After I made the decision, nothing unusual really happened. The hash
guy left for parts unknown with my dough and I mended some damaged
fences with the other guy.
The ‘other guy’ was dubbed
‘Fearless’ when, at a crucial moment, he had the balls to get behind the
wheel of an open van in an Albertson’s parking lot in Fort Lauderdale.
The moment was early on when we were all trying to figure out how to
turn a profit out of the Florida situation. A really close friend of
mine knew a couple of guys from Brooklyn who had moved up the ladder, down the coast, and
were getting bales brought by boat. The boats would pick up their loads off the
coast and come into the Fort Lauderdale canals... Now you might not
know this by driving through a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, since the
houses aren’t all that impressive from the street, but many many of them
have beautiful back yards and docks on the canals that intersect the
entire town. The Intercoastal has lots of spokes that run well inland
and plenty of operators were renting houses there. I think there are more boats in Fort Lauderdale than any other city in the country.
So my really
close friend gets a call from this Brooklyn guy... If we want to get
involved, he’s got a move in progress and would we be down for it. Now
we’re just two guys without a lot of experience at this (like none at
all)... I had never been this close to a smuggle and had no clue what
to do, where to do it, how to do it, or even what the consequences were
if things went bad. In other words, I was scared shitless at the
possibility of going to jail in Florida. So what did we do? The first
thing we did was what we always did... roll up a doobie and get high.
I’m not sure how much of this blog would have ever happened if I wasn’t a
stone cold pothead for almost 30 years.
Now the reason we had
gone south together was that we both knew people in the Miami area. He
knew these guys... and I knew someone peripherally that I had met while
doing a deal for someone else. Ethically, I’m not sure that it was the
perfect move (asking for permission to deal with this guy) but when you
think about it, how else did you get to meet anyone? So I go find a
phone booth and call the guy. It turns out that he’s down on his luck.
Whatever he had been doing had turned into a complete disaster and he
was not only broke but in debt and trying to keep from losing the place
where he was living. I didn’t know him that well at the time either
but, since I had seen him several times before, I was pretty sure he
wasn’t a cop or a rip-off. So I call him up, explain that we’re being
offered some weight, had no place to bring it or any other equipment but
would he want to get involved. After talking to us, he doesn’t
hesitate and agrees to a 3 way partnership on the deal.
So now
we’re waiting for the call... We wait all day and into the next...
another long day... And in those days, things rarely happened on
schedule and frequently didn’t happen at all. Just because someone said
they were going to have something didn’t mean that they would. So many
things had to go right in order for us to actually get the stuff...
The mother ship had to do it’s thing and meet the smaller boats. The
smaller boats had to get back to shore without being busted. Then, they
had to get to the dock of the stash house and off load in darkness
without being seen. And on and on and on... Things had to be moved
from boat to boat, place to place, checked in, evaluated, etc etc
etc... And, of course, we had nothing to do with any of that. We were
just guys down the line who were going to get lucky... if we got lucky
instead of unlucky (which was just as likely and in some ways even more
so).
It’s the end of the third day, like 11PM and we’re close to
packing it in when my friend checks in (no cellphones in those days) and
is told to go to the Albertson’s in north Fort Lauderdale to pick up a
van that’s loaded. We look at each other and the three of us realize
that there’s still time to change our minds and back out of this. So
what do we do? Roll up a doobie, get high, and drive the rental up to
Albertsons. The plan is to take the van, drive it to a house in Miami
(Coral Gables), and then see what we’ve got. My Florida guy says he’ll
drive the van and we’re going to follow him to make sure this goes well.
In the back of our minds, we knew that our job would be to crash the
rental into any police car that tried to pull him over. Oops... Sorry
officer...
We pull into the lot... and immediately we know this
isn’t going to be easy. The lot is virtually empty. The Albertson’s is
closed. And there, in the brightly lit circle beneath a huge, high,
halogen parking lot light is a dirty white window van. Now when I say
the van was open, I don’t mean the door were open (which they were). I
mean the van had windows all along the sides and they were cranked open.
We stop about 50 feet away and look around... as if we’re going to
see the cops if they’re there. My friend doesn’t say a word. He just
gets out of the car, walks to the van, glances back at us with a silly
grin, opens the door of the van and gets in. The keys are supposed to
be on the visor but we still breathe a sigh of relief when we see him
reach up and then start the engine. Now he’s supposed to pull out of
the lot onto I-95 (which is a couple of blocks away) and head south to
Miami. Instead, he pulls up next to us and says ‘The gas gauge is on
empty. I need to fill it.’ We look at each other, take a breath...
and could smell the pot from the van inside our car. He just looks back
at us, deadpan... and says, “I’ll do a self-serve... Do you have $20?
I’m tapped out.”
