Prohibition Creates Wealth

It was 1986 when things began to get really out of hand. I had been living the life for over 15 years despite all the obvious and not so obvious warnings. Greed is a funny thing in that it frequently overrules common sense. Sadly, I had little common sense to begin with so that made anything possible and, in several particular cases, problematic.

As I mentioned earlier, things had grown immensely from the original quest to raise money for an engagement ring. How innocent that all seemed! Buy a pound of pot for $125, weigh it into ounces, and pick up a profit of $175 by selling 15 of them at $20 each. It seems funny now but I was just as thrilled to get the 16th ounce to smoke as I was to make the dough.

By 1986, we were practically on top of the New York pot scene. The network stretched to all the boroughs and suburbs... Any shipment of any size hit our radar and most of the time, we knew who was in charge of it. Our track record was solid in that (from our way of thinking at the time), we weren’t greedy. We bought and sold the pot at fair prices and were both honest and reliable. We became skilled at all the things that go into a successful illegal business, including having all the equipment (finding and maintaining secluded houses, warehouses, scales, untraceable cars & trucks, bags, boxes, storage spaces, counting machines, etc.). It got to a point where people who came to town were hoping to connect with us rather than the other way around. I remember sitting at the Nassau Coliseum thinking we had just sold enough pot to put a pound under every seat in the arena.

Today, it’s hard to wrap my head around the mindset at the time. Some decisions just went all wrong and for all the wrong reasons. It’s not that I was completely in la-la land. You don’t forget that this thing is illegal. The expectation was that things could and would go wrong but the hope was that when it happened, it wouldn’t be unfixable. For example, if someone got ripped off, I wouldn’t pursue any payback. It was all part of the deal. Insurance from Lloyds of the Universe isn’t cheap but the premiums are small when you consider the coverage and benefits. If someone got in trouble, you got them a lawyer... you made sure their bills were paid... and you kept them on the books for as long as it took. On the other hand, it’s very easy to tell yourself that laws are being broken and there’s a price that may have to be paid. Unfortunately, that thinking didn't include the possibility that I myself might become a target...

It wasn't as if I didn't know that my 'cover' wouldn't withstand a serious investigation. It was more of a renegade bandido attitude that believed it would never happen. If someone happened to take a look at me, they'd see a 'normal' suburban guy who had a successful business and paid his taxes. The cover was enough to stand a cursory glance. It was never intended to stand up in court. It was intended to cover me if a fluke occurred. And it actually did that a few times.

A year earlier, I had given one of the smugglers about 25 grand as an investment in a hash scheme. The deal was successful and my $25k became $150k, turning the world into a very different place financially afterwards. It suddenly seemed crazy to be delivering 5 pound boxes or to be fronting someone else’s product to the entire circle or sending it across the country. It’s not like I stopped doing it, but I definitely took a step back.

And now, a year later (these guys only worked once a year at best), I was approached with another, larger opportunity. In fact, things were so good that I was approached for two different (and larger) investments, by two different smugglers. One was a hash smuggle from the usual sources and the other involved Asian pot that was to be run into Alaska and then down to the west coast.

Old Cape Cod... And That's The Way It Is...

Another moment came to mind the other day... It was a summer in the early 80s (I don’t precisely remember the year and it isn’t all that important anyway.) and I get invited by the Long Island people to spend a weekend ‘on the Cape’. I want to hang with these people and I've never been on the Cape with any of my new friends.

That means driving up to Cape Cod with the gang and hanging out in a house they rented on the beach with a dock. It was a high old time and I don’t even remember exactly where the house was. In fact there’s a lot about this particular weekend that I don’t precisely recall. It may have been Edgartown or it may have been Makonikey but again, none of that matters. What does matter is that I didn’t realize that this was all a ruse for a smuggle that was being run there. Apparently, the original intent was to pick up a few tons of hashish at sea and land it at or near the house where we were staying/partying.

