Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

by Bill Mason

  Tommy Harris was the wildest of the bunch, and the funniest. He was always telling hysterical jokes and crazy stories of his sexual escapades with his two girlfriends he called the Bookend Sisters. He always had cocaine on him and dispensed it freely to anybody he happened to be with. Fred was defending Tommy in a case stemming from his being busted driving past the Fort Lauderdale airport at two A.M. high on coke and with fifty thousand dollars and a derringer found in his car when he was stopped for a suspected DUI. Tommy would arrive for court each day in a car loaded with drugs and leave the keys with one of the secretaries. One of his buddies would come and drop off a clean car, exchange keys with the secretary and take the loaded car away. Right in the courthouse parking lot. Tommy would sit in court all day snorting cocaine out of a Vicks inhaler. Everybody thought he had a bad cold, and all his sniffling and nose-wiping seemed to cause everybody concerned to want to speed the proceedings up. I did a little paralegal research for Fred on the definition of a “derringer,” and that charge got thrown out. Shortly afterward Fred won the rest of the case. I wasn’t in court but heard he’d been brilliant.

  Three weeks after the trial ended Fred called and asked me to go to a motel with him to see Tommy. He didn’t say what it was about, only that it was very close to my house, but he sounded worried and I agreed. By the time we arrived, there were police and ambulances all over the place. Seems Tommy had sent one of his girlfriends into another room and then blown his brains out. Nobody could believe it about this guy who was always laughing and joking and seemed to be the most easygoing person you could imagine.

  These are the kinds of guys I was hanging out with. If I didn’t get to the law office by late afternoon, they would come by the house to get me, which didn’t sit well with Barbara, so I usually made sure to leave before that happened. On weekends Ray and Fred would come to the house, but since it was only the two of them along with Ray’s wife, Lollie, and Fred’s (post-Cheryl) girlfriend of the moment, Barb was okay with it. The girlfriends would inevitably make a fuss over my son, Mark, who was nearly sixteen by then and already one of the coolest people I’d ever know. Superintelligent, athletic, artistic and witty, he would fall in love with each of Fred’s squeezes one after the other.

  We (adults) usually went out for dinner. The alcohol-fueled camaraderie was infectious and Barb did her best to join in the revelry, but I was pretty sure she was scared all the time. If Bill Welling was in town, he’d join us, too. He and Ray could trade jokes all night long if you didn’t stop them, and the partying always went on until the wee hours. I think I was starting to get the idea I could keep this up forever.

  No wonder my marriage was going to hell.

  When Barb would loosen up on the weekends, I’d forget about how sullen and angry she was during the week and think that everything was okay, but it was those weekdays that were killing us. I came home drunk night after night, and if I wasn’t thinking straight, I’d tell her stories that sounded funny at the time but that only scared her even more, and rightly so. Like about how Joey Cam kept sending hookers to my prosecutor, Billy Dimitrouleas, “compliments of your friend Bill Mason.” When she’d ask me why I insisted on rubbing the cops’ noses in everything, especially after all I’d been through and was likely to go through again, I had no answer, so I just got angry right back at her. How was I to explain that I’d fallen completely in the thrall of Ray and Fred, and their way of doing things, even though they weren’t facing any charges and weren’t running the same risks I was? I couldn’t answer it myself, so how was I supposed to explain it to her? As if there was a rational explanation anyway.

  My lawyers and I became closer all the time. We’d enter weekend fishing tournaments together, which Ray and I usually won, much to the chagrin of the highly competitive Fred. Ray trailered his boat over to my house and parked it in the driveway, and we spent a few weekends replacing all the teak woodwork and putting in a new diesel engine, Fred standing around critiquing our work and tending the bar.

