Doctor Dealer (21 page)

So Marcia stayed.

Of course, in the next few weeks Larry explained that he would have to wrap up a few loose ends, jut to shore up his million.

“After that I’ll never have to do this again,” he said. “We’ll have money for the rest of our lives.”

Larry always tried to emphasize the benefits of his dealing: They had spent a lovely week in the Bahamas the previous spring after Larry came back from Aspen, and in the fall they had traveled to Williamsburg and Virginia Beach—she and Larry both loved the area. In a month they were planning to take off again for Miami Beach. And it was true that Marcia loved the vacations. But what Larry couldn’t seem to grasp was that she loved them mostly because they took him away from the damn telephone for a week. When they were on vacation they were like a normal couple! She would have been just as happy to spend a week at the Jersey shore on her own salary.

Before Marcia went to bed, Larry had also promised that they would move out of the neighborhood immediately, and that he would never again allow the world of his drug dealing to intrude on their home.

Marcia tried to sleep while Larry spent the rest of the night on the phone. She could hear his voice in the back room, sharing his anger over the lost money and conspiring to get it back.

Larry was talking to Tyrone, who said he had a friend who would get the thirty thousand back for a fee of five thousand dollars.

“How are you going to do that?” asked Larry.

In a tone that conveyed menace, Tyrone explained, “Well, Larry, Fred is just going to go in there and get it back . . . you know what I mean?”

“I don’t want them killed!” said Larry. “I just want the money back!”

“Supposing they don’t want to just give it to us?” said Tyrone, laughing.

“Then forget it,” Larry said, exasperated.

“You don’t do anything about this, word will get around and you’ll get ripped off a lot, man,” said Tyrone.

First thing in the morning Marcia insisted that Larry call a locksmith to have the front and back door locks changed. She called her boss at the VA hospital and explained what had happened, and got the day off.

Then Larry called Mark Stewart again.

Before noon they were driving down to look at a townhouse in Society Hill, which featured the most expensive residential real estate in the city. Society Hill originally took its name from a pre-Revolutionary War maritime commerce firm called The Society of Free Traders, but the name had long since come to signify the pinnacle of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. Larry and Marcia were shown a three-story maroon brick townhouse, 4 Willings Alley Mews, one in a row of small modern structures that blended easily with the Colonial architecture in the heart of Philadelphia’s most historic: district. The new houses were shoehorned in a tiny alley, just two blocks away from Independence Hall and directly opposite Saint James Church, the oldest Catholic church in America. The house had one room on each of its five levels, counting the basement kitchen and rooftop patio, and cost $150,000. Larry was worried about the IRS. If a $150,000 home out of the blue wasn’t a “red flag,” nothing was. But according to Larry, Mark reassured him.

“Look, Larry, you need the house,” Mark said. “If worst comes to the worst, I can always say that I loaned you the money.”

These were much fancier digs than those of ordinary Penn graduate students. The basement kitchen was spacious and modern, with all new appliances and a black-and-white checkered tile floor. The first level, which one ascended to up an open stairwell on curving
stairs, was a completely open living room with a fireplace and with floors inlaid with beautiful parquetry. The second floor was a big bedroom and bath with a wide closet area with a new washer and dryer. The third floor was another bedroom, a good place for Larry’s study and Marcia’s sewing machine and, thought Larry, maybe a pool table. The rooftop patio overlooked the city’s most quaint, historic sights and offered, in the distance, a panoramic vista of America’s fourth largest metropolis. To the east was the Delaware River and the lights of Penn’s Landing. Upriver was the blue steel Ben Franklin Bridge. Downriver the gray span of the Walt Whitman Bridge. Below, on the slate gray river, moved vessels of all shapes and sizes: tiny speedboats, tugs, warships, barges and giant tankers. Larry loved it.

Marcia hated it.

“It’s too vertical,” she said. “It’s like living in an elevator shaft. And there aren’t any trees or grass.”

But Larry wanted it. Marcia knew she couldn’t go back to Osage Avenue. And she had hopes that by moving away from Penn, Larry’s dealing connections would dry up.