Looking back, I probably should have realized that all the pick-ups and other vehicles were heavy-duty equipped and that there were a lot of faces I didn’t recognize moving about. I’m not sure either how I didn’t pick up on what was happening at the time but these were the days of Asian Stupid Weed and I pretty much dedicated my brain to Vietnamese weed that summer.

So we’re hanging at the house on Sunday morning, and it’s kind of quiet. I’m thinking the folks went to breakfast somewhere or something when, around 11AM, everyone comes back, says it’s time to go, and the next thing I see is everyone grabbing their stuff and all the pick-ups, cars and even a Chevy El Camino are either gone or going. I mean, it was an eerie feeling watching everyone take off and then being alone in a house in a place I’m unfamiliar with. I remember that happening to me in Florida once but that’s whole other story and I think I’ve already told it. Bottom line, in those days, when everyone started leaving, the smart thing to do was leave as quickly as possible, no questions asked.

We get moving and head out back down to Long Island. The next day I find out what happened. It turns out they were smuggling hash from Lebanon into the Cape. The product was sealed into tire linings, which were roped in a line, then dropped into the ocean by a mother ship, to be picked up by the smaller one or smaller two and then landed.

Now hash isn’t like pot in that it’s really heavy. I mean a fifty pound box of black hash is very small (not much bigger than a Manhattan phone book in the days when such books were a resource). A block with the dimensions of a piano bench would weigh a ton or more. Now Lebanese hashish came in sacks with string ties at the top. It was often red, but sometimes more yellowish like Kif. The high was light and the product wasn’t nearly as dense as the Afghani or Paki or Kashmiri varieties. Those were an entirely different product with a heavier high and a high density. A pound of black hash was about 4 inches x 3 inches x 1/2 inch. By contrast, the Lebanese sacks were oval and about 35% larger.

What apparently happened was the floating tires were either missed on the first few passes or dropped too early. By the time they were collected, it was too late to bring them in at the pre-planned location (I’m glad I slept through this.) so they executed a Plan B that involved landing the boats at Walter Cronkite’s house in Edgartown. Yes, they brought the load in on Walter Cronkite’s dock and had it loaded into vehicles and gone within 30 minutes. That was around the ‘time to go’ signal.

This was, as it later turned out, kind of an acid test of me by the importer group. I passed the test and quickly became eligible for the ‘really big’ prizes yet to come. Looking back, failure would have been the best result that weekend but who knew?

And The Beat Goes On...

So it’s 1980 or so...  and we’d been moving around from house to house...  renting some great places.  Some are on hills, some with long driveways, one was completely overgrown by surrounding shrubbery and trees...  another had a drive-through garage that let you park a car in the basement...  yet another was waterfront at Lloyd Point in Lloyd Harbor...  They were expensive, short term rentals...  always furnished...  and all with one thing in common...  They afforded the privacy and privilege to do our thing without being observed or at least without being questioned.  The neighborhoods were exclusive and the presumption was that you were entitled to the privacy if you could afford it.  And, in a nutshell, we could...  and did.

Meanwhile, Nada Mucho realized that we had been at this for about ten years without a problem, and began to integrate us more and more into his plans.  At first, we were landing his big Buicks and Oldsmobiles.  But then RVs began showing up... and vans...  usually chock full with product.  Time went on and, in the course of events, I met a fair number of his people, some workers...  some customers...  and some connections.  And all the while, we kept accumulating people, connections, customers and all the things that pile up as you go down a career path.

