by Mark Bowden
They were escorted back out to the couch.
At 3:00 p.m., Chuck came back in the living room and said, “Okay, stand up. We’re going downtown.”
Suzanne and Bruce stood up together. One agent clapped handcuffs on Bruce. Suzanne held out her hands, but the agent said, “No, Suzanne, you’re not going.”
“Good,” said Bruce.
She was shocked. Bruce leaned over to kiss her goodbye, and whispered, “Call your uncle.” Suzanne often referred to Larry as “Uncle Larry.”
When the agents left with Bruce, Suzanne called her sister. Kim had stayed angry with her sister for about four months after Suzanne and Bruce ran off to Las Vegas and got married. But they had gotten together before Christmas and had a long talk and a cry. Now they were as close as they had ever been.
Before Suzanne said a word about the raid, Kim blurted, “Guess what just happened?”
“What?”
“The FBI was at Michael Schade’s!” Schade was a Drexel student who had gotten involved with dealing through Kim.
“Oh, yeah?” said Suzanne. “Well, they were just here, too.” “What! Oh, God!”
“Yeah. That’s right. I want you to call our uncle and see if we can see him later.” Suzanne spoke cryptically because she assumed now that the phone was tapped.
“Okay,” said Kim. “I’ll be right over.”
Suzanne asked Kim to first alert Larry.
Next, Suzanne called Emmett Fitzpatrick, a well-known Philadelphia defense attorney. Fitzpatrick had been retained initially by David Ackerman in late 1982 when the FBI approached him asking questions about Mark Stewart and the Arena arson. Suzanne had met the lawyer once or twice with David.
“They took Bruce away!” Suzanne said.
“Who took Bruce away?” said Fitzpatrick.
“The FBI!”
“Oh,” said the lawyer. “Who’s Bruce?”
“He’s my husband!” said Suzanne. “I married Bruce. I’m not with David anymore.”
“Oh, well, congratulations,” said the bass-voiced attorney.
“Thanks,” said Suzanne.
“Now, tell me why they took Bruce away.”
“Well, you see, they had a search warrant, and they were looking for cocaine.”
“But they didn’t find any, did they?” he asked.
“Well, yeah, they found about a pound.”
“Ahh, but it wasn’t yours, was it?”
“Well, uh, no!”
“And it wasn’t Bruce’s either, was it?” he asked.
“No!” said Suzanne. She was cheering up.
“Where was it?” the lawyer asked.
“It was in this black box.”
“Uh-huh. Is there a back door?”
“Yes,” said Suzanne.
“What side of the bed was it on? The one closest to the door?”
“Yes.”
“Mmm. That’s very interesting. Do you know where they’ve taken him?”
“No.”
“Well, you wait there. Try to find out where he is. If he calls you or you find out, let me know.”
Suzanne hung up and waited. She walked through the house inspecting the damage. The house was a mess—had been a mess before the agents came, but now it was worse. She couldn’t find her car keys. Late Christmas presents that Suzanne was planning to deliver to Bruce’s nephews, about forty of them, had all been unwrapped. There was Christmas paper scattered around the floor in the basement, like the aftermath of a party. While the search was under way, Suzanne had felt excited about it all. It was at least interesting. But now she felt empty and sad. She wished they had taken her with Bruce. Suzanne assumed that the FBI was raiding everybody else that day, too, if they were at Wayne Heinauer’s and Michael Schade’s. She wanted to phone Larry and warn him and Frannie. Maybe there was still time for them to get away. But she was afraid to use the phone, and without her car keys she couldn’t easily get to a pay phone. The agents had seized what cocaine they found, which was Bruce’s personal stash. For some reason they had left behind a case of inositol on the dining room table. It was all tagged and marked for evidence, but they had left it behind.
Before Kim arrived, Fitzpatrick called to say that he had located Bruce in a cell at the federal courthouse. There would be a hearing to set bail later in the day. That relaxed Suzanne. She was in the shower when Kim arrived in a cab.
“Can I have a line?” Kim asked, standing in the bathroom by the shower stall wearing tight jeans and a black leather jacket with Walkman earphones framing the wild curls of her hair. Kim was much smaller than Suzanne and had fair hair, but she had the same exotic blend of Japanese and European features.
“They took it!” said Suzanne.
“They took it all?”
“They scraped the top of the microwave,” said Suzanne—that was where they sometimes drew out lines of cocaine for snorting. “They took it all.”
Kim said she had phoned Larry at his office. He had wanted to know more. So she had promised to call when she got to Bruce and Suzanne’s.
Suzanne told her sister that she didn’t want to talk to Larry over the phone. She asked Kim to call him back and ask him to meet with her as soon as he could get away. Suzanne knew she would need money to post Bruce’s bail.
So Kim placed the call. Larry’s receptionist put her on hold, and then Larry came on with his usual cheerful hello.
“Why don’t you just come over here when you’re done?” asked Kim.
Larry groaned, as if to say he didn’t think it was a good idea.
“No?”
“I’m dying,” Larry said.
“He’s dying,” Kim said, speaking to Suzanne.
