The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History (46 page)

"Yeah, we passed him halfway to Raywick headed to Louisville."

As Bickett turned to go back into the house, Cecil could see a man standing behind the door.

"Is anything wrong?" Cecil asked Bickett.

"No, it's fine. Maybe I'll catch up with you later."

As Danny Cecil turned to ride away, he overheard Joe Keith Bickett talking to his unfamiliar guest.

"Oh, it's just somebody riding some horses," Bickett said as he walked back into his house.

When Joe Keith Bickett returned to the living room with Hunt, Haskell was sitting at the fireplace.

"Look," Bickett said, "I'm out of this stuff you're talking about. But when Jimmy gets back from Louisville, I'll tell him you all are looking for him."

"Well, at least let me tell you about this deal," Hunt said. "It won't hurt to listen, will it?"

Then Hunt detailed his proposal to Bickett, and Bickett led Hunt toward the door. As they passed through the kitchen, Hunt saw Allen cooking cocaine on the stove.

"You guys basing coke?" Hunt asked. "My man can get you all the coke you want if you all can find him some pot."

This conversation continued for a while in the kitchen.

"You should come on up to the Horseshoe motel and talk to this guy," Hunt said.

"Sure," Bickett said, finally, to get Hunt out of the house.

After this factually disputed conversation, Bickett walked the Maine men to the door and watched them drive off, the silver Continental bouncing through the gravel-filled ruts of the washed-out drive. When the car weaved out of sight, obscured by the thick trunks of oak, walnut and sycamore trees, Joe Keith shut the door and rubbed his face.

Hunt and Haskell returned to Lebanon, where they bought a pizza at Pizza Villa to take back to the motel. They ate with Gagner and waited.

A few hours later Tank Allen drove to the motel in a gray Oldsmobile to say they were still working on the deal. To make Allen more comfortable, Hunt introduced him to Gagner, their so-called investor. They offered to show Allen the money, but he said it wasn't necessary. Gagner offered Allen a drink from a fresh bottle of Jack Daniel's, and Allen cracked the seal and drank straight from the bottle. Haskell took a swig, too.

Gagner brought bottles of whisky to his undercover drug operations as props. In the event that a drug dealer asked him to do drugs, Gagner would say he only drank, and he would drink the Tennessee whisky instead. But in the motel room with Allen, he didn't drink at all.

Not long after Tank Allen left the Horseshoe motel, Jimmy Bickett arrived in a cream-colored Oldsmobile with Stevie "Snake" Lamkin riding shotgun. They wanted Hunt and Haskell to come back out into the country with them, so Hunt and Haskell followed the cream Olds in their silver Continental the eleven miles from Lebanon to Raywick and then onto an unpaved, rural road and parked in a dirt patch at the base of a wooded hill. Haskell recognized it when they pulled off the road-the same spot where Jimmy had sold him twenty-one pounds once before. Hunt opened the Lincoln's heavy door and walked across the cold ground toward the other car; Haskell stayed put. Hunt sat in the back seat of the Olds, with Bickett and Lamkin in front. Jimmy said the deal would be later on, probably in the morning. After that, Hunt walked back to the Lincoln and returned with Haskell to the Horseshoe a little less nervous.

The next morning, 7:15 a.m., the phone rang in room 27 at the Horseshoe motel. Hunt answered. After a short conversation, he hung up the phone.

"Let's go," he told Haskell. "We're going to Stevie's."

They told Gagner where they were going and left in the Lincoln.

Stevie "Snake" Lamkin lived in a cream-colored trailer in Raywick next to a garage where he fixed cars as a part-time job. When Hunt pulled the Lincoln up to the garage, Lamkin pulled in behind. He had two girls with him. He needed to drop them off at school and pick up scales, so he backed out of the drive, leaving Hunt and Haskell waiting. A few minutes later Lamkin returned with the scales and without the girls.

Lamkin took Hunt and Haskell into his two-car garage. A gray'88 Oldsmobile was on one side, and on the other side was the hood of an El Camino resting upside down on the smooth concrete floor. Lamkin set the scales up on the El Camino hood, opened the trunk of the Oldsmobile and started pulling ten-pound bags of marijuana from the trunk. They emptied the trunk and put all the bags next to the El Camino hood. When they emptied the Oldsmobile, they backed it out of the garage and pulled Hunt's Lincoln in so it could be loaded up without attracting attention from the road.

