Doctor Dealer

by Mark Bowden

  Larry was doing him a favor.

  Somehow, despite his growing drug dependence, Ricky managed to hang on to his job at Western Electric. In 1984, Ricky used the money he had been banking from his job to make a down payment and obtain a mortgage for a house on Sunset Lake in Haverhill, near the place where he and Larry had long ago spent summers with his parents.

  Ricky made sure his father and mother saw only the surface of his life. They were pleased with his steady progress after years of drifting. His parents had nothing but stunned admiration for their son’s old friend Larry. Whenever they saw the Lavins they heard more about their phenomenal youngest son’s success. Once, Ricky’s father asked Justin, “So, I hear Larry’s working on his first million!” When Ricky relayed the comment to his friend, Larry said, “Tell Ted I’ve hit it.”

  His parents never got the word when Larry was arrested in Philadelphia, or that he had jumped bond and was living in hiding. Ricky never told them.

  Friday, June 14, 1985, was a regular workday at Western Electric for Ricky Baratt. He was looking forward to spending time over the weekend with his family. Sunday was Father’s Day. In the ten months since Larry’s bust in Philadelphia, Ricky’s life had come together. His source of cocaine had dried up, and Larry’s flight had relieved him of the crushing burden of debt. At work he had been selected for a training program to work on secret military contracts. That morning he had taken advantage of his half-hour morning break in his usual way, by smoking a joint in his car on the lot outside the Andover plant, so he was feeling relaxed as he walked back in the front door. But instead of just waving him in as usual, the guard at the front door told Ricky that he was wanted in the security office.

  Ricky assumed he was going to get word on his application for security clearance for the training program.

  When he entered the security office, a Western Electric guard told him that the FBI wanted to see him.

  “What about?” asked Ricky.

  “I guess it’s about your security clearance,” he said.

  Two men wearing suits stood when Ricky entered the office. A company security executive was seated behind the desk.

  “Mr. Baratt?” asked one of the standing men.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re with the FBI. You’re under arrest for drug trafficking.”

  At first Ricky thought it was a joke.

  “Okay, now what do you really want?” he said.

  “No, no,” said one of the agents. “This is what we want. We’re here from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.”

  Ricky could hear his heart start to pump loudly and felt a sudden rush of panic, but then he took a deep breath and urged himself to stay calm. Larry had always told him to say nothing if he was arrested.

  The agents showed Ricky a document and asked him to sign it. He read over it quickly.

  “No, this says I’m willing to waive my rights,” he said. “I don’t want to do that.”

  “Okay,” said one of the agents. “Stand up.”

  Ricky stood. The agents began searching his pockets, taking his money, his wallet, and his watch. They put his hands together behind his back and handcuffed him. Then they led him out the door, walking him out through the crowded offices. His friends and co-workers watched with looks of astonishment.

  Oddly, Ricky felt calm, even detached. It might have been the effects of the joint he had just smoked out in his car. He worried about his dog. If he was going to be in jail overnight, or over the whole weekend, who was going to feed and walk the dog?

  In the ten months since Larry’s arrest, Ricky had been living in a kind of fantasy, deluding himself with the hope that his crime was too small to warrant prosecution. He had not realized until then how much he had feared and dreaded this moment.

  And yet, he felt oddly peaceful and resigned. A great weight of worry lifted. On the long ride to the courthouse in Boston he tried to imagine what evidence they had against him. Rusty Lavin had said his name had been in one of the crude ledgers seized at Bruce Taylor’s house, but that had happened almost a year and a half ago. How much could they make of that?

  At the courthouse he was left in a concrete holding cell with a group of Hispanic men.

  “What’s going to happen?” he asked the agent who led him into the cell.

  “Well, you’re going to be arraigned, and if you make bail, you’ll go home,” he said.

  After about an hour they led him out of the cell and took him for fingerprinting and a mug shot. One of the supervising agents told Ricky that he was allowed to make a phone call.

  “Who should I call?” Ricky asked. “I don’t have an attorney. I don’t even know one.”

