Doctor Dealer

by Mark Bowden

  “Not yet.”

  “Do they project any dates or anything?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re in that same limbo as when I left?”

  “I’m in limbo and the reason, that’s one of the reasons I’m liquidating,” said Ken. He said he wanted to convert his assets into cash, anticipating the cost of defending himself from the pending indictment, and he also didn’t want to just leave the girls in the office jobless and the patients without a dentist. Conversation drifted back to children. Ken’s little girl had just started to walk. Larry said Christopher, who had been slow learning to talk, “won’t shut up . . . sometimes I just have to put my hands over my ears, I just can’t handle it anymore, you know?” He said Chris was adjusting well to the baby.

  “It is a girl,” said Larry.

  Ken told Larry that the FBI had been questioning everyone in their office, all their friends.

  “Kenny out on the limb here,” he said. “. . . All friends left Kenny. No Boy. No Way-wee.”

  “Boy in New York now?”

  “Boy in New York. Boy’s setting up with Dad. Doesn’t think he has a problem, and, ah, thinks you’re in the Witness Protection Program.”

  They both laughed hard.

  “No, I’m in a much better situation than that,” said Larry.

  “Yeah?”

  “I like my situation, Ken, I think.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, I like my situation. If everything could clear up and change, I don’t think I’d go back anymore. I’m just having too much fun.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I don’t think I’m really into playing dentist anymore, you know?” said Larry, laughing.

  “To playing dentist?”

  “No, I said I don’t think I’m really into that anymore. I like talking to people but I don’t really like drilling, I guess. . . . I never really liked doing the work, you know? I realize that now, now after having not done it. You know, at first it really bothered me, now it doesn’t. . . . You really see how people think about doctors when you, when they don’t know you’re a doctor, you know?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When you hear comments like, ’This guy had this piece of land because he’s a doctor,’ and, you know, they wink at you or something. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. . . . So, your picture’s in the post office. Do you know that?”

  “No!” Larry laughed with surprise.

  “You’re ’Wanted,’ Way-wee.”

  “It’s really in the post office?”

  “Sure is,” said Ken.

  “I looked in the post office here and I didn’t see it.”

  “. . . They said it wasn’t posted on the wall. Like, there’s this thing of ’Wanted’ people and it was in it.”

  “I’ll have to check that out,” said Larry.

  “Yes, Way-wee, you could have a nice picture.”

  “That sucks . . . it just kills me ’cause every time I read those they’re for real severe people.”

  Larry asked about his house. Ken said it was still empty, the grass was overgrown. It painted a sad picture for Larry. They talked more about the sale of the dental practice. Then Ken asked about Rusty. Larry said he was amazed, but the FBI didn’t seem to be giving his family much trouble. They had not even spoken to his parents.

  “It’s very weird,” said Ken.

  “They don’t even make the minimal—”

  “That’s what your mother-in-law says. She goes, you know, ’They’ve been here, why don’t they go see Larry’s parents?’ “

  Larry laughed.

  Ken ran down the list of their friends and associates, giving Larry the latest news. The Rasners had gotten off—no jail time. Suzanne Norimatsu-Taylor had been sentenced to two years. Her husband, Bruce, had gotten ten.

  “Taylor got ten?” said Larry.

  “Yeah.”

  “He got the Eight Forty-eight conviction.”

  They discussed money that was owed Larry by various people. Larry asked Ken to steer any payments to Rusty, so that he could use it to help support his parents.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re not going to jail or anything yet,” said Larry.

  “Not yet. Way-wee, that bring up another point. If Kenny go to jail, will you help wife and family?”

  “Yes, yes, yes. I make sure your wife get constant amount of it,” said Larry, laughing lecherously. “That’s not going to happen, right? Do you think?”

