Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (37 page)

Part of the reason for my mistrust was due to several intimate conversations between Solly, Hawkeye and me while we were together in both Montreal and in Jamaica. Jamaica was where the parties rolled the longest and the drug use was the highest, as a vacation mentality would merge with Solly’s festive spirit. I have a pretty high tolerance for drugs and when most people are toppling over, I am still firmly in command of all my faculties. Some of the questions that came from Solly on those late night stoned-out chats came with a sharing of information that was somewhat one-sided. He told me all about his past and the various hits he was involved in. Solly was another leg shaker who exhibited nervous tendencies unconsciously. In addition to leg shaking, Solly had itchy palms that he was always scratching. His troubled conscience notwithstanding, Solly was a true soldier in the sense that he was always ready and willing to drop anything to help his buddies.

One time, he told me that he was called out of bed to run downtown and help a friend named Riley Robertson who was being beaten up by a black American football player at a downtown speakeasy. When Solly arrived at the sixth-floor apartment where the speakeasy was located, he covered the room and handed his buddy a gun. When Riley was ready to shoot the football player on the spot, Solly cautioned him.

“Not here in front of everyone. Take him out on the fire escape, at least.”

When I asked what happened next, Solly told me the black visitor to Canada ended up falling to his death from the sixth floor fire-escape.

“What happened?” I asked again and Solly made a pushing motion to indicate that the black man had been pushed over the fire-escape. I knew he was telling the truth because I remembered the headline about an American visitor falling to his death at a speakeasy and how all of the witnesses had mysteriously vanished from the scene.

Another time Solly was called out of bed by one of his buddies in the middle of the night. Fearing there was a serious problem, Solly strapped on his guns and ran downtown to a hotel to find his partner at the time, Robert Lavigne. He found him alright. In bed with a three hundred pound woman.

“Look, Solly,” Robert said as he lifted one of her fat legs. “She’s got rolls of fat everywhere. You can fuck her anywhere. In the arm. In the leg. Anywhere.”

Solly told me he did not appreciate the humor at three in the morning and told me it was a good thing in a way that Robert was gone. Robert was the guy who died with Charlie Wilson in a hail of bullets in a club north of Montreal.

“I liked him, but the guy was crazy,” Solly told me. “He was going to get us all killed.”

In amongst all of his stories, Solly asked me pointedly if I had ever killed anyone. Warning buzzers went off in my brain, cutting through the layers of cocaine, marijuana and alcohol that dulled my senses.

“No,” I told Solly. “But I would never tell anyone if I did.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s no statute of limitations for murder.”

“But I told you about mine.”

“I never asked you to.”

Solly was miffed at my lack of forthrightness, as though I had failed to reciprocate his honesty. I was not sure if he was trying to bond with me or searching out fodder for future use. I even wondered if he and Hawkeye were confidential informers, although the idea almost defied belief. How could you rob and kill people and still work with the police? But how else could Solly know so much information about Irving and others that could only have come from the source or from the police? He told me that Irving was thrown out of the witness protection program because he would not own up to killing Toonie. How would he know that? He told me that Irving killed a man, a nice young Jewish fellow who was a fringer, who had invested money with Irving. I remember the man from his frequent visits to our car lot to buy and trade in vehicles. He had apparently continued his relationship with Irving after I left town. When the Jewish man threatened to go to the cops after a bad deal, Irving killed him. But how could Solly know this? Was he just passing on rumours?

Hawkeye told me stories about his past that had me wondering about him, too. He told me about being apprehended for an offense that put his partner Solly in the can for three years. It was a gold bullion robbery at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Solly was doing time for the score and Hawkeye was on bail, headed for the same fall. He told me that he tried everything to avoid it. He told me he cooked up a scheme which he first ran by Solly in jail for approval. After getting the green light from Solly, Hawkeye made a deal with the Crown to provide undercover information. The first thing he did was arrange to have a hundred pounds of weed left in a motel room for the cops to find. The cops and the Solicitor General were happy with the publicity from the find, but soon pressed Allan for more information if he wanted to keep himself out of jail. Allan told me about arranging for a pound of diluted heroin to be placed
in a locker downtown for the police to find. He did not sound at all concerned that someone delivering the heroin to the locker went down with the smack.

“Fuck him, he’s a heroin dealer,” Hawkeye replied to my query.

