Doctor Dealer (39 page)

Something in Reed’s manner suggested this case was different. It was like something personal between them. Reed was going to try to nail him to the wall.

Larry couldn’t understand.

“Why does the guy hate me?” he asked Marcia that night. “I can understand him doing his job, but why does he hate me?”

When Chuck Reed told Larry he would be back, he wasn’t at all sure of it. He was fascinated by this young criminal’s attitude. It was unlike any he had encountered before. Reed had confronted plenty of lawbreakers in his four years with the FBI, but he had never before felt
after
one in the way he felt he was after Larry Lavin.

It was like personal combat. Reed was used to his suspects’ giving some small recognition that they were doing something wrong. Not Lavin. If he showed anything it was pique, as if to say, “By what right do you make trouble for me?”

Reed was enthused. This investigation was the richest, most challenging case he had been assigned. As the work progressed and the plot thickened, Reed and his newly assigned partner, Sid Perry, shared a mounting sense of eagerness. They saw Larry Lavin as an insufferably cocky criminal, someone who had grown rich thumbing his nose at the law, who felt he was smart enough to get away with it even after he knew they were on to him. This multimillionaire drug-dealing young dentist was like a walking insult to law-abiding society. Every day he was free gnawed at them. Reed and Perry knew the
FBI wasn’t going to lose interest in the case, and they were confident that their patient efforts would eventually prevail, so in the most serious sense of the word, their work was fun. In Larry Lavin they had hooked a big fish. They were prepared to savor the long struggle of bringing him in.

Suzanne Norimatsu had moved back into her parents’ house in Plymouth Meeting, an affluent suburb northwest of the city, after breaking up with David Ackerman in late 1982. She was reading a Stephen King novel in her bedroom when the doorbell rang downstairs.

Her father, Richard, a tall engineering company executive, called, “Suzie, there are some people here to see you.” He did not sound pleased.

Suzanne knew immediately who it was. Her friends had been paid visits recently by Chuck Reed, and they said she was one of the people he had been asking about. She had met Chuck before, twice. She had been living with David back in December when the agent had stopped by the apartment to question him about the arson. A few days after that, Reed had stopped by the restaurant where Suzanne now worked. He had been kindly.

“You seem like such a nice girl,” the agent had said. “Why are you hanging out with these gangsters?” Reed had asked her to just think about what he had to say. He would tell no one they had met, and she should tell no one. If she decided to help them build a case against Mark Stewart, David Ackerman, and Larry Lavin, it would just be between them. Suzanne had said no. She went home that night and told David what happened. She had not seen Chuck since.

But there he was, waiting in the living room with his badge out, standing beside Treasury Agent Tom Neff. Both men introduced themselves formally, showing their badges. Suzanne’s father sat next to her on the couch across from the agents, who withdrew folders from their briefcases and opened them on their laps. They sat with pencils poised over yellow legal pads.

Suzanne had been coached for this moment by David Ackerman. He had told her to politely refuse to answer questions, and to ask the agents to phone her lawyer, who would arrange a meeting.

“We’re investigating an arson of the King Arena,” said Chuck. “What do you know about it?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t talk to you. You’ll have to talk to my lawyer,” said Suzanne.

Chuck slapped shut the folder on his lap.

“You have a lawyer!” he said.

“Yes, I have a lawyer.”

“Why do you need a lawyer?”

“Well, I just do,” said Suzanne. “His name is Emmett Fitzpatrick.”

“What’s his number?”

“I don’t know, but it’s in the phone book.”

“Don’t be such a stupid girl,” said Chuck. “Are you going to let these guys put words in your mouth?”

Then her father interceded.

He said, “You don’t have to talk to her like that.”

Several weeks later, when the weather was warm enough for Suzanne to be out in the driveway washing her car, Chuck Reed pulled up in front of the house again. The bearded agent strode purposefully across the front lawn. With him again was Agent Neff. Suzanne’s heart leapt. She thought he might be coming to arrest her.

“Oh, no,” she said, taking two steps back from the agent. “I can’t talk to you. You have to talk to Emmett.”

“He won’t let us talk to you,” said Chuck. “We’re going to get that car you just washed. We know it was bought with cocaine money.”

Suzanne just frowned at him.