  “Think of someone to call,” the agent said. “You’ve only got one.”

  So he called his mother. There was a long silence on the phone as he explained.

  “Does this have something to do with Larry?” his mother asked.

  “Possibly,” said Ricky. He was nervous about talking on the phone in the marshal’s office. “Just find me a lawyer. Call somebody.”

  By late afternoon a lawyer arrived at the courthouse and obtained Ricky’s release on fifty thousand dollars’ bail—the judge accepted the lawyer’s word that the five-thousand-dollar bail deposit would be paid on Monday. Ricky borrowed five dollars from the attorney and took a train and a cab back to the plant. It was early evening. His car was the only one left on the lot.

  He drove to his parents’ house. Over dinner he told them for the first time of his experiences with Larry over the last four years. His father and mother, who had been patient with him for so long, again listened sympathetically. They said they had known something was wrong, but never exactly what.

  “Now that we know,” said Dr. Baratt, “we can do something about it.”

  Ricky felt a great sense of relief, and an enormous sense of gratitude for his parents’ loving response, and even a certain sense of pleasure at finally being able to expose Larry Lavin, the superstudent, the dentist, the financial whiz kid his parents had always admired, for what he was.

  “Gee,” said Dr. Baratt. “I guess Larry wasn’t as smart as we all thought.”

  On Monday, the FBI pulled in its nets. Thirty more of Larry’s friends and associates were arrested and charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

  Among the catch: Paul Mikuta, Billy Motto, Ken Weidler, David Ackerman, Willie Harcourt, Brian Riley, Stu Thomas, Danny Schneps, Gary Levin, and Stan Nelson. Also arrested were Jeff Giancola, Larry’s old friend from Phillips Exeter, now an attorney with the U.S. Small Business Administration in Washington, D.C., and Gordon Acker, the fifth former Penn Dental School student charged in the conspiracy. Soon the FBI would add to the list Dan Dill, the fraternity brother who introduced Larry to dealing at Penn and who had gone on to become a vice-president with the investment firm Kidder Pea-body, and Christine Pietrucha, Suzanne Taylor’s faithful friend.

  In a statement issued to the press, an FBI spokesman named the missing Larry Lavin as architect of the drug conspiracy, and said, “This case typified the insidious greed that now permeates all walks of the American way of life, which has resulted from the large profits obtained from the sale of narcotics. Those involved came from all walks of life. Prior arrests and records are the exception rather than the rule. . . . Most of those involved have been considered affluent and productive members of their community.”

  At the courthouse, big Willie Harcourt sat next to Ken Weidler on the same row of seats Larry and Frannie Burns had occupied ten months earlier. Willie could remember the night four years ago when Ken had offered him a chance to get involved in the business. Ken had been so successful then. It was as though he glowed with affluence and style.

  Now Ken’s head was down. He didn’t want to look Willie in the eye.

  “I’m sorry about this,” said Ken.

  Summer was long and hot in Virginia Beach. Larry spent every available day on the ocean. He took turns inviting his neighbo
rs out on the boat, pulling them on water skis and fishing with them. His scuba diving grew more and more adventurous and frequent.

  At home, Larry continued to sink roots into the community. He loaned money to a friend on a home construction project, and spent forty thousand for an expensive cement pump to help expand the business of the contractor who had built his backyard pool. Working with the owner of the diving shop, Larry discovered that scuba gear imported from Taiwan cost a fraction of what the dive shop was paying American manufacturers. In pursuing that he learned that the Port of Hampton Roads, in order to encourage business, offered generous assistance to businessmen interested in having merchandise imported. Larry was convinced that if he hit upon the right product to import, he could build a thriving legitimate business for himself.

  These nascent ideas were all in Larry’s head the day he told Ken that, even if all the legal troubles somehow went away, he might not want to come back.