So they took it. Mark Stewart was only too eager to make the financial arrangements. Larry gave him sixty thousand in cash and Mark wrote him a check, which Larry deposited at Bank Leumi. Larry then obtained a ninety-thousand-dollar mortgage. Larry hired two men and a truck to move their belongings, and they were living in Society Hill by evening. Larry didn’t tell Tyrone and Fred that he was moving. He promised Marcia that he was leaving that kind of dealing behind for good.

Sometime in the next few weeks Larry bought a gun, a black .22-caliber short Beretta. He had been advised to get a .25-caliber, because it was small enough to fit comfortably inside a vest pocket when he wore a three-piece suit, but the gun shop didn’t have any of that model so he settled on a smaller but equally suitable model.

Mark had been angry when he heard about the robbery, with concern that was both paternal and proprietary. He offered Larry help in tracking down the people who had done it, and chided him for being so casual about letting people come by his house. Mark helped with arrangements for the gun, telling Larry where to buy it and directing him (with instructions to pay a hundred dollars) to Abe Schwartz, the Philadelphia police detective responsible for processing gun permits. Larry put the pistol in the top drawer of the table beside his bed.

Three months had passed since the afternoon when Paula Van Horn reported the robbery. For all of that time, David Ackerman
had spied on his housemate. He hid a long-playing tape recorder in her room and steamed open all of her mail. Slowly, he accumulated evidence. Paula had bought skis for her children. David thought that was odd, because Paula never had seemed to have any extra money before.

“Oh, come on,” said Larry. “She bought skis for her kids. What’s the big deal?”

Next, Ackerman came up with a phone conversation where Paula, from what could be learned listening only to her end of the conversation, appeared to be discussing plans for buying and rehabbing a dilapidated row home in South Philly.

“This is nothing,” said Larry. “I’ve been paying her well.”

But when Ackerman found the key to a safe-deposit box, and a receipt that showed Paula had opened it shortly after the “robbery,” Larry’s faith was shaken. He still wasn’t convinced, but he agreed that it was worth checking out.

Through Mark Stewart, Larry had met Slim Robinson, a big black man who trained fighters. Slim was a stylish man, favoring wide-brimmed colorful hats and matching suits. He drove a big black Delta 88 with a plush velour interior and spoked wheel covers—all of it adding an aura of mystery, power, and menace. Larry asked Slim to accompany him on a visit to Paula’s apartment. When Glen Fuller showed up from one of his Florida runs, he wanted in on it, too. This was Glen’s kind of action. Larry gave Glen his unloaded .22-caliber pistol.

“This’ll get her thinking,” he said.

Before leaving, Larry phoned Paula. He said he was coming over with two Philadelphia police detectives.

“They think they’ve finally got a break in the case, and they want you to come down to headquarters to pick the suspect out of a lineup,” he said.

When Paula opened the door of her apartment on Fitzwater Street, she took a long look at his companions and decided they looked nothing at all like policemen.

Glen immediately reached out and stuck the gun in her belly.

“We want the money back,” he said.

And Paula confessed. It happened that fast. None of it was her idea, she said. She said she met this guy—the man who had come forward on the day of the robbery and told police he had witnessed it and given chase to the thief. He had forced her to do it.

“Where’s my money?” asked Larry.

“He took it,” she said.

“Well, where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Then Larry produced the safe-deposit-box key. Paula seemed shocked.

“Where’d you get that?” she asked.

“Never mind about that.”

“The guy was nice to me. He let me keep some of the money.”

“How much?”

“Half—but I spent some of that already.”

“Let’s go,” said Larry.

Paula said she had to change her clothes first.

“What for?” Larry asked.

She scowled. “I’m wet,” she said. Her bladder had failed when the pistol was pushed into her side. The men laughed.

Larry didn’t want to let Paula out of their sight, so Glen volunteered to go upstairs and keep an eye on her. In the bedroom, as Paula quickly pulled off her clothes in the bathroom, Glen said, “Since you’re stripped down, how ’bout a little quickie?”

Paula screamed. Larry and Slim came running. Paula said Glen was going to rape her.

“Just kidding, just kidding,” said Glen, chuckling. “Boy can she scream!”

Larry had to laugh.

On the long drive out to Pottstown, Slim entertained Larry and Glen by telling Paula that Larry was really dealing drugs as a front for the “Black Mafia.”

“You don’t think we’d let this little white boy make all that money for himself?” said Slim.

