Chapter 5: “But Officer I’m innocent. I didn’t know the drug money was counterfeit”

February, 1968

Bobby had to go to jail.  His court date had come up.  His brother had been paroled while I was in Soledad and he and Bobby had been pulling burglaries around the city.  One of their favorite things was to work the obituary columns in the newspaper.  They'd look up when someone was getting buried, then rip off the dead person's house while the funeral was going on, figuring everyone would be at the funeral. One of the places they hit was a retired cop who had died.  When they ripped off his house, they brought a lot of heat on themselves.  Every cop in the city was outraged and put a lot of attention on busting the operation.  The police figured out the pattern and set a trap.  Bobby and his brother walked right into it.  The brother, John, was on parole from a five to life for Armed Robbery.  Since he already had a life top, they didn't prosecute him but just revoked his parole and sent him to Folsom State Prison, the most maximum joint California had at that time.  Bobby was charged with second degree burglary.  He had no prior record so would normally have gotten probation as a first offender.  But, as I said, he'd ripped off the wrong house and the cops wanted him to do time.

With Bobby down for a year, I was on my own.  It was January 1967 and I had been out about five months. My record for being out of prison was ten months but I got arrested three or four times during that period and spent a few days in jail each time.  So five months out of a cell was a long time for me.



The money was now rolling in regularly from the drug business.  I was making the flights to LA once a week and everything was smooth.  I'd stopped the credit scam after Christmas was over and the runners were picking up dope and dropping off money everyday.  Lippy had finished the dry out and was back in business.  Maria had wanted me to begin scoring through Lippy but I told her I didn't want to pay the mark up.  Since I was doing good volume, she agreed to leave things the way they were.

I'd connected with a ring of "boosters" or professional shoplifters. One of them was a Mexican woman about 28 years old who had a wooden leg and was about 7 months pregnant.  She and her husband scored smack and crank from me regularly.  She'd gotten into the habit of dropping by my apartment each day and taking an order from me.  I'd order clothes or whatever items I wanted and she would spend the day boosting them from stores all over the city.  She'd deliver the stuff to me the next day in return for dope.  If she had an unsuccessful day, she'd trade me a blow job for the dope.  I'd sell the merchandise she got for me to a fence.  I'd gotten a new fence that had a TV store a couple of blocks from me so it was convenient.  He paid OK and took almost everything I brought him.



Bobby had left me a set of keys to office buildings in the city. I also had a set of keys for the San Francisco parking meters that I rented out.  The convicts made the keys at the county jail in San Bruno.  Almost everybody coming out of San Bruno had a couple of meter keys.  I had keys for every section of San Francisco. The county didn't give "gate money" when they released you so the keys were the equivalent of "gate money". You just walked down the street emptying parking meters.  For some people this was their whole hustle.  They would stake out a block or two and rent a hotel room where they could observe it.  They would wait for the meters to get full and hit them just before the city meter man was due to empty them.  They guarded them jealously.  If you tried to work the meters, they be down on you quick, willing to kill.

So everything was working kind of automatically.  The systems were in place and working and I had a lot of time on my hands.  I had begun reading books on investing and motivation.  One of them said that if you want to be rich, you have to develop a rich attitude.  It suggested going to a luxury hotel and sitting in the lobby, smoking a good cigar and reading the Wall St. Journal.  So I had started a routine of spending a hour a day in one of San Francisco's finest hotels, sitting in the lobby, smoking an expensive cigar and reading the Wall St. Journal.  Now that the money was rolling in, I wanted to learn the lifestyle.

I was also spending a couple of hours a day in a broker's office in the financial district watching the tape.  I didn't understand anything about the stock market but I was reading books and getting the idea that the market was where you got really rich.  So I'm hanging out there, trying to understand it.  I still had the office in the financial district I had rented a few months before and was trying to find a use for it.  I was keeping it so that, if I wound up back in prison, I could tell the parole board that I had operated a legitimate business with an office, etc.  I wasn't planning on going back to prison but, given my life experience up to this point, even with my gun and my commitment to die first, I couldn't entirely dismiss the possibility of prison.  It was imbedded in my psyche.

I was thinking about getting off of drugs.  My addiction had gotten outrageous.  It didn't cost me anything but I was beginning to visualize a new life and drugs didn't fit in the picture.  For the first time in my life, I could actually conceive of converting everything to legitimacy.  I'd have to continue with a different name but I could see how I could make everything legal and not have to risk at the level I had been risking.



Bobby's girlfriend in Oakland was named Linda.  After Bobby went down, I had started taking her to dinner or a show occasionally, just to keep her entertained until Bobby got out.  She was beautiful and we wound up in bed together.  So now I was having an affair with her while Bobby was in jail.  I justified it in my mind by saying that I was just taking care of her until Bobby got back.  It's amazing what lies we can tell ourselves and get away with it.

I called Linda and invited her to go to Las Vegas with me.  She agreed and we set up a trip to Vegas. I'd never been to Las Vegas before.  I'd only been out of California once and that was when I was four years old. 

Linda and I flew over to Vegas on a Friday because she had the weekend off.  Linda was a California blonde, about 5'6 and, as I mentioned, beautiful.  She was 24, divorced and had a 4 year old son.  She worked as a medical secretary and was completely straight.  No drugs.  No crime.  I didn't know why she was hanging out with losers like Bobby and me.  The only thing in our future was jail or death.  A lot of people are fascinated by criminals though.