“Just listen to us, Suzanne. You don’t have to answer any questions. But I’ll tell you right now, you better take that black hat off and put on a white hat. Mark Stewart, Larry Lavin, and David Ackerman are wearing the black hats, and you know it. If you think you’re going to be loyal to them, and protect them, then you’re going to go right down the drain with them. So you better wise up now.”

Suzanne again said no, and the agents left.

But what Chuck had said stayed with her. Now that she was no longer living with David, and no longer involved with the cocaine business, she had mixed feelings about what was happening. Stepping back from the scene for a few months had given her a different perspective. She was no longer as certain as David and Larry that these earnest government men were doomed to fail. That business about “going down the drain” haunted her.

Later she wished she had asked, “Would it be all right if I just wear a gray hat?”

Brian Riley believed he had a sixth sense for trouble. When he got an uneasy feeling about what he was doing, and didn’t stop, he invariably got hit over the head. But if he heeded this sixth sense and stopped in time, the hammer would fall in front of him or behind, but he would have just enough time to escape.

In March of 1983, Brian’s sixth sense was ringing in his ears. Four months earlier, carrying two shopping bags full of money wrapped as Christmas presents, he had been stopped and searched by guards at Boston’s Logan Airport. Almost a hundred thousand dollars was discovered in the packages. It was not against the law to carry that much money around, but it sure raised suspicions. Brian had to hire
a lawyer and sign for the cash to get it back. After that he could feel the eyes of law enforcement on the small of his neck.

Then, for a few weeks, he had felt especially lucky. When his Datsun got stuck in the snow in southern Maryland on a drive back from Florida with more than fifteen kilos in the trunk, two state troopers had kindly stopped to help pull him out of the bank and send him on his way. When he and Paul Mikuta, on a different trip, got stuck in line at the Miami airport with several kilos hidden in their bags just as the X-ray machine broke down, there was nothing for it but to stand there whistling while the guards hand-searched everyone’s luggage. Both Paul’s bag and his own escaped with just an ineffectual, cursory grope.

But Brian could feel his luck running out. His anxiety was partly eased in late 1982 when Stan Nelson took over most of the running. By early 1983, the portly Florida lawyer was spending most of his waking hours in a car, either driving money down to Florida or bringing coke back to Philadelphia. Larry had met Nelson shopping for New Jersey real estate in 1981 and had loaned him sixty-three thousand to start a fruit-beverage distribution company in Florida. When the beverage company failed to generate sufficient profits to repay the loan, Larry suggested that Nelson earn the money to repay him by driving cocaine north. Stan started in the summer of 1982, and six months later he was handling most of the transportation for Larry’s business. Larry liked turning over transportation to Stan because he was reliable, and because he did not fit the profile law enforcement agencies sought in airports and on highways—well-dressed young men with big suitcases or big cars. And Nelson was clever. He used the canning machine from the beverage company to seal kilos in odorless cans, and mixed the cocaine-bearing ones in with his regular truckloads of fruit-juice powder. It was the safest, most ingenious method Larry had seen.

So by January of 1983, Brian’s responsibilities were reduced to keeping the books and breaking, cutting, packaging, and distributing the cocaine.

When the FBI and IRS stopped out to see Larry at the dental office, it further upset Brian. He told Larry right then that he should take his money and run, sell out to someone else and stay as far away from drug dealing as he could for the rest of his natural life. Larry just laughed.

“They can’t prove anything connecting me with drugs,” he said.

To help keep things that way, Larry drove up to New York City with Brian and went on a shopping spree at electronics stores, buying himself thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of equipment, including six scrambler phones in briefcases that would enable him to talk on the phone without fear of a wiretap and devices that could detect the presence of a bug. Larry had a ball talking shop with the store owners.

On the drive home, Brian said, “You really think you can fool the FBI?”

Larry said they would probably get him on tax charges because of his connection with Mark Stewart, but that he didn’t think they knew the first thing about his drug dealing.

“I only sell to my friends, who won’t help them,” Larry said. “I never handle anything anymore, so they’re not going to observe me dealing anything. That leaves the telephone.”

Brian tried to explain that he sometimes got a feeling about these things, and the feeling was bad.

“Larry, things are too fucking hot. You’re crazy. If it was the Philadelphia police or even the state police, maybe you would have a chance. But the FBI? Man, they go to college to learn how to bust people like you.”

