Smugglers 3 Accidental Kingpin (3 page)

“Geraldo, don’t you ever do that again. From now on, you are never to hit anybody without getting the okay from me first. If you do, your whole family and all your friends will pay for it. Are we clear on this?”

“Crystal,” I said. Of course I agreed. 

“I know who the four of you are now and what you are capable of, and I’ll never forget that you guys will rock and roll in an instant with no indecision. On one hand, the four of you did me a favor, but cost me a lot of money on the other, so I expect you to make up the difference. Your weekly quota just went up twenty percent. You will never see me again as I don’t like or need to be seen.” He nodded to his henchmen. “They will take you back to your car.” That was the last time I saw the boss from Columbia.

I told the guys what had taken place and about the new marching orders. They asked if I trusted him.

“I wouldn’t trust him if he was two days dead, so watch yourselves.”

“He better watch out for us!” Tomas said.

“You got that right,” Roberto said.

“Yeah,” Juan chimed in.

I could tell by their comments and attitude that they thought they were untouchable and bulletproof, and that is when people go down, end up dead. That is when you really need to be careful because cockiness will sneak up on you with all that money and respect or fear.

Life was not all bad. With the new price and eighty people taking a slice, we were still netting two million per month. We spent all our time at tittie bars, drinking champagne at two hundred fifty a bottle, driving bullet proof cars that cost five hundred thousand each, had ten thousand square foot homes, and one of our wives drove a four hundred sixty thousand dollar Bentley convertible when she went shopping.

And of course, I had Rihanna waiting for me anytime I wanted her.

The four of us had not been fishing together in two years even though two of us now had brand new five million dollar Sportfishers. We were so deep in the cocaine business that there was no way of turning back, so we may as well become the biggest.

We started moving more and more product, and soon our distributor for the New York area wanted to come down for a face to face with us; in fact, he insisted.

I had him checked out and talked with him on the phone. He said he wanted special treatment and pricing from now on, and that he would double his weekly take of goods.

I set up a meet here using an old tactic that was used on me. I told him to be at a coffee shop at a certain time and had two guys pick him up and drive him around town for a couple of hours to make sure that they were not being followed. They then brought him to a marina where a ski boat took him to a one hundred foot Broward. Once on board, he was strip-searched for wires. Finally we sat down over drinks and the Broward took off.

“What do you want?” I asked him

“I want all of New York and do not want any competition,” he said. “I want a better price and the same quality that I am getting now.”

“How do I know that you can take over all of New York and pay for it, too?” I asked.

“I am not paying for it all the first month or two, so you will need to front me two million in goods. The people you have in New York are scattered and have no leadership. Sooner or later they will go down and roll over on the supplier, who will rollover, and the beat goes on. By the time you find out about it, they will be kicking down your door. If you stick with me you only have one man to worry about, not sixteen or twenty. If someone in my organization takes a bust, I’ll take care of him myself. I am single, smart and best of all, my money is off shore. If someone gets busted and I can’t take care of it, I will call you, say goodbye and then vanish, and the rollover stops.”

“It all sounds good except for the two million up front,” I said. I told the captain to head toward South Bimini and anchor there and send dinner up to us. This would give us more of an opportunity to talk, and then we could head back in the morning.

We continued our conversation over dinner.

“This is a funny business we are in,” I said. “It always starts with a peek and usually ends up with running for your life. I’m not going to end up that way as at some point I am going to quit and live in a town where great wealth is not unusual. Miami is one of those towns. It’s where millionaires mow the lawns of billionaires, and I won’t stand out. What’s your life style like up North?”

“Well, to be frank, I have a very modest lifestyle. I live in a two thousand square foot Brownstone and conduct all my business from a work car, a five year old Ford. To me this is all a means to an end. I make a lot of money now but do not intend to go to jail for the rest of my life. One of my goals is not to be killed by someone like you. People who drive big cars, go to clubs and get high on the supply are stupid. If you have a lot of flash in your life, you are going to jail or going to get yourself killed. I want to put one hundred million off shore and then retire, so in the meantime it behooves me to keep you safe. In fact, as far as I am concerned, this is the only time we will meet. But that’s up to you.”

“It’s funny,” I observed, “if you think this is ‘Scarface,’ you’re going down, and if you think it is GM, you could end up rich. This is chess, not checkers.”

We continued to talk most of the night and headed back in the morning. I agreed to front him the two million and never see him again.

I filled the guys in on what had taken place, but for the first time I realized how much I had changed, because I was not in agreement with them: they wanted to kill him and take over New York themselves. Meanwhile parked out in my driveway was a Ferrari and two Lamborghinis, and their owners were high or getting higher.

“If you dance with the devil at some point he leads,” I said to myself after the guys left. “What’s happened to us?” 

