American Desperado (24 page)

I
N THE
winter of 1971, Andy rented some cottages on the beach south of Acapulco, Mexico. He went with a girl of his, and Vera and I met them there. This was one of the best weeks I’d ever had. The thing to do there was ride horses. Vera loved to ride. I had ridden a couple times in Texas when I lived there with my sister. The horses in Mexico were easy because they knew the trails. We rode them along the surf. You’d see nobody for miles. The waves would roll up, and the horses had confidence in the water, so you could ride them in the ocean. When we got hungry, we’d take a boat out to an island with a shack where they cooked fresh, warm-water lobsters in hot sauce and butter.

Nobody had a care in the world down there. The other people in the cottages were all from Europe. The women walked around with no tops. But it wasn’t like being at a Playboy Club. They weren’t hustlers. Everybody was relaxed. Vera and I met another couple from France, and we became very friendly. We started this joke that I was going to go to France and work for her father in the fish business. It was a joke, but in my head it was a fantasy I could live in. Maybe I could get away from it all.

B
UT WHEREVER
I go, I meet people like me. Illegal people. One day Vera and I were at the pool, and a kid about my age came over and started talking to us. This guy looked American, but he spoke with a Spanish accent. “I’m Carlos Hill,” he said. “I have a club in town called Carlos’s. Please come tonight as my guests.”

Carlos’s was a Mexican version of a New York steak house. Next door there was an illegal casino. Vera and I went with Andy and his girl. Carlos Hill hosted us the entire night. Obviously, he
was a sharp kid, and he was into the same things as Andy and me. Once he broke out the cocaine, we really bonded. Andy and I told him about our nightclub business in New York, and Carlos said, “You work with Gambino?”

“Why would you say that?” I said.

Carlos said, “My mom is from the United States. She came here to hide.”

“Who the hell is your mother?” Andy said.

“Virginia Hill.”
^*

Carlos claimed he was the illegitimate son of Bugsy Siegel and Virginia Hill.
^†
I never found out if his story was true, but he was obviously a connected guy, and I could see in his eyes he had a crazed blood in him, like me.

Vera had a great time at Carlos’s restaurant and clubs. She was naïve. She really didn’t understand what I was truly about. She didn’t understand that her friend Patsy who had introduced us was a half-a-whore party girl. Vera was a college girl from France. She was clueless.

As we got friendlier with Carlos Hill, I got a sinking feeling. One side of me wanted to know more about what he was into, and the other side didn’t want Vera involved. I wanted her to stay naïve.

Vera had classes starting at her college, so she decided to fly back to New York. Andy and his girl went with her. I stayed another week. Carlos wanted to introduce me to a friend.

The morning after Vera leaves, Carlos calls me. “Come out to the pool.”

I walk out and see a little Mexican guy sitting by the pool in cowboy boots. Carlos says, “This is my friend, the mayor of Guadalajara. He’s a maniac.”

Carlos points to six guys sitting with the mayor. “These guys are all his killers.”

Everybody smiles. The mayor doesn’t speak English, but Carlos is translating. The mayor points to a skinny kid with a fuzzy mustache in his group of killers. “This one is like my son,” the mayor says. “Rafa Carlo Quintero.”
^*

The universe has funny rules. I’m on vacation with the girl of my dreams, and the next thing I know I meet a guy claiming to be Bugsy Siegel’s son who introduces me to the biggest drug smuggler in Mexico. A few years later Rafa Quintero would become very important to me and Pablo Escobar.

But at that time I hung out with the mayor of Guadalajara. He was a character. He had all these young girls with him. He points to one and says, “I fucked her last night, and I found out she lied about her age. She’s sixteen. My limit is fourteen.”

The mayor wanted to take me to Guadalajara to show me what he promised would be the Greatest Thing in Mexico. He wanted to drive me in his car. In Mexico there were no convertibles that you could order from the factory. The mayor had taken a Ford 500 and sawed off the top. The seats were upholstered with furs from Mexican jaguars. We set off in the mayor’s convertible. Outside Acapulco we get pulled over at a roadblock run by the Mexican army.

