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Something About Me and My Book:
Ron Ruthfield has bought his own unique perspective to The Capital Underground, having lived in South Florida during the days when the use of marijuana and cocaine became recreational and permanent habits. During Miami’s Cocaine Cowboy era of the 1970s and 1980s, he saw up-close and quite personally how the drug trade became the necessary evil that made South Florida an economic powerhouse and a major player in the world’s economy.

His time as a television reporter in South Florida, and a newsman for the nation’s leading wire service in other southern states, gives him a particularly incisive view of the rapid growth of drug smuggling, America’s prison system, and international money-laundering. Mr. Ruthfield has developed contacts on both sides of the law, including those who reaped enormous financial benefits, those who wished they had, and those who hunted them.

The Capital Underground brings Mr. Ruthfield's personal and professional experiences to a wide audience of readers. He and his wife make their home in North Carolina.
Website:
http://www.thecapitalunderground.com


THE
CAPITAL
UNDERGROUND




by
Ron Ruthfield



Names, places, characters, and occurrences in this book have been purposely altered by the authors. Any comparisons to actual people, times, locations, or events contained herein are totally coincidental and should not be construed to be historically factual.

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopies or any other means, without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, go to www.thecapitalunderground.com.

Copyright © 2009 by RAZ Partners Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

First Edition

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-0-578-04009-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010906365



RAZ
Partners Publishing LLC






This book is available at quantity discounts for educational, business
and promotional use. For information, please e-mail, call or write:

RAZ Partners Publishing
PO Box 2447
Boone, NC 28607
828-355-9310
razpartners@gmail.com




ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge the millions of U.S. citizens
who have become, and continue to be, casualties of
America’s War on Drugs.

One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, those in
power will recognize the mistakes of the past, accede
to the wishes of the nation’s Founding Fathers, and
restore the public trust between government and its citizens.





"The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards. And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil, danger, and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."
-- Samuel Adams, American political leader, philosopher, author, and advocate of the Boston Tea Party.


Chapter One


"Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."
-- Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning American economist

3:00 PM, Friday, June 17, 1988

THE BOMB

Ari’s sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his black-leather swivel chair when he heard a voice on the other end of the phone telling him he was going to die, albeit painlessly, with the twist of a switch. It was at that very moment he knew he should have taken a furlough from the War on Drugs.
It wasn't the death threat making him perspire so profusely. It was the hazy Florida sun that could drive a lazy man crazy.
It had been a particularly hot Friday in Fort Lauderdale, a seasonal nuance that almost always occurred less than a week before the summer scorch started to melt even the thickest asphalt.
At 3:00 PM, he arrived at the parking lot outside his downtown office building, at eighteen stories the tallest in Broward County. He was returning from a lengthy client meeting in congested Miami that had begun at nine o’clock that morning.
Ari grabbed his navy blue pinstriped suit jacket draped on the passenger seat and escaped from the cool air of his metallic silver Jaguar. He flung the garment over his white-shirted shoulder as the ninety-seven-degree temperature outside smothered him like a sausage sautéing in a hundred-and-fifty-degree chafing dish.
It was a forty-five-second walk from his car to the entrance, but there was enough mixture of humidity and solar power to drown his clothes quickly in perspiration.
Once inside, he took the elevator to the penthouse floor. He opened one of the double doors to “Hirsch & Hirsch, Attorneys At Law” then went breezing past his receptionist and into his well-appointed office.
After grabbing a bottle of cold Evian from his private half-size fridge, Ari sat down to confront the mess on his desk and sifted through papers that had become intermingled with a pile of pink message slips.
It had been a long, blistering week. Ari thought about heading home a bit early and jumping in the pool at his condo complex. Everyone in the office except Stacy, the twenty-eight-year-old who worked the front office, had already left for the day.
Although Fridays at the firm in the summer months meant working till noon only, the receptionist had stayed on to finish filing some papers.
A short twelve minutes later, Ari’s private phone rang. The call dashed his plan to splash.
He didn’t know it would become the most important call of his life. Or alternatively, death.
“Mr. Hirsch. Robert Sewell from the FBI is on the phone. Line four.”
Ari knew this call was urgent, particularly because “line four” was for Emergency Use Only.
“This is Ari Hirsch.”
“Ari, Bob Sewell. Are you alone?” He put on his best bureau voice, one that reflected a sense of great urgency.
“Yes, Bob. Nobody’s in my office but me. How can I help you?”
“I’m here to help you, Ari, not the other way around.”
”Well then, Bob, please. Assist me,” Ari responded, a bit condescendingly.
“Look, Hirsch. I feel the same way about you as you do about me,” Sewell answered in an inflection slightly more than intense. “So let’s forego the unsociable gestures.”
Hirsch held no distinct fondness for the FBI, primarily because its agents had exercised extraordinary statutory means to arrest and testify against dozens of his legal patrons.
In the nine years Sewell held the post of top-cop in that part of the country, he and Hirsch had a number of unfriendly run-ins during court sessions. By 1988, Hirsch had represented more than one-hundred clients arrested by local police, deputy sheriffs, and state and federal agencies for drug-related crimes.
Many of them had received complimentary “get-out-of-jail-free” cards, including those dealt by the FBI. Those were dished out when clients agreed to testify against their accomplices and enter WitSec, the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Even with smuggling illegal drugs into the country and, in some cases committing multiple murders, the hoodlums hid behind an opaque veil of secrecy in villages, towns, and cities across America.
Ari’s experience spoke volumes. He knew quite well that many governmental entities, including those with more letters in their acronyms than the Hawaiian alphabet – particularly those fighting the War on Drugs – had disgraced themselves by becoming as corrupt as the traffickers they were trying to arrest.
There were fat-layered underbellies in many government agencies always hungry for money and willing to do almost anything to get it. Crooked officials became the symbols of the system. They were the ugly ones, those who locked their paws on more dollars than had ever been printed by the U.S. Mint, and more deutschemarks, francs and gold than Switzerland had laundered for the Nazis.
There was credence to Ari’s belief that there were drug-thugs on every petal of the poppy plant. Despite what the government had told the public for decades, he knew it was all about the money and power.
Both had become permanent motives of the culture that involved occupants of the crack house and the penthouse, the jailhouse and the White House. Trying to stop that machine would be like attempting to halt an Earth-bound meteor with a water pistol filled with Jell-O.
To be sure, Ari had gotten a number of calls on his private phone, but this one from Sewell, chief of the bureau’s South Florida office, was different.
“Shoot.” Ari didn’t mean that literally.
“Dino Morelli is planning to put a bomb in your Jag and take you out.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Where’d that come from? Attempting to intimidate a lawyer defending his client is out of bounds. Sewell, it’s not going to work,” Ari said impatiently.
“You feds never stop harassing us, do you?” In the creases of his mind, Hirsch thought something this serious might or could actually happen, but he was still surprisingly shocked. He had represented Morelli in two other drug cases and there was never a problem between them. He owed Ari his freedom for horse-trading with government agencies, including the IRS and DEA.
“Pay the income tax on the drug profits and I’ll try to cut a deal,” Hirsch had told Morelli, a dope-smuggling wise guy who was also a professional crack-head. Both times, Ari was successful with the feds and Morelli skated from doing time.
Those kinds of deals were second nature to Ari because he knew the system so well. He didn’t spend seven years as a Special Agent for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and waste his time learning zip.
“So why would Morelli now want me dead?” he asked himself.
He knew standing in for someone that high up in organized crime certainly had its financial rewards. He also knew of its many personal pitfalls and this was, without question, one of them.
“Ari, this is one situation that’s as serious as colon cancer, and your ass is on the operating table. Morelli thinks you’re going to sell him out at the grand jury hearing on Monday.”
There was a thunderous silence as Ari thought about what he had just heard. He knew Morelli was looking at up to twenty-five years for getting nabbed with coke that had a street value of $10 million, but Ari would never have sacrificed his attorney-client privilege or told anyone where the “bodies were buried.” He was dumbfounded that Morelli wouldn’t know that.
“How’d you get this information, Bob?” Hirsch asked in a slightly friendlier, more moderate spirit. He knew he needed to keep calm; it was the only way he would be able to decrease the severity of the literal jolt.
“Got it on tape, Ari. The bureau’s had a wiretap on his phone ever since he was jammed up.”
Two months prior, Morelli had posted a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bond within hours of his apprehension by the feds and the seizure of the cocaine. He was once again a free man, but confronting almost certain indictment during the upcoming special session of a federal grand jury.
“We recorded it two hours ago. The conversation is between Morelli and Jimmy Spazzini, one of his goombahs. Wanna hear it?”
Ari Hirsch didn’t give it a second thought, nor did he care if the tap was legal or illegal.
“I’m all ears.”
“I’ll call you back in a few minutes. Stay put. Do not leave your office. Make sure you lock the doors. If you don’t do as I say, you’re a dead man.”

