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

her stepdaughter status. Irving was very much like her recently departed father, who was gruff and sarcastic but straightforward with his thoughts and emotions. Both men had supreme confidence in their actions, and both had the same barrel-chested appearance. But there the comparisons stop, because Barbara’s father was a hardworking family man whose conscience was regularly assuaged by prayers each evening.
    Irving, on the other hand, was anything but pious. He had been divorced by his wife, after leaving her and his children on welfare when he went to prison. Irving had two children. A teenaged son named Aaron who was on anti-schizophrenia medication and who walked around in a lonely fog looking for a father substitute. And a daughter named Donna who was a remarkably well-adjusted young woman in her early twenties. Donna was a psychology major in university and I took her diagnosis of her father as a paranoid psychopath at face value, even before I looked up its meaning in a medical dictionary. Neither child played an active role in their father’s life, although it was obvious they loved him in spite of his shortcomings. For his part, Irving treated his son about as well as he treated his dog, Nitro, and showed similar misgivings about the usefulness of either. Nitro had a habit of eating rocks until his teeth were worn down to stubs, which annoyed Irving to no end, while Aaron popped prescription pills in a fashion that led Irving to shake his head in disgust.
    Irving had little to do with his daughter, who had reached a point in her life where she neither needed her father nor respected his way of life. Donna had educated herself into total independence and her only holdover trait from her father’s influence showed up in her choice of men. I never knew whether she was being spiteful or if she was merely a victim of her own neurosis, but I found it curious that she dated men very much like her father. When I first met Donna, she was dating Irving’s ex-con partner from his very first holdup who also was named Irving. Little Irving had turned his life around at that point and owned a moderately successful computer repair service. When Donna’s father, Big Irving, tempted her boyfriend back into a life of crime, Little Irving was eventually sent back to jail. At which point, Donna started dating a career criminal named Ziggy Epstein, who was another member of our smuggling crew. Ziggy was a nice young man several years younger than Donna. He was kind and thoughtful, but I could never fathom why Irving’s daughter chose men who were so far beneath her hard-earned station in life.
    The first thing I did after getting tacit approval from Barbara to go ahead with Irving’s proposal was to call Ryan. Even though I had lost faith in lyin’ Ryan, he was the only person I knew capable of putting together a four-hundred-pound load of weed in Jamaica on short notice. I let him know from the outset that I was brokering a deal for some mob guys, and I gave him the same ominous warning Irving had given me. I told Ryan nothing of how the weed was being shipped. No timetables. No connections. I only told him what I wanted and when I wanted it and I promised payment upon delivery.
    Ryan had our buddy Brian Kholder take care of our business. Brian had spent long hours in Jamaica overseeing the pressing of weed for some of Ryan’s earlier scams.
    Brian came from a good background, which does not refer to the lovely mother and hardworking father who brought him up. Brian’s references came from his uncle Moe, a notorious gangster and pimp in the underworld and a wise guy for the Montreal Italian mob. Uncle Moe was dying of cancer when Ifirst met Brian, but his uncle’s reputation remained intact when, from his hospital bed, he sent shovels with red ribbons tied on, to those who still owed him money. Brian was not like his uncle Moe in the least respect. Brian was a philosopher by nature and the only one of my smuggler friends who