None of the names in this story have been changed if your name appears in this story well then now that's just too bad. I will swear to anything I have written in this before God to be true; to the best of my abilities to recollect and that goes double for what is said about Geraldo Rivera

In reflective intervals I have asked myself that question for the last 25 years. I really wouldn't say I'm a criminal I have never stole anyone's property or sold drugs. I have always lived by a strict ethical code but I did become a felon after an encounter with Geraldo Rivera and his brother Craig. I had always been an outlaw but towards the latter part of the mid eighties I had pretty much decided to embrace the banality of an orthodox life style. I would have to forget some of the strange things I had seen and I would have to leave the strange drugs alone but strange things are easily forgotten, in time they can be written off as delusions or hallucinations and my freebase and crack cocaine addiction was receding in the rearview mirror of my life like an accident on the freeway.

Traditional storytelling dictates that I provide a background before I start this tale of intrigue. In the mid eighties I had always made a fine living doing installations for my mother who was a well connected landscape architect. We had many celebrities for clients one of which Dr Frank Fields was the science editor for the same network Geraldo Rivera worked for. I had a small fleet of trucks that I had somehow managed to finance while I was still in college. This gave me plenty of money to indulge in my favorite forms of recreation: chasing beautiful women, indulging in mind altering substances and redecorating the local bars and clubs in early Bruce Willis. The last of my recreational hobbies was the one to which I took the most satisfaction and was to lead to my meeting and striking up an affiliation with strip club impresario Richard Capri at the end of this story .

Some of the construction contracts I was working on for my mother required two foreman's and 20 man split crews. I paid my men 100$ a day the foreman made 150$. The only criteria I had for my employees was that they had the strength of an ox and the temperament of a wolf, at one time I had at least eight different parole and probation officers calling me to check up on their charges. The dawning of each new day heralded endeavors which could only be compared to gladiatorial training under the burning summer sun. At the end of the day when the relentless sun began its inevitable surrender to the cooler breezes of the evening; the unseen hand of night caressed the salty sweat that encased sinewy muscles. A primal aphrodisiac seemed mingled with the secrets of the night and charged the whole atmosphere with sexual anticipation.

The late seventies and eighties were so different from the planet currently occupied by the human race that if I didn't know better I would think I was indulging in nostalgic fantasy. I would drink beers and casually fling the empty's from the cabs of my pickup trucks into the rusty eight foot beds in the back, when the cacophony of their rolling around became too much it was time to toss them into the trash receptacles of the nearest convenient park. I do not seem to recall the carnage and trails of mangled body's left as roadside victims of the villainous drunken drivers that the modern media has somehow now turned into beasts of mythical proportions. Once upon a time in America not that long ago the sight of a squad car did not invoke fear in the hearts of every American who was not a Stepford citizen. Police officers actually drove drunks home and would never dream of drawing their gun unless you had drawn yours first, in fact during a wild melee between my friends and the Pagans motorcycle gang that required the response of every police department on Long Island to break up the arriving police locked their guns in the trunks of their squad cars before entering the fray. We would build huge bon fires on the beach and gather by the hundreds in the park overlooking the bay we smoked our pot and pursued our teenage love affairs. If the cops came they gave us a knowing smile and told us to behave ourselves. We loved are country because we were free before freedom was just a word in a Janis Joplin song. I remember when the Iranians took hostages and burned our flag in the street I would have gladly went to Iran and killed everyone of those bug eyed bastards.

I called myself an outlaw before but perhaps a knight errant would have been more appropriate although that whole chivalric thing does ring pretty corny in the twenty first century. From the time I was old enough to talk I knew there could be no higher aspiration for a man than to be a poet warrior. My friend if you have not slept with the most beautiful women you have ever seen, if you have ever backed out of some critical moral dilemma for fear of personal injury, if you have never prevailed against overwhelming odds to see your enemy driven before you then it is my contention that your life and all your material possessions are less impressive to the Gods than some homeless Vietnam vet that you leave laying in the street.

