Blow (23 page)

From talking to Carlos, which he did now about once a week, George also saw that occasions were going soon to arise where he'd have to attend business meetings outside the country, and for these he'd need to equip himself with false ID. Trips would certainly have to be made to Medellín. Already a meeting had been planned for Toronto that fall to introduce Carlos to Barry Kane. Toronto was chosen because Carlos could fly there under his own name with no legal problems. Also, according to the wisdom passed on by jailhouse lawyers at Danbury, talking with someone about drug smuggling in a foreign country made you arrest-proof on a conspiracy charge, since the meetings could not be used as evidence in an American court of law. This bit of wisdom was dangerously incorrect, as any criminal lawyer could have advised. As long as the conspiring was aimed at breaking laws in the United States, it could be carried on inside the dimly lit hut of a fakir on the banks of the Ganges and still be presented to an American jury. Talking in Canada, however, did lay a veneer of secrecy over their impending project, making it distinctly unlikely anyone would discover that the availability of high-grade powder on the East and West coasts was about to surge dramatically.

For his phony ID, George relied on the fact that local bureaus of vital statistics, the agencies that issue birth certificates, never in his experience bothered to note down alongside the name of someone who was born whether that person had also died. To get a birth certificate, he simply filled out a form in the name of someone on the obit pages of the local paper, paid five dollars—no identification required—and walked out with the document within fifteen minutes. From that, he could get everything else he needed—a voter registration card, a library card. He'd apply for a Social Security card, telling the lady he'd been working outside the country all these years and never had one. When he applied for a driver's license, he'd say he'd lived in London since he was a little boy and had always used public transportation. Given the number of times he'd taken it, he had the Massachusetts driving test fairly well memorized. George was careful in applying for a U.S. passport, since conceivably one could have been issued to his namesake before he'd passed away, and for all George knew, the normal waiting period of two weeks might entail a cross-check of the records, which would reveal that this guy seemed to have changed a lot—where'd he get all that hair? To cut down the risk, he'd purchase a round-trip airplane ticket to London, the flight leaving two days hence. Then he'd go to the passport office with his driver's license and birth certificate. He would explain that his best friend had announced he was getting married in two days and he had to get a passport quickly so he could make it to the ceremony. Seeing the evidence of the airplane ticket, the agent invariably would rush it through by the next day, no problem.

In such a fashion, George raised from the dead Delbert Lapham, Brian Whittaker, and David Mahan. He'd garnish his official ID's with business cards, giving himself a variety of occupations. At one point, after Barry Kane had advised him to launder his money by buying gold and silver, he handed out cards announcing he was a precious-metals broker. He stayed in that line of work for quite some time, until, on a flight to Los Angeles one day, the man next to him said, gee, what a coincidence, he was in the precious-metals business, too. What did George think of the current market? That's when George's migraine problem suddenly returned and he begged off further conversation. After that, George decided to become an out-of-work movie actor.

That October, Kane landed his Cessna at the Norwood Airport near Weymouth to pick up George, and they headed up to Toronto, where they met Carlos at the Holiday Inn at the airport. Carlos seemed genuinely excited to see George again, in their first meeting since April of 1975, a year and a half before. They gave each other great hugs and did a lot of back thumping. Carlos's face had matured, and he was no longer the scrawny kid he was in prison. He still talked rapid-fire, brimming with enthusiasm. “Bouncing off the walls” was how George describes him. He was dressed in a dark suit and tie, still very businesslike in his ways. An attaché case had replaced the cardboard file he'd carried around at Danbury for organizing the notes he made, the brochures he collected on different airplanes and navigational equipment. He got on well with Kane, partly because both of them were detail men, absorbed by the facts and figures, whereas George stuck to the big picture. Carlos took elaborate notes as Barry gave him a tour of the plane and ticked off its vital statistics. Fuel capacity for the Cessna 310-R was just over two hundred gallons, including what was in the little torpedolike tip tanks attached to the ends of the wings. It could do 165 knots. Leaning out the fuel mixture to 65 percent, this meant it could cruise an hour on twenty-eight gallons, which gave it a range of just over thirteen hundred miles.

