Doctor Dealer Read online

  DOCTOR DEALER

  MARK BOWDEN

  ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

  The Best Game Ever

  Bringing the Heat

  Black Hawk Down

  Guests of the Ayatollah

  Killing Pablo

  Copyright © 1987 by Mark Bowden

  Afterword copyright © 2001 by Mark Bowden

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Originally published in 1987 by Warner Books, Inc., a Warner

  Communications Company, New York, New York

  The article beginning on page xiv is reprinted with permission

  from The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 16, 1986.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  The events in this story are true. Names and physical characteristics of many

  individuals have been changed in order to protect their privacy.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bowden, Mark

  Doctor dealer / Mark Bowden.

  p. cm.

  Originally published: New York, NY : Warner Books, c1987.

  ISBN-10: 0-8021-3757-1

  ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-3757-9

  1. Lavin, Lawrence W. 2. Narcotics dealers—United States—Biography.

  3. Dentists—United States—Biography. 4. Cocaine habit—United States—

  Case studies. 5. Narcotics, Control of—United States—Case studies. I. Title.

  HV6248.L325 B69 2000

  364.1’77’092—dc21

  [B]

  00-032146

  Design by H. Roberts

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  08 09 10 11 12 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

  For Tom Scheye

  Acknowledgments

  First among those I would like to thank for helping me write this book are Larry and Marcia Lavin, who answered my innumerable questions with patience, thoughtfulness, and candor—even when the subject matter concerned things they would prefer to forget. Thanks are also due to Chuck Reed, Sid Perry, Mike White, Peter Scuderi, Agnes Osborn, Nancy Payne and her family, Jess and Babette Miller, Steve La Cheen, Henry S. Ruth, Jr., Willie Harcourt, Ricky Baratt, Glen Fuller, Brian Riley, John Sidoli (pianist and mathematician), Suzanne Taylor, Christine Pietrucha, Tom Bergstrom and Lynn, Chris, and Anita Furlan, Ron Noble and Tina Williams Gabbrielli, Pauline and Justin Lavin, Sr., and others who will appreciate not being named.

  I would also like to thank Gene Roberts for giving me time off to work on this book, Jamie Raab, Ed Sedarbaum, Rhoda Weyr, David Hirshey, Hank Klibanoff, Donald Kimelman, Avery Rome, Katherine Hatton, Elizabeth Coady (because I owe her one), and Rosie Patterson (for watching Danny). A special thanks to Gail, to my mother and father, and to each and every member of my family for their continuing love and encouragement.

  Contents

  Prologue Virginia Beach

  One Strike One . . . Strike Two . . .

  Two From Nothing to Zoom

  Three Less Risk, More Exposure

  Four Why Carry an Elephant?

  Five Never Carry Cash

  Six Batten Down the Hatches

  Seven Maybe You’ll See Smoke

  Eight It’ll Just Be a Tax Case

  Nine We’ll Be Back

  Ten Let’s Get Out of Here

  Eleven Time for a Vacation

  Twelve An Idyll

  Thirteen Does This Have Something to Do with Larry?

  Epilogue Federal Courthouse, Philadelphia

  Afterword

  DOCTOR DEALER

  Prologue

  Virginia Beach

  There was no reason to suspect anything unusual when Larry saw Pat O’Donnell on the dock in a business suit. Pat was a semiretired FBI agent who kept his boat berthed at the Lynnhaven Dry Storage marina. He often came by after putting in a morning at the office, and spent the afternoon talking to his friends as they came in off the water. Sometimes he carried a walkie-talkie in case the office needed to get in touch.

  Larry had been out all day with his friend Roy Mason. It had been a lazy fishing trip on a calm sea under a sky so bright it hurt the eyes. Larry looked tousled and tired, the picture of a man of leisure back from a day at sea, his thick black hair windblown, his long narrow nose and cheeks sunburned. He was dressed in a maroon rugby shirt with wide chest stripes of yellow and blue, worn baggy jeans, and leather deck shoes with no socks. He smelled of fish, and was eager to get home and clean up. Larry didn’t enjoy fishing as much as Roy; he had gone along mostly to keep his friend company. They hadn’t caught much, just a few cove fish that were a nuisance because they snapped at your fingers when you tried to take them off the hook.

  As the vessel swung alongside the pier, O’Donnell strode out to meet them. Larry figured Pat wanted to ask, as dedicated fishermen always did, what they had caught and where. Docked across the narrow slip of water, facing seaward, Larry was surprised to see a high-performance Wellcraft, a sleek speedboat called a Scarab. Pat had been talking to two men in that boat. They were also in business suits . . . that was odd.

  When the boat got close, Larry jumped up to the wharf and, with Roy feeding him the lines, quickly secured them and skipped back aboard to begin retrieving his gear.

  “How’s the fishin’?” asked Pat.

  Larry smiled and turned and stooped to open the cooler. He knew the sight of three or four cove fish would make Pat laugh. But before he could turn and display the largest of their catch he was grabbed under both arms by men he had not even seen approaching.

