Doctor Dealer (2 page)

Now for hour upon hour there was nothing to do but dwell on these things. Larry’s cell was a windowless cube. He had paced the length and width, two and a half strides each way. The walls were cinderblock coated thickly with beige paint, cold and smooth to the touch. The floor was concrete. Through the bars to the right was a bare wall and hallway. Larry sat on a thin, clean gray mattress on a steel platform, his knees drawn up under his chin and his long arms wrapped around his legs. There was no pillow, sheet, or blanket. Across the cell was a toilet and sink. No towels. A Gideon’s Bible was on the edge of the sink—
No, thanks,
says Larry. Overhead burned a light bulb in a wire cage. It had burned on through the night and into the day—a dawning he could detect only by observing subtle changes in the color of light down the dimly lit corridor. It was noisy. Drunks in other cells raved and sang, vomited and snored. The air was moist and warm and smelled of soap.

On his way in, waddling in those needless leg irons, Larry had passed under a sign that read, “Security and Professionalism.” It was a fair description of how he was being handled. Once inside, his manacles had been removed and he was ordered to strip. Guards took his watch and wedding ring. They they searched his mouth and his hair and told him to turn around and bend over and pull his buttocks apart so they could shine a light up his ass. All the while Larry was eagerly obliging, smiling, trying to be helpful. He was handed a crisply folded zippered jumpsuit of bright orange and a pair of worn black cloth slippers—“Get dressed.” There had been nothing threatening or abusive in the guards’ manner. In fact, everyone had been polite. But it was all nightmare. Larry moved in numb obedience as uniformed men processed him, poked at him and probed him, ordered him to sit or stand or step forward, to turn and bend, touched him with scrubbed, hard hands, managed him with bored efficiency. It was as though his life had slipped, like the life of some character in
one of the cheap sci-fi novels he liked to read, into a maddening mirror dimension where nothing about him mattered except physical entity—Lawrence W. Lavin, D.M.D., Phillips Exeter Academy, University of Pennsylvania, businessman, investor, former member of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, husband, father, sportsman, and, yes, multimillion-dollar drug dealer, none of this mattered. He was an object, six feet three inches tall, 185 pounds, eyes green, hair black, something to be inspected, cataloged, numbered, transported, stored. All of it filled him not with despair or anger or even sadness, but with a paralyzing sense of futility. All of it, the walls, the bars, the light bulb in its own small cage, the clerks chatting about their favorite TV shows. It was upon him so suddenly, as though yesterday’s blue ocean and blue sky and all the days and years before it had all been one dream and now he had awakened abruptly to another . . .
and this is now to be my life!

“Do you think it’s possible to kill yourself by jumping off the bed and ramming your head into the bars?”

Larry had dozed; the voice startled him.

It came from the next cell, the voice of a boy, distressed. There had been a drunk in the next cell who had made incoherent noise for hours before falling asleep. Now the drunk had evidently been released, and this kid had been brought in. Larry could tell by the light in the hallway that it must be midmorning. He had been sitting there about fourteen hours.

“No,” said Larry, chuckling sympathetically. “I’ve already figured out there’s no way to commit suicide in this cell.” He meant this to sound like a wisecrack but the kid in the next cell didn’t laugh.

“I read about you in the paper this morning,” said the kid. “You’re that yuppie coke dealer. The fugitive.”

There was awe in his voice. It didn’t surprise Larry that his story was big news. He had been through that once before.

