Chris told his friend that he had a business proposition.
In his job at TRW, he explained, he was handling classified government information that, according to a friend at work, Gene Norman, would be worth at least $20,000—maybe $50,000—every month to the Russians or the Communist Chinese. He said he and Norman had even discussed how they could do it and had agreed the best approach would be to go to a Communist country’s embassy in a third country—such as a Chinese Embassy in Africa, or the Soviet Embassy in Havana or Mexico City—and offer the material for sale.
Chris then proposed a partnership: he would obtain old classified documents and Daulton would sell them to the Russians or Chinese.
Daulton laughed at the idea.
“Man, you’re crazy,” he said, rejecting the proposal without taking it seriously.
“I’m telling you, we could make hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Chris said enticingly.
Daulton didn’t say anything, then tentatively rejected the idea again. But Chris knew his friend well. He knew his friend couldn’t turn down a mother lode like this, and he was right.
12
The opportunity to diversify his business with a new line of merchandise couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for Daulton. His drug business had experienced several setbacks: he had lost almost $10,000 to a rip-off after he posted front money for a drug buy that went sour and the potential seller stole his money; he had lost several thousand dollars when the Mexican Government devalued the peso and his deposits in Mexican banks, where he kept some of his operating capital, shrank overnight. And he had developed such a consuming dependency on heroin and cocaine that it was costing him $500 a week.
It was time to get out of drugs and into something else, Daulton told his brother philosophically one night in the spring of 1975. It was not like it used to be—rip-offs, undercover narcs all over the place, the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration peeking around every corner. What he really wanted to do, Daulton said, was save enough money to buy a legitimate business that the two of them could run.
“I’m a good businessman,” he boasted to David Lee. The two adopted sons of Dr. Lee had been close since childhood; even though Daulton was several inches shorter, David looked up to his brother, who was four years older, and Daulton had done his best to look after him; David was one of the few people to whom he would not supply drugs, although he had constantly tried to recruit David as a partner, and David had said he wanted no part of it.
The idea of buying a business interested the brothers and they became enthusiastic; they talked about starting with one business and building up a chain—maybe pizza parlors, a hardware store or something like that. One of the brothers mentioned the Golden Cove Delicatessen two miles from their home; it was for sale. David said he’d look into buying the deli, and Daulton said he would look into raising the capital. But Daulton had one further thought for his brother: “Stay in school and work hard; don’t blow your life like I’ve blown mine.”
In mid-March, Daulton went to a faded yellow stucco apartment house located in Redondo Beach a few blocks from the Pacific surf. Apartment E, on the second floor, was rented by a sometime business partner of Daulton’s, Danny Patrick, and they used it as a command post for their drug business.
About four o’clock in the afternoon, one of their customers, after telephoning in advance, knocked on the apartment door and introduced Daulton and Patrick to a ragged-looking man in his mid-twenties and described him as a newcomer to the Redondo area who wanted to buy some cocaine.
Daulton welcomed the stranger because he had the recommendation of an old customer, and he and Patrick quickly told him that he wouldn’t find any purer product in the entire South Bay.
Daulton lit up a marijuana cigarette and passed it to the two youths. They took a puff and the joint was passed back to Daulton and Patrick, and then back to them. It was a scene worthy of a Western movie—Indians making friends amid wisps of smoke while a pipe passed from man to man.
The stranger seemed anxious and said he wanted two pounds of cocaine, some of which he would sell to his own clientele in Orange County. After the first buy, he said, there would be others. The news delighted Daulton, always looking for avenues to increase his volume. As they negotiated a price, Chris arrived in the apartment after ending his shift at the TRW plant, and he immediately took some puffs from a newly lit joint. The stranger said he wanted to get down to business. “Let’s see how good your stuff is,” he said.
Patrick said that he had some high-quality cocaine hidden outside the apartment but didn’t want to go for it until it was dark. “Too many cops around,” he said.
Finally, after dusk turned into night, Patrick said it was safe to go out. He left and a few minutes later returned with a clear plastic bag—the kind used to keep sandwiches fresh in lunch boxes. It was bulging with white powder.
“There’s a full ounce there,” Patrick said. “It’s the best you’ll get anywhere in L.A.”
Patrick dug out a small spoon from his pocket and plucked a few granules of cocaine from the bag and handed it to the newcomer, expecting him to stick it in a nostril to savor its effects. Instead, the new customer said he wanted to test its purity, and dropped the sample into a glass vial filled with fluid that he produced from his pocket and shook it up. Defensively, he said, “I just don’t want to get ripped off; I don’t know you guys yet.” As he continued to shake the vial, the liquid became milky. It was confirmation that the substance he had been handed was indeed cocaine.
“Why don’t you snort some?” Patrick inquired. “Try it. It’s good stuff.”
“I didn’t come here to party,” the new customer said.
There was a silence in the room.
Daulton, Chris and Patrick looked at each other.
“I gotta go,” Chris said. “I think I hear my mother calling.” He got up and left the apartment.
“Are you a narc?” Daulton demanded.
“No,” he said, brushing off the question with a laugh. “I just want to see if this is good stuff or not.”
