Mr Nice: an autobiography (67 page)

‘Malik, you’re not going to testify against me, are you?’

He smiled.

‘If I do, D. H. Marks, then you can do the cross-examine. You will see what harm I do. I am just going to tell them the bullshit. We are in paper-mill business.’

‘What’s happened to your nephew Aftab?’

‘He has become snitch against me.’

‘Will he testify against me, too?’

‘If DEA ask, he will do.’

Jim Hobbs and Ronnie Robb joined us. Both had been unceremoniously extradited from Holland and then offered immediate freedom if they agreed to plead guilty, become snitches, and grass up everyone they knew. They had declined the offer and were awaiting trial. Then I saw Ernie for the first time in ten years. He had lost all his excess weight and looked exactly like he did in 1973.

‘Ain’t this some shit?’

‘Ernie, I’m sorry about all the goofs I made,’ I said.

‘Aw! Forget it. I made a few myself. Prison don’t bother me, but I can’t stand the thought of my Patty being inside for seven years. I’ll do anything to get her out. Anything.’

Patrick Lane joined us. It had been five years since I’d seen him. Like Ernie, he looked remarkably healthy and suntanned.

‘You must be pleased getting only a three-year sentence. That’s close to an acquittal.’

‘That’s where you are wrong, Howard. The prosecution are appealing.’

‘What! On what grounds?’

‘Because I carried on doing business with Lord Moynihan after November 1st, 1987. That means I should have been sentenced under the Sentencing Reform Act, which demands a higher sentence than the one Judge Paine gave me. The prosecution say I should get fifteen years without parole. That makes it a worse sentence than Ernie’s. At least he’ll get the chance for parole before that. I won’t. I’ll be in prison until well into the next century. I can’t do this to my wife and kids.’

The six of us sat around discussing old and present times. I hadn’t had a joint for almost a week.

‘Can we get any dope here, Ernie?’

‘Forget it.’

In the afternoon I interviewed a number of Miami attorneys, all wearing the trappings of dope-dealing wealth and most claiming to have close friends within the
prosecution with whom they could negotiate a favourable snitching deal. One of the lawyers, Steve Bronis, behaved very differently from the others. He was cold as ice and didn’t smile.

‘Mr Marks, let me make one thing clear before we start. If you intend to plead guilty or co-operate with the US Government, I am not your lawyer.’

‘You’re my lawyer. As long as I can afford you. What will you charge?’

‘I’ll get the papers from the court and read them. Then I’ll let you know.’

In the evening, I talked to some other prisoners, again mainly Cuban and Colombian. The message was obvious. Unless one was absolutely as innocent as the driven snow and could prove it without the remotest shadow of a doubt, one would get convicted. The only way to avoid the resulting heavy sentence was to become, or pretend to become, a snitch.

My mind was troubled when I tried to get some sleep. No way can I become a snitch, a grass, a
chivato
, a stool-pigeon, a squealer, a rat, a traitor, a wrong ’un, a betrayer, a Judas, and lie at the bottom of Dante’s hell for all eternity. I wouldn’t be able to look my kids or my parents in the eyes if I did that. If Patty was convicted and got seven years, what would happen to Judy, presently languishing in a nearby jail? She was equally incapable of grassing and might have to spend years in prison. I might have to spend forever inside. How would our children survive without us? But then I mustn’t give up. When I asked the US Marshals in court what had happened to my personal belongings, they said the DEA had them. John Parry’s idea had worked. The DEA are now reading my phoney defence. I’ll stick it right up them in trial. If I can get acquitted at the Old Bailey, surely I can manage it in downtown Miami. I’ll talk to Hobbs and Malik in the morning and get them to agree to say the Pakistani load was for Australia, not America. I drifted off.

‘Name?’

‘Marks.’

‘Number?’

‘41526-004.’

‘You’re going to court, Marks. Leave everything behind in your locker.’

Thirteen hours later, in the Miami Courthouse’s bullpen, the court proceedings finished for the day. I had not been called. I managed to get a US Marshal’s attention and asked him what was happening.

‘What’s your number?’ asked the Marshal.

‘41526-004.’

‘You are being transferred to another facility.’

‘Where?’

‘North Dade.’

I’d heard that name before. That was where Judy was being held. I turned round to face the other prisoners.

