Part 11 (1/2)

'Hard? No, not hard. I heard one of them say, ”Stop that c.u.n.t. I'm going to take him apart,” and he came up to me and said ”Excuse me, sir,” and I said, ”Sir? No. Don't call me sir. My name is c.u.n.t. Please call me c.u.n.t.” That dealt with him. Then the other one said, ”Can I see your pa.s.sport?” and I said, ”It's not my pa.s.sport, it's yours,” and gave it to him. He asked what I did in Nepal. I told him I was a barman. Vodka and lime. What would you like? He asked if I smoked any funny tobacco. I asked if he meant Kinabis, and he said it didn't matter. Then I caught a bus to Fulham.'

I had to come straight to the point.

'Can you send stuff out from Nepal by air, John?'

'Ooh! No. No. I can't do anything like that. No. No. No. Now, I know a man. He knows a man who might know.'

'How much would it cost?'

'Well, money is the thing, and they always do things for a fair and honest price, I promise you.'

'What's a fair price, John?'

'You will tell me, I'm quite sure.'

'What will you want out of it, John?'

'If I help you do business, I'm sure you will give me a drink.'

'A drink?'

'Yes. If a man does something for you, you give him a drink. Please, if everything goes well, give me a drink.'

'Can you check that the quality will be all right?'

'I only smoke Tom Thumb, but I know a man who has a knife.'

I took this as a yes.

'Can you make it smell-proof?'

'Not if G.o.d made it smell.'

'Do you know a man who can?'

'No. But if you do, let him come and do it, or give me instructions.'

'How much can they send?'

'I should think it depends on when you want to do it by.'

'Well, John, the Americans will want to do a ton as soon as possible.'

'Now I was in America once, and the thing is that Americans will always want more, and there is no end to their madness. Lovely people, for sure, but you have to keep them in line. When my visa ran out, the Immigration asked me why I wanted to extend it, and I said it was because I hadn't run out of money. He stamped it and said, ”Have a nice day.” So, if the Americans ask for a ton tomorrow, say you will do half a ton when Wales win the Triple Crown. That will deal with their madness, and everyone can get on with their lives. It saves all that tidding.'

'Tidding?'

'Talking Imaginary Deals.'

Accurately conveying the contents of my conversation with Old John to Ernie wasn't easy. I told Ernie has.h.i.+sh could be exported from Nepal for about the same price as Robert Crimball charged in Bangkok, but 500 kilos was the most they could do at one time, and someone would have to be sent out to ensure the consignment was smell-proof. Ernie sent his right-hand man, Tom Sunde, with money, instructions, and smell-proof know-how. Tom came to London first before going to Kathmandu to meet Old John. He had been authorised by Ernie to keep nothing from me regarding the intricacies of the New York scam.

During the 1970s, the most powerful Mafia crime family in the United States was that of Carlo Gambino, the prototype for Vito Corleone in Mario Puzo's novel, The G.o.dfather The G.o.dfather. Born in Sicily at the beginning of the century, Gambino was still of the old-school belief that the Mafia should steer away from involvement in drug-trafficking. Carmine Galante, the main contender for Gambino's position as the G.o.dfather of the New York Mob, had no such scruples. The Mafia should control everything, including dope. Carmine Galante's organisation used the services of Don Brown, an Irish-American who made his money dopedealing in Queens, New York, and spent it in Los Angeles. Don Brown knew Richard Sherman, an extremely shrewd Californian defence attorney retained by Ernie Combs. Unwittingly, Sherman introduced Ernie to Don Brown. A scam was born.

Large quant.i.ties of missing goods provided strong evidence of the Gambino crime family's ability to remove items from John F. Kennedy Airport without going through the usual channels. Smuggling quickly followed. The preferred method was to send a cargo of legitimate goods from a New York company to the dope-producing country. The importing company in the dope country would ostensibly return the imported goods as faulty or different from ordered. In fact, a consignment of has.h.i.+sh would be sent and grabbed by the Mob.

As a prelude to the Nepalese scam, an air-conditioning company called Kool-Air had been formed in New York. It was ready to export real air-conditioning equipment. On separate flights, Old John and Tom Sunde, carrying a small suitcase full of Ernie's dollars, flew to Kathmandu to take care of business. First Old John had to form a Nepalese company capable of importing air-conditioning equipment and let me know its particulars. A week later, I received a telegram from Kathmandu. The message comprised one word, 'YETI.' I knew that yeti was the Nepalese name for the abominable snowman of the Himalayas, but this didn't help. Ernie was anxious for news. I didn't know what to tell him, so I cabled Old John in Kathmandu to call me.

