I’d never been to Boston…
At age 19 I hadn’t been much of anywhere. That was about to change. My partner Don Woodbeck and I went to meet a dude named Big Bruce. We showed him some sample bricks of weed we’d brought in from Arizona.
"Looks good, smells good, tastes good…that’s about it," said Bruce.
But he felt the Mexican weed was not good enough and he was kinda right. Great, now what do we do? Here I’ve missed two days of classes, spent nearly 140 bucks on airline tickets. I was flipping a couple quaaludes a doctor had given us, Dr. Zep. He had one jar of real Rohr quaaludes and he gave me and Don a couple.
Big Bruce saw those, smiled and said, "I’ll take all you can get."
It was damn cold out for early in the fall in Cambridge. And man those streets were narrow. We were all in a rental car headed to meet Big Bruce, his partner, and another guy. I had given the doctor. a tape recorder to hold. Dr. Zep was well dressed, he would be our boss, the top cop, Don and I were in leather jackets with upside down shoulder holsters just inside our coats. I had taped some cop car sirens for background noise if needed. Don and I would go in first, then the Doc would come in for the clean up. That was the plan.
Big Bruce met us near the front of the apartment buildings. They were old, red brick like all the college type apartments in this heavily populated town. Bruce and another guy came up to Don and me,, "You guys bring all the jars?" Yep, we nodded. We had like four big suitcases with us with what were suppose to be jars of pharmaceutical ludes.
In real life we had the one jar and tons of books to give the bags weight.
"Look guys, there are like 10 or 11 people up there, they wouldn’t front me the money, they don’t know you, that’s why, wanted to meet you two." I was already sweating into my thin black leather jacket. I had the Miranda Rights in my inside pocket and it was getting drenched. I whispered to Woodbeck on the way up those stairs, "Don there are too many of them, we only got five shots each (we had light weight Colts only had five shots but were small and thin good to hide)." Don said, "follow the plan, it’ll be like pop-corn, easy, Announce, guns, badges, cuffs, right. See pop corn."
Every step I took up those stairs made my heart pound harder. I thought ‘did they hear that’ maybe they know. Maybe this is a hit. Like George’s brother Tommy got. Can I get my weapon out fast enough? It was cold but sweat was in my eyes, it burned.
The door opened. I stepped inside carrying two suitcases full of, you know. Don next to me. Looked like a party, loud hard rock music (Zeppelin) in the background, purple light posters on the wall, a room full of men, all ages, no girls. The fat man near us looked drunk had a handgun in his waist belt. I saw one younger fellow in the back, long red hair looked near my age. Yeah, it was a large group, some looked pretty damn dangerous, and others looked like modern day hippies.
I put the smaller case towards me. The fat man said, "Lets see the stuff guys." We hadn’t even said our names yet. Over in the corner was a ply wood piece, lying on a heater, on top of that was MORE MONEY THAN I HAD EVER SEEN. Their money, the guy money.
Woodbeck nodded to me, "OK show ’em the goods" I opened the smaller case, took out the one jar we really had, you couldn’t see in the case it was facing away from them and towards me and Don, I tossed it into the little group, they all grabbed for it. I yelled "FREEZE POLICE OFFICERS YOU’RE ALL UNDER ARREST, DON’T MOVE."
They continued as if they didn’t hear me…I said it again, maybe I just wasn’t loud enough. No reaction, then slowly the Fat Man went for his gun. Woodbeck was over the coffee table in a blink, all 6 foot 2 inches of blonde muscled mass was air borne. Don put his pistol to the Fat Man’s ear, had his arm around the guys neck and said almost quiet like, "WE SAID FREEZE BOSTON POLICE." They froze.
