On Time...

Time.  Time is part of everything we do.  The measurement of it is uniquely human.  A dog may experience time but it’s unlikely to be measured.  Seasons change and behavior runs in cycles but animals are blissfully unaware while people are continually reminded of it.

 

What time is it?  When does my show start?  How old are you?  How fast are you going?  What’s the ETA?  Should I use second day delivery?  When did I get my last haircut?  Is it dinnertime yet?  What time will you be home?  When does the school year end?  When is Happy Hour?  When is that bill due?  What year is that car model?  When does the hockey season begin?  What quarter is this?  Is that the two minute warning?  What was your time in the marathon?  How long does it take to cook a hard-boiled egg and how long before it cools? 

 

Sometimes, it seems ‘like only yesterday’ since we’ve seen someone while years have actually gone by.  When we say ‘slow as molasses’, we’re talking about time, not molasses.  Being consistently late is unacceptable.  But it’s cool when you never appear to be in a hurry.

 

And most working people trade time for money...  What’s the hourly wage?   Is there overtime pay?  How many vacation days per year?  When is the due date?  When is high tide?   When was your last period?  I’m sorry Officer but how fast was I going?  What is my pulse rate?  How long does the music play during Final Jeopardy? 

 

The bottom line of time is that it can only be measured by itself.  You can’t see it or feel it but with altered perception, you can slow it down or speed it up.  You can’t escape it and if you try to, you are just wasting your time.  This is leap year...  but real time will still pass at the same pace.  The first time I smoked pot, time seemed to stand still.  It literally shape-shifted for me and what felt like an hours-long ride home ended when I got in the door and the clock said I was right on time.  This was quite the mystery.  How can time slow down and pass at the same speed simultaneously?  It’s all about perception.  Sanity is being able to distinguish between what we perceive and what we’re expected to perceive. 

 

My first awareness of time was probably when I knew it was dinnertime or time to go to sleep or maybe it was Howdy Doody time.  It took on a different meaning when I started school and discovered the difference between the school year and the summertime.

 

At this point in my life, approaching 70, time seems to be racing like a runaway train on a downhill track, constantly accelerating with no station in sight and with failing brakes that can’t be replaced.  Seasons pass quickly, and today becomes yesterday in the blink of an eye. 

 

So...  where is this going?  Time slows down considerably when you are waiting for the Federal government to decide whether to arrest you or not.  Time becomes the right to a speedy trial if it happens...  and how your charges might fit into the sentencing guidelines...  and, if the worst happens, time served.

A Fair Share...

It immediately becomes clear that I’m going to do this thing...  that it can’t be avoided...  and even if I wanted to, I have no idea how to find Nadamucho.  I’m left with the almighty envelope that has the keys to the kingdom.

This is going to take some planning but whatever happens has to happen quickly.  At the time, my impression was that it was only a matter of time before the Feds got a judge to open these boxes and the vault.  So I get on the horn to Pfeiffer and tell him we have to meet...  that there’s something that needs doing and it’s something only he can do...  And when I tell him it’s something we can’t even talk about from payphones, he’s in his car in Buffalo and driving down to see me within an hour.

About 8 hours later, Pfeiffer shows up and I give him the details.  We figure out that he’ll be driven by my best, most reliable worker in one of the anonymous cars, followed by me in another anonymous car.  That way, if something goes radically wrong, the lawyers are on it immediately instead of Pfeiffer having to beg for his guaranteed phone call while fighting off the DEA, the FBI and God knows who else.  We decide to do it the following day on the presumption that the sooner we do it, the less we think about it...  there’s less of a likelihood we’ll punk out or run into the Feds.

So he spends the night practicing his signatures (there were several names)...  and after a quick discussion at dawn the next morning, we decide to do the closest one first.  It’s the Dime Savings Bank in Melville, NY and it has a huge parking lot that abuts the big local shopping mall.  For me it’s perfect since I can park in the mall lot and monitor the activities outside the bank.  We drive the two anonymous Caprices up to the area...  the plan goes without a hitch.  Pfeiffer, dressed in a sports jacket and business attire, exits his car with his attache, walks to the bank and comes back out 10 gut-wrenching minutes later, gets back in the car and they drive out of the bank lot and we meet at another pre-planned spot at a local diner.  In the lot, Pfeiffer says there was $65k in the box and a few notes.  He’s got it all and we’ve cleared the first step.  Things went so smoothly that they are all for moving on to the next bank before lunch.

The second bank is every bit as easy as the first...  The clerk hardly even looks at him, opens the safety deposit box door, gives him the box and goes back to some paperwork while he empties the box in the small room.  The box had another $60k, an address book and some more notes.  Now it’s not even lunch and we’re sitting on $125k plus a bit of paperwork.