For example, there came a time when we were moving so much stuff in so many directions that I was both buying and selling to and from the same people all the time.  Nobody complained and everybody made out.  The people with Jamaican weed wanted Colombian...  There was great stuff from all over, Panama, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, etc etc...  There were so many different kinds of Mexican that they were called by whatever state they were grown in...  Michoacan, Sinaloan, Yucatan, etc etc...  We *never* sold powder or pills as a rule.  Inevitably, though, they would show up in various places and cause various issues.  Coke, heroin, qualudes, sopers, seconols (reds), tuinols (blue & orange), nembutols (yellows), etc etc... It was all part of the culture but we didn’t let it become part of the business.  Hash?  well that’s another story entirely.  Hashish was no big deal.  It was smokable, edible, and came in lots of varieties.  Lebanese, Pakistani, Kashmiri, Afghani, Moroccan, Nepalese, etc etc...  All had different tastes and smells and effects. 

Sorry to digress but I haven’t spent much time on the products...  They were, after all, the reason many of us were getting high and getting rich simultaneously.  Of course, not everyone came out the other side in great shape.  But that’s still to come. 

So we’re selling pot everywhere...  Every month or so, we’d go down to Wolf’s Corrugated on Broadway in Manhattan and load up on boxes and tape and bags and markers.  I remember the box sizes...  32, 34 and 36 were fine for 15 pounds or so but then the sizes went into the 40s and even 50/52 for whole bales.  We always went for the heavy duty boxes because you didn’t want these things falling apart and specifically not at the wrong time.  After all, we just treated them like boxes of ‘anything’ when we went about delivering.  People deliver boxes all the time and who could tell that these were any different.  The only limitation was that they had hard dimensions.  It was pretty funny at times, walking up to a brownstone with 3 or 4 boxes piled high in your arms, balancing them while waiting to be buzzed in, eyes darting everywhere, hoping you weren’t going to get ripped off, busted, or scammed.  And, amazingly, it almost never went bad.  Of course, the ritual delivery and sharing of a joint was a customary thing...  guaranteeing that by the time I’d made my last delivery, I was totally blitzed.  After all, we did have the best stuff around.

And this is going on and on...  Nada Mucho introduces me to some of his people that live nearby...  one thing leads to another...  and suddenly, there’s another little sub-circle that is created.  And this one is interesting because it crosses all the usual lines of connectivity by adding a geographic element...  The way things normally worked, people met and acquired connections in the course of doing business.  People pop into the scene for a while...  then drop out for one reason or another...  They’d move, get busted, get ripped off, become rip-offs, violate the ‘code’ of proper conduct, semi-retire (nobody ever really retired...  they just said they did).  The scene was like an amorphous blob of quantum physics.  Every deal was different.  Whoever was the source this week might be the low man next week.  And this made it virtually impossible for the enforcement folks to come up with any kind of tree that would enable them to predict who was on top at any given time.   But this little sub-circle crossed all those lines.  Suddenly, I was at the top of a pyramid that I had been in the middle of.  Just by knowing when things were arriving.  Remember, everyone who touched anything marked it up.  Eventually, just by hearing a price, you could figure out how far away the seller was from the true source.  Knowledge was power in this scene.

A Christmas Morning Ghost

So...  as fate would have it, Pfeiffer's ghost reappeared on Christmas morning in my house...

Mrs. R mentioned a rug that she thinks we ought to sell and I realized that it was one of many gifts that Steve bestowed on us.  (I believe this particular one is worth about 5k.)  One thing I didn't say in the previous post was that Pfeiffer was one of the most generous, stand-up, and funny guys you'd ever meet.

Lots of people say they'll do anything for a friend.  You hear it all the time.  "Oh, he'd do anything for a friend." or "There's nothing he wouldn't do for a friend in need." or "He was the one person I'd ask and know the answer before I asked."  But...  there's the generic 'anything' and the real renegade bandito outlaw version of 'ANYTHING'.