  Larry bought himself a bigger boat that summer, replacing his twenty-six-foot Sea Ray with a thirty-two-foot Wellcraft. He liked to take out parties of three or more on his excursions, and the smaller craft was just too cramped. The larger vessel was better equipped to handle ocean waters miles offshore, where Larry liked to dive. He loaded down the cabin of his new vessel with sophisticated electronic navigation equipment, a depth finder, and other devices. Fishermen who docked their boats at Lynnhaven liked to take Brian O’Neil along on their outings because he would dive and tell them where the fish were swimming. Larry preferred diving to fishing anyway.

  It was on one such outing that he had met Pat O’Donnell, a retired FBI agent who was working for the state police’s white-collar crime unit. When Larry came home and told Marcia that he had been out all day with someone from the FBI, she panicked. She thought they should just pack up and move out. But Larry felt so comfortable with Pat that he began going out regularly on the boat with him and his friends, some of them state policemen and FBI agents. He and Marcia, who thought the idea was insane, even attended a Christmas party at Pat’s house.

  Brian O’Neil was a remarkable friend and neighbor to the Virginia Beach community. He loaned money to his friends liberally, and took pleasure in cultivating his growing reputation for warmth and generosity. He talked Jess Miller’s teenage son out of a chewing-tobacco habit by giving the boy an amazingly detailed technical description of the progress and consequence of mouth and gum cancer. He lectured at the local high school class of another neighbor, Andrew Payne, about investing in the stock market. When one of his scuba-diving buddies, Walter Heller, confessed that he had a lifelong ambition of tracking down and meeting his real mother (he had been put up for adoption as a baby), Brian coached the diver on methods of tracking down missing persons, leading him to private detective agencies that eventually found the woman living in California. Then Brian threw a party and took up a collection—donating a liberal sum himself—to send the diver on a trip to California to meet his mother. When one of his friends broke up with his longtime girlfriend, Brian had hours to spend fishing, drinking beer, or just sitting around the pool, lending a sympathetic ear, helping to ease the heartache. Brian inspired loyalty and deep affection in those he befriended, everyone from neighborhood teenagers to the retirees with whom he fished and dove off Lynnhaven’s piers.

  In January, Brian took a trip to the Florida Keys with a group of his diving buddies. He had read all of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, so he spent the better part of one day looking through the author’s house and favorite haunts.

  Marcia watched with little surprise as Larry’s friendships, his diving and fishing, and his new business interests gradually pulled him back out of the narrow family orbit they had enjoyed so briefly after fleeing Philadelphia. She looked back fondly on the weeks that they had spent in the beach apartment, when the phone never rang and Larry had nothing to do but spend time with her and with Chris. Their shared sense of danger had for a time brought them closer than they had ever been. By early 1986, Larry was every bit as busy and preoccupied as he had ever been dealing drugs and practicing dentistry. It was as if they lived separate lives, Marcia at home with the children, Larry out and around, looking on his family role as more of an obligation than a joy.

  News from their past life was frightening and sad. Larry’s friends and associates were all going to jail. One morning Larry read in USA Today where twelve of his coconspirators were sentenced, but it didn’t include what the sentences were. He got the numbers from his brother: David Ackerman, 15 years; Ricky Baratt, 5 years; Frannie Burns, 16 years; Dan Dill, 5 years; Willie Harcourt, 8 years; Paul Mikuta, 12 years; Brian Riley, 12 years; Stu Thomas, 7 years; Billy Motto, 20 years!

  Larry could guess why Billy had gotten hammered. Of all those involved, of all the Ivy Leaguers and young professionals, grade-school-educated Billy Motto had known better than anyone what the risks were. It was Billy who had insisted all along that eventually they would all go to jail. Larry knew that the feds would consider Billy an “organized-crime figure.” From life in South Philly, growing up as a teenage drug addict, fighting his way out of real poverty, Billy knew more about consequences in the real world than any of Larry’s other friends. He was the one who tolerated violence in the collection of his debts. So, in that sense, he was the most seriously criminal of them all. But Billy was also the only one who would never squeal. Everybody else had mouthed the ideal: “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” But Billy had really meant it. He would never flip. And the government wouldn’t forgive him for that.

