Rendezvous With the Fat Man Read online

  Rendezvous

  With The

  Fat Man

  AN INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY

  Jan Leslie Sherman

  and

  Gail Sherman Jones

  RENDEZVOUS WITH THE FAT MAN

  Copyright © 2015 Jan Leslie Sherman and Gail Sherman Jones

  All Rights Reserved

  Second Kindle Edition

  Revised and expanded.

  ASIN B07KX15PT8

  Contents

  Introduction — Who was Jan Sherman?

  Chapter 1 — Blame It on Ibiza

  Chapter 2 — Let’s Party

  Chapter 3 — First Rendezvous with the Fat Man

  Chapter 4 — Score and Smuggle Number One

  Chapter 5 — Sold to the Highest Bidder

  Chapter 6 — Don’t Mess with the Fat Man

  Chapter 7 — Choose Your Mule Well

  Chapter 8 — Sisterhood?? Reconnection??

  Chapter 9 — Here We Go Again

  Chapter 10 — Papi’s Bust

  Chapter 11 — Retirement is Great...If You Don’t Get Busted

  Chapter 12 — Literally the Last Chapter

  Photo Album

  Introduction — Who was Jan Sherman?

  Jan Sherman was a cocaine smuggler. Her smuggling career spanned eight years—from 1972 to 1980, encompassing eleven trips to South America—and netted close to seven kilograms of pure, uncut cocaine worth five-hundred-thousand dollars (two-million dollars today). In search of the precious crystal, Jan traveled to Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Ecuador, and Brazil, staying in a posh hotel in Buenos Aires one day or a shabby tent or hammock in the dense Bolivian jungle another.

  She met with prospective clients, seeking her smuggling skills, in the finest five star restaurants, dined on the best Argentinian filet mignon, and toasted deals with Dom Perignon ’71. While making cocaine from scratch in the hidden drug camps in the remote Andes Mountains, she ate filet of raw goat, grilled armadillo, and jabali (wild boar meat) and drank pisco sours.

  Jan immersed herself with the local people and their cultures. She traveled both alone and with others, with thousands of dollars in her pocket or almost none, with drug scores that were amazingly easy and those that were exceedingly complicated and dangerous. She smuggled in countries where the mafia controlled the drug trade and the governments were run by military dictators embroiled in violent political coup d’etats. Jan traveled to impoverished areas with few, if any, modern conveniences. The knowledge and experience she gained during her smuggling years enabled her to thrive and survive in a business where most people were busted and languished in deplorable foreign jails for years or, even worse, were brutally murdered.

  There were no tattoos on her arms, nor was she a hardened criminal with a pistol in her bra. She never carried a real weapon. Her weapon of choice was her brain—using intelligence, acting skills, and feminine charm to outsmart adversaries. She was clever at thinking on her feet and judging human nature to avoid negative situations.

  Jan was a ‘nice girl,’ well-liked and admired for her self-confidence, bright smile, and friendly demeanor. She was five-four in stocking feet and had intense green eyes. Men were attracted not only to her loveliness, svelte body, and long, brunette hair, but also to her tenacity and zest for life. The fact that she was extremely independent and rebellious, motivated by a thirst for fun and adventure made her even more desirable to them.

  She lived her life to the fullest and preferred not to be constrained by the norms of the 1970s; she was the perfect example of the liberated woman. Her feminist spirit was constantly validated by the growing demands for equal rights for women. Jan was unwittingly swept up in that social and political upheaval.

  At the time of her first smuggle, Jan was totally naïve and unaware of the dangers of the cocaine trade. She didn’t even know what it looked like, nor could she tell the difference between cocaine and powdered sugar, much less the effects of the drug.

  Her decision to smuggle drugs was an alternative choice to a ‘real’ job, allowing her to pursue her dreams of traveling around the world financed by the money she made from her cocaine sales. Jan had no qualms about participating in an illegal activity, fraught with peril, as long as the monetary reward was worth it. The cocaine trade was so seductive and ridiculously profitable that people, including Jan, did crazy things they normally wouldn’t do to get that big money. The payoff was like winning the lottery or casino jackpot.

  It didn’t take long for her smuggling career to escalate from one adventure to the next, each trip a learning process from mistakes to successes. Being young and overly optimistic contributed to her lack of fear. In fact, Jan looked forward to the future challenges and exciting opportunities in her newly chosen profession. She also assumed her looks, sexual attraction, and acting skills enhanced her chances of prospering in a male dominated and ruthless business, even though she knew macho Latino men thought that smart, outspoken women like her were annoying and had no place in their world.

  After living a secret, double life as a cocaine drug smuggler for almost a decade, Jan decided to quit and give up the lucrative enterprise. The stress and guilt of hiding her illicit activities from her family had become unbearable, especially while trying to maintain her real identity. She lied to them, claiming to be a freelance photographer and writer. That mistruth troubled her immensely during her years as a smuggler and it eventually affected her mental and physical health. Her personality changed from a pleasant demeanor to paranoia and egotism. And worst of all, she became dependent on cocaine, which later in life escalated to alcoholism. Jan had been successful in her drug smuggling career, but unfortunately not so much in her mundane personal life after retiring from the risky cocaine trade.