All we can think of in the car is how badly we
want to get the fuck out of that lot without a SWAT team descending on
us. We give him $40 (in case he needs something else... like a
goddamned window screen to cover the bales that you can smell and see
through the untinted windows) and he proceeds to drive to the gas
station near the highway. Long story short, he filled the tank, drove
the van south into Miami with us trailing, into his garage... and we
enjoyed a very successful adventure. There was about a half ton of pot in the van and we all made a nice piece of change.
From that day forward, though, we
always referred to him as “Fearless” because, well, he was that and
more.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
'70s in Florida - The Sunshine State
February 2015
Been reflecting lately on how much I've left out of these posts... They were built around the players, and the stories that leaped out at me. But truth be told, there's quite a few players who I've kept out of the mix, either out of respect or because of some need to protect privacy. Nonetheless, I've decided to include some of them under pseudonyms and focus on some places instead of people for a while. Also, I've never taken this down the path of what led to the eventual, (and you might say inevitable) arrival of a dozen federal, state and local law enforcement people at my house at 6 in the morning on May 16, 1990.
Also, forgive me if I repeat any previous stuff because I'm not 100% sure what I've laid out here. For now, I don't feel like rereading to find out. I can do that later.
In terms of places, Florida in the 1970s was so totally crazy that there's no end to the entertainment. I mean, I remember one day, checking into the Doral Hotel on Miami Beach with a close friend... I’m standing at the front entrance smoking a cigarette when I look down and see a crisp hundred dollar bill at my feet. No fool, I pick it up and slip it into my pocket... I look around and incredibly, nobody is paying any attention to me. Next moment, I look and see another C Note about 5 feet away... and almost before I get to it, I see another and, now on high alert, I spy a short stack that was blown across the driveway. Before a minute elapses, I’m standing there with about fifteen hundred bucks stuffed into my jeans. I mean, this was 1970s Florida!!! Drugs and money everywhere... Just pick it up off the pavement! And I'm not kidding. It was a situation where the inmates ran the asylum. And for a while at least, we were the inmates.
Those days, we were frequently flying Samsonite luggage around the country filled with weed and with carry-on bags laden with cash. There was no security, no machines. There was even the Eastern Airlines shuttle from NY-Boston and NY-Washington DC where you could actually get on the plane without a ticket!! You could buy your ticket on the plane. And, no, I'm not kidding about this either. You could show up late, run down the corridors and if you got to the gate before they closed the doors, you made the plane. And this was what frequently happened. I remember flying to a deal in an Ohio town that was halfway between Columbus and Cleveland Ohio... A half dozen of us flew to Columbus with empty American Touristers, figuring to fill them with pot (I think it was supposed to be from Costa Rica or some such odd place) and then fly them back that night. Well, we get to Columbus, drive to the deal, only to decide that the stuff was just unsellable and we had to pass. In those days, it wasn’t unusual to be flying with suitcases AND with a carry-on filled with money. So we nix the deal and figure out that we have just enough time to get to Cleveland to make a flight back to LaGuardia. This time, however, we’re really close on time and we get there with about 5 minutes before flight time. So here we are, all six of us running for the plane without enough time to check our empty Samsonites. I’ve got a shoulder bag of cash to boot. The flight attendants (they were stewardesses in those days) greet us with happy smiles and help us stash our cases in all kinds of places... including their own closet. I mean hey, we’re the customers, right? And, if that wasn’t weird enough, about 20 minutes into the flight, one of the stewardesses comes up to me and says I look really familiar but she can’t quite figure out where she knows me from. I look closely and realize this is the same crew we had in the morning, flying into Columbus. In the course of the ensuing conversation, I find out that they flew from LaGuardia to Columbus to Dallas, back to Cleveland and were headed back to LaGuardia to complete their trip. I just smiled... and said nothing. But I’m thinking she eventually figured out that we had been on the morning flight but I also wonder if she could ever have pieced together the real story based on presence of the empty cases and the fact that we all looked like stoned out hippies. For us, it was just another day in the life.
Anyway, back to Florida... What a place! Ft. Lauderdale is basically a city of canals. Non-descript houses from the street had full dockage in the backyards with easy access to the Atlantic...
The Florida thing was a complete experience... I mean, for example, I had an acquaintance (we’ll call him “Nada Mucho” for the story), who had his parents driving up a blue Buick Electra that he would fill with weed. His dad, Irving, apparently used to be a Jewish Deli guy who claimed that Vlasic pickles stole his formula. Anyway, I think Irv was also a Kosher Nostra guy because he just had that mentality. My first wife and I were renting a house that was the only one on a short dead end street in Bayside Queens, NY. They’d show up in the middle of the night, park and disappear. Then Nada Mucho would deliver the keys to the car the next day. At first, he offered cash to just land the car and let him get the stuff. But as time went on, and they kept coming, I built a nice relationship and was able to move most everything that showed up. Looking at his folks, you’d never ever know... Never... Ever... And as it turned out, Nada Mucho would be delivering all kinds of keys to me... for a long time.