The cops all knew me and I believe many of them actually admired me I turned my first bar over by myself. before I was 20 years old . ‘Mo's place’ every working class neighborhood used to have at least one place just like it "oh don't fuck with that guy he'll kill you" you know the place where testosterone is as plentiful as the beer.. The owner was some muscle bound aficionado of blow dryers named Harry Defrance. Harry liked to sell cocaine to underage girls in the backroom The bouncer was some rotund little man with a third degree black belt. Joe Scarione was making a fortune with his karate school and had everybody in Copiague convinced that he was the second coming of Bruce Lee to me it just looked like he swallowed Bruce Lee.

I knew there would be trouble that night I had been in their early drinking with some pretty rough characters among them Dave Lamante president of the long island chapter of the Pagans, his brother and another guy that Suffolk county homicide latter dubbed Lurch but Lurch is a story for another time back then he was just Phil Barbowski a guy I had grown up with. After work we would all meet at the Dojo in Phil's basement which was kindly donated by the Amityville police department when they had made a procedural error and tried to arrest Phil in my yard out of their jurisdiction. When the legal wrangling was over they had to pay me 25,000 dollars and meticulously observe the order of protection the judge had issued on my behalf..

The Pagans were courting Phil hard and at the time they had just given him a vintage Harley-Davidson and were sitting there buying us shots of Wild Turkey. It turned out to be a lot of shots since Dave seemed to have this strange idea that he could out drink me. I knew that even though Dave was a lot older than me there was nothing he could do better than me. I made no attempt to hide my distain for him and his bicycle club. As I had mentioned before I had already witnessed about 10 guys led by John Nemeth give at least 80 of them a remorseless beating. Nemeth is the boy next door to the Amityville horror house and many people including the Amityville police feel he is the real Amityville horror but again that's a story for another time. It seemed every time we did a shot another one of Kevin McCauley's crew filed into the bar there was at least a dozen of them and they were all making money stealing cars for the local Mafioso. McCauley was their leader and I will have to admit a better looking specimen of a young man I have never seen in my 50 years of existence 6' tall with a body like Adonis capped by long wavy brown hair and that perfect square jaw that only a select few of Irish descent are blessed with. The boy could fight too. I had watched him spar on the beach and he was as good with his feet as any other man I ever saw. In retrospect I guess me and Kevin were rivals but at the time I was completely naive to stuff like that but when Kevin's girlfriend propositioned me the night before she was to leave for army boot camp I sure as hell wasn't turning it down this girl was the proverbial blond beauty that most guys dream about. We spent the night naked in the cab of my pickup truck overlooking Amityville beach in between making love like hungry animals she told me about how unhappy she was with Kevin and her life in general and how she was mostly joining the army just to get away from him. It was the next day now the girl had already taken that ride on the blue bus and Kevin thought he was entitled to some payback. Dave gave up after only about 10 shots we walked outside with Joe Scarione who assured Dave that he would let nothing happen to me while he was working. Dave claimed he had a date with two girls at Something Else the Pagan watering hole a couple of blocks east on Montauk highway. He left Phil with strict instructions to come and get him at the slightest sign of trouble and he would bring the whole club. With that we slowly sauntered back into mo's place with the roaring sounds of bikes fading into the night. I knew full well I was pretty much on my own in this one.

Phil had a big bag of Quaaludes on him and when we took are seats at the bar I told him to give me one, him being the stupid Polock that he was took two. I had a beer and reveled in the wild turkey buzz already coursing through my veins soon it would combine with the Quaalude and unleash the demon that shares my body. All the while McCauley's boys were filing in, gathering around the pool table in the back. I didn't count them but the number was definitely between 10 and 20. By the time McCauley made his grand entrance the Quaalude had done its job well I know when the demon is free it's like being a passenger in a car. I am no longer driving the vehicle and everything even my memories of events are in a red haze.

