The Art of the Heist

Fourteen

Like all good businessmen, I knew the importance of diversifying my assets. After several years of robbing banks, hitting museums, and putting the profits into my collection, I was ready to invest my money in a different venture. I didn’t have to look far for the ideal opportunity.

The mid-1970s were a boom time for heroin consumption and distribution in the United States. The recent expansion of opium production in the Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia had resulted in a steady flow of the drug into the country, while the return of soldiers from Vietnam-many of them already addicts-ensured a solid customer base on which to expand. In short, the heroin business was the Starbucks of its day. Everyone wanted his own franchise.

As with any retail enterprise, the success of our fledgling business relied in no small part on finding a dependable and inexpensive supplier. Fortunately, Ralph had just such a person in mind. While on vacation in Miami he had met and struck up a partnership with a purveyor from Tijuana, Mexico, named Héctor Sánchez.

It was an ideal arrangement. We didn’t even have to cross the border. Every couple of weeks Sánchez would send one of his mules up to San Diego with a package. Ralph would fly down with the money and an exchange would be made.

For the first few months our transactions went smoothly. Then one day Sánchez contacted Ralph with a special request. Saying he needed some extra cash, Sánchez asked for three payments up front at the next delivery. He’d make it worth our while, he promised. The demand wasn’t entirely unusual. Drug dealing is an unpredictable business. Opportunities requiring large amounts of money can arise out of the blue. Ralph and I figured this was what had happened. We agreed, and at his next meeting with the mule, Ralph handed over the extra payments.

But when Ralph flew down to San Diego two weeks later for his next scheduled delivery the mule was a no-show. A phone call to Sánchez confirmed what Ralph and I already suspected: that the Mexican had no intention of giving us our money or the merchandise we were owed.

If he had known us better, he might have understood what a huge mistake he was making.

One of the first rules of business-any business, but the drug business in particular-is that you can’t let anyone take advantage of you. The first person to screw you and get away with it sends a clear message about your vulnerability to all future associates. Ralph and I could not let Sánchez’s defiance go unchallenged. I knew what Ralph wanted to do to the man. But I had an idea of my own, one that, if carried out correctly, would broadcast our message to all of Tijuana.

As luck would have it, just a few weeks earlier one of Ralph’s friends had knocked over a train carrying military surplus. The guy had gotten away with an impressive haul, including a substantial stash of the explosive C-4 and various detonation devices. Knowing how much I loved unusual weapons, he’d offered me first dibs on the lot.

I didn’t have much use for any of the stuff at the time, but I figured I might at some point in the future-if not, I told myself, I could still have a hell of a lot of fun blowing things up. If I had known an opportunity to use the explosives would present itself so soon, I might have purchased even more of the C-4 than I did.

As much as it would have pleased Ralph to take Sánchez out, killing the man seemed far too extreme to me. Besides, my real hope was that we might intimidate him into giving us our money back. To accomplish this we needed to demonstrate not only that we meant business but also that the consequences of not paying us back would be even more severe the next time around. Sánchez’s house, I concluded, might be a perfect target. Ralph had visited Sánchez’s home once before and was confident he could find it again. The only remaining question was how we would get to Tijuana.

Flying across the country with a suitcase full of C-4 and a remote detonator was out of the question. Driving seemed equally risky, knowing Ralph’s and my propensity for speeding and the number of highway patrolmen between Boston and the Mexican border. In the end we decided to take the train.

I was especially enthusiastic about the idea of making the trip to San Diego by rail. I’ve always found the forced idleness of train travel to be highly relaxing. And the route we’d be taking, the Southwest Chief, traveled through a part of the country I’d never seen before. All in all, I figured, the three-day ride would provide plenty of welcome distractions from the task that awaited us.

It’s safe to say I’ve never packed so carefully for a trip. The night before we were to leave, Ralph and I divided the C-4 between two large suitcases, padding the plasticized bricks with socks and undershirts. These bags, we had decided, would be checked for the trip. One of the advantages of C-4 is that it’s incredibly stable. Still, neither of us was especially comfortable with the idea of riding all the way from Boston to San Diego with the explosives under our seats.

“Careful with those,” I cautioned the porter at South Station as he loaded the suitcases, both marked FRAGILE, onto his dolly.

“Whadda you have in here,” the man joked, “your grandmother’s china?”