Chapter Two


“Amid the clichés of the drug war, our country has lost sight of the scientific facts. Amid the frantic rhetoric of our leaders, we've become blind to reality. The War on Drugs, as it is currently fought, is too expensive, and too inhumane. But nothing will change until someone has the courage to stand up and say what so many politicians privately know. The War on Drugs has failed.”
--Walter Cronkite, American broadcast journalist

42 Minutes Later - 3:42 PM, Friday, June 17, 1988

BAD NEWS, WORSE NEWS

Immediately after the call, Ari told Stacy to take off the rest of the day, slumped in his chair and became as still as the Florida air. He had carefully locked the door behind her as his eyes followed her happily wiggle her way to the elevator foyer. But now he was in the office and frighteningly alone.
His entire body tensed but managed to cool down from the air conditioning that almost all south Floridians used year-round. Beads of cold worry-sweat appeared across his forehead and dripped down his cheeks until they fell off the edges of his face.
The tick of the clock resting on Hirsch’s desk appeared to get louder and louder with each passing second as he nervously waited for the phone to ring.
When “line four” finally did, he immediately grabbed the receiver.
“Ari Hirsch speaking.”
“Yeah, Ari, it’s Bob. Are you ready to listen to the tape?”
“Go ahead, Bob.”
As Sewell started the recorder, Hirsch got a sharp pain in the pit of his stomach, a sign of his being unready for what he was about to hear. As the tape began to roll, it felt as though someone had jabbed him with a pointy object, like a six-inch, stainless-steel ice pick.
“Hey, Spazzini, is that you?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Morelli. No small talk. Just listen. We have a problem that needs to be taken care of.”
“What kinda problem?”
“Hirsch.”
“Ari Hirsch?”
“No, Hershey Bar. What the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, Ari Hirsch! He’s trouble.”
“What’s the beef?”
“You remember what happened to Carmine Nardelli in Providence last year? I want the same thing to happen to Hirsch.” Morelli was alluding to one of the heads of the New England mob who one year before was blown to miniscule fragments by a bomb rigged to detonate when he started his two-month-old stretch Cadillac de Ville.
The police found a bloody hand and head more than a hundred feet from where the explosion occurred. Nardelli’s carcass was missing both. Ten fingers and a frowning face lying on the ground in pools of rusty-colored blood.
“Are you fuckin’ nuts? That guy’s helped you more than your own mother!”
Despite the mild protest, Morelli knew Spazzini – appropriately baptized Jimmy “The Fuse” because of his expertise in pyrotechnics – would carry out his demand. He had too much on him and Jimmy knew it. Besides, killing people was Spazzini’s regular day-and-night job, including weekends.
“I think Hirsch is gonna sing on me come next week.”
“Flip on ya? You’re flippin’ on yourself! Hirsch never gave up anyone!”
“Do it tonight, Spazzini. Do it tonight. You know where he lives. In his Jag, and make sure it’s the right car. You owe me, Jimmy.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“Ten grand.”
“I’ll get it done.”
Simple enough for someone who loved money more than life itself.
The jaw-dropping, brazen conversation between the two gangsters clicked off as Sewell unhooked the connection between the tape recorder and the phone.
“Do you believe me now, Ari?” asked Sewell. Once he played the taped conversation, the fifty-eight-year-old with thirty-one year’s agency experience, knew Hirsch would be petrified. At least enough to get Ari to agree with what the FBI had in mind.
Hirsch recognized a grave situation. This one came with a shovel.
“What do I do from here?”
“It’s bad news, worse news, Ari, and you only have the two choices. First, the worse news. You can do nothing and die. The bad news is that we can put you into witness protection.”
“WitSec? Over my dead body, Sewell!” Jesus, that was the wrong thing to say.
“That’s still the worse news, Ari. Take it from me. Your life as a lawyer is over. So take advantage of us helping you start a new one in a different part of the country. You know the game and all its rules. Get to a new location so we don’t have to scrape your flesh and bone fragments from your driveway.”
Ari thought of a third alternative but quickly dismissed it. “I could find a hiding spot on my own but they’ll get me for certain.” He knew Morelli’s hit squad wouldn’t rest until Hirsch became dust.
The option of being in the Federal Witness Protection Program, commonly called WitSec, came as no surprise to Ari. Not at all. He was aware that any honorable federal agent who had knowledge of a potential murder was, by government policy, compelled to notify the person in danger and offer sanctuary.
What they were not obligated to do was reveal where or when someone entering the program would be hidden. Nor did they have to tell anyone the disposition of charges against the conspirators, in this case Morelli and Spazzini.
Living in the open and not being murdered would be difficult. After all, the kingpin of Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel, Pablo Escobar, had assassinated more than twelve-hundred people throughout his years of running 80 percent of Latin America’s trafficking. His butchers had eradicated more than two-hundred judges, including many who sat on the bench of his country’s Supreme Court, top-ranked police officials, dozens of journalists, and three of Colombia’s presidential candidates.
Even Escobar’s own attorneys died on his orders.
How could Ari Hirsch think he might be safe? He didn’t. And Sewell’s cold, straightforward manner made him feel even less secure.
“You really mean WitSec, don’t you?” Hirsch inquired.
“You know that’s exactly what I mean, Ari. WitSec is the only way you‘re going to stay alive. And you know as well as anyone that it’s always the last choice in keeping someone breathing. But before I call in the U.S. Marshals, you need to make the decision to get in or stay out, and you don’t have much time.”
“How much time?”
“It’s already run out.”

Chapter Three


“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
-- Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the U. S.

