Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (32 page)

“How’s it going, Rolf?”

“Not very well.”

“Are you ready to fly over here?

“Yes, but I don’t like it,” he said.

“What do you mean you don’t like it?”

“I have been talking to some of the pilots in the hotel bar and they tell me it’s not a good idea.”

“What do you mean you’ve been talking to the pilots in the bar?”

“There’s a bar at the hotel next to the air strip where all of the local pilots hang out.”

“You are not supposed to discuss what you’re doing with anyone.”

“I didn’t tell them anything. I just listened in to their conversations. What you are asking me to do is dangerous. The authorities are on the lookout for that kind of thing.”

“Of course it’s dangerous. That’s why you’re being paid so well.”

“Money is no good to me if I’m in jail.”

“It’s a little late for this, Rolf.”

“I don’t care if it’s late. It’s my neck on the line.”

“That’s why you were supposed to get over here quick. Get in and out fast. Not sit around drinking with a bunch of rednecked crackers who happen to be pilots. Is Lou there yet?”

“Yes. He’s staying at the hotel.”

“Which hotel?”

“The same one as me.”

“Jesus Christ! I told him to stay at a campground!”

“I don’t think it matters anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because the mission is too dangerous.”

“You had plenty of time to decide that it was too dangerous before we invested all of our money in this deal. I have six hundred pounds here waiting for you.”

“I can’t carry that much. I can take five hundred at the most.”

“You said you could carry a thousand.”

“That was before I calculated the weight of the extra fuel in the long-range tanks.”

“Fine, then come over and get the five hundred.”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, Rolf. I have all my money and all of my friend’s money tied up in this deal. I’m not going back to Canada empty-handed.”

“I have my money invested, too, but there’s no point in continuing just to get caught.”

“If you move right now you won’t get caught.”

“I don’t know.”

“Look, I have to go up to Saint Ann’s and tell Bossa you’re not coming today. He’s waiting up there with everything ready. The landing strip is reserved and it’s the nicest one on the island. It’s even paved, for fuck’s sake. All we’re waiting for is for you to fly your ass over here like we planned.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Call me back tomorrow and tell me when you’re coming. I don’t want to hear anything else except that you’re ready to fly.”

I hung up the phone with a loud slam of the receiver and it took a few moments for the conversation with Rolf to settle in. It was obvious what had happened. Rolf had developed cold feet and he no longer wanted to do what he said he would do. I was beginning to think that his participation in our mission had been nothing more than a scam from the very beginning. The smooth-talking prick had been sucking money out of our venture from the get-go and he never had any intention of flying a load of weed up from Jamaica. His bullshit lies were just another way to keep his head above water, by using our expense money to cover his day-to-day needs.

I thought about his initial flight down to Jamaica to meet Errol, who supposedly had some weed for him. There was no Errol. Rolf’s flight down to Jamaica had been nothing more than a worm on a hook and I was the guppy he went fishing for. I still had hope that he would fly over to Jamaica as expected, but in truth, I was not even expecting him to phone back again. I was quite surprised when his call came through the next day. I was hoping that Rolf had regained his nerve, but his first sentence squelched that idea.

“It’s over,” he said.

“What do you mean it’s over?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back home.”

“Fuck you! Tell me now.”

“They know all about me. They know what I’m doing.”

“Who knows all about you?”

“The
FAA
. The police. They are probably listening in to our phone call right now.”

“Listening in to what? You haven’t done anything yet.”

“They know what we are planning.”

“How the fuck would they know that?”

“They looked in the plane and saw the long-range tanks I had installed. They saw that the seats had been removed.”

“Who let them into your plane?”

“They don’t need anyone to let them in. They have this mirror thing on a long pole that lets them see into the windows of aircraft that are parked on the tarmac.”

“How do you know they looked in the plane?”

“They told me.”

“Who told you?”

“An
FAA
guy and the police who work at the airport. They pulled me aside and told me that they looked inside my plane and saw the missing seats and the long-range fuel tanks. They told me they know what I’m up to and they warned me not to try it.”

