Doctor Dealer (34 page)

It gave Larry the creeps. Mark had blown even this. According to the newspaper account, there had been two alarms. The fire had started at about one in the morning and had burned for an hour and a half. Part of the roof had caved in and most of the Forty-fifth Street side had been destroyed. The damage would have been worse, but before an alarm was even sounded for it, the fire was noticed by a city fire fighter on a truck speeding to another blaze. Good luck or bad, depending on your point of view.

A few days later, Mark assured Larry that despite the city fire department’s alert and valiant effort, the building was a total loss for insurance purposes. The insurance payoff, $1.25 million, would enable Mark to more than pay off Larry’s investment.

So Mark immediately asked to borrow some of the settlement money in advance. He had this other project working, see, and with just the right push . . .

On New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1981, there was a long line of black, white, and silver limos in front of La Truffe, a trendy French restaurant on Front Street, the first street west of Penn’s Landing, the renovated waterfront area on the city’s oldest, easternmost edge. Suzanne thought it wasn’t a good idea to flaunt their youthful affluence with such display, but David was in an especially good mood.

They were engaged. David had invited more than twenty family
members and friends to an extravagant banquet. His father and stepmother were there, and friends from the record company and the cocaine business. David wore a well-trimmed sparse brown beard and moustache, and dressed in a neat tailor-made black tux. Suzanne wore a strapless gown of black silk with flouncy billows of fabric across the chest and down one side. Her straight brown hair was cut in a shag, with straight bangs down to her eyebrows. There were three tall candles in between the floral arrangements that were spaced down the long table. In front of each plate were four crystal goblets, because tonight David’s friends were not just going to drink wine, they were going to sample a tableful of rare vintages, some of them more than thirty years old. La Truffe’s chefs had prepared an eight-course meal, each course a special gourmet creation. David wanted it to be, simply, the finest meal his friends and family had ever eaten. It was certainly the most expensive. The wines alone cost nearly ten thousand dollars.

An unspoken part of the celebration that New Year’s Eve involved Willie Harcourt, who sat at the opposite end of the long table from David. Of course, not all of those present knew that David’s largess came from cocaine dealing (although it was common knowledge among the restaurant staff). In the weeks of planning for this event, David and Willie had discussed a transfer of power. David was to continue collecting 25 percent of the profits, and Willie was going to earn the other 25 percent by taking over David’s job. In honor of the transition, David presented Willie with a rare five-thousand-dollar bottle of cognac.

Ever since the confrontation over the final eighteen-kilo shipment last June, Willie had worked hard to disguise his contempt for David. He was almost twice David’s size, and had at times been sorely tempted just to flatten him. Willie was better liked than David by the other workers. So the big bartender’s feelings colored the whole organization’s attitude toward David. Behind his back, Ackerman was called “that Little Napoleon” and worse. David’s growing arrogance had even begun to alienate customers. Larry had heard complaints from Paul Mikuta and Stu Thomas, who had threatened to stop doing business with David.

Just that day, Billy Motto had decided to take his business elsewhere. Willie had returned to Philadelphia with a special order of five kilos for Paul Mikuta and Billy. It had been a hassle to arrange it, especially over the holidays. David had been planning for the party and meeting with Willie to effect the transition, and had decided to defer further shipments and sales until after the first of the year. But Paul and Billy had insisted, so David had geared up the machine for one more run in 1981. When the shipment arrived, just that morning, David called both dealers to let them know. Paul came by first. He
tested all five kilos and took the two he liked best. When Billy showed up and learned that Paul had gotten first pick, he was livid. His deal with Larry assured
him
of first pickings. It was clearly a time for tact, a quality that was no longer part of David’s makeup. Instead of smoothing things over, offering to make things up to Billy, David lost his temper. Here he had done Billy a favor by making a special run, and instead of gratitude he got shit! The two dealers raged at each other, and Billy stormed off without the two keys. That night, at the engagement party, David gave Willie a gold ring with rows of diamonds set in it that Billy had given him as a gift earlier in the year.

“I don’t want it,” David said. “You deal with him now.”

