Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (33 page)

The time came when Bossa’s oil from the six hundred pounds of weed ran out. Then I had to start paying for the oil in Jamaica before it could be body packed up to Canada. At first, Duke was able to supply me with oil, but his price was too high. So I started flying down to Jamaica myself to purchase and prepare the oil to be body packed to Vancouver. My old friends from Montreal, who were still dealing in ton loads of weed and oil, would have probably laughed at my little scam. But I had no interest in getting any bigger and any more exposed than I already was. I felt comfortable dealing in Jamaica, where the customs agents were corrupt and most of the cops could be paid off. I also felt comfortable in Vancouver where I was relatively unknown to the police. As long as more Jamaicans could be found to come to Canada body packing oil, my business would continue to bring in several thousand dollars per week for as long as I ran it. Next, Duke sent his girlfriend up with a dozen pounds of oil. I had her take a taxi from the Vancouver Airport to my house and paid her immediately for the oil.

Eventually Barbara and I had to look for a larger house after our son was born. We could not afford to upgrade in the North Vancouver area because house prices had doubled in the few short years that we lived there. I was looking for a place large enough to house our family of four and I also needed space for one more item. I wanted a grow room. The grow room would
supply my weed requirements, with a little left over to supplement my inconsistent commissions. The house I eventually chose was next door to my pot smoking buddy Brandon in the Maple Ridge area. Ben, the electrician, wired my new basement with four one thousand watt metal halide lights. The conversion worked out beautifully and while I sacrificed some storage room in the basement, I always had a larder full of weed and a pocket full of cash. Not too many people were growing pot indoors at that time and the authorities weren’t really checking for it the way they are today.

I read up on the subject of cannabis cultivation until I became a veritable expert. I loved the hobby aspect of growing pot and the bonus of having valuable buds at the end of the process just made it all the more worthwhile. My friends were growing pot and I was growing pot. We all used our legitimate incomes to pay our household bills and used our illicit income for luxuries.

My oil business must have looked like I had a licence to print money to my ex-partner Lou because he started to pester me for the chance to be an oil runner. I had no wish to use Lou as a runner since I had more than enough Jamaican volunteers. As well, my friend Brandon warned me not to do so.

But I felt sorry for Lou, who had never made a real score in his life, and after much consideration, I finally agreed to take him down to Jamaica and pack him up with oil. I rented May’s house in Great River Private on this occasion because it was remote and secluded, in a high-end area that had its own private security. Lou loved the exotic Jamaican experience, with the ocean view and the spicy food and the warm summer nights full of jungle sounds.

Duke, who had been supplying some of my oil, was having trouble securing enough, so I went with him hunting for oil suppliers in Montego Bay. I was pulled aside by a young man who I was told later belonged to the Chicken Gang. The young Jamaican man offered to sell me some oil. I told him I was interested but his price was too high. I told him I might see him again next trip down to Montego Bay because I already had
enough oil for now on this trip. He asked me where I was staying in case he came up with a better deal and I told him to come and see me at May’s. Duke said that was a mistake as soon as we drove off.

“What do you mean?”

“Those guys work with the cops.”

“So what,” I told him. “We’re staying at May’s and the oil is all stored at Righteous’ house.”

“I’m just telling you, mon. You can’t just talk to people on the street. You have to be careful.”

“You’re just being paranoid.”

A few days later, on the very day we were to leave for the airport to body pack a dozen pounds of oil to Vancouver, I was driving back to May’s house with Duke. It was time to pack Lou up for the trip home and we were heading back to May’s to get our suitcases. It was Righteous’ idea to pack Lou at his house in Hopewell instead of Great River Private. He felt safer working in his own kitchen rather than wrapping up Lou in May’s house. As I pulled off the main road into the private road to the Great River Private estates, I noticed a Jamaican work crew standing around a water main with a green Land Rover parked nearby. I sped past them and drove a half mile further to pull into the driveway of our villa. As I stopped at my front door, May’s niece, Mercy, came running out to greet me.