Roberto was totally out of control and was going to get the rest of us busted for dope and murder. We needed to do an intervention at this point, so I called Tomas and Juan together to discuss it over lunch.

To my surprise they disagreed with me and thought I was the one that needed the help! They did not like the fact that the meeting was called. They were really upset and left without eating.

I could not believe that they were so blind to their behaviors and they had “a nose full” and wanted to just kill anyone who got in their way. They truly believed that they could get away with anything because they were rich and above the law. It seemed that the more money we made the worse everything got.

I knew that we would never get back to our old way of life, but we really needed to get ourselves under control before it was too late.

I tried calling the guys one at a time over the next week and attempted to meet with them in hopes of salvaging our relationships, but they all had excuses as to why they could not meet with me.

I noticed coldness in their voices as I spoke with them, and each cut our phone conversation short. I was beginning to think that it was all in my head, as all else continued as before, except they avoided me and had someone else pick up their goods. This gave me reason to pause.

Then Juan called me and mentioned that we hadn’t been out fishing in a long time, a couple of years, in fact. He suggested we all go out on my Sportfish the following week. He wanted to meet at the marina at 6 a.m. and go out for the day and night.

“It will be fun. We can fish, talk and drink beer like the old days.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” I agreed.

The morning we were to meet I realized that something was wrong; it was not just like the old days. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. That’s why I ended up tucking my 9mm in the back waistband of my shorts and placing a small bug in my pocket that would send sound to my cell phone as an eavesdropping device. On the other hand, I still wondered if it was just all my imagination as we headed out to sea and deeper water with our beers in hand and our bodies cooling on the fly bridge.

We drank our beer and had a few good laughs, but I felt that there was an undertone to this get-together. On my way to the head I tuned in my phone to pick up the bug I’d left on the fly bridge and listened as I stood in the bathroom.

My eyes filled with tears as I listened to my three friends discussing their plan to knock me out at the barbecue and throw me overboard to die. They discussed how they would be able to split the money three ways instead of four.

My eyes were reddened from crying, and when I returned to them, I said that I had just done a big a blast.

I handed out another round of beer as we continued the trip out to blue water where we would stop for a breakfast barbecue. I sat on a bench with my back against the railing and my face turned toward the barbecue so I could keep my eye on them.

“Come on, Geraldo,” Juan said, “get your ass over here and help cook our breakfast.”

As I stood up, I reached back and pulled out my 9 mm and shot Juan in the face. As the other two started to pull out their guns, I shot Tomas twice in the chest and disarmed Roberto before he could get his gun pointed at me. I clubbed him, knocking him out, and watched as he crumpled to the deck in the pool of Tomas’ blood.

I tied Tomas and Juan’s feet to an anchor and threw them overboard. The water was a mile deep at this spot, and their bodies would never be found.

While Roberto was still out I broke both his right arm and leg and broke some ribs on his right side also. He started to come to, so I hit him with a small dinghy anchor. I went to the engine room and opened some sea cocks so the boat would sink and then placed a life preserver on Roberto’s body. I found the E-Pirb unit to alert the Coast Guard and put the six-man raft (which was set to automatically release and inflate if the boat sunk) overboard with Roberto’s body tied to it.

I set a fire on board, threw my gun over the side, and threw the E-Pirb in to make sure it worked. I lit the fire with the LP gas fully open and inside, and then got in the water and turned Roberto face down to assure that he drowned. In an hour’s time, the Coast Guard arrived and the Sportfish was on its way to the bottom of the sea. There was a lot of debris in the water where the boat had been, and Roberto was cold.

I told the Coast Guard that I did not know what had taken place as I was in the head and the others were cooking on the barbecue when I heard an explosion, so I went over the side where I found Roberto in a life preserver and the life raft. I told them that I did not know what happened to the other two, and that when I found Roberto he was almost dead. I explained that the only reason I believed I was alive was because I was in the head at the time of the explosion.

Much to my relief, the Coast Guard, the widows and everyone concerned believed my story. I arranged for all three wives to receive five million each, and I knew I would never see them again.

Chapter 3

Over the next couple of weeks I consolidated and took over Tomas, Roberto and Juan’s areas and dealers
, and instead of going to Texas or Chicago to see my dealers, I had them come to me. I made sure they were all searched, and more than once, before they actually met with me.

Among this group I had a cop from vice and an ex DEA officer for security purposes, and all my cars were bulletproof. I also had four full-time guards
at my home, all on my payroll.

Every Friday my home
, my cars and phones were swept for bugs. I never talked to anyone on the telephone and never hung out at clubs and had intermediaries set things up. In spite of all these things in place, I still had to be very careful and always on the alert. No one on my payroll was allowed to mention my name or do drugs, especially cocaine or they would be eliminated. I only saw five men on a regular basis as it was much safer that way. I never kept any cocaine in my home, car or boats.

