by Mark Bowden
“What for?” Larry asked.
She scowled. “I’m wet,” she said. Her bladder had failed when the pistol was pushed into her side. The men laughed.
Larry didn’t want to let Paula out of their sight, so Glen volunteered to go upstairs and keep an eye on her. In the bedroom, as Paula quickly pulled off her clothes in the bathroom, Glen said, “Since you’re stripped down, how ’bout a little quickie?”
Paula screamed. Larry and Slim came running. Paula said Glen was going to rape her.
“Just kidding, just kidding,” said Glen, chuckling. “Boy can she scream!”
Larry had to laugh.
On the long drive out to Pottstown, Slim entertained Larry and Glen by telling Paula that Larry was really dealing drugs as a front for the “Black Mafia.”
“You don’t think we’d let this little white boy make all that money for himself?” said Slim.
At the bank, Glen claimed to be Paula’s boyfriend and accompanied her into the small room where she opened the safe-deposit box. There was about forty thousand dollars there, and plane tickets to Europe. Paula explained that she had planned to take her children on a vacation.
Afterward they all went to Smokie Joe’s, a popular tavern and restaurant just off Penn’s campus, and Larry bought Paula lunch and some drinks. He said she could keep the plane tickets and the money in her bank account so she could take her kids to Europe.
The bottom line, after David Ackerman got his reward, was that Larry was out eighty thousand dollars.
Sometime in Larry’s junior year of dental school, one of Larry’s classmates wrote an anonymous letter to the dean. The writer explained that someone in authority ought to know, if they didn’t already, that Larry Lavin was a major drug dealer. Already six of his classmates had been drawn into the business, and several had become heavy cocaine users.
The letter was forwarded to Penn’s security police, who had a few scraps of similar information about Larry from his undergraduate days. They called the Philadelphia police.
On and off during junior year, city detectives began surveillance of the comings and goings at 4300 Osage Avenue—which added credence to the initial report. Then, when Larry and Marcia suddenly moved into a new three-story house in the city’s most expensive neighborhood, that seemed to clinch it. After all, this was a student who annually filled out financial aid statements at Penn reporting an income of less than $10,000. How could he afford a $150,000 home?
Larry Lavin’s name was added to a hit list at the Philadelphia district attorney’s office.
Marcia was feeling better about things in the spring. Her last few months on Osage Avenue had been bad, the worst in her years of living with Larry.
“Why do you want to marry me?” she had pleaded with him one night after he had been out late again, and then preoccupied on the phone until past midnight.
Larry was always quick to reassure Marcia. He was good at it. Couldn’t she tell how much he loved her? Wasn’t he just about completely out of the dealing business, just as he had promised?
The move to Willings Alley Mews, even though Marcia hated the house, had at least ended the traffic of drug dealers in and out of her home. There were no more rent bills, and Larry’s new “legitimate” income enabled her to practically bank her paycheck from the VA hospital—no more paying his ridiculous $350 monthly phone bills. For Larry’s birthday in March she brought home a chestnut Labrador puppy. They gave the dog the same name as Larry’s red-haired older brother, Rusty.
She and Larry had found a Catholic church to get married in, Saint Cornelius out off Route 1 in Chadds Ford—most priests refused to schedule wedding masses for couples who were not members of their parish—and set a date, Saturday, June 7 at 11:30 a.m. That kept Marcia busy. Their invitations had gone out in fancy script on pale yellow stationery embossed with flowers. Larry, of course, wanted to invite about five hundred people. Marcia wanted something small.
“I don’t want any drug dealers at my wedding,” she said. Trouble was, nearly all of Larry’s friends were drug dealers.
Glen Fuller was definitely out, but Ken Weidler and David Ackerman and Stu Thomas and Andy Mainardi and Paul Mikuta would all get invitations. Marcia said Mark Stewart was definitely out. Larry battled hard to put him on the list, and finally Marcia gave in.
The reception was set for one o’clock at the D’Ignazio Town House in Media. Marcia bought white satin for her own dress, yards of yellow cotton with a small flower print for her bridesmaids, and went to work at her sewing machine.