Our favorite was the Plymouth Duster. You could buy two of them for the price of an Electra. And the trunk was just as big. It was like an optical illusion.
Eventually, I was driving the 1200 mile trip myself... at first for others... and then for myself. It’s amazing nothing ever went totally wrong because the I-95 corridor was clearly a known drug route. I guess there are just so many cars... and only so many cops. Percentages... There were some very close calls though... Once, we had a Coupe De Ville Caddy that we used many times for this trip... One of the drivers, Keith (who was later murdered in an unrelated uptown Manhattan robbery when he got conked on the head with a dumbbell while protecting a friend), is heading back from Florida on another dry run when he gets rear-ended by a truck at a toll booth and the car basically bends like a hockey stick and the trunk pops open. It was essentially totaled.
Imagine if it was a full trunk... Note to self: The lesson here was never be overly anxious to do a deal. You just never know what might happen in the world of illegal activity.
Been reflecting lately on how much I've left out of these posts... They were built around the players, and the stories that leaped out at me. But truth be told, there's quite a few players who I've kept out of the mix, either out of respect or because of some need to protect privacy. Nonetheless, I've decided to include some of them under pseudonyms and focus on some places instead of people for a while. Also, I've never taken this down the path of what led to the eventual, (and you might say inevitable) arrival of a dozen federal, state and local law enforcement people at my house at 6 in the morning on May 16, 1990.
Also, forgive me if I repeat any previous stuff because I'm not 100% sure what I've laid out here. For now, I don't feel like rereading to find out. I can do that later.
In terms of places, Florida in the 1970s was so totally crazy that there's no end to the entertainment. I mean, I remember one day, checking into the Doral Hotel on Miami Beach with a close friend... I’m standing at the front entrance smoking a cigarette when I look down and see a crisp hundred dollar bill at my feet. No fool, I pick it up and slip it into my pocket... I look around and incredibly, nobody is paying any attention to me. Next moment, I look and see another C Note about 5 feet away... and almost before I get to it, I see another and, now on high alert, I spy a short stack that was blown across the driveway. Before a minute elapses, I’m standing there with about fifteen hundred bucks stuffed into my jeans. I mean, this was 1970s Florida!!! Drugs and money everywhere... Just pick it up off the pavement! And I'm not kidding. It was a situation where the inmates ran the asylum. And for a while at least, we were the inmates.
Those days, we were frequently flying Samsonite luggage around the country filled with weed and with carry-on bags laden with cash. There was no security, no machines. There was even the Eastern Airlines shuttle from NY-Boston and NY-Washington DC where you could actually get on the plane without a ticket!! You could buy your ticket on the plane. And, no, I'm not kidding about this either. You could show up late, run down the corridors and if you got to the gate before they closed the doors, you made the plane. And this was what frequently happened. I remember flying to a deal in an Ohio town that was halfway between Columbus and Cleveland Ohio... A half dozen of us flew to Columbus with empty American Touristers, figuring to fill them with pot (I think it was supposed to be from Costa Rica or some such odd place) and then fly them back that night. Well, we get to Columbus, drive to the deal, only to decide that the stuff was just unsellable and we had to pass. In those days, it wasn’t unusual to be flying with suitcases AND with a carry-on filled with money. So we nix the deal and figure out that we have just enough time to get to Cleveland to make a flight back to LaGuardia. This time, however, we’re really close on time and we get there with about 5 minutes before flight time. So here we are, all six of us running for the plane without enough time to check our empty Samsonites. I’ve got a shoulder bag of cash to boot. The flight attendants (they were stewardesses in those days) greet us with happy smiles and help us stash our cases in all kinds of places... including their own closet. I mean hey, we’re the customers, right? And, if that wasn’t weird enough, about 20 minutes into the flight, one of the stewardesses comes up to me and says I look really familiar but she can’t quite figure out where she knows me from. I look closely and realize this is the same crew we had in the morning, flying into Columbus. In the course of the ensuing conversation, I find out that they flew from LaGuardia to Columbus to Dallas, back to Cleveland and were headed back to LaGuardia to complete their trip. I just smiled... and said nothing. But I’m thinking she eventually figured out that we had been on the morning flight but I also wonder if she could ever have pieced together the real story based on presence of the empty cases and the fact that we all looked like stoned out hippies. For us, it was just another day in the life.
Anyway, back to Florida... What a place! Ft. Lauderdale is basically a city of canals. Non-descript houses from the street had full dockage in the backyards with easy access to the Atlantic...