6 Years and 11 Months Earlier - 9:15 PM, Friday, May 8, 1981

ARI, SANDRA AND THE FLORIDA BAR

If Aristotle Einshtein Hirsch had been born a horse, he’d have been a Thoroughbred. He wasn’t only hot-blooded but possessed agility, speed, spirit, and strength. He never ever quit – not even after he crossed the finish line – whether it was in the classroom or on the athletic field. Any of his high school, college or law school classmates could have told you Ari was the ultimate competitor.
For that matter, his drug-smuggling clients would have testified to that as well. Sixty-two of them, in fact, had become permanent fixtures in WitSec after agreeing to sweetheart plea deals.
Most of them served little or no time behind bars because of negotiations executed and finalized between Ari and various policing agencies.
In return, the buyers of his services were willing to testify against the overlords and more important figures in drug organizations. Typically, they also agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges of federal income tax evasion.
They entered WitSec and completely avoided the greater risk of being murdered in an out-of-control drug war. Since the program had been authorized in 1970, no witness out of the approximately seventy-five-hundred who had become WitSec members had ever been assassinated – if all of the strict rules had been followed.
In addition to being an officer of the court, Ari Hirsch was a legal commando who had smoother moves than a toreador’s cape. He was fearless. Not numb-and-dumb fearless, simply fearless. He demanded that judges and attorneys, including him, uphold the U.S. Constitution. At all times. In all cases. No passes. No free rides.
But the War on Drugs eventually took its toll. With vast amounts of money involved, the legal system became insanely corrupt. High standards quickly eroded and dribbled off the lips of the scales of justice. That spillage included large numbers of venal and dishonest government agencies, courts, bureaucrats, and politicians.
It especially affected South Florida where the media had endless headlines and broadcasts of police, judges and other public officials arrested for bribery and other felonies related to the illicit junk trade.
“Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.” That quote, spoken by U.S. Senator, Speaker of the House, and brilliant orator Henry Clay, was Ari’s Holy Grail.
He had engraved a brass-and-wood plaque with those words and hung it on his office wall next to his law degree to serve as a reminder to live up to the maxim voiced by the nineteenth century American statesman.
“Trust everybody but make sure you cut the cards,” was another way Ari operated; he played with an honest hand and wanted to keep his adversaries scrupulous as well. Nevertheless, he always saved the aces inside his sleeve for uncommon occasions.
In the 1970s and 1980s Ari had a blue-chip reputation as one of the best tax lawyers east of the Western Continental Divide. He had graduated near the top of his law school class. He also held the title of Certified Public Accountant.
A seven-year stint as an Internal Revenue Service Special Agent permitted him the distinct ability of completely understanding the most complicated of cases from every vantage point of the legal roundtable, an edge not enjoyed by most prosecutors, defense attorneys or even judges.
If his heart was the bullet in a gun, his brain was the trigger. In addition, it certainly didn’t hurt that he had an intelligence level that qualified him to become a member of MENSA.
His strength came from the gene pool of his Eastern European ancestors. They were the ones who had to fight and claw their way to self-determination to escape nationally sponsored hatred of Jews and friendly neighbors who thought the Chosen People needed to suffer and die for their heresy.
They made their way to America during the wave of nineteenth-century immigration and passed their genetic predisposition for survival to their kids. One of the youngsters was Murray Hirsch, Ari’s dad.
Murray was tougher than a fifty-nine-cent stick of beef jerky. As a member of Company B, Seventh Division of the highly respected U.S. Cavalry, he served his country well.
Stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1920 he was among the last of America’s warriors to ride horseback. He had the distinct ability to shoot a weapon while atop his steed galloping at full speed. When he returned in 1923 to Camp Dix in his home state of New Jersey, Murray captured the Golden Gloves Championship in the U.S. Army’s lightweight division.
But he was no lightweight out of the ring. In 1948, when a couple of miscreants called him a “dirty Jew bastard” in front of eight-year-old Ari, Murray pummeled the punks with the ferocity of a trio of elephants trampling through a circus audience. Nobody but nobody screwed with Murray Hirsch. If someone did, they never forgot.
Ari never forgot, either. The lessons he learned from that single encounter were twofold. First, be proud of your heritage and second, stand tall and stick to your principles. He knew his father stayed true to his ideals, true to his beliefs and true to his commitments.
The incident invaded Ari’s psyche and made him that much more aware of his father’s resolve. He closely guarded photos of Murray handsomely attired in full Army regalia atop his Cavalry chestnut. How Ari loved looking at Murray’s perfectly erect posture on his horse, his leather leggings wrapped around his pegged pants, and garter belts surrounding his muscular arms. To cap it, Murray wore his World War I campaign hat held tightly by a chinstrap.
Two other photos showed his dad and his opponent squaring off in the pugilism competition, which at that time required intense endurance because the matches had unlimited numbers of rounds.
One couldn’t tell if the photos were of Murray or Ari since both looked like Kinko's had duplicated them. Both had long, strong facial features, with deep-set hazel eyes that glinted when light hit them at certain angles. Their eyebrows were as thick as full-grown moustaches, and their heads of brown, frizzy, French Poodle-like hair always rejected all but the most toothless of combs.
His Uncle Sidney’s Purple Heart was also part of Ari’s memorabilia collection of his family, along with the wallet that was in his uncle’s back pocket when he got blown to scraps by a World War II Nazi projectile. He had been one of the first ground troops to land in Italy in 1943. Murray’s brother had paid the ultimate price in service to America by sacrificing his life under the command of General George S. Patton.
Patriotism came easy but living came hard for the Hirsch family. Murray, not well-schooled himself, made the inevitable decision that his offspring would be the recipients of the best possible education, which he thought was the second most important thing to mortal beings.
First was family.
He did everything he could do to provide for the household, which included driving a laundry truck to make ends meet when the family moved to Miami from New Jersey in 1950.
He taught his sons to be independent and close to one another. They returned the favor in kind by becoming successful lawyers and business partners. Enough to make a dad’s chest pop the buttons off his shirt.
Unfortunately, the younger son, Stan, died tragically when a cement truck went out of control and rolled his Corvette in a head-on collision in the mid 1980s.
Adversity aside, Ari thrived, but his first marriage didn’t. Financial success came easy, but coping with the trials and travails of his constant contact with narcotics characters while juggling his personal life and professional obligations became a tale of woe.
He and Barbara decided to remove their respective wedding bands sixteen years and two kids later.
Ari began living his life alone, except for the times when he positively thought he could break the record of basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain by scoring more loose women in a lifetime than he did hooping free throws.
Considering that Ari married quite young and was now free of connubial bliss, he took care not to rebound. After some years of being more peripatetic than the Harlem Globetrotters, Ari met Sandra.
One Friday evening in the middle of spring 1981, after spending several months dating women who wore short shorts and flaunted varicose veins, he walked into a busy South Florida cocktail lounge. Ari made his way through the crowd to the bar, and sat down next to what he perceived was a “person of interest.”
“Hi. My name’s Ari and my recently deceased aunt left me $20 million in a trust fund. I can’t touch the money unless I get married by the end of next month. Care to talk, beautiful?”
“Sure,” said Sandra without cracking the slightest smile, while her girlfriend sitting next to her swallowed an ice cube whole, “but the hundreds might get in the way of my two-thousand ounces of gold bullion. Besides, my Rottweiler is guarding the vault and no one can get near it except me. Unless, of course, you have the balls of a pit bull. Do you, Ari?”
“Before we talk about cojones, can you at least tell me your name?” Ari asked with a smile.
“Sandra. Not Sandy. Sandra.”
“Got it. And by the way, Sandra, who are you here with?”
“Your aunt’s money,” she said, then followed it with a bountiful laugh. “So tell me about your nerve, Ari. If you really have it, flaunt it. Not the money. The audacity.”
“I’m really not that audacious,” Ari whispered after taking a swallow of his Harvey Wallbanger, noticing Sandra was not wearing a gold band or diamond ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. “Only determined. Tell me, are you here looking for Mr. Right?”
“No, Mr. Wrong. I’m here with my girlfriend relaxing. And you? Why are you here?”
“It’s more comfortable than staying home alone.” Ari was surprised and uncomfortable with his own honesty.
“How often do you stay home alone?” That question dug deep, primarily because Ari rarely stayed in his oceanfront condo by himself.
“Probably not enough,” Ari admitted.
The conversation became a bit more probing as Ari and Sandra opened it up to a much deeper and more intense conversation. Sandra’s girlfriend, Victoria, picked up quickly on the situation. Her sensitivity told her the two were getting into a much more sober-sided exchange and there was no way she wanted to be a spoiler. Victoria finished her drink, paid her tab, and departed – “excuse me but I have to go home and water my terrarium” – leaving the two of them alone.
Victoria had been right. Ari and Sandra instinctively knew they had stumbled on a new relationship that wasn’t about to begin and end at the Florida bar. In fact, it never ended.
Within sixty days, they were playing house in Ari’s condo, and had fallen impossibly in love with one another. Neither of them knew they would wind up putting their lives into the clutches of the U.S. government some seven years later.
Sandra Elizabeth Hayes, thirteen years younger but looking twenty years younger than Ari because of her petite, athletic appearance and wrinkle-free face, had lived in the United States for more than two decades. When she was eight, her parents packed the house, took their Snow White and drifted south over the Canadian-U.S. border.
They traded bitter-cold winter mornings along Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy, maple leaves and hockey pucks for sunshine and tropical beaches, palm fronds and the War on Drugs in South Florida.
After graduating high school in the “Venice of America” – Fort Lauderdale got the nametag because of its manmade parallel canals like its Italian sister city – Sandra spent two years at Florida State University in Tallahassee studying Beer Swigging 101.
Her fundamentalist Baptist parents urgently requested Sandra to find her messiah in the form of a husband and become an ordained housewife. Much to their chagrin, she didn’t bear that cross.
When Sandra’s mom died in 1986 from cancer, Alvin Tucker Hayes did what he thought was Biblically correct; he married his widow’s sister nine months after she passed. Actually, Alvin was Biblically confused since the holy book actually mandates that a man marry his deceased brother’s widow.
Even though he was befuddled at times, Alvin was a self-taught engineer for one of the world’s largest jet aviation manufacturers, but thought education for women was a waste of precious resources. All women really needed were Jesus, marriage and their husbands to lord over.
Sandra must not have paid close attention. She dropped out of college and successively become a hairdresser, bartender, commodities’ broker, and headhunter. Not the kind who shrinks the top part of an animate body, but the type one places in management and executive positions. Her ability to match candidates with clients led to more success than she’d ever experienced.
Daddy was not happy with his daughter. Not because she withdrew from college, but after all that experience she still hadn’t found a spouse. Besides, she served liquor to strangers. Rumor was she even drank the Devil’s Brew herself every once in awhile.
Sandra had an abundance of traits that could have qualified her for becoming another Mother Theresa, Joan of Arc, Dian Fossey, or a lion tamer. She could have charmed the stripes off a zebra or the tail end of a rattlesnake, easy assignments for a woman who was born under the sign of Leo. Ambitious, confident, and generous to a fault, her loyalty was as unwavering as a guide dog.
Although she may have been stubborn at times, Sandra was by contrast encouraging with Ari, a quality that fit her personality as easily as a T-shirt, jeans and sandals fit her body and feet. Her happiness came from knowing she was totally capable of being independently successful, but recognized the need for periodic reinforcement and someone special like Ari by her side.
To him, Sandra was the ultimate friend, someone who was eminently forgiving, and who perennially lifted him spiritually and emotionally.
Sandra was hard not to like. There was no tension, no personal agenda, no dwelling on things she couldn’t fix. She also had a keen sense of people’s differences, making her accepting of almost anyone. In return, everyone embraced her for who she was and not who they wanted her to be.
Her warmth and enthusiasm immediately attracted people.
Allies were Sandra’s specialty because of her desire to help, whether it was personally or in whatever endeavor or task she undertook.
Whomever Sandra met acknowledged her joie de vivre, her sense of balance, her ultimate friendship.
Determined never to fail at anything, Sandra had more pride than a family of lions. She ruled over a kingdom that she avidly protected and cherished. That included her business life and her existence with Ari.
He was attracted to her wit and charm but she was also very easy on the eyes. Intuitively, he knew he could never make her better than she was because of her insistence on doing it herself. Sandra wanted to be the best at everything she did, including her attempts to make all things right.
Ari knew quickly that Sandra would make an excellent partner because she gave him almost total affection and communicated a deep love he had never experienced but that made him feel good about his reason for being. At times, she may have been stoic, but was kind, supportive, flexible, and had a desire for adventure like no other woman he had ever met.
Between the two, there was enough passion to make their heads spin like a twister in the middle of Nebraska, enough energy to take their relationship to new levels, and enough fire to light up the stage at a Rolling Stones concert. The bottom line was that she loved Ari deeply and in a way she had never loved anyone else in her life.
She wasn’t about to let that go.