In April, over spring break, Larry and Marcia flew to Miami Beach for four days. They visited Jungle Land and a serpentarium, lay in the sun, and dined out at fine restaurants. Now, with his money filtering out of the illegal business, with Ken and David handling most of the time-consuming details of dealing, recruiting runners, breaking down the coke according to the “Lavin method,” changing money at local banks, etc., Marcia felt certain that marriage was the final push Larry needed to break away from the whole scene, to settle down and concentrate on dentistry, on her, and eventually on their children. She was determined to help that happen. To stress the point, at home Marcia would take the phone—all three lines—off the hook. Each time she did it Larry was furious, but Marcia stubbornly persisted.
Still, the ugly reality continued to intrude. One night Larry’s old pot contact from Virginia Tech, Ralph, stopped by Willings Alley Mews with his girlfriend, uninvited. Marcia recognized Ralph, who was short and stocky with thick black hair, as one of Larry’s louder, cruder drug associates. She said that Larry wasn’t home. Ralph stood with his girlfriend for a moment on the front step, obviously waiting to be invited in.
“Is he coming home soon?” he asked.
“He should be. You can just wait for him out in the car,” said Marcia, and she started to close the door.
Ralph put his hand on the door and forced it open.
“I’m coming in here and showing my girlfriend this house,” he said angrily, pushing past Marcia into the living room. He took his girlfriend on a tour of the house while Marcia sat downstairs fuming. When they finally left, she slammed the door behind them.
Later, when she angrily told Larry what had happened, he shrugged it off.
“That’s just the way he is,” he said.
“I don’t care how he is. He has no right to push his way into our house!”
“Marcia, you’ve got to be nice to these people. They owe me money.”
“I don’t have to be nice to them!” she said.
When intrusions like Ralph’s occurred, even Larry’s friends sided with Marcia. They couldn’t understand why Larry persisted in trying to have things both ways, to maintain the quiet little domestic scene, with a wife opposed to his drug dealing, and yet continue trying to expand his criminal enterprise. When David Ackerman heard the story about Ralph, he said, “Larry, how can you let these people come into your home where your wife lives?”
A few nights later, it was Glen Fuller. Of all Larry’s friends, Glen was Marcia’s least favorite. He had a grin that struck Marcia as lewd. He stood for everything in Larry’s life she hated. She had first met him when she and Larry were undergraduates, on a visit to Haverhill, and was disgusted with the way Larry seemed drawn to him. She had heard a hundred times Larry’s boastful stories about stealing a snowmobile with Glen, about ripping off a stereo. . . . It was bad enough having to deal with Glen Fuller in the past. Now Glen was back on the scene, in the thick of things. Marcia didn’t care to know the specifics about what Glen was doing for Larry. But she knew he was trouble. She knew that if she was pulling Larry one way, then Glen was surely pulling him the other way. Every time she saw Glen or even heard his name she could feel Larry slipping away.
Glen sensed that Marcia’s hard feelings toward him seemed out of proportion, so he tried especially hard to overcome them. As the wedding approached, he got a few of Larry’s friends to chip in with him to buy Marcia an antique Hamilton watch
, gold framed and studded with diamonds. It had cost Glen thirty-five hundred dollars from someone he had met in Florida, but he figured it was worth closer to ten thousand. When Glen stopped by the house one evening to pick up Larry, on their way to break down his most recent two-kilo delivery, he asked if he could come in; he had a present for Marcia.
Larry stepped out into the alley and told Glen that it would be best if he didn’t come in. Marcia was especially touchy about people connected with the business coming by, he explained. Glen could tell that his friend felt bad about it.
“I got something for her, a wedding present,” Glen said. “Here. You give it to her. Tell her it’s a peace offering.”
He waited out in the alley.
Marcia was in the living room watching TV. Larry handed her the present. It was wrapped in silver paper.
“What’s this?”
“A wedding present. It’s from Glen.”
“I don’t want it,” she said, handing it back.
“Come on, Marcia, just open it.”
“No.”
“Why? He’s just trying to be nice.”
“I don’t like these people. I don’t want them at my wedding and I’m not taking anything from them.”