‘They’re sending me to a women’s prison,’ I exclaimed. ‘North Dade. That’s where my wife is. Fantastic.’

‘That’s not just a broads’ joint,’ said one of the prisoners. ‘It’s where they put stool-pigeons. You’re getting a break, Limey.’

North Dade Detention Centre is a Florida state jail rather than a federal prison. State jails normally house offenders against that state’s law. International dope smuggling is a federal offence, but the US Federal Government has taken to renting state jails from the state authorities and using them for its own purposes. Some of North Dade was used to house the increasing number of female federal prisoners; the rest was used to cultivate snitches and protect them from those who would wish them ill. The jail itself conformed somewhat to the American movie stereotype, with metal-grilled, electronically controlled cell entrances. Facing the array of cells were televisions that were never switched off. There were telephones. The outside recreation area was a small cage containing a table-tennis set-up and a weight-lifting
machine and could be used by only a handful of people at a time. There were no facilities other than those required for basic hygiene. Almost every male prisoner was a self-confessed snitch who had been caught smuggling cocaine. They had agreed to testify against their business partners and friends in return for lower sentences. One man was giving evidence against his mother. Each had his own justification: he’d been ripped off, it wasn’t his fault he was busted, he told them to stop, he couldn’t stay in prison for years because it wouldn’t be fair to his family, everyone would have to become a snitch soon, there was no other way. The American ‘War on Drugs’ was fulfilling some hidden and sinister agenda. Demand for confessions had been a characteristic of political repression in many countries at many times. It probably reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution in Communist China. Loyalties to families and friends have to be replaced by loyalty to country. Forget individual ethics and obey the laws and regulations. Enjoy yourself, but do it our way: watch TV for as long as possible, then practise using your firearms. If you don’t do it our way, we’ll kill you. If your brother is doing something illegal, you should stop him. If you don’t, you’re as bad as him, and we’ll get both of you.

The jail regime was loose. The guards had been instructed not to upset the snitches; they were valuable government property. Not all of the inmates were Hispanic. One was of Italian extraction. His name was Anthony ‘Tomak’ Acceturo, the once-reputed boss of the New Jersey Lucchese crime family. We discussed our loathing of snitches and the US Government which had created them. At the same time, it was obvious we each suspected the other of being a snitch. Why else would we be here?

Judy and I were able to talk to each other on the phone. She was twenty yards away. Although keeping up her strength, she had been bitterly upset by the treatment meted out to her by her brother Patrick’s wife. Their home was
within a twenty-minute drive of North Dade, and it had been understood that at least someone would visit her. No one did. Not even her lawyer, Don Re, had been to see her. She was very, very lonely and cried for her children.

Steve Bronis came to see me the first morning, and I said I had not become a snitch. He said he knew and explained that the likely reason I had been transferred was to remove any possibility of my persuading Malik, Ernie Combs, and Patrick Lane not to become snitches. These days there were more snitches than non-snitches. Soon they’d have to build very small special prisons just for stand-up guys.

Bronis had already reviewed the transcripts of the trials of Ernie, Patrick, and others. He felt that the defence lawyers had not put enough effort into getting the telephone taps thrown out of court. He had contacted the DEA and Gustavo in Madrid. Gustavo had sent Bronis the papers I’d left with him. The DEA claimed that there were no defence notes in my personal belongings. Read your heart out, Lovato.

Bronis arranged to have Judy accompany us during his legal visits. I hadn’t seen her for six months. She looked different: more worried and more strained. Judy’s choice was simple: admit to something she’d never done, get a sentence of time already served, and go home as a convicted felon; or wait for months, maybe years, in a county jail and attempt to establish her innocence before a brainwashed jury. She chose the former. A few weeks later, Don Re’s able assistant, Mona, represented Judy in front of Judge Paine, who convicted her and set her free. The relief was the greatest I have ever known. Her and our children’s intense pain and suffering were over. We might not see each other for a while, but Judy’s plea agreement made provision for US Government assistance to be granted to help her to enter the country in the future and visit me.

