90 Church Page 15

  Manasso’s third case was a straight buy: ten kilos of pure high-grade heroin. The Bureau gave me $50,000 for the buy. This time Manasso called a New Jersey drug dealer named Carlos and made arrangements, telling him that I was Mafia, trying to make a deal direct without sharing with my boss. The buy was to take place in a bar in Greenwich Village. I met Carlos at a bar on Houston Street in lower Manhattan. I easily convinced him of my Mafia cover story. The arrangement was that I go to his car to inspect the heroin, and then Carlos would go to my car and look at the money. Then we would swap car keys, so no one would see the exchange. My car, with the money, had a radio device so we could follow it. We all knew from my previous phone conversations with Carlos that he was coming from uptown Manhattan and we assumed he would be returning in the same direction. We had surveillance cars in a four-block radius ready to follow him up the West Side.

  Two things went seriously wrong. Carlos didn’t like my car, and didn’t care who saw us. He wanted to keep his own car, so he gave me the suitcase of heroin in the street and I gave him the money, knowing we could still follow him as he drove back to his drug source, but he drove in the opposite direction and headed for the Holland Tunnel. Two of the surveillance cars moved in on the pursuit, with Silkey in the lead car. But by the time they got to the Tunnel, Silkey was two cars behind Carlos. In the middle of the Tunnel, Carlos jammed on his brakes and slid his car sideways, blocking both lanes. He then jumped out, carrying the money, got into another car in front of him that had stopped and was waiting for him. Then he continued on – leaving the tunnel completely blocked with his abandoned car. We had the drugs, ten kilos of heroin, but Carlos had escaped into New Jersey with the money – and we had no leads on how to find him since the car he was driving was stolen. The case was a complete disaster. Once again Manasso had outsmarted us, giving us exactly what he promised – kilos of heroin, now up to the agreed twenty kilos. The only good case was against Belonconi and that was only because of Michael’s quick thinking.

  When I told Rachel what had happened, she couldn’t believe it. We’d planned this operation for a week. Now I began to think that someone besides Michael was controlling things from the inside. At first I thought it was Silkey. Silkey was in the car with Fernando and could have set up the killing outside the hotel. He might also have deliberately lost Carlos in the tunnel. Silkey knew everything and had been in the right place when things went wrong. The problem was that Silkey wasn’t smart enough, and would never betray Michael. Then I thought about Pike, but he wasn’t any smarter than Silkey. Blanker could have done it, but would need help from the other agents. As I thought about it, it seemed to me that only Michael would be smart enough to cast doubt on Manasso, while working from the inside. It all came down to Michael making a deal with Manasso. Only Michael would have the guts to arrange for Fernando to get murdered; he had done it before with Stuckey. Rachel warned me to be careful and trust no one. She said I had to find out who was corrupting the cases and expose them. It was my duty as a senior agent and it would be a defining moment in my career. She said I had to be brave and keep investigating, but I could see the fear in her beautiful dark eyes.

  Blanker and Pike, who had been so proud of my work, now openly criticized me, calling me a “novice” and “out of control”. They said Manasso had not acted in good faith even though the kilo count was what Manasso had promised; they believed that the cases had been set up to protect the drug source, which was Manasso. I reminded them that I had made a case on John Belonconi, one of the biggest Mafia kingpins in New York. I argued that shortcomings in the cases were not Manasso’s fault but ours, and maybe we would find Carlos. They didn’t care. They said Manasso was a dope dealer and that deals with criminals didn’t count. He would either come clean with all of his sources in Europe and the United States or he would go to jail and the Bureau would tell everyone, including Belonconi, that Manasso was the informant in all three cases. I insisted that this was wrong; we were breaking our agreement, but they wouldn’t listen. They gave me five days to bring Manasso in. I wondered what Michael would do next.

  Rachel shared my outrage and disappointment. I would have to betray Manasso. It was wrong, but I had no choice. We knew Michael was behind everything, but there was nothing I could do. Michael was too smart.

  Rachel laid her head on my chest. “You can’t do everything yourself; the Bureau should have helped you control the cases better. They’re weak, they let an evil drunk like Michael manipulate things and steal money. You must be strong and do what’s right. In the end good always wins.”

