Doctor Dealer (38 page)

Larry listened quietly. He hadn’t thought about the drug raid in 1980.

“They probably won’t put that together,” he said.

Marcia started throwing groceries into cabinets and drawers.

“If anything, it’ll just be a tax case. I’ll be able to beat it,” said Larry, half talking to Marcia, half to himself. “I have the practice now.” Larry saw his dental practice as a shield of legitimacy.

“What about those checks for the house?” asked Marcia. The house, the pool, the greenhouse, the Jacuzzi, the BMW . . . all of these things had been purchased with checks through Mark Stewart’s finagling.

“Don’t worry,” said Larry. “Mark will back me up.”

“When?” asked Marcia.

“What?”

“When is this all going to happen?”

“Not for a long time. If anything happens it won’t affect us for about two years.”

Marcia finished putting all the groceries away. Then she took Chris and put him in the stroller and wheeled him out through the garage and up the driveway to the street. She went for a long walk with the baby up Timber Lane. It was a breezy autumn day, the sun dappling green lawns through a shifting lattice of autumn leaves. Marcia felt panicked. Larry’s words, even his assurances, brought back terrifying memories of the year on Osage Avenue, the robbery, the move to the house she hated in Center City, the police barging in through the door at night. She had escaped all of that before bringing this baby into the world. She had carved out here, on this quiet suburban lane, the life she wanted for herself, for Chris, and for Larry. And now the old anxiety had tracked them down.

They would lose the house. They would lose it all.

Larry’s receptionist, Cookie Yokum, interrupted his work on a patient to tell him he had an important call. So he excused himself for a moment and, in his office in back, punched the flashing light on his desk phone.

“Larry?”

“Yeah. Mark?”

“Can you get to a pay phone and call me back right away?”

Pay phones were now a routine with Larry and his workers. It was a strict rule. No business over anything but pay phones. But it was unusual for Mark to insist on the precaution.

So Larry ran out the front door without even putting on a jacket. There was a line of pay phones at the shopping center across the street. He called the number Mark had given him. As Larry later remembered it, the call went as follows:

“Larry, I just saw Larry Uhr in your lawyer’s office,” said Mark. Larry Uhr managed the limo company in Atlantic City. Mark said that Uhr had been in tears. The FBI was after him, he had said, and he was sorry, but he had decided to give testimony against Mark.

“What are you talking about? Why would he be giving testimony against you?” asked Larry. As far as Larry knew, there was nothing to hide concerning the limo company.

“Larry is the person I hired,” said Mark.

“Hired for what?”

“The arson.”

“Oh, my gosh.” Larry just about dropped the phone.

Now the trouble was worse, much worse. Uhr was the person who arranged for some of Larry’s Atlantic City parties and liaisons with whores. They had snorted coke together, and Uhr knew all about Larry’s cocaine dealing. Larry had actually cultivated Uhr’s friendship, letting him into his confidence in an effort to get a better handle on what Mark was doing with the limo company.

“I can’t believe you would do that to me, Mark,” said Larry. “Why didn’t you tell me he was the one? If I had known that I never would have even talked to the guy.”

Any hope that the FBI probe would miss the cocaine connection vanished. If Uhr talked, a tax case would be the least of Larry’s worries. What was he going to tell Marcia?

FBI Special Agent Chuck Reed was startled by his first look at Larry Lavin. Reed opened the door to Larry’s dental office and there was his man, smiling warmly at him from behind the reception counter, saying hello . . . a lanky fellow who looked no older than a college kid.

Reed had known Larry was only twenty-seven, but confronting him now in his white dental smock—so boyish, so pleasant, so outwardly wholesome—gave the agent enough pause that he said nothing as Larry turned and walked back to his operatory, leaving Reed and IRS Agent Steve Gallon with a receptionist in the waiting room.

For nearly four months Reed had imagined this meeting. Ever since he had seized Mark Stewart’s books at the Wellington in October, Reed had known that behind many of Stewart’s fiscal acrobatics was a young dentist whom no one seemed to know anything about. And even though the case was progressing nicely against Mark Stewart, the FBI agent had found himself even more interested in the young, mysterious Lawrence W. Lavin, D.M.D.