The mayor points to the trunk and says, “Footballs, footballs”—using the English word. He opens the trunk and shows the soldiers ten “footballs” inside. These are packages in brown paper shaped like soccer balls. The mayor cuts one open to show the Mexican soldiers, and the “football” is made of coke. I look at these soldiers and think,
Great. I’m going to a Mexican prison
.

But the mayor is smiling. He hands the commander of the soldiers a “football.” The commander sticks his knife into the coke and snorts. He lights up and slaps the mayor on the back for having
such good coke. This football is his payoff. Next thing I know, the soldiers are standing next to the mayor taking pictures. The mayor takes one soldier’s rifle and poses like he’s going to shoot him in the head. Mexico was truly nuts.

We finally get to the mayor’s house in Guadalajara. I had thought “mayor” was an honorary title. But my friend is the actual mayor—or at least the top political guy in town—who lives in a mansion, with police outside guarding it. They unload the footballs from his car. After we clean up and snort a bunch of lines, the mayor says, “Now. I’m going to show you the Greatest Thing in Mexico.”

It turns out the Greatest Thing in Mexico is located in a Guadalajara whorehouse called Del Noche El Dia. That’s where the mayor takes me. He has a special table at the bar on the first floor. The place is filled with fourteen-year-old girls in bikinis. They’re coming up to him and saying, “Hello, Mr. Mayor.”

Something about the mayor with these young girls turns my stomach. But the mayor is very happy. He stands up. “Now I will show you the Greatest Thing.”

“Greater than this?” I say, looking at the roomful of teenybopper whores.

The mayor is giggling as he pulls me into a theater. At the front is a stage with a band. There’s a singer in a blond wig, and a magician pretending to saw a girl in half.

The mayor points to the stage. “Here it comes,” he says.

A curtain opens. There’s a donkey with three whores standing around him. Have you ever seen a donkey cock? It’s not a small thing. These whores start touching it. They are dressed in French lace, but the whores must have come straight from the farm. They know exactly how to handle that donkey. He gets hard, and one of the whores slides under him on a table so he can fuck her.

I know I’m a freak for sex, but this is disgusting. Enough is enough. I really am not enjoying the Greatest Thing in Mexico. This poor donkey has enough problems pulling a plow, or whatever he
does for a living, without these whores making a spectacle of him. I know I’m fucked up, but this sickens me.

The mayor opened my eyes to why I dislike politicians. People like me, people on the streets, we know we’re bad. Politicians do the same things we do, but they act like they’re such good people, giving speeches, handing out medals to crooked cops. Politicians are the worst scumbags I’ve dealt with.

I left Mexico with a bad feeling. Vera showed me the differences between our lives. Her life was riding horses on the ocean. Mine was sitting with a dirty mayor at a donkey show. For the only time in my life—until I had my son—I got the idea of trying to go to the other side. On the plane ride back to New York, I thought about trying to get more serious with Vera.

*
Vera Lucille is a pseudonym to protect the identity of Jon’s former girlfriend.

*
The informal yet chic French restaurant located at 100 East 53rd Street since 1959.

*
A Spanish restaurant at 823 Greenwich Street, established in 1927 and still open today. It is better known for the kitschy murals of flamenco dancers on its walls than the quality of its food.

*
Hill was the longtime girlfriend of Bugsy Siegel, the gangster who worked with Meyer Lansky and Jon’s uncle Joseph Riccobono in Murder Inc. and went on to develop Las Vegas. Siegel was murdered in 1947 when his Las Vegas investments on behalf of the Mafia failed to turn profits quickly enough.

*
The Mexican drug lord arrested in 1985 for torturing to death an American DEA agent. He was convicted and remains in prison in Mexico.

†
While Virginia Hill was known to have taken several trips to Mexico, there is no evidence she ever had a son there.