“Something like that.” I smiled, then reached into my billfold and pulled out a twenty. “Just take good care of them, okay?”

“Will do,” the elderly porter said, discreetly accepting the tip and slipping it into his pocket.

We left Boston on a Tuesday morning and arrived in San Diego around noon the following Friday. After three and a half days on the train we were both ready to get to work. Ralph, who always had trouble sitting still for more than five minutes at a time, was especially antsy.

After having lunch at a restaurant near the station, we took a taxi to a rental car agency, where we’d reserved a car for the next leg of our trip. Despite the obvious risks involved with carrying military-grade explosives into a foreign country, I wasn’t overly concerned about the border crossing. Then as now, security measures at the border were focused almost exclusively on cars entering the United States. If we were searched, it would most likely be on our way out of Mexico. Still, Ralph and I took the precaution of unpacking the bricks of C-4 and taping them to the bottom of the rental car for our trip across the border.

Needless to say, we were careful to avoid potholes on the trip down.

We arrived in Tijuana in the afternoon and drove up to Sánchez’s place to get a look at the property while there was still some daylight left. The house, a rambling, single-story ranch perched on the dry hills directly overlooking the Tijuana bullring, was just as Ralph had described it. At the back of the structure, jutting out over the precipitous hillside, was a large, hacienda-style covered porch. This, I concluded, would be our initial target. The stiltlike construction of the porch meant it would be easy to take down, and if we timed things right, the spectators at the corrida would even get a free fireworks display.

If Sánchez still refused to pay, we’d take down the whole house.

Having scouted out the property, Ralph and I found a room at a nearby motel and made our final preparations, packing everything we would need-several hundred feet of ignition wire, the remote detonator, and the C-4 itself-into two large duffel bags. Knowing we had a long night ahead of us, we tried to get some sleep. But after the long train trip and the days of anticipation we were both restless. We tossed and turned in the dark for several hours, finally setting out for Sánchez’s house at around three in the morning.

We parked just up the hill from the property and, after watching from the car for some time to make sure everyone was asleep, made our way down to the house. Working in the dark, Ralph and I carefully placed the explosives around the foundation of the porch, wiring each brick of C-4 to the ignition device. With our prep work finished, we returned to the car and settled in to wait for daybreak. Once we were certain everyone was out of the house we would set off the charges with the remote detonator.

Sánchez’s wife and two children were the first to leave in the morning. Watching them pull out of the driveway, I breathed a sigh of relief. The maid left next, heading down the hill into town with her shopping basket. Finally, just before noon, Sánchez appeared in the front courtyard.

“Let’s do it now,” Ralph suggested. “It’d scare the crap out of him.”

It was tempting, but I shook my head. I wanted him far enough away that we wouldn’t run into him, or any of his cronies, on our way out of town. Eventually Sánchez would know it was our handiwork, but I was hoping to be across the border before he figured out that we were responsible.

We watched as Sánchez climbed into his Mercedes and pulled out of the driveway.

“Ten minutes,” I said, checking my watch. I turned on the radio, catching an AM station from San Diego, Carl Douglas’s static-scarred voice singing, “Everybody was kung fu fighting…”

“Now!” I told Ralph at last.

For a split second after he punched the remote, nothing happened. “Shit,” I started to say, thinking we’d screwed up the wiring, but the word never left my mouth.

The explosion rattled the windows of the rental car, spewing rock and pulverized concrete across the hillside, obliterating the porch.

“Motherfucker!” Ralph gasped appreciatively, awestruck by our handiwork.

There was no denying it was a beautiful sight. I smiled. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

A week later I called Sánchez from Boston.

“I heard you’ve been doing some unexpected remodeling,” I said.

“Fuck you, Connor,” Sánchez replied. “I know it was you and Petrozziello. You’re lucky I didn’t catch you. I would have cut your fucking balls off and fed them to you.”

“No,” I corrected him, “you’re the lucky one. You get us our money by the end of the month or I’m coming back down there to blow up your whole fucking house. With you in it.”

“Go fuck yourself!” Sánchez snarled, slamming down the phone.

Despite his defiant attitude, I could tell from the tone of his voice that he believed me and that he was scared. Two weeks later Ralph received a plain brown envelope in the mail with a San Diego postmark and no return address. Inside was a full refund.