90 Church Page 5

  That afternoon Michael came into the office and got into a heated conversation with Silkey and Dewey in front of Pike and Blanker. Dewey pointed his finger at Michael. “It’s a fucking set-up. It’s Stuckey’s junk; I told you, you can’t trust this asshole with a pack of cigarettes. Stuckey’s double-crossing you, Michael – can’t you see it? He sets these poor assholes up for a bust with his junk so he can walk free, deal drugs, and spend our money and kill people. This ain’t the way it’s supposed to work.” Pike and Blanker nodded their heads in agreement. I was shocked to see Dewey betray Michael in front of Pike and Blanker and the other agents.

  Michael didn’t say anything at first, letting Dewey calm down. Then he said, “I trust my informants. Stuckey wouldn’t do this. Give this asshole you busted last night to the cops, put him in the system. Don’t offer him a deal and make him serve the time. It’ll be good for him.” Dewey, Blanker and Pike just shook their heads in disgust over how badly Michael was handling the case.

  Michael and I met with Stuckey, who seemed in good spirits – smiling and talkative as ever. He even brought his teenaged girlfriend to the meeting and bragged to her about his government friends and Mafia buddies. Stuckey asked us how the case went and Michael looked at him and said, “The boys think it was your junk. Did you set this man up?”

  “How could you say that?” he said indignantly. “I would never do that to you, Michael. You’ve been good to me, and I’m gonna see my way out by being good to you. I don’t care what they say. I didn’t set him up. It was not my dope.”

  This satisfied Michael. He smiled and patted Stuckey on the back, but even I could see that the guy was conning Michael.

  At our next meeting at the Heidelberg, we ate Italian food. Michael stunned everybody. “I’m going after Tommy One-Finger.” Tommy “One-Finger” Carpini was a member of one of the five crime families. He got his name because the little finger on his right hand was missing. He worked as an entrepreneur for the Mafia, financing everything from numbers to restaurants to drug deals. If you needed money you went to Tommy One-Finger. He would set you up with money and become a partner in whatever illegal activity you had in mind. Since Tommy used mob money, he could never lose. If anyone defaulted on the loan they would die in the street. Michael explained that Stuckey had made a new friend inside the Mafia who introduced him to Tommy One-Finger. Stuckey and his new friend were going to ask Tommy One-Finger for a loan of fifty thousand dollars for a drug deal. Michael was going to ask Pike to match it with another fifty thousand dollars.

  The next day Dewey stormed into Pike’s office with Stuckey’s file. With all of the agents listening he said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding! These people wouldn’t let Stuckey wipe their ass. Stuckey doesn’t have the balls for this! Don’t you see? How can you approve the money for this case? It’s all going to come down on Michael. Don’t you see how wrong Michael is?”

  Pike smiled. “It’s Michael’s ass. He trusts this guy. I’m going to give him the money. Stay out of it. If it fails, Michael goes down with the case.”

  Later Michael and I met with Stuckey at a bar in Midtown. He was more than a half hour late, but oddly the waiting didn’t seem to bother Michael. When Michael laid out the case proposing two $50,000 payments, Charlie lit two cigarettes in a row, trying to give me one. He started to sweat. Charlie knew if he lost Tommy One-Finger’s money in a drug deal he would be killed. Michael assured him that things would be okay and put his arm around him. Looking straight into his eyes, Michael said, “Charlie, I promise you two things: one, this is your last case, you will be free from 90 Church, and two, you will not have to testify in court.”

  Stuckey took a deep breath, put out his cigarette, and looked at me with renewed courage and a big smile.