The third spot is the big enchilada...  the ZDC vault and for this one, there is more than a signature required.  There’s a password and a number that must match a record.  We have all the details but paranoia is high...  What if they know Stu?  Will this place look more closely at the signature?  And the location is odd...  The only place to watch from is across a wide boulevard in a store parking lot.  This time, Pfeiffer is in the place for almost a half hour and comes out empty-handed.  He gets into the car and we meet at another pre-selected diner lot.  “I can’t do this place like the others.”  he says.  “This is not a box guys...  It’s a vault and we’re going to need a hand truck to empty it.”  and adds “And the car won’t do.  There’s a lot of gold in there and boxes and boxes of shit.  We need a van!”

So the first thing we realize is that this isn’t going to happen until at least tomorrow.  And we’re all very aware that a bad-ending clock is ticking somewhere.  Naturally, we retire to the stash house du jour, twist up some joints and feed each other’s growing paranoia.  Pfeiffer describes the deal inside the ZDC.  They actually had a very tough-looking guy there who was openly carrying.  They did look at him and he actually fumbled on one of the code elements but in the end, Pfeiffer was Pfeiffer and he demanded access to his vault.  The Pfeiffer lesson there is that brass balls will take you a long way if you are willing to use them.

The next thing I start doing is ticking off who I know that has a van and isn’t afraid to commit felonies.  The list is actually substantial but it doesn’t take long to pick a prime choice.  The keeper of the stash house had an Astro van with a ridiculously heavy duty lock.  It had been broken into several years back and was reinforced to prevent it going forward.  On top of that, the van had a heavy duty suspension and was registered to someone who had died in 1955.  Needless to say, there was also a commercial-grade hand truck that we kept in the back.

Once we settle the van issue, Pfeiffer starts off telling us that there are ‘at least’ a half dozen boxes of cash and that it is way more than anything he’s ever seen in one place.  This in itself was significant because I had personally delivered a half mill to Pfeiffer on a deal and he was no newbie.  Next he talks about a few boxes that he couldn’t lift.  He opened an edge of one and he’s convinced it’s filled with metal.  To boot, there’s another bunch of stuff that seems to be very personal...  family pictures, a high school yearbook, lots and lots of paperwork, a handful of address books...  He thinks it’s going to take more than one trip with the hand truck to get it all out of there.  Next he starts talking about how much he wants for what he’s doing and the conversation starts at 20%.  I’m arguing that it’s way high and the other driver is joining the conversation about what he thinks his role is worth.  We’re all pretty stoned and we’re negotiating something big here.  If the vault has a mill, and we’ve already gotten $125k, 20% is going to be a ton of dough.  If the vault has 2 mill, 20% will be an insane cut.  The driver says he’ll take half of whatever Pfeiffer’s cut becomes.  So now, I’m looking at a 30% attrition and the Astro van isn’t even part of it yet.  He chimes in that he wants the same as the first driver.  It doesn’t take long to convince everyone that we’re all going to make a lot of money here but this was not the time or deal to be greedy on.  We all agreed that if we got hot after the act, we’d keep everything and use it to either hit the road or hire lawyers.  A short while later, Pfeiffer, who is the only one who has actually laid eyes on what’s inside the vault says he’ll make do with 10%.  This means the three of them will clear 20% off the top and the deal is struck.  Amazingly, nobody asks me what I want and I don’t even raise the question.  I know I’m going to be fair but I have no idea what that means.  Fair?  After all, what’s fair when you are robbing banks in order to obstruct justice?

 The next day comes and we set out...  and in the end, it’s just as Pfeiffer predicted...  It takes over an hour, and two trips with the hand truck.  I’m watching from across the boulevard as they load box after box into the back of the van.  I can see at least one box is so heavy it takes both of them to lift and move.  As we pull away, I can only describe the feeling as one of total exhilaration.  We did it...  The boxes and the vault were empty, and nobody was onto us.  My heart was racing as we drove back and I’m trying to get a feel for what I should do now.  Obviously, we have to do an accounting and the guys have to get paid.  But how do I safely get the stuff back into the right hands?  There’s just no way I want to hold the dough.  It takes about five minutes to decide that I need to get it to Stu’s wife.  After all, she’s his family and she’s the one who will be paying his legal bills...  and raising their three children.  I set the thought aside and we set about tallying up the haul.  Personally, I don’t really care how much there is.  I’d rather do a flat sum payout but the guys are adament...  they want the percentage.

