Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (19 page)

We made arrangements for the hookers to be at the flight crew’s hotel room by noon the next day to guarantee that there would be no interference from them when we went for our hash. That day, I awoke early and fidgeted away the morning while I waited for the appointed hour to leave the house. It was Friday the thirteenth, which held no significance for me, until later in the day.

Our team met at noon sharp at Modern Motors and we prepared to depart in a convoy for the airport. Simon was driving a
BMW
. Myron drove his Land Rover. I followed in a nondescript one-year-old Chevrolet Caprice, with John Miller riding shotgun and Shaun sitting in back. Chip “the Limey” was not supposed to be with us that day, but he just so happened to appear at the car lot right when we were all leaving. He was invited to come along with us in the cover car. As we left the car lot, Irving drove off in a different direction towards the stash house to wait for the arrival of the hash.

It was snowing lightly outside of the garage and the streets were wet but not yet slippery. The snow came down in fluffy flakes while our fleet of cars negotiated its way to the domestic area of Dorval Airport. The Lockheed Lodestar was clearly visible, with a dusting of snow on the aluminum fuselage. I broke away from the procession as Simon and Myron disappeared into the aircraft hangar to park their cars. I parked in an area where we could see Myron and Simon as they walked from the hangar to unload the hash, but we could see only a portion of the plane through the frost fence that surrounded the runway. I kept moving the car to different parts of the parking lot because there was a four-storey airport office building with lots of windows that overlooked where we were waiting. I did not want any alarms raised because four unshaven men were sitting in the parking lot for a half hour or longer. I drove out of the parking
area and went off down the service road, returning at measured intervals to check on the removal crew’s progress. It was one of the few occasions that I can remember when I was uninterested in smoking any pot or hash, as my nerves were on high alert, and I preferred it that way.

We could see movement towards the rear of the plane as Simon and Myron removed the hash in suitcases, leaving the wooden packing crates on board the aircraft. I had a momentary rush of alarm as an airport security car came racing across the tarmac towards the plane at a high speed with its lights flashing orange. At the last minute, it turned and drove away with its lights turned off. Fifteen minutes later, Myron’s black Land Rover sedan left the hangar with its tail dragging low, due to the nine hundred and fifty pounds of hash weighing down the back of the car. I was hoping the Land Rover’s suspension could stand the load of all that hash and was imagining the hassles if the rear end collapsed. I pulled in behind Myron, keeping a safe distance away, as the black Land Rover rolled along at a sedate fifty miles per hour which was pretty much the same speed that Myron always drove. There were one or two other cars on the road that day, which was not unusual for a Friday at noon. I noticed one car, a rust-colored Pontiac Lemans, follow us for a mile or so and then turn off the highway we had driven in on. I felt a sense of relief as I watched it turn and disappear down a side road that led in another direction. We were barely a mile or two from the stash house and all was looking well, when a short distance further ahead, I noticed the same Pontiac Lemans waiting at a side street to pull onto the highway behind us again. Since we had no stop signs to contend with and he did, I figured the driver of the Pontiac must have taken side streets and driven like hell to keep up with us.

“That’s the cops,” I said to the others in my car, as I saw the Lemans pull in behind me. I knew we were about to be busted so I pulled around Myron’s Land Rover and made a dash for it. I started to pass the Land Rover and I could see confusion in Myron’s face as I burned past him with the Chevrolet going flat out. Then another car two car-lengths in front of me, slammed
on its brakes. I spun the steering wheel hard to the right and missed that car, then swerved further to the right to avoid a third car that slammed on its brakes directly in front of me. I found myself momentarily bogged down in the snow at the side of the road as my tires screamed for traction. I could see Myron’s car behind me in my rearview mirror, as the Pontiac Lemans ran into the Land Rover’s front fender and drove the car into a snow-filled ditch.

My Chevrolet started to break free of the snow and the wheels found pavement once again. I was almost free and away when another ghost car pulled in front of me and slammed on its brakes, trying to force me off the side of the road. The next moments rolled by in slow motion as I hit the gas with the Chevrolet’s rear wheels spinning wildly. A man jumped out of the car in front and pointed a handgun at me through my front windshield.