26

J
.
R
.:
When I returned to New York, I had a problem. My friend Vincent Pacelli was getting married. Vincent was expanding his heroin business into Chicago, and he was marrying the daughter of one of Sam Giancana’s
^*
top bosses from Chicago. The marriage was like a business deal. This is what I hated about the Mafia. Everything people did was decided according to what was best for the families.

My problem was that Phyllis and Vera were going to the wedding. Vera was going because her friend Patsy Parks knew Vincent. Phyllis was going because her dad was in the heroin business with Vincent. Plus, the wedding
was a big event on the social calendar of the New York Mafia. The reception was going to be held at the Pierre.
^*
They were going to have several orchestras playing, a rock band, belly dancers. What a guinea wedding. No way was Phyllis missing this.

Phyllis wanted me to go with her. In her mind, it was time for us to start up our marriage again. Vera knew about me and Phyllis, and she did not pressure me. I hadn’t figured out how to deal with Phyllis yet. If I broke up the wrong way, I could have Henry and his crew trying to feed me into a meat grinder at their pizza shop. I hadn’t resolved this in my mind.

I went to the wedding with Phyllis, and Vera went with her friend Patsy. The wedding was a real guinea party. There were old mustache Italians at the tables with walkers and oxygen tanks. The young guys are all sneaking into the bathrooms putting shit up their noses so the old guys didn’t see. Everybody was stuffing money in the belly dancers’ bikinis. Half the waiters were undercover FBI agents.

I snuck off to talk to Vera. We stood there watching all these drunk greaseballs, and she asked, “Is this a normal American wedding?”

“Ours will be different,” I said.

Without thinking it, I’d just told her my plan. My way out from Phyllis and her family was, I would go to France with Vera. I’d meet her family and ask her dad, the fish seller, if I could marry his daughter. I’d stay in France as long as it took for Phyllis to get over her anger at me. If it took a couple years, so be it. I really wanted to be with Vera. I was wild about her.

J
UDY
:
Vera was so special. Phyllis was like my sister. I love Phyllis, but she was a very hard person. Vera was like Jon’s high school sweetheart, Farah Aboud, but she was a mature young woman. What an effect Vera had on him. Jon’s face became soft around her. His voice changed. He was gentle.

I was so happy for him. And then one day, she was gone. To this moment, I don’t know what happened to Vera. One day Jon said, “Vera’s gone. You’ll never see her again.”

J
.
R
.:
What happened to Vera was, she saw me as I truly was. She stopped being naïve. Her eyes were opened by something that happened to her friend Patsy Parks.

Patsy claimed to be a model, but she was really a club girl who followed Bradley Pierce around. People called her Park Avenue Patsy because she acted like she had a lot of money. The truth was, she supported herself as a courier for Vincent Pacelli’s heroin—just like Jack in the Toucan Shirt used to. I was not involved in Vincent’s heroin business, but I knew that Patsy would drive heroin to Boston. She worked with a kid named Barry Lipsky. Barry was always in our clubs. He looked like a college boy from Princeton. The idea was Patsy, who always wore the cross on her neck, and a straight-looking guy like Barry could drive heroin around without looking suspicious.

But as normal as Barry Lipsky looked, as soon as you talked to him, you realized he was a goon. He was always talking about horror movies. He would come up to people and make faces, imitating screams and monsters. He was not right in his mind.

Vincent Pacelli and his father had always used odd people to move heroin for them. They once used Playboy Bunnies as couriers.
^*
Patsy and Barry did okay for about a year, and then, around the time of Vincent’s wedding, she was busted. Vincent had an informant in the New York prosecutor’s office who told him Patsy was going to testify against him. The girl was stupid because she bonded out. People knew she was a rat, and she was running around being a party girl.

Even though my business was different from Vincent’s, we were part of the Gambino family. He came to me and said, “Patsy’s got to disappear.”

I knew this was a problem. Patsy was Vera’s best friend. Vera did not understand the Mafia. She had figured out that Andy and I weren’t normal businessmen. She’d been to a Mafia wedding. But she didn’t know what the Mafia truly meant.