So we tote the boxes down the steps to the basement and begin the count.  There’s over 1.5 mill in cash...  plus Maple Leaf coins, American Eagle coins, gold kilo bars, silver...  and incredibly, several thousand tickets to Phantom of the Opera which was a huge hit playing on Broadway.  It turns out, Stu was backing a scalper and holding the tickets as collateral.  He’d release tickets as he was repaid.  We had a good laugh about that, and I actually took a half dozen tickets.  (Great seats!!)  As it turned out, though, and I had no way of knowing it at the time, the real value was in the family pictures, the paperwork, address books, the high school yearbook and the other non-negotiable stuff in the vault.  We actually flipped through about ten address books trying to figure out whether to destroy pages or entire books.  There were long number series that Pfeiffer was sure led to offshore and international bank accounts.  In the end, we left them intact in the belief that they'd be safe.  Once we separated all that stuff out, the boys took their cuts and I went about repatriating the bulk of the cash, metals and show tickets to his wife.  A few days later, I had my top guy deliver the car to her, trunk filled with all the valuables.  Meantime, I put together a few boxes with the paperwork and personal stuff and drove it out to New Jersey.  My long time best friend forever, Gregg, who I went to school with, did the Far Rockaways with, and who got me the opportunity at the Times, wasn’t connected in any way and would never ask a question.  He let me come out, deposit the stuff in his basement and leave without a single question.  He knew I was in deep but never asked for anything in return and never wanted to know what was in those boxes.

You can imagine how I felt a couple days later when I heard the Feds raided her father’s house in Virginia and seized the entire stash.  Oh well...  at least the vault and boxes were empty and the boys had plenty of party money...  We had done the job and the rest was out of our hands.

Denial is a Very Strong Anesthetic

So it’s 1988... and things are happening in every which way... the scene is essentially out of hand. Quality is at an all time high and prices are as well. The business is clicking on all cylinders until... the unthinkable happens.

A courier for the hash smuggler goes to Switzerland and is picked up by Interpol. Whether he was on a list, had phony paperwork, said the wrong thing to the wrong banker... I never found out. What I did find out, though, was that he was interviewed by the US DEA and spilled his guts without seeing a lawyer. I didn’t know it at the time but when the smuggler met the courier at LaGuardia Airport that June afternoon, he was taken down by a horde of agents and carted off to a federal jail.

As soon as I heard the news, I realized this was some serious shit and there was a real possibility that I’d get drawn into this on some level. The attitude of people who knew what had happened ranged from disbelief to resignation to denial. Denial was a common reaction since having $40 million dollars makes one feel pretty damned insulated. “This can’t be serious...” and I specifically remember meeting his wife (while I was in a high state of paranoia) saying “Oh there’s nothing to worry about he’ll be out on Monday...” Me? I’m thinking there’s no way he’s getting out any time soon. First of all, he was a fugitive for over 15 years since he ran out on a court date in the early 1970s. Second, they had no idea who he was since he hadn’t ever been printed. Third, he wasn’t known under his real name. There was a fourth and fifth but the bottom line was the smuggler was not hitting the streets on Monday no matter what.  Hell, even I didn't know his real name.

And this was like a sharp knife plunged into the heart of the scene. Suddenly, all the people surrounding his schemes were vulnerable, the lawyers were circling like vultures and lots of people were in the wind. I felt a lot of anxiety but had hopes that nobody could prove my involvement. After all, I gave him the dough in person... no witnesses... and I kept this quiet at my end. I did know the courier as an acquaintance but only in passing at parties and the occasional hand-off. We weren’t tight and he didn’t know much about my business. I’m hoping that even if I’m drawn into the case, it’s as a dealer only.

Denial is a very strong anesthetic.

A few days after the LaGuardia arrest, I get a call to meet Nadamucho to ‘discuss things’. Now one thing about Nadamucho is that he never ‘discussed’ anything. That’s part of the back story of his name. He was so soft-spoken that you were never sure if he said anything you thought you heard. It was just Nadamucho's way. If you remember, he was the one who introduced me to this scene (as well as others) and he wasn’t a socializer. If he asked to see you, there was a good reason. Lots of people were taking long vacations around this disaster but I wasn’t in any position to just disappear. We owned the house, had a newborn child, had a mortgage, paid taxes, owned other houses, land in the Caribbean, commercial properties, etc. etc. We were citizens and if we were going to stand up to this, we couldn’t run.

So I agreed to meet him at a diner where Northern Boulevard overpasses the Cross Island Parkway in Queens. I get there about 45 minutes early and sit in my car in the diner parking lot, watching carefully (like all those smart guys I’d read about in books and seen in movies) to make sure he: a) isn’t setting me up; and b) isn’t being followed. Of course, this was insane because if he was setting me up, an early arrival would tell me nothing and if he was being followed, I was going to get screwed anyway. But hey... in for a dime in for a dollar and I sit there. Funny thing was I am sure I pinned several dope deals going down in the lot that morning. A good indication is when one guy drives a pickup into the lot and a different guy drives it away...

The time comes and Nadamucho pulls in alone and walks into the diner. I get out and join him, eyes everywhere and paranoia raging. We sit down at a booth and look at each other... After minimal small talk, ‘This is a big problem.’ I offer and he nods, mumbling something about he’s seen bigger but this was definitely up there. I’m straining to listen when he reaches in his jacket, takes out an envelope and sets it on the table. ‘We need to empty the big guy's boxes before the Feds get there.’ he says. ‘Boxes?’ I reply, not getting it at first. “3 Safety deposit boxes and the Zurich vault.” he explains adding patiently. I look at him, trying to absorb this information. Is he asking me to empty safe deposit boxes and a vault? Really? Me? A nice Jewish kid from Queens? He wants me to rob banks?

