Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer (40 page)

I was going to call my book “Last Man Standing,” but that title should really go to two people I know who last I heard were still in the smuggling game. One is Allan Hawkeye Stone and the other is Buddy Kholder, Brian’s brother. I don’t know for certain what Hawkeye has been up to for these past years. His partner Solly Cohen is dead, and no one knows who did it. My old pal Big John Miller is dead, after gaining compassionate release from prison and surviving less than a few years with a colostomy bag on his hip. Ron “Hoss” Kingsley is dead, blown up by a bomb during the Quebec biker war. Ziggy Epstein was gunned down in Florida after the hit on Freddie Peters. Freddie Peters is dead, killed by Ziggy and an accomplice. Charlie
Wilson is dead, killed by Jean Paul LaPierre and his partner. Jean Paul LaPierre and Susan Braun are dead from gunshots delivered at least in part by Jean Paul’s partner. Jean Paul’s partner, Joseph Lemieux, is dead, killed in a jailbreak after he killed a guard. Joseph’s younger brother, Rene, was also a victim of gunplay, having been killed in a bank robbery shootout. Irving is either dead or in jail or back on the streets and running from the Angels or who knows who else. I don’t know and I don’t care. Shaun Palmer went to jail. Myron Wiseman has disappeared after he took on a new identity to avoid a jail sentence for the Lebanese hash scam. Simon Steinberg went to jail after getting caught on our Lebanese hash scam. He came out on an early parole, only to fly a plane full of coke from Colombia to Canada. Simon was caught again and I heard that he ratted on the Colombian cartel in his plea bargain. The last I heard about Simon, he had overdosed on heroin in jail, but was still alive. Brian Kholder is dead at forty-five years of age, from natural causes brought on by the ravages of heroin. His wife Karen is dead of leukemia, perhaps also aggravated by years of heroin use. Dave “Kaka” Klein died at thirty-eight years of age from a heart attack caused by a combination of too many drugs and high living. The boys on the docks retired, but not before one of them was taken for a ride by Mickey McDonald and shot four times in the back as he made good his escape at a stoplight. The couple from the West Island that were friends of Brian Kholder’s and who were running aircraft filled with pot and oil from Jamaica to the States split up after they were busted. The wife and the husband and all of their high-flying buddies were caught and got long prison sentences in an American prison. Brad “the Wild Man” Wilder died of a brain aneurysm, several months after he turned himself in and completed a seven-year jail term for smuggling bags of weed on his father’s airline. Irving’s hit man, Roger Ouimet, was blown up along with four of his buddies by members of the Hells Angels.

My lawyer Sidney Goldman was murdered during the war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine. It might have been a biker gang hit or perhaps Sid was punished for losing a
drug case involving a high-ranking female member of the Colombian drug cartel. The Montreal chapter of the Hells Angels killed the entire chapter of the Laval Hells Angels and sunk all five of their bodies, wrapped in sleeping bags, in the back river of Montreal. The Laval Hells Angels were murdered in part because they were too deep into the coke bag, but mainly because they owed Tooney half a million dollars and would not pay. Ryan “Tooney” O’Toole is dead, murdered by Irving and Roger Ouimet in a motel room. Tooney’s partner, Ron “Smitty” Smith, is serving a life term in an American prison.

In large part, the ones who escaped the carnage in Montreal were the ones who moved away. Me. Bishop. Manny. Ryan McCaan. Robby Robson.

Derrick the Doctor is still in Montreal, although he is not hanging with a criminal element anymore since most of his gangster friends are dead or in jail. Shaun Palmer moved to Ottawa after he finished his jail term. Chip “the Limey” Jenkins moved to Vancouver and escaped Montreal justice but unfortunately, his wife died shortly after he won freedom from his importing case. My Jamaican partner Righteous moved to Miami with his family and is chasing the American dream. My Jamaican friend Sunny married a black woman and moved to the States ending up in Texas. I wonder how Sunny finds the ganga down there?

The second guy who was still “standing” in the smuggling game when last I heard, is Brian Kholder’s younger brother, Buddy. Buddy built a hotel in Jamaica with the proceeds of his smuggling activities and appears to be doing well. I went back to Jamaica several times after quitting the smuggling game, and on one occasion, I brought two of my work friends down from Vancouver with me. We surprised Buddy, as he sat with his sister Bonnie by his hotel pool. Buddy’s face turned white when he saw me and I realized later that it was my two friends, who looked like mafia enforcers on either side of me, that were bothering him. When he realized that I was just paying him a social visit, Buddy relaxed a little, but not enough to stop his habit of bouncing his leg up and down.

Buddy told me that just that same week he had witnessed his best friend Hans being killed in front of him and Hans’ daughter. It happened at a seaside bar that Hans owned down the street from Buddy’s hotel. Three Jamaican hit men had come into the bar, with guns drawn, and warned Buddy and the daughter to step aside, before they gunned the German down and left. That might have been part of the reason why Buddy was still a leg shaker. I had a great time with my two Vancouver buddies on that trip and I finally came home without the nagging feeling that something bad might come out of my visit to Jamaica.

There will always be a connection between me and that island, even if most of my old friends have left. The last time I returned to Jamaica, Barbara and I went, as we always do, to visit the house on the hill in Great River Private to pay our respects to the owners. May is no longer living there, since she came down with Alzheimer’s and had to be moved to a home in the countryside near Mandeville. Her son G, who is now retired from the police force and who has known us for decades, offered us the use of May’s house for free anytime we wanted it.

“May is gone and the house is empty,” he told us. “This is your house now. You should be living here.”

We thanked G for his offer, but I doubt that we will choose to live in Jamaica anymore.

Like everywhere else in the world, crime has gotten worse and even I am careful to stay only in the safe areas of Jamaica these days. I used to carry a pneumatic spear gun for protection in my smuggling days, but a spear gun is no match for the
AK
-
47
s carried by Jamaican thieves today. I have decided that the key to happiness in this life is to stay low profile. I no longer wear my gold bracelets and chains and gold watches, which sit unostentatiously out of sight in my safety deposit box. Instead of a Mercedes, I drive a newer domestic model of convertible, and my wife has a similar but older model. I am still working at my same old sales job and although I am not rich, I am finally living the Great Canadian dream that I have always wished for, but never realized I had.

If there is any advice that I can give, it is contained in these poetic words from Jamaican musician Peter Tosh: “Live clean and let your works be seen.”

But who listens to advice these days? I have seen people lose their very lives because they refused to take advice or refused to do what they did not want to do. You would have to be blind not to see that my story is one of danger and excitement mixed with despair. It is a story of high highs interspersed with low lows that exceed anything you might expect in the normal world. The danger kept on coming and the rewards never lasted. If I had it to do all over again, I would have gone to university and toughed it out to earn a degree. I would have left my gangster friends to their own lives and started saving towards retirement and a pension, like most people do. I doubt that I will ever really retire, although my friends might argue that I retired years ago. My life is comfortable in its present form, as I watch my children grow and move along with their own lives. I get up in the morning and have my coffee and read the daily papers as I always have. I take note from the news stories that the next generation following behind me is making the same mistakes I did. Every day there is another headline about a vengeance killing or a rip off killing connected to drugs. It seems to me that the world is getting crazier than ever. There is so much for young people to learn, I think to myself, as I read about their misguided exploits.

But I have learned my lesson.

“Live clean and let your works be seen.”

Yah, mon!