  Rachel was right and I knew it. She was right about Manasso and my whole life. I was too weak to stand up against Michael and the Bureau. From my first day as an agent I knew things were wrong. I should have stood up then; now too much had happened.

  “I can’t,” I confessed. “I can’t go against everybody, I can’t do it. Please understand. There is no one to turn to, no one can help me.”

  “I understand. I love you. Do what you must do to survive. We’ll work it out. To survive you must pick the best time to stand up for what’s right. You will know when.”

  The next day Manasso called me. He asked that I meet him alone in the Bronx. He named a good Italian restaurant in a bad area. I said I’d meet him there at 9:30 p.m. Dewey had loaned his car to Silkey, so I said he could take mine after I met Manasso. After the meeting I would take a cab to Rachel’s apartment in Riverdale. We had planned Christmas dinner.

  It was a cold bitter December night when Dewey and I drove to the Bronx. The snow was beginning to cover the sidewalks and street. As we pulled up in front of the restaurant, the windshield shattered from gunfire. We ducked below and huddled on the floor. Dewey pulled out his forty-five and smashed the dome light. More shots came crashing in at us from a vacant lot next to the restaurant. “Stay in the car until I tell you to get out!” Dewey screamed. “Then go forward, to the front.” He opened the driver’s side door; the car remained dark. He crawled out onto the cold street on his hands and knees. The bullets kept smashing into the car, ripping open the dash. Dewey scrambled past a parked car to the edge of the building next to the lot. I saw him wave me forward. I got out and crawled to the front of the car. With my head down I stuck my gun over the fender and took wild shots into the vacant lot. More bullets rained down on the car. It was all Dewey needed; he stepped from the side of the building and got off two quick shots. Everything was still. He looked at me and laughed. “Got him.”

  Slowly I raised my head and looked over the vacant lot at a body lying in the dirt, being quickly covered by the falling snow. I walked closer, pointing my gun. It was Manasso. I could see the blood pouring through the outside of his jacket. He was fighting back tears, but he looked up at me with a forced smile. “I thought I told you to come alone.”

  I leaned down and held his head and asked, “Why? Why?”

  “Because you were going to betray me.”

  I didn’t say anything at first. “How did you know?”

  “Twigs.” His face turned gray; he coughed up a little blood and his eyes went vacant.

  Dewey stood over the body, chanting, “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch! A Christmas killing. Merry, merry, fucking Christmas!”

  I ran back to the car. “Dewey,” I yelled, “I have to take the car.” The car had bullet holes all over it and the windshield was completely smashed out. I shoved it in gear and floored the accelerator, ignoring Dewey’s shouts.

  I drove as fast as I could; the wind rushing through the broken windshield numbed my face and hands. I kept repeating the name, “Twigs, Twigs.” I was so cold by the time I got to the office that I could hardly open the door with my keys. Finally, I got in, rushed into the Library, turned on the fluorescent lights, and stared at the rows of files and index cards. Someone had helped Manasso. “Twigs” had to be a code name. Someone here in the Bureau was a double agent, and it could only be Michael. I had him now. I would stand up, expose the whole rotten mess. Now
was the time. I had to do what was right. I thought about the strange turn in all three cases. Blanker? Dewey? Silkey? Then I almost screamed, The money! The money! Michael always played for the money; nobody else could set things up so completely. I had had enough of being set up, double-crossed, and falsely written into the reports. It was going to end here with Michael. I was going to prove his treachery. It was my time to stand up for what was right. It was now or never.

  I went to the file cards to look up “Twigs”. Incredibly, I found it right away, a three-by-five index card that simply read, Twigs. Reference file Manasso. There was something else, something very strange. As I stared at the card, I felt a deep chill. The words were “smuggler,” then “photo.”