At the bank, Glen claimed to be Paula’s boyfriend and accompanied her into the small room where she opened the safe-deposit box. There was about forty thousand dollars there, and plane tickets to Europe. Paula explained that she had planned to take her children on a vacation.

Afterward they all went to Smokie Joe’s, a popular tavern and restaurant just off Penn’s campus, and Larry bought Paula lunch and some drinks. He said she could keep the plane tickets and the money in her bank account so she could take her kids to Europe.

The bottom line, after David Ackerman got his reward, was that Larry was out eighty thousand dollars.

Sometime in Larry’s junior year of dental school, one of Larry’s classmates wrote an anonymous letter to the dean. The writer explained that someone in authority ought to know, if they didn’t already, that Larry Lavin was a major drug dealer. Already six of his classmates had been drawn into the business, and several had become heavy cocaine users.

The letter was forwarded to Penn’s security police, who had a few scraps of similar information about Larry from his undergraduate days. They called the Philadelphia police.

On and off during junior year, city detectives began surveillance of the comings and goings at 4300 Osage Avenue—which added credence to the initial report. Then, when Larry and Marcia suddenly moved into a new three-story house in the city’s most expensive neighborhood, that seemed to clinch it. After all, this was a student who annually filled out financial aid statements at Penn reporting an income of less than $10,000. How could he afford a $150,000 home?

Larry Lavin’s name was added to a hit list at the Philadelphia district attorney’s office.

Marcia was feeling better about things in the spring. Her last few months on Osage Avenue had been bad, the worst in her years of living with Larry.

“Why do you want to marry me?” she had pleaded with him one night after he had been out late again, and then preoccupied on the phone until past midnight.

Larry was always quick to reassure Marcia. He was good at it. Couldn’t she tell how much he loved her? Wasn’t he just about completely out of the dealing business, just as he had promised?

The move to Willings Alley Mews, even though Marcia hated the house, had at least ended the traffic of drug dealers in and out of her home. There were no more rent bills, and Larry’s new “legitimate” income enabled her to practically bank her paycheck from the VA hospital—no more paying his ridiculous $350 monthly phone bills. For Larry’s birthday in March she brought home a chestnut Labrador puppy. They gave the dog the same name as Larry’s red-haired older brother, Rusty.

She and Larry had found a Catholic church to get married in, Saint Cornelius out off Route 1 in Chadds Ford—most priests refused to schedule wedding masses for couples who were not members of their parish—and set a date, Saturday, June 7 at 11:30 a.m. That kept Marcia busy. Their invitations had gone out in fancy script on pale yellow stationery embossed with flowers. Larry, of course, wanted to invite about five hundred people. Marcia wanted something small.

“I don’t want any drug dealers at my wedding,” she said. Trouble was, nearly all of Larry’s friends were drug dealers.

Glen Fuller was definitely out, but Ken Weidler and David Ackerman and Stu Thomas and Andy Mainardi and Paul Mikuta would all get invitations. Marcia said Mark Stewart was definitely
out. Larry battled hard to put him on the list, and finally Marcia gave in.

The reception was set for one o’clock at the D’Ignazio Town House in Media. Marcia bought white satin for her own dress, yards of yellow cotton with a small flower print for her bridesmaids, and went to work at her sewing machine.

In April, over spring break, Larry and Marcia flew to Miami Beach for four days. They visited Jungle Land and a serpentarium, lay in the sun, and dined out at fine restaurants. Now, with his money filtering out of the illegal business, with Ken and David handling most of the time-consuming details of dealing, recruiting runners, breaking down the coke according to the “Lavin method,” changing money at local banks, etc., Marcia felt certain that marriage was the final push Larry needed to break away from the whole scene, to settle down and concentrate on dentistry, on her, and eventually on their children. She was determined to help that happen. To stress the point, at home Marcia would take the phone—all three lines—off the hook. Each time she did it Larry was furious, but Marcia stubbornly persisted.

Still, the ugly reality continued to intrude. One night Larry’s old pot contact from Virginia Tech, Ralph, stopped by Willings Alley Mews with his girlfriend, uninvited. Marcia recognized Ralph, who was short and stocky with thick black hair, as one of Larry’s louder, cruder drug associates. She said that Larry wasn’t home. Ralph stood with his girlfriend for a moment on the front step, obviously waiting to be invited in.