Doctor Dealer (20 page)

Billy Motto hung on to his pot business, despite the growing demand for cocaine. He had pot people with no interest in cocaine, and cocaine people with no interest in pot. But either way he was making more money than he had ever dreamed would be his.

So much money that he was able to convince his mother to retire early from her longtime job as a seamstress at the Quartermaster “sweatshop,” as she called it, and to give his father enough money to retire from his street-corner produce vending. Billy sponsored a neighborhood softball team. He hung out on the same street corner down off South Street, where people who used to laugh at him now came to ask for a loan, or for advice.

Larry had big plans for Billy South Philly. He had begun to think of Billy as someone who could eventually run the business for him. He liked Billy even more than David, although Ackerman was clearly better educated. As David had made more money and taken on more responsibility, he had lost some of his initial respect for Larry. Once David had mastered the details of the breaks, of keeping the books and changing the money, recruiting runners, etc., much of Larry’s mysterious aura of power and success evaporated. At times, there were signs that David felt he knew how to run things better than Larry himself. There were times when Larry could see David eventually becoming a rival—and a dangerous one at that. Billy, on
the other hand, had proved himself to be eminently capable—his payment for goods delivered was always punctual and accurate to the penny—and admired Larry so openly that he was a joy to have around.

He knew he could trust Billy because of something that had happened six months earlier, in the early fall of 1979. Even after Billy had begun dealing cocaine, he had kept after Larry, month after month, about his desire to be introduced to marijuana contacts in Florida. Finally, by summer of 1979, about the time cocaine had reduced Larry’s interest in pot dealing to a minimum anyway, Larry agreed to let him make a run to Florida. Billy had never even been on a plane.

Larry gave him sixty thousand dollars. Billy showed the money to a few of his friends down in South Philly.

“Take it,” they said. “Rob him. He’s just some college kid; what’s he going to do about it?”

But Billy said, “No. I’ll stay with him and make more money than this.”

Billy flew to Miami, barely taking his eyes off the window the whole trip. Larry had coached him on every detail. At the airport he would have to take a cab to the hotel, where he would be contacted by a supplier. Billy flagged a cab, checked nervously into the hotel, and waited, pacing his hotel room.

And it all happened just as Larry said it would. Within an hour this short, mugsy guy showed up with a big bodyguard. They walked out to the hotel parking lot. The mugsy guy showed Billy two to three hundred pounds of pot in the trunk of a new model Chevy. Billy handed over the cash.

“So you’re Billy,” said the supplier. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Larry. Why you doing business through him? You and me, we should do business directly.”

Again, Billy resisted. Larry had been good to him. He knew Larry was bringing him along, letting him get bigger. Something told Billy that he would do better by sticking with Larry.

“No thanks,” he said. “I don’t do business that way.”

The two men left Billy with the car, which he then drove directly back to Philadelphia.

In time, the story about Billy’s response to the offer in Florida got back to Larry. It said something about Billy that really impressed him. Larry had to ask himself:
What would David Ackerman have done?

Stewart started sending Flyers tickets over to Osage A venue regularly, great tickets just two rows up behind the players’ bench at center ice. Larry took Marcia to one game and she was hooked. So they started going out to dinner and then to the Spectrum every two
weeks. Larry took along his new camera and huge telephoto lens for closeup shots of the action.

After one such outing in late March, Larry and Marcia and L.A. returned late to the Osage Avenue apartment. Larry invited L.A. in for a drink.

They had been inside only for a moment when the doorbell rang. Marcia had gone into the kitchen to make her lunch for work the next day. Larry opened the apartment door and crossed the first-floor hallway to the front door of the apartment building. He opened the door a crack and peeked out at a face he didn’t recognize.

“There’s been an accident outside; can you help us?” the man asked. He was a black man about Larry’s age. Judging by his accent he was not a Penn student.

Larry turned the handle to open the door, and as he did he felt a sudden impact against it, pushing him over backward, off-balance. Larry could see there were two men pushing through. In one man’s hand was the blue-black metallic flash of a gun.

Larry quickly threw his full weight back against the door, partly closing it. Only two arms and hands and guns protruded through the doorway. Larry screamed for help.

“Call the police!” he shouted.