The Florida thing was a complete experience... I mean, for example, I had an acquaintance (we’ll call him “Nada Mucho” for the story), who had his parents driving up a blue Buick Electra that he would fill with weed. His dad, Irving, apparently used to be a Jewish Deli guy who claimed that Vlasic pickles stole his formula. Anyway, I think Irv was also a Kosher Nostra guy because he just had that mentality. My first wife and I were renting a house that was the only one on a short dead end street in Bayside Queens, NY. They’d show up in the middle of the night, park and disappear. Then Nada Mucho would deliver the keys to the car the next day. At first, he offered cash to just land the car and let him get the stuff. But as time went on, and they kept coming, I built a nice relationship and was able to move most everything that showed up. Looking at his folks, you’d never ever know... Never... Ever... And as it turned out, Nada Mucho would be delivering all kinds of keys to me... for a long time.
Our favorite was the Plymouth Duster. You could buy two of them for the price of an Electra. And the trunk was just as big. It was like an optical illusion.
Eventually, I was driving the 1200 mile trip myself... at first for others... and then for myself. It’s amazing nothing ever went totally wrong because the I-95 corridor was clearly a known drug route. I guess there are just so many cars... and only so many cops. Percentages... There were some very close calls though... Once, we had a Coupe De Ville Caddy that we used many times for this trip... One of the drivers, Keith (who was later murdered in an unrelated uptown Manhattan robbery when he got conked on the head with a dumbbell while protecting a friend), is heading back from Florida on another dry run when he gets rear-ended by a truck at a toll booth and the car basically bends like a hockey stick and the trunk pops open. It was essentially totaled.
Imagine if it was a full trunk... Note to self: The lesson here was never be overly anxious to do a deal. You just never know what might happen in the world of illegal activity.
A Few Missing Pieces - 2009-2010
In chatting with a friend last night, I asked for an opinion of a particular passage that I recall writing... and after a few minutes realized that the passage was never posted. So this morning, I'm doing a little comparison to see which ones have slipped through the cracks. So far, I am finding some from 2009 and will post them up. If you want to think of them in order, I'll try to add a date in the subject lines... Also, forgive me if any of this was previously posted... And forgive me if you are someone who is in any of these stories. The statutes have long passed... and if you're reading this, God bless you!
July 2009
So... a very famous television journalist passed away a few days ago... which brought to mind a story from the old days. I'll leave most of the details out since they relate to a set of characters that haven't been hit yet here. But the gist of the story is a weekend when a half dozen of us descended on a small house in Cape Cod with a dock to wait for the arrival of a bunch of Lebanese hashish. The original plan involved dropping the stuff off a large ship packed in tires that were tied together and would float until they got picked up by the water guys and brought to this house. But, for whatever reason, the water and weather didn't cooperate for that plan. Plan B wound up being executed and ultimately several tons got landed and off-loaded at Walter's place. Nobody was home, nobody was around, and the landing was, at the time, quite successful.
January 2010
I wore my gold Rolex on New Year's Eve and couldn't help but remember Steve Pfeiffer... I feel bad for the way Steve died... pretty much alone up in Buffalo when a long-lasting backache was diagnosed as lung cancer. He was dead within a few months but his memory lives on...
Steve was the epitome of a 60s outlaw. He was there at the very beginning of the madness although I didn't know him that well until some years later. Back around 1968 or so, Steve went down to Mexico, bought a bunch of Mexican bricks, put together a harness, strapped it on his back, and actually swam across the Rio Grande, smuggling the stuff into the US. This was the tip of a 20 year iceberg of drug-induced madness that included free-basing, acid, heroin, coke (lots of coke), uppers, downers, booze, and just about every mind-altering substance known to man.
In terms of attitude, think Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. Steve was the whole package. He grew up in Astoria, not far from where I did (although I never knew him back then). I first met him at CCNY but we weren't more than casual acquaintances at the time. Later on, however, we got real close and he played a serious role in some of the more outrageous scenes in this story.
I remember Steve Pfeiffer stories that bridged the gamut from drug-crazed parties; renting a Lear to fly around to a half dozen cities collecting a couple of million bucks in an afternoon; to blocking the door to a pot-filled house (and by 'pot-filled' I mean rooms stacked floor to ceiling with bales and boxes), telling the cops to go fuck themselves when they said they had a complaint from a neighbor; to the discovery of the body of his main squeeze coke smuggler in Jamaica Bay who was identified by (my dentist) based on her teeth; to robbing four banks over a few day period... (He actually took the stand in his own defense during the murder trial.) Each of these and probably a hundred more stories are worth telling... I'll see if I can do them justice as time allows over the next little while...
Oh yeah... The Rolex... He gave it to me for paying up 1.5 mill minutes before a deadline so he could avoid assassination by some very angry Colombians. It has an inscription on the back "On Time"... Well... the one I wore on Thursday says "Still On Time" because the original got ripped off in Vegas and he replaced it with an exact replica.
