Doctor Dealer (27 page)

“Of course not,” said Willie. “Go ahead.”

She unzipped the bag. The trooper leaned over to look, and she began removing items. Willie stood there with an odd numb feeling, registering no particular alarm. He was trying to look like an innocent passenger. It crossed his mind that in a minute he would either be walking toward the plane or heading in the other direction in handcuffs.

The woman pulled out the bottle of mouthwash, unscrewed the top, and smelled it. She turned to Willie and smiled.

“This is what we were looking for,” she said, and proceeded to explain about the mouthwash problem.

Willie got on the plane and bought himself three bottles of vodka as a first round.

When he got to Philadelphia, he delivered the kilo and explained what had happened. Instead of offering sympathy, Ken criticized him.

“Why did you ever let them search your bag?” he said.

“Jesus, Ken. They wanted to search it. There’s a cop standing right there. If I said no, do you think they weren’t going to?”

From Willie’s perspective, the smart boys in Philadelphia were spoiled brats. They had little understanding or appreciation of the risks he was taking to make their millions. Every time Willie had to walk into a strange hotel room and face small, dark men with guns he died a little inside. He spent the money he made liberally because there was no sense hoarding it. Sooner or later one of those transactions was going to go bad. It wasn’t just paranoia, either. Every week the Florida papers had stories about people like Willie getting busted, or turning up in cheap motel rooms dead. He had a kind of sixth sense, or at least he thought he did. Anyway, he trusted it. It told Willie that he wasn’t going to get killed doing this, but that eventually he and everyone else involved were going to pay. They weren’t going to get away with it forever.

Still, by the end of 1980, Willie had earned about a hundred thousand dollars and had hopes of doing much, much better. After the raid on his house and Glen Fuller’s bust, Larry was talking about getting out of the business for good. He had decided to sell out to Kenny and David in early 1981. That would make Willie top management.
His dreams of earning enough money to open his own club were shouldered aside quite readily by the prospect of earning a million dollars.

Safety became Willie’s primary concern. A million bucks would do him no good dead or in jail. After the mouthwash incident he tried to avoid flying, even though the thirty-hour drives seemed endless. In Florida, he had gradually been making progress toward a safer, more efficient way of doing business. The key was to remove the middlemen, to get off the street.

All along, Willie had been dealing with four to six sources, mostly Cuban. On each trip he would check out what each supplier had and pick the best, often ending up with two kilos from one, one kilo from another, three from another. There was Miguel, who was doing a slow, self-destructive free-fall on Quaaludes; Vivian, a tiny chainsmoking Cuban woman who dealt in her apartment right in front of her three children, who were old enough to know what was going on; Lester, the jeans merchant; and a group of sinister Colombians who scared him. In time, Willie found out that backing both Miguel and Vivian was a Cuban named Rene, a cheerful playboy who drove a boat of a ’78 Monte Carlo, and always met Willie at the same bar in the Dadeland Mall near the University of Miami because he thought it was the best place in Miami to pick up women. He had long black hair and a thick beard and reminded Willie of the way Al Pacino looked in
Serpico.
Willie liked looking at the women but was always eager to get out and make the deal because he was nervous and felt conspicuous toting a satchel filled with cash for hour after hour in a crowded bar. Rene would rarely consider business until after he had taken a girl home from the bar and had sex—something he nearly always managed to do. It was through Rene that Willie met Pepe.

Pepe’s Cuban friends had a different nickname for him. They called him Flaco, which meant Skinny. He was in his late thirties, with deep-set soulful eyes and such broad, prominent cheekbones that his face seemed swollen. Cocky and animated, clean-shaven with a thick black moustache, just three inches over five feet tall, Pepe always wore cowboy boots and a big cowboy belt with a Texas-sized buckle behind which he would thrust his thumbs when he strutted, looking for all the world like a cartoon mouse playing sheriff. Willie liked him immediately.