"What's in them?" I ask. "Everything." he answers. "If the Feds get this stuff we're all going away."

My heart is pounding and I’m trying to keep it together when he excuses himself to take a piss. Now I’m sitting there with this envelope on the table for about five minutes when it dawns on me that he isn’t coming back. I look out in the lot and his car is gone. It’s the last time I ever saw him.

 Still sitting there, I tried to absorb what just happened. To this point, I was mainly in a CYA mode... a mode I was fairly familiar with. On a handful of occasions, bad things had happened and I had escaped involvement even when things looked extraordinarily bleak. Even the dentist kept me in the clear during the Nuvia-Jamaica Bay episode. Loads had been fluke-busted and I managed to shoulder a burden but still avoided the attention of the enforcement folks. Nadamucho, however, had just put me in an awful position. How could ignore this? My mind was racing... weighing the options. If I did nothing, and the Feds got to whatever was in these boxes, I was clearly part of the ‘all’ in ‘we’re all going away.’ If I did something and things went really bad, I was probably going to be in deeper shit than I was already. Did he tell anyone else that he was giving me the envelope? And what was in the envelope anyway? I looked down at it... picked it up... felt its weight... clearly the contents were off balance and there was more than paper in it. I put it down, visualized myself opening it and knew right then that there was no way I could ignore this.

I had my own set of safe deposit boxes in various banks. What if he had a box in the same bank as me? Would they know me? Clearly, whatever I was going to do had to be done quickly. I knew the routine at the banks. You only need your key and to be a signatory. If they asked, you could show them an ID but they almost never looked at it. If you had the key and were on the paperwork, they simply opened the box-door and you pulled out your box. Some of the clerks would pull it out for you but you could circumvent that with “It’s okay, I’ll take it.” Then you’d bring it to a little closet-sized room with a desk, a chair and a lamp. Once the door was closed, you were basically good to go. The boxes came in all sizes and I remember designating them in the amount of cash you could stash in them. The smallest still would take close to $100,000. And the biggest? The big ones held close to a million dollars in hundreds. We rarely, if ever, got to that because so much of the dough was in smaller bills. But either way, in my mind, boxes meant cash and lots of it. The key thing was that Nadamucho obviously knew that there was more than cash at stake here.

As it turns out, the envelope had all the necessary information, complete with signature examples for each set of bank paperwork. The kicker was the vault... the big enchilada... at the Zurich Depository on Northern Boulevard. To get into this place, you not only had to have the key but there were also special ID documents and a secret password. I quickly conclude that this needs a quick plan that will get the job done and somehow, keep me from personally having to walk into the banks or the depository. It doesn’t take more than a few minute to figure out that there’s only one person I knew that could carry this off without freaking out. I knew someone with the balls, brains, brass and total insanity to make this happen.  I needed Pfeiffer!!

My Dear Friend Denis...

Another old friend appeared to me over the weekend and it’s worth taking a breath and remembering Denis. Back in the early days, my roommate, Tom worked at Time Magazine as a researcher. Tom’s co-worker in research, Alex, was, like most of the people in my tale, another one whose life flew off the tracks in the early 70s. He was gay when gayness began to demand recognition. There was a huge undercurrent of gender-related activity in the air. Greenwich Village was a hub. The West side cowboy/biker scene was exploding. Discos and other all-night clubs were happening in Chelsea and throughout the city. As for me, I was still accumulating outlets and sources for my newly discovered career. This connection with Alex uncovered a whole new subcultural market that seemed absolutely perfect. My connections into the scene were all honest gentlemen who, by nature, were used to doing things in the shadows.

Sadly, as the 70s drew into the 80s, the scourge of AIDS and HIV ran rampant in the gay community. It was a horror show. Lots of people were just wasting away and incredibly, the politicians refused to help, blaming the sickness on a ‘lifestyle’ rather than an illness to be cured. It was a sad time and if you’ve never seen the movie Philadelphia or Dallas Buyers Club or any of the dozens of depictions of that time, you should take an hour or a day and try to understand what it’s like to be castigated and cast out for being terminally sick. Bottom line, it wasn’t all fun and games in the New York City underworld in the 70s. People were scared out of their wits. Nobody was sure of anything except people were dying and it was obviously an infectious disease. Once people realized it was possibly blood-borne, things got out of hand quickly. Everybody felt vulnerable, whether they were gay or not. Needles were known to carry a risk. A guy I knew who had a place in the meat-packing district around 14th Street and 8th Avenue was afraid to open his windows. He believed that a mosquito bite could carry the HIV disease if the mosquito had bitten a person who was positive for the virus. And who was going to tell him to open his windows? Me? No way! The music/art/theatre scene was, as it always had been, a hub of homosexuality and people were dropping like flies. Meantime, it was hard to ignore the thought that this disease was linked to our drug-fueled, acid-laced, Be Here Now, wave of baby boomer culture.

