American Desperado

by Jon Roberts

  Danny ran a lot of businesses with Jon, but I stayed out of those. I wasn’t born yesterday.

  J.R.: Danny and I started buying property in Coral Gables. We bought a hundred-unit building, a sixty-unit building, a bunch of smaller buildings. Later we got into developing Aventura. We had several companies together—J.P. Roberts Investments, Straight Arrow Investments, Good Deal Autos, Prestige Automotive, Mephisto Stables. We ran all our companies out of an office on Biscayne Boulevard.

  We got into car leasing and trading because the car business was a good way to launder my money. We brought in a professional manager from a Ford dealer in New Jersey to run our car businesses. We also partnered with Ron Tobachnik.* Ron was a hit man out of Chicago, but he also had a car business in Miami. He was a very bad guy, with a lot of balls, but unfortunately he was very stupid. He ran a car-rental company out of the Holiday Inn at Fort Lauderdale Airport that I took a piece of.

  When it came to growing my legitimate businesses, I never had a vision like “Let’s build a factory and produce lightbulbs and make something useful.” I just wanted simple, easy ways to launder money.

  The great thing about the car business was that, as I started moving more coke around the country, I could draw from the business and use plenty of vehicles. I’d give my drivers different rental cars, so they were harder to follow in any kind of pattern. Plus, if, God forbid, one of my drivers was stopped and they found dope in the trunk, he’d then have a defense that it wasn’t his car. How did he know there was dope in the trunk?

  IN MY first few years in Miami, I only had one non-driving-related problem with the law. My business was growing. I tried to keep my nose clean. But one time in about 1977 I was in the Palm Bay Club with Gary Teriaca. A big-shot jerk at the bar made an obnoxious comment to Gary about something. Gary said something back, and the guy hit him. Gary was a wiseguy who could not fight. I reacted out of instinct to defend him. Gary always drank Johnnie Walker, with the bottle and a shot glass on the bar in front of him. I picked up his Johnnie Walker bottle and broke it on the guy’s head. My mistake was, after the guy went down, I got on top of him and shoved the broken bottle in his face.

  People in the club, they did not want to see that. They weren’t used to seeing how people fight in the real world. They started screaming. Some idiot called the cops. Next thing, I’m being led out of the Palm Bay in handcuffs. It was very awkward for me.

  I was going to be charged with assault with a deadly weapon. The guy I’d hit just about had his nose cut off his face. The prosecutor told Danny Mones, “This one is going to court.”

  But I was so confident in Danny’s bribery skills that the night before the trial, I partied my guts out. The next morning I phoned the clerk of the court and said, “Tell the judge I ain’t coming.”

  Danny paid a doctor to write a note saying I was too sick to go to court. Frank Marks argued some bullshit to the judge. Meanwhile, the guy I allegedly assaulted moved out of the state and refused to testify. I made sure of that. The judge realized he had a difficult election coming up, and it would be even worse if we started contributing money to his opponent, so he threw out the case.

  When I was younger, I used to believe that the Mafia got all its power from brute force. But as I got more in the world and analyzed how to run my business, I realized that force only goes so far. There’s more power in paying off the right politicians. When I looked back at what my uncles accomplished with Gambino, they got much more done with lawyers and payoffs than by killing people. This is true at any level of illegal work. If you’re going to commit crimes, don’t be a jerk and wait to get a good lawyer. Get your lawyer first, and pay off all the judges and politicians before you do illegal things. If you follow my advice, you’ll thank me.

  * A strip club just over the Hialeah side of the border with Miami, still in operation today.

  * The Puerto Rican lottery-ticket-laundering scheme was probed in the early 1990s racketeering investigations of San Pedro and Erra. Erra’s common-law wife, Marcia Ludwig—the longtime friend of Florida governor Graham’s wife, Adele—testified to a grand jury that on a visit to Puerto Rico she obtained a winning lottery ticket worth a quarter million dollars. She denied that there was any impropriety in her purchase of the ticket. Investigators noted that Ludwig won the lucky ticket about the time of the scandal when she had enlisted Governor Graham’s wife to help persuade him to pardon Albert San Pedro for his 1971 felony conviction.

