Doctor Dealer (11 page)

But although Larry’s living habits had quieted considerably, his dealing had not slowed. To the contrary, the time that Larry had formerly spent out carousing was now spent wheeling and dealing. Marcia more or less staked out the bedroom as private turf. Whenever people stopped by to visit Larry—and they came and went at all hours of the day and night—Marcia would do her best to make them feel unwelcome, often retreating to the bedroom with a defiant slam of the door. She grew to hate the telephone—Larry had five of them, five different lines, and it was not at all unusual for him to spend all night talking on them, sometimes two or three calls at the same time. For her the phones embodied the business and were an ever-present rival for Larry’s attention and heart. His premed classes took most of his time during the day, and studying and talking on the phone kept him awake most of the night.

One evening, when Marcia had contrived to get Larry away from the phones by taking him out to dinner, he fell asleep at the table!

Now that she was living with him, Marcia fought harder against the dealing. She wanted it to stop; it was foolhardy and it frightened her. But having spoken her mind, and having been reassured by Larry that he was about ready to stop, Marcia was not inclined to be a nag. Larry had such a winning way about him. He would start off arguing, then he would just listen or walk away. He would come back an hour later, smiling, contrite, acknowledging the truth of Marcia’s complaint, promising some sort of compromise. For a few weeks he might even strive to do his dealings out of Marcia’s sight. But the all-day, all-night routine would eventually return, and there would be another row over it. Marcia knew that if it came right down to it, she could either put up or shut up. As a junior in college, Marcia was willing to put up with it a while longer. Larry had, after all, begun to settle down.

But there was no use trying to stop him during the summer of 1976. Larry was a man possessed. He
had
to make back the money he had lost. It had taken almost two years of dealing to reach that thirty-thousand-dollar level, and now he was almost back to zero. Larry had the necessary connections. He knew where to buy marijuana, and, even in the campus off-season, he had enough customers to sell it. All he needed was one more big deal to get back on his feet.

His determination took some of the fun out of dealing. This was the first summer he had devoted full-time to it. He felt restless staying in West Philly all summer. The year before, in the summer after his sophomore year, Larry had managed the frat house’s rental program,
and he had worked with Paul Mikuta. He and Paul had worked for the Mikuta family’s roofing company, until Larry got fired for goofing off. Then he had driven a taxi for another small company owned by Paul’s father. Larry had gotten to know the back roads and beautiful estates of Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs. He and a friend one afternoon broke into several big houses and stole odd items from mantelpieces and bookshelves, then left little notes behind. In one house they had sat at the dining room table, sipped whiskey, and taken a golf club; in another Larry had unplugged a telephone and carried that home—Larry had this thing about telephones. “Can you imagine coming home to discover that someone has broken into your house and stolen . . .
your telephone?”
Larry would say. He thought that was
so
funny.

But this summer there was little time for fun and games. He worked a few small deals with friends in western Pennsylvania, and for the big deal he needed in order to get back on his feet, he contrived a plan. He would wait until Phi Delta Theta’s rental account was fat at midsummer, use it to make a big buy in Florida, sell as much as he could by the end of summer, and be in good shape for an even bigger deal by the time senior year began.

Larry was so desperate that, for the first and last time, he planned to make the run to Florida himself.

First Larry had promised Marcia a vacation. He still had a few thousand dollars left after L.A.’s debacle. He and Marcia took off first for New Orleans, where they stayed with the family of a wealthy classmate Larry had known at Phillips Exeter.

It was a style of life that wowed Larry and Marcia. His friend belonged to a fabulously wealthy social circle, people who lived on estates surrounded by high fences, where you had to show an I.D. card just to get in. At a party one evening, cocaine was set out on tables around the swimming pool. Larry went off on a friend’s motorcycle, and when he came back the crowd was all naked—all except Marcia, who sat clothed and very uncomfortable, awaiting Larry’s return.