“You’re torturing me.”
“It’s not good. You’re not going to like it,” said Kim.
“You should just tell me on the phone. I mean, what the heck, they’ve already been there.”
“Well, uh, I don’t know. Do you think?”
“Yeah, what difference does it make if they’ve already been there? She can tell me what happened, at least . . . what they said.”
“All right. Hang on.” Kim called to her sister. “Suzanne, pick up the phone! Larry wants to talk to you. He says since they’ve been here, it doesn’t matter. He’s dying to know what happened.”
“Hello?” said Suzanne.
“How you doin’ ?” said Larry sadly.
Suzanne listened as Larry explained why he felt it was safe at that point to talk.
“Just tell me what happened,” he said.
“Well, uh,” Suzanne fumbled for a way to begin. “We woke up and there were about twenty of them running around here with shotguns. And they had a search warrant. It was the same, it was Charles Reed, I don’t, do you remember him?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah, well, he came in later on. It was like his little—”
“Thing.”
“Thing, yeah. He came in and, uh . . .”
“When was this? Early this morning?”
“They started at around ten o’clock this morning and they left around three, I think.”
“Jeez.”
“And I didn’t know until the moment they were leaving that they weren’t going to take me. I don’t know why, because up until then they had said different. They had mentioned a couple of people’s names, you know, that—”
“What did they find?”
“They found some cocaine and some money, and I called Mr. Fitzpatrick.”
“Right. Did he call down there or anything?”
“Yes. He spoke to Bruce. . . . He called me back at four-thirty and said I needed, um, twenty-five hundred by—First they wanted a quarter of a million, then they reduced it to twenty-five thousand, I mean twenty-five hundred.”
“That’s a big move.” Larry laughed.
“I know. Fitzpatrick was going, like, ‘I did this for you.’ By five o’clock, and I said, well, first of all, they took all my keys. I don’t have any car keys o
r house keys, and they took all my money. So I said I didn’t even have any money, I couldn’t get down there by five o’clock. So he called back and said nine o’clock tomorrow morning I’ll be able to post bail, down at Fifth and Market.”
“Okay. So, how much of each thing do you think they got? A rough guess.”
“Oh, about eighty-five.”
“Eighty-five thousand?”
“Yeah.”
“And the other thing?”
“About a pound, I think.”
“And did they take all types of paraphernalia?”
“Yeah.”
“I imagine what they would do is dump all that in, any cut or anything, and call it all one.”
“Fitzpatrick did say to me that he can’t represent Bruce because it’s a conflict of interest with he and David.”
“Yeah, well, you know. Someone can get someone else.”
“Well, no, you see, they took all these—the evidence they took were pictures of me and David, anything that was written to me from David.”
“And what? That’s nothing, right?”
“No. It isn’t anything, I mean, it’s just strange that they want—”
“What did—can you figure any way that they knew to go there?”
“Oh, well, they said that they had photographs of Bruce and someone named Wayne from about a year ago.”
“Someone named Wayne,” said Larry, musing, unclear who that might be.
“Um-hmm,” said Suzanne. “Who they were visiting today also at the same time.”
There was silence on Larry’s end. Then, softly, with real concern in his voice, “Ooh, my gosh!”
At first Larry thought, Maybe it’s a different Wayne, someone Bruce did things with on his own.
“Did they mention a state or anything?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s out there.”
“Yeah, they did?”
“Yeah.”
“Ooh, my gosh.”
“They said they had been looking at him for a while.”
“Ooh, my gosh,” Larry sighed. “A year ago!”
“Yeah. They showed him the pictures.”
“So what did Bruce do this whole time?”
“Slept on the couch.”
Larry laughed. “He slept there?”
“Yeah, me and him. We slept on the couch.”
“They didn’t really hassle you?”
“Well, no . . . well, they—That’s why I don’t—Every time he asked me questions about anyone, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t look at him, so then they finally went away.”
“They showed him a picture of him and Wayne a year ago?”
“Yeah. They did take him off into another room for a little bit. That’s when they said they wanted to make a deal.”
“And did anything happen?”
“No. He said that he didn’t know any of these people to make a deal with, or anything about them.”
“So they talked about me and David then, or do you think they were talking about other people?”
“Oh yeah, well, they talked to me about you guys.”
“But, as far as making a deal, is that who they were talking to him about, or do you think they were talking about some other people, too?”
“Yeah, there were some other people, too, since they called me in, too, for that part.”
“Well, did you recognize any of those other names besides David and I? Did you recognize anyone else they wanted to make a deal about?”
“Yeah.”
“Who else was it?”
“Well, your other friend. I don’t really know him,” said Suzanne in a pleading voice. She had just told the FBI she didn’t recognize the guy, so she was reluctant to name him now on a tapped phone.
“Right,” said Larry. “Did they say a name, or . . .?”
“Yeah. Uh-hmm.”
“Begin with an F?”
“Yep.”
“Any other names that you knew?” asked Larry.
“No, that was it. Just them.”
“Unbelievable,” said Larry. He was amazed at the tenacity of the agents. They had been following them all around the country for more than a year!