  It was interesting to note that Ken Weidler had only received two and a half years. Larry, who had never called Ken back after their conversation in June, wondered how Kenny had managed to pull it off. Two and a half years! What could Kenny have given them that was worth so much?

  In his happy isolation, Larry could view with detachment the collapse of his business and the downfall of his friends. He could congratulate himself for being the only one smart enough to have gotten away. It alternately made him feel like a genius and like a schmuck. In the late-night hours after Marcia had gone to bed, he would sit watching TV, eating his standard plate of hot dogs, and sometimes his freedom and satisfaction turned to feelings of guilt and betrayal. After all, he was responsible for destroying all those promising young lives. But the feeling would pass. Larry could think of no instance when he lured someone into the business, or forced them to stay when they wanted out. It was like some accident of history. It had landed him on his feet, and everyone else on his ass. And there was no way that was just luck.

  Larry learned in late winter that the FBI planned to indict both his brother Rusty and his sister, Jill. He talked to Rusty on the phone almost every week. In desperation, Larry called Tom Bergstrom to see what he could do. Tom told him that the FBI might be prepared to leave Rusty and Jill alone if he would turn himself in.

  “How much time would you be willing to do?” Tom asked.

  “To tell the truth, Tom, right now I can’t see myself doing any time in jail at all,” he said.

  Although it weighed heavily on his conscience, Larry knew that he would not turn himself in to save his brother and sister. There was a simple, ugly truth behind the decision. He loved his brother and sister, but he loved his freedom more. His year as a millionaire fugitive had been the happiest year of his life. How could he voluntarily give that up? At worst, Rusty and Jill would have to be away for a few years. Judging by the sentences his associates had received—Billy had gotten twenty years!—Larry knew he could expect to spend a decade or more behind bars.

  He told Tom that he wanted to wait and see whether they really did arrest Rusty and Jill before making up his mind.

  “Then it will be too late,” said Tom.

  But Larry had already decided.

  In early April of 1986, “Brian” piloted a fishing and diving expedition forty-five miles offshore.

  Loaded down with beer, crabs, bait, air tanks, and diving equipment, he eased th
rough the Lynnhaven outlet with his friends Lee, Wally, and Barry before sunrise. Only the glow of all the electronic equipment in the cabin illuminated the blackness of the ocean. The water was still and flat. As dawn approached, the sky and ocean glowed a deep reddish orange that slowly faded until the first blinding flash of sun edged over the rim.

  Their destination was the sunken remains of the Morgan, a U.S. Liberty cargo ship from World War II that had carried tanks, tank parts, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and 70-mm shells. The Morgan had crashed into a commercial freighter on its maiden voyage out of Norfolk harbor. Larry’s electronic gadgetry located the sunken wreckage easily, and buoys were thrown overboard to mark its location. It took about forty minutes to maneuver the vessel directly over the wreck. Larry and Lee took turns with Wally and Barry diving down 120 feet, exploring the remains of the cargo vessel. That afternoon, Larry located the sunken remains of the Cayahoga, a 125-foot Coast Guard cutter that had taken seventeen trainees to their deaths when it sank. Larry anchored over the wreck and took a nap while his friends fished.

  When he woke two hours later, a thick fog had rolled over the boat. He had planned to dive down to the wreckage, but the fog would make it impossible to see the buoys for an anchoring run. They decided to head back. Negotiating the fog with the boat’s electronic equipment was easy.

  As the vessel got under way, Larry climbed back down into the cabin to warm soup for himself and his friends. He had installed a small microwave oven in the cabin, and found occasion to use it on every outing. As he worked in the cramped space below, Larry shouted up to his friend Barry, asking how far they were from land.

  “The monitor says six miles,” Barry shouted.

  But before the last words were spoken, there was a crash and Larry was thrown against a cabin wall.

  In an instant, he and his friend Lee exchanged a terrified glance, expecting to hit water. But nothing happened. The vessel was oddly stationary, as if it had suddenly been lifted out of the water.