Doctor Dealer (25 page)

“No, I’m not,” said Larry. “That’s not my building, and I’m not taking you in there. If you want to search there, you’re going to have to go get the owner and serve him with a search warrant.”

Abruptly, the two detectives who had been questioning Larry walked up to the living room. Larry assumed they had gone to confer with the others. He and Marcia sat alone at the table. They both fully expected that Larry was going to be taken to police headquarters, so Larry whispered to Marcia to call his lawyer as soon as they left. But after a few minutes of sitting alone they realized that the house was silent. Larry got up and walked up to the living room. It was empty. The door was open wide and all of the men had gone.

“They left!” he called down to Marcia.

“Are they coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

Marcia looked out the window down at the street. There were cruisers and vans pulling away.

Larry closed the door.

Marcia was delighted at first. She busied herself picking up drawers and putting things away. She was filled with nervous energy.

But later on that night, when she couldn’t fall asleep, she got up to look out the window. There was still a blue police van parked down at the end of the alley. She got back in bed, turned her head away from Larry, and quietly cried.

Glen Fuller made thirty runs to Florida for Larry from the spring of 1979 until the fall of 1980. His deliveries had grown from the standard two-kilo orders to routine deliveries of ten or more at one time. He was a stocky, moustachioed dervish during that year and a half, living life on a circuit of flights and marathon drives from Philly to New England to Philly to Florida, back to Philly and back north. . . . There was always a rush, either sellers in Florida who would only have cocaine for sale that day, or customers in New England or Philadelphia who wanted a delivery before Friday in time for the big weekend sales. Glen was tireless and fearless. He did everything on impulse. At a time when most dealers wouldn’t dare carry cocaine through airports, Glen would wake up late in Miami from a drunk the night before, realize he had to be in Philadelphia that afternoon, snort a few long lines, pack up his bags, and board the plane. When he drove he would cruise upward of 90 MPH, snorting coke to stay awake and smoking dope to ease the boredom of the drive, steering up the road shoulders if the traffic in front of him was moving too slow. Larry knew Glen was reckless, but his old friend owed him more than a hundred thousand dollars and had no other way of paying the money back. Glen earned five thousand per week—which went
toward the debt—and was paid one thousand per day in expenses when he was on the road, an amount Glen somehow managed to squander on whores (Glen liked to buy them two at a time), food, drugs, planes, cars, boats, you name it. Larry often said he didn’t care and didn’t even want to know about what happened in Florida or in airports. “I give you the money, you bring me the product,” Larry would say. “That’s all I need to know.” Glen enjoyed the freedom that gave him and was willing to accept the risks. And when Larry would sit still for it, Glen could entertain him with stories that raised the small hairs on the back of the preppie dental student’s neck.

Once a bag full of money had split open in the middle of a crowded concourse at the Philadelphia airport. He had swiftly stooped over, dropped the broken bag on top of the pile, and scooped up the pile between his arms. When he stood and looked down he saw he had gotten all but one fat bundle of hundreds—ten thousand dollars. So he kicked the bundle along in front of him until he made it to the men’s room door and into a stall, where he patched things together as best he could.

He had gotten arrested in Fort Lauderdale for reckless driving with $576,000 in the trunk. The police impounded the car and held Glen overnight in the drunk tank, where he slept on the concrete floor and contracted a skin rash that took him more than a year to lose. But the next morning a friend posted bail and they recovered the car, trunk unopened, money safe and dry.

On a trip to Orlando, Glen picked up a blond named Marti and recruited her to help him move coke through the airport. He had twelve kilos on that trip. So they split it up in their bags and got in line to go through security. Marti went through the checkpoint with no problem, but just before Glen was to follow her, the X-ray machine broke down—which meant hand searches of luggage.

Glen just pivoted, grabbed his luggage off the counter, and said, “Oop! Forgot my ticket!”

He walked back up the concourse alone. Marti put her bag in a locker down the concourse and came back.

Meanwhile, Glen had ordered himself a scotch at a bar in the terminal and called Larry, who, as usual, was in a hurry. Glen wanted to forget this flight and leave the next day.

“I don’t want to hear about it,” Larry said. “That’s your problem down there. We need that stuff up here tonight.”

