Cocaine Confidential

by Clarkson, Wensley

  Now she lives alone in her hilltop home still fearful that the other drug barons she has crossed will one day seek revenge. There’s something about Jody that reminds me of that burned-out actress recluse played by Gloria Swanson in the classic movie Sunset Boulevard.

  ‘I’ve dealt with the Mob in Vegas, the Mafia in New York and the Cubans in Miami,’ says Jody in a throaty, deadpan smoker’s voice. ‘They all trusted me at one time or another but in the end coke sent them all crazy.’

  These days, Jody is a virtual recluse in her whitewashed hacienda about thirty miles inland from the Costa del Sol. ‘There’s only one road in and one road out of here,’ she explains. ‘If anyone came looking for me, I’d know about it before they did. I bought this place especially because of that.’

  Jody’s only companions are two Irish Wolfhounds called King and Queen (they’re both male) in a property surrounded by high white walls and an electronic gate system that seems more akin to Fort Knox.

  ‘I don’t go out much any more,’ she explains. ‘I did all my partying between my twenties and seventies. These days just putting the kettle on for a cup of tea is an effort. But I don’t regret a thing about my life. Why should I?’

  Jody reckons she’s survived the deadlier aspects of the cocaine game because she’s been extremely discreet about the ruthless drug barons she’s worked with down the years. It’s made her very guarded about her former life, which makes being interviewed by me a difficult process for her. ‘I find it hard to talk about what went on back in the bad old days. I saw things that no person should have to witness. I even pleaded with one Mafia guy not to kill my then boyfriend after he was suspected of being a police informant.

  ‘In the end they ignored me, dragged him down to the basement and the last thing I remember hearing was his high-pitched scream followed by the firing of three bullets in fast succession. The bastards dragged his body onto the back of a truck before I even got a chance to say goodbye. And that is just one of many such incidents. I’m only scratching the surface.’

  Jody first got involved in the cocaine business back in the late 1960s when her then boyfriend – a Cuban national based in Miami – started running coke from South America via Cuba on a light aircraft.

  ‘It was so easy back then. The coastguard and just about everyone else at that time was more worried about the Soviets firing missiles from Cuba than anything else. Coke was not high on any law enforcement agenda, so flying a few pounds in via an small municipal airport near Boca Raton was no big deal.’

  Jody says at the time cocaine wasn’t given any priority by authorities. ‘They knew about its existence but it wasn’t until it started flooding in from Colombia in the mid-seventies that it began being treated like the Devil’s Candy.’

  Jody claims that it was around that time that she flew with her then lover to Cali, Colombia, to meet with cocaine cartel members so that her boyfriend could arrange to buy a shipment. ‘They were a strange group of men. They seemed to think they could have sex with any woman who took their eye. I bumped into one of them in the corridor of the hotel where we were staying and he tried to rape me after I stopped to say goodnight.’

  Shortly after this, Jody got involved in cocaine exportation with the Vegas Mob. She was even propositioned in a Las Vegas hotel elevator by Frank Sinatra. ‘I’d moved to Vegas to try my hand at being a croupier and met this heavy, connected guy with a mean Brooklyn accent. He’d just gambled and lost a small fortune on the roulette wheel right in front of me. It was only as he was trying to kiss me in the elevator I realised it was Sinatra! Well, within an hour I was in bed with him.

  ‘The following morning, he let one of his associates whisk me off with his two bodyguards in a stretched Mercedes to a warehouse in an abandoned construction site in the desert. It was very surreal. I thought we were heading to Palm Springs to meet up with Frank later but his associate just said he had a small errand to do.

  ‘Well, we walked into this place with two other bodyguards and there was all this coke carefully packed in small bricks. I have no idea to this day if Frank even knew that his guy was heavily into coke ’cos I never saw him take the stuff. Anyway, there was so much coke in that warehouse it was stacked up to the ceiling. I didn’t know it then because I wasn’t so worldly, but that was probably worth more money than all the hotels in Vegas put together.’