There was no cure except complete abstinence and for many people, that was not an easy option.

Anyway, via my relationship with Tom and then Alex... and several others, I found myself interacting with a very smooth honest guy who owned a loft on 23rd Street down the block from the Chelsea Hotel. This was Denis, who was a unique cog in the invisible machine. He was always around, seemed to be connected to everyone I knew or wanted to know, and who was, in his own right, a very smart dude. He came from a card-carrying Mayflower-descendant family and was apparently the black sheep of the family due to his sexual proclivities and perhaps some other frowned-upon behaviors. I mean, here was a guy whose grandfather held the patent on the modern fire hydrant, whose uncles, John & Washington Roebling, designed the Brooklyn fucking Bridge. Denis was a story unto himself, both smart, well-read, and enterprising.

One day, in the late winter of 1969, Denis is sitting around with his friend Stan, and they pick up the Times and read an article about how the United Nations was holding some kind of conference to promote coffee in the United States. Denis was a Princeton guy and his complete package included a very smooth delivery. So he spends a day, puts together a presentation and heads up to the United Nations to propose a Manhattan club that will only serve coffee products. Six weeks later, Denis gets a grant of $250,000 to build the club and, from what I heard, that’s how the Electric Circus nightclub was born. They opened the doors and the first weekend took in $100,000 and the rest is history. Eventually the venture went public and imploded after a few disastrous openings, most notably in Toronto, but the seed of creation was sown right there in Denis’s loft on 23rd Street.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1356&dat=19690430&id=f4ZPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=cAUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7364,9564346&hl=en

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19690415&id=zE0aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=MygEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2691,4694883&hl=en

http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2013/04/recollections-of-electric-circus-if-you.html

The Electric Circus was only one of dozens of ventures that came out of that loft. Denis was a principle in a Redwood Furniture deal, partner in numerous SRO hotel deals, had fantastic pot connections on both coasts, and never, for one New York second, did anything unethical or did not stand up to any promise he ever made. Eventually that became funny after I got popped owing him dough and he actually had the balls to take a tax deduction on it. (But, yes, that’s another entire story).

Incidentally, Denis bought that three story loft building for about $30,000 in the late 60s and the last I heard he had turned down an offer for about $3,000,000. Unfortunately, after he bought the loft, he bought the farm when he developed some terminal form of abdominal malignancy (may or may not have been HIV-related) and passed away around Y2K. Denis was one beautiful guy. I still miss him.

Vehicles Anonymous Meets Every Monday at 8PM...

Once we bought the house, lots of things changed radically.  First off, we couldn’t use our place as a stash anymore...  After all, we lived there.  Second, regardless of being secluded (which it really was), or driveway that went out of sight (which it did), or drive-through garage (which it had), or anything else, we had to maintain an image with the realization that we weren’t just moving on in a few months.  It wasn’t ‘What the hell, who cares, they’ll never know what happened here until it’s too late anyway.’   We were on the hook, so to speak, for the foreseeable future.  And this ushered in the era of house-sitting employees, additional rentals, new equipment sets for each place, etc. 

On one level, nothing changed much.  We still were renting secluded homes in very nice neighborhoods.  We were still taking in loads whenever the opportunity arose.  The network continued to grow, now expanding well beyond the New York area.  We were shipping to Idaho, Washington and the entire northwest, Kentucky, Ohio and the midwest, Buffalo continued to soak up whatever we sent, and we didn’t even have to touch the stuff that went north to Canada.  Just a phone call would get it to where it had to be and all we had to do was count.  What could be better, huh? 

Well, on another level, more people in the fold meant we needed additional insulation wherever possible.  After all, we had a house to protect and, as time went on, a ‘normal’ taxpayer reputation to live up to.  And this brings the tale back to PJ.  He had the accountant that fixed us up to buy the house but he had lots and lots more than an accountant.  One thing that was always troublesome, were the cars and trucks.  No matter how we sliced it, if a load got busted, the car was going to be traced back to someone somewhere.  NadaMucho used his parents to drive a humongous Buick.  We were always looking for the 'average' looking guy or, better yet, family that would take a leisurely drive up the coast for a grand.   We had bought Caddies and Chryslers and Dusters and other cars but in the end, we had to title them and insure them and it was a very weak link in the situation.  Any half-assed investigator could run a registration and find our vitals in about five minutes (this was pre-digital).  To this point, our luck had held but it was definitely time to stop depending on luck.

Unless, of course, your last name was Pfeiffer, and in which case, you simply didn't give a shit...  You had cash in your pocket?  You went out and bought a top of the line Caddy, totally pimped out, in your own name...  and screw anyone who cares about it.

