Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (24 page)

“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the judge chided the Limey and me. “Make certain it doesn’t happen again.”

At this point, I took some time off and enjoyed a much deserved rest from all things criminal. My wife gave birth to our first child, Allison, after my acquittal and I began to crave a different lifestyle. I spent almost two years of nonstop work to get the Hawk
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s through their certification program. Of the ten Hawk
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s I lost five because I did not have the money to pay out the options on them, and then I lost one more when I had to sell it to keep the rest of the certification program afloat.

You have to understand that these planes were not just sitting for free in some field in England. They required constant maintenance and a place to stay, all of which costs money. I had to take several trips to England before the Hawk
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s completed their certification process. The process involved mechanical conversions to the aircraft as well as conversions of flight manuals from military to civilian status. The problem was that the military
had to decertify and release the flight manuals before they could be translated into civilian language. Before the process was completed, two years had passed and I ended up having to borrow ten thousand dollars from Barbara’s sister. I gave her my Corvette as collateral which she promptly smashed up while driving home drunk.

Chip the Limey was of some help to me, as he had friends and family in England where the planes were stationed. Those friends helped with errands and deliveries of paperwork and so forth that passed between the mechanical shop certifying my aircraft and myself representing the various authorities in Canada and the U.S. who were involved in the certification process.

I visited Chip’s buddy, Bob Chambers in London, who I first met on the Lebanon scam in Beirut. Bob got me a piece of hash and showed me the sights around London. It was springtime and it was the first time I ever enjoyed England. I rented a car and Bob and I drove down to the forested countryside of Kent. I was surprised to see that the trees in Kent were well spaced and looked manicured, as compared to our northern Canadian forests full of tangled underbrush and evergreens. The English forest, like all things British, was neat and tidy, with no need of walking trails because the space between the trees was open and carpeted with pine needles.

When I returned to Canada from my last trip to England on the Hawk
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certification program, I took a job selling computerized word processors which were new to the marketplace. I needed the income until the Hawk
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s were sold and I was not interested in trying to maintain my criminal status any longer. A change was brewing, as I hung out with mainly straight friends, except for Luc Lavoie and Pierre Allard who owned a car lot near Decarie Boulevard. Pierre Allard was an interesting character, with a combination of straight and criminal tendencies. Pierre was as charming and polite a person you could find, but when he was doing poorly in the car business, he would supplement his meager income with the occasional bank holdup.

“I have to do it,” Pierre said to me, as his bank robbing partner Ti-Lou looked on with hooded eyes. “I opened the freezer
last week and I found all of the Mastercard statements that I gave my wife money to pay. She’d spent the money on clothes and makeup. When I tried to explain to my wife that she had to stop doing this she threatened to jump from the overpass onto the Decarie Expressway. What can I do? She’s crazy, but I love her.”

Ti-Lou was the smallest bank robber I ever met. He stood about five foot six and weighed barely one hundred and fifty pounds. He looked like a kid, until you looked into his soulless eyes which were gray and without life. Stone-cold killer Randy Segouin also had dangerous eyes, but his eyes sometimes had sparkle. Ti-Lou’s eyes were dead. He used cocaine which he loved, and prostitutes which he despised. He was a woman hater and a serial killer, which I knew nothing about at the time of our meeting. After he left the shack that served as a sales office, Pierre told me a little about Ti-Lou, starting with an apology for having him around.

“He’s not my friend,” he said, when his bank robbery partner was absent. “We just do holdups together.”

A Jewish prostitute named Sarah would stop by Pierre’s place from time to time to chat and complain about the difficulties of her profession. She was a pretty brunette with a slim figure and a whiny voice. When I had not seen her for a few weeks I asked Pierre about her.

“He killed her,” said Pierre, referring to Ti-Lou. “He took her to Quebec City, and on the way, she tried to steal his coke. He said he gave her as much coke as she wanted, but when he saw her trying to steal some from his bag, he pulled out his gun. He was going to shoot her on the spot but just then, they came up to a tollbooth.”

Pierre went on to tell me that, fearing for her life, the prostitute started screaming hysterically and tried to jump out of the two-seater Corvette as they slowed down for the tollbooth. Ti-Lou immediately put the gun away and calmed her down. When they left the tollbooth, he took his gun out again and, without another word, he shot her three times in the head.

“I buried her in a special place where they will never find her,” Ti-Lou told Pierre. He said he had used the burial site
many times before, without anyone ever discovering its secrets. I thought the story was bullshit until I realized that Sarah wasn’t coming around anymore.

After that, I was uncomfortable around Ti-Lou but since I knew that he was always armed and was most probably a serial killer, I did not reveal the disgust I felt for him. Ti-Lou was eventually sentenced to life in prison for one of several other murders he was charged with. All of the murders involved women. I was not exactly sad to hear that he was in prison, and I laughed along with Pierre once we’d read his penciled note sent from Parthenais holding cells asking Pierre for an alibi.

While in prison Ti-Lou got his just rewards. He was killed by the boyfriend of one of the murdered women, who happened to be in the same prison as Ti-Lou. The boyfriend stabbed the little murderer so many times in the head that he was forever after referred to as “Eye picker.”

My new job selling word processors went well through my three-month training period, at which point I was assigned a sales territory and a quota. I found myself under the supervision of a young woman, which was a first for me. The printing business had always been the almost exclusive domain of men and this experience with a woman supervisor was troubling. I was still expounding the female-bashing opinions of my chauvinistic friends in the underworld when suddenly I was subservient to a woman. And she was a bitch. A sarcastic, ball-busting bitch of a woman, who turned me off sales completely. She accompanied me on my rounds like I was a junior and on the first call I made, I went into a meltdown and broke out into a sweat that ran down my face and turned my ears red. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. A few days later I found another job and handed in my notice.

