blood warming to a boil. From what I could gather, Brandi and Barbara had returned home from a shopping trip and parked Brandi’s Volkswagen in
our heated garage. When they came into the house for a glass of wine and some further conversation, Barbara noticed right away that something was amiss. All of our suitcases were sitting packed in the hallway and, at first, she thought that maybe I was preparing to leave on a trip somewhere. When Barbara realized that the dog was missing, she made an immediate attempt to flee the house.