  I wasn’t completely oblivious, though, and in between the endless bouts of partying I began to feel some niggling doubts about my attorneys. Those doubts increased after the third time I got called in the middle of the night to bail Fred out when he’d been arrested on a DUI charge, and after the fourth time I had to go pick him up from some drug smuggler’s house where he’d gotten so blitzed, even his shady client was afraid to let him drive. I’d usually take Barb with me, because it wasn’t safe for me to be out alone without my lawyers. She would freeze into near-catatonia for days after one of those little excursions, choosing to stay quiet rather than risk another blowup with me.

  Other than at my hearings, I had never seen either of my attorneys in action and got curious about how they handled themselves in a trial. I wanted to see them blazing away at the enemy, my own personal cavalry warming up for the big show that would be my trial and their greatest triumph.

  Ray was in the middle of a first-degree-murder trial. The defendant was the head of a local motorcycle gang, a huge guy appropriately named Big Jim Nolan. The judge and Ray hated each other, and on the very first day that I showed up to watch the trial, Ray was cited for contempt of court. Twice. The first time was for refusing to wear a tie, which was standard for Ray, but the second time was for calling the judge an asshole in open court.

  Each day at court’s end about twenty or so of Nolan’s fellow motorcyclists would leave the spectator section of the court and stop at Ray’s office across the street to talk and drink beer. I’ve never smelled such a group. After they left, we would have to open all the doors and run fans to try to get the body odor out, then the three of us would head out to a bar as usual.

  I was becoming more and more insecure about Ray’s abilities in court after watching all his antics, but my doubts were put to rest when Nolan was acquitted of every single charge.

  13

  Tickling the Dragon’s Tail

  ONE NIGHT I was driving Fred home because he was too drunk to do it himself. I didn’t like this task, because after I dropped him off, I’d have to drive home by myself, and I wasn’t supposed to be out. If I got stopped for some reason and the cop recognized me, it wouldn’t be easy trying to convince him or the court that I’d been to a meeting with my attorneys until two in the morning. We were on Sunrise Boulevard just east of the interstate when Fred spotted a bar he liked and insisted on stopping in for one last drink. The place was a real dive and completely empty except for one guy slouching sideways at the bar—and who should it be but Judge Robert Tyson himself. Even from the door we could tell he was stone drunk.

  Fred waved me to a bar stool to the right of the judge and out of his line of vision. Fred himself took up the seat on the other side. He looked at Tyson, waiting until the poor sot realized there was somebody sitting next to him. “Evening, Judge.”

  “Whoozat?” I heard Tyson mumble as his head jerked slightly.

  “Fred Haddad. How’re you doing?”

  Tyson grunted something and let his head drop down. His hand was wrapped around a half-full glass of what looked like a scotch and soda. The glass was tilted and appeared in imminent danger of falling over. I was tempted to straighten it up, but it was clear Fred didn’t want the judge to realize I was there.

  Fred managed to get some semblance of a conversation going, and, once roused, Tyson was a bit more lucid than I’d given him credit for. Eventually, Fred steered things around to current cases and said, “So what can we do to help Bill Mason out? Guy’s been through a lot, so how do we give him a break?”

  Tyson snorted and sat up a little straighter, then seemed to remember his drink and took a small sip. “Mason’s too hot,” he replied, shaking his head. “Forget it.”

  In the car a few minutes later, Fred said, “That sonofabitch.” He went quiet for a few minutes, then said, “I got an idea.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Let you know tomorrow. Gonna call Ray first.”

  The idea was vintage Ra
y and Fred. They requested a hearing before a different judge, Joseph L. Price of the Broward circuit court, and gave as their reason that they needed to subpoena Tyson to testify as to the guilty plea I’d entered as part of the deal Dave Damore had offered. It was an entirely reasonable request, and as soon as it was granted, Fred ran right over to Tyson’s courtroom and demanded that he disqualify himself from the case because he was now a witness. The judge nearly went crazy, but he had no real choice in the matter.

