Gangster Redemption

by Larry Lawton

  Lawton waited on the deck of the ship wearing Bally of Switzerland shoes, a Hawaiian shirt, and handcuffs.

  “Hey, Larry,” his friends he had met on the cruise were saying to him, and Larry would turn his shoulders and show them his handcuffs.

  “I’m tied up right now,” he said. They gave a look of shock and kept on walking. Lawton was laughing.

  Lawton left the ship at seven in the morning before he had the chance to pay his $1,000 bar bill. He was taken to the Dade County jail, which housed 32 men in a sixteen-man pod. Larry was the only white guy, and no rookie to street life, he knew there was going to be trouble. The Fresh Prince of Bel Air starring Will Smith was playing on the TV. He walked up to the TV and turned it to the news.

  “A big black guy came up to me,” said Lawton. “In the joint they call him the House Man. He turned to say something to me, and boom, I hit him. And I could hit like a tank. He didn’t go down. We got to fighting, and he hit me in the throat. I couldn’t talk. My hand was broken. The guards came and took me to a different cell.”

  The next day Lawton, his face still swollen, was put back in the same pod wearing the same bloody shirt.

  “This was the county jail,” he said. “They didn’t care. The motherfucker I was fighting with looked at me with respect, threw a kid off the top bunk, and said, ‘That’s your bunk. You’re okay.’

  “That jail was terrible. This was right after Hurricane Andrew. There was no electricity or hot water, and the jail was packed to the gills. I was lying in my bunk, and I could hear the patter of little feet. I looked up, and I could see a rat on a pipe over my head. I didn’t make a move. I didn’t want that rat to fall on me. After the rat walked past, I tied towels on each end of the pipe so the rat couldn’t return. Fuck that, I don’t like rats, human or animal.

  “This place was a nut house. A kid tried to rob my two hundred dollar shoes. I fell off the bed hitting him, boom. I pounded his face into the concrete. Boom, boom. Nobody breaks up a fight in jail. I was smashing this kid.

  “Finally someone said, ‘Larry, enough.’ They grabbed my arm. I quickly turned to see who it was, and it was the House Man, the big guy. My hand was already very swollen. It had already been broken. The guards came and took the kid out. They didn’t touch me, because the other inmates pointed to the kid and said, ‘He’s a thief.’

  Lawton, unable to make a phone call, ended up staying in the Dade County jail for ten days.

  “Tony and everybody wondered, What happened to Larry? The cruise came in, and where is he? In the county jail you can’t make a long-distance call, and Fort Lauderdale is long distance from Miami. It took me ten days to get someone to make a call for me.

  “Can you call this guy? Tell him I’m here.”

  Larry was transferred to the Broward County Jail, which enabled him to call his friend Fat Tony. He was bonded out for $20,000. Lawton ended up getting five years probation for writing the bum check.

  All Lawton could think about was revenge against the owner of the security company for having him arrested for writing the $9,900 check after he had made his former friend a pile of dough.

  “When I returned to my townhouse, I was thinking, This motherfucker. How can he do this to me? We’re robbing these people, and he doesn’t want to give me any fucking money? Then he goes and calls the cops? This fucking cocksucker – I was getting so mad. I could have blown the whistle on his whole operation. You know what the press would have done with a story about a guy stealing from the school board? I could see the headlines in the newspapers, “Security Company Robs School Board.”

  “The reason I didn’t do it was that I wasn’t a rat, and I was making too much money on diamond robberies. I didn’t want to open the whole thing up, because if I did, I’d get myself in trouble. What if they put my picture in the newspaper? The owners of the jewelry stores I robbed might have seen it, and I would have been done for.”

  Lawton decided instead to burn his partner’s place down.

  “The company was in an L-shaped plaza on Wilton Manor Boulevard,” he said. “I had hung around with enough pros to know how to do it. You put gasoline in a two-liter squeeze bottle. With a knife you jab a hole in the top of the screw cap, and then you lay the bottle right near the door. A door is never sealed a hundred percent, so you squeeze the bottle so it blows the gasoline under the door, and then you light it, and the fire goes under the door into the place.

