Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (15 page)

“I am going to kill him,” said Irving. “I’ll walk right up to his door, ring his bell, and when he opens the door, I’ll drill him.”

He was serious. No fucking around with Irving when it came to money. That was one Jewish stereotype he followed religiously. To coin one of Irving’s favourite expressions, he’d kill his own mother if the price was right. But I could not go along with Irving on this one. I wanted money, but not enough to kill an innocent man who was just doing his job. I argued against Irving’s plan and I stoutly refused to drive his getaway car.

“It’s not right, Irving” I said, as I asked myself why the fuck he couldn’t drive his own getaway car. I offered to give up the scam if that’s what it took in order to stop Irving from killing an innocent man, but there was no convincing him. He was gonna do what he was gonna do, no matter what I said, and the Devil be damned if he didn’t like it. When Irving realized that I was not budging on the issue, he contacted Miller and asked him to be his getaway driver. Miller’s compensation for the job was to be made a full partner in our scam. John Miller agreed to take the job, but in the end, the dock supervisor was transferred to another location on the waterfront and the problem was solved on its own.

John became a thirty percent partner in our scam, all for doing nothing. And boy did he love the change in lifestyle. John was driving an old shitbox Oldsmobile when I first met him. A few months later, he was driving a new convertible Cadillac Eldorado, and he was decked out in gold jewelry and puffing fatties. I didn’t mind sharing my booty with John. There was more than enough money to go around and John Miller changed my somewhat tedious job with an edgy partner into a job that was fun. Irving had the door. Irving sold the weed and collected the money. Irving had control. John and I were like his assistants, for all intents and purposes.

Irving kept records in his little black book, but there was never much cash given out because we were always investing the bulk of our profits back into the scam, paying for subsequent shipments that grew larger and larger every time. We drew
enough money out to support our lifestyles, and every now and then we would pull a chunk of money out of the kitty for a larger house or a better car.

For me it was not about money so much as it was about the game. My future was riding on a life-sized magic carpet, with heavenly rewards and deadly consequences. The protagonists kept changing as I evolved through different sets of friends and business acquaintances. From Ryan and Robby I moved on to Bishop and Ross. From Bishop and Ross, I moved on to Irving and John Miller. Our antagonists were the police, Canada Customs, Immigration, the Mafia and all of the other lowlifes and criminal groups who wanted what we had.

“Don’t let the Mafia get wind of our scam,” Irving always preached to me. “I ain’t giving up nothing to those wop bastards,” he promised. “There will be blood everywhere if it starts up with them.”

Irving knew what he was talking about. The mafia had cost him several of his friends. One of Irving’s friends, Adam Schidlenski, survived a beating and stabbing that saw him left for dead in a car trunk at Dorval Airport. When the Mafia tried to extort money from Adam a few years later at his bar in Saint Jovite, he threw the Mafia enforcers out of his bar at gunpoint and told them to check with “the old man” and see who the fuck they were dealing with. Old man Vincent, the reputed head of the Montreal mafia, told his boys to leave Adam Schidlenski alone. “That guy is too crazy,” he said at the time. The Mafia eventually blew Adam up on the Decarie Expressway using a remote-controlled bomb to do the job. The hit was ordered when Adam would not pay tribute to the mob for a scam he was involved in where he melted down Canadian quarters for their silver content and then shipped it to the U.S. My friend, Big John Miller, used to chuckle at how Adam had offered him the job of driver, which was a euphemism for bodyguard or enforcer.

“No fucking way was I taking that job!” laughed Miller, finishing with a loud snort. “I knew what was happenin’. Two fucking weeks later, the guy was dead.”

John Miller was a nice guy who had the misfortune to be born with a pug’s build. Powerfully strong, with massive arms and shoulders, he had a striking appearance, even though he stood no more than five foot ten. Miller was a good-looking man for his size. He had prematurely white hair and a quick, easy smile with nice white teeth. He was a learned man, with a sardonic wit and a sarcastic view of life. With his menacing looks and jailhouse demeanor, John Miller didn’t stand a chance in the straight world. I always believed that he was doomed from birth to lead a life of crime. On the outside, Miller had the looks of an enforcer. On the inside, he was a hippie. He loved to burn weed and hash. He liked snorting a line of blow from time to time, but weed was his thing. Proud as a peacock, he liked wearing flashy gold jewelry and driving his purple Cadillac Eldorado convertible.