So, when the thought of selling the rug came around, I looked on the wall of our living room at the Erte 'S' and 'R' lithos that hang there (also Pfeiffer gifts), and thought about the Presidential Gold Rolex in a safe deposit box (inscribed 'On Time' on the back) that he gifted after a particularly important and cash delivery (avoiding negative consequences from some angry Colombians).  In the business, there are lots of different types of connections.  Some are cool and understanding.  If something goes wrong, they'll either chalk it up as a business expense (if they trust you or the evidence you present), or front more material to help you get back on your feet.  And some are not so understanding.  The Colombians are almost always in that category.  Once you take the stuff, you are paying for it.  And they don't care what happens, whether someone gets popped, or the stuff is unsellable or the market collapses or if the sky falls.  You are paying.  And they don't care if you have to rob a bank to do it.  The penalty for not paying is serious. Death is a possibility and you aren't the only possible victim.   So Steve was extremely grateful when my guy from Idaho showed up with the dough for some particularly lousy product.  He flew us around in a Lear that day to pick up the dough and you could see the relief on his face when he realized he wasn't going to have to face these guys empty-handed.

He was generous in a dramatic sense and wouldn't blink at gifting things of great value.  In the years I knew Steve, he lived life like a roller coaster.  He'd accumulate a quarter million and be broke six months later.  It happened lots of times.  Either he'd snort it, shoot it, spend it, get busted and have it seized or find a totally new way to diminish the pile.  Gifting was almost like saving to him because gifts don't go away.

And, when the time came in 1989 that some very dangerous things needed doing, and there was almost nobody willing to take the risks, I asked Pfeiffer to step up and he never hesitated.  I'm grateful to this day because his bravery (or madness if you see it that way) gave me the ability to avoid a really long stretch.

So...  we still might sell the rug but there's no way I won't shed a tear when it happens.

Triggers... and Nuvia

Life is filled with triggers and sometimes I get surprised.  There are the usual triggers like an aroma that can take me back to Mom’s cooking or a song that sticks in my head for a week or two.  Then there are the unusual triggers, like a word you haven’t heard in a while or a memory that just jumps out of nowhere and you can’t figure out why.

Well, this happened to me last evening at the dentist.  I’m sitting in the smallish waiting area, when the receptionist says ‘Hold on Nuvia’ into the phone.  I hear the name and in an instant, I’m back in the 1980’s lost in a memory about my dentist, a coke smuggler named Nuvia, and as crazy a situation as any I’ve put into this story.

In a previous post, I mentioned Steve from Buffalo who lived life as much on the edge as anyone I ever met.  He was given to excess, whether it was a heroin habit, free-basing coke, drinking, smoking two plus packs a day, or dealing in tons of weed.  Steve Pfeiffer was the prototypical outlaw, living on the run, facing down all dangers, and basically as confrontational as you’d ever imagine being. 

For example, I remember a house rental in Brookville, NY where we had a big delivery of bales that were chock filled with seeds and shake.  And by big, I mean there were rooms with bales piled to the ceiling.  So we put together a tight crew and began carefully mixing the shake, buds and seeds into bags and boxes that were destined to be shipped out to the northwest or up to Buffalo or just sold locally.  This kind of operation took weeks and there came a morning when I was there with Steve and suddenly, the local hamlet cops were at the door, knocking after a report from a neighbor that some strangers were seen coming and going at odd times and with high frequency.  I’m like, well this is it, we’re getting popped and it’s been a good run and what was I thinking and I knew Steve was trouble all along and how could I have been so dumb as to be here this morning...  Pfeiffer, on the other hand, isn’t in the least bit fazed.  Without ever opening the door, he waits until they knock another few times and then yells loudly , ‘Who the fuck is knocking on my door this early in the morning?’  And when the cops say ‘It’s the police, open up.’ he replies angrily, ‘I’m sleeping, come the fuck back after twelve if you want to talk to me.’  And when a beat passes without an answer, he adds, ‘And bring a fucking warrant because I ain’t letting you in and this is the last thing I have to say to you.  Now get the fuck off my property before I charge you with trespassing!’ Long story short, the local cops left and never came back.  This is a very wealthy area and he actually faced them down.  People who live in Brookville are entitled to live however they want because they’re all set.  The sick thing was that this was totally typical of him.  Yes, he was given to excess, but he always kicked whatever habit he got caught up in.  He got into some very crazy situations but he always found a way out of them.