  * Meyer Lansky worked with Lucky Luciano to forge an Italian-Jewish alliance that dominated organized crime in America through the twentieth century. Lansky’s financial schemes laundered billions of Mafia dollars and helped finance Las Vegas, and he worked closely with Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista to build an Italian-Jewish crime empire in Cuba. With the fall of the Batista regime in 1959, Lansky joined the diaspora of American gangsters who fled the island. To evade prosecution in American courts, he sought asylum in Israel but was kicked out in 1972. After reaching a legal stalemate with U.S. authorities, he came to Miami, where it’s believed he remained a shot-caller in the Mafia’s vast financial dealings. When he died peacefully in 1983, his known assets consisted of little more than suits in the closet of the rented apartment he shared with his wife of more than thirty years, Thelma.

  * Alvin “Al” Malnik was rumored, but never proved, to be a front man for Lansky. After Lansky’s death in 1983, it was alleged that Malnik was heir to Lansky’s criminal organization, though Malnik denied any connection with organized crime. In 1982 a valet was nearly killed when a bomb planted in Malnik’s Rolls-Royce exploded outside the Cricket Club. The crime has never been solved. Malnik, who is seventy-nine years old today, is best known for his relationship with singer Michael Jackson. In 2003, when Jackson was facing trial for child molestation in California, he stayed at Malnik’s home in Miami and named Malnik godfather of his child, Prince Michael Jackson II, aka “Blanket.” Jackson later had a falling-out with Malnik and accused him of scheming to take control of his multimillion-dollar music catalog. After Jackson’s death Malnik claimed that Jackson had named him as executor of his estate. The validity of his assertions have been vigorously disputed by some legal experts.

  * Ronnie Bloom’s father, Harry “Yiddy Bloom” Blumenfeld, was the brother of Isadore “Kid Cann” Blumenfeld, a Minneapolis mobster convicted of murder and running a prostitution ring. Both brothers moved to Miami in the 1960s and worked closely with Meyer Lansky.

  * In 1989 Danny Mones’s lawful contributions to judges sparked a statewide controversy, as reported by David Lyons in “Court: Campaign Gift Was Conflict for Judge” in the Miami Herald’s September 21, 1989, edition. Mones’s help in financing judges’ campaigns led to a battle in the appellate courts and a call for reform that was subsequently abandoned at the urging of judges and lawyers who preferred the corrupt campaign finance system as it was—and remains.

  * Ron Tobachnik is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s former business partner.

  † Al Mones was an organized-crime partner of Meyer Lansky.

  † “The big negative point [of the Forge] is the cocktail lounge, from which raucous rock music sometimes emanates, to be heard throughout the restaurant, which is not conducive to elegant dining.” From the previously cited Guide to Restaurants of Greater Miami.

  ‡ The Forge, still popular today, opened in 1969 and defined Miami chic in the 1970s: “Lavishly decorated to resemble a San Francisco restaurant circa the turn of the century, the Forge has food and service that is equally lavish, making it one of South Florida’s truly great restaurants. If you’re seeking a fine piece of beef, accompanied by a bottle of 1947 Cheval Blanc or 1959 Lafite, served with efficient elegance, this is the place to find it.” From page 84 of Harvey Steiman’s Guide to Restaurants of Greater Miami, Los Angeles: Brooke House, 1977.

  35

  J.R.: I never smoked a cigarette in my life. I was always into fitness. I ran at least five miles on Miami Beach every day.
Running was how I made friends, too. The 1970s weren’t just about coke and Quaaludes. Fitness was a big craze in Miami. It was how I met Harvey Klug.* He was a runner on the beach. Harvey’s relatives owned a Nathan’s Hot Dog store in New York, and he was one of those nice, straight-arrow kids who grew up without a care in the world. Unfortunately, he got interested in betting, and after I hooked him with Bobby Erra, he ended up owing some money. The truth is, if you were hanging out with me, you weren’t ever a completely straight arrow. But everybody liked Harvey. He was such a good runner, he worked out with some of the top athletes. One day Harvey said to me, “I’ve got to turn you on to my friend.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Mercury Morris.”*

  Merc was an amazing runner, ballplayer, you name it. I used to play basketball with him and some of his NFL friends, and these guys were so good, they could have played in the NBA. They would kick my ass up and down, but it was worth it just to play top athletes in the world. Merc was also one of the first spokesmen for Nautilus workout equipment. He’d travel around the country promoting fitness.