“Take off from that airport right now and go park the plane somewhere else. You and Lou scout out a better site and I’ll wait over here until you’re ready.”

“It’s too late.”

“What do you mean it’s too late?”

“They chained my props.”

“Wait a minute. The authorities think you might be doing a dope run so they chained your fucking props? Get Lou to buy some bolt cutters and just cut the chains off.”

“You don’t understand. They seized the plane.”

“Why the fuck would they do that when you haven’t done anything wrong yet?”

“The
FAA
called the owner of the plane in Alberta and asked him about the long-range tanks. The owner said the tanks were not authorized and told the
FAA
to seize the plane. I am probably going to be in big trouble with the
CAA
when I get back to Canada. They might even seize my pilot’s licence.”

So there we were. That was it. There was nothing more to say except goodbye. Checkmate Rolf. You got me good. If you had not been hanging around the airport bar drinking your fat ass off but instead had flown over to Jamaica like we had planned, the mission would have been completed by now. I cursed Rolf every which way from Sunday as I drove back up to Saint Ann’s to see Bossa and tell him the bad news. When I told him our plane had been seized in Georgia, Bossa took the news without any visible concern. He offered to keep my weed safe until I could arrange to get another aircraft to come over. But the plane was not the problem. The pilot was.

I discussed the situation with my Jamaican sidekicks, Duke and Righteous, on the way back to Montego Bay. When we stopped to burn some weed with Sunny in Hopewell, Duke offered me a solution to my problem.

“Have Bossa make the weed into oil,” he suggested. “I will carry it up to Canada for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can carry it on my body.”

“You would do that?”

“Yes, mon, no problem. I already carried some oil to New York.”

“Six hundred pounds of weed will make more oil than you can carry up to Canada by yourself, Duke.”

“I can carry some oil too,” said Righteous.

“And me as well,” said Sunny.

“It’s not a bad idea,” I answered. “No one will expect someone from Jamaica to body pack drugs all the way to Vancouver. Usually the oil runners get off in Toronto or Montreal.”

“Yah, mon,” said Duke. “All I need is a return air ticket and a letter from you inviting me to visit you in Vancouver.”

“You know, I think it might work.”

“It have to work, mon.”

The plan made sense. And the alternative was to leave six hundred pounds of weed behind in Jamaica while I scurried back to Canada with my tail between my legs. I drove back the next day to Saint Ann’s and spoke to Bossa about the idea. To my
surprise, he agreed to convert the weed into oil for me and before I left for Vancouver, I put him in touch with Duke. There was no need for me to stay around Jamaica until the oil was ready. Duke was capable of picking up the oil from Bossa himself and wrapping it onto his body. Unlike Duke, I had no experience in body packing and I would never have considered such a bush-league scam unless I was in a jam. With little other choice, I flew home to Vancouver to wait for Duke to arrive.

Rolf was back in Vancouver when I arrived but I was in no hurry to see him. He had let me down and I could not get over the feeling that he had been scamming me all along. Lou called from somewhere in the States. He was driving the camper home to Vancouver and was out of money and out of fuel. At first, I told him to buy a hose and siphon his way home because he went against my orders and stayed in the same hotel as Rolf, but in the end, I Fed Ex’d him some money.

When Lou arrived home in Vancouver he asked me about paying the mileage charges for the camper. I was glad I had not rented the camper in my name and I let him squirm for a while. I told Lou I would pay him for the mileage charges when the bill came in later. There was no rush because I knew Lou never paid his credit card debt anyways.

When Rolf called me up and asked me to meet a friend of his who had invested money in the scam and to explain what happened, I was only too happy to oblige. I met Rolf’s investor at his father’s office in a high-rise tower downtown that featured a view of the ocean. I was surprised to see that the friend’s father was also in on the scam. He asked me what went wrong.

“I’ll tell you what went wrong,” I told the father. “Rolf here chickened out. He fucked around in Georgia, drinking with the
FAA
, instead of flying over to Jamaica to get the load of weed and then he went and got his plane seized.”