So, to get back to the Nuvia trigger...  At the sound of the name, I’m transported back in time to the late 1970s and early 80s.  Pfeiffer is on the scene in Manhattan, living in a downtown loft.  While I called him Steve from Buffalo, that came later.  He actually grew up in Astoria (not far from me although we didn’t know each other at the time) and went to City College.   We grew close primarily as part of the social scene that was typical of the drug-dealing subculture.  He was always on the periphery of things that I was doing until one day, we got together and decided to deal directly with each other.  That happened a lot, and this particular time, it changed a lot of things for me, my circle, and my sensibilities.  Even today, I look back to Steve and remember him walking into my house one day in the early 80s and saying, ‘You really have to get a personal computer.  These things are going to change everything and if you don’t get one, you’ll be left behind.’  Yup, Pfeiffer was my launch into the digital world.

Nuvia...  right...  so Pfeiffer isn’t only living downtown, but he’s taken up with a Colombian coke smuggler named Nuvia.  She was, in a lot of ways, a perfect fit for him -- totally fearless, completely insane, and with an incredibly loud mouth that never stopped spewing obscenities.  And, oh yeah, she also had beaver style front teeth, which takes me back to the trigger. 

So, back around the time when I was working at the Times, my brother returned from an Asian stint in the Air Force with a wife from Oklahoma and took an apartment in Rego Park’s Lefrak City.  I had a short but happy affair with a neighbor of his who recommended a dentist in the area, Ken S.  I hadn’t seen a dentist in quite a while and was happy to connect with Ken, and as things go, we became arms-length friendly.  I shared with him when I left the Times and began my ‘other’ career.  He was an interesting guy, a talented dentist, and I always liked to spend time with him.  At one point, I bought a 14 foot sunfish sailboat on a trailer from him but that’s another story for another time.  So...  time goes on and one day, Max S (who at the time was partnering with two other guys—Jerry S and Pfeiffer) asks me if I know a dentist.  I recommend Ken.  Max sees Ken, likes the result and tells a friend who tells a friend who tells Steve.  Before you know it, Ken has a growing client base of pot dealers who are paying him in envelopes filled with 10s and 20s.  Now Pfeiffer, after his heroin and coke things, had awful teeth and by the time he finished with Dr. S, he had laid out more than 10 grand (which was a LOT of dough before the current stupidly expensive dental pricing happened).  His mouth was fixed and he was happy as a clam.  Next thing you know, he sends Nuvia to see Dr. S and for another 10 grand, he rebuilds her mouth too.  Unfortunately for her, he only rebuilt the teeth and not the bad-tempered, foul-language spewing nature of her madness.  It was pretty funny to hear her curse people out with her Colombian accent...  or at least it seemed funny until one day, she just disappeared.

Steve was around but Nuvia was gone.  No goodbyes, no farewells, no Nuvia.  Did I mention that they fought?  Steve and Nuvia were two of a kind.  Loud, profane and in each other’s face.  And, oh yeah, they both weren’t afraid of owning guns. 

Until, about six months later, I get a freaky call from Dr. S, ‘I’m calling you from a payphone near my office...  The cops were just here...  Homicide cops...  and they’re asking me to identify a set of teeth they found in a burlap sack in Jamaica Bay along with a full set of bones.'

So Ken, being more or less a ‘straight’, tips the cops to Max, Max’s girlfriend, Jerry, Steve, and ID’s the choppers as belonging to Nuvia.  Although he didn’t include me in the mix, the shit hits the fan and about six months later, Pfeiffer gets indicted for murder.  Yes, murder.

