Doctor Dealer

by Mark Bowden

  Then Larry entertained Michael with stories about how he had gotten involved in dealing drugs. Larry wanted Michael to like him, so he was trying to pour on the charm. His way of being charming was to talk someone’s head off. He told him all about his old pot-dealing days at Penn, college man to college man, and trotted out all his favorite old stories. Just as Larry’s father had a habit of telling and retelling his war stories, Larry had his well-polished anecdotes from college days. He had told the stories so often, always portraying himself as the reckless, fun-loving hero who got away in the end, that he frequently lapsed comically into the third person, as if he were talking about someone else. If you were in the right mood, Larry’s storytelling was charming and funny. To Michael, who was just eager to get this all over with, Larry sounded like an awful braggart.

  Then Larry told Michael about the arson of the King Arena. He explained that he had had nothing to do with it, that it had been Mark Stewart’s idea.

  “That’s how this all started,” he said. “I should have gotten out of all this then. But, hindsight is twenty-twenty! For some reason, I’m the one Chuck Reed really wants to get.”

  They talked about Bruce Taylor. Michael said that it was a shame that he was dying of leukemia, and was startled when Larry laughed.

  “That’s bullshit,” Larry explained. “Did you fall for that? It’s so stupid. Bruce tells people that because he figures if he ever splits with money from the business, nobody will come looking for him.” Larry just shook his head.

  Michael was shocked. He told Larry he felt foolish for believing Bruce all this time.

  Larry told Michael all about the taped conversation between him and Wayne Heinauer.

  “It’s a very incriminating call,” said Larry. “That’s the worst thing they have on me.”

  He advised Michael not to cooperate with the FBI.

  “Take the Fifth, because once a person starts talking, they have to keep on talking,” he said. “If you take the Fifth, then they have to prove everything against you. In your case, they don’t have very much. Make sure the lawyer your father is getting you is a criminal lawyer. If he’s not, call me and I’ll hook you up with Donald Goldberg. He’s my lawyer. He could help you find somone who really knows what to do.”

  When they got to Olga’s, Steve and June Rasner weren’t there. Larry waited for a while, then called Steve’s dental office and left a message for him to call back. He and Michael played video games while they waited for the call.

  Rasner explained to Larry that he and his wife had seen someone with a zoom lens on a camera parked across the street when they got to Olga’s, so they left.

  Larry was irritated. “You’re hallucinating now,” he told Rasner. Steve said he didn’t want to talk on the phone at Olga’s, and asked Larry to go to a pay phone across the street. “You guys are paranoid,” said Larry.

  He hung up and they headed across the street to the pay phone. “Both of them are a bundle of nerves,” Larry told Michael. “I hope they can keep their heads, or else we’ll all be in a lot of trouble.”

  An FBI photographer captured the frown on Larry’s face as he spoke that line.

  Summer brought few new revelations. From what he could remember of the conversation with Wayne Heinauer, Larry had pretty much convinced himself that he didn’t have that much to worry about. After all, he had mostly talked about Frannie! It just supported his claim to have gotten out of the business a long time ago. They certainly couldn’t know anything about Frannie’s recent payments to him. They had a lot of healthy (and correct) suspicions, but little proof. Everyone was being interviewed; no one was talking. That’s how it looked from where Larry sat.

  In spring, the U.S. attorney’s office had offered a deal that had shocked Larry. Through Don Goldberg they explained that if Larry would assist their investigation of Frannie, then he might expect to get only a ten- to twelve-year sentence.

  Ten to twelve years!

  How stupid did they think he was? Larry had never known anyone to be sent away for more than ten years for selling marijuana or cocaine. And he had no prior offenses! His lawyer dismissed the government’s offer as a sucker’s deal. To Goldberg, who knew little of the magnitude of Larry’s cocaine dealing and had been lied to about when it had ended, it sounded as if the feds were eager to enlist his client’s aid, but they didn’t seem willing to offer anything in return for it. Neither lawyer nor client had ever entertained the notion that Larry would be going away to jail for anything more than two years at most.

  So Larry rejected the deal instantly. Whom were they trying to kid?

  Larry went white-water rafting out in central Pennsylvania in May, and he and Marcia entertained at home around the pool several times over the summer. Marcia began noticing that fewer and fewer of Larry’s friends were accepting their invitations to drop by the house and use the pool. Once, when his old undergraduate pot-dealing partner Andy Mainardi had visited, Andy came in someone else’s car and insisted on getting out way down the block and walking up through backyards to the house. Marcia was insulted.

  She sensed approaching doom, but she had grown used to that over the last two years. Christopher was a happy energetic two-year-old, absolutely smitten with his daddy, who seemed to have little time for him. Marcia dressed him in colorful outfits of matching shirts and overalls and snapped pictures of him at play with his porchful of toy trains and houses and blocks. Chris was especially fascinated with cars. He liked to sit on Larry’s lap and pretend to steer. He paddled around the house in a little orange-and-yellow trolley car. Words came slowly to Chris. At two he was an unusually silent child. He understood a lot but seemed reluctant to speak. Marcia joked that he certainly didn’t take after his father.