  Jan Sherman was my younger sister. She was found dead on the toilet in her condo bathroom on January 12, 2013, several months before her sixty-second birthday in April of that year. After she died, my mother gave me a box filled with her personal items. As I pulled out each piece to evaluate, I realized that I had discovered a treasure trove. There were thousands of color slides and print photographs she had taken of people and places from around the world, eclectic foreign art objects and souvenirs, numerous passports dating back to the 1970s—their pages all filled with an array of customs stamps—and a bundle of over a hundred letters she had written to my parents and grandmother during her trips. There were also cards and letters from her friends and lovers.

  Regrettably, I never really knew my sister well before her tragic death. Our sibling relationship deteriorated after I moved away from home at age eighteen to attend college, while she was still in high school. A year after I left, she began her quest to travel abroad. And thus began our life-long separation.

  Therefore, it became my number one priority and new obsession to learn who my sister really was. Like a detective in an investigation, I meticulously read and studied every document and photo in her belongings. I even made a timeline, comparing our lives on parallel tracks as to what she was doing in her life at a particular moment with what I did.

  I internalized every word written in her correspondence by hand writing each page of the letters to relive her experiences, vicariously. I pictured in my mind’s eye the visual images of what she saw in the places visited, the people she met, and the fascinating stories she wrote. I relished Jan’s descriptions of her innermost thoughts, feelings and emotions. After finishing my quest for discovery, I realized what a unique individual my sister was and what an incredible life she had lived at that time. However, I also learned what a s
tranger she was to me.

  I felt sad that we had missed out on enjoying a close, loving relationship and spending more time together. Jan and I fought a lot as siblings, as most young sisters usually do. But even though we cared about each other, we just couldn’t connect and never resolved our personal issues. The family bond definitely would have been better and stronger if we had not been separated by oceans, mountains, and distance.

  Also, because of preoccupation with our separate lifestyles, we didn’t see or communicate much through the years; out of sight, out of mind. Time passed so quickly, that we lost track of when we had last seen each other.

  In the 1970s, I was a Spanish and social studies teacher at a junior high school in the Latino barrio in East San Jose, California. In comparison, during that time, Jan had made and smuggled cocaine from Bolivia and skied in the Bolivian Andes (specifically Mt. Chacaltaya, the world’s highest ski area at 18,000 feet with rarefied air), trekked six days, with altitude sickness, to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania (the highest mountain on the African continent), worked on a kibbutz in Israel during a violent confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis, lived in Argentina during the brutal military dictatorship, and hiked alone through China. She almost died twice; on a safari through the Saharan desert and after contracting meningitis in Morocco. All of those trips were financed with her profits from cocaine smuggling.

  I learned from Jan’s letters that on days when I was dealing with 140 hormonal middle school students entering puberty and titillated by the opposite sex, breaking up fights in the hallways, and struggling to inspire and motivate my classes plagued with racial and behavioral problems, Jan was sitting at a waterfront café, sipping a cappuccino while looking out over the fishing boats on the Greek island of Spetsai on the Aegean Sea or snorkeling in the Mediterranean.

  Obviously, the contrasts in our lives were enormous, and I was a bit envious of all her endeavors. My life seemed boring and mundane compared to hers. She had experienced more adventure during the decade of the seventies than most people encounter in a lifetime.

  The most precious article I found in Jan’s estate was a manuscript she wrote describing her clandestine journeys in the 1970s to South America, dealing with the drug underworld, and her unique relationship with her cocaine connection, THE FAT MAN. Luckily, this was a decade before the cocaine trade was taken over by the violent Medellín cartel, run by Colombian drug lord and narco terrorist Pablo Escobar in the 1980s, and in the 1990s by the Sinaloa cartel headed by Mexican drug lord Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzman. Their drug networks controlled eighty percent of the global cocaine trade. Violent gangsters were recruited at that time and continue to wreak havoc and brutal massacres to this day. Fortunately, Jan had already retired from the cocaine trade. Otherwise, she may not have lived to tell her story.

  Her secret life all came spilling out from the manuscript and I was literally ‘blown away.’ The revelations helped me understand her quirkiness and learn a little more about what made her tick. The void of information about Jan began to fill up with a more complete picture of who she really was and my love for her blossomed. She was a flawed, unconventional, free-spirited girl who naïvely chose a dangerous lifestyle in her twenties. I learned that she was a fearless, kick-ass chick, curious and cunning, a trippy dreamer and an independent soul. The truth is, my sister had balls. Who knew? How cool was that? She was a true anti-hero.

  My family was aware that Jan traveled throughout the world and more extensively throughout South America at that time, supposedly as a freelance writer and photographer for various magazines. But she never mentioned anything in her letters about the unlawful activities with her Bolivian drug connection, THE FAT MAN.

  This book is Jan’s lasting memoir for posterity. As a tribute to my sister, I wanted to help her achieve that legacy. She died alone, estranged from our family, and had no children or friends at the end of her life. There was no memorial service, nor obituary notice published in the newspaper; in other words, no proper closure.