Chapter Four


“Western governments…will lose the war against dealers unless efforts are switched to prevention and therapy…All penalties for drug users should be dropped…Making drug abuse a crime is useless and even dangerous…Every year we seize more and more drugs and arrest more and more dealers but at the same time the quantity available in our countries still increases…Police are losing the drug battle worldwide.”
-- Raymond Kendall, Former Secretary-General of Interpol

6 Years and 11 Months Later - 4:44 PM, Friday, June 17, 1988

WELCOME TO CLUB WitSec

Sandra answered the phone at the condo.
“Sweetheart, we need to talk. Anyone else at home other than you?” Ari was calling from his office.
“Nope. No one here except me and the cockroaches.” Florida was famous for those creepy invertebrates. “What do we need to talk about?”
“Us,” Ari suggested somberly.
“What about us?” Sandra asked. “This sounds wonderfully mysterious.”
“A moment ago I hung up with the FBI chief for South Florida. You’re not going to like what he told me, Sandra,” he said in a notably heavy timbre.
“Pray tell me, Ari.” Sandra never knew when he was teasing.
“They want to put me into WitSec,” he responded quietly.
“What the hell is WitSec?” she asked.
“It’s the Federal Witness Protection Program.”
“What are you talking about? Is this a joke?” Now, she was palpably disturbed and agitated. She knew Ari had many clients who might have broken the law, but she knew nothing of how deeply he was involved in defending them. Notably drug traffickers.
“It’s as serious as my life,” Ari said in a tone Sandra had never heard from him. “One of my clients is going to be indicted for drug smuggling in three days and is planning to put a bomb in my car, similar to the one that took out Carmine Nardelli last year.”
“How could that possibly be,” Sandra questioned, “when you’re his attorney?” She remembered Ari telling her about the infamous Nardelli case. She had actually seen the aftermath of the assassination on the evening network news the day it happened.
“I may be his lawyer but this is for real, Sandra. The South Florida FBI chief called a little while ago and played a tape the bureau recorded on a phone tap. The client was talking to one of his gang associates and told him I knew too much, that he couldn’t leave himself exposed for fear I might testify against him and tell what I know.
“He’s afraid he’ll go away for twenty-five years if the feds uncover the information I have. They were planning to plant the bomb tonight, like terrorists!”
“You’re really serious about this, aren’t you Ari?”
“Unfortunately, I am.”
“Doesn’t this guy know you wouldn’t say a word? What the hell is going to happen to us? Are they taking you into protective custody? How long will you be gone? How did you get into this, anyway? Shit, Ari, didn’t you know the risks? What the hell were you thinking?” Sandra fired questions at Ari faster than he could respond.
“You’re asking too many questions, Sandra, and there’s not enough time to answer them all. The FBI is telling me to leave right now, tonight. If I don’t, my life is over. Maybe not by a car bomb, but they’ll find another way sooner or later.” This was the scariest moment of his life, and Sandra knew it. “My folks would fall apart if they see another son die – by a Mafia hit man, no less.”
“Where are they taking you?”
“I don’t know yet, Sandra. Right now, I’m in danger. I can’t even come home and I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is that I have to get out of here fast and not look back. Once I get into WitSec, I can’t get out.”
“Ari, I’m going with you,” Sandra demanded. “You are not leaving me behind.”
“No way, Sandra. Being in hiding is no way for you to live. That’s crazy. You might never see your father or sister or friends again. Get on with your life, Sandra. You can do a lot better than staying with me.”
“I didn’t get into this relationship for a temporary fling. My future’s with you, Ari, and I’m staying with you for as long as it takes to get our lives together. You have no choice.”
“My life has no meaning right now, Sandra, and yours does,” Ari said unconvincingly. “I have no idea where or how I’m going, what I’ll be doing, when or if I’m ever coming back, and I can’t pull you into this bottomless pit.
“There’s a drug war going on, and there are dragnets everywhere. I need to bail out to keep my sanity and my earthly existence. If this client doesn’t get me, another paranoid, coke-crazed one will. I can’t take you with me, Sandra.”
“The hell you can’t! I’m packing some bags and we’re leaving together, you son-of-a-bitch, and don’t ever tell me what to do or who and how to love.”
Within hours, Ari and Sandra were passengers in exile on a jet plane flying to an unknown destination with the FBI acting as federal agents, travel agents and chaperones.
And, for what might be the only time in American history, a CPA, attorney and former IRS Special Agent, all rolled into one character, entered WitSec. He and Sandra began new lives, and remained self-muzzled and incognito more than twenty years later.
What led to the banishment, however, had begun almost a decade-and-a-half earlier.

Chapter Five


"Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does."
-- James C. Paine, U.S. District Court Judge