  Several higher-ups from the Fort Lauderdale P.D. had been in attendance at the hearing, and they’d followed Fred to Tyson’s court. They understood exactly what he was doing but were powerless to stop him. As soon as Tyson removed himself from the case, every restriction he’d placed on me was completely nullified, since he no longer exercised any control over the matter. For reasons I didn’t fully grasp, even the fact that I’d been released primarily for medical reasons no longer applied. Unless somebody took specific procedural steps to try to take me back into custody, I was completely free, my only obligation being to appear in court when required to do so for either the VOP hearing or the Ramada matter.

  The day was March 6, which I remember for more reasons than just having my restrictions lifted. Fred, Ray and I went out to celebrate, which didn’t make it much different from any other weekday night except that now we had something to toast, rather than drinking for its own sake. After two hours of some pretty unbridled revelry, I decided to break the usual pattern, get home early and share the joy with Barb, something we’d done very little of in recent months.

  I was feeling great and didn’t want to be indoors or even in the car just yet, so I stopped at a little outdoor bar near the Jolly Roger Motel right on the beach, thinking I’d have a short one and just watch the waves break for a few minutes. It was only fifty feet from where I parked to the bar, but before I covered even that short bit of ground, half a dozen cops appeared out of absolutely nowhere and told me I was under arrest. As cynical as I’d become, I simply couldn’t believe this was happening. “What the hell for!” I demanded as they yanked my hands behind my back and slapped cuffs on me.

  “Prowling,” one of them said.

  “Prowling?” They began marching me back toward the street. “I haven’t been here ten goddamned seconds, how the hell could I be prowling!” I knew better than to open my mouth under those circumstances, but it was so patently ridiculous, I couldn’t help it.

  Instead of answering, they stopped our little march and frisked me, whether to annoy me or because they’d realized they’d forgotten to do it before, I don’t know, but one of them pulled a small knife from my jacket pocket.

  “Well, what have we here?” one of them said.

  “It’s a knife,” I shot back. “I always carry it.” There was nothing illegal about it. Lots of people in South Florida carried knives for protection. This one happened to be an old piece of junk with a bent blade. It wasn’t good for much, but it made me feel better to have it.

  Down at the station they booked me for prowling and possession of a knife with a “specially curved blade.” Now I’m getting good and steamed, and demanded to call my lawyer.

  “Keep your shirt on,” one of the arresting officers, a plainclothesman, told me. “You can be out of here in a couple minutes if you don’t give us a hard time.”

  He was right. My bail was set at a puny fifty dollars, I paid it myself and walked out. I had to take a taxi to where the police had towed my car and bail it out, too, but nobody came after me when I went home. I called Fred and gave him the whole story. He told me he’d do some checking around and to meet him at his office before court.

  I got to Fred’s office before he did and read about my arrest in a newspaper in his waiting area. When he showed up, he looked worried. Understand: Fred never looked worried.

  “There’s an arrest warrant out for you,” he said without preamble.

  I asked him what for.

  “Violation of parole,” he answered, wincing.

  I felt a sliver of fear deep in my chest. “I don’t get it. How did I violate parole?”

  “They say you were prowling and in possession of a weapon.”

  In other words, my arrest the previous evening was bullshit, a setup, an excuse for them to violate my parole. I’d managed to temporarily beat the original VOP, and now there was a new one, complete with a new judge. No wonder they’d let me out so easily: They weren’t interested in prowling, they just wanted to have an official arrest on the record to document my misbehavior. “What the hell do I do now?” I asked.

  “The first thing you do, don’t go home.”

  I didn’t. I went to Ray’s, called Barbara and told her what was going on. That evening the cops showed up at my house to take me in. Barb was down the street at a neighbor’s, and only my two daughters were home. Suzi, seventeen at the time, told the cops I wasn’t there and that her mother was down the street, and that they should wait while she called her, but they shoved her aside and went in anyway. They looked around, satisfied themselves that I wasn’t there and left. By that time Suzi and Laura were nearly hysterical, and that’s how their mother found them about half an hour later.