“Can we get our money back for the weed?”

“No. The money is all gone.”

“What about the weed?”

“It’s sitting in Jamaica if you want to go and get it.”

“Then what can we do?”

“Ask Rolf that question. He took your money, not me.”

“Can’t you help us out in some way?”

“I have my own investors to deal with.”

“I guess that’s the way it is, then.”

“Yes, that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

I did not cut off communication with Rolf completely after the failed scam but I did not see him for a long time afterwards. I could not be totally certain that he had scammed me all along, but my gut instinct told me that he had. I still had my job selling printing equipment on straight commission to go back to, so things were not too bad financially.

I called all of my friends who had trusted me enough to invest in my scam and told them the sorry news. Without going into detail, I told them that I might have a way of recouping their investment but they would have to wait a while.

It was almost a month before I heard from Duke and I was beginning to think that my Jamaican friends were as untrustworthy as my Canadian pilot. Then I got the call.

“Hello.”

“Yah, mon.”

“Hey, Duke. Where are you?”

“I’m in Toronto.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Everyting cool, mon.”

“When are you coming to Vancouver?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll meet you at the airport.”

“Yah, mon.”

Beautiful! Duke had already cleared Canadian customs in Toronto.

When Duke arrived in Vancouver, I met him at the airport and drove him straight to our home in North Vancouver. There I helped him to unwrap the layers of tape that were holding almost twenty pounds of oil around his midriff. The next day was spent packaging the oil in one-ounce brown bottles. It was a messy business but well worth the effort. I paid Duke five thousand dollars up front and promised him another five when the oil was sold.

After a few weeks visiting with me in Vancouver, Duke went back to Jamaica to wait for his second payment while I called upon my pot smoking friends in Vancouver to help me sell the oil. At two hundred dollars an ounce wholesale, when the oil cost twenty dollars a gram retail, my friends were all making money. The spread allowed my dealers to double up on their investments. I could have charged them more for the oil, but I learned a long time ago to set up my dealers to be dependent on me, by giving them good profit margins. By giving better margins, I had my street dealers protecting me as the source of their livelihood rather than flipping me to the cops for a quick buck.

I fronted the oil first to Lou so that he could make some money to compensate for wasting his time driving the camper to Georgia and back. My electrician friend, Ben Jessup, also moved some product for me, as did another friend named Brandon Penfold.

Brandon was a big oil mover and a lot of fun to be around. He was a rounder who liked to hang out in the seedier places of Vancouver. He was the person who introduced me to my commission-based job and he had become a close friend and confidant. He was a little jealous of the action I was into, but became much happier when he was given the bulk of my oil to sell.

My Vancouver friends and dealers were happy. My Jamaican friends were happy. I was happy. My investors were especially happy when I paid them all back. I paid everyone back in full except Bishop, who received a thousand dollars less than he invested. I could have covered Bishop’s investment in total, like my other investors, but I held back the thousand to cover the rotten stock he sold me in his now-defunct company called Montreal Toner and Supply. It took a few months before everyone was reimbursed, but eventually they were all paid back. It wasn’t as good as getting a three-fold return on their money, but it was much better than they might have expected, considering the nature of the business they had invested in. I could easily have told everyone that their money was forfeited, just as I had told Rolf’s investors, and they would have had to accept that.

After Duke returned to Montego Bay, my Jamaican pal
Sunny came up with some oil strapped to him. Then came Righteous. Then Duke came back again. It was great for me. I sat at home doing nothing until a phone call came. Then I would go to pick up another visitor from Jamaica.

The money was flowing in pretty nicely and there was plenty of jingle in my jeans to cover both my needs and wants. The sales job Brandon had turned me onto was perfect for my lifestyle. I could work when I wanted, leave when I wanted, stay away for weeks or months or years and then return to selling printing equipment. It is not in my nature to sit around and do nothing for very long, and even though my oil business was prospering, selling printing machines allowed me to fill in some of those daytime gaps.