  Merc also loved smoking weed and doing lines. One time we were at a club doing lines right at a table. Some asshole fan came up to him and said, “You’re a professional athlete. You can’t be getting high.”

  Merc laughed, “Hey, man. Watch me play on TV. You’ll see how high I am.”

  It was a little sad, because Merc was traded, then retired from the NFL right around the time he made that boast. By then I’d started hooking him up with kilos of coke that he was selling to his friends in the NFL with Randy Crowder,† another football great.

  I’ll be honest. I probably sold them coke because I liked hanging out with these guys. Movie stars don’t impress me. Athletes do, and one of the magical things coke did was bring these heroes into my world. Merc was a special guy. Not just a great athlete—he had a heart. He went through some troubles. At one point he came to me needing money really bad, and he offered to sell me his Ferrari Daytona. He was so desperate, I gave him a ridiculous amount for the car, like fifteen grand. When they arrested him in 1982 for drug trafficking, he was not caught with my coke, but he could have given up my name anyway, and he didn’t. He was such a good guy, I felt a little bad for being so rotten to him with his Ferrari. But I’m not the good guy. That’s not my role.

  AS MUCH as coke brought me up in the world, sometimes it did bring me down.

  One day the Buffalo Bills were coming in to play Miami, and Merc called me up. He said, “Jon, I’m going to bring a guy by your house.”

  “Merc, you’re my man. Bring anybody you want to bring.”

  I’m in my house on Bay Drive, and in walks Merc with O.J. Simpson. I was taken aback. Here was O.J. Simpson—Juice,* one of the best running backs in history—in my house. We sat down and started putting shit up our noses, and everybody’s high as a motherfucker, and everybody’s laughing. O.J. turns to me and says, “Hey, man, if you’re ever in Buffalo, look me up.”

  I said, “ ‘Ever in Buffalo’? Juice, are you out of your fucking mind? I ain’t never going to be in Buffalo unless they blow it up and put the pieces on a barge and bring it down here where it’s nice. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I don’t know what came over me. I guess O.J. rubbed me the wrong way. After an hour in my house, it was tiring to be around him. Even though all of us were doing coke, O.J. went beyond. He was a coke fiend. He was crazed.

  Talking to O.J., the other impression I got was that he was very fortunate he had his talent as a running back. Without that, he would have been lucky to work flipping burgers. I’m not saying O.J. was a dummy. He told a lot of funny stories. But he was very stuck on himself, and I didn’t see that he had the brains to back that up.

  When O.J. left my house that first night, I was glad.

  A FEW weeks later he showed up again with Merc. After a few hours Merc had to go home to see his kids. Like I say, Merc was a good guy.

  Now I’m alone with O.J. He came on a Thursday night, and the next day he’s still in my living room, blasted out of his mind, doing more lines. Suddenly I’m his babysitter. Outside of doing my coke, O.J.’s only other interest was, he wanted to fuck any white girl there was. But he was too crazed to leave the house. The easiest thing was to put him in the guest room and bring in a bunch of hookers. They could be ugly, as long as they had bleach-blond hair and were white. He’d party with one or two girls for a couple hours, then he’d want the next ones. I kept a small herd of whores in my living room, feeding them booze and blow, so they could be on call for O.J.

  Saturday night I go into O.J.’s room and say, “Look, man, don’t you got to practice with your team? Isn’t there a curfew?”

  “Curfew?” he says. “I’m O.J. I do anything I want.”

  “Juice, you got a game tomorrow in Buffalo.”

  “As long as you get me on the first plane in the morning, I’ll be fine.”

  By Sunday morning the man is totally, totally gone. He’s burned through so much blow, so many whores, his eyes don’t even focus no more. He’s awake, but his head is rolling on his chest.