McCauley strode to the back in quick purposeful movements and began playing pool with himself never looking at the balls just staring malevolently at me. I turned around to see Phil's face down on the bar in a puddle of his own drool it wasn't Phil's fault. Alcohol and barbiturates do not affect me the way they effect others if anything they demonically stimulate me I am the real life Dr Jeckel and Mr Hyde. It was Hyde that walked up to the pool table and asked McCauley whether he was there to fight or play pool. McCauley let out this animal like scream and sprung over the pool table swinging the cue stick at me in the same motion but Hyde see's everything coming at him in slow motion. He also has super human strength. Hyde stepped into McCauley's leap and wrapped his arm around McCauley's snapping it with the ease of which a man would snap a piece of dried kindling. McCauley was still screaming but now it was in pain as he lay on the ground and Hyde purposefully set about breaking his other arm oblivious to the blows being rained down upon him by McCauley's friends. When he heard the other arm snap Hyde turned on the insects that had been attacking him 3 of them went to the hospital with bruised hearts they all had severe facial contusions but Hyde was nowhere near through. He ripped the payphone off the wall and proceeded to beat anyone who was dumb enough to still be standing up and because Mo's place also needed to be punished he went behind the bar and used the pay phone to smash every bottle of liquor in that bar then he kicked out the plate glass windows and explained to the cowering Joe Scarione that it was now his turn. To the little fat mans credit he did manage to land a kick to my back that was the only mark I got on me that night but he also slept for a long time after Hyde hit him with a right hand counter punch. In fact Hyde finally decided to leave and go home because he thought he might have killed him. The police the ambulances and the Pagans all responded at about the same time, I was home sleeping like Lon Chaney Jr. The two cops who moonlighted for my mother building decks told me that when they got there they just assumed the Pagans were responsible and when the indignant owner of Mo's showed up and refused to stop shouting they resculpteured his hair with their nightsticks and charged him with removing his own payphone since it would have required premeditation and the use of a machine to pull the two through bolts out of the concrete. I was never charged with assaulting anyone, back then before Bernie Goetz you could not be charged with assaulting a professional criminal.

This was not to be the last time I did the cops a favor. My foreman was a black guy named Steve Husbands. We were up at a place in Amityville that was called the Block in the eighties for reasons that will incorporate Geraldo Rivera and his brother Craig into this story. The Block was probably the worst area in the country. M & M pays tribute to this with his ditto "Amityville this ain't Detroit this is Hamburger Hill". The 5% nation of Islam was just taking hold and they had laid claim to the pool hall on the northern corner of the strip. Crack had not yet been invented but these were the same fledgling gangstas that would go on to become the Supreme team of Rap folklore. Steve was making over a thousand a week working for me at the time and in black culture back then that entitled him to the finest girl; her name was Candy and believe me she was. One of the 5% ers was upset that Steve had taken his Candy. Steve's brother Michael was a renowned martial artist who Chuck Norris refused to fight and Steve himself was a nationally ranked hundred and sixty pound wrestler so it wasn't much of a fight. Steve proceeded to beat him like the proverbial red headed step child and I sat in the cab of my 1700 International laughing but it soon turned deadly serious when the rest of the 5%ers came swarming out of the pool hall and engaged the outnumbered Rasta's who were cheering Steve on since he was Jamaican. Predictably in the wild melee that ensued I lost it. The next thing I remember was Steve driving my truck as I was making a perfect shot with my 300 Savage rifle. Skipping a 6" chunk of black top right into the back of a fleeing 5%ers head. The whole corner of the pool hall was collapsed and it turned out that I had sent the big flatbed wheel hopping in its lowest reverse gear right through the front window then went home and got the rifle and had Steve drive while I took pot shots at their feet as they scurried for cover. I remembered none of it needless to say I had serious anger management issues but again you could not be arrested for assaulting a professional criminal. The police force was not yet a paramilitary unit like it is now and since my truck had my name and telephone number prominently displayed on both sides I attributed their lack of retribution as a display of their gratitude for doing their dirty work for them. That pool hall would remain boarded up and reinforced a monument to Hyde. Nobody from that side of town would ever fuck with me again and this was to be my undoing.