I don’t know if he realized it or not, but no matter how cool he thought he was being with the cops, I knew he was traveling down a slippery slope when he started playing ball with them. In the end, Hawkeye was not able to avoid his sentence, because in spite of his help to the cops, the Solicitor General himself called to put a stop to the deal that was brokered.

Hawkeye and Solly both went into prison with an
OC
stamp on their files.
OC
stands for organized crime. When Hawkeye finally exhausted all avenues and he finally had to face the music, Solly was already in line for a parole. But they got out at almost the same time because Solly served three years of a seven-year sentence and Hawkeye ended up serving less than two.

To get out early, Hawkeye told me he had made a deal with a guard at the prison he was in. Hawkeye was on a work detail, cleaning brush in the forest with an axe, when he had a run-in with another inmate. The other inmate had been mercilessly picking on a young lad who was new to the work team and Hawkeye took offense to it. He warned the guy off and when the other inmate would not listen, Allan swung his axe near his foot and told him to leave the kid alone. His axe would have cut the inmate’s foot off, if he hadn’t moved his leg out of the way, and he screamed like he was being murdered when the axe cut into his boot. The head guard saw the whole thing and pulled Hawkeye out of line.

“You don’t like it here, do you?”

“Not much.”

“How would you like an early release?”

“How can that be?”

“Anything can happen once you’re in the system.”

“How do I make it happen?”

“My truck is getting old. I need a new one.”

“I’ll have a new one in your driveway Monday.”

And that’s how Hawkeye won an early parole after serving barely a year of a seven-year sentence. At least that’s how he told me it had happened. It crossed my mind that he might be stroking me, but I saw the same thing happen with Simon Steinberg, who was out on parole in two years, after receiving a twenty-year sentence. His family must have contributed to some fund or political party, but whatever they did, it worked.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to have serious concerns about the integrity of my Montreal partners. With all the trouble brewing in Montreal at that time between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine, I wondered if the police might be investigating me as well. In all
150
people died in that biker war before it was ended in a truce. When an innocent seven-year-old boy was killed in a car bombing of a biker, the police became proactive about shutting down the bikers. On paper, I looked bad enough to be a possible player in the biker war and my mysterious travels between Montreal and Vancouver could certainly be considered suspicious.

Add to this the fact that my ex-partner in crime, Irving, was known to have been involved with killing Toonie, why wouldn’t I be a suspect? When the fire marshall investigated my house burning down, I blamed it on Irving. What if Irving had blamed me for killing Toonie when he was in witness protection?

The proof of my hypothesis followed shortly thereafter, when I was waiting in the Dorval Airport terminal for my plane to Toronto. The plane was connecting to flight
992
to Jamaica, where I was meeting Solly and Hawkeye who were already down there. As I waited alone by the coffee bar for my flight to depart, a lone individual came rushing into the lounge as if late for his plane. He carried no hand luggage and I saw no ticket. He sat himself beside me at a small table beside the food counter. The stranger was short and unshaven and he wore jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt. His casual dress looked somewhat out of place amongst the other business passengers sitting around the coffee bar. Cops do not realize it, but they present an image that looks as much like a criminal as the criminals do. Same leather jackets. Same three-day growth of beard. Same swagger and
demeanor. I spotted him in a second, as he began a casual conversation that I was unable to avoid. You know the routine. Nice day, eh? Should be a good flight. Where are you headed? That kind of shit. I did my best to ignore him and I was pleased when he finally excused himself and left with the statement that he had to collect his hand luggage from a locker before the flight. I knew he was full of shit because there were no lockers in the in transit lounge where boarders had been pre-cleared for their flights. The friendly stranger still had no hand luggage when he returned and sat down beside me again to continue his deception. I did my best to avoid further conversation with him and was relieved when I was finally called to board the aircraft. I was especially glad to see that his seat was not the vacant one next to mine. However, as soon as we were in the air, he appeared beside me again to carry on with his force-fed chat.

“I am going to Mexico to be a guard at a gold mine,” he said after some mindless conversation about nothing. “It pays good money. Do you want a job? They need more people.”

“No, thanks.”

“Do you know how to use a gun?”

“No,” I answered. “I am into the peace scene.”

“Really, you never owned a gun?”

“Years ago, for hunting maybe. Not anymore.”

“Where are you heading from here? he asked.