The kid had been busted for possession. Larry did his best to sound avuncular. It was a familiar role. At home when he stepped out into the front yard to water his flower beds or trim the lawn, the neighborhood children, especially the teenagers, were drawn to him, Marcia used to say, like iron filings to a magnet. He had time for them, treated them like equals, took their teenage problems seriously. He was teaching this one to scuba dive and this one how to program his home computer and this one about the stock market. It was a role he had played only in the eighteen months they had lived in Virginia Beach as fugitives. He was Brian O’Neil, the computer whiz who had made a bundle quickly, sold off his company, and was now taking a few years off—thirty-one years old, rich, and temporarily retired. He
was someone the kids could look up to who lacked the distance and authority of their parents, someone who could give them advice that didn’t sound patronizing . . . and they would listen. The Miller boy across the street had given up his new chewing-tobacco habit after Larry’s talk about cancer of the mouth. The Payne boy next door had decided on a career in the stock market after Larry had come to his school and talked to the class about investing. What would they think of him now? What would his new friends, their parents, think? Their Brian O’Neil, volunteer treasurer of their civic association, was Dr. Lawrence W. Lavin, notorious criminal kingpin, in hiding. Their role model was a secret corrupter of youth, evil genius of the Yuppie Cocaine Conspiracy, largest drug ring ever discovered in Philadelphia, the city he had fled. That was how the newspapers would be playing it right now. He didn’t have to see the papers to imagine. He remembered vividly the day of his first arrest nearly two years ago, at the Philadelphia courthouse, when he was amazed to find a courtroom filled with reporters to witness his arraignment. Every time he looked up the artists would start scribbling frantically. And the prosecutor went on about a “major criminal conspiracy,” “the most elaborate cocaine organization ever uncovered in this region,” and about him as a “criminal mastermind.” Larry had always gotten a kick out of the legend he had built among his friends, but hearing incriminating bits and pieces of his past spoken by these humorless, literal detectives and lawyers somehow rang so false, and yet, what could he argue? What parts of the story could he deny? He had first felt the futility that night when the sketches of him by the courtroom artists and the cold mug-shot image of his face were the lead items on the TV news. The first story! At home in his den with the shades of his big Main Line home tightly drawn, seated in his leather armchair with a remote control flipping channels, half stunned and half amused, he had watched them all until Marcia had pleaded angrily from the kitchen, “Larry, why in the world would you want to listen to that?” But he had wanted to listen because he wanted to formulate answers. If he could only explain . . .
yes, that’s true, but. . . but. . .
where would he start? How could anyone understand? The FBI and federal prosecutors had built such a labyrinth of solid evidence, hostile interpretation, and ugly innuendo that Larry felt lost and hopeless. Now it was all happening again, only this time there would be no bail, no escape. These walls, these bars, the light bulb in its own cage burning, burning, accusing. There was no escape . . .
and this is now to be my life!

It seemed so absurd. Larry felt no more like a criminal kingpin than the kid the next cell over. For selling pot and cocaine? Come on! But there was no use even trying to explain. What judge or jury would ever see it his way, would ever understand that his drug sales weren’t
like a heroin pusher’s, that it was just between friends, that he had meant no harm?

Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Keys rattled and a door creaked. The kid in the next cell was taken out. The cell door shut with a clang that stayed in Larry’s ears for minutes after the voices and footsteps were gone.

He caught his head nodding between his knees and jerked it back upright. Larry had not showered since yesterday morning. He felt crusty and worn and longed to escape his own odor. Even if he wanted to sleep he knew he could not with the light bulb boring through his eyelids. This must be some kind of game they play with your mind. They had given him papers to sign, and it was only a matter of time before they would want him to start talking. He figured this waiting alone was meant to soften him up. He had eaten a starchy meal off a tray and was now feeling gas pains that doubled him over. Marcia had said the children were with neighbors and would be okay. Had they let Marcia go home? Tara had never gone to sleep without being rocked by her mother. And Chris. What answers did they have for that restless four-year-old mind? Where is Daddy? Where is Mommy?

What was Pat O’Donnell doing on the dock yesterday afternoon? Was that how they had found him? Or was it the phone calls? Larry had known he was making the single biggest mistake a fugitive can make when he called home. But in eighteen months there had only been a handful of calls. Most from pay phone to pay phone at prearranged times, and only to Rusty, his brother, or to Ken Weidler, his best friend and former dental partner. Marcia had talked only to her mother and sister. Surely none of them would have betrayed him! Even if they had, Larry had never told anyone where he and Marcia were living. He poked and probed at the problem like a sore tooth. Had his brother betrayed him? His best friend? Larry could accept neither possibility, so the conundrum returned to Pat O’Donnell. Could Pat have had something to do with it? Marcia had thought Larry was crazy when he came home one day from the marina and said that he had been out fishing with an FBI agent. “Larry, let’s move. We can’t stay,” she said. She had been in a panic. But Larry hadn’t felt threatened at all.

