by Mark Bowden
“If you look at the overall percentage, you’re gonna make a lot more,” said Tom. “And there’s less work involved.”
“Yeah, but think about the risk, Tom. If someone gets caught, what’s going to happen?”
“You don’t have to deal with the bulk,” Tom argued.
That was true. The single most risky thing about dealing pot was its bulk. It was difficult to traffic in amounts large enough for profits without handling shipments as conspicuous as hay bales.
“My customers want pot, not coke,” said Larry. “If I had more than a few ounces of coke I wouldn’t know where to sell it.”
“You know how it works, Larry. If you start selling it, they’ll start buying it. The market is there right now.”
Larry wasn’t so sure.
“Maybe, but my business is just starting to really pay off for me,” he said. “Why should I change it now? Especially with the extra risk?”
“Look what’s happened already,” said Tom. “How many busts have you had this year?”
“Yeah, but not much happened to them.”
Tom reminded Larry of a shipment one of Tom’s people had brought back by plane; when they opened the suitcase they found that someone from baggage handling had opened it and ripped off about forty pounds of pot. Something very similar had happened on a shipment from Virginia for Larry.
But Larry knew Tom had a point. They were both increasingly aware of federal efforts to crack down on marijuana in Florida. Until recently, the big pot boats—dealers called them the “motherloads”—just anchored in the ocean outside of U.S. territorial waters, and smaller, faster boats shuttled freely back and forth from ports up and down the southeastern coastline. Now that traffic was being interrupted regularly, sometimes violently. Bales of pot tossed overboard by fleeing smugglers had begun washing up on beaches in Florida and South Carolina. The world was changing.
“They’re looking for pot, not coke,” said Tom. “You can slip a kilo bag inside your carry-on luggage. . . . There’s less risk.”
“Yeah,” said Larry. “Less risk, but more exposure.”
FOUR
Why Carry an Elephant?
Ken Weidler was a broad-backed, fresh-faced boy from central Pennsylvania when he showed up at Penn to begin dental school in the fall of 1977. He had fair hair, blue eyes, a square jaw, and perfect teeth. Despite his good looks, Ken was hesitant and awkward. He figured dental school was going to be a grind. College had been fun, but now it was time to knuckle down. His father was a dentist, so Ken expected his classmates would be like his father. Dental school would be populated by mature, serious, hardworking students preparing for a normal, responsible life. This is how he saw it. There would be no more drinking bouts, no more all-night parties, and, even more likely, no more pot. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he had thought it through and he was ready for it.
That perception lasted only a few weeks. Ken found that although most of his classmates in dental school were more serious students than those he had known at Muhlenberg State College, and did tend to be more reserved socially, there was nevertheless a sizable proportion of potheads to keep him company. Ken had done some petty dealing at Muhlenberg and still had his small-time dealing connections. So, soon after moving to Philadelphia, he renewed his practice of buying marijuana a pound or two at a time and peddling enough to provide for his free personal stash.
After Christmas break, at a party thrown by Chris Furlan, a popular first-year dental student, Ken was getting high with his friends in the basement, away from the main body of the party, when they were joined by this lanky, smiling, talkative classmate with a thick mop of black hair named Larry Lavin. Ken knew Lavin as one of the more studious members of his class, or at least it seemed that way, because it was rare to see him at a party. He was surprised when Larry showed up in the basement and accepted the joint. When they started talking, Ken found Larry to be altogether different from the perception he had gathered from classes and the dental lab.
Both students lived in the West Philly neighborhood of the dental school, which is housed in a dignified stone building at Fortieth and Chestnut streets, a busy corner west of the main Penn campus. As they walked home from the party together that night, Larry invited Ken to stop in his place for a drink. Ken was impressed by how nicely Larry’s apartment was furnished. They smoked a joint together in the living room—Ken admired Larry’s aquarium—and talked about first impressions of dental school. Ken told Larry a little about himself, and then he said something that made Larry laugh.
“If you’re ever looking for some weed, I can get you an ounce of Colombian for forty bucks.”
“I can do better than that,” said Larry. He got up and crossed the room. From under the sofa he pulled a box. Lifting the lid, Larry showed Ken four one-pound bags of pot.
“That’s a lot of dope!” said Ken.
This made Larry laugh. “You’re kidding!”
“No I’m not,” said Ken. “I’ve never seen that much pot before.”
“Look,” said Larry. “This is nothing. I’ll call you later this week and really show you something.”
Ken left that night very stoned, and amazed that someone he had met only hours ago would reveal that much about himself. He chalked up Larry’s boast about calling to show him even more pot to the effects of the wine and the dope, if he remembered it at all. But Larry did call two days later.
“We just got some in,” he said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Can you come over right now?”
Ken walked over to Larry’s apartment. Larry greeted him at the door, but instead of inviting him in, he told Ken to wait for him on the porch. He ran back in the house and then came back out and led Ken across Forty-third Street to a three-story row house. Larry let himself in and led Ken upstairs.