“Vancouver,” I lied.

“What flight are you taking to Mexico?” I countered.

“Flight
463
out of Toronto at noon.”

He pressed me with more questions relating to guns and violence, until I left my seat and went to the bathroom. I figured for sure he was a cop and I wondered if his barely concealed interrogation was a prelude to my arrest in Toronto. While I was in the bathroom I popped a Quaalude to take the edge off, before returning to my seat.

Damn! He was still there.

There was no getting away from him, I thought, as I sat down and feigned sleep. After several minutes with my eyes closed, I couldn’t believe it when I felt him elbow me in the ribs. I
opened my eyes and he looked into them. He said nothing for the longest interval, as we held a staring contest at thirty thousand feet above sea level.

“You seem very calm” he said after the pause. “But is your heart racing inside?”

“Huh?”

“Are you scared inside?”

“Scared of what?”

“You know.”

I knew alright, but I wasn’t letting on to this guy.

“No, I don’t know,” I persisted in a louder voice. “Now leave me alone. I want to have a nap.”

He left me alone from that point on and the stranger was nowhere to be seen when I awoke and deplaned in Toronto. The first thing I did when I got off the plane was to check the video monitor for the time and flight number he had given me. There was no flight of any kind to Mexico within hours of noon, and his flight number was a phony.

I continued on my way to Jamaica and was relieved that the pest was nowhere to be seen on the next leg of my voyage. When I arrived in Montego Bay, I saw Solly and Hawkeye in the waving gallery.

“I told you never to meet me here at the airport,” I growled, as they both meandered over towards me outside of the inbound terminal. I gave them the story about the cop on the plane and I was miffed at their lack of concern. Hawkeye acted like it was an everyday occurrence. Solly just laughed and had me repeat the part about the cop elbowing me in the ribs and then laughed harder.

When Barbara and I left Montego Bay on the return leg of a later flight, I saw a man in a suit in the waving gallery. He was taking a picture of Barbara and me as we walked across the tarmac to the plane. He was either taking a picture of us or he was taking a picture of the bare tarmac and we just happened to be in the way.

I knew the heat was on and my fears were reconfirmed when I was returning with Barbara from another trip to Jamaica that
was purely a pleasure trip around Christmas. For some reason, Barbara and I were having an argument on the plane ride home via Toronto. We had both been drinking and the booze was starting to speak, as my wife and I exchanged insults. By the time we reached Customs and Immigration, we were so angry with each other that we retrieved our bags separately and went through different customs lines. Canada Customs must have seen this as unusual behaviour and no doubt already had me on a watch list. I saw Barbara clear customs in the next line over and scowled at her, as a female customs officer searched my bag and found nothing. I was expecting to be sent on my way, when a male customs officer of a more senior rank came behind the counter and told the girl to step aside. He said he was taking over the search.

“Hand me your jacket,” the male customs officer said to me.

He was referring to the jacket I always wore on plane rides or carried through customs. The suede jacket gave me an air of legitimacy and offered a number of extra pockets to pack money and other trifles into. The jacket was clean on this occasion, or so I thought. The senior customs officer took the apparel from my arm and started carefully removing the lint from every pocket in my jacket. As he placed the bits of lint on the counter, I quickly saw that it wasn’t just lint. It was bits and crumbs of marijuana that had fallen out of joints that had been in my pockets over the course of many years. The weed bits came from joints in Canada and in Jamaica. In fact, I could tell by the bright shade of green that most of the marijuana crumbs were from Canada, having been transported to Jamaica and back again. When he had finished picking through my pockets, the customs officer arranged the lint in a little pile on the counter and I was surprised to see that there was enough weed in that pile to roll a huge fatty. I wasn’t really worried if the case went to court, because it was no big deal. But at the same time, I remembered how Phil Robson had been stopped in Toronto by Canada Customs with half a joint that his girlfriend had accidentally packed into his suitcase. Canada Customs made him go to court on that little beef and he had to hire a lawyer. Then he had to travel back and forth between Montreal and Toronto for months
while the case meandered through the Canadian justice system. Montreal was only three hundred and sixty miles from Toronto and it was a major hassle for Robby. I was living in Vancouver, which was three thousand miles away from Toronto, so I was none too pleased when the senior customs officer looked at me with a satisfied grin and turned to his female associate.