One day my employee who ran the business in Miami informed me that business was off because a Mexican group was putting dealers on the street with crystal meth. This was cheaper and lasted longer and more importantly it was highly addictive. People who lived in poorer or middle class neighborhoods were using this now.

I told him to get all the information he could on the crystal meth and the Mexicans who were distributing it, and I would expect a report the following week.

Our gross had dropped three per cent by the following week in Miami, and I knew we had to reverse this trend quickly. My man found out that they manufactured this stuff themselves, and they were part of a Cartel from Mexico that supplied grass, cocaine and crystal meth. Their plan was to be the sole distributor for the U.S.

I had him set up a meeting with the head Mexican and inform him that are main area was the East Coast, that we do large volume and were interested in the crystal meth. I told him to tell the Mexican that we wanted to do a test run with five hundred kilos and we needed a price.

He returned within the week. “You aren’t going to be happy, boss,” he said. “They said in order to get any crystal meth from the Cartel we have to take not only the crystal, but cocaine and pills—Ecstasy—too. Second we have to drop all other distributors, and third, we have to work for them from now on and have to give up all the names and addresses of our dealers.

“They claim that their prices are comparable or better than ours, and they will take over all security matters, including any competition. They’ll also see to it that you’ll be the only one in South Florida in the business. They also sent one hundred Ecstasy pills and an ounce of crystal meth for you to check out.”

“Arrogant asshole!
Did he tell you how many men that he has on payroll for security? I could not believe that the Mexican turned down the five hundred kilos and tried to tell us that we would work for him.

“No,” my guy said, “but he did say that they were from an L.A. street gang, and doing hard time is not a deterrent as they feel
right at home in prison.”

I told him that I wanted him to find out just how strong they were and exactly what we were dealing with. I told him I would be by his office the following week to pick up the samples. His offi
ce was at the Barbecue Showroom; in fact, all my distributors’ offices were in barbecue showrooms.

A week later I sent a message back that the goods were fine, but we had a deal on cocaine that we had for many years, and we would stay with them, but I still wanted to do a deal with pills and crystal meth.

I received a answer back from the Mexican stating that the deal was no longer an option. That night my barbecues in Florida, New York, and Minnesota were burned to the ground.

I was mad as hell and went on a rampage in my office, breaking furniture and whatever I could get my hands on.  I then also broke my own “rule” and met with the head of my security and told him to set up a hit on the Mexican and several of his top members.

Before my plan was put into effect, several of my street vendors were found dead with no indication of anything being stolen. They were just shot in the head. It was the work of the Mexican.

My man told me what his plan for the Mexican was; I told him to get on it immediately. I reminded him that it was his territory, so he needed to protect it for himself also. I would take care of the rest of the US, but he had to get the Mexican out of his town! He already had the top man for the Mexican staked out along with several of his top men.

I instructed him to have the hits done with shot guns if possible and all at the same time.  I would pay an extra ten thousand per man, and one hundred thousand for him if all goes well.

On the day it was to go down, seven were killed, including the boss
, and my guy disposed of the guns at sea. Rest assured we thought it was over, and out of respect as well as fear, they would stay out of our territory.

A week later my
top security guy was found with his head missing. By the look of the rest of his body, he had been tortured for some time before death took him; I had to assume he told them everything.

Most likely h
e had told them about the hits, about me, about my family. I moved my wife and kids to New York by private plane, which would be harder to trace. I wanted everyone I loved out of harm’s way.

I did not think anyone knew
about Rihanna, but I wanted her safe, too, just in case. I deposited a million dollars in an off shore account I had set up for her a while back, and called her on a Track phone.

“Baby, you have to get out of town for a while. You have to go back to the Bahamas. Take the next plane out and leave everything behind except your passport.” I had her write down the bank name and account number I had set up for her in Nassau, Bahamas just for such a
contingency.

“When will I see you again?” she asked.

“Probably never. Go now and make a new life for yourself. And thank you for the best times of my life, baby,” I said.

After a long pause, during which I heard her sniffle, she said,
“I love you, Geraldo. I’ll never forget you.”

I hung up without another word.

During the next few days, the bodies of the men who had made the hits on the Mexican were discovered. All were headless with evidence of extreme torture.

One day a package came; it contained the head of
the guy who had replaced my security chief. The note inside read, “Your time will come.”

Within the next two weeks, I received more heads in the mail with notes attached.

My men took out some of their vendors and blew up the car with the new boss inside, killing him. We were doing assassinations and drive-bys but no torture. My men were scared and starting to rip me off and leave so as not to be kidnapped and tortured to death.

The Mexicans were brutal and without mercy as they even started killing wives and children, and this put even more fear into my men. I knew I had to make a move soon before they got to me.