Then they weighed all the bags, and the total came up short-139 pounds. Hunt said he wanted the full 150 pounds, that they had the money to pay for the full quota and that the full quota was what their investor wanted. Lamkin didn't seem to mind. He left to get another bag or two of marijuana while Hunt and Haskell waited in the garage, loading the 139 pounds into the trunk of the Lincoln. While Lamkin was gone, Jimmy Bickett arrived in his cream Olds. Hunt went outside to talk to Jimmy while Haskell waited in the garage. Lamkin returned with two more bags, carrying them into the garage without bothering to hide them. After weighing out the full amount, Lamkin and Haskell finished loading the trunk. The Lincoln's trunk wasn't large enough for all 150 pounds, so they put two or three bags in the back seat, and Lamkin covered them with a blanket. With business done, they talked about going back to town.

"Well, how about if Mike rides with us?" Bickett asked, referring to Mike Haskell. Hunt and Haskell agreed. Hunt would park at the shopping center in Lebanon across the street from the Horseshoe, and Haskell would go with Jimmy Bickett and Lamkin to the motel to get the money. Haskell rode in the back seat of Bickett's Oldsmobile, and Hunt drove the Lincoln by himself.

Taking Haskell along on the cash pickup was security against Hunt's driving off with a load of dope for free. In the cream Olds, Bickett made small talk with Haskell. He asked a few times about the new investor and how Haskell knew him. Haskell told Bickett that the investor was someone Hunt had dealt with in the past with coke. Haskell didn't know the guy that well, but he seemed to be OK. When Hunt drove into Lebanon, he turned his headlights on as a signal to the numerous law enforcement officials monitoring the transaction that he had the drugs. Hunt pulled into the Market Square shopping center and parked between Higdon's Foodtown and McDonald's, opened the hood of his car (his prearranged signal) and waited for the police to pick him up.

Jimmy Bickett pulled the Olds into the alley beside the Golden Horseshoe. Twenty years before, the Horseshoe had been the country music alternative to Club 68 across the street. Whereas Club 68 booked musicians who played rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues, the Horseshoe was a country-western place that hosted the likes of Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Hank Williams Jr., Johnny Cash and Barbara Mandrell. By 1989, however, the Horseshoe was nearly abandoned, and the motel behind the Horseshoe was well on its way to becoming a first-class dump.

Haskell opened the back door of Jimmy's Oldsmobile and walked toward the motel. As far as Jimmy Bickett knew, Haskell was picking up the cash. Haskell went into Gagner's room, and Gagner asked if there were any weapons in the vehicle. Haskell said no.

"OK. Get down on the floor," Gagner said.

Haskell lay down, and Gagner radioed the Kentucky State Police to tell them Jimmy was in the lot. Gagner and Haskell waited in the motel room for the next thing to happen. Outside, Bickett revved his engine, growing impatient.

"He's going to go," Gagner said into his radio.

Gagner and another officer burst into the parking lot with their guns out. Haskell stayed on the floor and didn't look outside.

There were two exits to the motel parking lot, one on each side of the nightclub-Kentucky State Police cruisers blocked both. Bickett tried to escape but then stopped the car when he realized he was trapped. State Police Detective Mike Bandy didn't show his face to Bickett at first because he was a familiar law enforcement face in the area. But after Bickett was cornered, Bandy stepped forward, cuffed Bickett and read him his rights. In Bickett's pockets, the police found a few Valium, a halfounce of cocaine and the business card for a Miami resident, who was formerly an officer of the Colombian air force.

At 11:00 a.m., Monday, February 13, after they arrested Jimmy Bickett, DEA agents and state troopers drove up to Joe Keith's farmhouse under a gray, rainy sky. By chance, Beverly Bickett, Joe Keith's sister, drove up right behind them. With his gun drawn, DEA agent Richard Badaracco told Beverly to go tell Joe Keith there were people there to see him. He told her to keep her voice up so they could hear her. It wasn't her family's first run-in with the law, but that didn't make it any easier to have guns pointed at her. Her eyes wide, she tried to count the men coming toward her. She backed up against her brother's back door, knocked loudly and yelled for Joe Keith.

Beverly and her boyfriend managed the Bickett family bar now that Charlie worked at the prison. On Mondays she would always go over to Joe Keith's and tell him how the bar's business had been that week. She also liked to straighten the house up a bit. Mondays were the only days Beverly could clean the house because the gambling parties always started on Tuesday nights and usually didn't end until Sunday.