At this point, my lifestyle was starting to catch up with me and I found myself sleeping poorly and I began suffering chest pains. I started to imagine voices in my head with conflicting ideas. Do this. Do that. Kill him. Don’t kill him. Find a new job. Find a new score. All of the voices had a different character and voice. It was like being in the middle of a discussion group and not being able to offer an opinion.

I went to see a doctor.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

“Me, nervous? You gotta be kidding.

“What about stress in your life?”

“Stress? No. Not really. I’m in sales, so I’m always a little stressed.”

“Are you sure you don’t have any personal problems?”

“No more than most people.”

He gave me some pills. I used them for a while, but when I sold the three Hawk
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planes and got one hundred and fifty thousand dollars U.S. I felt I no longer needed them. I paid back all of my loans to my sister-in-law and to the bank and I totaled up the expenses paid to complete the Hawk
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aircraft certification project.

After I deducted the cost of completing the purchase and certification of the Hawk
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aircraft and calculated my profits, I went for a final visit to jail to explain the bookkeeping to Irving. I knew it was going to be a difficult meeting. Irving thought he had paid my debt with the planes and he was certain to be disappointed to learn otherwise. The documents detailing my expenses showed nothing in the way of salary for me, although I had put years into the program. The net return, after everything, was about seventy five thousand. No matter how you sliced it, that was nowhere near the money that was owed to me. There was only one asset left from our group fund and that was the fifty thousand dollar cash bail that was put up in my name for Chip the Limey.

When Irving came to the security window in the visiting room and picked up the telephone to speak, I could see that he had been working out. His shoulders were broader and he had grown a beard that obscured the softness of his unshaven face.

“You look like shit,” he said to me.

“I got a cold.” The truth was I was taking coke and the doctor’s pills and I was dreading this meeting.

I told Irving that the Hawk
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s did not cover what he owed me. I felt I was owed the fifty grand cash bail for Chip the Limey that was put up in my name. Irving disagreed. I showed him the
expense sheet I had drawn up, but he paid no attention to the figures. Irv said that he should have the bail money. His logic was simple: “I’m in here and you’re out there.”

I said that it was not fair and that I did not agree. He penned me a note and held it to the security window. The note was simple.

“Buy life insurance.”

I was furious. “This is the way you treat me, after all I’ve done for you?”

He shrugged. I collected my papers and stood up to leave.

“Don’t think I’m joking,” he warned. “And don’t think I’m broke either. I got lots of money put away and lots of friends.”

I left without looking back. On the ride home, I thought about Irving’s threat and where I was in life and where I was going. I no longer felt any high or rush in my lifestyle. It had all turned to shit. I was almost broke. I had no income, save the chicken feed I was earning selling word processors. I hated my boss. I hated my job. I hated Irving. I hated my life.

I stopped on the way home to have a drink with some of my friends who I had left behind in the straight world. It was Friday, and a regular meeting place for some of the guys I used to work with in the printing business was at a small tavern in Lachine. I sat down beside Ed Johnson and tried to join in the raucous conversation he was having with some others. But my mind would not let go of the meeting with Irving. Irving had been my friend. He had been like a father to me. But I felt as though I had grown smarter since I met him. I no longer needed or wanted a mentor, and if I did, it would not be Irving. And now it had come to this . . . death threats.

“Where’ve you been keeping?” said Ed.

“I been around.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“Come on. I can see you have a problem.

“Nah, it’s nothing.”

“You can tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Looks to me like you’ve forgotten how to talk to your friends.”

I left without explaining my problems to Ed. How could I? I had tried to go straight, but my old life was still holding firmly on to me. I could have let go of the bail money and let Irving have it, but I was not going to be bullied into it. If I had been allowed a little more time to think things over, I might have done things differently. If I’d had a crystal ball to show me the future, I certainly would have turned loose the bail money and let Irv have it.

Instead, I went to Irving’s house and conned Jane into giving me the bail ticket that was hidden in the stone crawl space beneath their house. I knew that Irving would be furious, but as far as I was concerned, it was check and mate. Once I held the bail ticket that was in my name, I had the bail money. I knew that Irving’s screams of anger would be heard for miles outside his jail cell when he found out, but too bad. It would be years before he was out of prison and by then . . . well, who knew what would happen between now and then?

After I secured the bail ticket, I did what Irving had advised me to do in his three-word note. I bought some life insurance. My friend Gary Martin found it for me. It was the cutest little .
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automatic you ever saw and it was made by Savage. I purchased a shoulder harness, and from then on, I wore the gun twenty-four seven.

Over the next six months I lived a double life as I continued to go to work selling word processors while armed to the teeth. I was cautious in my movements and arranged certain codes with Barbara so that she would know where I was and what I was doing at all times.

I stopped into my old stomping grounds at Modern Motors which had been taken over by friends of Luc Lavoie. Ziggy Epstein was there on a weekend pass from prison and he pulled me aside with a warning about Irving. Irving was telling everyone he knew how he was going to get me. Freddie Peters who was on a day pass also pulled me aside and warned me to make up with Irving.

“If you don’t, he’ll pick you off with a .
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from the end of your street,” he warned.

I knew my dispute with Irving was getting serious but I would not give in. It was about much more than the money. In my mind, I had been used and double-crossed. I had backed him up with weapons. I ended up on trial because of him. I went to Lebanon during a war because of him. I went to Jamaica countless times that could have landed me in prison because of him. And what did I have left to show for it? Nothing. And on top of that, Irving was trying to cheat me out of the money I was owed. Why was he after the bail money so badly if he still had lots of cash stashed away like he said he had? Was he pissed off that I wasn’t in jail with him, or was he just letting the animal side of him take over now that he was in jail again?