More - January 2010
If you read some of the earlier stuff, you'll remember the 'Glop'... well... by the time the glop was all gone, I had developed a serious circle of guys who could move crazy amounts of the worst stuff around... And Steve, being from Buffalo, was a good part of that circle (Lee out in Idaho was another)... Meantime, the Colombians began icing the competition with increasing frequency... Steve was, as usual, a wild man who really never gave a shit about consequences and offered to move a ridiculous amount of crappy pot for them. As it turned out, his plan involved my circle and he dropped a few thousand pounds of total garbage into my lap and said basically to find a price and sell it. Although he wasn't a Colombian, Steve was not the type of guy you wanted to disappoint... So I grabbed hold of a bunch of my glop experts and proceeded to moved this stuff in places like Idaho, Montana, Kentucky and other really out of the way places. As his deadline for payment drew closer and closer, I realized that he had actually promised the Colombians a $2 million payment by a certain date and was in danger of being killed unless he made the payment. The morning of the deadline he only had 500k or so and most of the rest of the bucks were in places like Pittsburgh, Philly, Rochester, Ithaca, some town in Kentucky... Another suitcase of cash was being driven across and was somewhere in Ohio... I'm like totally crazed... because once they knock off Pfeiffer, I'm going to be the one with the goods and they don't care if I promised a deadline or not... They just want the dough... or else...
But is Steve nervous? Not even a little... He's partying like crazy... rents a Lear... stocked with coke and champagne... brings a couple of babes along... tells me to meet him at 10AM at the Marine Terminal at LaGuardia and off we go on a collection tour... In one day, we hit six cities... including Columbus Ohio to meet the guy driving across... ended up having lunch in Pittsburgh... Dinner in Buffalo... And I was home in New York to watch the 11 o'clock news... He got his bucks... The Colombians got paid... and he bought me this cool watch that I wear like once or twice a year... The original got ripped off at the Cooney-Holmes fight in Vegas when someone broke into my hotel room while I was sleeping (okay... I was more like unconscious than sleeping) and took it. As it turned out, that trip to Vegas had hidden benefits when the Secret Service showed up to investigate a bank deposit with some counterfeit money... but that's another story...
BTW, flying in a Lear is one of the craziest feelings I've ever had... The thing takes off like a rocket and goes faster than anything I've ever been on... The wings are so short that it feels like you could reach out and touch the tips... And, in those days, the pilots didn't give a damn what you were up to as long as they got paid... This, apparently, wasn't the first time they had gone on a trip like this... It was like being in an air-taxi... Steve didn't tell them the next destination until we were back on the plane at each stop. They'd just file the flight plan and off we'd go... no security... no TSA... nothing but 'Where to, Sir?'
Still More January 2010
My teeth have always been lousy... I used to go to the dentist as a kid and find out i had a dozen cavities. So when my brother turned me on to a good dentist, it was a good thing... both for me (since I needed one) and for Dr. Ken Saltzman (who saw me as a walking goldmine). Fortunately for me he did great work. Fortunately for him, I paid in cash...
So when Max S needed a dentist, I was happy to refer him... and Ken was happy to take on any set of bad teeth... especially bad teeth that paid cash...
Max was partnered with Pfeiffer at the time and referred him to Ken as well... And Pfeiffer had a mouth that needed serious attention. And Ken managed to fix everyone's problems... Whether it was root canals, crowns, caps, cavities or any other oral deficiency, he had the skills to take care of them...
And everything went along fine... Pfeiffer was so happy that he sent his coke-smuggling, gap-toothed Colombian girlfriend to see Ken... A dentist's dream... She was a real piece of work too... Nuvia (I think that was her name) was his current squeeze. Like I said earlier, Steve was a true outlaw and over the years I knew him, he got married twice (both nice girls, if you ignored that one was an addict and the other a hooker).
To Steve, being married wasn't anything remotely resembling anything like a 'normal' marriage... He was still out there doing whatever came next... whether it was a deal, a run to or from Canada, a trip to Mexico, or just plain basing himself into oblivion. In the meantime, he had a son by his first and never failed to take care of the kid's support. With all the messed up stuff he rationalized as okay to do, he still had a set of rules to live by. He never lied, never failed to do what he said he would, would give his last penny to a friend, was incredibly generous when he was flush and impossibly arrogant when he was loaded. Did I mention he was loaded a lot of the time? He also had a ridiculous temper. If he got pissed at you, you knew it immediately and it became the most important thing in your life. It was something you'd ignore at your own risk... and the risk was substantial since Steve liked guns and knives.