  “After I torched it, I left. I wasn’t one of those arsonist criminals who watches his fires burn.”

  The office of the security company was destroyed. To make his point Lawton also threw a Molotov cocktail into one of the security company’s cars and destroyed it. An article in the Fort Lauderdale paper the next day discussed the suspicious nature of both the store and the car fires.

  The next time Lawton drove past the building he noticed that the owner had put up metal doors across the front of the security offices. This time he threw a Molotov cocktail onto the roof and another one into a security vehicle.

  Lawton got a call from his lawyer.

  “You’re suspected of burning his place down.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lawton said. “Why would I burn his place? I had nothing to do with it. He has a hundred employees, and they’re all low lifes. You know what security guards are.”

  Said Lawton, “Nevertheless, I think they had an idea I did it.”

  In the end Lawton was handed five-years probation on the check robbery on his promise to pay back the money. As for the fire, there was a great deal of suspicion but no hard evidence, though considering Lawton had been suspected of burning own his own pizzeria he had to be the primary suspect.

  *

  Around this time one late afternoon Lawton was drinking at the Colony West golf course bar. His limo was in the parking lot. A beautiful woman was sitting with another man across the bar, and she kept looking at Lawton. Lawton picked her up and took her into his limousine, and like that, she became his girl friend. Lawton named her Spanky because she enjoyed being spanked. For Christmas he gave her a television set. She gave him pajamas.

  During a big New Years’ party at Larry’s house, Larry, Spanky and Fat Tony’s father were together at the bar when Spanky made the same mistake the woman on the cruise made. She told everyone, “Larry is my boy friend.”

  Lawton went ballistic.

  “What did you say? Get the fuck out.”

  “You want me to leave?” Tony’s father asked. He was uncomfortable being in the middle of this.

  “No,” Lawton said. “You stay. She goes. Get the fuck out.”

  Lawton kicked her out of his house and never saw her again.

  “That was how I was,” said Lawton. “I was the boss, and I didn’t want anything to mess that up.”

  Not long afterward Lawton was sitting in a country and western bar in Fort Lauderdale. The owner was a wiseguy from New York. From across the bar Lawton noticed an attractive girl with a cowboy hat on. To Lawton she looked like Shania Twain, and he sent her a note on a napkin.

  The note read: “Hey beautiful, let’s not fuck around. We’re all adults. I’ll take you for a ride on my horses.”

  She agreed, and as she got off her bar stood, Lawton noticed she was a cripple with a bad limp.

  “I did it anyway,” he said. “I took her for a ride on my horses, and we rode up a trail to spot I used to call Blow Job Rock. I considered leaving her there, but I didn’t. What a psycho I was.”

  It wasn’t too long after that that he met his second wife, Melissa.

  “I used to loan shark money to a guy named Dave McKay, who owned a bar. He was in his 30s, my age, and his bar was called McKay’s. The bar had a women’s softball team, and I sponsored the team, which was called Larry’s Ladies.

  “One day there was a party at my cleaning lady
’s home. After riding my horses, I walked in with a drug dealer friend of mine, when I saw this smoking hot girl sitting on the couch with a loser guy. I said to Fat Tony, who was already there, ‘Who is the fine girl over there?’

  “He said her name was Missy. ‘She plays on your softball team. She’s only 19.’

  “‘Who’s the guy she’s with?’

  “‘Some loser.’

  “I invited everyone in the place back to McKay’s bar for drinks on me.”

  “When we got back to the bar I said to Missy, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m a player on your team.”

  “You can’t drink here. You’re aren’t 21.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Tell you what,” Lawton said. He pulled out a wad of cash wrapped in a rubber band. “If you’re 21, I’ll give you a thousand bucks. If you’re not, you show me your tits.”

  “Fuck you,” was all she could reply, and she walked out.