Defended by Stanley Siegel (RIP by Alzheimers in 2002), Pfeiffer pleads not guilty.  Siegel puts on a spectacular case, proving Nuvia was smuggling coke for the Medellin cartel, and denying that Steve had anything to do with her disappearance or subsequent reappearance in the sack in the bay.  The government put on a case with neighbors testifying about frequent fights, loud verbal abuse and Nuvia often displaying facial bruising and black eyes.  They covered Steve’s record, from time in prison to his dozen felony arrests that never went to trial to his paying the dentist for her dental rebuild.  After they rest, Pfeiffer actually takes the stand and testifies on his own behalf.  Talk about having a brass set of balls!!  He testifies and gets acquitted because they can’t rule out a possible role of the cartel that she smuggled for.

And this all just popped into my head last night after hearing ‘Nuvia’ for the first time in about 30 years.  BTW, Pfeiffer passed away about ten years ago in Buffalo, the victim of lung cancer.  Perhaps another time, I’ll share some more Pfeiffer stories because there are LOTS of them.  From him flying us around in a Lear to pick up cash, to him swimming the Rio Grande with a bail of Mexican on his back, to him playing the key role in a bank robbery that ‘sort of just happened’ a few years later.  And he never... ever... told me if he did it or didn't do it. Whenever her name came up, which was not frequently, he just smiled and shrugged.

Happy holidays Everybody!!

Still Alive... Yay!

Yes...  I'm still alive...  A few years older and now eligible for Medicare (which, so far, is the best health insurance I've ever had).  Some new friends had a bunch of questions so I've decided I need to add to the original blog.  After all, I never touched on what happened to bring it all to an end for me.  And, needless to say, things change as time goes on...  people leave this world...  Patti is gone...  Gary too...  but I'm still here and I think this needs to be taken further.  Watch for some new old stuff coming soon.

John the Beak

So it's the 1970s and pot is everywhere.  Unlike the 1960s, there is no transition from alcohol.  Pot is the drug of choice and the baby boomers are pretty much all smoking it.  And...  as it turns out, any time the baby boomers do anything en masse, the world changes.    Some facts:

When World War II ended, and soldiers returned home to the US, there was a huge increase in conceptions.
There are 78 million Americans who are classified as baby boomers.
In the 1950s, when they were in primary school, more schools were built in a five year period than in any ten year period before or since.
In 1964, baby boomers represented 40% of the overall US population.
In 1965, 36% of the population was under the age of 18.
Today, only 18% of the population is under 18.
Today the boomers make up 28% of the population.

Regardless of what the boomers did, the impact was huge.  Education, music, housing, investments, travel, workout regimens, medicine...  huge fortunes were made catering to the boomers.  And this was no less true on the underbelly of society as it was out in the open.  Back in the 60s (and for quite a while before), the Italians pretty much cornered the market on organized crime in the US.  They were known as 'crime families'...  And, like any family, they had children...  and those children were just as likely to be baby boomers as the rest of the generation.  So now, unlike my growing up in a middle class law-abiding culture, these kids grew up in something that was quite a bit different.  When my train rolled off the tracks and into the world of dope-dealing, these kids weren't far behind in recognizing the opportunities they had.  Where my college buddies and I had to build a network, these guys (and girls) were exposed to networking in illegal activities from day one. 

Now as things began to get more serious for me, I was getting introduced to more and more dealers and wholesalers.  (The way the scene worked, the dealer today could be a wholesaler tomorrow and vice versa.)  And it was kind of inevitable that eventually, I'd get introduced to a few serious baby boomers who were mobbed up.  This is a bit different from Big Al (who I wrote about early on in this thread) since Al was quite a bit older. 

Anyway, this all comes to mind because John the Beak was a mobbed up baby boomer.  When I started out trying to grow a business with this stuff, it was all about finding customers and connections...  I think I explained a lot of that dynamic earlier in the thread.  Well, there comes a point in the process when they are trying to find you and you're trying to only be found by the right people.  I've always had a weakness in over-intellectualizing things that I shouldn't.  It's probably why I didn't get laid until I was 20 or so.  Well now...  where was I? ummm...  

