Chapter One
The Early Years of Friendship

John Alan Brooks, nicknamed A.B., was introduced to me at age 17 by a mutual friend, John Davies, who used to hang with me after school before our teenage years. (This name will come up again later in the book.) Davies’s and A.B.’s fathers also owned coal businesses. We all lived near each other in Blackpool, England, a very working-class tourist town located on the coast, 60 miles north of Liverpool. It was England’s largest tourist resort and was invaded every year by thousands of visitors wanting to let off steam.

It was the revolutionary 1960’s and our generation did not want to follow in the footsteps of our parents. We considered them boring with their dress, style and music. The Beatles, the
Rolling Stones, and The Who were doing the British musical invasion in America. To us, life was to be experienced with gusto, excitement, and inquiring minds. “What can we do that is new?” was our motto.

A.B.’s father was a very strict parent, expecting both his young sons to continue in the family business, bagging and delivering coal as they had done growing up. Nothing could have been further from A.B.’s mind. He, like the rest of this 60’s generation, was all about dating, partying, fast cars and for him, fast boats. The latter would open a way into the business that later took him into the “Champagne World” of big money and organized crime.

Most weekends consisted of trips in our cars 50 miles north to The Lake District, where A.B. became obsessed with any water he could get on. He was a very proficient water skier and developed some early skills with sail and speed boats. Later, he got into power boat racing.

Clockwork was A.B.’s first power boat, appropriately renamed because it represented a memory of how he had escaped from his possible first prison term . He had been arrested for turning back the mileage odometers on cars (“clocking” as it was known in the motor trade) that he bought to resell to the public, thus enhancing the cars’ values. At that time prisons were becoming overcrowded, and coupled with a strike by the guards, Judges had no choice but to merely fine people and not incarcerate them. To A.B.’s surprise, for his offenses he was fined a small amount and set free. The judge told him that all his previous tamperings with the cars were rolled into this fine. On his way out of court, in a cocky move, he flicked a 10 pence coin to the prosecuting attorney and said, “That fine covers an average of 10 pence per car,” as he had turned back over 100+ cars and the fine was very little.

The social scene was growing in our community and showing off was the norm. Most of our crowd owned campers/Travel trailers we would leave in The Lakes area to sleep in. Or, alternatively, we would stay at the Low Wood Bay Hotel near Windermere where the “in crowd” hung. Located next to one of the lakes in Ambleside, I used to watch A.B. water ski in a very dare-devil way, always pushing the envelope. Looking back now, I realize he was the first adrenaline junkie I knew.

My wife, Desley, and I double-dated many times with A.B. and his dates. We attended his first wedding to Jill, a pretty little girl, when she was just 16 and Alan was 18. They purchased a small house just blocks away from ours and our friendship continued.

Although A.B. had a commanding height of 6’ 1”, he was never a violent person. The only fight I can recall was on a Saturday night in 1968 in Jenk’s Bar near Blackpool’s north pier. We had gone to listen to a local kid named Ian Anderson, of soon to be Jethro Tull fame, who was playing the bar. While there, some drunks, ordering drinks, pushed A.B. hard to move him out of the way. A.B. responded with a push back and the fight was on. Two more drunks got into the act and I was thrust in the middle. Soon I was on the floor, being kicked. My wife, who was six months pregnant, in a bid to save me, grabbed a handful of hair of the guy doing the kicking and pulled a clump out by the roots. He was enraged and took a swing at my wife. The bar crowd, who was not having anyone hit a pregnant woman, soon overcame the instigators and threw them out. From that day to this, I never saw A.B. raise a hand to anyone.

In the next couple of years, we both started buying and selling used cars. A.B. and I would see each other at the British Car Auctions while there to buy cars to resell to the public. In the beginning these were inexpensive cars, but the values of our purchases increased as we became more successful and our profits grew. In the early 1970’s, I wanted to rent a car showroom to display a few cars at a time and have a legitimate bricks and mortar building instead of selling cars from various home addresses. I asked A.B. to go into partnership with me and put up 50% of the money. That was a mere 500 pounds, British sterling, each. He did not have the money, so he approached his father for a loan. His father’s answer was a firm “NO!” He surmised it would be a foolish venture, with rent to pay on top of the cost of the cars. He was convinced we would not make a profit and we would both lose our money.

This moment became a fork in the road for us and we each took different courses. I followed the honest road and A.B. began traveling on the dishonest one. I am sure that as a teenager A.B. did not have a dream to become one of the world’s most efficient drug traffickers. We were both young adults and had no idea that this car venture would grow to become a very profitable enterprise, with me owning a small chain of new and used car dealerships in just a very short time. Of course, I was happy that I had not needed a partner after all.