Fast forward to the Mid 80's; Reaganomics had already infected the country and with it came crack cocaine for the nation's urban poor and working class. I made more money than most but I still had to be considered among the" poor and infamous" as Phil used to call us. I started frequenting a house just south of the Block occupied by a brother and sister about the same age as me who were poor and black; Jonathan and Renee. The Block was now featuring the largest chunk of freebase that could be had in the NY area for the smallest amount of money. 20$ would buy more than a gram of rock. If you took it to Lafayette and Hunts Point in the Bronx you could make 100$. I knew plenty of guys who were . It seemed like freebase had been legalized at the Block the police were almost completely absent and the surrounding neighborhood lay in ruins. Those that remained untouched by the madness never left the safety of their own homes. My whole crew would smoke at Jonathon's house and we would leave jobs undone for days while I crashed out there, it got so my mother was afraid to go get paid for fear that she would have to pay me.

One day me Renee and a couple of miscellaneous black guys were indulging in our disgusting habit in the back bedroom when Rasta Joe burst through the door with a shotgun. I threw Renee on the bed behind me before I looked in his eyes and saw he was not going to shoot if I did not force the issue. After all I had been on his side 5 years ago at the pool hall besides rushing a shotgun at anything less than a few inches is suicide.. Rasta Joe backed out of the room snarling at Renee to tell her brother somebody's got to pay. Gradually I got to know everybody in the neighborhood even Rasta Joe who was far more friendly when he wasn't leveling a shotgun at you. Pi and his family lived in a two story home with a finished basement across the street there were two brand new cars in the driveway and the home was immaculately furnished. Everybody in the neighborhood knew the family had nice things. Pi had worked hard all his life to acquire them and his wife was still a registered nurse. Eventually the whole family would succumb to their crack addiction with his wife holding out the longest until one day her car stopped leaving for work in the morning. I will never forget the day Pi and I were in the basement when he started bellowing up the stairs at his son; "what did you do with daddy's pipe". When I was 14 years old I had been in a work program where urban kids were given summer jobs by the state cleaning out local parks. I was one of the only white kids in that program during that time I became close friends with a girl named Tracy Bowen. Tracy's family had been heavily involved with the local commerce and had burnt the house to the ground one night while cooking shit up. Tracy now lived in a trailer next to the burnt out shell of the house. Her bodyguard Clyde was her constant companion. Clyde looked like a giant black fire hydrant and had a similar personality. Tracy needed a bodyguard because the bottom of the trailer was paved with stacks of 20$ bills no exaggeration there was at least a million in 20$ bills strewn about that trailer at all times. Sometimes I would get high with my childhood friend but it always made me really nervous being around all that cash, in that neighborhood. I do not care how tough either Clyde or I was.

"What does not kill me makes me stronger" and freebase cocaine did not kill me so it became inevitable that I would give it up. When I did I was angry. I had had a front row seat and watched sorrow and human misery be distributed in a highly addictive and smokable form. At the time I was naive and blamed the Suffolk County Police Department. I was streetwise enough to know that cocaine could not be sold that cheap, illegally for a profit. I knew it was coming in at the Chinese restaurant at the far southern corner of the Block and I thought I knew who was bringing it there. Enter Geraldo Rivera whom I contacted through my client Dr Frank Fields. Having grown up in Babylon, the neighborhood adjacent to the Block Rivera took an immediate interest in the story. After confirming that there was an open air drug market in the middle of suburbia Geraldo set me up with his brother; Craig. In those days they were a team Craig did all the field work; principally the filming and Geraldo took care of the production and presentation. I took Craig into Jonathon's house where we placed a tan colored duffel bag rigged with a camera in a prominent position on the dresser one of the crack heads became fixated with the duffel bag and started asking questions about it and Craig's abstinence. Craig started stammering an answer that he had to keep an eye on the bag but I put an end to the whole matter by telling the crack head that if he was going to smoke and get paranoid he would have to leave. We stayed for hours and when we finally left Craig talked incessantly about all the great footage he had and how none of it would have been possible without the fear my presence inspired. Craig asked me to go for dinner and drinks but I declined I was there to do a job not socialize.