So one of the other guys in the story was connected to John and was sort of pushed away by John and his crew so they could deal directly with me.  And this kind of thing doesn't happen in one moment.  It kind of develops into a situation.  Like I moved weight to the guy between us...  who moved it either directly to John's crew or indirectly through someone else.  Meanwhile some principals in each deal are trying to keep their distance...  while others are trying to cut out the middle guys.  I usually felt it was worth having the middle guy there.  (a tactic that was double-edged but effective...  until I got truly nailed)... 

If this story doesn't seem truly coherent, I might be out of practice...  but another element of John the Beak was the difference in how the players saw the business.  Some of them were into quality at any price and didn't care about much else.  Others didn't care at all about quality but wanted cheap stuff.  And others (like me) cared about both and could move both high and low quality material in different directions.  Last time I wrote about this, I think I mentioned Steve in Buffalo and Lee in Idaho as guys who were spectacularly efficient in moving lousy stuff.  Well, John the Beak was pretty good at it too but for different reasons.  If John gave you something, you were simply scared shitless to tell him it wasn't any good.  The flip side of that was that you could sell anything to John as long as it was cheap.  Only rarely, probably by accident, did John come into anything of true quality.

Visiting John's spot was memorable for a few reasons.  First, it was in a quiet residential area of Lindenwood Brooklyn.  What I didn't know at the time was that John (or his family) had the whole area sewn up.  As time went on, though, I got the picture.  We'd be hanging out and guys would show up with reports about what was happening in the neighborhood...  who got his face broken...  was it okay to go after someone...  who had the tape players...  the speaker systems...  etc etc...  it was about much much more than pot.

On arriving at the Beak's spot, the first thing you heard were the Dobermans...  There were a couple right there and you basically prayed that they were tied up.  To get to his joint, you had to walk down a long driveway between two houses...  then knock on a door that was like something out of Being John Malkovich...  It was like 4 feet high, thick heavy wood and bolted tight as any door you've ever seen.  You could hear the growling and barking way before you got to knocking...  And once you knocked the dogs went bananas...  clawing at the door...  louder... deeper...  real scary shit...  But if you wanted to get paid, or if you wanted to deliver the goods, you had to deal with it.

It's not like John the Beak was a super key player in the overall scene...  but his world was different enough from anything I was used to that it makes for some great material. 

Like the time he sold me a bunch of bales that came straight from Florida.  They got weighed...  I paid...  And John and his guys left to go back South.  It was only a couple of days later, when we were breaking down the bales that I came across a few things that really pissed me off.  The stuff wasn't great but it wasn't horrible either.  But one bale had an 8 pound fucking rock in the middle of it.  This rock cost me over 2 grand.  So I went about trying to get my money back...  which was never going to happen because John the Beak wasn't the kind of guy you told what to do.  Weeks went by and his crew is still in Florida (supposedly waiting for a boat that never came)...  He says he'll return the rock to the Columbians but it's not going to be easy...  I pack up the rock and head over to National Airlines cargo, sending off my 'mineral sample'...  Bottom line, the rock never gets picked up in Florida...  I never see a dime...  And I'm too chicken-shit to start making demands of these guys.  If John's guys don't get pissed at me, the Columbians, who are totally and outrageously insane, might take offense and wipe out my entire family over a $2,000 rock.

There are a lot more John-type stories...  He was actually a pretty cool dude when you ignored all the rest of this stuff...  which I can say about most everyone in the saga...  Lots of laughs...  lot of absurdities...  but it was impossible to forget that he was as connected as anyone in the Sopranos.  I never found out exactly which family he was with but I know he and his cousin (John the Dope) were both heavyweights.  and John the Dope was no dope.  Feel free to speculate about John's Beak...