It was Larry who had underwritten many of Stewart’s multimillion-dollar investments. The young dentist obviously had a huge hidden income. He knew that Larry had gone to prep school and the University of Pennsylvania, that he lived with his wife and small son in a big house on the Main Line, and that he sped back and forth to this dental office in northeastern Philly three times a week in a sleek silver BMW 733. Reed had a hunch that there was only one likely way for a preppie dentist less than two years out of school to secretly make millions, and that was cocaine.

Reed knew Larry had been a hidden owner of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Arena with Stewart through an entity named Larmark, Inc. (Larry-Mark). Larry was not a suspect in the arson—Reed doubted
he knew much about it—and the agent knew he couldn’t prove his drug suspicions, but in his experience people were usually rattled when confronted face-to-face by the FBI. You never knew how they would react. Some people would just panic and talk.

So when an opportunity came to serve some of the tax case papers on Larry, Reed decided to accompany Gallon on the long drive out. It was a cold evening, February 19, 1983. It had snowed the day before, not hard enough to have closed things down, but the first significant snowfall of the year. The day had been sunny. Philadelphia in winter is a study in browns and grays. As darkness came and the slush under wheels turned icy, lights from street lamps and cars and traffic signals became a dazzling, dizzying confusion of reflections. It was a slow drive through rush hour traffic and it would be late before they got back, but Reed didn’t mind. He wanted to personally enlighten Larry Lavin that the FBI had entered his life.

Cookie Yokum, the receptionist, didn’t seem surprised when Reed and Gallon introduced themselves as federal agents. She told the men that Dr. Lavin was busy with a patient, that they needed to make an appointment.

“You tell Dr. Lavin that we want to see him
right now,”
said Reed.

When Larry walked into his private office, Reed did not so much smile as grin. He and Gallon introduced themselves, and they all shook hands. Reed had positioned himself against the side of Larry’s desk. Larry thought he could detect a trace of amusement on the FBI agent’s face.

“Would you mind answering a few questions?” asked Gallon.

“Go ahead,” Larry answered.

Leaning on his
Bahston
vowels, Larry answered a question about himself by telling them he was from Haverhill, Massachusetts, and proudly running through his impressive credentials: Phillips Exeter Academy, University of Pennsylvania for B.S. and D.M.D.—the diplomas were in frames on his office wall. He said he knew nothing about the arson. He readily admitted his business tie to Mark Stewart, which surprised the agents. They had expected him to be more evasive. Larry forthrightly explained that he had met Stewart in 1980, and that he had gotten involved with him trying to promote boxing matches at the King Arena—although he mentioned nothing about being a part owner.

“Did you know that Mark Stewart was involved with the fire?” Reed asked.

“No.”

“We know you’re a key executive in a lot of his companies,” said Reed. “We know you could furnish us with a lot of information.”

“I knew Mark was having trouble with the IRS,” Larry offered.
“In my eyes what Mark may have done wrong is transfer monies from one company to another, so funds were being spent in one place that were being generated from another. Whether that’s illegal or not, I don’t know. Also some of his depreciation techniques might be questionable, but I gotta tell you, I consider Mark a friend and I don’t plan on testifying against him or hurting him in any way.”

Larry hesitated, then added, “I think I better speak to a lawyer.”

“Why don’t we just go along for now,” suggested Reed, “and any questions you don’t want to answer, we’ll just skip over.”

Larry said that would be okay.

Both Reed and Gallon were taking notes on yellow legal pads. Reed was intrigued. Far from seeming rattled, Lavin seemed to be enjoying himself. He had the feeling that the conversation was like a chess game. To Reed, Larry seemed very confident of himself, very smart. He could see right away that he wasn’t dealing with the kind of guy who was going to panic.

Reed asked Larry if he was financially involved in any corporations with Stewart.

“No,” Larry said.

So the FBI agent started baiting. He asked Larry about Larmark.

The dentist hardly blinked.

“Oh yeah, that was when I was in school. I was thinking about leaving school to help run the Arena.”

Reed asked him if he was aware of any connection between Stewart and cocaine dealing.