“Stop,” he said.

“Hold on,” I said to the others in my car as I punched the throttle and slipped low in my seat to present a smaller target. I made it past the cop without getting shot and was on my way to freedom when another car came out of nowhere and rammed me back into the ditch. The next moments were mayhem as guns were drawn and half a dozen or more plain-clothes police officers surrounded us. We were all pulled from the car and made to stand with our hands on the roof of the nearest cop car. There were six or more vehicles stopped all over the two-lane highway, some with red cherries flashing on top and others just parked there with lights left on and doors left open. I can remember the chill of my hands on the metal roof, as I stood looking at Big John Miller and Shaun standing in the same position on the opposite side of the police car.

When it came time to handcuff the five of us, there turned out to be only one pair of cuffs available amongst all of the cops on the scene. That told me that they had been totally unprepared for this bust. The one pair of handcuffs that they found were used on Big John Miller, or “le Gros Bubull” as they called him, making reference to John Miller’s extra-large size. We were all
taken to
RCMP
headquarters in downtown Montreal where the cops tried to sort us all out.

I was separated from the others and put into a room with Shaun, where two police officers interrogated us at opposite ends of a long maple conference table. Some pieces of
ID
, including my driver’s licence, were sitting in a pile at the centre of the table. My licence was pushed towards me by my interrogating officer and he asked for confirmation of my identity. I refused to talk or give my name until I saw my lawyer. After several failed attempts to get me talking, the two police officers left the room.

“Tell them your name at least,” Shaun whispered to me. “They’re getting pissed off.”

“I’m telling them nothing,” I replied, remembering Irving’s teachings.

“It can’t hurt to give them your name.”

“They can see my name right there on my driver’s licence. It has my fucking picture on it.”

“You better tell them something.”

“Not a chance.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the two police officers returning to the room.

“So, you don’t want to talk,” my interrogator said as he smiled down at me. “Take him outside,” he said to the other officer, with a nod towards Shaun. “Then send in Tarzan,” he said, with a wider smile while looking at me. His fellow officer scowled at me, then handcuffed Shaun, and took him from the room. Then they both disappeared along with my interrogating officer and I was left in the room alone. After a minute or two, the door opened and a man entered.

This must be Tarzan, I thought, as he came to the end of the table where I was seated and looked down at me. For several seconds he stood there saying nothing. Something in his expression made me ask, “Do I know you?”

“I know you,” he said.

“From where?”

“I know you, that’s all.” I tried to place him, but to no avail.
Then I figured it out. He knew me, all right. He knew me like a brother from listening to three or four years of wire taps on my phone.

“They tell me you’re not talking,” Tarzan said, as he leaned slowly over the table and with both hands he carefully removed my glasses. I don’t actually wear glasses, but in keeping with my desire to look more like a businessman when I was on the job, I had ordered a pair made up that looked like reading glasses but were fitted with zero ground lenses. At the time, I was wearing the glasses so as to separate myself from some of my accomplices who looked like career criminals. When the glasses came off, I recalled my experience in the washroom with the Montreal homicide detective.

“Is this where I get my beating?” I said in a calm voice, looking Tarzan squarely in the face. The question caught him off guard and removed his element of surprise.

“This is the
RCMP
,” he said with feigned indignation as he threw my glasses back on the table. “We don’t beat people,” With that, he walked out of the room and that was the last I ever saw of Tarzan.

After my brief conversation with Tarzan, I was removed from the conference room and I was asked no more questions. I was subsequently taken to Parthenais Detention Centre where I was held on the seventh floor until my lawyer could spring me out on bail. I called on Sidney Goldman, of the same legal office that Jean Paul had introduced me to when I had had my problems in the U.S. I was a little disappointed that Sidney’s underling, Steve Bloomberg, came to see me in jail, instead of the senior lawyer himself. But the advice he gave me was to prove prophetic.

“Don’t talk to anyone in here,” Steve Bloomberg said. “Stay quiet and keep to yourself until I can get you out of here.”