  I didn’t turn myself in—I hadn’t been officially notified of anything, the police hadn’t left any papers and they hadn’t indicated to Suzi that I was wanted. Their treatment of my daughters was written up in the papers the next day, Ray having informed reporters that he was preparing a one-hundred-thousand-dollar civil lawsuit against the police for their abominable and traumatizing behavior toward innocent minors. He also got a hearing scheduled for March 10, this time in front of a completely new judge whom Ray knew well and who had been at Ray’s fifth, sixth and seventh weddings. Fred assured the judge I would appear and then told me it was safe to go home.

  Everything was coming apart. I’d rather have died than gone back to jail for a serious stretch, and with that attitude I didn’t see any reason to go quietly. I had three days to plan how to get out of it if things really went bad.

  The first thing I had to do was speak to Barbara. Given all that had happened, it may seem difficult to believe, but I loved her very much and she felt the same about me. She may not have been sure if she could live with me, which I understood, but I’d never questioned the depth of her feelings for me.

  I sat her down and sketched out how I planned to escape should it become necessary. For someone who’d barely had a sober breath in nearly six months, I thought I was doing a pretty good job, painting a perfectly reasonable picture of how the whole family could relocate and start a new life somewhere far away from South Florida. We’d talked before, many times, about buying a big boat and sailing around the world, maybe settling down in Australia, Brazil or Mexico. It had been some harmless fantasy-spinning then, but now I tried to treat it as though we’d been making serious plans.

  She listened indulgently, but there was no mistaking the cloud descending behind her eyes. She’d heard me make too many empty promises in the past, watched me turn over new leaves with heartfelt intensity, only to see me revert to my old ways over and over. She’d watched me drink myself into a numb stupor night after night since I got out of jail and continue to thumb my nose at the police even though I knew they were hell-bent on putting me away again. She’d seen the kind of people I’d been hanging around with, and how I’d traded in a decent and respected lawyer like Dave Damore for two certifiable lunatics who were barely distinguishable from their clients. There was no sense in my pointing out to her that she’d had some pretty good times with them as well, because I didn’t want to push her into saying out loud what we both knew to be true, that she’d only done it for me and would have been much happier sitting in front of the television with me and the kids.

  Yet I still felt that I had a chance to convince her, if I could just be concrete enough about my plans and about the stability that would come into our lives once we got away. Oblivious to how absurd that must have sounded—stability while hi
ding from the police?—I told her that I’d pulled together a considerable amount of cash and stashed it in the van that we’d “inherited” from one of those smugglers who’d rented our house at Lighthouse Point. I didn’t tell her about the guns that were also hidden in it (more stability there), but it made no difference, because she wasn’t about to climb into it with me with our children in tow.

  The next day I retrieved most of the money from the van and hid it in the house for Barbara. If I had to leave, I’d get in touch with her afterward and tell her where it was. I also grilled Ray and Fred on the details of the legal procedures we’d be going through but didn’t tell them the reason I was asking, which was to identify opportunities to take off if it came to that.

  On the morning of March 10, I showed up early at the law office. When the courthouse opened, Ray gathered every employee they had into a group with me in the middle, and we walked across the street like that to make sure no one would accidentally shoot or abduct me. The hearing was scheduled for eleven, but we were there at nine. The courthouse was unusually full of people, and it wasn’t until we were inside that we realized it was because most of them were reporters. Some had it in for me, others had been glamorizing me as a modern-day folk hero and all were hoping to get a page-one photo of me in handcuffs standing before a judge. We were set upon by people popping flashbulbs and shoving microphones in our faces. Ray tried to move them out of the way while shouting “No comment!” over and over, and somehow we made it into the courtroom. Barb was already there, and some reporters as well, and two pretty serious-looking bailiffs were doing an excellent job of making sure everybody behaved. The sudden quiet of the place after the commotion in the hall was eerie but comforting.