14 Years and 2 Months Earlier – 1:05 PM, Sunday, April 14, 1974

ARI AND THE SUNTAN MAN

The Bronze-Tone sales representative permanently colored Ari’s life, and in return, Ari saved his skin.
Before he ever began representing an endless wave of clients involved in the drug war, the thirty-four-year-old legal whiz had become a highly skilled, versatile tax attorney handling high-profile cases.
He administered corporate mergers, acquisitions and spin-offs as seamlessly as he planned the transition of multimillion-dollar estates. He was proficient at formulating pension plans and tax shelters. Plus, he was every doctor’s financial best friend since he knew how to make medical professionals judgment proof.
That all changed when Kenny Cooper topped ten miles over the speed limit in tiny Golden Beach, a spit of land in Dade County one mile long and four blocks wide with a grand total of nine-hundred-thirty-two, money-flushed residents.
The townspeople didn’t take well to people driving more than the twenty-five-miles-an-hour speed limit through their tiny barrier island, bordered on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and the west by the Intracoastal Waterway. Hallandale Beach pointed due north and the condo canyon of North Miami Beach and Sunny Isles lay south.
Inhabitants of the upscale coastal enclave paid their cops well to stop anyone from putting the pedal to the metal, even if it was a gentle push to twenty-six miles an hour. Most outsiders in the area knew if their speedometer went beyond the legal requirements in Golden Beach, they’d wind up paying a substantial fine, not to mention a hefty increase in their insurance premiums.
Strangers rolling along A1A, the ocean road that ran through the middle of town, became easy bulls-eyes in the speed trap, and Kenny Cooper was the ultimate stranger.
He had never even heard of Golden Beach, much less crossed its boundaries. It turned out to be the most bizarre Sunday afternoon drive he had ever taken. As the needle on his speedometer hit thirty-five-miles-an-hour, he saw the red lights atop a squad car swirling in his rear-view mirror and a reflection of what was in store.
“License and registration,” boomed the voice of the constable as Cooper rolled down the driver’s side window of the bright-white, bucket-seated, 1974 Pontiac Bonneville ragtop he was driving.
“Did I do somethin’ wrong, officer?”
“Hold the questions for the judge and step out of the car.”
Cooper, the Key West rep for Bronze-Tone – which promised both sexes the “The Most Stunning Fun-Tan Under The Sun” – knew this cop spelled and smelled trouble. He located the registration in the car’s glove compartment, exited the car, then pulled out his billfold from a back pocket and fumbled for his license.
“Thank goodness it’s valid,” Cooper muttered to himself as he handed it over.
The man in blue – in truth, the police wore short-sleeve white shirts in Golden Beach – stuck his head inside the vehicle to look around for anything suspicious. It wasn’t what he saw but what he sniffed that grabbed his attention.
The heavy and distinct odor of high-grade marijuana was quite familiar to the officer, who had engaged in taking a toke or two every now and then with some of his police pals. Most of what they smoked was easily “borrowed” from a couple of low-level pot dealers they knew as off-duty officers. But now he was on the job and had to enforce the law.
Like the schmuck that he was, Cooper had smoked a joint on the jaunt and didn’t bother to open the windows or put down the convertible top to air out the vehicle.
Bad Kenny, bad.
“Put your hands behind your back,” the cop bellowed as he grabbed the suspect by his collar and threw him against the car. Cooper complied. He had no choice. This was his first arrest, and he didn't even know why. There was zero evidence of “Mary Jane” in the interior of the car and he felt secure the only thing he could get detained for was a speeding violation.
As much as he tried to convince himself there was nothing to be concerned about, he was petrified when they slapped the adjustable silver-colored hoops on his hairy, boney wrists.
The officer searched inside the car for any leftover grass, roaches or seeds and pushed the interior switch that unlatched the trunk. It was then the cop unearthed the jackpot, but it wasn’t cannabis or any form of it.
There, sitting in neatly stacked piles and rubber-banded, were more twenty-dollar bills than either one of them had ever seen.
“Shit, officer, it’s not even my car. What the hell is all that cash doin’ in there? It’s not mine, goddamn it. I swear to God it’s not mine! Hey, take these cuffs off. They’re killin’ me. Come on, cut me a break here.”
He might as well have been talking to a granite headstone.
Two back-up officers arrived faster than they could say “Look at those Andrew Jacksons,” assessed the situation after sealing off the town with “Police Crime Scene – Do Not Cross” yellow ribbons cut from a spool, then began counting the money. Right there on the side of the road. Peeling off bill after bill and enumerating aloud, they wrote down the amount contained in each mound and tossed them into police-issued duffel bags.
Twenty minutes later, traffic began to back up both north and south of Golden Beach. Irate drivers began blowing their horns. That was always a sign of impatience and arrogance by New Yorkers. The ones who made the annual “snowbird” pilgrimage to that area to roast in the sun and visit family and friends who had moved there to escape the crime, pollution, traffic jams, and people honking their horns.
A couple of them cursed at the police trying to control traffic and were cited for “verbal abuse of a police officer,” a no-no in the hamlet. Some of them were unlucky enough to get on-the-spot citations for breaking the anti-noise ordinance, while others received them for making illegal U-turns. All required court appearances or the payment of a large fine plus court costs.
Whoops! There go the insurance rates.
It was enough money to fill the ticket quota of the City of Hallandale Beach for a month, and a sizable bonus for Dade County deputies at the other end of Golden Beach.
After five-and-a-half hours and hundreds of onlookers and stalled cars later, the trinity of cops stopped counting at exactly $1.5 million after finally running out of crisp, green bills. The “cash register” was empty and so was the feeling Cooper had in his stomach.
He sat in the hot police car until they finished the detailed accounting, hands behind him still clasped together with chromium shackles.
By the time they reached the mid-point in tallying, there were journalists from every newspaper, TV and radio station in Dade and Broward Counties clamoring to chronicle the events and claim their fifteen minutes of fame, or infamy. The story made it all the way to the three dominant national networks, which aired the events on their evening newscasts. Several television stations sent up their two-seater Bell helicopters to record the action in full, vivid color.
At the time, the incident was one of the biggest money-busts in the history of South Florida, but puny as compared to later takedowns.
“Chaotic, unruly and comical” was how one reporter described it on the eleven o’clock news, accompanied by aerial views of three-mile-long caravans of vehicles on both sides of town. Golden Beachers Find Green Gold screamed a headline in one of the dailies, while another announced Cops Cop Cash, Can’t Cop Crop, an obvious reference to the police’s inability to find any illegal substances anywhere at the “crime” scene.
Poor Cooper couldn’t catch a hungry catfish in a ten-gallon aquarium using jumbo shrimp as bait on a drop-line hook.
He was always an empty bottle in the suntan lotion industry, and for that matter any business in which the forty-three-year-old schlemiel was ever employed; there were at least a dozen. He could barely explain what SPF meant, which was perhaps one of the many reasons he was the lowest producer among one-hundred-sixty-seven Bronze-Tone reps across fifty states minus Alaska.
The company had given him one of the hottest suntan markets in America, the Florida Keys or as the locals called it, "The Conch Republic." But he was such an inferior salesman he might as well have been peddling the greasy tan oil to the nomads of Lapland.
A likeable enough guy, Cooper often picked up some extra bucks doing odd jobs. Sometimes really odd. Like this one. A small-time weed hustler Cooper knew asked him if he’d like to make a quick five grand. He also told the lotion “specialist” he would forgive the past-due debt for fourteen joints of potent pot that Cooper had bought from him.
“Are you trying to be funny? Five grand? Tell me what I have to do,” Kenny urged his pal. “My rent is two weeks late and I don’t have it. This’ll get me healthy.”
Cooper could never get healthy. The two-hundred-twenty pounds clinging to his five-foot-seven-inch frame was enough beef to cause some serious cardiac damage. Especially with a daily diet of mayonnaise-soaked eggs, one-hundred-fifty-one-proof Bacardi Añejo rum, random amounts of pocket rocket, and no exercise, although he believed chasing women was a noteworthy part of physical training.
“Tomorrow morning, I want you to take a car to the Seapoint Plaza high-rise in Hallandale Beach and park it in the underground garage in spot number 145. I’ll give you the address in the morning. You’ll see a bright red, 1973 Chevy Impala in parking place number 146. The keys will be in the ignition. All you gotta do is swap out the Pontiac for the Chevy and bring it back. I’ll give you the five grand when you return. Got it?”
Cooper bobbed his head north and south and wrote down the information so he wouldn’t get confused. He was also speechless thinking that amount of cash would be in his hands in less than a day.
“Whatever you do, do not look in the trunk of the car because you’ll break a special seal that’s placed inside. If the wrong people find out you poked your nose in the wrong spot, there could be trouble. You don’t want to disappoint them, do you Coop?” Cooper quickly shook his head side to side as his shoulder-length, bleached-blonde hair slapped back and forth over his shoulders and ears.
Cooper, dressed in white-tattered beachcomber shorts, palm-fronded tropical shirt and teal-blue flip-flops picked up the Pontiac the next morning. He jotted down the street address and directions, and headed north along the Overseas Highway for the four-and-a-half-hour jaunt to Hallandale Beach.
Too bad he had to drive through Golden Beach before he got there.
The array of tagged, twin-locked bags landed in the police vehicles, as did Coop. Headquarters was two short blocks away and that's where the human and financial contents got driven. One of the cops took the Bonneville to the precinct and parked it in the small, beach-sand-coated parking lot.
The last thing the residents of the wealthy settlement wanted was a lot of publicity. The chief of police summoned the sixty-two-year-old mayor, who had been enjoying Sunday evening cocktails and dinner at his chi-chi country club three miles away with his wife and another couple who lived in the exclusive ghetto.
“Hizzoner” appeared at the station house wearing the mandatory cuff-less madras pants, light blue golf shirt-with-alligator-logo, and dark blue Arnold Palmer Palm Beach blazer. His white, patent leather shoes matched his belt to perfection.
“We have to get rid of this money.” The mayor was more than slightly serious. “Call the sheriff’s office and have them take it off our hands. We don’t need any more exposure. And for God’s sake, get it out of the jail cell – and him, too!” he hollered as he waved his right-hand index finger at Cooper who by now was sitting quietly with the cuffs still on his wrists.
Yes, the big blue duffels and the Coop were behind bars, all incarcerated and causing prison overcrowding.
There was nowhere else to put the cash except in one of the two six-by-nine-foot cells; they could barely squeeze anybody in the one-stall bathroom when the structure was built twenty years prior, let alone have a safe big enough in which to stuff that amount of bagged money. The police vault was slightly smaller than a sixty-nine-dollar microwave oven.
Cooper sat there in silence until the cops began to throw question after question at him. Other than saying he wanted an attorney, he refused to talk. Clammed up tighter than an over-size cork in a bottle of champagne. Nevertheless, he was charged with a few misdemeanors but nothing more serious than speeding. Yeah, he had a lot of money in the car, but that wasn’t a crime.
Within an hour, Dade County sheriffs’ vehicles came screaming into Golden Beach, moved the cash into an evidence van and Cooper into a Ford cruiser.
They deposited Cooper in a holding cell at the county corrections center, and stowed the cash-filled bags in the property room. A deputy sheriff put the funds into the department’s official account the next morning, figuring the department would hold it in trust for whoever owned it.
