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"As a toddler, Francine Lucas had a Fendi fur coat, a $10,000 FAO Schwarz train set and more toys than she could play with. She also had dozens of cuddly toy dogs and teddy bears that were stuffed with cash, as were the washer and dryer in her family&amp;amp;#8217;s big house in Teaneck, New Jersey. The walls, too, were literally lined with money; there was simply too much to hide under the mattress. Little Francine had no idea how rich her family was or where the wealth came from. All she knew was that her tall, good-looking father worked nights in &amp;amp;#8220;the candy business&amp;amp;#8221; and arrived home each morning carrying satchels bulging with cash. Coming through the front door, Frank Lucas would lift his daughter high in the air and coo, &amp;amp;#8220;Daddy&amp;amp;#8217;s baby.&amp;amp;#8221; Then he&amp;amp;#8217;d shower, change and cook breakfast while Francine played near him in the kitchen. Frank was at the stove frying eggs and bacon, with three-year-old Francine at his feet, when federal agents burst into the house one morning in January 1975. She felt comforted for a moment as her dad swept her up and pressed her to his chest, then terrified as strange arms ripped her from him and threw her to the carpet. She witnessed the rest of the chaos from ground level&amp;amp;#8212;a rush of shoes, guns and her mother&amp;amp;#8217;s screams as her father was taken away by police; he was eventually sentenced to 70 years in prison. Frank Lucas was not, of course, in the candy business. In the early seventies, he and his gang, The Country Boys, controlled much of the heroin coming from Southeast Asia into the New York area. It was Frank who came up with the idea of shipping dope back from Vietnam in the caskets of dead American soldiers. Shortly before the raid on his house, federal agents seized about $4 million in drugs from just one of his several &amp;amp;#8220;stash houses&amp;amp;#8221; in Newark, New Jersey. Frank later boasted in a magazine article that he&amp;amp;#8217;d even killed a man (something he&amp;amp;#8217;s since denied). For Francine, her dad&amp;amp;#8217;s arrest would mark the start of a 30-year odyssey that took her from New Mexico to Puerto Rico to Las Vegas and finally Atlanta. Through it all, she would learn to conceal who she was and what she was thinking, to wrap herself so tightly in an aura of middle-class respectability that no one ever guessed her secret. But this month brings the release of a movie about Frank Lucas&amp;amp;#8212;American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington as Frank, and Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, the prosecutor who brought him down&amp;amp;#8212;and Francine can no longer hide. She figures that the people who know her only as a mortgage broker and suburban mom will put two and two together. So she&amp;amp;#8217;s taking control and telling her story in these pages. In doing so, she hopes to shed light on the agony of the 2.4 million American kids who have a father or mother in jail. Exposing her past has compelled Francine to come to terms with her own history and how she feels about her father, feelings that even today are a mixture of love, anger and shame. &amp;amp;#8220;I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t think I&amp;amp;#8217;d ever have to confront this, especially in front of the entire world,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s like a wound you&amp;amp;#8217;ve covered over. It&amp;amp;#8217;s infected, and it&amp;amp;#8217;s rotten in there, but you&amp;amp;#8217;ve got gauze over it. And now I&amp;amp;#8217;ve got to take it off and scrape it clean&amp;amp;#8212;to do the work I haven&amp;amp;#8217;t wanted to do&amp;amp;#8212;so it doesn&amp;amp;#8217;t hurt so much anymore.&amp;amp;#8221; From the high life to life in hiding There&amp;amp;#8217;s little drama in the comfortable existence that Francine Lucas-Sinclair, now 34, has built for herself with her husband Mark, a computer database manager, and their two children, Julianna Celine, five, and Jonah, one. Nothing in her dress or manner makes her stand out from the other residents of her lush subdivision outside Atlanta. And that&amp;amp;#8217;s the way she likes it. &amp;amp;#8220;I want things to be stable,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;I don&amp;amp;#8217;t need any more roller coaster rides in my life.