Willie secretly felt sorry for David. The once-promising dental student had gone through a personality change. David had been a charmer when Willie first met him. His intelligence was just one of his winning qualities. But in the last two years he had lost his charm. His intelligence, while still crisp, was used like a whip to scourge and prod the people who worked for him. The same young man who had swept Suzanne off her feet and into the business just twelve months ago was now a tyrannical boyfriend who flew into rages at the slightest provocation. David was constantly accusing Suzanne of sleeping with other men. He would refuse to let her leave the apartment, and refuse to allow her to let anyone else in. That summer, for instance, after an authorized day trip to the beach with her sister, Kim had asked to stop upstairs after the drive back from Atlantic City to use Suzanne’s bathroom. She had never been in her sister’s new apartment. Suzanne said no.

“What, are you crazy?” said Kim. “I have to pee, all right?”

But Suzanne didn’t dare. She had promised David to let no one in, under any circumstances.

There was growing tension between Larry and David because of David’s erratic behavior. David, who lived in fear of Larry’s just taking the business out of his hands, began to suspect everyone around him of conspiring with Larry. His paranoia reached comic proportions. One evening he flew into a rage after Suzanne used the expression “Okeydoke.” David had asked her to make him a sandwich.

“That’s a Larry expression!” he shouted. “Nobody else says that anymore! What have you been talking to Larry about?”

Willie knew the change had been caused by the cocaine. He had watched it happen. David had started “basing” in late summer. After formally breaking up with Gina and before he and Suzanne began living together again, David briefly took up with a woman who was addicted to this technique. Basing involved first mixing cocaine with ether and distilled water to turn it into a solution, and then drying it
under a heat lamp or blow-dryer to, in effect, wash out the hydrochloride that makes cocaine soluble and capable of being absorbed through mucous membranes. The resulting dry paste is cocaine in its purest form, far more potent than the powder most users suck up their nose. When smoked, the paste is taken up through the lungs with greater efficiency than snorted cocaine is absorbed through nasal passages. Basing is a highly addictive form of cocaine abuse, and a dangerous technique—comedian Richard Pryor would set himself on fire doing it. Once he got started, David would lock himself in his apartment for days at a time, calling out for more cocaine when his supply diminished. There were days when David would call Willie and ask him to bring food and leave it in the hall outside his door. This period lasted for several months. When the woman left, David stopped basing. But the experience seemed to have left him with an insatiable lust for cocaine.

But little of that was in evidence on New Year’s Eve, when toast after toast of vintage wine was hoisted to the honor of the host and his lovely fiancée. David presented Suzanne with an heirloom, a valuable diamond engagement ring that had been his grandmother’s.

The total bill for the evening was thirty-five grand. Willie threw in five grand towards the tip.

Willie was grateful for the meal that night, for the fine bottle of cognac and the opportunity to earn his own million, but mostly he was glad because at last he would be rid of David Ackerman.

At least, that was the plan.

But if the first two months of 1982 were any indication, David was incapable of backing off. He continued to badger Willie constantly. On the night before Kenny Weidler’s wedding, David sat through the night snorting cocaine and going over fine points of bookkeeping and packaging formulas with Willie. Every time Willie would make a motion to leave, David would insist that he stay. It got to be 3:00 a.m.

“You’re supposed to be in Kenny’s wedding tomorrow, David. Don’t you think you ought to get some sleep?” Willie said. The wedding was in upstate New Jersey.

“Don’t worry,” said David. “I’ve got a couple of ’ludes. I’ll be okay.”

Willie left at 5:00 a.m. He slept for about an hour, dressed, and drove to the wedding, getting lost along the way. He arrived at the end of the ceremony. David wasn’t there. It had been a very traditional wedding, with six ushers and six bridesmaids. David was to have been an usher. His absence was glaring. When he arrived late for the
reception, David stayed out in the car until Willie came out to coax him in. Ken was furious with David, and his wife, Barbara, wouldn’t even speak to him.

Despite the festive New Year’s meal, David’s relationship with Suzanne was actually on its way downhill by the time of their engagement party, and it continued to worsen over the next few months. After the engagement, his jealous suspicions became psychotic. If Suzanne stayed out too long shopping with her sister, he accused her of having met with another man. If he found two coffee cups in the apartment, he accused her of having another man over while he was gone. And yet, on a trip to Atlantic City, when David decided he wanted to sleep with Kim, Suzanne’s sister, he talked Suzanne into sleeping with one of the drivers. Kim refused to sleep with David, but Suzanne and the driver hit it off so well that their relationship continued—fulfilling David’s worst fear. Living together in an apartment on Conshohocken State Road now, high on a hill in northwest Philadelphia, David and Suzanne would fight and fight until he would tell her to leave. She would throw some things together and head for the door, and then David would angrily refuse to let her leave.