  I rushed to the file cabinet to find the Manasso file and leafed through it. My hands were shaking. I found it halfway through the file. It was a large color photograph of people sitting at a table, a picture you pay a photographer to take at upscale clubs. Manasso was standing with his back to the camera – there was no mistaking his muscular profile. The caption said “Twigs second from the left”. Second from the left was a girl seated at the table. She was overweight, plain-looking, next to a guy in a bad suit with lots of jewelry. I kept staring at her. I didn’t recognize the girl. It made no sense. Then I felt colder than the wind rushing through the broken windshield on my way down to the office. I had seen something that my mind could not accept. I looked at the caption again: Twigs second from the left … I was missing someone in the photo. I looked over Manasso’s shoulder. There was only part of a face, almost completely hidden under a flat-brimmed black matador hat with silver buckles. There was a hand on Manasso’s shoulder with long fingers and red nails. Under the hat I saw the eyes of Twigs, the unmistakable, dark, deep, raccoon eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A TANGLED WEB

  “MR. HEYMAN”

  “Life is a balance sheet; mark well your accounts payable.” That’s what Manasso had said and warned me: “No independent cases on any of my associates.”

  I had killed agent Jerry Ramirez when I told Rachel that Jerry was going after Caldwell in Atlanta.

  Rachel’s apartment had been leased to an overseas corporation in Spain. My clothes were still there but nothing else, no sign that she ever existed. I called her work number. It rang to an answering machine in her bedroom closet. Someday I would find her, but I didn’t know how. I had nowhere to go; I couldn’t stand the thought of going home, after what I had done to Daisy. I was too stupid and ashamed to beg for her understanding. I went to “Heyman’s” whorehouse, the place that Michael had taken me to several months earlier while looking for an informant. It was the only place that seemed appropriate for me now. I didn’t even know Heyman’s real name. He was Jamaican with a heavy accent, always saying, “Hey Man,” which is how he got his nickname.

  For two days I lay in bed, drinking vodka and snorting coke until Heyman got tired of me bothering his paying customers. Before I left, there was a commotion. Heyman started to argue with a white man. It was the father of Gabriel: the main attraction, a white teenager junkie whore. She was getting her daily fix from Heyman by sucking everyone off. Her father was a dentist from Long Island. He and his wife had tried many times to get Gabriel into drug rehabilitation, but she would never go. Now he had come to take his daughter home. I didn’t think Heyman would give her up easily. At first the father was brave; “I’ve come to get my daughter.” Then he pleaded, “Please, may I see my daughter?”

  Two of Heyman’s bouncers grabbed Gabriel’s father and threw him on the floor, leaned his arm up against the radiator, and snapped it at the elbow. He lay on the floor screaming and crying. Then they stood him up and threw him down two flights of steps. Gabriel watched the whole thing, standing there in her blue silk robe with her wide cold eyes staring out into space. I just stood there too and never said a word. In fact, it was kind of amusing, seeing him somersault down the stairs, screaming and crying. Heyman watched this horror take place and laughed with great satisfaction. There is a limit to how bad you can feel and I had reached it. I could not feel any worse.

  Finally, I dragged myself home to an empty apartment. Daisy and Mark had gone to Chicago to her parents for Christmas. I was glad; I didn’t want them to see me. I took a shower, changed my clothes, shaved. I hated being home more than being at Heyman’s whorehouse. I tried to hold back the tears, surrounded by Daisy’s clothes, pictures, and Mark’s toys. The apartment was still decorated for Christmas, which made me feel even worse. Over and over I kept remembering how I bragged to Rachel that I was sending Jerry Ramirez to Atlanta to make a case on Manasso’s lawyer, and how I ordered Silkey to pick up Fernando from the hotel, giving Manasso an opportunity to shoot him. I had killed them both and I would live with it the rest of my life.

  Dewey’s file clerks filed a report on Manasso’s death. The autopsy said he died from two gunshot wounds to the chest. There was a footnote: they had to cut the gold bracelet off his wrist and on it was engraved just one word – Rachel. Guilt grew inside me like a horrible tapeworm. I went back to work, and months passed. I took any case, no matter how badly put together or how small. I bought heroin in Harlem, or cocaine on the East Side, anywhere there was an opportunity. I lived, ate, and slept with drug dealers to become their best friend – then looked forward to the day when I would betray them. I had evolved into a predatory creature of the night. There were no more bothersome thoughts about right and wrong. I was comfortable with my addiction to cocaine. It had helped me get through the guilt and madness of Rachel, and of Jerry’s death. Perhaps it even saved my life.

