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

time to time, these groups would divide and mutate into other cells or criminal groups which would often interact with each other on projects. For example, one criminal cell might be smuggling weed into the country while another cell would be selling it at street level to the local market. Or one cell might be printing fake documents which other criminal cells and groups would trade for drugs or unregistered guns.
    Anytime two or more people were involved in a criminal enterprise, the local newspapers in Montreal lumped everyone together into a gang and then gave that gang a name. If you lived in the west end of Montreal you were part of the West End gang. If you lived in the east end, you were part of the East End gang. The Dupont brothers from Saint Henri had control of downtown Montreal and any trouble that occurred at the bars and night clubs was attributed to the Dupont gang. The Italians controlled Montreal North and criminal activity in that area was usually attributed to the Mafia. The South Shore and Laval both had their own local gangs. These groups would work together on occasion, but only when there was a mutual benefit. It’s not as though you might offend someone in the West End gang and suddenly have a hundred guys after you. You would only have the hundred guys after you if the party you offended was willing to pay a fee or offer some other benefit as a reward for that service.
    In an effort to make a quasi-honest living, I stopped smuggling cannabis for a while and started selling cars from my home.The business is called “curbing” in the trade and the first few cars I purchased for curbing were from Charlie the Weasel’s car lot on Decarie Boulevard. Charlie Wilson was a couple of years older than I was at the time and he was a hard-working man with simple tastes. He talked in the rough fashion of the east end, but he had a friendly face with slightly protruding front teeth that softened his features. He dressed in non-designer clothes and although they were not brand names, he always looked neat and I never saw him in jeans.
    Charlie introduced me to his partner in the car lot, Irving Goldberg, who was fresh out of prison from a twelve-year bit for armed robbery. Irving was older than Charlie by ten years or so and Charlie often made reference to how dangerous Irving was. He did not look at all dangerous to me. I saw Irving as a clean-cut, slightly overweight man who looked like any other car salesman you might meet. He was of average height, with short curly hair and had a cherubic smile that projected a confident hospitality. I related well with Irving and with his partner Charlie, both of whom had criminal pasts that were more extensive than mine. My other friends from the West Island, who were mostly college and high school dropouts, were just playing at being gangsters and they were scared of Charlie. Charlie’s pals were actually career criminals. I felt that Charlie understood the seriousness of the games we were playing, while my co-conspirators from the West Island did not.
    The Weasel was given that name because he sought out money like a ferret searches out food. Charlie used to drive around to the places where my friends and I hung out and he would sniff around in the hope that he might profit by overhearing some scam or deal. Charlie Wilson had made his bones in the underworld as a young man. While working in a carnival, he was approached by some members of the notorious West End gang. They came to Charlie with a plan that was simple, and together they pulled off a score that went down without a hitch. Big Tommy Moore and Ryan Robertson put a guard’s hat on Charlie’s head and had him knock on the back door of a Brink’s truck while the delivery courier was still collecting money bagsin the store. Charlie was a short guy and all that could be seen by the Brink’s driver was the top of his hat. When Charlie knocked on the bulletproof window, the driver saw the hat and opened the door.