  With these new developments we scheduled another meeting at the Heidelberg and ordered steak from Gallagher’s. Michael outlined his plan. The drug dealer was Lewis Turko, a big-time international wholesaler to the Vito Genovese crime family. Turko had sold drugs to Tommy One-Finger before, with success. Turko trusted Tommy and knew he would be sending couriers. The deal would be for six kilos of pure heroin, for a total of one hundred thousand dollars cash. Stuckey would get fifty thousand dollars of mob money from Tommy One-Finger and be Tommy’s courier. Stuckey would then introduce Turko to an undercover agent – Dewey, who would pretend to be a courier for another buyer supposedly recommended by Tommy One-Finger – who would put up another fifty thousand dollars. But that payment would actually be government funds. Everything seemed simple, perhaps too simple.

  With Pike’s approval, Michael requisitioned fifty thousand dollars cash from the Bureau to be used as an undercover buy. Michael laid the cash out on his desk, called me over and said, “This is stupid. Look at that money. These are new, large-denomination bills. Take the money and go to different banks along Wall Street, break up all the hundreds into twenties, fives, and tens. Don’t draw attention to yourself. This has to look like drug money.”

  I spent the afternoon going from bank to bank along Wall Street, changing the money and making up stories why I needed small-denomination bills. When I got back to the office I bundled all the money in rubber bands. Michael put the cash in a green gym bag, then Dewey, Michael, and I drove to meet Stuckey at a restaurant in the Bronx. Stuckey had a black leather attaché case filled with cash from Tommy One-Finger; all new twenty-dollar bills bundled neatly in green-and-brown bank wrappers. Dewey took the gym bag and Stuckey carried the briefcase and went to a private health club in Midtown to show Lewis Turko the one hundred thousand dollars. After seeing the cash Turko agreed to sell six kilos of heroin.

  The next night Turko would bring the six kilos to a bar in Times Square. Stuckey and Dewey would meet him and each give him fifty thousand dollars. Stuckey’s hands were shaking and he kept repeating, “They’re going to know it was me. Please, Michael, don’t do this, don’t do this.”

  I felt sorry for Stuckey; he was being pulled into something very dangerous.

  Michael led him over to the corner of the restaurant and when Stuckey came back he seemed to be calmer. Michael grabbed the black attaché case from Stuckey and gave it to me. Then he told Dewey to give me the gym bag with the government money in small bills.

  “Here,” Michael said to me. “You’re in charge of all the money. Don’t lose it, and don’t spend it. I don’t trust Dewey. He ratted me out to Pike, tried to fuck up the case! He’s a disloyal cocksucker.” Then he squeezed Charlie’s face with both hands as if he was joking. “And I don’t trust Stuckey here. He may not come back with it.” He smiled at me. “You’re the only one I trust.”

  When I got home that night I opened up the black briefcase and the green gym bag and stared at the money. I had never seen one hundred thousand dollars in cash before. I showed it to Daisy. We knelt in front of it, first touching the Mafia’s new money, all twenty-dollar bills in brown bank wrappers neatly stacked in the attaché case, and then the Bureau’s dirty small bills bundled in rubber bands and piled loosely in the gym bag. The money didn’t seem real. There was no excitement in touching and seeing it. Before we went to bed Daisy said, “I feel disgusted for being interested in seeing drug money. It makes me feel dirty.” The gym bag and attaché case sat on the coffee table all night, like Monopoly money after the game was over.

  The next night we met at the office and Blanker came in to wish us all luck. Dewey was wearing a body wire. Stuckey looked pale and nervous; his hands were shaking and he kept staring at Michael. Michael pulled me aside and with a big smile said, “I’m afraid Stuckey might bolt. I’m gonna take both the gym bag and suitcase to the meet. Stuckey will not run without the money.”

  Michael drove the lead car by himself, carrying all of the cash, followed by Stuckey and Dewey. The rest of us trailed in a caravan of four radio cars to meet Turko at a bar in Times Square. Turko would have a suitcase with the drugs. Dewey would give Turko the green gym bag of old bundled money and Stuckey would give him the b
lack attaché case filled with the new, bank-wrapped twenty-dollar bills from Tommy One-Finger. A simple exchange in a busy place.