  Within weeks, Jody had agreed to work for Sinatra’s associate as ‘the organiser for all his coke shipments’. She explained: ‘I never saw Sinatra again but this friend of his and me, we sort of hit it off. I was also good with figures and he reckoned he trusted me more than his own people, so I got down to work and we also had some fun together.’

  Over the following five years, Jody believes she handled the transportation of at least $500 million worth of cocaine. ‘Funny thing is it costs virtually the same today as it did back then. I organised the airplane pick-ups, the trucks that smuggled it across borders, the couriers, the mules. I also acted as the supply lady for personal consumption for all sorts of gangsters. They seemed to trust a woman more than a man when it came to providing cocaine to snort. I guess it was much more daring back in those days.’

  Jody says she even started running a lucrative sideline – a personalised cocaine delivery service – which helped introduce her to a vast array of celebrities and politicians, all of whom were heavy cocaine users. ‘I was acceptable in all types of places. People liked having me around because I was always carrying a load of coke in my handbag but also because I knew how to behave.’

  Jody claims her cocaine encounters also endeared her to some very heavy characters. ‘I had this way with men. They liked the fact I could be both naughty and nice at the same time. I didn’t even take much coke back then. It never really appealed to me in the early days because it made me so manic and I didn’t need any more energy than I already had! But later I paid a heavy price for overusing it.’

  Meanwhile Jody’s reputation as a superb organiser of the trafficking of cocaine was spreading fast across the US underworld. ‘It was the 1980s by this time and the amount of cocaine flowing into the States was incredible. I personally handled ten flights a week from the Caribbean into Nevada.’

  But this coincided with the outbreak of the United States’ war on drugs, which meant that previously secure landing strips were now being monitored by law enforcement through radar installations. Jody explained: ‘Suddenly it got much harder to get the coke in here. The airstrips in the Caribbean were being watched as well and we had to start finding new routes to bring it in.’

  So Jody was sent to meet a notorious drug trafficker in Mexico to see if there was an alternative air and sea route for the massive amounts of cocaine available to be brought in from Colombia. ‘This Mexican guy was razor sharp. He wanted a big chunk of our profits to allow the coke to come through his territory but he was guaranteeing it would get to the US unhindered. Again, the fact I was a woman seemed to make it easier to deal with such characters. They didn’t put on such a macho hardman act and some of them even tried to date me but ultimately they gave me some respect and I showed them I was as tough as they could ever be.’

  Jody eventually moved to southern Spain to run the Costa del Sol end of the same Mexican’s cartel’s cocaine trafficking business. ‘It’s true I ended up working for the devil. Boy, they were determined characters. They’d decided that because Mexico was the transit point for all cocaine from South America, that gave them more power and influence than even the Colombians. They had a good point!

  ‘The Mexicans hated the South Americans who looked down on them as toothless peasants. Well, I can tell you the Mexicans take no prisoners. They’re ruthless beyond belief. They will smile at your face and then produce a gun from behind their backs and shoot you dead in an instant.’

  For the following ten years, Jody ran the southern Spain end of the Mexican cartel’s European operation. ‘I earned a lot of money and I never had one problem with them but I was getting
old and I didn’t want to keep watching my rear view for the rest of my life.’

  That’s when Jody made a potentially risky decision. ‘I told the Mexicans I was out. I knew there was a risk they might kill me just to ensure I did not give away any of their secrets to the police or other cartels. At first they thought I was loco. But I insisted I had to leave. I’d had enough and I wanted some peace and quiet in my life.’

  Incredibly, says Jody, the Mexicans paid her off with a retirement ‘bonus’ and wished her well. ‘It was a miracle when I look back on it. They almost always kill people who try to leave their organisation. I don’t actually know to this day why they spared me – but they did.’

  Today, Jody claims she is happy in retirement watching so many of the trigger-happy cocaine barons on the nearby coastline killing each other. ‘It’s great up here. Sure, I still have to watch out for my security because of a few people I have crossed down the years but on the whole I am enjoying a long and peaceful retirement and long may it last.’

