Mr Nice: an autobiography (24 page)

Although I had been unable either to persuade Old John to restart operations in Nepal or to find an air-freighting hashish source in some other country, Ernie had allowed me to invest some profits in his Bangkok to New York Thai stick scams on the condition that Judy and I come to America to spend the pile of cash that was now accumulating in his Californian safe-deposit boxes. We were both dying to go, but one needed a full British passport and an American visa to visit the United States. I could have used one of the birth certificates I had and the batch of referees at the Ewell Group of Companies to get a full passport, but I was always worried that the person named in the passport would suddenly apply for a passport himself. Ideally, I needed someone who knew I was using his passport, would never apply for one, and would back me up in whatever way was needed. Judy thought of an old childhood friend of hers, Anthony Tunnicliffe. He
lived near Birmingham and was a few years younger than I, but not too many. Judy was certain that for a reasonable sum of money he would forgo the ability to travel abroad. Judy also suggested that she take on her friend’s wife’s identity. That would make things doubly safe: Mr and Mrs Anthony Tunnicliffe. The real Tunnicliffes were overjoyed at the proposal. They truthfully filled in their passport application forms and took photographs of themselves. Their local doctor signed both photographs and forms as being authentic. The Tunnicliffes gave the signed forms and photographs back to me. Phil Sparrowhawk got a rubber stamp made which approximated that of the Tunnicliffes’ doctor. Judy and I then filled out new passport application forms in our own handwriting. In appropriate handwriting, Phil filled out the doctor’s bit on the form and on photographs of me and Judy and rubber-stamped them. We gave the forms back to the Tunnicliffes, who posted them to the Passport Office. The only check the Passport Office was likely to make was to telephone the doctor and ask if he’d countersigned the Tunnicliffes’ application and photographs. No worries. Full passports bearing our photographs were delivered to the Tunnicliffes’ Birmingham address within ten days. Now we needed American visas. To get them we had to show ourselves able to afford an American visit. We rented a flat in Birmingham in the name of Tunnicliffe. One of the phoney companies at Ewell, Insight Video, opened up a branch office in New Street, Birmingham, and employed a man named Anthony Tunnicliffe as the Midlands General Manager and a lady called Jill Tunnicliffe as secretary. A Tunnicliffe bank account was opened at the Midland Bank. We mailed our US visa application forms and passports to the United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square. They were sent back with visas valid for multiple entries not exceeding two months each visit.

In late 1976, with an over-abundance of caution, Judy and I flew as Mr and Mrs Tunnicliffe from Birmingham to
Denver, Colorado, via Brussels, Frankfurt, New York, and Chicago. A chauffeur-driven limousine took us from Denver to Vail, where Ernie, who had put on a tremendous amount of weight, Patty, and Tom Sunde shared a large and luxurious house. The snow was thick, and we were in time for Thanksgiving, with which I was totally unfamiliar. There was lots of mindless television. In freezing temperatures, I rode a horse over the Rockies and played with guns. I didn’t like Colorado life.

Ernie also had a huge apartment in Coconut Grove, Florida, where he liked to spend the Christmas and New Year. The five of us flew from Denver via Dallas/Fort Worth to Miami. Judy and I checked into the Mutiny, a hotel immortalised by some Crosby, Stills, and Nash album, and were given a deluxe suite with a mirrored ceiling, sauna, Jacuzzi, bar, and four televisions. Lots of Colombian dope, dope dealers, gangsters, nubilia, and exotica flooded the streets. I liked Coconut Grove life. We took a year’s rental of an apartment in a luxury condominium complex overlooking Key Biscayne and fitted it out with up-to-date everything, including a safe full of $100 bills. I bet $10,000, my first and last football bet, on the Oaklands Raiders to beat the Minnesota Vikings in the Superbowl. I won. I bought hot jewellery and a Cadillac Seville from a Mafia friend of Ernie’s called Luis Ippolito, took a driving test, and got issued with a Florida Driver’s License in the name of Anthony Tunnicliffe.