He knew he couldn’t hold the door. Just as it gave way, L.A. came running out to the foyer. One of the men smacked L.A. across the face hard with the pistol, knocking him down. Larry lunged at the man’s back, but got hit over the back of the head by the man behind him. He went down.

When Marcia heard the doorbell ring she had assumed it was someone coming by to do business with Larry again, which irritated her. Then she heard Larry scream. She wheeled around and looked out toward the front. She saw the arms sticking through the door with guns, and Larry and L.A. struggling. She stepped back into the kitchen confused. Should she call the police? But then she knew Larry had drawers full of money and cocaine and Quaaludes in the back room. . . .

Then one of the men was in the living room shouting, “Don’t look at us! Don’t look at our faces!”

He saw Marcia in the kitchen.

“Come here, bitch!” he shouted, showing his gun. Marcia stepped toward the living room and he grabbed her by the arm and pushed her down on the floor. L.A.’s face was pressed straight into the thick blue rug. He was bleeding and his glasses were shattered. Next to her Larry raised his head, and one of the standing men clobbered him again with the gun. One of the men held a gun to the back of her head.

“Just don’t look at us and nobody is going to get hurt,” he said. Marcia pushed her nose into the carpet.

Larry lifted his head again. “I know who you guys are and you better leave right now!” He got hit over the head again. Marcia thought,
Why doesn’t he just shut up?

One of the men had gone directly back to Larry’s study. They could hear him trying the drawers to Larry’s desk. He came striding back into the living room hollering, “The keys. We know you have keys to the desk back there. Where you keep the money.”

Larry fished the keys from his pocket and handed them up. “Look, this man’s hurt; we have to get him to the hospital,” he said, and got hit on the back of the head again.

“Stop lifting your head up, you idiot,” Marcia told him.

L.A. hadn’t stirred.

One of the men went through the kitchen and down the hall. They could hear the keys jingle and the desk drawers being opened. The other man moved around the living room, jerking the phone cords from the wall and then trying, still holding the gun, to work Larry’s stereo out from its space on a shelf by the TV. Suddenly, the gun went off.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“Did anyone get hurt?” Larry shouted.

Both men bolted. They slammed the door shut behind them and were gone.

Larry, Marcia, and L.A. lay quietly for a few moments until they were sure the men had gone. Then Larry bounded up to check out his desk in the back room. Marcia turned to help L.A., who sat up dazed and bleeding. A neighbor from upstairs, a dental school classmate whom Larry paid to help break up cocaine shipments, banged on the door.

“Are you all right?” he shouted through the door. “Should I call the police?”

The men had taken off with Larry’s keys, and in the confusion of the moment Marcia couldn’t remember where she had put hers, so she couldn’t open the door.

In the back room Larry inventoried his drawers. Two cash drawers had been opened. One was filled with neatly stacked ten-dollar bills. They hadn’t been touched. The drawer that had been filled with twenties was empty. There had been a pound of cocaine in a Ziploc plastic bag on top of the desk. That was gone. They had evidently torn the bag open before taking it, because there was a mess of white powder on the floor.

Larry was thinking fast. Someone had surely heard the shot. The police were going to be there soon.

He ran out to the living room.

“Are you okay?” he asked Marcia.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Go vacuum the back room.”

Through the locked door, he told his neighbor to run around back to the window of his study. With Marcia running the vacuum, Larry hurriedly passed handfuls of bills and bags of drugs out the window to his neighbor. They had the room completely cleaned long before the police arrived.

Larry’s wheels were turning fast. He found Marcia’s keys and opened the front door. Then he got his neighbor to help him move the stereo. The more stuff he could remove to the basement fast, the more he could claim had been stolen. He certainly couldn’t report that they had gotten away with thirty thousand in cash and a pound of cocaine.

He was carrying the stereo down the hallway to the basement steps when the police arrived.

Larry blurted an explanation. “I was afraid they’d come back, so we’re moving a few things out,” he said.

The cops couldn’t have been nicer.

“They got the stereo, huh?” one of the cops said.

Larry caught on immediately. “The stereo? Yeah, my five-hundred-dollar stereo.”

Inside the apartment the same cop glanced over at Larry’s new Sony.

“They got your TV, too, did they?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Larry, smiling.

“Damn shame,” said the cop, adding it to his report.