I had not left my compound in weeks out of fear. I called in a Miami cop and had a sit down with him. I told him part of the story and offered him one hundred thousand to take care of my problem.

“Geraldo, you don’t understand that every time you take out their head man, they just move someone into his place and pay them more money. It will never end unless we continue the fight for you.
”

He gave me a hard look, and I nodded my head. I wanted to hear more.

“You will need to pay us one million up front and one hundred thousand per week forever or you will be kidnapped and tortured. You need to give me the money now, so we can get started before they get you.”

I agreed to all his terms and paid him. He
also said he would not arrest the Mexican kingpin for dealing drugs, and we would have to get together and share Miami and the rest of the territory. We would share on a first come first served basis, but the first one that breaks that deal would go to jail or die.

We got together the next day and did the split, with the same rules to apply for each state except California which the
Mexicans wanted for themselves because they had been there ten years or better. All the Mexican there distribute their goods.

To have a fight over California at this point would be suicide, so we started this uneasy truce about territories in Miami now and have lots of fights over who was first and was selling goods there with the most men, etc. etc. Somehow we managed to get along without killing each
other for the time being.

If anybody from outside looked at this, they would say a gun fight would break out any minute, but day by day we got by without cutting each other’s throats.

When we went into Minneapolis, we encountered a problem. They had a presence there or felt they did, with one Mexican from L.A. that they had moved there over a year ago and they were operating out of a clothing store in New Hope, Minnesota, and with an old gangster who just wanted to be in the action for all the excitement, not the money, just the jazz.

From the get-go we had trouble with Miami
. They wanted to claim it exclusively like California, but I wanted to have half of it.

At first,
dealers on street corners started to disappear; then it went to all-out war with people being shot or killed in other ways.

I decided to hire and pay monthly for a motorcycle gang. This could be a problem because for years they had been known for selling crank (speed—crystal meth). I had the cop contact the president of the local chapter for a sit-down.

When the meeting took place I was amazed at how clean cut and business like the biker was. Don’t get me wrong, he was real big, and I could tell he could kill me in a heartbeat, if I crossed him.

B
ut this was business. As the saying goes, “I against my brother, we against our neighbor and all against a stranger,” and the Mexicans were strangers to all of us. I had to give them a wholesale price on meth, cocaine and weed to get the deal done, and he agreed to our rules of security, with one exception: his men would be using the goods, too. I tried to tell him this was a mistake; if his men got high and busted, they would roll over on him. 

Consequently this would be the only time we would talk. Someone would contact him alone.

We made the deal, and he left with the understanding that I would supply him with goods, and he would take care of the Mexicans.

In the meantime my man met with the cook, and we took over his lab and chemist for meth and bought him a farm in central Florida where he set his cooking facilities up big time with the understanding that he and his wife had to be super clean with a low, low profile. We would supply the chemicals and do all the pickups and give him fifty thousand per month as long as he kept his nose clean. He and his wife should end up with twenty million in cash.

The cartel got its people in Minneapolis and so there was all out war between the Mexican gang and us for control of Minneapolis and Wisconsin, Illinois and the Dakotas.

The Mexican cartel never put two and two together. They thought it was just the motorcycle gang, but never the less, my business was growing by leaps and bounds on all fronts; the death toll on both sides went through the roof but nobody cared because they were lowlifes, corner dealers, and the DEA lost a snitch once in a while or a C.I. as they like to call them. But the motorcycle gang members were hard core and never really cared. The more Mexicans they killed, the more
bikers died. And soon the word was out: stay out of Minneapolis and St. Paul or you will die or be beaten like a piñata at the very least.

It was a constant fight in several states to keep the territories, as men kept showing up dead on both sides. The wars escalated except for Florida which stayed where it was until one day, the war spilled over to Florida, too.

I put in a call for the president of the motorcycle club and found out that he and about three dozen of his men had been blown up in a clubhouse bar in New York during a meeting. The cops thought they were killed by a Mexican gang because the outside of the club showed signs of being doused with gas and so did the line of bikes outside.

They knew that I was not behind it. But I knew they would retaliate, so to be safe, I moved the kids and my wife again with body guards to get them out of harm’s way. And I knew I had to kill the Mexicans to stand any kind of chance.

I had the cop come to my house for a meeting. “Come on in,” I said. “The Mexicans are breaking the truce everywhere which includes here. And I have to do something about it now or I will lose everything including my life and the money to pay you monthly. So I need your permission to move forward now. “

“You don’t have my permission to break the truce,” the cop told me. “If you do, you can expect to go to jail.”

I opened the security right hand drawer in my desk and took out a nine millimeter and leveled it at him and said “It’s too bad you don’t see things my way.”

“Everybody knows where I am,” he said. “If I turn up with bullet holes in me, they will be here in a hurry.”