Carlos called to have a meeting at a warehouse in downtown Miami that night. He said he had something very important to discuss that concerned us all. We met him at midnight, which made us a little nervous to begin with, so Tomas and Roberto staked out the warehouse starting at noon.
About 7 p.m. several well-armed men arrived and went inside. They were obviously setting a trap and were going to kill us.
We loaded up with hand guns and several clips and four auto 12-gauge shot guns and lots of 00 buck each. We decided our best play would be to keep them waiting long enough so they think we are not going to show up.
We spirited up in two cars and set up across the street from the entrance and waited for them to give up and leave. When they finally came out together about 3 a.m. we let go with the double 00 buck until our shotguns were empty. Then we went to our pistols after we threw the 12-gauges to the ground.
Carlos’s group got off a few shots, but they hit the air and dirt because the 00s were already tearing through their bodies as twenty rounds of 12-gauge were fired at them in a matter of seconds before they were assaulted by the big clip 9s. They were most likely dead before the 9s.
When the smoke cleared we saw that the walls behind them were full of pock marks, and eleven men in all were lying in a pile.
We put our guns in one trunk, and three of us got in the other car. Juan drove the truck with his tools on the seat next to him and was dressed in his work clothes. If he was stopped he could claim that he was on a call to a customer whose air conditioner had broken.
I took all the guns out of the car when we arrived home to my garage and took them apart. I then put the parts in bait boxes with live bait and water in case I was stopped on my way to deep six them. I would throw them in the water here and there. I didn’t have to worry about the jumpsuits we wore, but even the shotguns could be identified by the strike marks and empty shells. There was no hard evidence to tie us to the murders now, only circumstantial.
Soon we had a new problem. In a week we would be out of cocaine, and we did not know how to get in touch with the big boss.
We just sat on our hands and waited for him to call, half expecting a hit squad from him to take us out.
Finally he got in touch with me, asking to meet with me on his terms. I was to meet him at a diner the next day and was told to make sure I brought my Trac phone with me.
I arrived at the diner on time, and my phone went off. I was given instructions to meet him at another place.
When I approached my car two armed men put me in the shotgun side after disarming me. One of the men sat directly behind me in the back seat. During the whole trip I thought he was going to shoot me in the back of the head. I prayed it would be over quickly.
The shot never came, and before long we pulled up to a white house. Waiting for us inside were four heavily armed men and the boss. He was sitting at a desk, and I sat opposite him, thinking that I was going to be tortured and killed for what my partners and I had done.
“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 office 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.
Smugglers 3 Accidental Kingpin Page 3