Larry said no.

“Are you a cocaine dealer?”

Again, Larry answered firmly, “No. Listen, I don’t know whether I can help you or not. I think I have to get myself a lawyer and then get back to you.”

Larry was a skillful liar. There are veteran agents who claim to be able to tell if someone is lying, but Reed thought to himself as he listened to the young dentist that if he hadn’t known Larry was lying, he would have been completely taken in. It was a very convincing performance. To Reed, Larry’s manner suggested that he felt he was smarter than the agents, that they would never get him. He was arrogant. That got under the agent’s skin. All of which made Reed’s next move especially satisfying.

He opened his briefcase, withdrew two thick documents, federal grand jury subpoenas that named Lavin Options, Inc., and L’s, Inc., two other corporations in which the young dentist was involved with Stewart, and dropped them loudly on Larry’s desk. Larry turned the papers silently. He seemed stunned. If they were aware of these corporations, then they knew he was making a lot more money than
he was reporting for tax purposes. At the very least, Larry knew he was in tax trouble. He showed no alarm or surprise. He offered no explanations. But his smile was gone. He grew abrupt.

“Like I told you, I’m going to have to get a lawyer,” Larry said, standing and gesturing for the agents to leave. Reed smiled. He and Gallon packed up their legal pads and pencils and walked toward the front door. As he reached the door, Reed turned.

He asked, “Where’d you get the money for the BMW parked out front, Larry?”

Larry stumbled. He began one explanation: The car was provided by Larmark, Inc.; but then he switched to another: He had mortgaged his house to buy it. Then he bailed out, defining exactly what his relationship with law enforcement agencies would be from then on.

“I’m not going to answer any more questions without my attorney,” he said.

“Okay,” said Reed. “We’ll be back.”

Before the agents left that night, Reed stopped to shine a flashlight in through the windshield of the BMW. Larry watched from behind the blinds of his office as the agent took out a notepad and wrote down the car’s serial number.

Larry was in shock. He had anticipated this visit. A number of his friends had already been seen by federal investigators working on the Stewart case, and word had gotten back that they were asking questions about him. Fortunately, Larry Uhr had backed off his initial decision to testify against Mark, so Larry had less to fear. He had consulted with Donald Goldberg, a tall, dapper gray-haired lawyer considered one of the finest defense attorneys in Philadelphia. Larry had told Goldberg of his business relationship with Mark Stewart and turned over the original documents he had signed when he and Mark incorporated. He also told the lawyer that his resources came from cocaine dealing, but that he had stopped. Now he was trying to avoid getting dragged down by his partner. Goldberg, whose mellifluous voice and calm manner were as reassuring as his reputation, saw before him a decent, candid, likable young man who had made mistakes but was trying to put them behind him. He had advised Larry not to let on to the agents that he already had consulted with a lawyer—it would just further excite their suspicions about what he was hiding. Instead, the lawyer said, talk to them awhile. Answer their questions as far as possible without incriminating yourself. When the terrain gets dangerous, bail out, tell them you would like to consult with a lawyer before answering any further questions. Be polite.

Larry had done those things, but the session had been deeply disturbing. The subpoenas indicated that there would definitely be a tax
case against him, which meant the possibility of going to jail. That was frightening enough. But, beyond that, there was the attitude of that bearded agent Reed. Larry felt as if Reed were sizing him up for the kill.

It all seemed so unfair. What had he done that was so bad? Had he killed someone? Had he stolen from someone? All he did was buy and sell harmless recreational drugs. How could they hold it against him for not reporting his income? It was illegal, for Chrissakes! If he reported it, he might as well just be turning himself in! Larry saw himself as a hardworking businessman. Down deep he believed his drug fortune had been earned through industry and intelligence. He had worked long and hard to make his money. The fact that his merchandise was outlawed seemed more like a legal technicality than a felony. Everyone knew that drug laws were a joke, that they were ignored by vast segments of society. What better proof of that than Larry’s own success?

If trouble came, Larry always figured it would be from local police grabbing someone for possession or transportation. Those were the only kinds of busts he had ever dealt with. The punishment was usually probation or something insignificant.