So one day, PJ shows up on my driveway in a shiny brand new Chevy Caprice Classic...  This car was absolute perfection from my perspective.  It was a common family sedan, low key, unassuming all-American car with a very very large trunk.

So I ask PJ what’s the scoop and he just smiles and says he paid all cash and tosses the registration on my kitchen table.  I look and see that this car is registered to nobody I know.  I ask PJ who is he paying to own the car and he just smiles and beckons me to go outside with him.  Even in those days, we were hesitant to talk about serious things indoors.  The saying went, ‘If you want to read it in the newspaper, say it over your home phone or talk about it in your house.’  So I walk outside with him and learn that he’s ‘got a guy’ who can deliver brand new anonymous cars, any make or model, any set of options...  literally anything you wanted...  fully insured, registered, plated, ready to go...  for a reasonable add-on price tag.  You want a Chevy?  a Jaguar?  Plymouth Duster?  Caddy?  Benz?  No problem at all.  Just bring the dough when you want a car and the car shows up within a week or so.  My world is changing once again-and while it felt a little out of control, how do you stop something like this once it gets going?  My scene had taken on a life of its own.

Before too long, we were buying Chevys like candy.  I met the guy, developed a nice rapport and eventually turned him on to Marvin who started buying a car a week for about 6 months.  Eventually, by chance, we noticed that he was re-using phony IDs but it wasn’t all that important.  Once these cars were in use, it was nothing to fill one up, leave it somewhere, and just turn over the keys to the other guy.  He'd take the car, empty it, bring it back, and everyone was smooth.  Nobody knew where the stuff went and everybody had a car to use.  I'd drop off a carful to Marvin...  He'd give me the keys to an empty...  I'd go fill it up...  etc etc...  until I happened to look in the glovebox one day and realized that the car guy had been reusing his IDs.  We had bought more cars than he had IDs for.  And he had a connection at the DMV so this obviously went higher and deeper than I wanted to know.

In any event, the key was to be able to walk away from a car without having it lead to you.  Like everyone else, in those days, this guy was a totally legitimate luxury car guy.  If you wanted to lease a Bentley, he could arrange it.  Porsche?  No problemo.  He didn't hide or work out of a back room.  His showroom was one of the biggest wide open glass fronted luxury car places in Great Neck.  Everybody knew this guy but they didn't have a clue what went on behind the scenes.

Oh...  speaking of not talking about serious things indoors, we had taken to talking in ridiculous codes, even on the phone.  Pounds were ‘little baskets’ (aka LBs), other items and amounts were called paintings, 2x4s, tiles, chairs, tables, you name it.  The one thing you could always be sure of was that nobody ever meant what they said...  until that one time... 

I get a page from Big Al from Red Hook, go to the local payphone, and call his local payphone...  He tells me to meet him at his warehouse to check out some ‘radios’.  My eyes roll because I know that Big Al (previously described here), wants in on the bigger end of pot distribution and has been trying for a while to make it happen.  Of course I agree to go see him since his ‘friends’ are doing lots of stuff in Miami and elsewhere.  John the Beak and John the Dope are in town and seem to have lots of product so this might actually be something.  I pick up a buddy, show up at his warehouse and he walks us to a big Ryder truck that’s parked off in a dark corner.  ‘Wait till youse see dis stuff!’  he says, all excited.  And when we’re behind the truck, he calls over one of his guys, and up goes the rear sliding door...  opening on a truck filled, top to bottom, side to side, end to end with....  RADIOS!!!  The guy knew a guy who knew a guy who ‘might have’ hijacked a truck filled with radios.  It took a few minutes but I spent every second of those minutes explaining to Big Al that were weren’t really criminals, just pot dealers...  which was, of course, unimaginable to him.  ‘Youse is either in the biz or not!’  was his angry attitude.  Until I told him I’d front him 10 pounds off the top of the next primo batch I saw.

And nobody got hurt....

One Small Step Becomes a Giant Leap...

In the legal working world, success is a combination of who you are, where you are, what you know and who you know. All factor into career progress in varying degrees depending on your career. In the underworld, who you know vastly overshadows the others. Idiots often become big shots because they know someone. You could be a really smart guy but have no connections and fail terribly. There is a wall that you can't get past without the right contacts. And it was no different in our circles. Sometimes a simple introduction changed everything. And that’s what happened when I met PJ. The circle that opened up to me after I met Nada Mucho (PJ among them) made a huge difference in what was possible. Suddenly, I was in touch with an entirely fresh group of high-level distributors, wholesalers and, at the top, smugglers. I hadn’t changed a bit and I was still connected to all the same people... but adding the new circle magnified the possibilities exponentially.

First of all, PJ lived just minutes away and we knew a lot of the same people from different directions. This added complexity to the sales matrix but also became an invaluable information source. We both benefited no matter who was running the particular deal. Up till then, I was more or less of a successful wholesaler/retailer. I still saw friends and acquaintances I’d met in the beginning when I was trying to make sense of what I’d gotten myself into. I was able to sell to them at way less cost than they’d pay elsewhere and was also able to pick out the primo quality for them. It was a great connection in many ways since I was not only keeping up old relationships but I was also now paying less and selling for more.