'John, what's this message mean?'

'That's the name of the thing you wanted.'

I wasn't happy with calling an air-conditioning company The Abominable Snowman.

'That's really not a very relevant name, John.'

'It's very relevant, I promise you. They haven't caught one yet.'

I gave up.

'Okay, John, that's the name. Is everything else all right?'

'No. They don't eat spaghetti here; they like to use chopsticks or they eat wurst or smorgasbord. We can't get the thing to go for spaghetti.'

Each day I was finding Old John easier to understand. He was unable to ensure that the load would be transferred to Alitalia before it reached New York. He could only manage to ensure the consignment's New York arrival on other European or Far East airlines. I told Ernie. He said he'd work on it.

With the money Ernie had given me, I added some luxuries to the Regent's Park penthouse: a stereo system and records. Judy's father and his girl-friend had moved into the Brighton family flat, so Judy now had the use of her father's flat, which was quite near Regent's Park. At about four o'clock on a spring afternoon, I was alone in the penthouse, idly gazing at London's skyline and listening to Ladies Love Outlaws Ladies Love Outlaws by Waylon Jennings. I looked down and saw four hefty men with overcoats rus.h.i.+ng up the street towards the entrance to my block of flats. Something told me they were coming for me, but I didn't know who they were. The ground-floor entrance doorbell buzzed in the penthouse. I asked who it was, and a m.u.f.fled voice said something incomprehensible. I released the downstairs door, put on my stoned gla.s.ses, walked out of the flat, and started descending the emergency stairs, reasoning that the men would be likely to take the lift. When I got to the bottom of the emergency stairs, I noticed that the four men were still outside the gla.s.s double-doored entrance. The caretaker was holding open one of the doors and talking to them. They all saw me, and the caretaker motioned his head in my direction. I walked slowly and brazenly to the door as if to leave the building. One of the men took a flash photograph of me. by Waylon Jennings. I looked down and saw four hefty men with overcoats rus.h.i.+ng up the street towards the entrance to my block of flats. Something told me they were coming for me, but I didn't know who they were. The ground-floor entrance doorbell buzzed in the penthouse. I asked who it was, and a m.u.f.fled voice said something incomprehensible. I released the downstairs door, put on my stoned gla.s.ses, walked out of the flat, and started descending the emergency stairs, reasoning that the men would be likely to take the lift. When I got to the bottom of the emergency stairs, I noticed that the four men were still outside the gla.s.s double-doored entrance. The caretaker was holding open one of the doors and talking to them. They all saw me, and the caretaker motioned his head in my direction. I walked slowly and brazenly to the door as if to leave the building. One of the men took a flash photograph of me.

Then another said, 'That's not him.'

'We're sorry, sir. Excuse us,' said another.

I flashed them a look of irritation, walked to the street, and took a cab to Soho.

It was obviously the Daily Mirror Daily Mirror, with or without the police. How did they know? I had no idea, but I couldn't go back to the penthouse again and had to consider as lost the money and valuables left there. Anthony Woodhead, who was the penthouse's official occupant, might encounter a few problems, unless it was he who had tipped them off. I was meant to be masterminding the sending to the New York Mafia of the first-ever air-freighted has.h.i.+sh from Kathmandu, and I had nothing in the world but a few pounds in my pocket and a pair of stoned gla.s.ses. I telephoned Judy. She picked me up in her car, and we drove to Liverpool and checked into the Holiday Inn under a false name. The next morning, the Daily Mirror Daily Mirror was slid under the room door. Again I dominated the front page, which was headlined THE FACE OF A FUGITIVE. Underneath was a large picture of me wearing my stoned gla.s.ses and moustache. I shaved, put Brylcreem on my hair, and combed it straight back. Judy went out to rent the cheapest possible bedsitter, 4 a week with shared bathroom and kitchen in an area called Sheill Park. I telephoned my parents to let them know I was okay, and telephoned Ernie to tell him what had happened. He was unperturbed. I didn't have the nerve to ask him for more money. He had some good news for Old John. The load could arrive on j.a.panese Air Lines (JAL); the Italians had been talking to the j.a.panese, and an arrangement had been made. was slid under the room door. Again I dominated the front page, which was headlined THE FACE OF A FUGITIVE. Underneath was a large picture of me wearing my stoned gla.s.ses and moustache. I shaved, put Brylcreem on my hair, and combed it straight back. Judy went out to rent the cheapest possible bedsitter, 4 a week with shared bathroom and kitchen in an area called Sheill Park. I telephoned my parents to let them know I was okay, and telephoned Ernie to tell him what had happened. He was unperturbed. I didn't have the nerve to ask him for more money. He had some good news for Old John. The load could arrive on j.a.panese Air Lines (JAL); the Italians had been talking to the j.a.panese, and an arrangement had been made.

