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

front tooth, I never considered him a threat to my relationship. Like Ryan, I should have paid more attention to the situation, but I was too busy working my scam.
    Bishop and I returned several times to Phoenix for a refill of our illicit drug prescription. The last trip we took saw us take back one hundred and forty pounds of primo Mexican weed. We were so confident of our operation that we even made arrangements to have Colin and Vince come to Montreal for a visit on the next trip north. They were eager to come to Montreal and offered to ferry another two hundred pounds up to Plattsburg for us on a front. Up until this time, I had been accompanying my friend Bishop on the journey, but I never carried anything on my person. Bishop was the courier. My end was the “cap.” I set up the purchase and I had the connections in Phoenix, as well as providing the bulk of the start-up financing. There was no need for me to stick my chin out, even a little. However, I am very quick to take on responsibility if needed, and when I discovered at the last minute that four suitcases of weed were too much for Bishop to handle with his bum leg, I did not hesitate. I didn’t know about his leg, which had been injured in a motorcycle accident some years before but I suspect to this day that he was just nervous to do the run alone. I felt I had no choice but to help him carry the bags to the check-in counter. Flying with several suitcases was not unusual in those days. The airlines always accepted extra bags, sometimes without a surcharge if the plane was light on passengers. There were noraised eyebrows as we checked in Bishop’s luggage. However our suitcases were so stuffed with bricks of weed that one of them was in danger of breaking open. Bishop and I taped it up at the airport counter to keep it closed. We could have gone back to the Ali Baba shop and left two of the bags of weed for a future run. It might have been embarrassing as well as costly, but it certainly could have been done.
    Instead, I helped Bishop carry the bags to the check-in. I made certain the baggage stubs were on his person and in his name. We were the only people in first class when we boarded the plane and the stewardess sat down with us and began chatting freely. We were playing a game of heads up poker when she started asking questions.
    “Where are you headed?” she asked. “What do you boys do for a living?”
    “We’re gamblers,” Bishop answered, while trumping my pair of aces with three little sixes. We were gamblers all right. We were gambling on getting four suitcases of weed from Phoenix to New York without getting busted.
    There were no customs checkpoints to worry about, but with several thousand miles to cover, it was still a dangerous mission. When we landed and deplaned in New York, we went looking for our bags. Much to our dismay, they were not with the other bags on the revolving turnstile. We waited until all the passengers from our flight had left the terminal and then waited around a little longer, thinking that our bags might still be coming. Just as we were about to give up hope, I spied our taped-up suitcase along with the three others sliding down onto a different baggage carousel about forty meters away. At first I figured that some member of the ground crew had placed our bags on the wrong incoming turnstile. I later discovered that it was no mistake and that some unknown but enterprising airport worker was intending to grab the bags himself.
    Bishop and I quickly walked over to the adjacent carousel and scooped up the four suitcases, taking two apiece. We made a dash towards the escalators to make our way to the car rental agency. As I reached the escalators and I started to put my footon the first step, I felt a hand on my shoulder pulling me back. I spun around, ready to take issue with this rather aggressive interruption of my journey and came face to face with several plain-clothes policemen. There were five or six of them