But that isn’t what this chapter is about... This is about who you know... And the connection to PJ also opened a door to possibilities that went far beyond anything I’d imagined to that point. He wasn’t just a hippie. He was doing things in a far more traditional way than I knew existed. He had an accountant, a lawyer, and some other very interesting resources... The key to these connections was that they all knew, to some degree, what was going on and they were all in for the ride and the dough.

By 1980, we had been through a dozen places in Manhattan, several in Queens, and were well into the first dozen on Long Island. The rules in the burbs were simple... Seclusion was essential... and we were mostly steered towards houses that were upper echelon places... Up a hill, behind tall hedges... down a long driveway... anything isolated... And it was funny... our criteria and resources justified almost any rent. Couple of grand a month? Sure thing... We’ll pay in advance if you’d like... Cash even... They were mostly on the Gold Coast/North Shore... Sea Cliff, Brookville, Lloyd Point, West Hills, Huntington Bay, Halesite... All upscale and all taken with one thing in mind... a secluded, controllable environment. After a while, you could get used to that type of place...

So one day, when we were facing the end of a particular lease... and the housing scout was out scouting houses, we came across an interesting opportunity. Interest rates, under the Carter administration, had reached epic levels approaching 18%, and had made real estate virtually unsellable. These geniuses from Georgia peanut country decided they could control inflation by raising interest rates... which they did... except the plan failed miserably. So once he was out of office, rates began to fall and had hit 12% when we ran across a house on 2.5 acres that the owner was desperate to sell. Vincent Poma was a banker for UBS and he’d raised his family in the house... was looking to downsize... but was stuck there in a non-existent real estate market. The scout comes back and tells me this is a very unusual situation... the house is up a 150 foot hilly driveway that ends at a drive-through garage. I mean there was a garage that you could pull into and out of without backing up. The house itself was interesting too... It's got a pool, a cabana with a bathroom, a back yard that would accommodate a tennis court. Built in the 1950s, it was supposedly a guest house for a very wealthy guy... Guido Eckstein was the name I recall but a little research shows he was the son of highly respected restaurateur, Vincent of the same last name.

http://www.nytimes.com/1964/06/03/victor-eckstein-owned-luchows.html?_r=0

More about the amazing house later... but bottom line... for $170,000 we could own it. And although it would practically tap our cash, we could scrape together the $70,000 and hope to get a mortgage for the rest. Unfortunately, there was just one problem. I had no income... errr... no visible income that is.... no tax returns... nothing that would justify a mortgage... and frankly, I had no idea about such things. And this is where the open door comes in. In a conversation with PJ, who was also renting in the area, I managed an introduction to an accountant who, basically, for a fee (of course)... could take care of the entire mortgage application issue for us. The guy was connected to the ‘real’ world of finance in ways and with knowledge that I had absolutely no clue about. Within a week or two, I had employment records, pay stubs, tax returns, and anything else that was needed to get the mortgage. In fact, I didn’t realize it at the time but I was signing on to a whole new way of life. Buying the house was just a first step. Maintaining something in my name also meant having an ongoing income, filing taxes, and so on and so forth. The next thing I knew, I was taking an insurance exam, getting a brokers license, and cashing checks (for a fee, of course). Today, it’s what they call money laundering. In 1980, I called it a major sign of success.

Fluke of the Day

Even now, after all these years, I don’t really understand why the authorities had such a tough time finding us.  It’s not like we were master criminals...  or even sworn to the Italian omerta.  We were just a bunch of crazies with a modest amount of common sense and a little more balls than normal.  Virtually every bust that happened was a fluke.   Were there people who spilled the beans?  Sure.  Did people go down from it?  Yes again.  But it was almost always a fluke that started the ball rolling.

Frequently, someone was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It could be a traffic stop gone wrong or a cop inhaling a whiff of smoke that escaped from an open window.  It could be a cop mistakenly thinking you were a robbery suspect but then finding a pocket full of cash or a box of pot.  And the funny thing was that we were so damned obvious.  It got to the point where I’d pull into a diner, look at the vehicles in the lot and know instantly if a deal was going down.  You could go to a phone booth and just know that the person hanging out there was doing business.  I never quite understood how we got away with so much for so long. 

We had car phones before the cops could listen in.  The serious smuggler types had satellite phones but we were fine with payphones and beepers.  Occasionally, I’d see someone I didn’t know hanging at a payphone but managed to make eye contact with.  We’d just smile and nod, knowing that we were both in the same game.  Surprisingly, I don’t recall ever doing business with someone I met like that but it was more from paranoia than anything else.  Even though I was sure I was clean, I wasn’t sure of the other guy.  It’s tough to work with tons of contraband and rely on blind intuition.  We always thought we were vulnerable but it was almost always the fluky moments that got people busted.