  Now the person who I respected more than anyone else, and wanted to become, was Michael Giovanni.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HONOR AMONG THIEVES

  HOUND FROM HELL

  Winter turned to an early spring, without any major cases. Then one day Pike came back from a meeting with George Blanker, and said to Michael, “The FBI wants us to do a joint investigation with them on some Colombian cokers. They want me to meet with them tomorrow morning, and I’d like you to come with me.”

  Michael was reading a newspaper and lowered it to look at Pike. “I’d love to join you, but I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. Why don’t you ask Dewey? He’s always well-dressed.”

  Pike was irritated. “Michael, I want you to come.”

  Michael kept reading his paper. “Sorry, Ted, I can’t make it. I’m sure you’ll do just fine. Dewey looks the part. He’ll go with you. He never has anything useful to do. No way am I going.”

  “You have to go, Michael. It’s an opportunity for us to work with the FBI. They specifically asked for you. Blanker told me to tell you to go.”

  Without lowering his newspaper, he looked at me. “Okay, Ted, we’ll be there. What time?”

  The next morning Michael and I met Pike at the FBI headquarters on 69th Street in Manhattan. Their offices were nothing like 90 Church. There was a big illuminated FBI emblem on the wall, wood furniture, carpeted floors, and a receptionist with an English accent.

  Pike was dressed in a navy blue suit, white shirt and a red-striped tie. He was fat; every button pulled on his shirt and his pants pulled so tight it exposed the zipper on his fly, but at least his tie didn’t have food stains on it. Michael was dressed in the same wrinkly clothes that he had on the day before, and the day before that, and he hadn’t shaved in days. My hair was almost shoulder-length and I wore my usual coal-black shiny mohair suit with a bright green silk shirt open at the throat, and a pair of burgundy-red deerskin boots. I’d snorted a line of coke for breakfast so I was feeling just fine.

  The receptionist ushered us into a conference room where there were four FBI agents, all looking the same – dark suits, white shirts, red ties, clean-shaven – and every one of them had a crew cut. They stared at us like we were three clowns from a circus. As we made introductions, Michael said nothing, and no one said anything to him; he just sat at the end of the table without looking at anyone,
like a pouting schoolboy. An older, balding agent walked in and introduced himself as Special Agent John McDermott, from Washington, D.C. He was definitely in charge. He greeted Pike, calling him “Agent Pikerman,” ignored me and glanced at Michael without saying a word. He sat with the other agents at the opposite end of the table. One of them, Campbell, rose to his feet, started a slideshow presentation and pointed to the first slide, a map of South America. He began, “South America, the world’s number-one source of illicit cocaine…”

  Michael glanced at me with a big stupid grin. I knew we weren’t going to be here very long. Then he took out a pack of cigarettes and began to light up. Agent Campbell stopped. “I’m sorry, there’s no smoking here in our conference room.” Michael lit the cigarette, blew out the match and threw it on the middle of the wooden table. After a moment of awkward silence, McDermott said to one of the younger agents, “Would you please get Agent Michael Giovanni an ashtray?”

  Campbell resumed his silly presentation with a map of North America and the main points of entry of smuggled cocaine: El Paso, Miami, New York. The next slide was a series of mug shots. He said this was the Hermes “Medal-lee” family, pointing to picture after picture: Juan, Orlando, Horenda, Isabella, and its leader, Hermes.

  As he continued to name them, Michael interrupted, “Like a small street.”

  Campbell ignored him. “Isabella Medal-lee is –”

  “Like a small street,” Michael interrupted him again.

  Irritated, Campbell said, “What are you talking about? What’s a small street?”

  “It’s pronounced Medalley, Med alley, like a small street.”

  Pike got pink.

  McDermott said calmly, “Agent Campbell, please continue with your presentation of the Medalley family.” The next slides were pictures of streets in downtown Bogotá, and Campbell continued, “The FBI, in concert with the Colombian government, has conducted investigations of the Medalley family, but has been unable to penetrate their tight-knit inner circle. It would be unusual, but we think possibly they are also working with the Carlo Gambino family. These investigations continue but have had limited progress. Six months ago, one of our agents assigned to our embassy was killed by this cartel. The Medalley family is headquartered here in New York City and as the next eight slides will show –”