We spent two days gambling, saw a show and ate in the gourmet room.  I lost a few hundred dollars playing Blackjack which I didn't know how to play, but I had a good time.  We stayed at El Rancho Vegas which was one of the earliest hotel casinos built on the Las Vegas Strip, following closely on the heels of Bugsy Seigal's Flamingo.

On Monday morning, we caught a 6am TWA flight back to San Francisco and then Linda took the bus back to her home.

The sun was out and the temperature was nice for February.  I had on a light sport coat and was comfortable. It was only 9:30 and the bank didn't open until 10am so I did some shopping, buying a pair of slacks at a men's store and picking up a couple of items at a drugstore.  That took up the half hour and I went into the bank and got in line for a teller to make the deposit.



When I got to the teller I handed over the deposit slip and the money.  The teller began counting the money and then picked it up, along with the deposit slip, excused herself and walked away.  I was standing there zoned on drugs, not realizing that something was wrong.  I was still standing there a few minutes later when two secret service agents show up beside me.  One of them said that some of the money I was depositing was counterfeit and they'd like to talk to me.  As he said this, he was lightly running his hands over my body to check for a gun.  My gun was in my left pants pockets and I indignantly twisted away so his hand didn’t touch it.  Then we went into the manager's office.

"Where did you get this money" one of the agents asked.  He was about 6'2 and had a sandy crew cut.  The other one was shorter and darker.

"I just got back from Vegas. I took some money with me and won a little so I was putting it back in my account.  Here, here's my airline ticket."  I took it from the inside of my coat and handed it to him.


He looked at the ticket, then said, "I doubt that you got these bills in Vegas.  They handle a lot of money there and these wouldn't have gotten past them.  Look at it."

He held up a twenty dollar bill. 
He was right.  It wouldn't have got passed me if I hadn't been stoned when I counted the money.  The ink was too dark and the printing was crooked.  Someone had done a very poor job.  It had been just good enough to get me busted.



I was still explaining that I didn't know where they came from and I wasn't a counterfeiter.  I made up a story on the spot about a business I owned and said that maybe the bills came from there. They noticed my packages and asked if I'd paid for the purchases with $20 bills.  I said I had.  They seemed to be doubtful about my guilt.  I was playing victimized citizen but I didn't think it was going to play long and I was trying to figure a way out of this when Crewcut told his partner to go check the cash drawer at the men's shop while he took me down to federal building for questioning.

There were no handcuffs.  I wasn't placed under arrest.  I was just requested to drive down to the federal building with him to answer a few questions.  We went out and got in the car.

 There was no way I could answer any questions.  I had a gun in my pocket, warrants out for my arrest, and I got the counterfeit money in a drug transaction.

"Do you get a lot of cash in your business?" Crewcut asked, referring to the fictional business I had made up in the bank.


"Yeah it's a retail store and we take in $200 to $300 a day.  I don't know how my clerk could have taken such poor quality bills though.  That stuff's really bad".

I took a cigarette out of my shirt pocket and patted my right pants pocket as though looking for a light.  Then I patted my left pants pocket with my right hand, made as though I discovered the lighter, reached in and pulled out the .25.

Crewcut looked down, saw the gun pointed at him and said, "Oh shit".


I held the gun in my lap, pointed at him, and put my left arm across my leg to cover it so he couldn't reach over and knock it away.


"Take it easy.  I don't want to hurt you".


"Passing counterfeit doesn't carry a lot of time", he said, "this is making it a lot worse."

"I really don't know anything about the money but I got it in a drug transaction and I'm on parole from San Quentin". 



He got the "OH shit" look on his face again.  I could see he had just realized how serious I was.  We were driving up Powell Street. 



"Turn right on California," I told him. 

He turned right.  Traffic was heavy.  It took us about five minutes to get to the bottom of the hill.  I continued to reassure him that I wasn't going to hurt him and that all I wanted was to walk away.  I also told him that the bullets in the gun were dum-dums so he wouldn't disrespect the small caliber of the gun. Some people are willing to go up against a .22 or .25 and take a bullet, knowing that it probably won't be fatal.  I didn't know if he was hero material or not but I let him know that the odds were different than they looked.



We had stopped at a red light at Kearny and California.  My office was at 225 Keary, about a block away.  The streets were packed with people.  I decided to leave him at the light, blend into the crowd and get to my office.  I could plan the next step from there.  I figured if he had a gun, he wouldn't shoot into the crowd.

Opening the door, I said, "I'm leaving now.  Stay in the car".

I got out and ran into the crowd on the sidewalk. He got out of the car, pulled a gun and shot me.  So much for not shooting into a crowd. 

The bullet hit my leg and knocked me down.  My gun went spinning in the street, landing about 6 feet away.  The next thing I knew, his foot was on my back and his gun was at my head.  I couldn't move if I wanted to.  He cuffed my hands behind my back and radioed for backup and an ambulance. The Secret Service backup arrived before the ambulance.  They searched me while I was lying in the street.  My current identification had the address of my apartment on it, so they were going to find the dope. 

I knew the parole board had just passed a new ruling that any parolee caught with a gun wouldn't be eligible for parole for a minimum of five years.  They wouldn’t even talk to you for five years.  The two ounces of heroin in my apartment was good for another five.  So I was laying there in the street with a bullet in my leg facing at least ten years inside.

Copyright 1994-2010 Liana Di Stefano & Ken Windes