The answer satisfied Daulton and Patrick, and they relaxed. Eagerly anticipating the profit from a two-pound sale, they offered him another sample to take with him. “Try it,” Daulton said, confidently predicting that it would convince him they offered a quality product. The man shook hands with Daulton and Patrick and said he would be calling them to arrange for delivery of his purchase. He said he had a partner lined up to help finance the deal, but would have to wait a week or so to get the cash.
Ten days later, the same stranger knocked again on the front door of the two-bedroom apartment. Patrick opened the door a crack and saw his familiar face … and then he saw that the new customer was holding the shield of a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy in one hand and what looked like a search warrant in the other.
“Cops!” Patrick shouted.
He tried to slam the door in the deputy’s face. But the undercover officer was stronger and forced it open. From behind him, a raiding party of five other narcs poured into the tiny apartment while several others stood guard outside.
Daulton and one of his “runners” had been sitting at a table sorting cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines and other drugs. They looked up and saw Patrick, still screaming “Cops,” race past them toward the rear of the apartment, with shouting police officers in pursuit.
Charging out of his chair as if it were spring-loaded, Daulton ran toward the bathroom while Patrick sprinted past him into a bedroom. Patrick struggled to lock the bedroom door, but it wouldn’t lock, and one of the detectives forced it open.
Cornered, Patrick looked around, spread his arms and leaped headfirst through the window of the second-story bedroom. The window exploded with projectiles of glass. For a moment, Patrick was suspended in air, a halo of glittering shards encircling him, as if he were held there by the strings of a puppeteer. Then suddenly he fell to the ground, landing beside a staked-out policeman who was
already wiping blood from a wound in his arm ripped open by a spear of glass.
The undercover narc looked out in disbelief from the window. Then, wondering where to look for Daulton, he heard the sound of a toilet flushing. He forced his way into the bathroom and saw Daulton, his square head canted downward and looking at a spiral of gurgling water in the toilet bowl.
The inventory of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and amphetamine tablets found in the apartment was carted off to a Sheriff’s Department substation as evidence, dealing Daulton’s business another financial setback. Patrick, daubed with his own blood from scalp to shoes, managed to walk after his plunge, and he, Daulton and the surprised, newly hired runner were booked on charges of selling cocaine and possession of marijuana, methamphetamine, LSD and opium. The bail was set at $15,000.
At the substation, Daulton turned on his most cunning self. He had to. There was no possibility he could raise $15,000. Various partners owed him at least $20,000. But he knew they wouldn’t be able to raise it on short notice. His only chance was to talk his way out of the crisis. And so he began.
“I’ve had it with this drug shit,” Daulton told the undercover narc who had busted him, and he seemed genuinely contrite. “This fuckin’ dope shit has ruined my life.”
Daulton knew that the man who had set him up and arrested him was the one who would decide what charges would be brought against him, and so he decided he had to bargain with him to stay out of jail. Daulton also knew that all narcs lived by their informants—every time he had been busted it was because of a snitch—and he correctly appraised the ambitions of the deputy sheriff.
“Let me out of here and I’ll help you,” he said, offering himself as an informant.
The cop said he was interested and offered to make a deal: he would drop some of the charges, so bail would be only $10,000. He crossed out “$15,000” on the booking sheet with an “X” and replaced it with “$10,000.” But, he emphasized, Daulton would have to help him.
“I can’t get ten grand,” Daulton said. “I don’t have it. No deal.”
“Okay,” the cop said, and he wrote “$15,000” on the booking sheet again and crossed out “$10,000.”
“You want to get out of pushin’? I can help you,” the cop said. “But I can’t let you out of here, no way.”
Daulton poured it on some more: In jail, he said, he wouldn’t be of any use to the detective. Outside, he could do plenty.
The cop said he would give it some more thought. He left the room, and Daulton waited out his decision.
An hour passed and the detective returned. He said he believed Daulton meant what he said about being finished with narcotics and that he believed he really wanted to help. He had decided, he said, to reduce the charge to “Being Present Where Marijuana Was Being Smoked.”
Once again, the detective crossed off the $15,000 bail, and the next morning, Daulton was released from jail. His bail had been lowered to $500.
Although Daulton had used his wily persuasiveness to get out of jail again, he still had other problems.
The Los Angeles County Probation Department officer who was supervising the parole that had been granted to him following his arrest in 1971, and had been extended after his two arrests in 1973, had filed a report with Judge Donahue in early March recommending that the probation be revoked.
Andrew Daulton Lee simply refused to submit to the supervision of probation, the P.O. told the judge. The defendant, he said, had been given repeated opportunities to get a job or stay in college, but had spurned every opportunity and almost always missed appointments with his probation officer.
Two days after Daulton was released from jail, the undercover policeman who had made the deal with him came by his house to collect. He laid out a blueprint by which he hoped to nail a prominent Los Angeles criminal lawyer, who specialized in defending clients from the underworld, and a professional football player, a former Los Angeles Ram. Both, the cop claimed, were up to their ears in the drug business. But he needed help to get some evidence. The cop, it seemed to Daulton, was salivating at the prospect of the big collars, and the thought repulsed him. But he agreed to help set up cocaine buys with the two men which would be monitored by the detective, and agreed to be wired with a listening device. The cop left Daulton a very happy man.