Our two months’ permitted stay was running out, so Judy and I decided to visit Canada and then re-enter the United States. We went via New York, where we stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria and took a tourist helicopter ride through Manhattan’s skyscrapers. New York had a kind of magical energy. We noticed its absence when we got to Toronto, where we were totally bored and took a Canadian Pacific flight to a slightly warmer Vancouver. We checked into the Seaporter Inn and watched the seaplanes taking off. The
next day we visited Stanley Park, and in the evening went to the planetarium. We sat near the centre. At the circumference of the almost deserted auditorium, peering at me through the twinkling darkness, was Marty Langford’s face, agape with astonishment.

I suppose remarkable coincidences happen often enough, but this was a bit much. The man who had been my closest childhood friend for at least fifteen years and whom I had not seen since 1973 and had no way of contacting was now a few yards away. What is it about Vancouver planetariums that attracts Welsh dope fugitives?

Marty and I talked. He had been living with McCann and his Dutch wife Sylvia since he fled to Ireland three years previously. Other members of the Tafia had gone their separate ways. McCann, now using the name James Kennedy and claiming he was a close relative of the late President Kennedy, was doing very well for himself. He had an office floor in the Guinness Tower in Vancouver, oil interests in Venezuela, and had partially financed the film
Equus
. He had a warm friendship with James Coburn and his wife, Beverley. Marty declined comment on the source of McCann’s wealth. I gave Marty my new name and room number in the Seaporter and told him to give it to McCann, who rang the next morning.

‘How’s British Intelligence?’

‘Slightly greater than that of the Irish, Jim.’

‘You fucking Welsh arsehole. Still as smarmy as ever, aren’t you, H’ard? But I got to give it to you. You got out of it and did it by yourself. I’ll be over in half an hour.’

I quickly introduced McCann and Judy to each other before Judy excused herself from our hotel room on the pretext of needing to go to the hotel shopping centre.

‘Are you still dope-dealing, H’ard?’

‘When I can, yes.’

‘Those days are fucking over, man. Dope dealers are history. High finance is where it’s at.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Revolving letters of credit, shell companies and offshore banks. I’m spending money hand over fucking fist, and it’s all other people’s.’

‘So, what’s different?’

‘What’s different, you stupid Welsh prick, is that I’m living in the fast lane, and I’m legit.’

‘I take it you’re no longer a revolutionary.’

‘I’m a fucking revolutionary until I die. Since when is selling dope on Brighton seafront a revolutionary act, for fuck’s sake?’

‘It’s a bit closer than all this upwardly mobile corporate stuff you’re into, Jim.’

‘Is it fuck? H’ard, doing this business I meet the people who matter, the high rollers. You understand me, do you? There’s only five hundred people in the world who control anything worth a fuck. And I’ve met them all, every fucking one of them.’

‘Where’s Graham, Jim?’

‘He’s become a poof. He’s living in San Francisco or some other poof place. He’s probably still dope-dealing, like you.’

‘Did you do any more Shannon deals after I got busted?’

‘I’m not telling you, H’ard. Graham never could control those idjits in Kabul. I found out who they are and their addresses in Kabul. I’ve got them when I want them. But those days are gone, H’ard. You need to wise up, but we’ll keep in touch. If you ever get a real problem, you can ask for the Kid.’

Judy and I had arranged to meet Ernie, Patty, and Tom Sunde in San Francisco. A load of Thai sticks from Robert Crimball in Bangkok had just been cleared by Don Brown in New York, and the West Coast was considered the best market for top-quality Thai weed. This is where the money would be. After sales, Ernie was going to introduce me to his lawyer, Richard Sherman, and a friend of theirs who worked in the safe-deposit vaults in the Wells Fargo Bank. We flew
there from Vancouver and stayed at the Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill. I didn’t much like the views of Alcatraz, but I was interested to see, for the first time, the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, one of the main candidates for the birthplace of the Sixties movements. It was disappointing and looked identical to every other area of San Francisco, which itself wasn’t that different from most American cities. There wasn’t a hippie in sight. Maybe they were all at home smoking Thai sticks. I filled up a safe-deposit box in the Wells Fargo Bank with the money I’d made by investing in this last Thai scam and took Judy to Las Vegas. When we weren’t attending one of several dozen star-studded performances, we were gambling. I had bought a book on how to beat the system playing blackjack and studied it intensely. I gave Judy a $1,000 stake to play on whatever table she fancied. She chose Baccarat. I also allowed myself a $1,000 stake. After the first all-night session, I was ahead by $100 while Judy had won a total of $16,000. It was most humiliating.