“A pimp’s car,” he used to laugh. “I have to drive it like an old whore,” he would snort, as he spread his legs wide to clear the low steering wheel.

John was down with the blacks and spent a good deal of his time at Rockhead’s Paradise Bar, near the rough quarter of Montreal known as Saint Henry. Rockhead’s was a club that catered to a mainly black audience, and many a time, when I went looking for Miller, I found him there. He was comfortable in that black environment that had the whores and the patrons swapping outrageous lies and generally laughing it up.

I started bringing John down to Jamaica with me to break the monotony. He was a little older than I was and I used him to dispatch a couple of the container loads of weed we sent from Kingston to Montreal. We were supposed to keep a low profile in Jamaica, but that was difficult with Miller around. His personable nature and his enjoyment of a good time led him into the centre of most gatherings.

One time we were at the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, with Miller at the pool bar and me in my room smoking a joint. I was listening to the police band that was playing by the pool. Suddenly they stopped and I heard a commotion going on down below. I looked over my balcony and saw the police band
running in scattered directions and, a short distance away, I saw John Miller watching them from behind a palm tree. I found out later that John was having a friendly conversation with an Australian gentleman at the bar. Somehow the conversation became heated, and when the Australian said that all Canadians were shits, John decked him into the pool. As soon as that happened, the police band scattered and the show was over, pending the arrival of real policemen.

I had many good times with John Miller. He was a good friend and he was as solid as a rock when the chips were down. John was one of the few business friends I kept all my life and I am only sorry that he is not around today to continue the good times.

We had to do something. We had weed coming out of the wazoo and more was on the way. There was too much to fit into Alex Jones’ attic so we rented a house and we had Bishop babysitting the stash, or “sitting on the bomb,” as John Miller and I used to laugh. The house was a modest two-storey Tudor, with an attic that held several hundred pounds of our pressed marijuana at any given time. But Bishop needed to go out on occasion, and the thought of leaving all that weed untended was a little disconcerting to all of us. At first we had Bishop call Irving or me when he needed relief, but that soon became unworkable. The poor guy could not even go to the store for a pack of smokes without planning it and he soon began to complain that he felt like he was sitting in prison. Before he became crazy with boredom and quit, Irving and I found a solution.

“Let’s get him a dog.”

Irving and I were both dog owners and we saw this as the best answer to Bishop’s problem. Irving had a German shepherd called Nitro and I had a Doberman called Max which was short for Maxine. They were both spoiled house pets, but they both had been trained to bark and growl at strangers. Max came with Barbara and me when we went on our sabbatical to Mexico. We
used to leave the dog in our camper in Mexico with the side doors wide open and we never got robbed. The Mexican children loved to tease Max to get her to start barking and frothing at the mouth and then they would laugh and exclaim “El Lobo” which means wolf.

Irving’s shepherd, Nitro, was also trained to guard the house and car. Once, when Big John Miller and Irving were out for a drive, they stopped at an intersection near a bus stop. Some poor guy was waiting for the bus when Nitro suddenly jumped out of the car window and with no provocation at all, ran over and bit the man on the back of his leg. Irving called Nitro back to the car and John Miller opened the passenger door to let him in. Before they drove off, Irving leaned across John Miller and addressed the bus rider in a concerned voice. “Gee, that looks pretty bad,” he said. “You should have that looked at.” Then without even offering the man so much as a ride to the nearest hospital, Irving stepped on the gas and drove away.

After much searching, I located an ad in a local newspaper for trained guard dogs. The dog breeder lived in Rosemere, a picturesque little village in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal. On a bright winter afternoon, Irving and I drove out to see the dog trainer who met us with an affable smile. He greeted us in English, laced with a strong Quebecois accent. “What kind of dog do you want?” he asked. It didn’t really matter, we found out later. He had only one dog available. When we first laid eyes on Marquis, he was locked in a cage in the kennel quarters, where there were no other dogs at the time. Marquis was a black-and-tan Doberman that weighed in at about one-hundred-and-fifty pounds, which is large for that breed of dog. He had a cropped tail that was longer than normal and a left ear that flopped over his eye while the other ear stood straight up to a point. His stance was solid, with feet that were like bear paws. His legs were like gnarled tree trunks, covered with black bumps and warts. His black-and-tan coat was coarse and thick and oily and he smelled of unwashed dog. His head was massive and when he snarled his fangs hung below his lips in a menacing manner. He immediately went for us as we
approached his cage. As we came closer, the Doberman began barking and snarling and frothing at the mouth.