“I’m not going back to the slammer,” Daulton told his friend and occasional business partner, Aaron Johnson, the next day. He had begun to suspect that Johnson himself was working as an informer; indeed, he wondered if their own 1973 arrest hadn’t been set up by Johnson. Too many of Johnson’s friends were being busted. But he didn’t express this concern to Johnson or tell him about the deal he had just cut with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. But he admitted to Johnson that he was worried about his P.O.’s report.
When Daulton had made the deal with the narc, he had intended to go through with it. It had to be done to get out of jail, he reflected. But after he thought about it, he decided that it was too risky. His life wouldn’t be worth anything if he became a snitch. Besides, it was against his principles.
The next morning, Ken Kahn, his lawyer, called Daulton and gave him more bad news: The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said that on the basis of the Probation Department report, it intended to petition the court to order Daulton’s return to jail—not the County Jail, but the State Prison. Kahn said a hearing had been scheduled for early April before Judge Donahue to consider the petition and the damning Probation Department report.
Daulton hung up and decided that he had to leave the United States. He would not go to jail. And, he thought, the Russians might provide the key to his survival.
The two friends sat in easy chairs near each other in the room at Daulton’s home that his father used as a den.
“Okay, one more time: what do I do when I get there?” Daulton asked.
“Get a telephone book, look up the address, hop in a taxi, pass the place, get off several blocks away, case it; walk in like you own the place and then give the stuff to the first security officer you see and stall until they get someone who can read it. Simple,” Chris said.
“It ain’t that simple,” Daulton said.
“You’re wasting my time. Good-bye,” Chris replied.
“Okay, okay. Sit down. What about my money?” Daulton said.
“The air fare is in the envelope,” Chris said. “Your flight leaves at eleven. That’s four hours from now.”
“No, I mean my money.”
“Take it up with them,” Chris said.
“But how do I know?” Daulton said. “It’s my ass that’s being risked, ya know.”
“Put yourself in their place,” Chris said. After all, he said, Daulton was about to offer the Russians American defense secrets.
“Now, remember, don’t give ’em my name, because if you do they won’t need you.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Daulton said. “Want a gin-and-tonic?”
Chris accepted the offer, and Daulton asked his father, who was in a nearby room, to fix them a drink.
As he did, they hunched over a typewriter and Chris tapped out a message:
Enclosed is a computer card from a National Security Agency crypto system. If you want to do business, please advise the courier.
Two days later, the undercover agent who had arrested Daulton called the Lee house to talk over the planned setup of the ex-football player and the mob attorney. Dr. Lee answered the phone, and the detective, who had met the physician at the jail after Daulton’s arrest, said he imagined Dr. Lee must be very happy that his son was getting out of drugs.
“I think he really means it,” the sheriff’s detective said. “Did he tell you he’s going to work for us?”
Dr. Lee hadn’t heard this item of news and said so.
“Well, he is,” the detective said. “He’ll really be able to do some good.”
“If he is, I don’t know how he’s going to do it,” Dr. Lee said. “He just left
to live in Mexico.”
It took a few moments for the cop to realize that he had been victimized. His first reaction was disbelief; then he asked Dr. Lee if he had a telephone number in Mexico for his son. When the physician said he didn’t have one, the narcotics officer politely said good-bye and hung up. But he vowed to himself that this wouldn’t be the end of things.
Chris returned to work in the Black Vault, and as he operated the encrypted teletype machine, he sometimes looked up from the keyboard, stared blankly at the wall and wondered what forces he had set in motion.
13
When Chris was twelve, he had taken possession of his own field, forty beautiful acres in Palos Verdes; he never took legal possession of it, but took possession of it in his mind. He shared the field with a wizened old Mexican tenant farmer named Rosco; Rosco looked after the neat rows of beans that grew on one part of the field while Chris assumed the responsibility of looking over the creatures that populated the land.
He knew where they all lived—the diamondback rattlers beneath the yellowed Palos Verdes stone; the pheasant that roosted in the eucalyptus trees; the mallards that rested in the winter and the red-winged blackbirds that fed on polliwogs in the marsh. He knew the quail and the barn owls that nested in the gnarled stump of a tree not far from a wild hive of bees. He saw where shrikes had impaled the mice they caught on cactus needles and even found which burrow a skunk and her four offspring, following in single file, disappeared into each morning. He had gotten to know a red fox with a gimpy front foot, and Chris named it—what else?—Gimpy. One morning he had found the fox dead on Hawthorne Boulevard, and after school that day at St. John Fisher, he had picked up the carcass of Gimpy, pedaled his bike to the glen that he had prowled and left it there in a better resting place.
Chris knew every inch of his forty acres, every wild flower as well as every creature. Even after he had gone on to high school he still came down to the field every now and then to watch the cottontails come out at dusk. As his faith in the institutions in which he had invested his trust waned, his field remained a constant in Chris’s life.
The Falcon and the Snowman Page 10