Still, Brian could understand how hard it was for Larry to stop. Brian himself found it hard to stop. He was making almost a thousand dollars a day, and had bought himself a condo in Florida and a boat and a house in New Hampshire up near where his kids lived with their mother. Larry, eager to avoid
any
suspicious activities himself, gave him almost complete autonomy. Brian liked the people he was working with. He played outfield for Billy Motto’s softball team. At home or on the road he lived a partying life, with a big-breasted teenage girlfriend named Nancy at home and a loose and exciting social circle that included Kim and Suzanne Norimatsu. On the road he had money for expensive hookers, fine meals, and luxury restaurants. His work for Larry had accustomed him to a style he was reluctant to abandon.

But when Brian woke up one afternoon in his house on Pennsylvania Avenue and saw a SWAT team with rifles running across the front yards and police cars and vans up and down the block, he figured, “This is it.” He pulled on his pants and waited for the door to crash in. He had too many kilos of cocaine in the closet to even think about flushing it down the toilet or hiding it.

But nothing happened.

Finally, Brian opened his front door and wandered out to see what was going on. He half expected to be grabbed and thrown to the ground. Instead, one of the cops explained that they had busted a cocaine dealer two houses down from Brian’s.

That did it.

Brian’s last ounce of luck was gone. He telephoned Larry and told him that he was clearing out.

“You’re too hot,” Brian said. “I got a bad feeling about it, Larry.”

Larry didn’t argue. Brian owed him fifty thousand dollars, but Larry agreed to settle for twenty-five. They met in the parking lot
behind a restaurant near Larry’s house in Devon. Brian handed over the money owed, and took off that night for New Hampshire.

In the months that Brian had been running the business for Larry, he brought down from Exeter, New Hampshire, a strange, rough-hewn motorcyclist with long brown hair and thick moustache named Bruce Taylor. Bruce had a coiled snake tattooed to his left forearm and rode a Harley-Davidson. Brian, who had known Bruce from high school days, asked him to come to Philadelphia with him in October of 1982 to act as his bodyguard. Bruce was reputed to be a martial arts expert and had a reputation in the small towns of northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire as a roughneck. He had been one of Brian’s cocaine customers. So when Brian suggested bringing him down to Philadelphia, Larry went for it.

“He’s a bikey type, but he’ll do anything for us,” Brian said.

For six months, Bruce was Brian Riley’s shadow. At the first meeting where money and cocaine were exchanged and Bruce was left alone momentarily with $350,000 in a briefcase, he considered picking it up and running. But staying had its own advantages. By January of 1983, Bruce was injecting cocaine, two grams at a shot, three or four times a day. To explain the hypodermic needles and syringes in his apartment, he told Brian and Larry and others that he was a diabetic. He was making five hundred dollars a week and falling into debt, but there was no shortage of white powder.

Brian and Larry had taught Bruce the techniques of breaking down kilos, cutting them, making rocks, and packaging. He lived with Brian for his first months in Philly and moved to his own house around the corner on Twenty-ninth and Poplar in early 1983. But Brian quickly came to regret urging Bruce on Larry. His would-be bodyguard and assistant was clearly in over his head with cocaine. Bruce would fail to show up for meetings or deliveries, and Brian would have to bang on his door for up to a half hour to wake him up in the middle of the afternoon. Bruce was hopelessly inept at keeping the books. Larry would check weekly, and discover that deals that should have shown a tidy profit had somehow come out to be losses of fifty grand or more.

When Brian suddenly quit and left town, Larry had little choice but to hire Bruce to manage the business for him. Dropping the business altogether was something Larry never even considered, even with the FBI and IRS probes. Ever since he was a sophomore in college, now nine years ago, Larry had been tallying his net worth, recording its ups and downs in neat little columns of numbers. By the spring of 1983, Larry was worth nearly five million, but easily a third of that was tied up in the business, in debts, in product, or in
cash being assembled for the next deal. Another third or more represented holdings of stocks, real estate, condos, silver certificates, and loans. By now this complex financial machinery had acquired a momentum of its own. Larry needed the cocaine business funds to keep the legitimate projects going—not one had proved significantly profitable. Only the limo company had promise, and Mark was raiding its budget to feed his many unhealthy projects.