&amp;amp;#8221; Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s worked hard to be &amp;amp;#8220;normal&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;#8212;not easy for someone whose world fell apart at a young age. She remembers precisely how she felt that morning in 1975: the sharp fear, followed by a dull ache and the realization that nothing could ever again be certain. And it wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t. A few months later, Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s glamorous mother, Julie, went on trial; during the raid, she&amp;amp;#8217;d tossed suitcases filled with tens of thousands of dollars out the bathroom window. That crime earned her six months in jail. That turmoil continued once Julie was released because, as newspapers later reported, Frank had begun cooperating with authorities while in prison, providing information on other narcotics offenders (something that Frank also denies). To protect his family from possible retaliation, Julie, Francine and Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s half brother were eventually placed in the federal witness protection program for a year. They moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where Francine was given a new last name&amp;amp;#8212;Walters&amp;amp;#8212;and was warned never to discuss her past. Unsurprisingly, she grew into an amiable but quiet child, one who knew how to distance herself from others so they never bothered to ask questions. These were lonely, dispiriting times for Francine. There was little money&amp;amp;#8212;some days the cupboards held only a box of Ritz crackers&amp;amp;#8212;and she missed her dad terribly. She knew he was in prison, but didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know why; her greatest treat was his weekly phone calls to her. Today, from his modest home in New Jersey, the ex-gangster looks back fondly on those conversations: &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;d say, &amp;amp;#8216;Honey, I love you,&amp;amp;#8217; and &amp;amp;#8216;Honey, I&amp;amp;#8217;ll be home soon,&amp;amp;#8217;&amp;amp;#8221; Frank recalls. &amp;amp;#8220;I knew I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t be home right away, but I said it to calm her down.&amp;amp;#8221; After three years, Julie and Francine moved to Puerto Rico to live with Julie&amp;amp;#8217;s parents (by then her half-brother had gone off to college). It was there that Francine, then about 7, began forming a hazy picture of what Frank did for a living. &amp;amp;#8220;My grandfather told me my dad sold drugs and that&amp;amp;#8217;s why he was in jail, because drugs are bad,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;But I really didn&amp;amp;#8217;t know what drugs were.&amp;amp;#8221; One October afternoon, when Francine was nine, her father reappeared&amp;amp;#8212;an imposing figure in an elegant suit, standing with arms open wide, his big personality seeming to fill the lobby of San Juan&amp;amp;#8217;s Caribe Hilton. His visit was a surprise to Francine; reportedly, Frank had been released early for helping authorities (something Frank again denies). An ecstatic Francine proudly paraded him through the local shopping center. &amp;amp;#8220;He owned the mall,&amp;amp;#8221; Francine says. &amp;amp;#8220;There was nobody else there but him.&amp;amp;#8221; When the school year ended, the family returned to New Jersey, staying with Frank&amp;amp;#8217;s parents. One day, when she was supposed to be outside playing, Francine eavesdropped on a heated conversation between her mom and dad. There was, she sensed, a struggle going on. &amp;amp;#8220;How am I going to get a job?&amp;amp;#8221; she heard her father ask in frustration. &amp;amp;#8220;I wish I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t have to go back to selling.&amp;amp;#8221; Francine gasped; by now, she knew what &amp;amp;#8220;selling&amp;amp;#8221; was, knew that it could mean another police visit and the disappearance of her parents. Then the angry talk quieted and Frank&amp;amp;#8217;s mood shifted. A resolution, Francine realized, had been reached. Daddy was back in the candy business. A few weeks later Francine accompanied Julie to the fashionable Stardust Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas for what she thought was a mother-daughter vacation; in truth, Julie was there to help with a drug deal. Francine had just come in from a swim, ordered a vanilla milk shake from room service and settled in to watch TV in their suite when a gun-toting man entered her bedroom. &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;m an FBI agent,&amp;amp;#8221; he said. &amp;amp;#8220;Your mom is under arrest.&amp;amp;#8221; Other FBI men surrounded Julie. Moments later, there was a knock on the door and the agents sprang into position, guns drawn. One opened the door to find an elderly waiter standing there, Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s milk shake trembling on his tray. The agent sent the waiter away and&amp;amp;#8212;in an act Francine will never forget&amp;amp;#8212;drank her milk shake. Frozen in place, she watched her mother being led off. &amp;amp;#8220;It was like my lungs had collapsed&amp;amp;#8212;I couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t breathe,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. This time Frank got a reported seven years in jail; Julie would serve four and a half. Francine was sent to live with Julie&amp;amp;#8217;s parents in Puerto Rico. Although deeply depressed without her parents, Francine got her first taste of a normal life in Puerto Rico. &amp;amp;#8220;My grandfather was very moral. He would say, &amp;amp;#8216;Don&amp;amp;#8217;t do what your mother did.