  In late August, she learned she was pregnant again.

  Larry awakened late on Tuesday, September 11. He had office hours that day, starting at 11:00 a.m., and he had several things to get done before then. The night before he had remembered some papers from his loans to Stan Nelson and Joe Powell that were tucked away in his desk. He knew he ought to throw them away. And there was one remaining embosser, one that he had altered to look like the official seal of the Church of the Sacred Heart, that should not just be lying around.

  He was afraid to just throw these items in the garbage. For all he knew, the FBI might be going through his garbage. So Larry put the papers and the embosser in his briefcase.

  Marcia had already left with Chris. Larry dressed in a white Lacoste sportshirt, yellow poplin slacks, and a pair of topsiders with no socks, ate a quick bowl of cereal with a glass of orange juice, and then took off in his big silver car for work. It was a gray, humid morning. Several times along the way Larry thought about pulling off into a shopping center or parking lot to throw away the papers and embosser in his briefcase, but the momentum of the car, the music on the radio—these were some of Larry’s most enjoyable moments. Sometimes he just turned up the stereo and cruised. Other times he played games. On Roosevelt Boulevard the lights were synchronized, and Larry would race people, running red lights if he had to, always winning. He had been stopped about six times for speeding along this route—the sixty- to eighty-five-dollar fines were nothing. Larry considered these run-ins with traffic cops to be trifles. He made a point of donating generously to every law enforcement association he could find, plastering decals on the back window of his car and filling his wallet with cards from the Fraternal Order of Police, benevolent associations, sheriff cards, etc. When he lost his Pennsylvania license, he used one from Massachusetts. Larry considered himself to be a superior driver to most others on the road, owing to his summer employment as a cab driver in 1975, and he considered his car to be indestructible. So he felt entitled to drive as he pleased, and once he got going, he was loath to stop. He would use the dumpster in the parking lot of the shopping center across the street from his practice.

  So instead of turning into the small driveway beside the dental office building, Larry proceeded on
down Frankford Avenue another hundred yards, turned into the shopping center parking lot, and then doubled back across the lot in the direction of his office. He got out of the car and tossed the embosser and papers into the dumpster, then got back in to drive out of the lot and back down to the office.

  But as Larry turned around in the lot and headed back toward the entrance he was suddenly surrounded by cars. Men began emptying from them, men with guns. They were pointing pistols at him! The man just outside his car window was leveling a handgun at him, shouting, “FBI! Put your hands up! Get out of the car!”

  Larry jerked his hands up. But then he realized he couldn’t just get out of the car because one foot was on the clutch and the other was on the brake. The car was in first gear. There were agents in front of the car who would be hit if he released the clutch. When he reached down with his right hand to put the gearshift in neutral, the man outside his window screamed, “Keep your hands up! Get out of the car!”

  They were at an impasse. Larry just sat there looking harassed. One of the agents reached to open the passenger side door, but it was locked. When Larry started to reach down to release the automatic door lock, the agent outside his window screamed again. Finally, they caught on. Larry flipped the switch to unlock the door and the agent climbed in the passenger seat, shifted the car into neutral, and shut off the engine.

  Larry climbed out, his hands over his head. He felt foolish. What was all this? The FBI had informed him he was under investigation more than a year and a half ago. He knew he was going to be indicted. Don Goldberg had told him it was customary in cases like his to just notify the person charged when the indictment came down. He had fully expected to be asked to come down to the courthouse and turn himself in. So why the big show? Larry was indignant, but what could he do?

  One of the agents wheeled him against the side of the car and frisked him for weapons. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two other agents trot over to the dumpster. His heart sank. How could he have been so stupid? There had been at least six places along the way that morning where he could have stopped to safely dispose of those papers. The amounts involved in the loans to Stan Nelson and Joe Powell would just reveal more of his hidden assets. And the embosser! If they saw that, maybe they would catch on to his plans to flee! He wouldn’t be able to get out on bail! A female agent put handcuffs on him.

  “I would have turned myself in,” protested Larry. No one responded.

  Larry looked across at the front door of his dental office.

  “Could you send somone over to the practice and tell them that I’m not going to be there?” he asked.

  The agent answered, joking, “Yeah, I’ll just go over and stand on that porch over there and yell you’re the largest cocaine dealer in Philadelphia; they’ll just love that.”

  “You have me, but I don’t think you have to take it out on the patients,” said Larry. “There’s no reason why they have to sit there all day waiting for me, or for people to have to wonder what the heck’s going on.”

  “We’ll take care of it,” said another agent.

  They directed Larry into one of their cars. From the backseat he offered the driver directions back down to Center City and the courthouse. His hands began to feel numb.

  “Could you loosen these handcuffs?” he asked the agent seated next to him.

  “You aren’t going to try any funny business?” the agent asked.

  “What do you think I’m going to do?”

  The agent took off the cuffs and loosened them, then put them back on Larry’s wrists.

  The car entered the great redbrick, boxlike federal courthouse on the western side, on Sixth Street. They drove down a sloping driveway, stopped as a wide steel garage door cranked open, and then entered an underground garage. Larry was led to an elevator and escorted into a basement room where he was to be fingerprinted and photographed. Larry had decided to keep his mouth shut.