Larry sat down and opened the present. He could see that the watch was expensive, although it was more like one an elderly woman would wear. He was embarrassed for his friend.
“I can’t believe you won’t take this,” said Larry. “Just to be polite. It must have cost him a fortune! It’s something he wanted for you.”
“He probably stole it.”
“You could learn a few things about manners from Glen,” he shouted.
So Larry stashed the watch in his desk drawer and left. He told Glen that Marcia was going to wait to open the presents after the wedding. He later gave the watch to his mother.
As the wedding day approached, Mark Stewart began to fret.
Over their four months of working together, the older businessman had taken Larry under his wing. He gave him fatherly advice about his wardrobe, encouraging him to have shirts and suits handmade (as Mark did) and to generally improve his lifestyle. Mark had urged Larry, before the robbery, to find himself a nicer place to live.
“Marcia really likes the apartment,” Larry had said.
So Stewart had been delighted to have an excuse to move Larry and Marcia into a nicer home after they were robbed—it was almost like his way of saying “I told you so.”
Quickly, Marcia began to loathe Mark Stewart with the same intensity that she loathed Glen Fuller—he was, in a sense, a rival. It seemed as if Larry wanted to become Mark Stewart. All of a sudden he wanted nice clothes and a nice car . . . no, not just nice things, expensive things, often the most expensive things—a handmade this, an imported that. Larry had never cared about such things before. The whole mentality clashed severely with Marcia’s style, which was homespun, ordinary, and eminently practical.
For both Marcia and Larry, Mark Stewart came to symbolize—even though he wasn’t dealing drugs himself—the other pole of Larry’s existence. The Wellington Building became a soothing shelter for Larry. He would go in at night and sit behind Mark’s broad desk and juggle the WATS lines to hold conference calls to Florida and up to Haverhill and Vermont, piecing together deals. He worked up his little personal accounting with tiny handwritten numbers on pads of green paper with one of Mark’s exotic, expensive pens. Or he would count and bundle money he kept in Stewart’s safe, or reread their secret written agreements. Surrounded by the trappings of success that Stewart so assiduously acquired, twenty-five-year-old Larry Lavin could feel himself amounting to something. He could see himself behind the wheel of his own corporate empire. Mark’s attitude toward women offered Larry a way of coping with (if not resolving) his differences with Marcia. It was an unabashedly traditional, sexist perspective, one that wrote women off as a species only slightly more significant than the domestic servant. It was like a woman to be frightened about taking risks, right? All women nagged their men, right? Can’t live with them; can’t live without them. Mark understood.
Several days before the wedding, Larry got a message that Mark wanted to see him at the office.
It was late afternoon when Larry stopped by. Stewart waved him in cordially and introduced him to a man he identified as his staff lawyer.
“I’ve had him draw up an agreement I want you to see,” said Mark, pushing a piece of paper across the desk to Larry.
It was a prenuptial agreement, essentially divesting Marcia of any claim to Larry’s assets in the event she and Larry were ever divorced.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Larry.
“I know it seems ridiculous now,” said Mark. “Trust me.”
“Marcia will never sign this.”
“Maybe not. Why don’t you just ask? If she says yes, it could save you a lot of trouble down the road.”
Stewart’s lawyer joined in the sales pitch, explaining to Larry the legal nightmares of a divorce action—especially in light of his illegal earnings.
So Larry agreed to try.
Marcia was in the basement kitchen, preparing dinner, when Larry got home. He just came down the steps, crossed the room, and handed it to her.
She read it silently.
“Whose idea was this?” she asked.
“Mark thought it would be a good idea; he said—”
“No way,” said Marcia, cutting off Larry’s nervous explanation and handing him the piece of paper.
Larry chuckled.
“I didn’t think so,” he said. “I said I’d ask.”
Larry’s friends threw him a bachelor party. They invited him to a corporate suite at the Sheraton Hotel by Philadelphia International Airport. It was a fabulous place for a party. In the main room was a long glass conference table covered with a sumptuous spread of meats and breads and salads and candies and desserts. There was an open bar to supplement the ample stores of Quaaludes, joints, and private stashes of white powder. There were stereo speakers and several recessed television screens in the side wall. Connecting with the main room were three bedrooms. Larry’s friends had also reserved rooms down the hall.