July 2009
So... a very famous television journalist passed away a few days ago... which brought to mind a story from the old days. I'll leave most of the details out since they relate to a set of characters that haven't been hit yet here. But the gist of the story is a weekend when a half dozen of us descended on a small house in Cape Cod with a dock to wait for the arrival of a bunch of Lebanese hashish. The original plan involved dropping the stuff off a large ship packed in tires that were tied together and would float until they got picked up by the water guys and brought to this house. But, for whatever reason, the water and weather didn't cooperate for that plan. Plan B wound up being executed and ultimately several tons got landed and off-loaded at Walter's place. Nobody was home, nobody was around, and the landing was, at the time, quite successful.
January 2010
I wore my gold Rolex on New Year's Eve and couldn't help but remember Steve Pfeiffer... I feel bad for the way Steve died... pretty much alone up in Buffalo when a long-lasting backache was diagnosed as lung cancer. He was dead within a few months but his memory lives on...
Steve was the epitome of a 60s outlaw. He was there at the very beginning of the madness although I didn't know him that well until some years later. Back around 1968 or so, Steve went down to Mexico, bought a bunch of Mexican bricks, put together a harness, strapped it on his back, and actually swam across the Rio Grande, smuggling the stuff into the US. This was the tip of a 20 year iceberg of drug-induced madness that included free-basing, acid, heroin, coke (lots of coke), uppers, downers, booze, and just about every mind-altering substance known to man.
In terms of attitude, think Jimmy Cagney in White Heat. Steve was the whole package. He grew up in Astoria, not far from where I did (although I never knew him back then). I first met him at CCNY but we weren't more than casual acquaintances at the time. Later on, however, we got real close and he played a serious role in some of the more outrageous scenes in this story.
I remember Steve Pfeiffer stories that bridged the gamut from drug-crazed parties; renting a Lear to fly around to a half dozen cities collecting a couple of million bucks in an afternoon; to blocking the door to a pot-filled house (and by 'pot-filled' I mean rooms stacked floor to ceiling with bales and boxes), telling the cops to go fuck themselves when they said they had a complaint from a neighbor; to the discovery of the body of his main squeeze coke smuggler in Jamaica Bay who was identified by (my dentist) based on her teeth; to robbing four banks over a few day period... (He actually took the stand in his own defense during the murder trial.) Each of these and probably a hundred more stories are worth telling... I'll see if I can do them justice as time allows over the next little while...
Oh yeah... The Rolex... He gave it to me for paying up 1.5 mill minutes before a deadline so he could avoid assassination by some very angry Colombians. It has an inscription on the back "On Time"... Well... the one I wore on Thursday says "Still On Time" because the original got ripped off in Vegas and he replaced it with an exact replica.
More - January 2010
If you read some of the earlier stuff, you'll remember the 'Glop'... well... by the time the glop was all gone, I had developed a serious circle of guys who could move crazy amounts of the worst stuff around... And Steve, being from Buffalo, was a good part of that circle (Lee out in Idaho was another)... Meantime, the Colombians began icing the competition with increasing frequency... Steve was, as usual, a wild man who really never gave a shit about consequences and offered to move a ridiculous amount of crappy pot for them. As it turned out, his plan involved my circle and he dropped a few thousand pounds of total garbage into my lap and said basically to find a price and sell it. Although he wasn't a Colombian, Steve was not the type of guy you wanted to disappoint... So I grabbed hold of a bunch of my glop experts and proceeded to moved this stuff in places like Idaho, Montana, Kentucky and other really out of the way places. As his deadline for payment drew closer and closer, I realized that he had actually promised the Colombians a $2 million payment by a certain date and was in danger of being killed unless he made the payment. The morning of the deadline he only had 500k or so and most of the rest of the bucks were in places like Pittsburgh, Philly, Rochester, Ithaca, some town in Kentucky... Another suitcase of cash was being driven across and was somewhere in Ohio... I'm like totally crazed... because once they knock off Pfeiffer, I'm going to be the one with the goods and they don't care if I promised a deadline or not... They just want the dough... or else...
But is Steve nervous? Not even a little... He's partying like crazy... rents a Lear... stocked with coke and champagne... brings a couple of babes along... tells me to meet him at 10AM at the Marine Terminal at LaGuardia and off we go on a collection tour... In one day, we hit six cities... including Columbus Ohio to meet the guy driving across... ended up having lunch in Pittsburgh... Dinner in Buffalo... And I was home in New York to watch the 11 o'clock news... He got his bucks... The Colombians got paid... and he bought me this cool watch that I wear like once or twice a year... The original got ripped off at the Cooney-Holmes fight in Vegas when someone broke into my hotel room while I was sleeping (okay... I was more like unconscious than sleeping) and took it. As it turned out, that trip to Vegas had hidden benefits when the Secret Service showed up to investigate a bank deposit with some counterfeit money... but that's another story...