  About a month before my interview with Jody, she was approached by the Mexicans to come out of retirement to run their business once again. ‘They offered me a huge amount of money but I said no and I think they respected me even more for sticking to my original pledge.’

  Then she added: ‘Coke may still be growing as a business but the profits are being slashed and the murder rate associated with the drug is going up. Anyone going into coke thinking they will make a fortune these days is sadly deluded.’

  And as a postscript, Jody mentioned how cocaine itself had almost killed her. ‘I kept off it a lot in the early days but when I started working for the Mexicans they gave me mountains of the stuff for free. I was such a fool. I got seriously hooked. I’d do ten grams a day and run around like a manic idiot most of the time, although I still somehow managed to run things smoothly for them. In the end, one of my best friends got me booked into a drug clinic and I quit for good. But not before I almost had to have an operation to rebuild part of my nose because it had been rotted right through by coke. See? Even wily old birds like me can make the biggest mistakes …’

  But not everyone on the Costa del Sol is as keen as Jody to take a step back from the cocaine trade. It’s also home to some ruthless characters who use the drug to control others and make themselves a small fortune in the process.

  CHAPTER 21

  PATRICK

  Patrick, in his well-polished Gucci loafers and sharply cut Armani suit, looks every inch the successful Costa del Sol businessman. He likes to describe himself as ‘working in real estate’. But behind the charming, diamond-toothed smile lies a cunning mind always on the lookout for a crooked cocaine deal and a pretty girl. As we walk up the narrow streets of Marbella’s old town, his dark brown eyes scan the faces and shapely bodies of every female who walks by.

  ‘I can’t help myself. I love women.’

  If that sounds like the words of a romantic man with a healthy interest in the opposite sex you couldn’t be more wrong because Patrick – in his mid-thirties – ‘runs’ a number of apartments on the outskirts of Marbella that are occupied by some of the city’s most beautiful prostitutes.

  For Patrick is a cocaine dealer, who also does a bit of pimping on the side. Yet he’s surprisingly open and proud of his ‘dual career’. ‘They’re my bitches and they don’t do nothin’ without my permission,’ he says, without a hint of embarrassment. ‘They all love me and will do anythin’ I say. That’s the way it’s always been. I make sure they have a little blow when they want it. But I keep most of my coke to sell to my clients.’

  Dutch-born Patrick has no doubt he’s hit pay dirt by setting himself up as a cocaine-dealing pimp on the Costa del Sol. ‘The girls come here from all over the world because there are so many rich men – and women – who want easy sex and cocaine. I got English girls, Caribbean, South American, German, Eastern European, Russian, you name it. If you want somethin’ a little different like a tranny, I can put you in touch with the right people.’

  All the more remarkable is that Patrick’s girls actually appear to adore him. No doubt it might have something to do with the fact that he controls every aspect of their lives and ‘feeds’ them enough cocaine to keep them happy – and thin. ‘Hey, coke is the perfect thing to help them keep their weight down and that’s good for business.’ The pimp–hooker relationship is steeped in mystery and to the casual outsider it must seem unfathomable. But as one of Patrick’s girls explains: ‘I’m his bitch. He tells me what to do and I do it. I love him. I will do anything for him.’

  But why? ‘I can’t help myself, I just do everything he orders me to do,’ says another of Patrick’s ‘bitches’, an English girl called Louise from Bristol. ‘I don’t even accept that there’s something unhealthy about my relationship with Patrick. All the men he introduces me to are just business, but when I sleep with Patrick it means something. I love him and would die for him.’

  Another of Patrick’s girls is Beatrice, a well-educated former teacher from Buenos Aires. ‘I met Patrick in a bar on the seafront at Marbella. He bought me a drink and started chatting to me. He told me later he knew I could work for him because I come from a society where prostitution is not disapproved of. I loved the way Patrick spoke to me. He made it all sound so normal, so easy, so natural. I was short of money, I needed a place to live and I didn’t want to go back to Buenos Aires because there was nothing there for me,’ explained 28-year-old Beatrice.