  “Are you Larry Lavin?” asked one of the arresting agents.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not answering any questions until I speak to my lawyer,” said Larry.

  This angered the arresting agents, but Larry was just trying to play it as carefully as he could. He had gone down to the courthouse once before with his lawyer for fingerprinting and a mug shot. When Chuck Reed asked for Larry’s social security number, Larry had answered, but then Goldberg had said:

  “I hope you don’t have many more of these questions because my client is not answering any more of them.”

  So even though the agents and clerks grew irritated, Larry remained silent.

  An agent asked for his date of birth before snapping his photograph, and Larry answered, “Can I make a phone call?”

  While the agents called upstairs to get Larry’s birthdate for the placard he would hold for the mug shot, they allowed him to use the phone. He left word at Don Goldberg’s office that he had been arrested. Then he phoned Marcia.

  After spending the morning with Chris at a toddlers’ center near home, Marcia had stopped off with him for an early lunch at McDonald’s. They pulled in the curved driveway off Timber Lane just after noon. Marcia got out of her Volvo to open the garage door, and when she did she heard the phone ringing.

  She ran in to answer it.

  “How you doin’?” said Larry sadly.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Marcia.

  “I was arrested today.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m all right.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m downtown. The federal courthouse. I want you to stay home and wait for Don Goldberg to call and tell you what to do about bail.”

  “Okay.”

  “Go and find the deed to the house. We’ll probably need every penny.”

  “Okay. I’ll be ready,” said Marcia. “Do you think they’re going to let you out?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Okay. I’ll be here.”

  “I love you, Marcia.”

  “I love you, too, Larry.”

  Marcia hung up the phone and stood silently for a moment in the kitchen. It had finally happened. Then she realized she had left Chris in the car.

  Marcia ran out through the garage. Chris was playing in the driveway. The car doors were locked. Marcia always drove with the car doors locked, and the driver’s side door had locked when Chris closed it. Her keys were in the ignition.

  She retrieved Chris and phoned her mother.

  “Mom, Larry was arrested today,” she said.

  “What for?” asked Agnes.

  “What do you think for?” said Marcia. She and Larry had long ago told her mother about his pending “tax troubles.”

  “I’m going to need you to stay here so I can go down and get him. I need you to watch Chris.”

  After she hung up the phone, Marcia scooped up Chris, changed his diaper, and put him down for a nap. Then she walked back out to the sun porch and sank into one of the folding chairs. Tonight everyone would know that Larry’s problems weren’t just “tax troubles.” She ran her fingers over her womb, where their second child was just beginning to take form. This would be the last time she would sit out on the porch with her son like a normal person.

  After calling Marcia, Larry was posed by the agents for his mug shots. He held a small placard with white plastic letters stuck in rows, reading:

  FBI PHILADELPHIA

  09 11 84

  LAWRENCE W LAVIN

  PH 87D-29408

  DOB 3 14 55

  SSAN

  The look on Larry’s face expressed it all. His lips were pressed together tightly and his eyes looked beleaguered. Overall Larry looked bored. His thick black hair covered the tops of his ears and swept down evenly across his forehead down to his eyebrows. With his open-collared sportshirt and wholesome collegiate appearance, Larry looked like someone who had opened the wrong door and wandered in somewhere he didn’t belong.

  After posing for the picture, Larry was allowed
to phone his dental practice. Some of the patients had sat around for an hour waiting for him to arrive.

  “Tell them I’m sorry,” Larry told his receptionist. “Just tell the patients that I won’t be in.”

  After that call Larry was taken down the elevator to the holding cells, where he was strip-searched, given a jumpsuit, and left in a small room with a table and chair.

  He sat alone for a few minutes. Then the door opened and a casually dressed man of about medium height with short brown hair walked in.

  “Hi, Larry. How are you doing?” he asked in a gentle Southern accent. “I’m Sid Perry. You know me, I’m the one you always say such nice things about.”

  Larry had never met Sid. He smiled and tried to be pleasant. Sid just asked a few questions about the Rolex watch they had seized along with Larry’s wallet and briefcase. The watch had been a wedding present from Paul Mikuta and had an inscription on the back that Sid wanted Larry to explain. Larry did. Then Sid left. Larry was surprised Sid hadn’t asked about the embosser.

  Next, he was escorted into a room with, of all people, Frannie Burns! He tried not to act surprised. The room looked like a classroom. There were rows of chairs with writing surfaces attached to the arms. One wall had a blackboard and against the other wall was a long dark window. Larry guessed that people behind the window could look at him but that he couldn’t see out the other way. Frannie was seated at one of the desks, looking straight ahead. They were left alone in the room together, each pretending that he didn’t know the other. They assumed they were being taped or filmed. Every ten minutes or so agents came into the room to ask Frannie questions, then left again. Finally, both Larry and Frannie were taken down to share a holding cell in the basement.

  On their way down to the cell, Frannie’s lawyer, David Shapiro, met them in the hall.

  “What’s my bail going to be?” Frannie asked.

  “Probably about half a million,” said Shapiro.