&amp;amp;#8217; I think he thought they went wrong somewhere with her.&amp;amp;#8221; By now, Francine had a clearer idea of what drugs were, and she took her grandparents&amp;amp;#8217; admonitions to heart, becoming a serious student and a real &amp;amp;#8220;straight arrow,&amp;amp;#8221; as she puts it. Still, she passed no judgments on her father; a wall of denial separated the crime from the person in her mind. &amp;amp;#8220;I loved my dad. If I saw a drug addict on the street, trying to wash people&amp;amp;#8217;s windows for money, I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t connect it with him,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. Francine was ashamed that her parents were in jail, and she hid that from her friends. When they&amp;amp;#8217;d ask about her mom and dad, &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;d say, &amp;amp;#8216;They&amp;amp;#8217;re in the States,&amp;amp;#8217; and just cut it off like that,&amp;amp;#8221; she recalls. Her only contact with them was through letters and occasional calls. Conversations with her dad were always cheerful and usually centered around how she was doing in school. &amp;amp;#8220;What do you want for Christmas?&amp;amp;#8221; Frank would ask, and somehow he&amp;amp;#8217;d manage to send her pink sneakers, a VCR and his favorite Billy Joel tapes. Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s days were marked by loneliness and guilt. &amp;amp;#8220;You feel like you deserve what happens to you,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. The repressed anger she had about her situation would explode in occasional, uncontrollable rages over small things&amp;amp;#8212;like when a boy at school cut in front of her in line and the nuns had to pull her off him. &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;d feel a current from my neck to my head, and all of a sudden I almost couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t see. And I&amp;amp;#8217;d just lose it. I could kill somebody in a rage like that.&amp;amp;#8221; She took comfort in watching The Wizard of Oz. &amp;amp;#8220;I used to think about how Dorothy was going through difficult times, but she found the strength to follow that yellow brick road until she arrived,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. Francine saw her mom only once during Julie&amp;amp;#8217;s four years in jail when, at 12, a relative took her to visit the facility in West Virginia; her father, then in a Minnesota prison, was too far away to visit. The following year, Julie was released from jail and moved to Puerto Rico. At last Francine could claim to have at least one parent by her side. &amp;amp;#8220;I could go back to being a teenager again,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;I could enjoy myself and not have to worry so much.&amp;amp;#8221; Francine graduated from high school with top college test scores, and in 1991 she headed to the University of Puerto Rico. A public relations major, she was friendly toward her classmates but guarded&amp;amp;#8212;and with good reason. One night when she was doing homework with friends, she opened up, revealing that her father had done time for selling drugs. Her confession was met with dead silence. &amp;amp;#8220;I think they thought I was lying or crazy,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;I never again said a word to anybody else.&amp;amp;#8221; While Francine was in college, Frank got out of jail and moved back to New Jersey, where he led a quiet, law-abiding existence. (Julie, who&amp;amp;#8217;d built a new life for herself in Puerto Rico, decided to stay there.) He and Francine still spoke by phone weekly. After graduating, she followed a friend to Atlanta, became a mortgage broker, and dated&amp;amp;#8212;but each relationship went under, crippled by the weight of the secret she could not bring herself to confide. Facing the shocking truth In August 2000, when Francine was 27, her father called to tell her New York magazine had run a story about his former crime career. Frank sounded amused, but Francine was stricken with anxiety; she dashed to the nearest bookstore, bought all 12 copies to keep anyone else from seeing them, then went home and devoured every word. That day Francine read that her father had raked in at least $52 million from his drug deals, all of it now apparently gone. She learned about the so-called &amp;amp;#8220;cadaver connection&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;#8212;Frank&amp;amp;#8217;s successful scheme to ship heroin back from Southeast Asia in false-bottomed American coffins. And she saw her father, for the first time, portrayed as a killer. &amp;amp;#8220;There&amp;amp;#8217;s where I did that boy,&amp;amp;#8221; Frank said in the article, referring to a dealer who had crossed him. &amp;amp;#8220;Four times, right through here: bam, bam, bam, bam&amp;amp;#8230;. The boy didn&amp;amp;#8217;t have no head.