“Look, Larry, they’re hand-searching everyone’s bags.”

“Go to a different terminal,” Larry suggested. “Glen, have a couple of drinks and be brave.”

“Fuck you,” said Glen, and he hung up. Marti fetched her bag and they chartered a flight back to Philadelphia.

From time to time it would dawn on Glen that he was being used by Larry and his friends, that they didn’t really consider him one of them. He was a wild man, a reckless lowlife they employed to take risks for them.

Willie Harcourt hooked up with Glen for one and only one deal in Florida. Unlike Glen, Willie was a quiet, cautious, introspective man who tried to stay constantly alert for subtle shifts in circumstance that might mean danger or the law. Willie’s idea of a good run to Florida was to get in and get out as uneventfully as possible. He met Glen at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale in September of 1980, and almost immediately wished that he hadn’t.

Instead of quickly making the deal for eight kilos, Glen wanted to take everyone out drinking and for dinner, then picked up two whores. On the way to the airport the next morning Glen drove over 90 MPH, passing slow-moving traffic by swerving over on the shoulder. Willie was terrified. Glen was enjoying himself.

When Willie got back to Philadelphia he called Larry and said, “I will never work with this guy again. He’s going to get himself and the rest of us busted.”

Larry explained that he had to keep using Glen. Glen owed him money. “If you won’t work with him, you’re cutting yourself out of thousands of extra dollars every month,” Larry said.

“It’s not worth it,” said Willie. “Count me out.”

Willie was not the only one who wanted nothing to do with Glen. Kenny and David and most of Larry’s friends thought Fuller had some kind of death wish.

Oh, he was the life of the party when Larry and his friends all went out drinking or snorting together. Like when Larry threw a bachelor party for one of his friends at the Sheraton, the same room where Larry’s bachelor party had been staged. Larry wanted Glen there, so Glen chartered a plane from Boston with Larry’s brother Rusty. There was an especially attractive young blond hooker with green eyes and a rose tattoo over her left breast who stripped to her high heels and, loaded on bourbon and Quaaludes, orchestrated a group of the boys in a circle-jerk. Rusty kicked off the festivities by inserting cherries up the woman’s vagina and eating them out, accompanied by cheers and laughter. Later on, she jumped up to dance on a glass coffee table, which shattered, depositing her naked rump on the heap of broken glass. She didn’t feel a thing, just jumped up and kept on dancing. Larry and L.A. steered her, despite her protests, into the bathroom, and working with a first-aid kit they had summoned from the front desk, patched her up as best they could . . . Glen fit right in on those occasions.

But not always. One night after flying thirteen and a half kilos
to Philadelphia in his carry-on luggage, Glen checked into the Bellevue Stratford Hotel and got dressed up for dinner. Larry and Marcia and Andy Mainardi and his wife were having dinner in one of the fine restaurants downstairs, so Glen assumed they had come to dine with him. He joined them at the table, and everyone was very pleasant until Andy asked Glen to speak with him privately. They walked away from the table and Andy whispered, “You’re not invited. This is a private party.”

Despite affronts like this, Glen had hopes of eventually taking over the business from Larry, or at least the New England branch. He knew that Marcia was pressuring Larry to get out, and that Larry had a lot of “legitimate” investments going. He had talked to Larry about taking over most of the business and just continuing to pay him a straight percentage for a few years. He knew he had competition. David Ackerman coveted Larry’s longtime, big customers—Larry’s did ten times the volume of anyone else, and he was the only one who had made millions. But Glen figured his year and a half of hard, risky work and his long friendship with Larry gave him an edge.

That was where things stood on Thursday, November 13, 1980, when Glen arrived in Philadelphia from Florida with ten kilos and checked into an apartment he had begun renting on the eighteenth floor of a building at Thirtieth and Chestnut streets. Glen got home early in the afternoon, after driving straight through twenty-four hours from Florida. Larry came over to help with the break.