“The police were just here.”

“The police? When?”

“They just now left.

“What did they want?”

“They wanted us to let them into your room, but I did tell them I did not have a key.”

I thanked Mercy for the warning and I quickly unlocked the grillwork that protected the bedroom quarters and ran into my bedroom. I rummaged through my drawers in search of my weed and rolling papers and handed the works to Mercy, who ran off to hide it all somewhere outside.

As she left my room, an unmarked Jamaican police vehicle pulled up the long winding driveway and stopped in the yard
outside of our villa. It was the Land Rover that I had passed on my way in. I went outside to greet the visitors and met three plain-clothes Jamaican police officers who were standing by my front door. One of them asked if I was the renter of the house, before showing me a hand-written search warrant. After they asked me my full name, they added it to a line at the top of the search warrant and then asked me to escort them inside the house. The three policemen nodded at Duke, who was well known to them in the same way that everyone knows everyone on the small island of Jamaica. The cops took down Lou’s name as well as mine and then they went straight into my bedroom. Without much difficulty, they found about half an ounce of weed I had missed in my haste to clean house, but they did not find the oil that they were looking for. They kept looking around the bedroom quarters until they satisfied themselves that there was nothing else in the house and then one of them held out the brown paper bag with the weed they had found in my room.

“This is illegal in Jamaica.”

I resisted the impulse to remind him that the Jamaican economy was dependent on the marijuana trade, which brought in money equal or greater to the tourist industry and bauxite production together.

“It’s not mine.”

“It was in your drawer.”

“That’s not my drawer. I only rent the place.”

“You have the only key to the room.”

“That weed was left here by the last guest. Not me.”

“You are responsible.”

I knew where this was leading and I looked over at my friend Duke who was standing by with Lou, neither of them saying anything.

“Let me speak to my friend for a minute,” I told the cops

The cops nodded and then stood aside while I spoke to Duke in a whisper, “Fix it up man.”

Duke screwed his face into the proper expression of concern mixed with exasperation and walked over to talk to the three policemen. Duke huddled with them muttering in a conspiratorial
silence and then walked back to me a minute later.

“Do you have a thousand dollars?”

“Jamaican or U.S.?”

“U.S.”

“All I have in cash is five hundred.”

“Give it to me.”

I did so and Duke walked back to huddle with the three policemen. There was a rustle of bills changing hands and ten seconds later the three cops were gone.

“That was close.”

“Yah, mon.”

“They were here for the oil.”

“Yah, mon. Sent by the Chicken Gang. When you don’t buy their oil, they turn you in to their friends in the police.

“Did you see their warrant? The cops down here just carry them around blank and fill them out whenever they need them.”

“Yah, mon. Jamaican style.”

“I’m glad you were here, Duke.”

“Yah, mon.”

“Those pricks would have taken me to jail for half an ounce of weed.”

“No, mon. They wanted money.”

“Five hundred U.S. wouldn’t have done shit if they had found our twenty pounds of oil.”

“Yah, mon. Them would want a whole heap more money dan five hundred.”

“I don’t have any more money. I would have been fucked.”

“Yah, mon.”

“I guess it’s over for this run.”

“What do you mean?” said Lou, having finally found his voice.

“We’ve been spotted, Lou,” I answered. “They could be on the lookout for us at the airport.”

“They never even looked at our air tickets.”

“Are you telling me you still want to go through with the run after all this?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get busted?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t do it.”

“I want to.”

“What do you think, Duke?”

“Them cops working wid de Chicken Gang. Them not work for no
CIA
.”

“You think we can still pull it off?”

“Yes, mon.”

“Okay, we go.”

I made Lou a promise as I drove out of the Great River Private estates. If anything went wrong, I told him, I would pay him five thousand dollars and take care of his lawyer as long as he didn’t rat me out. I told him I would pay him out of my own money, even if we lost the load of oil.