  “I don’t know. All I can say is, if something happens to me, I’d like you to somehow maintain an open communication with, somehow with me, and if I feel that there’s a problem, like if I, if, if they want me to do something, if we have a prearranged time, I was thinking that if I answer the phone and say ’Hello’—instead of ‘Yo’ or ‘Way-wee!’—just hang up and don’t, don’t ever call me again.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Okay? I don’t think, I don’t know if that is going to happen, but . . . So if I ever say ’Hello,’ then just—”

  “Good,” said Larry. “See, I don’t mind calling you today because I’m several states away from where I live anyway, you know? So it doesn’t really bother me. They can fuckin’ do all they want, but it would be pretty hard for them to. ’Cause I had to be out of town anyways.”

  “Yeah.”

  “See, I’m in the real world again, Ken. You know, I got a job and—”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You got a job, Way-wee?”

  “Yeah, a little bit. Once in a while I do some work.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Most of the time I work out and just take it easy and read books. Run Marcia around.”

  “You play any golf?”

  “No, I really haven’t. I just haven’t got around to that yet.”

  “. . . So, you losing weight?”

  “I’m swimming and all that,” said Larry. “No. I’m about the same weight. I have to run Marcia around all the time and, you know, it’s the same old life. Going to malls, going to stores, buying this, buying that. Fix up the house . . . all that type of stuff takes up so much time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My lawn. I’m heavily into, you know, gardens and all that stuff.” Larry announced that he had won the local award for having the prettiest yard.

  “I can’t believe it. And I guess you did it, huh? You didn’t hire somebody?”

  “No, no. Well, I hired, but they were under my supervision, you know,” said Larry, laughing.

  “Well, you’re such a dork.”

  “No, I couldn’t do it myself, but I’m into it, you know? Like, this lawn I have sprinkler systems in and all that type of stuff. I put paper underneath my beds so no weeds will grow up through—”

  “Underneath your flower bed?”

  “Yeah. Things that you’ll never dream about.”

  “I, I never even heard of doing that!”

  Larry gave Ken gardening advice, advice on how to keep his Jacuzzi clean, advice on how to make it look like he was losing money in Atlantic City while converting checks to cash, advice about books—Larry was reading Elmore Leonard’s Glitz.

  “So what Kenny gonna do if he get indicted? You don’t have any suggestion on how to leave, do you?”

  “Well, you can’t leave,” said Larry.

  “No?”

  “You don’t have the personality for it. And I don’t: think you’re gonna have to. I think . . . if they really come down and convict you of everything you were guilty of, I mean, you’re still pretty innocent. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, I just can’t see, unless Rasner really strengthened their position or something, I mean . . . everything else will make you look like you were just on the sidelines. I think it will be very hard to prove. That’s my gut feeling. I mean, it could have been just my nicety that I gave you money, you know.”

  “You’re one nice guy, Way-wee.
”

  As Larry was talking on, checking up on old classmates, regretting that he was going to be missing his five-year dental school reunion in 1986, talking about how easily Marcia had given birth the second time, a security guard with a walkie-talkie walked toward him down the hall. On Ken’s end, the phone suddenly went quiet. Larry could feel his body just quake momentarily as the guard approached him . . . could he possibly? . . . he had talked for a long time . . . is this it? . . . and walked straight past.

  “There’s no one hanging around there, is there?” Larry asked, breaking the silence.

  “No, why?”

  “Oh, a security guy just walked by.”

  Larry wanted to get off the phone now. He took down another number to call Ken in a few months. He told Ken that Marcia had just recently written a letter to her mother, and that it should be arriving sometime soon. Ken said that Marcia’s mother had been in tears the last time he talked to her, upset that Larry and Marcia believed she would betray them.

  “There hasn’t been one thing I’ve done so far that’s traceable,” said Larry. “Even if I was on the other side working on it. That’s the way I try to look at it. . . . So hopefully I can maintain that. . . .”

  They agreed to talk again on the first Wednesday in August, at 9:00 a.m.

  “Later on.”

  “Talk to you.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Larry hung up the phone and walked back to the car, still feeling slightly dazed as he always did after a long talk with someone from the past . . . from all that.