As Carlos had earlier explained, the cocaine would be packaged in kilo-size bricks, wrapped with cellophane and duct tape, and twenty-five of these would be packed into a rubberized sack the size of an army duffel bag. The Cessna had a cargo weight capacity of fourteen hundred pounds, but in cubic feet the space would be very tight. Kane thought if he removed the two passenger seats, leaving only those for the pilot and copilot, he could fit in as many as ten or twelve duffel bags, as much as 300 kilos' worth, or 660 pounds.

The planned airlift of 100 percent pure coke was a feat that would generate an astounding amount of money, even by today's standards. At the going retail price of $100 a gram, and figuring an average cut of just two to one, a single kilo of imported coke amounted to three thousand grams of retail product, which would bring in $300,000 in sales. This meant Barry's airplane trip would produce approximately $90 million in eventual revenue. And to George, this was just the maiden voyage. He was already badgering Carlos to get his compadres down there in the forests of Colombia organized, so by the time the machinery was humming in the States, with more planes, more pilots, and more places to land, they could average a trip like this once a month—why not?—and bring in more than $1 billion worth of cocaine a year.

As transporters rather than actual dealers, of course, George and Carlos and Barry would get to share in only a relatively small portion of these sales figures. This was perfectly okay with George. As he often repeated, it was better to let someone else take the risk, have the headaches selling the stuff; that's where you got caught. Of course, he himself was wholesaling then, with Mr. T, but that was just to generate the start-up cash. Once things developed, he wanted to cut that off. He would do the pilots and the planes, arrange the trips, see to it that the goods were flown safely out of Colombia and delivered inside the United States to whomever and wherever the Colombians designated. This service would pay well enough. For the first run, Carlos had already gotten his Colombian contacts to agree to pay $10,000 a kilo—$3 million. Barry said he wanted $1.8 million of this. Not only was he doing most of the work, and doing it with his own plane, but, as he was shortly to explain, there were expenses he'd incur, people to hire, officials to pay off. For their part, George and Carlos agreed to split the rest, which added up to $600,000 each, for essentially making some phone calls and organizing a few meetings. This was 1976, when that sum would buy sixty BMW's down at Trans-Atlantic Motors in Hyannis, when someone with a million dollars could say legitimately that he was independently wealthy. George saw his motor sailer gliding into view, the beaches and cafés of the Costa del Sol fast taking shape on his horizon.

To get the kilos, Carlos said, Kane would have to fly down to an airstrip located on a certain ranch owned by an acquaintance of his outside Medellín. The airstrip was five thousand feet long and had been built for the planes bringing in coca paste from Bolivia and Peru. Accommodations would be provided for spending the night, meaning Barry could fly in one day, load up and take off the next. Carlos would supply him with a Colombian national who knew where the field was and would fly down with him to help find it.

Regarding the flying part, Kane foresaw a number of interrelated problems here, none of which couldn't be solved with careful planning and money—mostly the latter. One way to go was simply to fly the cocaine straight from Medellín into somewhere in the United States on a straight shot. But the distance involved was too long, about fifteen hundred miles to the tip of Florida, and then there would be only a limited number of landing strips to choose from. Florida was also where the DEA expected drugs to come in. What you wanted to do was to land the plane at someplace in the interior of the country, where the authorities didn't know from drug flights. For this reason, he proposed using the Bahamas, where he had contacts, as a transshipment point. He'd fly down to Nassau from the Cape. Then, on a Friday night, the start of the weekend air-traffic jam, he'd file a flight plan with the tower saying he was heading for one of the other islands, but instead he would go directly to Medellín. He'd land, load up the plane, and return to Nassau on Saturday. Kane had a friend in Nassau named Nigel Bowe, a lawyer who knew everyone in the Bahamas, from Prime Minister Lynden Pindling and the defense minister to the head of state security and all the high police officials. (The file on Bowe's involvement in the drug trade would soon be filling up several drawers in the DEA office in Miami.) By knowing Bowe and paying some money, Kane could manage to park the plane on the runway in Nassau, leave it there overnight filled with cocaine, and fly out the next day. No one would bother it.