  I call a friend to help me carry him to my car. By the time we get to the airport, O.J.’s in another world. I slap him in the face and shout, “Juice, I’m going to give you a big fucking line.” I spoon-feed a mountain of shit up his nose. I thought it would wake him up, but it works the opposite way. He goes out cold.

  He’s almost in a coma when we carry him out of the car. A skycap gets us a wheelchair, and we roll him into the airport. O.J. was famous then for that commercial where he jumps over hurdles at the airport.* As he rolls him through the airport, my friend is goofing on the ad, shouting, “Go, O.J.! Go!”

  We push him right up to the gate. I find a stewardess and say, “Ma’am, Mr. Simpson drank a little too much last night. Can you pour some coffee down his throat and make sure he gets on the flight to Buffalo?”

  O.J. finally opens his eyes. “Hey, man. Where am I?”

  “You’re getting into an airplane.”

  “Jon, I left my rental car at your house.”

  “Don’t worry, Juice. I’ll return it.”

  “Just leave it until next weekend.”

  “What do you mean, ‘next weekend’?” I say.

  “I’ll be back, man. We’ll party some more.”

  “Juice, man, I’m going to be out of town.”

  Obviously, I was lying. Next weekend I was going to take some quiet runs at the beach and work on my fitness.

  * Harvey Klug is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s friend.

  * Eugene “Mercury,” or “Merc,” Morris is the former Miami Dolphins running back who helped lead the Dolphins to two Super Bowl victories. In 1982 he was convicted of cocaine trafficking. After serving four years in prison, his conviction was overturned on appeal. Today he is a motivational speaker.

  * Juice was a popular nickname for Simpson in the 1970s.

  * A Hertz ad that ran in the 1970s featured O.J. leaping over obstacles in an airport while an old lady shouts, “Go, O.J.! Go!”

  † Crowder is a former Penn State All-American player. As a defensive lineman for the Dolphins, he was arrested in 1977 for selling a pound of coke to an undercover cop. He is the father of current NFL player Channing Crowder.

  36

  J.R.: Phyllis started flying down to Miami to visit me after I got set up in the coke business in 1975. Italian girls are like ticks. Once they stick under your skin, it’s hard to burn them out. I had mixed feelings for her. There were times still, like when she gave wise advice, that I was glad I had Phyllis in my life. Other times her voice made my stomach twist in knots. The one saving grace I had when Phyllis moved down was that she disliked my Bay Harbor house. It was too small for her. I gave her a condo in one of the buildings I owned in Coral Gables. The idea was, we would move in together when Phyllis found a decent place for us. Most nights I was free of her. Phyllis was happy if I kept her sup
plied with money for her shopping. I was happy if I could chase other girls.

  One night I’m out at Sammy’s Eastside with Hank Goldberg and Jimmy the Greek—another person who became my best friend because of my coke—when Hank sees a beautiful girl at the bar. Hank goes over to her, starts laying some shit on her about what a big deal he is, and she says, “I don’t give a fuck. You’re too ugly for me. Introduce me to your friend.”

  Jimmy the Greek stands up and says, “Me?”

  She says, “You’re even uglier.”

  She points to me. That’s how I met Lee Sweet.* Lee was involved with a guy who owned Chevrolet dealerships across the country. He paid for her to live in the Charter Club, which was a new building on the bay,† where all the girls lived who had somebody else paying for them. Even after Lee and I got together, she hung on to this old car dealer to pay her way.

  Lee was just an average blond girl, but she was easy to spend time with because she liked boating. She’d stay over, and we’d swim in the ocean in the morning, and cruise around Miami in my boat, looking for good places to eat. One day Lee and I pulled up to the Palm Bay for lunch. I was salty from swimming in the ocean, so I told Lee I was going to shower by the pool, then meet her in the restaurant.

  I decide to take a lap in the pool, and when I reach the other side, I see a knockout redhead sitting at the edge. I swim right over to her. Bippity bop, I make some jokes, tell her my name.

  “I’m Betty Collins,” she says.‡

  “Do you like boats, Betty?”