Willie first met Pepe at Rene’s house. As the demand for cocaine continued to grow in Philadelphia, Willie had become like a member of Rene’s family. After a night of partying they usually conducted business in Rene’s home in a comfortable development off a canal in
Fort Lauderdale, where there were green lawns and tall palms and the squat stucco houses were all painted in pastels. On one such visit, when he was looking to buy four kilos, Pepe arrived at the door with the delivery. Rene introduced Willie, who over the past year had built on the Spanish he had studied in high school until he could hold his own in conversation. Willie could tell by the way Rene spoke to Pepe that the visitor was not just a runner, but Rene’s boss. Willie guessed that Pepe had come by personally to check him out.

Willie was eager to impress. Ultimately, he thought, the safest way to do business in Florida was to deal with the top men directly. He withdrew a melt box from his satchel to test the cocaine, even though he knew the method was considered amateurish. After almost a year of this, Willie could tell by the look and feel of cocaine how pure it was, but Larry and Kenny and David always insisted on knowing at exactly what temperature it melted. But more important than his technique for testing the coke were his manners. In Willie’s experience, there were two kinds of people involved in the cocaine trade, the flashy hustlers, who were dangerous (Glen Fuller was a perfect example), and the more businesslike, regular people, who could usually be trusted. He knew that the quiet, simple way he conducted business with Rene would make the best impression on his boss. He made no effort to deal directly with Pepe, but handled the transaction with Rene as he always did, handing over the cash after verifying the quality of the product. As always, he didn’t take a drink or snort a line or smoke a joint until the business was complete. Then he relaxed and turned cordial. They all went out to dinner together.

On Willie’s next two trips to Miami, Pepe was with Rene. He peppered Willie with questions: “Is this cocaine good? Is this the way you like to have it? Would you like to buy more? Would you like us to front you some?” Willie said no. They were buying just what they needed, although the demand was growing. The quality of the cocaine was consistently good. And, no, they absolutely would not take any cocaine on credit. Pepe told Willie that he was impressed with his courage, that few people dared to carry that much money or cash on planes. Willie told Pepe nothing about whom he worked for, just that he would be back in two weeks and he would want to buy roughly the same amount again. He emphasized that he preferred dealing with Rene and Pepe exclusively, and if they could maintain a steady supply of top-quality product he would buy from no one else.

Those three trips were the best Willie had taken. He was picked up at the airport by his suppliers, whom he knew and liked. They took him directly to Rene’s house or an apartment he kept in Miami, exchanged six or seven kilos, then they went out to dinner and Willie
headed home. For the first time Willie felt he could relax, that there was a simple, safe routine.

On the fourth trip, Rene and Pepe drove away from the Miami airport in a different direction than usual.

“We’re going to my partner’s house,” said Pepe.

Willie knew that this was the big step. Pepe had mentioned that he had a partner, and Willie had gathered that the partner was his boss. Finally, after a year, he was going to get off the street completely.

The car pulled up to the gate of a beautiful home with a lush yard surrounded by a high gate. Parked in the driveway were two Mercedeses and an Italian sports car. The gate was opened by a young man who had been washing the sports car.

A beautiful dark-skinned woman answered the door and showed the men through a handsomely furnished foyer and living room into a wood-paneled den. One wall of the den was papered with a striking, bright poster depiction of an island sunset. Automatic weapons were displayed on another wall, alongside a tall bookshelf lined with volumes in Spanish and English. Outside the sliding glass doors on the other side of the room Willie could see a yacht tied up at a small dock off the backyard. A tall shirtless man in white shorts and sandals, with broad shoulders and a muscular build, stood up from behind the desk in the den as they entered. Pepe introduced him to Willie as Paco. He was younger than Rene or Pepe, only a few years older than Willie. After a year of dealing with Cubans who tended to be only half Willie’s size, it was a pleasure to meet someone who looked him right in the eye. Paco had a slender, boyish, clean-shaven face, and his skin was much fairer than Rene’s or Pepe’s, though he was tan enough to look as if he had just stepped off a yacht. More than any other feature, it was his eyes that startled Willie; they shone with a dark intensity that made him seem especially formidable. Paco spoke no English to Willie. He directed all of his remarks to Rene in Spanish. After shaking Willie’s hand he sat back down behind the desk and smiled and said nothing.