With guns pointed at her, Beverly walked into the kitchen, yelling loudly to Joe Keith that there were people there to see him. She was scared. Joe Keith, groggy and half-awake, stepped out of his bedroom, saw the police outside and knew he was under arrest.

"Is Bobby Joe Shewmaker here?" Agent Badaracco asked.

"No,"Joe Keith said. "Do you have a search warrant?"

The police told him they could do this the easy way or the hard way.

Telling Joe Keith that they were searching for Shewmaker was a way to buy time so that a judge would sign a search warrant for the residence. The real reason the police came was to grab Joe Keith before he could find out that they had arrested his brother in Lebanon. With their guns drawn, state troopers and federal agents swarmed the kitchen and living room. Tank Allen came out of the downstairs bedroom, and agents told him to sit at the kitchen table. Joe Keith took Agent Badaracco and other officers on a tour of the house, opening closet doors for them as the agents pretended to search for Shewmaker for about a half-hour. When Joe Keith came back downstairs, he tried to pick up the black notebook on his coffee table, but Badaracco stopped him. In the kitchen, Beverly watched the police handcuffJoe Keith and lead him out to sit in the back of a police cruiser. Joe Keith asked numerous times if Beverly could leave, but the police ignored his requests. Beverly nervously watched the cops mill around her brother's house.

In Joe Keith's cabin, police found the homemade freebasing pipe, a digital scale with cocaine residue, a package of cocaine, a pen tube and a cup with cocaine residue, the rifle and shotgun, the black notebook with marijuana distribution records, cutting agents, a Ziploc baggie floating in the commode and a road map of Kansas.

Joe Keith sat in the cruiser until around 2:00 p.m., when State Trooper Mike Bandy finally wrote him a citation and showed him the warrant that gave them the right to search the house. Joe Keith again asked if his sister could leave, and the police finally consented. She went to the store and bought cigarettes, returned and gave Joe Keith a smoke in the cruiser. The police booked Joe Keith Bickett in the Marion County jail by 3:00 p.m.

Louis Earl Bickett, eldest brother of Jimmy and Joe Keith, had been a GE employee for twenty-three years. Like many Marion County workers, he commuted the hour each direction every day to the General Electric factory in Louisville for the union pay and benefits. Louis Earl heard about Joe Keith's arrest from Beverly around 4:45 p.m., when he returned home from work.

Louis Earl drove his silver Dodge Daytona straight to Joe Keith's house in the rain. Officers on the scene wore ponchos. As Louis Earl approached the house, an officer came out carrying the rifle they had found in the kitchen.

"That rifle there is mine," Louis Earl said.

"That belongs to the federal government now," the officer replied.

Louis Earl stood out in the rain for four or five minutes before one of the officers said he could come inside. Then Detective Bandy arrived along with a blue van carrying a K-9 unit. As the K-9 officer opened the back of the van for the dog, Bandy made small talk with Louis Earl, asking him what ever happened to the guy in Raywick who used to change tires and all that. Louis Earl told him the guy was dead.

That evening Jimmy and Joe Keith were moved to the Jefferson County jail in Louisville, where all the state's federal defendants were housed. A search of Snake Lamkin's trailer yielded prescription drugs, eight wristwatches, including four Rolexes, and fourteen firearms.

In the sixteen months since Johnny Boone's farm in Minnesota had alerted federal agents to the scope of Marion County's reach, no one had been able to infiltrate the county's home turf. So, as the DEA agents drove the Bickett brothers to Louisville to place them in federal custody, they sent a clear signal to what remained of the Marion County underworld: We can catch you where you sleep, even in Raywick. We've got your number now.

"For the information of the bureau," the Louisville FBI chief wrote in a "priority"-level airtel to the director's office in Washington, federal agents just arrested "five Marion County, Kentucky, residents ... for selling 158 pounds of marijuana," saying that Jimmy and Joe Keith Bickett "are two of the main suppliers of marijuana in the ... area.

"To date, this task force has been unable to identify the distribution network of this Marion County marijuana cartel because of the remote area and also because this is a very close knit group, who have pooled resources and often work in conjunction with one another.

"It has been virtually impossible to penetrate this group with conventional investigative techniques, and attempting to convince an insider to provide information against this organization has proven to be futile."