By far the largest organised crime network in the world is the Yakuza, with a members.h.i.+p of several hundred thousand. Originating in the early seventeenth century as a group of young Robin Hood-type rebels defying samurai overlords, the Yakuza emerged after World War II as a more typically Western collection of gangsters with dark suits and sungla.s.ses. By the end of the 1960s, the Yakuza had forged important links with the Chinese Triads in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand; and an unprecedently powerful Chinesej.a.panese syndicate was beginning to send large s.h.i.+pments of heroin to the United States. Some of these went through Kennedy Airport. Now the Yakuza and the Mafia were waiting for Old John's Yeti to do its stuff.

I gave Ernie the number of the telephone box at the end of the road and told him I would be there between 8 and 8.15 every Tuesday night. I cabled Old John in Kathmandu with the same information and the good news about JAL, and I began to live the life of a Liverpool dosser about to be a rich man. A few hundred pounds was scrounged from some long-suffering friends and family.

My lack of ident.i.ty doc.u.ments began to worry me. A 21-year-old policeman had been shot dead by the IRA, and the Birmingham Black Panther and the Cambridge hooded rapist were at large. One could be stopped by the police at any time, and it would be embarra.s.sing for me to be unable to palm them off with a piece of paper showing some false ident.i.ty. The Driver and Vehicle Licence Centre in Swansea required no proof of ident.i.ty when applying for a provisional driving licence. I ordered one in the name of Albert Lane, and it was delivered to the Liverpool bedsit. I applied to sit a driving test and pa.s.sed. A full licence was issued. I joined the local library and opened a Post Office Savings Account, using the name Albert Lane. A bone-shaker of a Bedford van was purchased for next to nothing, and Judy and I set off on week-long vacations to a variety of campsites. We loved this perpetual holiday lifestyle, but Judy would often complain about my insistence that the tent was pitched adjacent to the public telephone box, whose number had been handed out everywhere from Los Angeles to the Himalayas. I had to make and accept telephone calls at all hours and did not want to be traipsing across moonlit fields in my pyjamas. The telephone box was almost invariably next to the campsite's bathrooms and toilets. Ours would be the only tent in the vicinity. During the day, we would either take advantage of the campsite's recreation facilities or join a local library under a couple of silly names. During the evening, we would attempt innovative ways of acquiring further false ident.i.ties.

Our favourite method was through fortune-telling. Judy dressed up as a s.e.xy clairvoyant and sat alone in a pub. I sat some distance away. Sooner or later, a man of about my age would initiate a conversation with her and find out she was an astrologer, palmist, and numerologist, capable of telling his fortune. She needed a few details, of course: date and place of birth, mother's maiden name, and his travels or travel plans. Some of them had no intention of going abroad because they didn't trust foreign beer. We ended up with enough information to procure several birth certificates from St Catherine's House, London.

On Independence Day, July 4th, 1975, 500 kilos of hand-pressed Nepalese temple b.a.l.l.s, some of the best has.h.i.+sh in the world, was flown from Kathmandu via Bangkok and Tokyo to New York. It was being smoked in Greenwich Village the next day. I was very rich again, and I was still in my twenties.

Ernie wanted to do another load right away, a bigger one. Old John wasn't keen. The suitcases of dollars that Tom Sunde had taken to Nepal had played havoc with the Kathmandu currency markets.

'This is the American madness. More, more, all the time. Next year the Nepalese won't plant rice, they'll plant the thing and all starve. They don't want money; they want medicine.'

I, however, agreed with Ernie and persuaded Old John to reluctantly commit himself to send a 750-kilo load. It worked. Other loads were sent from Nepal, but none were bigger. After one of the loads, Old John drove an ambulance to Kathmandu stuffed with antibiotics, bandages, and other medical supplies and left it there. He refused to do any more loads. 'Let Nepal be Nepal.'