Confessions of a lifetime gambler-retiring after 50 years

1977-1978

Boston and all of the Northeast was caught in a bizarre series of blizzards first in 1977 and then again in 1978 the big one.If you're from the northeast you are used to dealing with crap weather but these years took  the cake.

The Bruins made the fans fortunes right up until the Stanley Cup when they dumped it off to Montreal and gave the Boston books a huge break on an otherwise hard season.You wouldn’t think snowfall would effect a bookmaker but in Boston internal snowfall and external snowfall was rampant.When it snows people disappear meeting are missed  and nothing works just right everything gets put off until tomorrow. And my f..king word did it snow and snow and snow.

Our crew spent these years in the same basic way as years past. Our number had grown even larger now about 30 were direct or closely associated with our band of outlaws. We had a really decent bank built up by this time we held as a group in excess of 5 million in working capital and each member had done well with the spinoffs and shares in the past few years. We had numerous holdings of real estate. We had fishing vessels,vehicles and planes. We operated within our group four legal businesses and we acquiring more as quickly as we could. We had bars and restaurants and a motel. We owned a landscaping company, a small construction company and a fish company. When I say we owned these, I should say  each of the our  ‘holdings’ were held  in private members names or held in later years held corporately.

We learned early that maintaining a tight family group was best way to extend our footprint without stirring too much suspicion. Our farms had families living in them, our bars and business were run by local members who worked them daily and became part of the communities they were in.

I spent a lot of time on the west coast in those years to avoid the prodigious snow storms.I had met a sweet young thing from Fairfax county she was a jeweler with a beach house in Bolinas. She had a tight young body was smart as a whip and loved to party my kind of girl. In the early mornings she could be seen doing Tai-chi on the cliff in front of the house overlooking the beach it was quite the site and I loved to watch her move. God could that women move.

Coins, Julie and Mark pretty much ran the show at home. Tuna can who was my number one running mate had also been sucked up by a young lovely and was hard to find for a few years. He still walked the tracks inspecting for the MTA by day and did most of his tasks for us but you couldn't find him to hang out and I had lost my golfing wing man. Tuna was box whipped in a major way in 1978 and we all busted his balls ruthlessly.

On one of my trips west we bought 100 acres of land from a guy named Trask in Mendocino. Trask had 500 acres of prime land filled with huge redwoods about 12 miles east of the pacific we had heard through a mutual friend that he need to part with 100 acres but didn't want to sell it to just anyone. My Bolinas lass and I headed  up from my house on the river to check it out one day and meet this guy Trask who was supposed to be by reputation quite the  character. The land was pissa and for about 75K it was ours and another member had joined our group, Trask was latter to be known to the group as our gentleman farmer and tree man. On a section of his property there had been a brun through and the redwood on the property was filled with redwood burls from cut trees after the fire. We bought an alaskan mill a long double sided rig that was perfect for cutting burls and went about to cutting slabs.We shipped the burls east by rail and sold thousands of pounds to woodworkers all over the east coast. The burls were loaded on flat cars in stacks of slabs each about four inches thick and stacked and banded in 10’s, some with built in spaces that  were perfect for contraband.

I became a frequent flyer on the red eye from San Francisco to Boston with my Bolinas girlfriend, Jenna who often carried bundles of cash for us. She was a stunning redhead with an innocence about her that allowed her to pass unquestioned almost everywhere we traveled. We discovered on one trip where we took a helicopter from Sausalito to the San Fran airport that if you took the helicopter you landed out on a helipad out on the runway and were ferried by bus straight to the gate and plane if you had no luggage to be checked you bypassed security altogether this was just too good to be true and we took advantage of it often.

The beat went on life was good.   

At the end of the decade everything went to hell.

Competition was at its highest point the boundaries between families was getting very gray.

Loyalty and community were fast becoming a thing of the past, we continued on but the bumps in road began in earnest in 1980.

A close relationship between a Colombian family and our New York guy, Jay, had developed and had lead to a half a dozen successful ventures between 1978 and 1980. 

Julie had the Boston troops in step and everything was cooking with steam until October 1980.