Craig spent days filming the Block and the Chinese restaurant with a film crew hidden in a van in the parking lot of the Social Services center across the street. He was very excited about the footage he had acquired of the police ignoring blatant transactions as they sat next to his camera crew across the street and he had also caught some of the mysterious comings and goings at the Chinese restaurant. The restaurant was frequented by two or three middle aged men who seemed incapable of dressing without finishing off their ensemble with some off white raincoats they had purchased from central casting of the Pink Panther. One of them was a black guy who had a large birthmark on his face that made it impossible for him to go unnoticed. We figured the raincoats had to be from a precinct in the city which had worked a deal out with Suffolk County PD. Craig seemed to think we had the story of the year. He said that this would be a one hour special but when the show finally aired it was less than 15 minutes and used none of the footage I had got them and never even mentioned the Block. I was told that's just the way the TV news business is the studio made the finale decision on what would be aired. The next time I saw Geraldo it was on TV as I watched along with the rest of America and he failed to produce the " hidden " treasure of Al Capone and made a fool out of himself and the station which had relentlessly promoted the one hour special before it aired. I was already charged with second degree assault on a police officer and my life would never be the same again. I remember how much I enjoyed watching Geraldo tarnish his career forever on national TV.

When the show had not aired I had not been disappointed. I picked at least half of my labor up from the Block every morning and I had enjoyed living in Suffolk County and still did some work there even though most of my jobs were in Nassau County. I continued living my life as if nothing had happened because nothing had. I pulled into the Block one day and I was stopped by Suffolk County PD. Two cops about 35 years old each got out of the squad car and I got out of my International truck. The two of them began belligerently asking what I was doing there and one started fumbling around in my truck. I really had no answer for them it was as if you had showed up for work and were suddenly asked what you were you doing there. One of them began poking me with his nightstick he poked me quite a few times before I decided to disarm him, wrenching the club from his grip and tossing it away. His partner comes around me and grabs me in a chokehold with his nightstick from behind. I grabbed the club and used his grip on it to whirl him over my back at the same time dislodging the stick and taking possession of it which I dutifully tossed away. I was well aware that they could shoot me, all the while more cops and people were arriving. The crowd was becoming openly hostile witnessing the police assault one of the few reliable employers in the area and had to be forcibly restrained by the arriving cops. Suddenly a guy comes running out of the crowd and starts throwing powder puff punch's at me it was none other than birthmark still wearing his raincoat. I brushed him aside and looked around. I thought about letting Hyde loose but I knew it could only end in my death so I let them handcuff me. The two cops I had disarmed took me in their squad car and as we pulled out of the parking lot the passenger cop says take the long way and with that turns around and proceeds to knock almost every one of my front teeth out. He struck me viscously as many times as he could and with as much force as he could generate on that nightstick within the cramped quarters of the car . Every time he smashed me in the face I would sneer fuck you and spit blood and teeth at him. When we finally did arrive at the station house I figured the commanding officer would want to know how my face got like that but instead I was sequestered in his office where he mocked me as the beatings continued covertly from most of the other cops in the station house.