Most of the upper-echelon marijuana dealers in America had apartments in both Miami and New York. I wanted the same. Judy and I flew from Las Vegas to New York and booked into the Plaza Hotel. Elvis Presley’s death was announced while we were checking in. We found an apartment with huge rooms in the Pavilion Building on the corner of East 77th Street and York Avenue and filled it with the trappings of financial success. Ernie had a warehouse full of furniture to which we could help ourselves. Ernie also gave me the telephone number of his hashish and marijuana wholesaler in New York, Alan Schwarz, a charming multimillionaire who was the darling of Manhattan’s hip and cool. Alan had a whole network of dealers who worked for him in Manhattan and a team of drivers who were continually hauling Colombian marijuana from Florida coastal stashes to the streets of New York. He was very professional and efficient and the best guide possible to Manhattan social life. I first met Alan on his 21st birthday, which he gave at
Régine’s. Guests included Margaux Hemingway and Bernie Cornfield. The British residents of New York had not yet acquired the label ‘Eurotrash’. John Lennon and Mick Jagger both lived in the Upper East Side, and they and their entourages would sometimes grace our apartment with their presence. The beautiful Guinness sisters, Sabrina, Miranda, and Anita, often visited us, as did Jane Bonham-Carter and Lady Antonia Fraser’s daughter Rebecca. I hired a full-time Black chauffeur called Harvey who took us everywhere in a long black limousine.

McCann got in touch. He was coming to New York.

‘I’m giving a dinner at Elaine’s restaurant. Some really fucking important people are coming. You and Judy can come too. I’m opening the door for you, H’ard, the door to high finance and the fast lane.’

Elaine’s was a well-known actors’ haunt at 88th Street. McCann headed a table for ten, at which were seated various people including Fakri Amadi, the head of Hertz in Dubai, Al Malnik, the Wall Street whiz-kid who had married the daughter of Meyer Lansky, and, to my utter astonishment, Mohammed Durrani. McCann had obviously met him through Graham and won him over. Durrani was introduced as Michael, a name I knew he sometimes used, the Crown Prince of Afghanistan. Durrani’s very loud ‘very pleased to meet you’ and his facial contortions clearly indicated that he did not want me to reveal that I knew him. I was introduced as Howard ap Owen, the leader of the Welsh Nationalist Party. McCann insisted on drowning everyone in champagne and kept pestering Peter Ustinov, who was sitting alone at an adjacent table, to play him at backgammon. Durrani and I arranged to meet the next day at my apartment. Judy cooked him roast beef.

‘Howard, please do not think I am doing business with crazy Irishman. My cousin needs false passport for her husband, who is European, and Irishman is only man I know who can maybe get.’

‘I can do that for you, Mohammed.’

‘I am obliged, Howard.’

‘It’s no problem. I had to get one for myself. You heard about my problems, I suppose?’

‘I hear some things, but I pay no attention. It does not affect you and me, Howard.’

‘Do you still have the ability to air-freight merchandise from Karachi?’

‘Of course. Raoul, he is doing every day. You have met Raoul, no?’

‘Yes, but I don’t know how to get hold of him or if he’s prepared to do business with me.’

‘Raoul is always prepared to do business under proper terms. I will speak with him and arrange meeting. Sam, too, is doing from Beirut. You should see him. Sam will be staying with me in my house in French Riviera in few weeks’ time. You and your wonderful wife are most welcome to come.’

I telephoned Ernie and related to him the new possibilities now presenting themselves. He caught the next flight to New York.

‘That’s fantastic. When can they send it?’

‘In about a month or so, Ernie. I should think.’

‘Hmm! That long, huh? Okay. I’ll get started and set up the companies. We’ll do it like the Nepal one. By the way, can you help me out on the next Bangkok deals? My guys are pissed with flying over to Bangkok and back with messages and money. They always get hassled by US Customs for having Thai stamps in their passport. Do you have any guys we could use?’

I called Philip Sparrowhawk. In two days he was in Bangkok giving Richard Crimball a bag of money he had picked up from Tom Sunde in Hong Kong. Phil based himself in Bangkok for the next couple of years and developed his own personal relationship with Richard Crimball and others working in the business of exporting Thai marijuana.