Next they flew to Florida. Larry grabbed a pile of brochures at the airport. Snapping away with Marcia’s little Instamatic, he and Marcia hit every theme park and tourist trap they could squeeze into the week. At Sea World, Larry snapped a fuzzy sequence of pictures of leaping whales, performing porpoises, and a barking walrus. Marcia took Larry’s picture feeding three tame deer. He wore a bright yellow sportshirt and blue-and-maroon checked pants. At the wax museum in Orlando, with Marcia mildly protesting, Larry snapped pictures of all the wax figure displays—Captain Kirk and Spock, Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid, Burt Reynolds in his role from the movie
Deliverance,
the Beverly Hillbillies in their jalopy, Hoss, Ben Cartwright, and Little Joe. They went to Disney World one day, Cypress Gardens the next. Larry snapped Marcia’s picture before a beautiful botanical display. Marcia wore a white sundress and sandals. At Gatorland, Larry took pictures of writhing alligators, and at the Kennedy Space Center he took pictures of rockets.

Suntanned Marcia was pictured wearing a red dress sitting on Larry’s lap, smiling, at Rosie O’Grady’s. Larry looked sunburned and weary. Marcia looked radiantly happy. At nineteen she was slimmer and prettier than she had been two years before. Her face had outgrown some of its baby fat, and her high cheekbones framed big brown eyes. She had reason to be delighted—she had kept Larry to herself, away from telephones and nights out with the fraternity boys, for almost two weeks!

Back in Philadelphia, Marcia bought a big brown scrapbook with a cutesy painting of a kitten on the front, a binder with sticky pages of thick cardboard and clear plastic sheets that lifted to cover and protect her photographs. Snapshots from their trip filled the first ten pages. Marcia lovingly labeled and dated the pictures of their first vacation together.

When they returned home from their vacation, Marcia went to northern New Jersey to visit her folks.

Larry talked Paul Mikuta, who was home from Rochester for the summer, into going down to Florida with him. It would be like another week-long vacation, only this one with the boys! Paul Mikuta was a big, brassy guy who swaggered through life, courting risk with bravado. Having Paul along had turned a nerve-wracking trip—with memories of L.A.’s bust so fresh in mind—into a joyride. Larry figured he could complete the trip and package and sell the shipment before Marcia returned in two weeks.

So Larry and Paul flew to Miami together, and after a night on the town, they met with two of L.A.’s contacts and bought the marijuana. They had planned to just drive back to Philadelphia together, but at the last minute something came up in Paul’s family and he had to rush home. Paul carried some of the pot with him in his suitcase on the plane, but Larry refused to get on the airplane with such a large amount of contraband.

He felt deflated when Paul left. He was left alone in a hotel room with nearly a hundred pounds of pot.

First he bought three big suitcases, the kind with wheels at the bottom. Then he bought a one-way ticket to Philadelphia from Trailways,
checked the bags, and settled in a seat far back in the bus for a long, long drive home.

It seemed to take a whole day just to get out of Florida. July in the Sunshine State was sweltering. He couldn’t get comfortable on the bus. When he tried to read, it upset his stomach, so he watched the scenery for hour after hour.

About five hours into the drive, somewhere in northern Florida, a tough-looking young woman got on the bus, walked down the aisle, smiled at Larry, and sat down next to him. She had pale blue eyes and straight blond hair and was wearing a faded pair of jeans over a pudgy figure. She said her name was Heidi. Considering that there were many empty seats in the back of the bus, and considering the way she kept smiling at him, Larry figured she had more in mind to pass the time than conversation. Somewhere near the border of North Carolina, Larry slipped his arm around her shoulder and she reached down to unzip his pants. And there, three rows behind the nearest passenger, in broad daylight, Heidi sucked and stroked him to orgasm, and then loudly—in case anyone on the bus hadn’t noticed what was going on back there already—spit his semen into the aisle.

Larry began to consider that this had not been a good idea. He had always lectured L.A. about staying inconspicuous.

Heidi then started talking about herself to him, loudly—too loudly. She said her parents had sent her to a mental hospital because she liked to have sex too much—it was hard to imagine that anyone on the bus was not listening to her—but that she had gotten back at them by having sex with everyone in the place, patients, orderlies, doctors . . . maybe they could get off at the next stop and go to a motel. . . . Toward late afternoon, a few hours away from Washington, D.C., she stood up and walked to the front of the bus, shouting for the driver to pull over. He did, and she bounded down the front steps and threw up by the side of the road. All eyes on the bus turned to Larry, who smiled sheepishly and looked away, willing himself someplace else. Then Heidi got back aboard, sat back down next to him, and fell asleep.