“Okay, so you’re going to go down there at nine, right? I mean, there’s nothing else we can do, right? Is there?
“You can lend me some money.”
“Yeah, okay. Well, I will come and see you tonight.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how great that is. Uuh,” Larry groaned. Just how much deeper he was implicated was gradually sinking in. “. . . It’s unbelievable that they would watch him for a year!”
“Well, you know what they said, they’ve been hanging around. I mean, they said that to me a year ago. That they would be around for another two years or something.”
“. . .I wonder what happened out there with . . . with Wayne,” said Larry. “So, they tried to get real intimidating then and told him he was going to go away for a long time, that type of stuff?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Yeah? Great. Well, it will be interesting to see what Fitzpatrick says. Say the worst happens, what’s the worst they can do? If they definitely have a good search warrant then they have that, and I’ll be interested to see what—I’m just surprised that there weren’t a lot more names if they had pictures of him and Wayne.”
Larry knew that if they had been following Bruce for more than a year, they would have learned about a lot more people than Wayne. It didn’t occur to him that the breakthrough in the investigation had started with Wayne, with the DEA in Phoenix. He assumed it had grown out of the local probe of his own dealings. There was a gap there that he found intriguing. He was worried about what more Bruce might say.
Larry agreed to drop money off for Suzanne. He said he wanted to talk to Bruce as soon as he was released.
Sweat was rolling from Larry’s armpits when he hung up the phone. For the first time since the meeting with Chuck Reed and the IRS agent almost a year ago, Larry realized his predicament had significantly worsened. They were on to the coke business. His mind raced.
Drilling teeth was the last thing on his mind, but he had a patient in the chair all numbed up and a root canal in progress. There were other patients in the waiting room. . . .
Bruce won’t talk, thought Larry. We’ll get him a good lawyer. He’ll keep his mouth shut. He got into this business on his own. He wanted it. If you get in voluntarily it means you accept the risks. He’s not going to pass it on to everyone else. Bruce wouldn’t do that. . . .
Larry took a couple of deep breaths, stood up, and put a smile on his face as he went to tend to his patient.
Bruce called Suzanne collect from the detention center that night.
“Oh God, Suzanne!”
“Did Fitzpatrick say how it looked or anything?” Suzanne asked.
“He said it didn’t look that bad, but he always says that.”
“No, no, no. Now, he’s pretty honest.”
“Okay. The law says I’m gonna get at least ten years,” Bruce said.
“Don’t listen to them.”
“I ain’t. Fuckin’ Chuck there, what an asshole.” “Isn’t he?”
“Yeah. He says to me, ’Your wife set you up with us.’ “
“Did he?”
“. . . I told him to fuck off.”
“Why didn’t they take me?” asked Suzanne.
“They said they were going to arrest you later.”
“Oh, really?”
“I think he’s talking through his asshole. Because you could be running.”
“Arrest me later, huh?”
“Yep. Oh God, I don’t want to hang up. I’m gonna have to get off pretty quick.”
“I love you,” said Suzanne.
“I love you, baby. See you in the morning?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“Come on down to this area.”
“I will.”
“. . . Is there anything? Did they miss anyth
ing?” Bruce was feeling the hard effects of cocaine withdrawal.
Suzanne said they had gotten it all.
“Okay, down where I keep the tools? You know the shelf there, like, where you put the cans and stuff?”
“Downstairs there?”
“Yeah, and the Epsom salt?”
“Yeah.”
“See if that little package is in there. That little silver thing that the cartridge came in.”
“What cartridge?”
“Remember? The cartridge.”
“Oh.”
“In the storeroom that I was keeping the Ds in?”
“Oh yeah, yeah.”
“They get that?”
“I don’t know,” said Suzanne. “You want me to look? Hold on.”
Kim chatted with Bruce for a minute while Suzanne checked the hiding place. Bruce said to her, “You got to get me something off somebody for when I get out of here!”
Suzanne then returned to the phone. “I can’t find anything.”
“It isn’t there?”
“No.”
“They found it, then,” he said, disappointed.
Bruce asked Suzanne to check one other hiding place, and there was no cocaine there either.
“See if you can get me ahold of something tomorrow,” he said. “Fix me a blast in the morning. A big one.”
“Well, I don’t—”
“If you can’t, you can’t,” he said, dejected.
“I’ll try,” said Suzanne.
It was six o’clock. Bruce hung on the line a few minutes longer.
“Can you sleep there?” Suzanne asked. “What is it like?”
“It’s horrible. It’s, it’s all niggers.”
“Really?”
“Yep, same as last time. I got in a fight last time. Had to break the guy’s arm.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m in the same place.”
“Oh, no!”
“Naked,” he said.
“Naked!”
“Yep, Suzanne.”
“Why?”
“They took my clothes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s horrible.”
“I love you,” Suzanne said. She felt ready to cry.
“I love you,” said Bruce.
Larry came over later. Kim and Suzanne sat on the pool table and Larry sat in an armchair alongside as Suzanne went back over in detail the events of the day.