  “Larry, it’s all over,” said Pat.

  “You’re under arrest,” one of the men said.

  Larry looked at Pat, who was no longer smiling.

  “You are Larry Lavin, aren’t you?” asked one of the men holding his arms.

  “Yes. I am,” said Larry quietly. The man clapped handcuffs on his wrists in one quick motion.

  “Wait just a minute . . . there must be some mistake!” shouted Roy. “Pat, what’s going on here?”

  Larry was already being rushed forward along the pier, now with a group of five or six men around him. Behind him he overheard Pat O’Donnell hushing Roy’s protests, trying to explain.

  (The Philadelphia Inquirer; May 16, 1986)

  FBI ARRESTS ALLEGED HEAD OF ’YUPPIE’ COCAINE RING

  Lawrence W. Lavin, the former Northeast Philadelphia dentist who allegedly masterminded a major cocaine-distribution ring, was arrested without incident yesterday as he disembarked from a fishing boat in Virginia Beach, Va., the FBI said.

  Lavin, 31, had been a fugitive since November 1984, a few months after he was charged with heading a $5-million-a-month cocaine ring involving many other young professionals. He was free on $150,000 bail when he and his then-pregnant wife fled their Devon home.

  An FBI spokesman in Philadelphia said agents arrested Lavin about 5:20 p.m. as he and another dentist—who did not know Lavin’s true identity—were docking the other man’s 25-foot sport fishing boat at a marina. He was wearing blue jeans and a rugby shirt. He had been using an alias but ha
d made no effort to disguise his appearance, the FBI said.

  At the same time agents were arresting Lavin, other agents were arresting his wife, Marcia, at the couple’s home in an exclusive Virginia Beach development known as Middle Plantation, the FBI said. She was charged with harboring a fugitive.

  Both were being held in Virginia last night pending an arraignment before a federal magistrate. The couple’s two children, including a baby, had been living with them, according to the FBI.

  Lavin faces drug charges in U.S. District Court here that could bring him a life sentence if he is convicted. In addition to a 40-count indictment on drug offenses, he is also charged with evading $545,000 in federal income taxes.

  Federal authorities said the cocaine ring—which they dubbed the “Yuppie Conspiracy”—was one of the largest ever uncovered here, handling up to 175 pounds of cocaine a month. The drug in turn was distributed to others in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New England and the Southwest, according to federal prosecutors.

  More than 50 people, including three graduates of the University of Pennsylvania dental school, two lawyers and two stockbrokers, along with many other professionals, have been charged with being part of the drug conspiracy that Lavin allegedly headed.

  At the courthouse in Norfolk the clerks gossiped about television. Just another ordinary night shift. As he waited to be fingerprinted, Larry was told to sit on a bench in a corner of the room. With his hands cuffed behind his back, he was forced to lean forward awkwardly. He stared down at the manacles clasped tightly over his jeans around his lower legs, inches above his bare ankles. They were connected by a heavy chain about two feet long. Under the leg irons were his deck shoes, worn and familiar. Just an hour ago he had been standing on the deck of his friend’s boat, at sea. . . .

  And the clerks made small talk about soap opera. One of the arresting agents phoned Chuck Reed, the FBI man who had haunted Larry’s dreams for the last three years, to report that Lavin was finally in custody. At first Larry figured Reed would want to talk to him. He thought about what he might say—“Hi, Chuck. Long time no see”—but the conversation went on between agents as though he weren’t even there: “How’s the family?” “Give Sid my regards.” “Now you can get to work on other things.” They had just destroyed his life and they were congratulating themselves like salesmen who had just closed a big deal.

  As he waited, dejected, Larry mostly worried about Marcia. What had they done with Marcia?

  Just minutes after they had picked him up at the marina, as he sat in the backseat of the gray government sedan, the agent had turned and asked, “Are there any neighbors you could leave the kids with?”

  Larry had gasped, “You don’t have to arrest my wife!” and realized at once that the curt instructions being radioed from the front seat had directed agents to close in on his house. It was . . . what? Five-thirty. Marcia would be cooking dinner. Chris would be watching cartoons. Tara, who was only a year old, would be in Marcia’s arms or in her wheeled walker.

  Hours later, after the fingerprinting and phone call to Reed, husband and wife faced each other. Down a long tile corridor on an upper floor of the Norfolk courthouse, Marcia had heard his voice and had asked to see him. They were left alone for a moment, a small act of kindness, in an office with a broad desk of polished oak and plush leather chairs. Lawbooks lined the shelves. Outside wide windows, dusk bathed in soft rose and orange the rooftops and streets of the city below. Marcia seemed calm and sad.

  “I don’t blame you,” she told Larry, placing her hands on his. Tears had welled in Larry’s eyes and he could not speak. Marcia’s hands were cuffed. There were no tears in her almond eyes. She said, “I still love you.”

  After that they rode together in the backseat of a government sedan to the prison in Virginia Beach. Larry kept seeing the handcuffs on Marcia’s hands, folded in her lap. He tried to put the picture out of his mind.

  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!