“He’s retired,” said Larry. Besides, Pat was such a nice guy. They had really hit it off. Larry had felt sure that even if the ex-agent did stumble over his real identity, he would be more inclined to tip Larry off than turn him in. He knew what kind of husband and father Larry was. He knew the kind of guy Larry was. What good would it do society to take him away from his wife and children? But if it wasn’t Pat, then who? How? There had been the article in
Philadelphia
magazine last month, entitled “Dr. Snow.” His brother had read it to him over the phone. There were pictures of him and of Marcia. Could someone have seen it who recognized him? It might be as simple as that. But, then, why had Pat been waiting for him on the dock?

And arrest Marcia? Marcia who hated the business, who had tried every way she knew to pull him away, everything short of leaving him? If he had only listened to Marcia.

What returned again and again was the image of her hands, folded on her lap in the backseat of the car, in handcuffs.

Marcia in handcuffs?

Fall 1972, on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. Upperclassman John Sidoli was studying in his third-floor room in Langdell Hall when in jumped his friend Jeff Giancola with a plastic bag full of white powder. Jeff looked around frantically, his eyes coming to rest on Sidoli’s closet. He blurted, “John, let me stash this in there. Just for a little while. If Larry finds it he’ll kill me!” Before Sidoli had a chance to sacrifice good judgment to fellowship, Giancola stashed the bag in his closet and fled.

Sidoli listened to the footsteps retreat down the corridor. Setting aside his book, he stood and walked to his window in time to see Giancola fly out the front door and sprint into the Commons. Behind the girls’ dorm across the way the sky had the warm glow of dusk. Shadow covered half of the green between the tall redbrick Georgian dormitories. Two broad white elms in full autumn display were enclosed in this space. Sidoli had lived in the same corner of Langdell for more than a year, across the hall from Giancola and Larry Lavin. Sidoli was closer to Giancola, who had confided several weeks ago that he was involved in a drug deal with Lavin, which came as no surprise. Even though Sidoli had known and liked Lavin since the middle of their year as “Lowers,” as sophomores at Exeter are called, he had never really felt close to him. There was something outrageous about Larry, something that made Sidoli believe Giancola’s story. Of all the hundreds of students he knew at Exeter, Larry Lavin was the one most likely to get involved in something like that.

Giancola had said that Larry was working a heroin deal with the Boston Mafia. He said that whenever the drug connection called at Langdell Hall, a message was left for Larry to call his mother. Sidoli knew there were messages on the board nearly every day for Lavin
to call his mother. Ever since, whenever he saw the note on the board, “Lavin, call Mom,” it lent credence to the tale.

Looking down now through the magnificent elms, he saw Giancola stop midway across the Commons. Just inside the shadow stood a tall, thin figure Sidoli recognized as Lavin and some big guy with a hat and overcoat. The two strode up to Giancola, who appeared to be pleading. They knocked him down. Giancola jumped up swinging, and was knocked down again. He was kicked by the man in the overcoat. Then he was pulled to his feet and dragged toward the front door.

Sidoli panicked. He ran from his room and down the hall to the lavatory, where he opened one of the toilet stalls and closed the door behind him.

All was silent for long minutes. Then he heard Giancola call for him in the hall. He didn’t answer. The calls got closer until Giancola burst into the bathroom and discovered him hiding in the stall. Jeff looked desperate. He begged Sidoli to cover for him. Somehow, he said, Lavin suspected that the bag of white powder was stashed in Sidoli’s room. Jeff needed his friend to swear that it wasn’t.

Reluctantly, Sidoli agreed, but as they entered the room, Lavin was already holding the plastic bag in his hand.

“You were holding out on us,” he sneered. “You stole an ounce. We’ll show you what we do to people who steal from us.”

And the big man lunged at Giancola with a Coke bottle, shattering it against the side of the door. Sidoli leapt back horrified as Lavin and the other man wrestled Giancola to the floor. Straddling Jeff, Lavin opened the baggie and held the white powder over Giancola’s face.