I was bailed out the next day. When the case went in front of the Grand Jury I chose to testify. By now my regular lawyer Sidney Chase had been disbarred for excepting stolen merchandise as payment for his services and was steering all his clients to a legal light weight named Bruce Torino. I believe it was under Bruce's advice that I did not mention Geraldo Rivera at the grand jury hearing. In retrospect I believe Bruce was Sidney's brother-in-law. The two cops showed up looking only slightly less gay than Don Johnson in Miami Vice. Charlie Bartels the one that did the clubbing was even wearing Topsiders with no socks along with some kind of theatrical plastic caste. Many of the people in the grand jury were black and made it obvious that they did not believe either the cops or the heavy hitter District Attorney who was assigned to prosecute me. They were deadlocked for hours which I was told is very rare at a Grand Jury hearing but she did finally get the indictment. When the case started out I had four witness's but they all folded one by one under police pressure. I remember the day it became apparent I would have to plead guilty to a felony. My men were working about a a mile from the courthouse and I refused a ride with my lawyer because I was so disgusted with him. I did not know where the job was I only had directions. I walked them in the brilliant sunlight of midday summer. When I got to the house Richard Capri was standing in his driveway and I was to begin my association with this strip club impresario that only ended a little over a year ago with his death. When Richie died he left enough money to buy John Gotti 10 times over. I know because I was one of the people involved in the legal battle over that money. Henceforth I was to be a professional and if I busted anybody up I got paid for it and got paid very well. My affiliation with Richie now gave me a license to do whatever I pleased short of murder and a cop like Bartels could not do anything about it even if he wanted, which Bartels was to find out but that too is a story for another time.

Epilogue : 10 years latter a man named Gary Webb wrote one of the first pieces of journalism that reached a massive audience thanks to the Internet: an explosive 20,000 word, three-part series documenting links between cocaine traffickers, the crack epidemic of the 1980s and the CIA-organized right-wing Nicaraguan Contra army of that era. The series sparked major interest in the social justice and African-American communities, leading to street protests, constant discussion on black-oriented talk radio and demands by Congressional Black Caucus members for a federal investigation. His work was latter published in a book: " Dark Alliance ", but Webb immediately came under a relentless attack spearheaded by the NY Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. He lost his job and became an unemployable journalistic pariah and finally ended his life by shooting himself twice through the head. Webb’s series prompted an internal CIA investigation by Inspector General Frederick Hitz who issued two reports in 1998 containing devastating admissions about the CIA’s knowledge and protection of contras known to be active in the cocaine trade. In Volume Two, published on Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 contras and contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s. The Big Three newspapers’ response was mostly to downplay or ignore Hitz’s findings and to turn Bill Clintons sex life into a 3 ring circus. Although Webb dealt primarily with the west coast there is also the matter of Detroit being simultaneously over run during Clintons Governorship by the Chambers brothers and an army of drug dealing black hillbillies from Arkansas. Terry Reed and John Cummings co-authored Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA in the book they claimed that Bill Clinton was involved in more than $9 million a week in cash being secretly air dropped into Arkansas while he was governor. Paul Wilcher was an attorney that was found dead in his Washington, D.C. home. The coroner either could not find or did not report the cause of death. At the time of his death, Wilcher was investigating gun-running and the drug business in Mena Airport in Arkansas which had become the arrival destination of the contra drugs being shipped into the US by the CIA. Shortly before his death he wrote a 105-page letter to Attorney General Janet Reno describing evidence that he allegedly had concerning Mena Airport and expressing fear for himself and other witness’s lives. There are 11 other bodies linked to Mena Airport and the drug smuggling operations run by Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas.

I do not want to draw your conclusions for you. In a democracy you are supposed to be presented with the facts so that you may accurately reach your own conclusions. Local law enforcement would have been unable to stop Geraldo Rivera from dragging them headfirst through their own excrement on national TV. At the time Rivera was the biggest thing in journalism muzzling him would have required the intervention of something far more powerful than a police commissioner. NYC police detectives do not dress in beige rain coats nor are they easy to spot especially when they are doing something sneaky and underhanded. Latter on when I was running security for the Cafe Royale I was to run into birthmark again he was groping a stripper and still wearing his inspector gadget raincoat he acknowledged me with a nod and exhibited a very cavalier attitude for someone who was being considered as a possible receptacle for six 357 hollow points. As Harry Chapin once said "I stuffed the devil in my shirt" but I did ask some questions about him all I could find out was that he always paid in hundreds, nothing about him being in law enforcement.