That would later turn out to be a bad move for the sheriff and a great maneuver for Cooper.
A bank officer informed the Miami office of the IRS about the large deposit, which was standard operating procedure in these kinds of cases.
In turn, the tax guys served “jeopardy assessment” papers, under Section 6851 of the Internal Revenue Code, on the Dade County Sheriff’s Department. The IRS wanted its “rightful share” of the taxes due on the money, which was immediately frozen, and that was that. If the agency deemed the money came from unknown sources, the money had to be taxed at the highest possible rate. If no one claimed the cash, the government would keep all of it.
Orders for the assessment came directly from the heads of field offices for the Internal Revenue Service, which had intelligence, audit and collection specialists spread throughout the area to determine if the agency was in danger of losing tax money. One such occurrence made international headlines.
When a heavyweight championship boxing match took place in a Dade County arena, federal meddlers heard that one of the fighters was about to be paid in cash and might leave the United States without forking over the taxes that were due.
He was victorious in the fight for the crown, but knocked out by the feds when they confiscated his entire purse of more than $1 million stashed in his suitcase at the Miami International Airport. The new champ was waiting to catch his flight to Europe.
He went home with the championship boxing belt, but had no need for a money belt because his pockets were as empty as his previously filled suitcase. Dead broke, the champ never recovered as much as a kroner.
Meanwhile, a cell became Cooper's part-time coop. With zero cash – his "delivery service" fee hadn't been paid – he couldn’t even post bail. He didn’t have enough cash to buy another joint or get himself out of the joint.
At Monday’s 9:30 AM arraignment, the presiding judge appointed Martin Markell, a public defender, to represent Cooper. Charges against Cooper included speeding and reckless driving. Markell, a fifty-something idealist who soon would become a financial mercenary, filed a motion for delay. He notified the presiding judge he needed more time to find and consult with a tax attorney to evaluate the cash seizure by the sheriff’s office and the IRS.
Most judges didn’t enjoy stepping on the stubby, grubby fingers and toes of the federal revenue department. However, this case was different.
Upon careful examination of the file, Judge Paul Fields determined there were sufficient funds in control of the government, and a bond on minor traffic violations was “outrageous.” The assistant state attorneys ground their teeth when the judge released Cooper. Fortunately for Kenny, there was no evidence to charge him with any other crime.
The very next morning, a lawyer friend of Markell suggested he contact Ari Hirsch who he described as a “former IRS Special Agent, CPA and tax attorney who knew all the machinations of jeopardy assessment cases from both sides of the legal fence.”
“Good morning. Hirsch and Hirsch. How may I help you?”
“Ari Hirsch, please.”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“Martin Markell from the Dade County Public Defender’s office.”
“One moment please. I’ll see if he’s available.”
Markell wondered if this was another one of his legal colleagues who was always “in a meeting,” but who he’d have to call several times before Hirsch would grant him the courtesy of a conversation.
“Mr. Markell, this is Ari Hirsch.”
Somewhat surprised at the quick response, Markell said, “Thank you for taking my call, Mr. Hirsch. I’d like to make an appointment to see you with a client of mine who desperately needs help.”
“Can you tell me a little about the case?”
“It’s pretty involved, but here’s the scenario.”
Markell summarized the situation in a bit more than five minutes. Ari had it figured out before the public defender, known by his associates and clients as “the M&M man” because of his initials, even finished his explanation of what Hirsch had already perceived to be a simple case.
“I’ll have my receptionist give you the address and directions. Can you and your client be in my office this afternoon at three?” Ari asked.
“On the dot,” Markell replied.
At precisely 3:00 PM, Markell and Cooper entered the top-floor suite of Hirsch & Hirsch, introduced themselves to the receptionist, then took side-by-side seats while she proclaimed their presence to Hirsch after knocking on and opening Ari’s closed office door.
“Have them come right in, please,” Hirsch told her, as he stood up to formally greet them.
After the usual business amenities – “Nice to meet you; please sit down; thanks for seeing us in such an expeditious manner; care for a cold drink?” – they got down to money business. Within thirty minutes, Markell articulated full details of the case. Cooper chimed in with irrelevancies whenever he felt it was necessary, which was about every fifteen seconds, until his counselor politely told him not to speak.
Ari determined Cooper’s intelligence level was twenty cents short of a dollar and that he appeared to be a never-was has-been.
“What I failed to mention on the phone, Mr. Hirsch, is that Mr. Cooper has absolutely no cash,” Markell offered. “He’s also going to be out of a job because of this occurrence.”
Cooper nodded in agreement. Markell explained that Cooper was staying with him and his wife for the time being. They had taken him in as a result of his dire straits, that of being a resident of Tap City. Neither did they want him wandering the streets or standing in line at the Brothers of the Good Shepherd homeless shelter.
Nice guy that Markell.
What Markell also mentioned was that regardless of his public defender status, Mr. Cooper had promised him a share of the proceeds.
Was Markell crazy? How could he get away with that? No law license pulled? Why was he telling Hirsch?
Ari figured he was another one of the locals on two payrolls he had heard about so often. What he didn’t figure was that Markell would soon leave his public defender post and become personal counsel to Cooper.
“We’re going to attempt to recover Mr. Cooper’s money,” said Ari with an air of confidence, “and I think we’ll be successful.” He had lots of experience in these kinds of cases and knew exactly what buttons to push to get the money out of the IRS “pawn shop.”
“First, we have to determine whose money it is and if it’s not yours” – Ari was looking straight at Cooper – “I need to know who I’m representing. In addition, the IRS has close to five hundred different forms to recover the million-and-a-half. We have to identify the right one and have it signed by the owner of the cash. Barring that, the government will deny the claim and keep the money.”
“We’re going to presume it belongs to Mr. Cooper,” Markell said. “But if it’s drug money, how is he going to claim it?”
“That’s the way Al Capone and other criminals got away with it,” Hirsch answered. “He voluntarily reported his vast, illegally obtained income every year and filed it under ‘Miscellaneous Income’ on Schedule E. He was more religious about filing his taxes correctly than he was at attending church.”
By allowing Capone to file in this manner, it set a precedent for other tax cheats, including some of Ari’s bookmaker clients. “Lots of people earn money and don’t report to the IRS how they made it. As long as the agency gets its money, it couldn’t care less where it came from.” His clients had few worries that the revenue service would ever seize their assets.
Drug dealers and smugglers, whose activities in the early 1970s began to garner millions upon millions in cash, also paid their taxes to the federal government via the same method as Capone.
As their business boomed, so did Ari’s.
Over the years Hirsch liked telling his clients a tongue-in-cheek story about his dad helping Capone with “laundering” but never divulging it wasn’t “money laundering.” The mobster used Murray Hirsch’s pick-up laundry and dry-cleaning service when “Scarface” stayed at his winter home on Palm Island off the MacArthur Causeway on Miami Beach. Capone was the biggest tipper on Murray’s route.
“Mr. Cooper—”
“You can call me Kenny or Coop. Mr. Cooper sounds too stuffy.”
“Coop, the owner needs to file a special return for a partial tax year under an obscure IRS code which allows him or her to prepay income tax on the seized money and explain how it was earned,” Hirsch said, knowing it was probably way over Cooper’s level of understanding.
“Huh?” grunted Cooper. Comprehending what Ari illustrated was about at the same level of Kenny’s understanding of Greek mythology.
“I get it,” said Markell. “I’ll explain it to you later, Coop. Right now, we need to move ahead with Mr. Hirsch’s advice. Please continue Mr. Hirsch.”
“Once I prepare an income tax return disclosing miscellaneous income of $1.5 million, I’ll file it with Internal Revenue, arrange for payment of the taxes, secure a final settlement, and obtain a refund. The balance, minus legal fees and expenses, will go to the rightful owner. If it’s you, Coop, you’ll have to sign the filing declaring you’re the owner.”
The “refund” was more money than Cooper could even calculate.
It was then that Cooper finally came clean about the ownership. “There are some guys in the Keys it belongs to, but they’ll flee to Central America if I tell ‘em they have to sign a tax document to get the money back. Who knows what they’ll do to me for getting’ them into this mess?”
“Explain the situation to them,” Ari suggested, “and let them know this is their only choice. Get back to me after you speak and meet with them and we’ll proceed accordingly.”
“Meet with ‘em, hell! They’ll kill me on the spot!”
“No they won’t, Coop. They’re not going to risk their freedom by signing a document affirming ownership of the car in which the money was found,” said Ari. “They also know they can’t get the money without claiming it belongs to them and they won’t want any part of that. Getting rid of you does them no good at all because then they’ll have a murder rap to deal with.
“Neither do they want their pictures hanging on post office walls saying Wanted for Murder, Dead or Alive, $50,000 Reward.”
“Mind if Mr. Cooper and I have a confidential talk in your conference room?” Markell asked.
They followed Ari into the cherry-paneled meeting quarters and took seats in two of the twelve leather swivel chairs surrounding the oval table. Exactly enough seats for a jury and enough privacy to discuss the alternatives.
Ari went back to his office.
“Look, Coop, if Hirsch says nothing is going to happen, take him at his word. Don’t give me a hard time on this or I’ll walk away from the deal. Agree to it or I sail.” He knew he had his client in a corner.
Cooper appeared disturbed enough to leap from the eighteenth floor. He didn’t answer. He got up from his chair, paced the forest- green carpet for several minutes, then told Markell he would try it “Hirsch’s way.” The two men returned to Ari’s office and consented to the process. Cooper was too chicken to commit suicide and besides, it might hurt.
“Fine,” said Ari. “Go back into the meeting room for about an hour while I prepare documents for your friends to sign. The receptionist will get you some cold Cokes. There’s a TV behind the pull-down screen, so go in and relax.”
”Relax? How the fuck can I relax?” Cooper asked Hirsch.
Seventy minutes later, Cooper and Markell left the office with the documents Hirsch had drawn and cruised to Markell’s house where Coop called his drug buds. They already knew what had happened from TV reports and they were more than a bit pissed. Cooper told one of them he needed to speak with them face-to-face. They agreed to meet with him in one of their bungalows in Key West the next afternoon.
Markell had managed to recover the Bonneville from the Golden Beach cops that very morning, a much easier task than dealing with either the sheriff’s office or the feds particularly since the town wanted nothing to do with the case. Determining there were no drugs in the vehicle, the department quickly gave in to Markell’s demand of returning it.
Cooper asked Markell for fifty bucks, enough to fill and refill the tank in the event he needed to get it back to Broward County from Key West. “At least if I’m still breathin’,” he asserted. He had a few dollars left over for a box of Twinkies and a six-pack for the trip home. A six-pack of Seven-Up, that is.
After taking ten milligrams of Valium he pilfered from his host’s medicine cabinet, Cooper got a decent night’s sleep and awakened at 6:30 AM. After showering, shaving and getting dressed, he walked out of Markell’s house, hopped in the car and headed straight for a McDonald’s for two cups of black coffee; one to drink there and one to take with him as he headed south to the Keys.
Slowly.