&amp;amp;#8221; Today Frank tells Glamour, &amp;amp;#8220;I never killed anyone.&amp;amp;#8221; He was never charged with the killing. Francine tried to picture the scene&amp;amp;#8212;the man who had lovingly tossed her in the air, cooing &amp;amp;#8220;Daddy&amp;amp;#8217;s baby,&amp;amp;#8221; killing someone in cold blood. But her mind wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t go there. &amp;amp;#8220;It didn&amp;amp;#8217;t make sense to me,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;That guy who pulled the trigger was some other person. Not my dad.&amp;amp;#8221; The story reported pieces of background Francine had heard before, and others she hadn&amp;amp;#8217;t. When Frank was six, the Ku Klux Klan stormed into his home in La Grange, North Carolina, and killed his favorite cousin, 13-year-old Obadiah, for looking at a white girl&amp;amp;#8212;stringing him up on ropes, putting a shotgun in his mouth, then pulling the trigger. After Obadiah&amp;amp;#8217;s death, Frank, the oldest of nine kids, took responsibility for the family&amp;amp;#8217;s survival. He started with stealing chickens, moved on to robbing drunks and was on a prison chain gang by 12. He wound up homeless in New York at 15; at 17, a big-time Harlem drug operation took him on. The article shook Francine, but in her heart she believed Frank had to take up crime to support his family&amp;amp;#8212;and that the otherwise incomprehensible violence attributed to her dad sprang from the brutality he witnessed as a child. True to form, though, she didn&amp;amp;#8217;t call Frank to demand an explanation for what she&amp;amp;#8217;d read or tell him how much it had unnerved her. &amp;amp;#8220;Confronting him never crossed my mind,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;We don&amp;amp;#8217;t talk about feelings in my family. We just don&amp;amp;#8217;t.&amp;amp;#8221; Francine did, however, show the article to her then boyfriend. &amp;amp;#8220;Does your dad come here often?&amp;amp;#8221; he joked nervously. The relationship soon ended. Not long afterward, Francine fell for a man she met in a nightclub. A clean-cut, Jamaican-born computer programmer, Mark Sinclair was the opposite of her flashy, volatile father. His childhood, too, had been marked by loneliness, in his case because of his parents&amp;amp;#8217; divorce. She and Mark were, Francine says, &amp;amp;#8220;peas in a pod.&amp;amp;#8221; One night, as the two watched TV, Francine lifted the New York issue off her desk and said casually, &amp;amp;#8220;Hey, look, there&amp;amp;#8217;s a story about my dad.&amp;amp;#8221; Unlike her previous boyfriend, Mark was neither shocked nor scared. As he says now, &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s her dad. What are you going to do? You can&amp;amp;#8217;t change it. You&amp;amp;#8217;ve got to look forward.&amp;amp;#8221; The couple&amp;amp;#8217;s neighbors apparently either never saw the piece or failed to connect it to the chic professional woman in their midst. Only once did Mark slip up: A friend mentioned someone who&amp;amp;#8217;d been in the news for selling drugs and Mark said, &amp;amp;#8220;Oh, like Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s dad.&amp;amp;#8221; Says Francine, &amp;amp;#8220;I was livid.&amp;amp;#8221; Her fierce look stunned Mark into silence. &amp;amp;#8220;Her eyes got red with anger,&amp;amp;#8221; Mark says. &amp;amp;#8220;I never did that again.&amp;amp;#8221; In 2001 Frank called Francine to tell her he&amp;amp;#8217;d sold the rights for a movie about his life to a Hollywood company. Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s heart sank, but she lightheartedly ribbed him about the money he&amp;amp;#8217;d make from the deal. &amp;amp;#8220;Put me in your will,&amp;amp;#8221; she teased. Francine was on the phone with her mother one afternoon while the film was in production, recalling the events of the 1975 raid. As Julie described stuffing money into little Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s pants in a panicked effort to hide it, Francine felt herself reliving the terrors of that day. Suddenly a new picture popped into her head&amp;amp;#8212;of other children, lost and alone, innocent but paying a steep price for their jailed parents&amp;amp;#8217; crimes. That night Francine started googling. She learned about the millions of kids with incarcerated parents and their isolation, poor self-esteem and depression. The next day she phoned organizations that work with children of prisoners, and before long she was speaking at conferences, even talking openly to these groups about her past. She also put together a website, yellowbrickroads.org&amp;amp;#8212;named for her favorite movie&amp;amp;#8212;that lists resources, such as big brother/big sister mentoring programs for inmates&amp;amp;#8217; kids. Frank is proud of what she&amp;amp;#8217;s doing, and thinks anything that helps inmates&amp;amp;#8217; children helps inmates, too. &amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;d be surprised how much big grown men [in prison] break down and cry worse than I did,&amp;amp;#8221; he says. &amp;amp;#8220;I mean 800-pound gorillas. Guys that smell like a skunk, they look like Godzilla, but they love their kids. Everybody loves their kids. &amp;amp;#8220;Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s got a good mind,&amp;amp;#8221; he continues. &amp;amp;#8220;This kid has done wonders. She&amp;amp;#8217;s come a long, long way.