We had contracted for some product about 20k to come into NY, the method was not our concern it was handled between Jay and the Colombians

. We had put about 30% of the cash up front for then load 120k. The time came for delivery and nothing arrived as promised to say the least we were on high alert as something was apparently rotten in Denmark.

Jay was incommunicado and after waiting for 2 days at the arranged meeting place my crew came home. 

Julie ran around like a chicken with his head cut off for the next few days.

We finally got word that Jay had not returned from a Miami trip where he was supposed to meet the principles and complete payment arrangements once the offload had occurred. 

We had some folks we knew in Miami and put the word out on Jay and waited for results, none came.

It seems our old friend Jay had disappeared and we feared the worst.Mark and I started pulling favors we had a few other links to the Colombians and through those we discreetly tried to get information.

Jay was not in jail and had not been found with a bullet in his head it was all very mysterious but reeked of a ripoff.

It was about three weeks before Jay was heard from he had been in Jamaica and was fully aware of what and how things had gone south but appeared to need time to get up the courage to admit he had screwed the pooch.

The load had indeed been sent but not to us.

It turned our deposit had put toward someone else a load that went Texas

Jay had spent the last three weeks in Jamaica trying to get to the bottom of what had happened and was too afraid to call.

A courier had been sent to deliver the deposit in Jay's place as it seems he had a concert to attend in Miami. 

The Colombians it seemed had not received their last payment from the last load and had taken the cash instead and used it for another group in Texas.

Jay promised up and down that this was some book keeping problem and that it would be made right very soon.

It turned out later that this was a fantasy. 

We did not see a dime of our 120k back until the summer of that year.

Obviously Jay was persona non grata that whole year until June when I got a call to meet him in N.Y.

The “think tank’ was meeting on a regular basis and kicking some serious butt. We absolutely killing it for most of the winter and spring,during the summer doldrums we slowed but didn't loose much and went into football season in the fall with high hopes.

The Celts had raised another banner taking out Julus Erving and the Sixers in a classic fashion and the Houston in the finals

.The Bruins took out Pittsburgh 3/2 and then got ousted by The Islanders 4/1. The books did well, the fans did not but somehow the ‘think tank’ had week after week of big hits.

Losing Jay from the team in New York hadn't slowed down our booking operation much. The NY contingent replaced Jay quickly with the local from their group a guy named Lou who had been taking Jays action anyway.

Lou was a pissa an old school book he took over and never missed a beat.All of the ‘think tank’ action went to Lou who unaware that the action was from the inside dutifully sent up fat envelopes of cash which we happily accepted through the winter and early spring.

The summer had also brought a Red Sox squad that was only so so finished 5th with a record of 83/77 19 games behind the yanks. It was not the ‘think tanks’ best summer and too many envelopes went down to NY not up to Boston.

We rented a house on Martha’s Vineyard for a week at the end of the summer.A big house, a really big house on a cliff overlooking the sound and it's own private beach.

The house was full of bedrooms old Victorian style New England with wrap around verandas and could easily sleep about 20. 

The whole gang showed up we drank and ate told stories about each other had a grand old time.

We had a 20 Mako to go fishing,a Hobie cat to go sailing,a ski boat and a couple of jet ski’s.

Our wives and girlfriend were all sporting the tiniest bikinis, all tanned up with cocktails in their hands chasing a few kids around while they worked on their buzzes and laughed at us.

We had gotten this board like thing with a sail on it, crazy damn rig, later everyone had windsurfers but at this party they were fairly new especially to us. One by one the brave jumped on and feel off on off on off eventually the talented end up sailing off across the bay towards Wood Hole. For most of the afternoon we sent the Mako to rescue the stranded,exhausted and embarrassed from Nantucket sound. It seems on a windsufer it is a little more difficult to turn and tack back than it is to shoot off into the sunset downwind

.All week we had lobster bakes,steaks and swordfish and we drank mega boose.

A few to remain unnamed but well known island musicians even showed up.

The women had as much fun as the guys which was unusual in our business because they seldom were involved in what we did day to day.

Our friends on the island did right by us in the bars and marinas and we spent a couple of nights in restaurants drinking up their selection of vintage Rothschild's, if it was from the sixties we drank them.. all. At night the boys played cards. The ‘think tank’ huddled together going over sheets and sheets of info and scheming on the tells of the gambling world. God we had it all figured out or so we thought.