  My feeble, eighty-eight-year-old mother had Jan’s body cremated unceremoniously at the mortuary and brought home a beautiful ceramic urn containing her ashes a week later. That was it. Jan’s life was over; a pitiful ending which began with so much promise and joie de vive. Unfortunately, the inebriated world of alcoholism consumed and destroyed the last twenty years of her life.

  Many people might not like the fact that she was a cocaine smuggler as this business immediately implies a nefarious image and reputation. However, it was not the same type of enterprise in the early 1970s as it is today. Jan smuggled drugs in a time that was relatively less violent and airline security was more lax, making for more intriguing and adventurous stories. As improper as it may seem, her misdeeds were true crime capers.

  The unique experiences Jan encountered in the shadowy drug network that few if any people have ever observed were so compelling and extraordinary, that I had to share everything with the world. I was not going to let them die with her; in other words, I’ve brought her back to life.

  Dearest sister Jan….RENDEZVOUS WITH THE FAT MAN is dedicated with all my love to your lasting memory.

  Chapter 1 — Blame It on Ibiza

  In December 1972, Jan was twenty-two years old and running out of money. She had moved to the tiny island of Ibiza, roughly one hundred miles off the eastern coast of Spain, to write the Great American Novel. Her home was a large, sparsely furnished farm house overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and only companions were a dog, a goat, and twenty-five chickens. The tranquility, slow pace of life, and beautiful sunsets should have been beneficial for any writer. But lately, words were not flowing smoothly onto paper as she toiled hard on her portable typewriter. Crumpled balls of nixed pages, which her dog loved to swat around and shred into pieces, littered the hardwood floors.

  “Dammit!” she cursed.

  Jan sighed as she leaned back in the chair, looking out the window to watch the chickens and goat roam freely around the property, trying to garner from the animals an ounce of inspiration to write something, anything; a paragraph, a sentence, or even a word. She glanced back at the typewriter with a stern look of determination as she grabbed another blank page and rolled it into the carriage.

  She typed Chapter Three, then leaned forward and positioned her fingers to compose a sentence before running out of steam again. Exasperated, she stared off from the empty page and thought about Ernest Hemingway who said, “In order to write about life you first had to live it.” Jan ripped the paper out of the typewriter once again, balled it up and tossed it over her shoulder, adding to the litter pile on the floor. Her dog immediately grabbed it with his teeth, delighted to tear the wad into pieces.

  The gradual onset of ‘writer’s block’ was compounded by depression over her dwindling bank balance. She learned quickly after moving to Ibiza that the cost of living on the island was high and ever-increasing which contributed to her lack of motivation to write.

  Jan stressed about getting a job, but they were hard to come by on Ibiza as they were on the Spanish mainland. No one was looking for a struggling writer. She supposed she could find a job as a waitress or barmaid, but quickly dismissed those thoughts. Nor was she a 9-to-5 workday office girl. Jan preferred self-employment and more creative ways of making a living. With a handful of notable achievements behind her, she was convinced that she could do something more worthwhile and more lucrative. She was already spoiled from earning lots of money at a young age.

  Her professional career began at fifteen when she was given the opportunity to write a ‘rock and roll’ music column for a national teen magazine. Using the connections she made in the music world, she quickly parlayed a $50/week salary to nearly $40,000/year by the time she was eighteen, partnering with a middle aged man in an entertainment promotion agency on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Jan booked groups such as Jefferson Airplane, the Turtles, Iron Butterfly, and the Platters f
or local concerts.

  Though successful in business, Jan was unsophisticated about the ways of the world. She didn’t do drugs, had little sexual experience, and usually trusted strangers, believing that good karma would be repaid in kind.

  Unfortunately, Jan’s first career life lesson was brutal. Her partner in the promotion agency, unbeknownst to her, was a Mafioso who had caused a rival’s girlfriend to have an ‘accident’ that left her permanently scarred. In keeping with the Family’s policy of retribution, any woman associated with this man was fair game. In this instance, any woman was Jan. But Jan didn’t know that yet.

  All she knew was that her life had become pure hell. She received threatening phone calls from anonymous people and frightening notes were left in her mailbox. Two unsavory men seemed to follow her wherever she went. The pressure was unrelenting and Jan was terrified, made worse by the fact that she had no idea why she was the target of such harassment. In desperation, she hired a private detective. When he eventually uncovered the whole story, Jan knew there was only one thing she could do; get out of the business relationship.

  However, it wasn’t quite that easy. When she confronted her partner with the detective’s revelations and the desire to dissolve their partnership, he became enraged and threw her around a bit, vowing that she would regret it if she tried to leave. That scary threat was all it took for Jan to remove half of everything from her office that night and move out of her apartment by the following evening.

  The next five years were filled with a succession of lucrative jobs, ranging from stunt work, TV commercials, TV series gigs, feature films, and print modeling. However, the fast-paced life overwhelmed her and she eventually burned out. The Los Angeles rat race, combined with daily freeway traffic jams, toxic exhaust fumes from thousands of cars on the roads causing bad air and thick smog, contributed to her desire to get away. And worst of all, way too many people were moving into the LA area, crowding the native Californians out of their comfort zone. That was the final straw for Jan.