  Just then Patrick interrupts with a sly smile. ‘Tell them how nice I am, baby. How I look after you.’

  A warm glow comes to Beatrice’s face. ‘It’s true. He gives me a good life so why should I complain? I don’t have to stand on any street corners. He pays for me to have health checks and he makes sure I’m safe. What more could I ask?’

  Patrick squeezes Beatrice’s hand gently, they look into each other’s eyes like a pair of young lovers and then he slips her a sachet of cocaine. She gets up and totters off on her four-inch heels to the toilets. It’s bizarre. Trying to get to the core of this extraordinary relationship, I ask him: ‘If you love Beatrice so much why do you let her sleep with other people?’

  Patrick looks completely unfazed. ‘That’s just work, man. It don’t mean nothin’. My bitches know that I’m always there for them.’ Looking straight into Beatrice’s huge saucer-like brown eyes as she returns to the table, Patrick adds: ‘Do I treat you bad, baby?’

  Beatrice runs her hand up Patrick’s leg and leans across to kiss him on the lips. Then she slips him back the sachet of cocaine before turning to me sniffing and says, ‘See? I told you, I love him.’

  Obviously the cocaine he just gave her also helps.

  Patrick’s involvement in the sex and cocaine business began back in his birthplace, Amsterdam, more than ten years earlier when he was running errands for a group of pimps and drug dealers in the city. ‘But that place was too crowded, man. Some of the girls told me they were headin’ for Spain and I knew there was a lot of coke here as well, so I moved down.’

  Today, Patrick’s ‘empire’ includes twelve prostitutes, rotated so that they each work twelve hours a day in one of Patrick’s rented apartments. He reckons to make anything from £2,500 to £5,000 a week from the girls. The coke business brings in the same again.

  Patrick then reels off the going rates for different quality cocaine like a second-hand car salesman boasting about the prices of a whole range of vehicle models.

  ‘Top quality 99 per cent. Two hundred euros a gram … Medium. One twenty … Shit. Sixty …’

  Then Patrick interrupts himself. ‘If they want bigger amounts I charge less.’

  Patrick claims he rarely has problems with the local police. ‘They know the score. I drop them a few grams of coke or a few euros and they’re happy just so long as I don’t work the streets. It’s the same with the girls.’

  Some of Patrick’s best customers are British criminals who own houses on the Costa del Sol. ‘I know some very heav
y dudes from the UK who like the top quality stuff. Sometimes they hire one or two of the girls, too.’

  One notorious UK criminal recently contacted Patrick to ask him to provide a couple of girls to sleep with him and his wife plus an ounce of cocaine.

  ‘That dude was wild, man. He snorted all the coke and had sex with his wife and my girls all night long. Wow, he is somethin’ else!’

  Patrick prides himself on being a survivor and insists he has a long-term plan to ease himself out of both businesses ‘when the time is right’. He explains: ‘I like it down here, but I know it won’t last for ever. Other cats will come in and start takin’ my bitches and undercutting the price of my coke. That’s the way it goes.’

  Patrick never actually uses the word ‘pimp’ during our conversations but it is girls like Beatrice who make it crystal clear where the line is drawn. She asks Patrick: ‘Can I go out to do some shopping later?’

  Patrick takes a deep, slightly impatient breath. ‘Not today, bitch. I got some work for ya.’

  Not all the characters operating on the shores of the Med are as hard-nosed as Patrick …

  CHAPTER 22

  TIGGY

  On the infamous party island of Ibiza – regarded by many as the clubbing capital of the world – British cocaine gangsters have created their own mini-underworld, driven mainly by a huge demand for drugs from UK visitors during the busy summer months.

  Coke dealer Tiggy hails from Harlesden, north-west London, but every summer for virtually the past ten years he has taken up residence in Ibiza. ‘I love Ibiza. But it’s had its bad moments. There was a period when it was right dodgy,’ says Tiggy. In the summer of 2006, Tiggy was held up three times at gunpoint by rival British drug gangsters trying to stop him selling his ‘product’ on what they see as ‘their’ territory.