At the next stop, Larry told Heidi that he had to take a leak. He phoned his friend Stu Thomas from the station and begged him to drive down and meet him in Washington.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Larry. “You got to save me.”

Several hours later, as the bus pulled into the terminal in Washington, Larry again told Heidi he was going to the men’s room. Outside the bus he grabbed the driver and explained that he wanted to get off the bus, now. So the driver removed Larry’s bags from the compartment underneath, and Larry pulled them into the men’s room
with him, where he waited until well after the bus was scheduled to leave. Then he let another ten minutes go by just for good measure. He eased from the men’s room warily, and felt enormously relieved to find the bus, and Heidi, gone.

But as he waited for Stu arrive, Larry noticed that his bags smelled funny, and that small pools formed under them when he left them sitting in the same spot for a few minutes. He opened one of the suitcases after loading them in the trunk of Stu’s car, and was nearly knocked over by the odor. Locked in the hot compartment under the bus for nearly two days, the pot had gone bad. It smelled as potent as ammonia.

Back at Marcia’s apartment Larry dumped out the sodden, foul-smelling weed. Fistful by fistful, Larry attacked it with a hair dryer and packaged it. But the stuff never sold well. Larry was able to replenish the fraternity’s bank account, but he ended in debt to the friends who had put up money for the trip.

He made the best of it, telling his friends at 3939 about the sex maniac who gave him blowjobs all the way from Orlando to Washington, and everyone agreed that things like that only happened to Larry Lavin. But inwardly it hurt. Larry felt that all his hard work over two years had been for naught.

Word of Larry’s disaster spread unhappily through the small dealing community at Penn. He had become a cottage industry, and his fall was sure to swamp a few lesser entrepreneurs. Larry was performing service much valued by his fellow students. Use of marijuana and hashish was so prevalent on college campuses in 1976 that dealers were like precious resources—they were the ones taking criminal risks so that students could maintain their relatively “safe” one-or two-ounce stashes. At Penn, Larry was trading in such large amounts that he had become dealer to the dealers. He made the most money, but he also took the greatest share of risk.

To repay his debts and get back on his feet in time to profit during his senior year, Larry knew he would have to take even more chances than before. Few student dealers dared branch their drug sales off campus; in addition to the greater risks involved in getting caught by municipal authorities instead of campus cops, there was a greater chance of getting ripped off, beaten up, or even killed. But Larry was in a hurry. It was through another dealer that Larry was introduced early in his senior year to Tyrone, an uneducated hustler from Southwest Philly who sold marijuana on the streets of his neighborhood. Tyrone was a slight, short, light-skinned heroin addict, who had a hulking bodyguard named Gene who accompanied him at all
times. Larry’s new partner, Andy Mainardi, wanted nothing to do with Tyrone and his people. L.A., who was still waiting to face charges in Broward County, Florida, when school began again in September, told Larry he was crazy to risk dealing with Philly blacks. “Think about Marcia,” he said. But Larry felt he could trust Tyrone so long as he treated him honestly. Besides, Larry needed him. Tyrone was the only dealer who seemed able to sell Larry’s spoiled Florida pot. He bought it in small amounts, just five to ten pounds at a time, and always came back for more.

It was also during this period of desperation that Larry was introduced to an ambitious young South Philly street vendor named Billy Motto.

Billy was a few years younger than Larry. He was short and fit, a smart, cocky self-made kid from South Philly who always seemed as though he were ready to pounce on something. When he stood he stood straight, balanced like a fighter on the balls of his feet. When he was sitting he would sit straight, leaning slightly forward, with his hands poised to gesture freely while he talked. There were traces of old trouble with acne on Billy’s face, but it just made his good looks more rugged. Billy had dark blond hair and perfect white teeth and piercing green eyes. He liked to wear expensive jogging outfits and jewelry.

Contrasted with Larry’s easy suburban, prep school, Ivy League background, Billy’s background was rough and remarkable.