Willie had come down to buy six kilos, and for the first time, Pepe let him choose the six out of ten. No one had ever shown him a surplus and let him choose from them before. Willie painstakingly tested each of the ten kilos, melting a sample of rock and shake from each. It took almost two hours, with Pepe and Rene hovering around, offering to get Willie a beer or a drink. After all the strange encounters and close calls of the last eleven months, Willie was inwardly elated. He was finally in off the street!

After Willie picked out his six kilos, he handed over the cash and Pepe and Rene started counting.

Then something happened that hadn’t occurred before. They came up seventy-five hundred short.

Willie felt a cold stab of panic. For the first time ever, as a sign of how much respect he was ready to show Paco, he had left the satchel of money behind when he went to the bathroom in another part of the house. He had always,
always,
carried the satchel with him at all times in previous dealings, even in Rene’s house. It was so unusual for him to leave it behind that when he left the den, Rene had reminded him, “Don’t you want to take your bag?”

“No. That’s all right. I trust you,” Willie had answered, looking not at Rene but at Paco.

And now the cash came up short. Willie knew that Paco had not taken the money. A man dealing this much cocaine, living in this house, with that wife, with that yacht, with those cars,
doesn’t
pinch seventy-five hundred dollars when you turn your back on him.

So Willie asked to use the phone. He tried to call David, but there was no answer. So he called Kenny.

“Ken, something’s wrong. The money’s short seventy-five hundred. Look around your apartment.”

“I gave it to David,” said Ken.

“Look around your apartment,” Willie demanded. He was starting to sweat. Paco was expressing irritation.

“What’s going on here? Is this guy trying to pull something on us?” Paco asked Pepe in Spanish.

Ken left the phone for a few minutes and returned. “It’s not here,” he said. “Have David check his place.”

“He’s not home,” said Willie. “Do you have a key?”

“Yeah.”

“Go over there and look for it,” said Willie.

Ken groused about it, but he could tell by Willie’s tone of voice that it was a serious matter. “All right,” he said.

Willie waited in silence with the Cubans for a half hour, and then phoned David’s place. Ken answered.

“It’s not here either,” said Ken.

Willie felt sick.

Ken said, “Will, did you ever let the bag out of your sight?”

“Just for a second. I went to the bathroom.”

“You mean you left it with them for a minute?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Well that’s it!
They
took the money!” said Ken.

“No, Ken. They didn’t take the money. Believe me. That’s not what happened. It’s our mistake.”

“No way, Will. If you left it with them, those guys took the
money. That’s what happened and it’s
your
fault. Take the cocaine you can pay for and get back up here.”

Listening to one end of the conversation, Paco stood up when he heard that he was being accused. He was furious. While Willie was talking, Paco was screaming at Rene and Pepe, “Give this guy back his money! Get him the fuck out of my house! We’re never doing business with him again!”

Willie, overhearing this, quickly got off the phone with Ken and turned to plead with Paco.

“Believe me, these people in Philadelphia, they don’t know anything about the way things are done down here. They don’t know you gentlemen like I know you. I know you didn’t take the money.”

Pepe, whose judgment in bringing Willie to meet his boss was on the line, argued in Willie’s defense. But Paco was adamant.

“Give the man back his money and get him the fuck out of my house,” he said.

Paco would not even shake Willie’s hand as he left.

Willie flew back to Philadelphia that night crestfallen. All his hard work to make connections with the top man, all of it blown because somebody in Philadelphia couldn’t count and because Ken, who had no idea what Willie had been going through, was stupid enough to casually insult the top man over the telephone. When he arrived at his apartment from the Philly airport, there was a message on his machine. David had come home and found the money. It had gotten thrown away with the brown bag that had originally contained the cash.

Willie phoned Rene.

“We found the money. As I said, it was our mistake. I’m coming back down tomorrow. I’d like to give it to Paco personally and apologize for the misunderstanding.”

“I’ll get back to you,” said Rene.

Rene called back later that evening and told Willie to come ahead. The next day, Willie was back in Paco’s den. Willie apologized, they shook hands, and Paco loosened up enough to begin speaking English. He opened a bottle of Taittinger champagne and they sealed their future arrangements. From then on, Willie would make arrangements through Rene, but would deal directly with Paco and Pepe.