When it became apparent that the three policemen had left for good, Lou and I drove straight to Hopewell where my friend Righteous was waiting for us with twenty pounds of oil. There was barely an hour to spare before our flight departure, when we finished wrapping Lou. I was surprised at both Lou’s greed and his lack of fear as we placed bag after vacuum-sealed plastic bag of oil around his midriff. I was suggesting that he stop at around fourteen pounds but Lou, who was being paid by volume, kept saying, “More, give me more.” We packed him up until he had the entire twenty pounds of oil on his person and when Lou put on his suit jacket, there wasn’t even a trace of a bulge.

We drove to the Montego Bay Airport with Lou in Righteous’ car and Duke in mine. I was concerned, in case the cops recognized my rental car and stopped me again on the way to the airport, but that did not happen. At the airport check-in, Lou passed through the first hurdle and was whisked ahead of me into the in-transit lounge without being frisked. With that major obstacle overcome, we had a four-hour flight to Toronto to face. The flight went by very quickly, with an unexpected tail-wind pushing us into Toronto a half hour early.

I let Lou deplane ahead of me, so I could keep an eye on him
as he went through Canadian customs. I saw him again waiting in the immigration line and I noticed that he wore an impatient, grumpy look on his face. It contrasted with the tired but smiling faces of the other returning air passengers around him. I lost sight of Lou at the baggage conveyor, when his suitcase came down the baggage ramp ahead of mine. I was tagged by immigration for a baggage check, so I picked the shortest line I could find. I waited my turn in line, still looking for Lou, until I reached the customs counter. There was much movement and talking in the half dozen or so customs lines, as several hundred passengers waited impatiently to get through to the outer terminal. It was difficult to see what was going on with Lou until finally it was my turn to have my luggage searched. I lifted my bag on to the customs counter, along with my briefcase, and my attention was caught by a minor commotion in the customs line two counters over. I thought it might be a scuffle between two passengers but I was unable to discern what was causing the commotion. I was still unable to locate Lou, who I hoped had been waved through without a baggage check. The female customs agent who was working my counter looked through my bags and my briefcase.

“What’s this for?” the female customs inspector asked.

As she asked the question, my eyes focused on a briefcase sitting open on the customs counter two lines over where the commotion had occurred. I could not tell for certain, but it looked like Lou’s briefcase sitting open over there. The passengers in that line were being shuttled to a new line as that customs counter was suddenly closed. I had a sinking feeling as I looked back at my own customs agent who was asking me questions. She was pointing to a roll of expansion bandages that I had in my briefcase.

“What’s this for?” The female customs agent repeated her question, as she pointed to the roll of bandage tape that was to be used to rewrap Lou’s oil in his Toronto hotel room for the second leg of his flight to Vancouver. It was the same bandage tape that Canada customs agents were probably peeling off Lou right now.

“I have a bum knee,” I said, surprising myself at the efficiency of my unrehearsed answer. I thought I detected a flash of suspicion in her eyes, but the agent found nothing further to ask me about in my luggage and she waved me through to the outer terminal.

I was relieved to get through the customs screening, as I walked through the frosted doors to the outer area of the terminal. I waited several minutes in the outer terminal for Lou but he didn’t appear. As the seriousness of the situation set in, I went into survival mode. The last thing I wanted was to be arrested in Toronto and be charged there on a conspiracy beef. I had no idea how strong Lou was going to be in the face of a possible seven-year sentence for importing drugs. He could be inside spilling his guts to customs and the
RCMP
right now, I thought, as I started walking away from the terminal.

I took a cab to the Airport Hilton where Lou and I were booked into separate rooms. I took a seat in the bar and had a drink before I made some phone calls. First, I telephoned the front desk to see if Lou had checked in or left a message for me.

No, he had not.

I called home and spoke to my wife, asking her if she had heard from Lou or his wife Lucy.

No, she had not.

I told Barbara to call Lucy and check on whether Lou had called her. Then I left the bar and checked into another hotel under my first and middle name. I paid cash for my accommodation, and then went up to my room and threw my suitcase on the bed without unpacking it.