“Marquis down!” the dog trainer said, as he bent to open the cage.

The trainer slipped a choke chain around the dog’s neck, to which was attached a sturdy leather leash about ten feet in length. When he brought the animal out of its cage on the leash, Marquis became docile and friendly, like a big clumsy kid that kept stepping on everyone’s toes.

“Why is he for sale?” I asked

“This dog is not for everyone,” he said. “He needs a strong owner. As long as you hold him by his leash you are safe. But don’t drop the leash. The first guy I sold him to was too old. The dog was too strong for him. The second guy was a bread delivery man. He bought the dog to prevent people from stealing from his truck when he made house-to-house deliveries. One day he calls me up and tells me, ‘Come pick up your dog. He won’t let me back into my truck!’ I had to take him away,” the trainer continued. “He’s a good guard dog, though. He just needs a strong owner.”

Irving and I studied the animal some more, but we did not take the dog right away. After I looked in the papers for another week or two and found nothing, Fast Freddie Peters and I went back at a later date to pick up the dog. We brought along fifteen hundred dollars cash to pay the trainer. I am not afraid of dogs. I have always had dogs in my life. But Freddie had never owned a dog and this one was terrifying to him. I sat in the front passenger seat, with Freddie driving the big Mercury sedan that was used as our lot car, and I put the Doberman in the back seat. I held on tightly to the leash, but I did not feel especially safe with the Doberman standing at face level on the back seat of the car. To placate the black-and-tan beast, I had purchased a box of dog biscuits. I fed him along the route to our destination, which was Bishop’s house. As I fed Marquis, I noticed he was wagging his tail throughout the journey. He was docile, for the most part, except for attacking the car window every time he saw another human on the side of the road. However, he went absolutely
wild when we were stopped by a road work crew and were forced to wait beside a mechanical man, with a robot arm that raised and lowered a red metal flag. I thought the dog was going to go through the window to get at the mechanical contraption. Freddie was ducking forward in the driver’s seat yelling,

“Hold onto the leash, hold onto the leash!” The ride was uneventful, for the most part, until just before we arrived at the stash house and we ran out of dog biscuits. Freddie was more than a little concerned about the dog biscuits running out, so when Marquis suddenly leaned over the back seat and planted a long wet lick on his ear, poor Freddie nearly drove off the road.

When we got to the West Island house where the weed was stashed, we gave Marquis to Bishop, who was thrilled to have his own dog. Now he could leave the premises whenever he wanted, without having to worry about security. One look at Marquis and we knew that no one was going to come around the house while this dog was inside. After Marquis became adjusted to the house, he would come barreling up to the front door, barking and snarling and jumping against the door, whenever the door chimes rang. He hit so hard and high that he damaged the door jam above the top sill of the door. When Bishop took the dog for a walk around his residential neighbourhood, the brute would pull against his choke collar the entire way, growling and straining towards everything that moved and even some things that didn’t. The dog would try to attack mailboxes, cats and other dogs, men, women, cars and children.

One evening, Bishop tried to domesticate his workmate by having him sit down before his meal, in the same way that I had trained my Doberman to sit and wait politely for her signal to eat. Marquis became impatient with the idea and jumped up and bit Bishop on the arm, causing him to drop the plate of food he was offering. As soon as the plate hit the floor, the dog let go of Bishop’s arm and immediately began to wolf down the food. The attack left two puncture wounds in Bishop’s forearm that looked exactly like .
38
caliber bullet wounds. To Bishop’s credit, he did not give in to fear of the beast. After the dog bit him, he threw some more dog food down the basement stairs and when
the brute ran down after the food scraps, Bishop slammed the basement door closed on him. From that time forward, the basement became the dog’s quarters when Bishop was home. When Bishop was out of the house, the dog roamed freely throughout the living quarters, with access to all the rooms and all of the doors and windows.