  A short time later Lawton threw an Easter party on the beach for the gang at the bar. He bought kegs of beer, and barbeque for an army. Even though he weighed close to 250 pounds, Lawton was wearing a Speedo bathing suit. Lawton didn’t care.

  Lawton told Tony, “Go get some girls, invite them back to my house for a private party. Get Missy.’ Everyone knew my house was the party house. Missy agreed to come.

  Larry walked up to her and said, “You’re driving home with me.” She agreed. Lawton hosted what amounted to an orgy for the rest of the evening. But Missy was only Larry’s.

  At the end of the party Missy spent the night.

  “She ended up in my room – and I didn’t bring many girls up to my room,” said Lawton.

  The next morning she told Lawton she worked at Johnny’s pizzeria and had to be at work on time.

  “Why don’t you take off, and I’ll pay you for your day?” said Lawton.

  “No, I can’t do that,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you what, if you lose your job, I’ll give you a job at the bar, and I’ll double your salary.”

  She refused. She said she was loyal to Johnny.

  “And that meant a lot to me,” said Lawton. “I drove her to work, picked her up at the end of her shift, and she never left my house from that day on.”

  After eight months, they were married in November of 1994 in Las Vegas. She had just turned 21. They were comped by the Excaliber Hotel, where Lawton won $25,000 playing baccarat and backjack. They were married in a little chapel in Vegas.

  Missy, like his first wife Roselyn, had no idea what Lawton really did for a living. His next jewelry store robbery took place in Marietta, Georgia. After talking up the owner, he was shown the box of loose jewels. When he came in to rob the place, the owner didn’t want to give up the box.

  Lawton grabbed the owner’s wife and held a gun to her head.

  “Listen, you fucking idiot,” said Lawton, “if you don’t hand over the box, I’m going to blow your fucking wife’s brains out.’ The owner then gave up the jewelry.

  The next robbery occurred in Palm Bay, Florida, not far from where his parents lived. He walked in, announced it was a robbery, and the girl behind the counter started to laugh.

  “You think this is funny?” Lawton wanted to know.

  His two accomplices came in, and they emptied the store of valuables.

  Before they were finished, Lawton went out to get the car to bring it around back. He looked up and down the plaza and noticed the mailman walking toward the store. The mailman was going to come into the store, he realized, and he certainly didn’t want that.

  As the mailman was about to enter, Lawton interrupted him.

  “The owners just left,” Lawton said. “They’ll be back in ten minutes.” The mailman pushed the mail through the slot in the door and kept on going. Once the mailman entered the next store, Lawton got in the car, drove around back, and picked up everyone and the loot.

  “The FBI said there were four people involved in the robbery when there only were three,” said Lawton. “The people in the store knew there were only three. The FBI thought I was a lookout to divert the mailman. I was smart enough not to run or do anything foolish. The mailman wasn’t going to wait, and he went on his route. That was a pretty quick job.”

  *

  As part of his nouveau riche Lawton bought himself a limousine so he could travel around town in style. To house it he rented an entire warehouse. In that warehouse he paid friends in the construction business under the table to build him a clubhouse that served as his headquarters. The crew installed ceilings. A flunkie of his stole a roof air conditioner that he bought hot for $250 and had it installed. He built a small, private club with a bar. In another room he built offices for his bookmaking business. The office had a couch, big screen TV, a satellite dish, a refrigerator, and phones for his bookies.

  His bookies, Fat Tony and Little Mike, a neighbor who lived with his mom in Lawton’s neighborhood, was open for business Saturdays from 10 until 1 in the afternoon, and from 3 to 5 to the end of the football games. On Sunday they’d work from 11 in the morning until 1, and then reopen from 2 to 4 at the end of the games. Lawton’s bookmaking operation took its betting lines directly from the computer. Computers were just becoming big in the mid-nineties.

  “You could bet anything, football, basketball, fights, anything,” said Lawton. “My customers were all junkie gamblers. The biggest betting, of course, came during the NCAA basketball tournament.”