So as sure as the sun will shine / I'm gonna get my share now of what's mine / And then the harder they come / The harder they'll fall, one and all…

Jimmy Cliff released this song in 1972 I guess it took us eight years to take his words to heart but in 1981 things started to come to a head.

We had plenty of money all operations were doing just fine no real problems we were putting out some Euro plays and were picking up a speciality market in  golf.

The golf guys were different breed  than all the other gamblers some huge bets came down the line in the early days and we took some giant hits but in general we did OK as word spread that this crazy local was taking golf wagers.

Club pros from all over funneled their educated and well heeled members to us and it was a pretty good class of people. I do not ever remember chasing down a guy for stiffing us on a golf bet.

Golf bettors wagered large numbers in the early days it was mostly too win bets at odds and if you had 20 guys listed that was a lot. 10-1 was huge odds in golf in 1981 and that was about as high as the biggest dog on the card would ever bring.

Tom Kite and Bernhard Langer burned us regularly in the old days and even Lanny Wadkins popped us for a bundle from time to time.There were not that many real stars in the early years of our golf operation. Golf bettors tended to be even more homerish than football bettors, the same guys played the same golfers week after week.  We seldom lost big in golf unless a big odds line came in on a huge bet and when that happened someone was on a plane quick.

As I reflect now some 35 years later I can’t quite remember when it all turned to crap but it wasn’t for a few more years so I will go on with the basic story.

During the early eighties you could see things changing quickly it seemed development was everywhere. Whole neighborhoods were changing and my age friends were all getting more conservative in their tendencies. The blue hill boys didn’t change though we continued head down full speed ahead thinking we had earned our place and it would always be there.

Law Enforcement was beginning to be a problem for anyone now that became exposed.  There were plenty of people we knew that knew our basic set up but we kept things tight and avoided attention for the most part.

We changed offices and warehousing every few months, we had so many phones at so many locations New England telephone must have had us on a best customer list somewhere.

Most all of the original group had houses outside the city but we all did 90% of our business in town.

I always moved around and Jenna was becoming problematic as she was sick of it and wanted to return to the west coast.

I still had the house on the Russian River so in the fall of 1982 we left Boston for California.

Intent on spending the winter skiing in Tahoe and spending the fall on the river. I arranged a load of Thai-stick to head west and put the west coast group together to market it off that fall. I collected redwood burls at a warehouse in Sacramento readying a shipment east for late fall by rail.

We also attracted attention from law enforcement in the spring of that year but this time it wasn't for making book. We had used a guy in Miami that had placed some capital for us in the Caribbean he had come to us with good references from a trusted source so we sent him some business. It turned out much to our chagrin that he also had helped launder funds for a Colombian cocaine smuggler and had gotten caught up in a sting of some sort. Like a lot of Miami scumbags he began to roll on his clients and Coins who had been our representative in the deal had been named in a grand jury indictment.

Coins was freaking out because he could get disbarred if charged as well as a host of other unattractive penalties and possible jail time.

All we could do was go farther underground and throw money at fancy lawyers and it was unavoidable that Coins was going to appear in front of a Miami grand jury. We were plenty concerned and very pissed off

.

The case was to be heard on August 21st but the throughout the whole summer we felt we being tailed off and on and we worried about phones being tapped.

We had found a guy who worked for IBM who claimed he could sweep phone lines. He had special equipment and we paid him to sweep all our office phones weekly.

We were still paranoid though and talked in codes and used pay phones as much as possible to discuss anything delicate.

Nonetheless it was a miserable summer looking over our shoulders and listening for every scratch and click on the phone lines. I can’t really remember how business was that summer as Coins situation drew most of our attention and the outflow of cash to his lawyers seemed never ending.

I tried to stay on the west coast but came back in mid July to go offshore on a fishing trip to the Grand Banks. I had to get away from it all. 

One of our captains wanted a trip off so I took the boat for a trip.

We were offshore for thirty days had a slammer trip and when I returned it was just about time for Coins big show in Miami.