When the police were gone and L.A. had bandaged his head and gone home, Marcia collapsed on the bed. She was numb, and frightened. As usual, Larry went right to the phone. He called Tyrone and Mark Stewart—lately it was as if Mark Stewart were taking over their lives. Marcia couldn’t stand him. She sobbed.

Paul Mikuta stopped by to see if she and Larry were all right. He sat on the bed and wrapped his arms around Marcia to comfort her.

“I feel sorry for you,” said Paul. “All the things that Larry puts you through.”

“This wasn’t his fault,” she said.

Then Larry marched in and angrily announced that he knew why this had happened.

“It’s Warren,” he said.

Warren was one of the toughest characters among the West Philly
dealers Larry had met through his dealings with Tyrone. Even Tyrone had warned Larry about him. That afternoon Warren had come by with some Quaaludes. Larry had a weakness for Quaaludes, and in 1980 they were becoming rare. So he had counted out a few thousand dollars to pay for them, being careful not to open the drawers where major cash was stacked. But as he was counting, one of his runners had stopped in unexpectedly and, without thinking, had cheerfully poured sixty-five thousand in cash out of a tennis bag onto a chair in the back office. Larry had half expected Warren to pull a gun right there. He was so nervous he inadvertently overpaid for the Quaaludes.

“I just talked to Tyrone, and he said Warren was telling people just this afternoon that if I wasn’t more careful, I was going to be ripped off,” said Larry. “Anyway, I got word out on the street about these guys. I’m going to get them.”

Marcia had listened to all this as though in shock. She was no longer just frightened. Now that she knew how and why this had happened, she was furious!

“This
is
your fault!” she said, glaring at Larry.

“What?”

“How could you let that happen to us! You let those people into my home bringing money and drugs at all hours of the day and night. I can’t even sit around on the couch at night and watch TV without people coming in and out of my own home! You let anyone in from off the street! I’m not surprised this happened! We could have all been killed!”

Larry was stunned. Her sudden outburst took Larry and Paul by surprise.

“This wasn’t my fault,” Larry protested.

“Larry, you have got to stop. You have got to stop doing this. Something worse is going to happen! Don’t you see?”

“I’ve got word out on the street right now about these guys,” Larry said. “It’s not going to happen again. I’m going to get these guys.”

“Oh, that’s just great!” said Marcia. It was as if they were on different wavelengths.

Paul excused himself, awkwardly, leaving Marcia and Larry to fight things out. She could not get him to see that it
was
his fault, that it had grown out of his dealing, not just because one stupid runner had dumped money on the couch in front of the wrong person.

“You’re like an addict,” Marcia said. “You keep promising to quit, and then you don’t. It’s like you’re crazy or something, Larry. You’re addicted to this. And you can’t even admit it to yourself.”

“That’s not true, Marcia. I know what I’m doing.”

“Well, I’m leaving. I just can’t take any more of this.”

Larry was, for once, silent. Marcia had gotten angry before about
his dealing. They had shouted at each other about it often enough. But she had never before threatened to leave.

“Please don’t,” he said at last. There was no cockiness in his voice now. “Don’t leave,” he said. “I’ll stop.”

Marcia was moved by his depth of feeling. In recent months she had had serious doubts about his affection for her, and as their wedding date approached the issue was coming to a head. It was more than six years since Marcia’s first day at Penn, since the day she met Larry. She had matured from a pudgy, insecure teenager to a very poised and pretty young woman. She wore her straight brown hair short. Her face had lost all trace of its teenage chubbiness. It was now a wide oval with gentle contours at the high cheekbones, with large brown eyes and dark eyebrows. Gone was the round, childlike figure of freshman year. Marcia had a small, lean figure and kept herself in good shape. And just as she had physically shed baby fat, Marcia’s personality had become more lean and sharply defined. Earning her own degree and making her own way as a physical therapist had given her confidence in herself. Although she remained resolutely devoted to him, she no longer hesitated to criticize Larry. She had no doubt that her judgment was sounder than his. To Marcia, Larry’s obsession with dealing and making money had become pathetic. She knew she loved him, despite everything, and it relieved her deeply to see that he was not so far gone that he was ready to throw away their future. Surely Larry was too bright and too basically decent to avoid eventually being drawn into her orbit.