They used two big aluminum bowls, first separating out the rocks from the shake, then blending inositol and lidocaine, spraying the mix with methanol and pressing that into rocks, then drying the rocks and packaging all the separate orders. It was hard work, lasting until well past midnight. By the time it was done Larry and Glen were coated with white powder from head to toe, numbing their eyes and lips and noses, dizzying them. A fine dust of cocaine lay over the walls and floor and furniture. While they worked that evening, Larry and Glen talked about going fifty-fifty on the business, and Glen said he was ready to start whenever Larry wanted. Larry had promised Marcia to stop by Christmas, he said, so they would talk about it again before then.

It was past two in the morning on Friday when they finished the break. Larry wanted Glen to get a good night’s sleep and head up to Haverhill in the morning to deliver cocaine and cash to his customers there. But Glen was too wired to sleep. He and his friend Doug, who had come by to help, decided to leave right away. Glen filled a blue Samsonite suitcase that had belonged to Marcia with money. He preferred not to carry cocaine in anything unlocked because
an open container could more easily be searched without a warrant, so he asked to use Larry’s briefcase to carry the cocaine north. Larry needed the case to carry his cash.

“If you have to go now, just use a cardboard box,” said Larry. “We’ll tape it up real tight.”

“No way,” said Glen. “I’m not taking a box home.”

But Larry was the boss, and he insisted. They packed two and a half kilos in the box and Glen carried it reluctantly down to the trunk of his car.

Glen was weary of driving. He took two Quaaludes and, stretching out on the backseat of the Cutlass Larry had recently bought for these long drives, told his friend to set the cruise control on 63 MPH. There had been a lot of busts along the New Jersey Turnpike lately. Once underway, Glen dozed.

He was awakened by the sound of a police siren. He opened his eyes and saw flashing red lights.

“Fuck!” he said.

Two New Jersey state troopers approached the car, asked to see the auto registration, and after looking it over asked Doug and Glen to step out of the car.

“I’m in my bare feet,” said Glen. “Can I put my shoes on?”

They stood alongside the car as the troopers looked inside. One of the troopers found the remains of a joint on the floor under the front seat.

He approached Glen with a clipboard.

“We’ve got a consent form here for searching the trunk, but whether you sign it or not, we’re going to search it.”

He took the keys and opened the trunk. The other trooper stepped back to watch.

Glen saw his chance.

“Douggie, let’s hit it!” The two jumped back in the car. Glen had a spare key in his hand. He jammed it into the ignition, but before he could start the motor, one of the troopers grabbed Doug and pulled him out the passenger door. Doug and the trooper tumbled together down the embankment. The other trooper lunged at Glen from the driver’s side, pushing him over and poking a revolver in his ear.

“Don’t you fuckin’ move!” he screamed.

Larry got a call before dawn from his brother Rusty.

He said, “Glen got busted.”

And Larry felt again the sinking feeling he had experienced on getting the news about L.A., about Andy, and about Dick Muldair. This was the worst yet. Rusty told him that Glen and his friend Doug
had struggled with the state troopers, and that one of the troopers had broken his wrist. So there would be assault charges, resisting arrest . . . the works.

No one associated with Larry had gotten into such serious trouble. Andy had gotten off, L.A. and Muldair had gotten only ninety days. But this was bad. Larry knew the ten pounds of cocaine was enough to send Glen away to prison for years. That was a lot of pressure—what if Glen decided to cooperate?

No. Larry knew that of all his friends, Glen would be least likely to do that.

“I’ll get him a lawyer,” Larry said. “If you talk to him, tell him to hang on. I’ll take care of him. We’ll have him out as soon as we can.”

Over the next two days, Larry put up $200,000 in bail for Glen and Doug. Then there was $50,000 to retain the services of one of the top drug lawyers in the country, a Washington, D.C., attorney allied with NORML (National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws). The ten pounds of cocaine Glen had been carrying represented a lost $224,000 in profits. The car, which had been seized, ran another $10,000. It pained Larry to see those figures lopped off his running profits column on his books. In his gut, it didn’t matter that he was two million or more ahead of where he had started. Once a certain level was reached, Larry experienced any new setback as pure loss. Glen’s bust was the largest single loss of Larry’s dealing career.

Heat seemed to be coming from all sides. It had been a terrible year, one trauma after another—the robbery, Paula Van Horn, Ralph, the riot at the Arena, the police raid . . . now this!