A few days later, I was surprised to see a guy that I had worked with at my old printing machine company. Andre Dumont came strolling towards me on the seventh floor of Parthenais Detention Centre with his hand outstretched in greeting and a welcoming smile on his face.

“They’re all talking about you,” he said, carrying a newspaper
with headlines referring to our nine hundred and fifty pound hash bust.

“What are you in for?” I asked him while shaking his hand.

“I robbed a store,” he answered with a sheepish grin. “I was drunk.”

I guess Andre must have forgotten that he had told me just before he left the printing machine company we worked at that he was intending to apply to the Rosemere Police for a job.

“No kidding,” I said, with my lawyer’s warning ringing in my ears. “What did you use?”

“I used a knife.” It sounded weak. No one uses a knife to rob a store in Quebec, where there are more guns than people. I disclaimed any knowledge of the nine hundred and fifty pound hash bust and said it was all a mix-up before I said goodbye to Andre and went back to my cell for a nap. I stayed in my cell all that day and the next. When I finally emerged, after two days of ignoring Andre’s attempts at conversation, my ex-workmate was gone. A jail-wise inmate named Joseph Lemiuex came up to me.

“Hey, you know that guy you were talking to yesterday? They released him last night at
12
o’clock midnight.”

“So?”

“So, no one gets released from jail at night. They don’t process you at that hour anywhere in the province of Quebec.”

It didn’t take much to figure out that my workmate was a plant and that he must have got that job with the Rosemere Police Department after all.

After that, I stayed in my cell continuously and studied the book on criminal law that Joseph Lemiuex had loaned me. I returned the book to him after I got out, but by the time it reached him, he no longer needed it. He died in a jailbreak that saw four inmates try to escape. One of them produced a handgun that had been smuggled into prison. Joseph killed a guard on the way out and then was gunned down himself as his three accomplices made good their escape to a waiting car.

Before I got halfway through the law book Joseph gave me, I was processed and released after my lawyer sprung me on a fifty thousand dollar bail bond. A fifty thousand dollar bail condition
isn’t as bad as it seems because the court accepted my house as surety and I did not have to come up with any cash. Irving put his house up for John Miller’s bail and Shaun had an aunt who covered his bail with a surety on her house. Simon Steinberg had plenty of equity in his own home and was also granted bail. But as a foreign national, Chip the Limey required a fifty thousand dollar cash bail. That was put up for him from our cash kitty, in my name.

All of us were charged with conspiracy to import narcotics. Simon Steinberg had an additional charge of actually importing the drug. The next few years were a continuum of delays and postponements, as the two sides attempted to match the personal schedules of five suspects, four lawyers and several Crown counsels.

A depressing reality settled over me after the rug was pulled out from under us that Friday the thirteenth. I had a sentence hanging over my head and money for lawyers was draining my pocketbook. Irving, John Miller and I still had our Jamaican scam to fall back on, but now that the element of surprise was gone, I no longer had the comforting anonymity I used to.

One thing that I was proud of was the fact that no one in our group squealed. Nevertheless, I was furious at Simon, who in my mind caused us all of our problems with his lies and bullshit. At one point, I suggested to Irving that we kill him. I did not trust the little rich boy to keep his mouth shut in the face of a minimum seven-year sentence. I wanted to see him dead and buried in the woods before he could cause us any more grief.

“His family is rich,” Irving said in response. “If he disappears it will cause a lot of heat. It’s not worth it right now.”

I felt that Irving had some personal responsibility for our predicament and I guess I wanted to see him make it right.

“What if Steinberg opens up?” I continued. “You could go down, too.”

“He won’t open up.”

That’s when I realized that Irving actually liked Simon, in spite of his fuckups and bad breath. In hindsight, I’m glad that Irving did not follow through with my wishes, which would have made me an accessory to murder and would have added a
mortal sin to my roster of others. Instead of killing Simon, Irving pulled him aside and warned him what he would do to him and his family if he talked. The little rich boy stayed solid as a rock after that, and my soul was once again spared.