EBOOK
About
Mobsters, murder, betrayal, and revenge are the raw components of this candid look into the day-to-day life of a modern-day marijuana smuggler. Told from the viewpoint of an impressionable young entrepreneur named Jay Carter Brown, the book quickly draws the reader into the gritty underbelly of the international drug trade.
The story begins with minor-league smuggling scams between Canada and the Caribbean that soon escalate to multi-ton shipments of grass and hash from the Caribbean and the Middle East. All goes well for a time, but as the stakes grow higher, the inevitable setbacks occur.
When Jay teams up with a crusty old bank robber named Irving, he also inherits a host of other felons who come out of jail to visit his new partner, ex-cons such as: Randy the hit man who liked to practise his fast draw in front of a mirror; Simon, the drug-running pilot; and Chico Perry, who smoked reefer in his pipe while robbing banks and shooting it out with the cops.
Drug-runners, police, jealous friends, and rival gangs all contribute to this extraordinary story told by a young man who became involved at the highest levels of the drug trade, and lived to tell about it. Smuggler's Blues is a rare opportunity to experience life in another world - a world where survival relies on brains, brawn, and a generous measure of good luck. This first-person true account of massive drug-running operations, bank-robberies, and cop shootouts quickly draws readers into the reality of the international drug trade. Jay Carter Brown is a businessman and a freelance writer who was brought up in the west end of Montreal. Because Smuggler's Blues is based on true stories, the author's name and the names of all of the characters have been changed.
I first met Righteous through another Jamaican who I had met during my early forays to the island. That man was a caretaker named Sunny. Sunny was a friend of Solomon's and he was also the gardener and houseman next door to a villa that I rented on the ocean near Hopewell. At that time, my friends and I were on a junket to bring some suitcases full of pressed weed back to Canada in an intricate scheme involving Canadian Immigration clearance cards. Passengers returning to Canada in those days were first interviewed by Canadian Immigration and then handed a three-by-five-inch card and told to proceed to customs for baggage inspection. The three-by-five cards had several boxes with numbers beside them, one of which was labeled e-24. It was discovered that if the e-24 was ticked off by the immigration officer, a passenger holding that card would be sent straight through customs without a baggage search. If enough people were in on the smuggling scam the odds were high that at least one in a group of seven or eight returning passengers would be handed an e-24 card. Brian Kholder and his cousin Alexandra were along to carry the bags of weed through Canada Customs once someone in our group had slipped them an e-24 card after clearing Immigration. There were about ten of us working the scam on this particular occasion, all friends from work and high school or college. There was my wife and me. Ryan McCaan and his wife Sally, and Phil Robson and his girlfriend Paula. My buddy Robert Bishop was along without a date, as was Ross Mitchell, who was dismayed to learn that "ross" was the slang word for shit in Jamaica. We had rented a seaside villa in the Jamaican parish of Hopewell that was ideally situated near a source of marijuana that was grown in the nearby parish of Orange Bay. We chose the Hopewell villa because we were close to the Montego Bay airport, yet free from the many prying eyes of the hotel staff in town. While we waited for Righteous to arrange for the marijuana to be pressed and packaged in Orange Bay, the group of us lay about our rented villa in hedonistic splendor. As we lay lounging in ocean-side chairs, sipping brown cows by the pool and smoking copious
The story begins with minor-league smuggling scams between Canada and the Caribbean that soon escalate to multi-ton shipments of grass and hash from the Caribbean and the Middle East. All goes well for a time, but as the stakes grow higher, the inevitable setbacks occur.
When Jay teams up with a crusty old bank robber named Irving, he also inherits a host of other felons who come out of jail to visit his new partner, ex-cons such as: Randy the hit man who liked to practise his fast draw in front of a mirror; Simon, the drug-running pilot; and Chico Perry, who smoked reefer in his pipe while robbing banks and shooting it out with the cops.
Drug-runners, police, jealous friends, and rival gangs all contribute to this extraordinary story told by a young man who became involved at the highest levels of the drug trade, and lived to tell about it. Smuggler's Blues is a rare opportunity to experience life in another world - a world where survival relies on brains, brawn, and a generous measure of good luck. This first-person true account of massive drug-running operations, bank-robberies, and cop shootouts quickly draws readers into the reality of the international drug trade. Jay Carter Brown is a businessman and a freelance writer who was brought up in the west end of Montreal. Because Smuggler's Blues is based on true stories, the author's name and the names of all of the characters have been changed.
I first met Righteous through another Jamaican who I had met during my early forays to the island. That man was a caretaker named Sunny. Sunny was a friend of Solomon's and he was also the gardener and houseman next door to a villa that I rented on the ocean near Hopewell. At that time, my friends and I were on a junket to bring some suitcases full of pressed weed back to Canada in an intricate scheme involving Canadian Immigration clearance cards. Passengers returning to Canada in those days were first interviewed by Canadian Immigration and then handed a three-by-five-inch card and told to proceed to customs for baggage inspection. The three-by-five cards had several boxes with numbers beside them, one of which was labeled e-24. It was discovered that if the e-24 was ticked off by the immigration officer, a passenger holding that card would be sent straight through customs without a baggage search. If enough people were in on the smuggling scam the odds were high that at least one in a group of seven or eight returning passengers would be handed an e-24 card. Brian Kholder and his cousin Alexandra were along to carry the bags of weed through Canada Customs once someone in our group had slipped them an e-24 card after clearing Immigration. There were about ten of us working the scam on this particular occasion, all friends from work and high school or college. There was my wife and me. Ryan McCaan and his wife Sally, and Phil Robson and his girlfriend Paula. My buddy Robert Bishop was along without a date, as was Ross Mitchell, who was dismayed to learn that "ross" was the slang word for shit in Jamaica. We had rented a seaside villa in the Jamaican parish of Hopewell that was ideally situated near a source of marijuana that was grown in the nearby parish of Orange Bay. We chose the Hopewell villa because we were close to the Montego Bay airport, yet free from the many prying eyes of the hotel staff in town. While we waited for Righteous to arrange for the marijuana to be pressed and packaged in Orange Bay, the group of us lay about our rented villa in hedonistic splendor. As we lay lounging in ocean-side chairs, sipping brown cows by the pool and smoking copious