A cheer sounded when Larry arrived. Paul Mikuta had helped arrange it, and in attendance were Stu Thomas, Andy Mainardi, Larry’s brother Rusty, Ken Weidler and David Ackerman and about six others. The party was in full swing when Larry arrived. There had already been heavy drinking and drug taking, so Larry’s boys were feeling no pain. Five or six whores were among the crowd. One, a plain-looking black woman, was very workmanlike. Taking the young men off to bedrooms one at a time, slipping a condom over their erections, screwing them, and then stepping out to pick up someone else, her goal was clearly to service the party efficiently and move on.
Then Larry’s wedding present arrived: two stunning blond hookers. A stir of excitement went up among the assembled men.
“Don’t get any ideas,” one of the blonds said. “We’re here just for the groom.”
Amid cheering, Larry and the blonds were led by the crowd to one of the back bedrooms. To Larry, the blonds were both a perfect 10, like women clipped from the steamy pages of a men’s magazine. His friends had arranged through Mark Stewart for this special treat.
In the back bedroom the women undressed Larry and fondled him. Then they stripped and took a shower together, toweled off, and entertained Larry with an exhibition of cunnilingus. Together they had intercourse with him. Then they got dressed and left. To Larry, who was feeling the effects of a Quaalude and some scotch, the whole hour he had spent with these women felt like a dream sequence from an erotic fairy tale. Years later he would keep a snapshot of the women tucked in one of his dental books at his office.
Later in the evening Larry took another hooker to bed. In the bed next to his, Stu Thomas was having sex with another. Larry was spent, just chatting with the naked woman by his side, when the other woman got up from Stu’s bed and tapped Larry on the shoulder.
“He said he wants to know if you’re ready to switch,” she asked.
Larry just laughed.
“Okay, climb on in,” he said.
He woke up in the bed alone in the early hours of morning and took a walk around the suite. At some point there had been a food fight, so there were pieces of sandwiches and globs of salad on the rug, ceiling, and walls. His friends were all passed out. Some of them had made it back to beds, others were sprawled on chairs, couches, or the floor, all in various stages of undress. Clothing was scattered everywhere. The whores had all gone home.
* * *
On Saturday morning Larry, clad in his white cutaway tuxedo, white ruffled shirt, and white bow tie, started out early for the church. He was afraid he might get stuck in traffic.
So he was the first to arrive. He parked his new black Volvo on a hill in the far corner of the church parking lot and watched from a distance as cars began to pull in. Larry felt as if he had arrived at the end of a long journey to a place where he was uncertain he wanted to be. He loved Marcia, but after living together for more than four years there was little passion or sexual thrill between them (certainly not like the bachelor party’s). It was a deeper, more important connection. But in light of Marcia’s feelings about his dealing, about his friends, they had actually grown further apart during the last six months than they had ever been. It seemed an odd moment to be getting married.
Larry realized that he was not going to be able to keep his promise to Marcia, at least not soon. He was making so much money so fast that he knew he couldn’t bring himself to just walk away from the business. At the rate he was going, he could triple his million dollars before 1980 was up. And with Mark Stewart starting to funnel some of that cash into legitimate holdings, Larry was on the verge of success beyond his wildest dreams. Danger seemed at an all-time low. After years of dealing openly from his fraternity, from the apartments on Baltimore and Osage avenues, after all the pot busts and hassles with Penn authorities, Larry had finally set things up so that he was virtually uninvolved with the day-to-day management of the business. He was living across town from Penn, and he had learned to keep his dealings and associates away from his house. He had stopped dealing with Tyrone and the other street hustlers, so all of his customers were his best friends—even Billy South Philly, who had become one of Larry’s closest confidants. It seemed like the perfect way to run an illegal business. He knew he could trust his friends. If any of them were ever busted, they would never turn on him or their other friends. It was like an unwritten pact. No one forced you to deal cocaine. You knew the benefits, you knew the risks. If you got caught, you took the punishment and called it the luck of the draw. There was no sense dragging your friends down with you. Larry knew he wouldn’t.