Talking to the snitches, I quickly discovered what small fry I was. I had been charged with somehow being involved
with a grand total of about a hundred tons of dope over a period of almost twenty years. Now I was associating with Cubans who had done more than that in a single shipment and had documentary evidence to prove it. Lovato and his DEA buddies had certainly done a remarkable job in getting the world to believe I was its biggest-ever marijuana dealer. Part of me really loved the attention I was getting because everyone thought I was the greatest smuggler in the universe. American media, journalists, and authors began to take an acute interest in me. I had been the mystery cartel leader, absent from a trial having all the ingredients that Americans yearn for: a British Peer of the Realm running knocking-shops full of Filipino whores and snitching on his buddy from James Bond’s organisation, MI6, who had been smuggling dope in Pink Floyd’s equipment and banking in Hong Kong and Switzerland. It was really international: not just a bunch of Hispanics from south of the border, but real foreigners from Europe and Asia. ABC’s peak-viewing news programme,
Prime Time Live
, wanted to interview me. I said yes, of course.

Paul Eddy and Sara Walden were former members of the
Sunday Times
Insight team and now lived near Washington, DC. They had just written a book called
The Cocaine Wars
, which covered cocaine smuggling from Colombia to Miami, and now wanted to write a book about my arrest and trial. Paul Eddy had written to me in Madrid advising me of his intention and asking if I would agree to be interviewed by him. I did so on the condition that I would not answer questions if I felt that I might mess up my defence by doing so. They interviewed me a number of times at North Dade Detention Centre’s visiting room, providing a welcome break from the tedium of the television-flooded cell block and enabling me to have an objective viewpoint of the evidence against me. BBC Television wanted to make a documentary of Paul’s book about me. The director, Chris Olgiati, interviewed me at North Dade. BBC Wales were
making their own special documentary about me. They interviewed me too.

The fame I’d longed for ever since I was a weak swot in school was now well and truly mine. I loved it. But the fortune I had also longed for had disappeared. I wasn’t completely skint: Judy still had the Palma house and its contents. The Chelsea flat was also still in her name, and the Palma Nova flat I’d bought off Chief Inspector Rafael Llofriu was still mine. Some or all of this property could be sold to support Judy and the children. But I had no cash or healthy bank accounts, and Bronis wanted $150,000. My parents sold their smallholding in Wales, now worth a dozen times what it cost them, and liquidated their savings. I was forty-five years old and apparently the biggest dope dealer in the world, yet my modest-living and modest-earning parents were the only ones able to pay for the best dope lawyer in America. Humiliation and shame took their grip of me.

I explained my defence theory to Bronis. Apart from the rock-group scams, I hadn’t smuggled any dope to America. I wasn’t Mr Dennis, and I could prove I wasn’t in Pakistan when DEA Agent Harlan Lee Bowe said I was. The Alameda scam did not concern me. But I was a dope smuggler. The Pakistani scam in which I participated was to Australia. The Vietnamese scam was to Canada. The United States was not involved. No one in their right minds would smuggle dope to the US these days. Bronis himself worked like a demon. He hired a private investigator to collect documentary back-up for my defence. We obtained meteorological data from Australia showing that comments made by us and tapped by the DEA clearly referred to a particularly severe storm off the Australian coast. We obtained reams of statistics about money-laundering and dope-trading in Australia. Every word of the 500 phone taps could be explained. There was enough to convince a jury that what actually happened was a Pakistani scam into Australia. Showing that the Vietnamese scam was a
Canadian affair was much easier because the DEA were accusing me of precisely that. Additionally, however, the DEA were claiming American jurisdiction of the Canadian scam on the basis of some weed the DEA had found in California which had been packaged in precisely the same manner as that busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver. Each half-kilo bag of Vietnamese weed masquerading as Thai weed carried a label bearing the words ‘Passed Inspection’ and a logo of an eagle. The Californian and Vancouver weed obviously originated with the same supplier in Vietnam, but the DEA had no other proof of my participation in any importation to America. DEA Agent Lovato had gone well over the top in trying to prove the Californian Vietnamese weed was mine. He maintained that the logo on all the packages was of a sparrowhawk. As Sparrowhawk was Philip’s surname and Philip worked for me in Bangkok, it was obvious that I was smuggling dope into America. Bronis and I acquired ornithological texts demonstrating the physiological differences between sparrowhawks and eagles. Lovato would look a fool in court.