Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer by Jay Carter Brown Page A

slippers. Irving conducted much of his life in his bathrobe. He even came to poker games at my house wearing only slippers and a bathrobe. On this occasion, he was wearing his pale gold bathrobe and his brown slippers as he laid out the terms of our arrangement.
    “Okay, here’s how it is. We split the expenses fifty-fifty. We split the income fifty-fifty. Even-steven partners. Don’t rat on me, and don’t ever cross me. I’ve been crossed before and it never ends nice. They all cry and piss themselves in the end. But it’s always too late.”
    As he spoke, he looked at me with a deadly expression in his eyes. It was a clear message and I knew that he meant what he said. But I was not worried. It was not my nature to rat, nor to be dishonest in my dealings, so I had nothing to fear from Irving. He told me he had already sent Charlie down to Jamaica to send up a four-hundred-pound load, but Charlie had run into major problems completing his task. It seems that Charlie hadenlisted the help of Ryan McCann and his partner Robby to set up the purchase of the weed in Jamaica. The two men delivered the weed to Charlie, but when he went to pick up his weed at his rented Jamaican villa a few weeks later, someone had absconded with the stash. Charlie was told by Robby that a Jamaican must have swiped the load. But when Charlie questioned the Jamaican housekeeper at his villa, she described a white man with curly hair who had come by with a truck and taken the four suitcases full of weed from the garage. Robby had curly hair. And Ryan had a curly hair wig that he was showing off at parties. Four hundred pounds of cleaned and pressed marijuana was worth a sizable amount of money. Even in Jamaica, it was worth twenty thousand dollars or more. Irving must have been furious to have lost that kind of money, even if half of it belonged to his partner Charlie. He knew from Charlie that I had lived for a time in Jamaica and he had heard from Charlie about some of my smuggling successes.
    I listened intently as Irving laid out the score. He had a door into Canada he told me. A couple of guys he knew from jail were working on the waterfront and were willing to boost a crate full of weed if someone would ship it to them. He asked me if I could put a load of weed together in Jamaica and ship it to his waterfront contacts in Montreal. He told me that he did not trust Ryan and Robby, who were just names he had heard from Charlie. Irv said he would choke Robby like a chicken if he ever came close enough. Irving had an interesting ability to crack his knuckles at will and he accompanied his threat with a pantomime of choking someone, complete with the finger-cracking sounds of breaking bones. Irving had arranged to have Charlie’s Porsche repaired after Jean Paul LaPierre filled it full of bullet holes and he blamed the shootout on Ryan and Robby. Irving seemed to have little or no fear of Jean Paul, even while recognizing that the little Frenchman was capable of a showdown.
    “If Jean Paul or anyone else ever bothers you,” Irving told me, “just agree to whatever they want and then you leave them to me.” The offer was music to my ears. Irving was just what I needed. Not only did he have a door into the country but healso had the wherewithal to deal with Jean Paul and his ilk.
    “Just don’t have anything to do with those two monkeys when you’re down there in Jamaica,” Irving instructed, referring to Ryan and Robby. “And don’t be saying nothing about our conversation to your wife.”
    I assured Irv I would comply with his instructions and I shook his hand and left. But since Barbara and I are like two halves of the same clamshell, I went straight home and told my wife everything. I let Irv think that Barbara knew nothing until Irving came to know Barbara well enough to realize that his fears about her were unfounded. Before either one of them knew it, Barbara was treating Irving as she would a long-lost uncle, and Irving had given