Smuggler's Blues: The Saga of a Marijuana Importer Read Online Free PDF Page A

out of the vehicle, please.”
    “What for?”
    “Step out of the vehicle.”
    Bishop complied with the order, while the officer frisked him and a second customs officer looked on.
    “What’s the matter, son? You look nervous.”
    “I’m not nervous,” Bishop answered with a challenging stare.
    Suddenly the Customs Officer slapped his hand over Bishop’s heart and smiled over at his partner.
    “Hey, Charlie. I think we’re going to have a cardiac arrest here!”
    The officer concluded that Bishop was clean and let us all pass back through the border into the U.S. Everyone in our van was laughing as we drove away from the customs wicket. I was laughing. The Ali Baba crew was laughing. Their girlfriends were laughing. Even the two Customs Officers were smiling. The only one with a scowl on his face as we re-entered the United States was Bishop.
    Once we were back in Arizona, we purchased our first fifty bricks of Mexican weed and two hard-shelled Samsonite suitcases. We packed the suitcases with weed at the Ali Baba Head Shop and placed towels and limes over the red-wrapped bricksof marijuana. Then we bid farewell to the Ali Baba crew and drove our rented car to the airport. Bishop wheeled the bags into the terminal, where we both caught an uneventful flight back to New York. In New York we rented another car and ferried the suitcases full of pressed bud to Plattsburg just below Montreal on the Canadian border. There we met with Ross and we carefully stashed the bricks of weed under the springs in the back seat of his father’s car that he had borrowed for the day. A few hours later, Ross drove the weed back into Canada, crossing the Canadian border on a busy weekend with the drive-in movie crowd. The plan worked flawlessly and the reunion in our hometown of Montreal was a happy one, as the parties continued and drug use escalated.
    There was still plenty of coke and Quaaludes to go around at Ryan and Sally’s house and we continued to gather there to party. When Ryan flew down to Jamaica for a scam, the parties continued without him. Ryan had no idea how close Ross and his wife Sally were becoming in his absence. I gave him a heads-up one time, but he was too busy with his scam to properly deal with the issue.
    Meanwhile Barbara and I had rented a huge house in Beaconsfield where we had lots of room for guests and parties. I came home from a trip down to Arizona one time to find a mob of people at my house. I walked in with my suitcase and asked Barbara what was going on, what’s with all the strange faces. There were Corvettes and Jaguars and a Mercedes-Benz in the driveway and I recognized none of them. My friends, Joe and Hymie, and a mooch named Izzy Solomon interceded to explain that the Rolling Stones concert was on that night and there was absolutely no weed or hash in town for the event. I was the only one in all of Montreal who had weed to sell. These people were all drug dealers working the show. I was angry that my friends had brought all of these strangers to my house but I made the best of an uncomfortable situation. I sold the ten pounds of weed that was in my freezer for full retail. Then I called Ross to run to our stash and bring over the rest of our supply, and we sold every brick of Mexican weed that night.I went to the show with several of my friends, and I felt proud that everyone in the stadium was getting high because of us.
    The house Barbara and I rented had three unused bedrooms besides ours, and as fate would have it, my friend and partner, Ross, needed a place to stay after his parents asked him to leave home. He had thrown a tequila party in their absence and his older brother had come by to find everyone drunk and half naked. Ross took offense to his older brother’s objections and they had a punch-up that left Ross with his front tooth missing. Barbara and I agreed to let Ross stay in one of our many unused bedrooms. Since Ross was a bit of a flake and looked like a geek without his