Chapter Six


“The government is good at job creation. Every arrest of a drug dealer creates a new high-paying job opening.”
-- Pete Guither, American drug policy reformer

3 Days Later – 1:30 PM, Wednesday, April 17, 1974

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

When Cooper arrived at the seaside cottage, he didn’t have to knock. His “friends” were expecting him and he was right on time.
As he entered, his three pals made him take off every stitch of clothing. Standing there as naked as the day he was born, Coop was searched from his hair to his toenails and every body cavity in between.
They weren’t looking for drugs, but a bug, not the kind you kill with Raid but the type that records voices. Finding nothing in the empty spaces but skin and hair, they informed Cooper they didn’t know anything about the money.
“How could they not know anything?” Cooper asked himself. As long as they didn’t whack him, he wasn’t probing.
They never even asked Cooper to explain what happened. They already knew enough from watching the tube.
“We were doing a favor for a friend, and he’s already back in Costa Rica. We had no idea what was in the car except from the television reports,” one of them said. “Is he serious?” reasoned Cooper silently. As long as he was off the hook, that’s what mattered most. Eliminating him was now off the table.
“He paid us fifteen grand to get it delivered, and we were gonna give you five to get it done. Now, you get nothin’ and we’re keepin’ it all ‘cause you fucked up the score. We searched you because we wanted to make sure you didn’t rat us out.”
“How could I squeal on you when I didn’t know any of this?” Cooper asked.
“This is your puzzle now, Coop, so put the pieces together,” one of them said. “We don’t know anything and we don’t wanna. We’re gonna make believe it never happened. No fuckin’ way we’re gettin' involved with the feds, and we’ll deal with our Costa Rican friend later.”
“Well, then, the least you can do is sign a paper transferring the ownership of the car to me.” Cooper said but not without a quiver in his voice. “There's been enough trouble with the cops already. I don’t need another highway stop and not be able to prove I own the car. If one of you takes the car and gets pulled over, you’re gonna be right back where you started and cause yourselves a lot of grief.”
Cooper stood there scratching his facial stubble waiting for a response.
“What do we have to sign?” one of the group asked Cooper.
“I’m goin’ out to the car to get the transfer of title documents.” Cooper walked outside to the car. From the glove compartment he pulled the papers Ari had prepared and walked back into the house.
“It’s a formality. Sign it with your friend’s name,” Cooper said. The spokesman for the trio immediately scribbled a name on the documents, which not only transferred the ownership to Cooper but waived all rights to the contents of the vehicle.
Perhaps Cooper wasn’t as dumb as he projected. He now owned the car and its contents, “owned” being the operative word. A few days before, he was trying to sell suntan lotion to drug stores, souvenir shops and tourist traps, and now he was ready to become the not-so-humble winner of a $1.5 million payoff, although still in the possession of the IRS.
Even Cooper couldn’t believe how he got so luck-struck. For the first time in his years on the planet, he thought he was heading for the bonanza window, the one that had a sign over it declaring Winners Line.
After he got the necessary signature, he said “bye-bye” to his three associates who by now were delighted with getting themselves out of a potentially giant predicament. Cooper was waiting to tell someone about the secret sting and get his hands on the money. He didn’t know how much he’d wind up with, but he knew it would be a better payoff than he’d ever received in his life.
Cooper never bothered to go back to his own one-room apartment. Instead, he got into the Bonneville, steered it to the closest gas station to fill the tank, headed for the nearest pay phone, dropped a couple of coins in the slot, and dialed a Broward County number.
“Marty, I’m comin’ back right now! Wait till you hear what happened. You’re not gonna believe this one!”
“Hold it a second, Coop. You’ve only been down there for a couple of hours. Give me a hint about what happ—”
Before he could finish the word, Marty heard a click. He sat back patiently in his office, scratched his mostly bald, silver-edged pate, and wondered what had occurred two-hundred miles away. He decided to go home and await Cooper’s arrival.
The entire ride back, Kenny couldn’t stop thinking about the loot he was going to have. He’d lowered the convertible top and was singing his favorite song, Blowin’ in the Wind, which was a perfect description of how his hair was acting.
He glided along U.S. 1, then took I-95 north to Hollywood Boulevard, turned west five blocks and hung a right into the upscale community of Emerald Hills. He pulled into Mr. and Mrs. Martin Markell’s driveway at 6:47 PM.
Marty was already at the front door to greet him.