  At the pay phone in suburban Philadelphia, Ken Weidler stepped aside as the hand of the FBI agent reached to turn off the tape recorder and tracing equipment.

  Chuck Reed and Sid Perry had responded differently to Larry Lavin’s sudden disappearance in November. Chuck was angry. To him it was just another example of Larry’s arrogance. And it was embarrassing. Chuck had grown up in a generation that was cynical about law enforcement because it seemed like the little guys, the addicts and the street hustlers, were the only ones who ever got busted. Myth had it that the top men were too rich and powerful and smart to get caught. Here they had nailed the top man—arguably the most successful drug dealer in the city’s history—and he had gotten away.

  To Sid, with the sudden disappearance of Larry Lavin the case had taken a disappointing but intriguing turn. Just when they were about to reel in the big fish he jumped the line and swam away. It made for embarrassing publicity, but law enforcement experts understood that it was just impractical to keep suspects under twenty-four-hour surveillance when they were out on bail awaiting trial. Running away was, in fact, a very rare occurrence—statistics showed that only the smallest fraction of serious criminals, even those facing possible life sentences, skipped bail and disappeared. Most fugitives were caught within days or weeks. It was clear from the first day that Larry Lavin wasn’t typical. Suddenly the altered embosser they had found on the day of his arrest in September made sense. They hadn’t known what to make of it at first. Now it showed how carefully Larry had planned his flight. How interesting.

  Both young agents were in agreement on their response to his flight, however. They knew it was a detective’s once-in-a-lifetime challenge: to track down a truly intelligent, educated criminal with the daring, the motive, and the resources to remain a fugitive for good. Most career detectives accumulate a couple of cases like it over the years—the ones they can’t abandon. Chuck and Sid were going to measure themselves against this one. They were going to catch Larry Lavin if it took them well into their retirement, some twenty-five to thirty years down the road.

  At first the trail was cold. Larry had told no one where he was going. No one.

  Chuck was convinced of that after putting the pressure on Agnes Osborn for a few months. From interviews with Larry’s friends and associates, they knew Marcia was much, much closer to her mother than Larry was to his parents. And Marcia was going to have a baby in just a few months. If there was no contact with Agnes, either direct or indirect, then Larry and Marcia had made a completely clean break with the past. It was conventional wisdom in the FBI that nobody, ever, makes a completely clean break.

  So Chuck stopped by to visit Agnes regularly. He knew she didn’t like him. That was okay.

  On one visit to her apartment, he watched from a distance as Agnes unloaded groceries from the trunk of her car and took them in the house. On her second trip out to the car, she took a child’s red wagon from the trunk, filled it with groceries, and wheeled it in the front door.

  Chuck bounded from the car to the front door and rapped on it loudly.

  Agnes’s quizzical face appeared behind the storm door. She scowled when she saw it was the FBI agent again.

  “They’re here, aren’t they?” said Chuck.

  “Who?”

  “Larry and Marcia. Let me in.”

  “They are not here,” she said.

  “Then who is the little red wagon for?”

  “It’s my grandson Andrew’s Christmas present,” she said.

  When he had gotten nowhere with Agnes after the first two months, Chuck paid a visit to her ceramics teacher. To help cope with boredom and loneliness after Larry and Marcia left, Agnes had begun attending ceramics classes three or four times a week. Chuck introduced himself to her teacher, explained what he was doing, and asked if the older woman had ever mentioned anything about her daughter or son-in-law.

  When Agnes learned that Reed had talked to her teacher, first she was embarrassed about going to class again, then she was angry. She called Tom Bergstrom and complained about “that Chuck Reed fellow,” and Bergstrom had spoken to the U.S. attorney’s office about harassment of innocent citizens.

  Chuck had backed off after that.