I could swear I previously wrote about this incident but in re-reading the material I can’t find it.  So here’s a ‘fluke of the day’ story...  We had rented a loft-type space just north of Union Square West on 17th Street in Manhattan and were using it as a stash and central location for a while in the middle 70s.  The building was five floors with a loft on every floor.  There was an elevator that opened into each loft.  (Although it wasn’t uncommon since these loft-type areas had originally been commercial spaces, it was still pretty nice to have a private elevator with a key lock that you could turn on and off.)  Our space was on the fourth floor and the elevator opened into a relatively small office area with a desk, a few chairs and some shelving.  The main section of the space was separated by a flimsy faux wall that had a door opening onto a huge living area.

This main space was probably 40 feet long by 20 feet wide and perfect for what we were doing.  The big Ohaus scale could be covered and all our other equipment could be hidden when not in use.  In truth, it was a typically perfect spot to deal from with a locked elevator, locked staircase, storage space that was isolated from the entry, windows that only revealed the space up to the faux wall.  The streets below were always crowded and busy, but up in our loft it was an entirely different story...  the ultimate in space management...  which was something that we grew to appreciate more and more as the business expanded.  Controlled access was essential to staying out of harm’s way.  It prevented everything from rip-offs to fluke busts.  Fluke?  right...  back to the fluke...

So it’s a nice fall day and we had taken in a couple of bales of top-notch Jamaican weed.  As usual, we were breaking it down into five pound bags, weighing them on the Ohaus, making sure the mixtures were fair, and checking the overall weight to confirm what we were paying for.  A customer and his girlfriend came by early to pick up a few bags.  (They had folks that were in from out of town and had cash to spend.)  Meantime, we’re hanging out, tasting the stuff, getting high as usual.  The weed was very very good.  In those days, good Jamaican rivaled anything from South America and we loved it.  Ganga was good.  A few other friends stopped by to check out the stuff and we’re having a grand time.  This isn’t like other drugs...  You can’t smoke that much weed where it affects the overall weight.  Even a dozen joints wouldn’t change the deal...  so we proceeded to get down and get high. 

Meantime, one of them, Joey, (who it later turned out secretly had a hard drug habit), shows up and joins the party.  It’s a beautiful day...  We’re going to make some dough while hanging out and partying with friends.  The product is great and we’re having a jolly old time.  Until, that is, the elevator door opens and out steps a huge bald guy who looked very much like Kojak (Telly Savales) the tv cop.  Joey, in his state, forgot to lock the elevator door and I, in mine, had forgotten to turn it off.

We were mostly all sitting around in the front area by the elevator, smoking, laughing, having a good time and suddenly, we know we’re all going to jail.  Dead silence...  not a word...  Without thinking, I jump up and get in the open doorway to the back space to block his view of the open five pound plastic bags that are lined up on the floor.  It was like a production line of pot and there was absolutely nothing to prevent him from seeing it, smelling it, and knowing 100% that we were dealing from this loft.  I look around and nobody is laughing any more.  It’s dead silent in the loft.  And Kojak is more than big enough to see past me into the big room.  He’s got Kojak’s bald head, is wearing a Kojak trenchcoat over a suit (like lots of plainclothes cops) and I’m waiting for him to whip out handcuffs or pull his weapon or line us up against a wall.  After all, we’re just pot-dealing hippies, not violent criminal types.  Escape is impossible since the stairs are locked and there’s no running to the elevator.

I look up at Kojak and he focuses on me.  The guy is like 6’4” and 280...  I mean he seemed as wide as a truck in that small space.  But so far, he hasn’t said a word.  He just stepped into the room and slowly took it all in.  At this point, he opens his jacket and reaches inside...  I’m flinching, getting ready to present my hands for the cuffs...  He takes his hand out of his pocket and holds something up in front of me...  It looks like a pen.  I mean huh?  a pen?  And attached to the pen is a little card that says:  “Hello, I am a deaf mute.  Please buy my pen so I can support myself.”

I’m not making this up.  Not only isn’t he a cop, but he’s unable to speak or hear.  After about five poignant seconds, I’m reaching in my pocket for money and pressing a few 20s into his hand...  taking his pen...  and when he reaches back in his pocket, taking all his pens...  then giving him another $50, taking his arm and walking him back to the elevator, pressing the ground floor button...  and riding down with him.  Meantime, he’s got this confused look on his face, possibly wondering what just happened.  He hit the deaf mute pen sales jackpot but he’s not sure why.  

When I get back upstairs, we’re like ‘huh?’  and ‘did that just happen?’  and then I begin pantomiming what he could do...  like find a cop, do a charades version of smoking a joint...  pointing to our doorway...  etc. etc...  A moment later, we’re all in nervous hysterics, wondering what planet we’d landed on.  Believe me...  that Jamaican was some seriously good stuff.  And nobody got hurt.