BTW, flying in a Lear is one of the craziest feelings I've ever had... The thing takes off like a rocket and goes faster than anything I've ever been on... The wings are so short that it feels like you could reach out and touch the tips... And, in those days, the pilots didn't give a damn what you were up to as long as they got paid... This, apparently, wasn't the first time they had gone on a trip like this... It was like being in an air-taxi... Steve didn't tell them the next destination until we were back on the plane at each stop. They'd just file the flight plan and off we'd go... no security... no TSA... nothing but 'Where to, Sir?'
Still More January 2010
My teeth have always been lousy... I used to go to the dentist as a kid and find out i had a dozen cavities. So when my brother turned me on to a good dentist, it was a good thing... both for me (since I needed one) and for Dr. Ken Saltzman (who saw me as a walking goldmine). Fortunately for me he did great work. Fortunately for him, I paid in cash...
So when Max S needed a dentist, I was happy to refer him... and Ken was happy to take on any set of bad teeth... especially bad teeth that paid cash...
Max was partnered with Pfeiffer at the time and referred him to Ken as well... And Pfeiffer had a mouth that needed serious attention. And Ken managed to fix everyone's problems... Whether it was root canals, crowns, caps, cavities or any other oral deficiency, he had the skills to take care of them...
And everything went along fine... Pfeiffer was so happy that he sent his coke-smuggling, gap-toothed Colombian girlfriend to see Ken... A dentist's dream... She was a real piece of work too... Nuvia (I think that was her name) was his current squeeze. Like I said earlier, Steve was a true outlaw and over the years I knew him, he got married twice (both nice girls, if you ignored that one was an addict and the other a hooker).
To Steve, being married wasn't anything remotely resembling anything like a 'normal' marriage... He was still out there doing whatever came next... whether it was a deal, a run to or from Canada, a trip to Mexico, or just plain basing himself into oblivion. In the meantime, he had a son by his first and never failed to take care of the kid's support. With all the messed up stuff he rationalized as okay to do, he still had a set of rules to live by. He never lied, never failed to do what he said he would, would give his last penny to a friend, was incredibly generous when he was flush and impossibly arrogant when he was loaded. Did I mention he was loaded a lot of the time? He also had a ridiculous temper. If he got pissed at you, you knew it immediately and it became the most important thing in your life. It was something you'd ignore at your own risk... and the risk was substantial since Steve liked guns and knives.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
A Fateful Decision
As it turned out, I wasn’t prepared to jump on both of these deals in
that way. After all, I was going to get to sell the stuff whether I
invested or not. If the product made it in, I was first in line whether
I took part in the smuggle or not. Both teams wanted me to plunk down
six figures and I wasn’t going to lay 200k out in these high-risk
situations. So I had to choose. Both teams were successful, and I was
really tight with each of them... It was something of a eeny meeny miney
mo choice but I opted to go with the one that I’d already collected
with. Plus, there’s something nice about hashish in large quantities—it’s
really small and easy to move around. Hash doesn’t come with sticks or
seeds. A single small box (50 pounds) commanded 75 grand and you could
pretty much put most of it in an attache case. Also, most of it was
being shipped north to Canada and that meant it wouldn't interfere with
anything I had going on in the city.
Meantime, I had a long and terrific relationship with the west coast crowd. If their stuff made it in, I would be spending time out there in wine country. While I wasn’t in on the smuggle, I was certainly being counted on at the next levels. My guy Lee out in Idaho, had a scene that included a serious bunch of redneck drivers from Kentucky, Louisiana and other places. These guys had an invisible network of places to stay and roads that bypassed all the hot spots. We used them plenty of times to run stuff in both directions and they never lost anything or anybody doing it. These guys weren’t hippies. Most were Vietnam vets who simply didn’t give a shit. They survived hell in Asia and weren’t afraid of anything that could happen here (including getting arrested). In fact, my main friend out there had spent his time in-country driving trucks filled with artillery shells. So a hidden stash of contraband scared him not at all.
So I plopped down the dough on the hash and declined the second offer... and the clock began to tick on both of them. It was something new for me... knowing that specific products were on the way. Up to this point, I had only been vaguely aware of the scams that were in progress. It was a rare deal that arrived with any notice. Usually, we began to hear about this guy or that guy offering a ‘new’ product, and set out to find the most advantageous source. Experience had taught me not to jump in until I saw the bigger picture. New deals inevitably resulted in a period of jockeying for position in the deal du jour. At the highest levels, the circle didn’t have much more than a few leaders and there were probably another hundred (or two) who were always scrambling just below that level. When a deal hit, the smugglers just wanted to get paid and get laid. And that’s was usually happened.