In a big front room there was what must have been two hundred pounds of marijuana spread out on the floor. It formed a pile deep enough that Ken could wade into it over his ankles. The room reeked with the musky sweet odor of weed. There were about eight people—they looked like undergrads—working away at it, breaking it down to smaller amounts, weighing it, and packing it in Ziploc bags. They hardly even looked up when Larry and Ken came in. Larry bent over and pinched some of the new shipment into a rolling paper, deftly rolled a joint, and passed it to his friend.
All that afternoon, Larry held court. People came and went from the apartment handing him stacks of money, tens and twenties and even hundred-dollar bills. Larry accumulated a pile of the money beside his chair—there must have been thousands! His customers would leave with shopping bags filled with pot. All of the people who came in knew Larry, and they seemed to get such a kick out of him. They sat around the front room sipping beer and passing joints while Larry laughed and talked and talked and talked.
Ken was dazzled. What an amazing guy this Larry Lavin was! He had only known him for two days, yet Larry treated Ken like his best friend. He was not at all what Ken thought a big-time drug dealer would be like. Larry and his associates were college kids just like him, looking for a good time. Only they were making money—what looked to Ken like a lot of money. It was like something Ken had seen in the movies, all the money just piled up there on the floor.
Larry told Ken that they were always looking for new places to break stuff down. So Ken walked with him over to his apartment, which was situated perfectly. Next door was a supermarket parking lot that was set just a short drop from the foot of a fire escape. The fire escape gave Ken a side entrance out of sight from the street. Larry saw right away that instead of looking conspicuous walking down the street with huge suitcases or gunnysacks filled with grass, they could just drive his white Impala around to the side of Ken’s place, park, hand the sacks of pot out of the trunk, and carry them up the fire escape to the apartment. When they finished breaking the pot down into orders, they could just drop the bags into the trunk and drive away. So Larry offered to pay Ken a few hundred dollar
s if he would let them use his place to break down the next shipment.
Without hesitation, Ken accepted. He wanted in. Before the month was up Larry was sending him to Florida for weekend trips with neat bundles of cash.
Dental school was tough. There was one exam after another. Larry found that to stay afloat he needed to cram every night. He would attend classes in the morning, spend hours in the afternoon doing lab work, then from late afternoon until late at night he would be on the phone managing his pot business. The business had grown more complex. So many of his friends had graduated and moved to different cities, different states. Larry had to coordinate orders, make payments, collect debts; he had to recruit runners to make the buys in Florida and supervise the packaging and distribution . . . it was exhausting. Then, when he got off the phone late at night, it was time to start studying. He would turn on the Tonight show and open his books, studying straight on through the weird Creature Features that showed in the wee hours of morning. So many of his friends in dental school were putting in the same kind of study hours that the awful movies were a favorite in-topic of conversation at school—“Did you catch Invasion of the Star Creatures last night? Was that outrageous?”
Through freshman year of dental school Larry’s pot business continued, earning him enough to help meet tuition bills and pay the expenses incurred by a lifestyle only slightly better than the average graduate student’s. One of his few luxuries was a skiing trip to Aspen over Easter break with his brother Rusty, Paul Mikuta, and Andy. Marcia performed her clinical work in Boston and then was in Princeton for two months. She finished her internship at the Veterans Administration hospital in Philadelphia and was awarded her physical therapy license in October. She and Larry had another small graduation party for the Osborns at their apartment. Afterward, Larry took everyone out for drinks and dinner at a fancy restaurant. Marcia was offered a job at the VA hospital by the group with which she had completed her internship, so she went right back to work.
Meanwhile, as her stake in their relationship grew, Marcia was turning up the volume of her complaints. After one unscheduled visit by Tyrone, she blew up.
“How can you bring people like that into our home!” Marcia’s anger flashed so infrequently that it always caught Larry by surprise.
“Tyrone’s okay,” he protested.
“He’s trash right off the street! And you bring him and the rest of these slimeballs into our home! You’re going to get us both beat up or killed or arrested!”
Larry responded to her complaints meekly. He assured Marcia that Tyrone wasn’t as bad as she thought. After that, he tried to make sure people came by when Marcia was away at work. But even that wasn’t enough. Marcia and Larry had been engaged for nearly a year, and living together for nearly three years, but Marcia for the first time was considering leaving. She had had enough. She reminded Larry of earlier goals and promises. He had explanations, apologies . . . but he was still dealing. All Marcia wanted in life was a loving husband and family. They didn’t have to be rich. Why couldn’t Larry just concentrate on dental school? She would pay the bills until he was ready to practice. Together they would do just fine.
But the occasional outbursts did no more than drive home to Marcia how powerless she had become in their relationship. Larry’s string of broken promises forced the issue. Although he said he loved her and would plead with her to stay, he had given her every justification for leaving. But she stayed. Truth was, she couldn’t imagine setting a new course for herself without him. So Marcia waited. She would be the steady drip that wears through the stone. Larry was sure to leave behind this foolishness eventually, if she only kept up the pressure. Larry placated Marcia’s anger with another promise: He would be out of the business before the school year was over in May 1978. He just needed to swing a few more deals and he would have enough money to pay his way through dental school, buy a car, and have fifty thousand dollars in the bank.