  Little Mike knew about Lawton’s jewelry store heists and wanted to become involved. Lawton knew that not everyone had the balls to go into the store with a gun, jump the counter, tie someone up, and skip out with the jewels. Lawton decided to give Little Mike his chance.

  Lawton took Little Mike as an accomplice to rob a jewelry store in Coconut Creek, Florida.

  “Wait in the car,” Lawton told him. “When I give you the signal at the door, bring the car around back.”

  Lawton gave the signal, but it turned out that Little Mike didn’t have the stomach for the job. He got cold feet and ran away. Lawton always had contingency plans, and he walked out of the store like a regular customer, got in the car, and drove off himself.

  Lawton drove to an apartment in Margate and emptied the bag of jewels on the bed.

  “It was cool. I loved it,” said Lawton. “Meanwhile, the other two guys I was with wanted to kill Mike for running off. I calmed them down.”

  “No one gets killed,” said Lawton. “If anyone does the discipline, I do it.”

  But Lawton didn’t do a thing. He saw that Little Mike just wasn’t cut out to be a jewelry store robber.

  “I just never used him again,” he said. “He was just like Fat Tony, who couldn’t rob anyone either. But Tony had a good memory and he didn’t drink, so he did the bookmaking. I tried to use my crew to the best of their ability.”

  Lawton had rules for his crew. No drugs during robberies.

  “If I caught you with drugs, I’d shoot you. No drinking before a job. When he drove to an area for a robbery, his men couldn’t even go to the local bars.

  “I’d get a cheap hotel room under a false name, and they had to watch TV, or we’d order pizza. We never made ourselves conspicuous. I learned something about hanging out with guys: they are so much better than broads. Nobody fights. Nobody argues.”

  One time in Brooklyn his brother Dave and Jimmy, another accomplice, came home after a job and during a party offered Lawton crack. Lawton pulled out his pistol and pointed it at them.

  “If you ever come around here with that stuff, I’ll kill the both of you,” he said.

  They knew he was serious, and they never again did drugs around him.

  “I laid down laws, and I was half nuts anyway,” said Lawton. “Crazy Larry. Larry Florida.”


  More than any other rule, Lawton believed his men owed him the same type of loyalty he paid to Dominick Gangi and Willie the Weeper: they were to show up on time with no questions asked.

  One time at four in the morning he beeped Junior, one of his key men. Junior didn’t answer. Junior was sleeping in the warehouse, and when Lawton went in there, he found him laying down half drunk on the couch. Lawton took a .357 and shot three bullets close to Junior’s head. The sound of the gunshots reverberated throughout the warehouse. Boom, boom, boom. Junior was so afraid Lawton intended to kill him that he began to cry.

  “‘You motherfucker,’ said Lawton, ‘if you don’t answer your beeper, you better be dead or in jail.’ Junior learned his lesson.”

  *

  Lawton’s next heist took place in the Savannah, Georgia, area. Though Lawton didn’t usually pick out chain stores, he decided to rob the Freidman Jewelers in Savannah because it just seemed too easy. There was a Home Depot around the corner, and two employees who Lawton got to know.

  On the day he robbed them it was thundering. Rain was pouring down, a perfect situation, because people walking by the store holding umbrellas walked with their heads held down. They didn’t look in.

  Lawton asked if he could go to the bathroom. He wanted to make sure there wasn’t another employee in the back. After he came out of the bathroom, his two accomplices walked in. Lawton pulled his gun, put the two employees on the ground, and tied them up. The three then robbed the place.

  This store had jewelry cases going down each aisle. One of his crew went down one aisle, swooping up the loot, and the other went down the other as Lawton walked up and down like a general, pointing.

  “Don’t forget this. Go to the other side and take that.”

  Lawton was wearing a suit. He went to the front door and looked out, as though he was looking at the rain. People would walk by, and he’d nod, and they’d nod, as they ran to their cars or to another store. If they had wanted to come in, Lawton would have let them. He never stopped anyone from coming in. It took fifteen to twenty minutes to clean out a store.