During the 1970’s Desley and I hung with A.B. quite a bit, mainly socializing. I would go to London, staying at his Auntie’s home before jet setting off to California to see how the other half lived. One London trip I vividly remember was when I was driving a blue E-type Jaguar sports car (XKE) on the M6 motorway near Birmingham, England. A.B. was my passenger and he was pushing me to see how fast this car could actually go. It reached 150 mph and as I tried to keep with the curve of the road at that speed, the front end lifted a bit not allowing the slight turn. I was soaked in perspiration until the speed dropped again allowing me to be back in control. I looked over at A.B. and he was just grinning. That is what an adrenaline junkie does.

In California, we were both looking for new opportunities in business. I wanted to expand my growing car sales and A.B. wanted anything that could make him money but steering towards boating. We stayed at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles as it was located close to the excitement. A.B. loved the pool scene at the hotel and all the gorgeous women. He had a very smooth low-key way of chatting up the ladies and disappearing to their rooms in a very short period of time. One such lady who sticks in my mind had recently been runner-up in the Miss World competition. It took him less than an hour to take a walk to her room.

A.B. in Front, Keith (also in swim trunks) to His Left, Poolside, Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel

On one of these trips, A.B. took me to Friday’s bar/restaurant at Marina Del Rey, one of Los Angeles’ high energy celebrity hang-outs. As we walked through the door, we came face to face with actor Lou Ferrigno ( Incredible Hulk ). I thought, “This is where I want to live!” A.B.’s main reason for this visit was to connect me with his friend Noel Brookes (no relation to him) who was now living in the area, having moved here from our home town of Blackpool. Noel was a D.J. who I recognized from my earlier clubbing days. This person will crop up later in this book, as he wound up being one of the victims of serious drug abuse and was deported in shackles and chains back to the United Kingdom.

In England, A.B. was making profits buying and selling the cars during the mid to late 70’s. He decided to enter into a partnership to open a Health Club, Wine bar, and Restaurant, complete with a large indoor swimming pool called Sneakers. He partnered with two locals, John Barnett and Terry Pack. These guys were honest people who were successful in other ventures and who had also known A.B. for a number of years. Their shares were split three equal ways.

The developer chosen to build out this club was Ronnie Hunter. His claim to fame was that he had built the very successful night club, 007 , for the Britsh Heavyweight Champion boxer, Brian London, who later fought Mohammed Ali in a failed attempt to be World Champ. Sneakers, built in the middle of town, was just a short distance from 007. 

Although the guys tried hard, Sneakers never really got into profit. A.B. lost interest and sold me his shares in the club. He had found a new angle of profiting from importing new Ford cars from Belgium, tax free. He could sell them for thousands of pounds less in England than the Ford dealers could. British tax authorities took quite a while to catch up to A.B. on this avoidance. In the meantime, he was gone.

Running my car dealerships and attempting to get Sneakers into profit was consuming a lot of my time. I found out years later the reason I could never balance the stock of Don Perignon
champagne. A.B had kept a key to the club and after hours would enter with some of his women, open a bottle or two, use the pool and party.

Sneakers Health Club

In the very early 80’s A.B. was spending a large part of his time in Marbella, Spain. I presume this is where he started to pick up the contacts needed to move into his next money-making venture. I did not see too much of him then as I was planning my exit from England to live in Palm Springs, California. Within a short period of time I accomplished that.

In December 1983, the Queen of England was visiting America and during her visit to California she was scheduled to meet retired former British Ambassador, Walter Annenberg. His estate, Sunny Lands, was in Rancho Mirage, a neighboring city to my home in Palm Springs. The significance to this is I got a knock on my door that day, and there was A.B., larger than life as if I had just seen him yesterday. He looked very affluent, sporting a new Rolex and mentioning all the luxury cars he owned.

He stayed with us for about a week, using our landline phone a lot. I presumed he was calling family and lady friends. Later, I discovered he had been connecting with his colleagues in his new-found business of transporting hashish around the world. These calls later caused problems for me with various local and international law enforcement agencies, as unknown to me, A.B. was being observed and followed. (More on this later.)

It wasn’t long before A.B. met some female tourist in Palm Springs and again, within hours, a romance was on, although just for the day.

A.B. with Another Short-Lived Romance
 

This was the start of many visits A.B. would make to Palm Springs over the next 30 years. However, this time I noticed that something was different about his demeanor and confidence. I could not put my finger on it. He had told me he was living on a boat in Spain and did not do much to earn a living. I decided that if he turned up again, it would be appropriate to quiz him about his new-found wealth. Sure enough, A.B. was an unexpected visitor the following year in 1984.

On this visit, while we sat around our pool having downed a few alcoholic drinks, I started to question him about his lavish lifestyle. Where was the income coming from? This is when he started to open up about his ever-expanding criminal enterprise.

We Brits have a saying, “Show me your friends and I will show you who you are.” In this case, my friend took the easy criminal road and I took the hard-working honest route. My upbringing was total loyalty to one’s friends and today I am in touch with many people I grew up with in the United Kingdom.