Only one hundred eighty miles separate Nassau from the United States. On Sunday afternoon Kane would take off amid the hordes of mom-and-pop flights headed back to Florida at the end of the weekend. Just as he neared the coast, he'd make an abrupt right-hand turn, drop down to the deck, 100 yards off the ocean, below radar range, and fly north toward Cape Hatteras, toward that open window he'd shown his developer pal on the radar maps. From there he'd fly inland to the Piedmont area of North Carolina, where he would have arranged to land at a private airfield. The duffel bags would be transferred from the plane to a vehicle of some kind and driven down to George and Carlos in Miami. They would then be responsible for delivering the goods to the recipient designated by the Colombians, and getting paid—especially getting paid.

The only problem seemed to be the range of Kane's airplane, which, as it stood now, couldn't quite make it. From Medellín to Nassau was a little more than thirteen hundred miles as the crow flies—which meant flying straight over central Cuba, not a good idea unless you didn't mind getting shot out of the air. Allowing the plane to circumvent Cuba, taking it just to the east of the Guantánamo naval base, would add over a hundred miles to the run. So Kane needed to expand his plane's fuel capacity. Drug pilots often installed “bladder” tanks—inflatable rubberized tanks fitted into the interior cargo area—to disguise how far their planes could really fly; “a little extra for the wife and kids,” the expression ran. But bladder tanks, because they were undetectable from the outside, masking the plane's true range, were against the law. They violated the rules of the Federal Aviation Administration that set up strict limits on fuel capacity for the various types of aircraft, partly to inhibit smuggling. To add legal range you had to get special permission, but then the narcs would know about it. But Barry didn't want bladder tanks anyway because they took up too much space when filled, meaning he would have to leave some of the cocaine behind. A better idea, he said, was to install saddle tanks, specially built into the fuselage of the aircraft. These were expensive. But not only would they disguise the plane's range should some DEA type be snooping around the airport at Nassau, they also would take up no additional cargo room.

Kane also said he wanted a marine loran. Developed by the military and regarded as a breakthrough in navigational aids, a loran was an instrument about the size of a modern lap-top computer that would allow him to punch in the coordinates of the landing strip outside Medellín, its latitude and longitude, and then keep him on course once he got in the air. Using radio beacons as a fix, the loran could put you down within fifteen feet of anywhere you wanted to go on the globe—“Find you a toilet seat in Bogotá,” as one drug pilot put it. It could even help you land at night, with just a flashlight to show where the runway turned into jungle. But that's why the Colombian was coming along, Carlos reminded him—to show him how to get there. The Colombian was okay, Barry said, but he'd rely on himself, thanks.

With one thing and another, Kane figured he could get the plane ready for fifty thousand dollars, up front. No problem, Carlos told him, and promptly wrote out a check on Barclay's Bank, to cash. The meeting over, Barry declined the invitation to stay around to see the sights of Toronto, have some fun. Business and pleasure didn't mix with him, he said. Approximately three hours after he'd arrived, Kane had the plane back in the air and was winging his way home to Chatham.

*   *   *

Back living with Betsy in Weymouth—for parole needs, he still listed his parents' address as his own—George spent that fall feeling generally exuberant over his prospects, even trying in his own fashion to patch up some of the fences he'd smashed. He left an envelope at the Sad-Eyed Lady's with the ten thousand dollars he owed her for the fishing-boat fiasco; maybe she'd lighten up the curse she'd put on him. He also tried to get his father fixed up in a cushy political job. Ever since his stroke when George was a high school junior, Fred had been working half-days as groundskeeper at the Mount Hope Cemetery in Weymouth, never feeling great about it. One night at a bar George ran into a classmate of his from high school, a contractor who had gone into politics and got himself elected as a town selectman. During the conversation George learned that the job of commissioner of cemeteries for the town had come open, a political plum that paid pretty well for not a lot of work; there was some prestige in it, too. How much would it take to land that for his old man, George wanted to know. The selectman thought twenty thousand would just about do it. He'd have the cash ready tomorrow, George said. “This guy then called up my father and offered him the job. But Fred said he didn't want it. I think maybe he sensed something was wrong. Fred never took a nickel from anybody in his life without working for it.”