At the time Larry made the promise, he meant it. He liked dental school. He wasn’t the best student in his class, but he was far from the worst. He was quite good at keeping up with the rote memorization required in his anatomy classes, and he found particularly rewarding the hands-on work in the laboratory, making false teeth, preparing the mixtures to fill and cap. With school and with his deepening relationship with Marcia, there was little time left for the carefree tomfoolery of his undergraduate days. Other than on social or business occasions, where Larry might smoke a joint or sip a drink, he no longer cared for getting stoned or drunk. His years of heavy drinking and drug use as an undergraduate had left him with no desire for the stuff. And now that he was out of the cheerful circle of his fraternity brothers, dealing pot was strictly business. More and more, Larry found irritating the people he had to deal with in Florida, the Philadelphia street dealers, and even the new undergraduate customers. He enjoyed wheeling and dealing on the telephone, playing the businessman and boss, but, in truth, no one knew better than Larry how little he had to show for all of it.
But to an extent even he had not yet realized, Larry was hooked. He was hooked not on the drugs or even the excitement (which he did still enjoy), but on the little train of figures he tallied almost weekly and slipped inside the covers of his albums. Playing with the numbers was a fetish with Larry. He bought himself green accounting pads and penciled in his figures tiny and neat—outlay, income, debts, credits, profits—and played with them until they added up. Those numbers kept mounting despite the constant growing drain of bad debts. Lacking the inclination to bully payments from deadbeats, Larry had written off more than twenty thousand dollars to them over the last few years. In his mind the numbers mounted toward a goal like a climber on the side of a sheer cliff. Every time a deal fell through, every time somebody ripped him off, the climber’s foot would slip and he would lose some precious ground. But so long as he could regain his footing—and by now Larry was expert at that—the ground would be recovered, and the climb continued. Larry thought a hundred thousand would do it. With that he could pay his forty-thousand-dollar tuition in full, spend ten on a nice car, and still have fifty thousand in the bank toward a house or starting up a dental practice. It would make for a nice head start. Larry knew plenty of classmates whose parents were footing the tuition bill, and who looked forward to being subsidized when setting up practice. He figured his earnings just put him on an even competitive footing.
So Marcia believed Larry’s promise. She couldn’t have cared less about fifty thousand dollars and a new car, but it would be nice to have Larry’s dental tuition paid up. Still, Marcia would have even been content to do without that. She never counted on it. As far as she was concerned, her paycheck from the VA hospital was their primary means of support. Rent and utility bills and food came out of her pocket—partly because Larry was worried about showing any of his illegal earnings. As a result, to Marcia, Larry’s money was something illusory, a game he played with little numbers on sheets of green accounting paper. His future prospects in dentistry were good, certainly worth all the time and effort school required. Dealing was like some sort of dangerous, childish undergraduate stunt that Larry refused to quit.
At the end of his freshman year, Larry took Marcia on a two-week vacation to California. They flew to San Francisco, rented a dark blue Chevy, and toured the city, including the abandoned prison on Alcatraz Island. Larry was fascinated by Alcatraz. He snapped pictures of the guard towers and of the high walls with barbed wire on top and of the stark concrete-and-steel cells. He climbed down into the “Hole,” a cell with steel walls that had been used to isolate prisoners singled out for special punishment. The guide described how prisoners in the Hole were fed a mash that was prepared by throwing all the leftovers from the dining hall into a big pot, and how they were allowed to shower only with cold water. Larry asked to be closed in the punishment cell for a few moments, just to get the feel of it.
He and Marcia drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and north to the wine country and then
back down through the redwood forests to Yosemite. They drove across to Monterey and then down the coastal highway to Los Angeles. Larry posed lifting a fake pickup with one hand at Universal Studios in Hollywood. He and Marcia went to Disneyland and toured the Anheuser-Busch brewery; they took the ferry out to Catalina Island and miniature-golfed; they drove down to San Diego and saw that city’s famous zoo, and visited Old World and Marineland. Then they flew east to Las Vegas, where Larry gambled with quarters, and drove out to see the Grand Canyon. Staying at relatively cheap hotels, they spent just two or three thousand dollars on the whole trip. Again, Marcia was thrilled to have Larry to herself, away from the damn telephone, for weeks at a time.
When they got back to Philadelphia, Marcia started a second photo album, filling twenty pages with snapshots of the trip. Under the plastic sheets of those pages her relationship with Larry was assuming a history, a wholesome, normal history full of sunny days and close friends and happy moments. It was as if Marcia were willing their life to be this way.
With the onset of summer, Larry’s dealing fell off again, enough so that he was able to maintain the appearance of keeping his promise. But he and Andy were still short of Larry’s goals, and the climb continued.
Marcia was not the only one who thought Larry was flirting with disaster by dealing with Tyrone, and even with Billy South Philly. Her sentiments were echoed by L.A., who had returned from serving his time in Florida and landed a job on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and by Andy Mainardi, who was about to graduate from Penn. Both Larry’s partners warned repeatedly that drug dealing on a college campus was worlds away from drug dealing on the streets of a city like Philadelphia.
