PHOTOGRAPHS INCLUDED "Ocean racing superstar Don Aronow loved it
when writers called him a living legend. His life of adventure is
well known. It is his death that baffles police. "He was afraid of
nothing, no one. In his final hour, when a stranger spoke to him in
riddles and talked about killing, Aronow laughed. He felt no fear,
until he lowered the window of his white Mercedes and looked death
in the face. And then it was too late." -- Edna Buchanan, in The
Miami Herald Bordering a canal leading to Biscayne Bay, a short
dead-end stretch of Northeast 188th Street in Miami was the
crossroad of the Americas in the mid-1980s for the biggest drug
smugglers into the U.S.; the guys who ripped off the drug
smugglers; the biggest South American drug suppliers; competing
federal agencies investigating major drug trafficking and money
laundering; the CIA, covertly advancing the Contra war against
Central American land reform (which they called Cuban-sponsored
communism); some of the highest national politicians in the
country-and what attracted them all there, the most famous
fast-boat companies in the world. On that splashy boulevard of
(wet) dreams factories built marine magazine-ad ultra-sleek
gleaming speedboats ostensibly for racers, royalty to show off on
the Cote d'Azur, and wealthy divorced or divorcing middle-age
overweight men to pick up South Florida's sun-soaked hot chicks in
string bikinis (while the rest of us unwashed wondered how they did
it), but the boat builders' real business was fueling an arms race
between smugglers, who purchased them for cash, and Drug War feds
to catch smugglers. The storied creator of the quantum-leap faster
Cigarette boat, against which all other "penis" boats were
measured, as well as a two-time powerboat racing world champion and
the personification of a sport in which people crazily risked their
lives and bodies to win-not to mention a wicked ladies' man to
boot, Don Aronow was shot and killed in broad daylight in front of
his factory in 1987. Police found they didn't just have a murder
mystery-they had Murder on the Orient Express. FEBRUARY 3, 1987 USA
Racing Team, Miami, Florida Someone entered the front door and
walked in front of salesman Jerry Engleman's desk. He asked to
speak with Don Aronow, then looked right at him without recognizing
him. "What do you want?" Aronow said. "I've been trying to get
ahold of you," the man said. He said he worked for a very rich man,
with an Italian surname, who wanted to make an appointment to buy a
boat. "I never heard of him," Aronow answered. Engelman could tell
something else was happening, and he thought Aronow was trying to
find out what. Then the conversation got weird. He was proud of his
boss, he said. "He picked me up off the street when I was sixteen
and took care of me. I'd even kill for my boss." For the moment,
none of the observers thought anything more of it. Minutes later,
Aronow drove his new 1987 white Mercedes 560 sports coupe across
the street, found Mike Britton, a marine supplier, and asked if he
could help him at his new house. Driving out of his parking space
forward, with Aronow behind him, Britton saw a dark Lincoln Town
Car with tinted windows, about ten yards away, facing east as
Britton was about to head west. The driver's window was down, and
Britton could see the driver looking at him. At their closest, when
they passed, they were just a few feet apart, keeping eye contact
the entire time. Then Britton drove on, about fifty yards. Then he
heard gunshots. Britton finished parking his truck, then raced back
toward Aronow. In a hurry, the Lincoln passed him, going west. It
had turned around. By the time Britton got to the car, he found
Aronow's driver's side window down, the automatic transmission in
neutral, and Aronow's foot pressed against the accelerator like a
rock, forcing the engine to rev at its most shrill. Apparently,
Aronow had stopped to kibitz with his killer.
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