One problem, however, was that the smugglers generally weren’t all that concerned with the quality of the product. Their main goal was to get it in without getting caught. After that, there was a lot of arguing and problems if the stuff sucked. Nobody wanted to pay up front for lousy stuff and the smugglers then had to endure a whole next project in converting the crap to money. And, when the lousy stuff was REALLY lousy, the bad things happened more frequently. People had to take more chances in who they sold to, and the result was product getting ripped off or getting busted. Even if those things didn’t happen, bad stuff was a tough sell. This was on top of the perpetual battle over price. The distributors and their wholesalers all wanted the lowest number while the smugglers naturally wanted the opposite. The most obvious factors (but not nearly the only ones) were the market situation and the quality of the merchandise. After that, politics was a factor as well. Regardless of the quality, if you bought early, you could get burned when the smugglers lowered the price. Then you were stuck until everyone who came after you sold their stuff. And sometimes this meant you were behind the eight ball for an entire season. You might be sitting with expensive product that was only worth the price during a drought. Of course, droughts happened periodically so it wasn’t a long term disaster, but definitely a setback while the market was active with better and cheaper merchandise.
Smuggling is a seasonal business in many respects. Certain times of year were traditionally dry because of harvest times, shipping conditions, weather, etc. The occasional aviation deal was never enough to impact the New York market. And in the mid 80s, when the weather got warm, the boats began descending up and down the entire east coast. Florida, which was the wild west for Colombian, Jamaican and even Mexican weed, became far less of a destination during the summer. Mother ships were dropping things off Montauk, Newport, and as far north as Maine. It’s a lot of coastline and there are a lot of boats all up and down it. The fisheries were fishing for much more than fish (and pulling in a lot more than tuna).
Meantime, I had a long and terrific relationship with the west coast crowd. If their stuff made it in, I would be spending time out there in wine country. While I wasn’t in on the smuggle, I was certainly being counted on at the next levels. My guy Lee out in Idaho, had a scene that included a serious bunch of redneck drivers from Kentucky, Louisiana and other places. These guys had an invisible network of places to stay and roads that bypassed all the hot spots. We used them plenty of times to run stuff in both directions and they never lost anything or anybody doing it. These guys weren’t hippies. Most were Vietnam vets who simply didn’t give a shit. They survived hell in Asia and weren’t afraid of anything that could happen here (including getting arrested). In fact, my main friend out there had spent his time in-country driving trucks filled with artillery shells. So a hidden stash of contraband scared him not at all.
So I plopped down the dough on the hash and declined the second offer... and the clock began to tick on both of them. It was something new for me... knowing that specific products were on the way. Up to this point, I had only been vaguely aware of the scams that were in progress. It was a rare deal that arrived with any notice. Usually, we began to hear about this guy or that guy offering a ‘new’ product, and set out to find the most advantageous source. Experience had taught me not to jump in until I saw the bigger picture. New deals inevitably resulted in a period of jockeying for position in the deal du jour. At the highest levels, the circle didn’t have much more than a few leaders and there were probably another hundred (or two) who were always scrambling just below that level. When a deal hit, the smugglers just wanted to get paid and get laid. And that’s was usually happened.
One problem, however, was that the smugglers generally weren’t all that concerned with the quality of the product. Their main goal was to get it in without getting caught. After that, there was a lot of arguing and problems if the stuff sucked. Nobody wanted to pay up front for lousy stuff and the smugglers then had to endure a whole next project in converting the crap to money. And, when the lousy stuff was REALLY lousy, the bad things happened more frequently. People had to take more chances in who they sold to, and the result was product getting ripped off or getting busted. Even if those things didn’t happen, bad stuff was a tough sell. This was on top of the perpetual battle over price. The distributors and their wholesalers all wanted the lowest number while the smugglers naturally wanted the opposite. The most obvious factors (but not nearly the only ones) were the market situation and the quality of the merchandise. After that, politics was a factor as well. Regardless of the quality, if you bought early, you could get burned when the smugglers lowered the price. Then you were stuck until everyone who came after you sold their stuff. And sometimes this meant you were behind the eight ball for an entire season. You might be sitting with expensive product that was only worth the price during a drought. Of course, droughts happened periodically so it wasn’t a long term disaster, but definitely a setback while the market was active with better and cheaper merchandise.
Smuggling is a seasonal business in many respects. Certain times of year were traditionally dry because of harvest times, shipping conditions, weather, etc. The occasional aviation deal was never enough to impact the New York market. And in the mid 80s, when the weather got warm, the boats began descending up and down the entire east coast. Florida, which was the wild west for Colombian, Jamaican and even Mexican weed, became far less of a destination during the summer. Mother ships were dropping things off Montauk, Newport, and as far north as Maine. It’s a lot of coastline and there are a lot of boats all up and down it. The fisheries were fishing for much more than fish (and pulling in a lot more than tuna).
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
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?
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?
Monday, June 8, 2015
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