&amp;amp;#8221; Making peace with the past When American Gangster premieres at Harlem&amp;amp;#8217;s Apollo Theater on November 2, Francine, Mark and Julie will be in the audience; Julie says that Frank has not decided whether he will attend. Although Francine has visited the set, she is fearful about what she&amp;amp;#8217;ll see on the screen. Denzel Washington spent a lot of time with Frank, studying each gesture, yet Francine worries the film will fail to capture the complexities of his character and that he&amp;amp;#8217;ll come off as simply &amp;amp;#8220;evil,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. Frank seems less concerned about how he&amp;amp;#8217;ll be portrayed by one of Hollywood&amp;amp;#8217;s hottest actors. &amp;amp;#8220;Hey, listen, Denzel Washington? It should be a privilege for him to play me.&amp;amp;#8221; Frank and Julie are back together in New Jersey; he sees Francine at least twice a year&amp;amp;#8212;the two remain close and talk weekly&amp;amp;#8212;and Julie comes to Atlanta so often to help with the grandkids that she has her own bedroom at their house. Julie has long since forgiven Frank for the chaotic life he drew her into, according to their daughter. And Frank, says Francine, &amp;amp;#8220;loves Mom to death.&amp;amp;#8221; Francine&amp;amp;#8217;s feelings toward her parents remain conflicted. &amp;amp;#8220;I hate what they did,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;But I love them.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Out of the bad guys, you could probably say my dad was one of the worst,&amp;amp;#8221; she admits. &amp;amp;#8220;But he cared more about me than other dads who have a regular job but don&amp;amp;#8217;t show affection to their kids.&amp;amp;#8221; Francine still suffers, infrequently, from what she calls her &amp;amp;#8220;blackout rages,&amp;amp;#8221; a side of herself she keeps from her kids. To this day, amazingly enough, she has never discussed at length the details of her father&amp;amp;#8217;s criminal past with him. Yet she says she glimpses in her father something he&amp;amp;#8217;s rarely revealed in public: regret over his activities. &amp;amp;#8220;I can just feel it,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s hard to explain, but when he talks about anything that has to do with that [time], the pitch in his voice changes. I think he feels bad about everything. There is remorse.&amp;amp;#8221; One thing Frank readily acknowledges is the suffering his criminal career caused his daughter. &amp;amp;#8220;Dad was gone, somebody she depended on when she was a little girl,&amp;amp;#8221; he says. &amp;amp;#8220;It was horrible. That&amp;amp;#8217;s the part I don&amp;amp;#8217;t like to talk about. I get all choked up.&amp;amp;#8221; Meanwhile, Francine is preparing herself for the inevitable questions she&amp;amp;#8217;ll be getting about her own life. &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;ve been testing it out, telling people I know,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;They empathize much more than I thought they would.&amp;amp;#8221; Someday, she says, when her kids are older, she&amp;amp;#8217;ll sit them down and tell them what Grandpa used to do. Till then, she makes sure they enjoy the childhood she never experienced&amp;amp;#8212;one filled with ballet lessons, birthday parties and two parents they can count on. For Francine, the best therapy of all has been the time and effort she puts into yellowbrickroads.org and volunteering. She&amp;amp;#8217;s determined to help kids avoid the lonely, anxiety-filled years she had, and hopes that her good work will distance her from Frank&amp;amp;#8217;s lawless image. &amp;amp;#8220;I don&amp;amp;#8217;t want to be seen as just my father&amp;amp;#8217;s child,&amp;amp;#8221; she says. &amp;amp;#8220;I am myself now.&amp;amp;#8221; Most of all, she&amp;amp;#8217;s using her crusade to help pay back what she sees as Frank&amp;amp;#8217;s lingering debt to society&amp;amp;#8212;even though he may feel no similar obligation. &amp;amp;#8220;In a way, I can redeem him and me,&amp;amp;#8221; Francine says. &amp;amp;#8220;Or redeem him through me.&amp;amp;#8221; Nell Bernstein is the author of All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated. To learn more about resources for kids of imprisoned parents, go to yellowbrickroads.org."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/10/frank-lucas/1>