Chapter Seven


“Making our whole society a prison would not bring success to this floundering War on Drugs. Sinister motives of the profiteers and gangsters, along with prevailing public ignorance, keep this futile war going. Illegal and artificially high-priced drugs drive the underworld to produce, sell and profit from this social depravity. Failure to recognize that drug addiction, like alcoholism, is a disease rather than a crime, encourage the drug warriors in efforts that have not and will not ever work.”
-- Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, Physician, author and U.S. Presidential candidate

1 Day Later – 7:05 AM, Thursday, April 18, 1974

PLANNING THE PLAN

The very next day, Ari’s office phone rang a few minutes past 7:00 AM.
“Mr. Hirsch? Marty Markell. We need to see you right away. For obvious reasons, I don’t want to be too late getting to my own office. Can we come over now?”
Ari was used to going to work early practically every day. He didn’t require more than a few hours’ sleep a night, and because of his active practice, he was always trying to play catch-up on his workload.
He didn’t expect the majority of the firm’s partners and staff to match his daily 7:00 AM arrival time so he usually was alone for at least an hour-and-a-half before others began to show up for work.
“Yes, Marty. I was expecting your call, but not so soon.”
“Seems like Cooper has what we need to get it done. He showed up at the house last night and we’re ready to come over to see you. How ‘bout it? We can be there in twenty to thirty minutes.”
“Fine. I'll clear my desk and meet you downstairs. The doors to the building stay locked until eight o’clock. See you in a bit.” Ari had to review more briefs than a Hanes underwear assembly line inspector, but wanted to wrap up the Cooper caper as quickly as possible.
It meant a lot of money to the firm. Not that Hirsch & Hirsch was hurting financially, but the capital infusion meant it might be able to take on a sixth partner and grow the practice even more. At the age of thirty-four, Ari knew he and his brother could create a much larger firm than the thirty-one employees they already had.
He believed they were still in the embryonic stage of augmentation. They were two of the best tax and securities legal professionals in the state, and South Florida was populating faster than builders could construct housing, schools and highways for the massive and growing vehicular traffic.
And the drug traffic.
Ari walked downstairs at seven-thirty and saw Cooper and Markell heading for the front entrance of the glass-clad edifice. He unlatched the front door, and the three of them got in a waiting elevator, which lifted them to the top floor in less than fifteen seconds.
They went into the privacy of Ari’s office. Cooper hurriedly communicated the story to Ari who intuitively knew what the results would be. Although he predicted the bottom line, he still thought the way it went down was like watching and cackling through a Three Stooges routine.
“You’re a fortunate man, Cooper. I guess you’ll never have to worry about selling Bronze-Tone again. How’d you get messed up in this thing anyway?” asked Ari.
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Hirsch, I’m so hopelessly in debt I had to make some money. When five grand was on the table, I couldn’t turn it down. I suspected somethin’ was wrong with the deal, but I really didn’t have a clue about what was in the trunk. I’ve never been involved with anything like this.
“When I came to you a few days ago, it was the first time in my life I was ever in an attorney’s office, except when I got divorced. What an awful feelin’ I had bein’ in trouble with the law.
“Locked up like an animal in the zoo. Except $1.5 million was sitting next to me! I didn’t know what the hell to think. Thank goodness for Marty findin’ you.
“Both of you now know I was the fall guy if anything had gone wrong, but now it looks like it might work out. I can tell you I’m still broke but I feel like there’s some light at the end of this black hole I’ve been sucked into ‘cause of you and Marty doin’ what you’re doin’ for me.”
“As long as Marty and I get your full cooperation, I don’t think there’ll be any hitches, but you have to do as we say or it’ll fall apart,” Ari said.
“Mr. Hirsch, right now I owe my life to you. I’ll do anything you say.”
“The compliment’s not necessary, but I appreciate it, Kenny. What I’d like you to do now is sign a current income tax return confirming a gross income of $1.5 million with a tax liability of six-hundred-thousand dollars. The return also shows the IRS seized $1.5 million in prepaid income tax, but if we fork over the tax on the income you’ll get a refund of nine-hundred-thousand.
“Our fees and expenses total approximately a quarter-of-a-million, meaning that if we do collect, you’ll receive a check for around six-hundred-fifty thousand. Not bad for a few days work and overnight shelter in jail.”
“Not bad? How ‘bout in-fucking-credible? From five grand to six-hundred-fifty grand ‘cause I was over the speed limit! How fucked up is that? Ha! I think I’ll zoom through Golden Beach again,” Cooper said playfully.
He immediately signed the tax return, the fee arrangement agreement and the assignment of the tax refund for deposit into the Hirsch & Hirsch trust account. Cooper also inked his signature on a limited power of attorney authorizing Ari to represent him in front of the IRS.
Hirsch explained one last issue. Civil, Criminal and Collection Division IRS agents would interview Cooper as owner of the cash. He also might have to appear before an attorney from the Department of Justice.
“What are they gonna ask me and what should I tell them?” Cooper was catching the drift.
“Give them your name and social security number only,” Ari said. “Don’t answer any other questions. If they ask any, I’ll object and invoke your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. You won’t have to say anything else. You’ll simply sit there and let me take care of it.”
“I’ve heard of the Fifth Amendment, but what does it actually say?” For all intents and purposes, Cooper couldn’t tell anyone what any amendment said.
“Let me read it to you, Kenny.” Ari pulled a sheet of paper out of a desk drawer and recited it verbatim:

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Ari disclosed to Markell and Cooper a private revenue ruling issued by the IRS, which permitted the federal taxing authority to presume that the collection of tax is in jeopardy if an individual is in physical control of more than ten-thousand dollars in cash or its equivalent.
"That money can be legally seized," Hirsch said. "As specified in Section 1 of the Internal Revenue code, it's likely to be treated as gross income and taxed at the highest possible rate."
Cooper’s head was spinning like he had terminal vertigo. He had never experienced anything of this magnitude or this complicated. He had gone from meaningless job to less-meaningless job feeling like the abject failure he was.
He arrived in Key West days after he had quit selling city tours in Charleston, South Carolina. Partying every night, Cooper took in the sunsets with several Tequila Sunrises, and futilely tried selling suntan lotion to people who wanted to buy it as much as they wanted to suffer third-degree sunburns.
Now, he felt his life had taken an incredible turn of one-hundred eighty degrees, twice the average summer temperature in Key West.
The paperwork signed, Ari called the IRS representative in the agency’s collection department, as well as the Southern District Tax Section Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice.
He arranged for the filing of a short-period return and the turning over of the excess taxes.
Hirsch also gave his assurance that Cooper would be available to both agencies for questioning. The arrangement included an immediate refund of the excess taxes paid on the reported income.
Ari checked his calendar and made an appointment to meet with the two government reps, with Cooper and Markell in tow, at the IRS office in Miami at 1:30 PM the next day.
This might be over sooner than anyone thought.

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At 3:07pm on August 29, 2010, Traci S Campbell said…


Hello this is Traci. I wanted to stop by your page to welcome you to the network and ask you to please join me on my Facebook group at The C.H.A.M.P Within This group is about single parents and children who have grown up in a single parent home and for the ones who want to show their support.

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Traci S Campbell


At 12:09am on August 7, 2010, J Leland Kupferberg said…
Ron, consider marketing your novel by posting an excerpt on PatronQuo.com, our newly launched inititiative to promote fiction writers through a patronage model. Come participate as a patron, a writer, or both. Regards!

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At 7:47pm on July 22, 2010, casey zeman gave Ron Ruthfield a gift
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Hi, just reaching out to meet you. This is such a wonderful ning. Have an amazing night, Cheers Casey
At 4:40pm on July 12, 2010, Kate L said…
Welcome!
At 8:37pm on July 10, 2010, John Kremer said…
I like your book cover. Works very well as a small graphic. Dramatic.
 
 
 

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