  There had been no leads on through spring until Chuck and Sid were able to make Ken Weidler see his fate clearly. Either he could expect to go to jail for ten years or more and stay loyal to his best friend, or he could help the FBI find Larry and spend maybe two years, maybe less, in a minimum security prison. For Ken, who had bailed out of the cocaine business years before for fear of courting arrest and punishment, the alternative became clear as the day of his indictment loomed. He was doing it to protect himself, his wife, and his daughter. He didn’t feel good about it, but when his back touched the wall, his priorities were clear.

  At first, when Larry skipped his prearranged phone calls, it had seemed as if the son-of-a-bitch was psychic. How did he know that it was no longer safe to call Ken? The agents suspected that their cooperating witness had somehow passed a warning to his friend. Ken had to be reminded that his deal depended on results.

  Larry’s rambling talk with Ken was more than enough for the FBI to trace his location. He had phoned from a pay phone in a mall in northern Virginia, area code 804. With all his talk about being out of town and being several states away from home, they could only assume that he was living somewhere in the Delaware, Maryland, or Virginia area. Larry’s old friends remembered that he had always talked fondly about owning a boat.

  Also of interest in the conversation was Larrv’s mention of a letter with snapshots of the baby that Marcia had recently mailed her mother. Although Chuck had gotten heat for approaching Agnes’s ceramics teacher, it had paid off. He knew that Marcia’s previous letters had been first sent to the ceramics teacher, and then passed on to Agnes.

  So they began intercepting the ceramics teacher’s mail, and sure enough, within the week the letter from Marcia arrived.

  It was carefully worded, and there were no obvious clues. But Chuck and Sid were intrigued by the lines about Chris’s birthday party. They both had kids. They both recognized the kind of place Marcia described as a Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre, a cute party place, a combination pizza parlor/arcade/amusement park. Children loved it. Both agents had taken their kids to Chuck E. Cheese outlets, and it was just as Marcia described it . . . except . . . what was this business about a be
ar bringing little Chris his cake?

  They checked with the Chuck E. Cheese folks, and, sure enough, they didn’t have a bear. But there was a chain just like theirs that operated primarily in Southern states. Its name was Showbiz Pizza Place, Inc. There were two Showbiz Pizza outlets in the 804 area code region. One was in Richmond, where the agents doubted Larry would have settled, and the other was in Virginia Beach. And, yes, it featured this short, cuddly mascot with a country accent who wore big red-and-yellow overalls.

  His name was Billy-Bob the Bear.

  THIRTEEN

  Does This Have Something to Do With Larry?

  Round, timid Ricky Baratt never earned a penny in the four years he had been dealing Larry’s cocaine. From day one he was in debt. His life was dictated by the demands of dealing. He would be up all night drinking beer, smoking pot, and snorting cocaine, then he would go to work in the morning at Western Electric and snort more cocaine to stave off a hangover and stay awake.

  When he first started using cocaine, after Larry shipped him his first supply via Federal Express, it had given Ricky a great rush of good feeling. Playing his saxophone or his piano, he felt an effortless virtuosity. He could stay up all night drinking, then snort a couple more lines and stay up all day feeling supercharged. As time went by, he found that no matter how many white lines he snorted, he never attained the same euphoria he had felt at first. And after several years of steady use, all joy had gone out of the experience. He needed the drug just to keep a kind of equilibrium that approximated normalcy—Ricky could hardly remember what truly normal felt like at all. And even that rough “normalcy” had a price. Cocaine aggravated his already tender nerves. There were times his heart beat so hard he felt certain that people around him could hear it inside his chest like a hammer. He associated with no one except those involved in the business. He was always lonely and depressed and afraid. Living in his Boston apartment, driving a sleek Mazda Rx-7, carrying a wad of twenties in his pocket, Ricky had all the outward manifestations of success, but life seemed to have trapped him on the down escalator—no matter how hard he tried to climb out of debt to Larry he just lost ground. By late 1983, Ricky’s debt totaled well over $150,000. But Larry didn’t mind. He kept shipping kilos north. Ricky was just a small customer, an old friend.