On one of these nights, in anger David phoned Kim and told her to come and get her sister out of his apartment.

It was after midnight, but Kim was there in fifteen minutes. When she got to the door, David answered and told her to go away.

“Suzanne’s not leaving,” he said.

But on this night, Suzanne had decided that she really was going to go. She pushed David out of the way and started down the hall toward the elevator with Kim. As they waited for the elevator, David came running down the hall, pleading with Suzanne to return.

“I’m not coming back,” said Suzanne.

“Leave her alone,” said Kim.

David got angry and started shouting threats.

“Go away, David,” said Kim.

“I’m leaving,” said Suzanne. “And I’m not coming back.”

David made a move to grab Suzanne, and Kim, who was smaller than her sister, pushed David back. David then turned and pushed Kim, and Suzanne lunged at David to protect her sister. There was more pushing and kicking and screaming.

Then from out of a side door next to the elevator stepped a security guard.

“Would you please keep it down?” he said.

“All I want to do is leave,” said Suzanne. “And he won’t let me leave.”

“Look, I don’t want to get involved, but just please keep it down,” said the guard. And he left.

No sooner had the guard left than the fighting resumed. When the elevator doors finally opened, David started pushing his way in with the sisters, so Suzanne pulled the diamond engagement ring off her finger and flung it past David down the hall. Instinctively, David turned and went after the ring, and the elevator doors closed.

After hiding out from David at one place or another for a few weeks, Suzanne ended up at Willie’s. When David learned she was there, he accused Willie of sleeping with her, which was not true. Eventually, Suzanne met with David and they reconciled. She moved back into the apartment, and, within weeks, the fighting resumed.

As David worsened, his relationship with Larry grew more and more strained. It bugged David that Larry was collecting twice as much in profits as he. After Larry split the business with David and Ken, his daily involvement had virtually ceased. David was the one working all hours of the day and night, managing a multimillion-dollar illicit business while Larry was golfing once a week, setting up his dental practice as a hobby, fixing up his beautiful home in the suburbs, whizzing around backcountry roads in his luxurious foreign car, finding ways of converting his hot cash into permanent wealth. David was willing to accept the arrangement because it gave him an opportunity to do likewise. But once he had made his million, it was his turn to step back from the business and begin enjoying the fruits. Only he couldn’t. David didn’t trust Willie to manage everything smoothly—he had no David Ackerman to take over for him. And, to make matters worse, David was collecting only about 35 percent of net profits—splitting new customers with Larry fifty-fifty, sharing his and Ken’s old customers with Ken, and taking only 25 percent from Larry’s old friends, the business’s biggest customers. David had expected Larry to make him an equal partner, so that they would equally bear the cost of giving Willie his percentage. But Larry wouldn’t go along with that.

On March 14, Larry’s twenty-seventh birthday, Larry was at his parents’ apartment in Haverhill. Most of his family had gathered to celebrate with a cake and presents. By this time, both Larry’s older brother Rusty and his sister Jill had gotten heavily involved in dealing Larry’s cocaine in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Rusty was driving big expensive cars and embarking on large-scale development projects. Jill had been handling quite a few customers herself until, in 1981, her own abuse of the drug drove her to a nervous breakdown. Massachusetts state troopers found her raving in her car by the side of the turnpike in the fall of 1981 and took her to a hospital. Larry’s parents and oldest brother, Justin, the physician, were ignorant of the source of the younger half of the family’s sudden affluence—and
of Jill’s breakdown. They accepted Larry’s stories about the stock market and the record company at face value, and why not? Hadn’t Larry owned a seat on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange? Didn’t he have a gold record to show for his investment in WMOT-TEC Records? Larry’s brother Justin, who was earning good money teaching and practicing medicine, had begun calling his younger brother for financial advice. Larry had gotten in the habit of presenting his parents with thousands of dollars in cash, and was making plans to buy them a condominium in West Palm Beach, Florida, right: on the golf course—both Justin and Pauline loved golf. So it was an especially happy gathering of an especially prosperous family honoring the youngest son, for whom every family member had reason for admiration and gratitude.