  Michael pulled over to the side of the street to meet Dewey and Stuckey for a last-minute pep talk and to give them the money. Five government automobiles lined the street a block away, all listening in on Dewey’s body wire.

  Michael handed the black attaché case to Stuckey and the green gym bag to Dewey, and the two of them started walking down 42nd Street toward the bar. But, less than half a block away, just as everyone except Michael had predicted, Stuckey panicked. He ran down the street with the black attaché case. Within seconds he was out of sight into a subway entrance. There was no use chasing him. Michael jumped out of the car and ran up to Dewey. Over Dewey’s wire you could hear both of them talking on the radio. Michael said, “Dewey, you got to do this alone.”

  Dewey answered, “Pike and I told you about this asshole, Michael. You wouldn’t listen. Pike is right. You don’t know what you’re doing. Pike said this is a set-up, now someone is going to get shot. Make sure Silkey is close to me with his pump if things go bad. I’ll make the buy for half.”

  Dewey walked into the bar and Michael got back in the car and spoke calmly to everyone on the radio. “The informant is gone so we don’t have to protect anyone’s identity now. There’s a change of plan; Dewey will make the buy for half the dope, just three kilos. Follow Turko to the car; let him drive off, then pop him carrying the other half of the dope. We’ll have him on tape for a major buy and we’ll get him for possession of the three kilos. We’ll get our money back, the Bureau will have a new car and we’ll get six kilos off the street.”

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Dewey came out of the bar carrying a small suitcase. He stopped on the sidewalk and rubbed the back of his head, the signal the deal had gone down. Five minutes later Turko walked out of the bar, carrying the green gym bag, and went across the street to a parking garage.

  Pike was right beside him when the valet delivered Turko’s white Mercedes. He drove west on 47th Street toward the Hudson River. Then all traffic stopped. Two government cars in front of Turko blocked the street. There was a chorus of car horns. Agent Greenway got out of one of the cars and started yelling and waving his hands at the other cars while he made his way to Turko’s Mercedes. Agent Silkey got there first. He smashed the passenger-side window of Turko’s car with the butt of his pump shotgun and pointed the barrel at his head. Greenway dragged Turko from the car and threw him on the street. Turko started to get up and pulled a black revolver from his belt. Greenway dropkicked him with his cowboy boot and kicked the gun out of his hand. Silkey handcuffed him and dragged him to the car. It was all over, within minutes. An hour later Lewis Turko sat in the Bureau’s conference room, sweating, with his hands cuffed behind his back, staring across the table at Greenway, Silkey and myself. The green gym bag was on the table.

  Lewis Turko was about forty years old and despite being very rich he dressed like a janitor in wrinkled pants, scuffed shoes, and an old faded shirt. He sat calmly without saying a word. We smiled at him and waited. Finally, Michael walked in.

  “Hi, Lewis. How are you?” Michael said. “I only got a couple questions. Who broke the window on my new white Mercedes? And gee, Lewis, what have you got in this green bag here? Could it be three kilos of junk and fifty grand? Tell me it ain’t so.”

  Michael dumped the money out of the gym bag onto the table – all new bills, bank-wrapped in neat bundles. It was the mob money.

  Turko just stared at the piles of new twenty-dollar bills bundled neatly with brown bank wrappers. Then Dewey walked into the conference room. Turko jumped up and yelled, “Say nothing no matter what they do, say nothing!”

  The whole room, except Turko, erupted in laughter. Finally Michael said, “I see you’ve already met Agent Dewey Paris. He has a suitcase full of heroin, heroin you gave him. It’s all on tape. They’re going to find you a toothbrush and put you up for the night, and I’m going to file the papers on my new Benz.”

  Turko stopped staring at the money and looked at each of us and said, “You don’t know what you are doing here. Take the small fish, that’s our understanding. You don’t know who I am. I swear by my Christ that I will destroy every one of you for what you are doing to me. The Genovese family will never forget. You will all feel their revenge.”

  There was a surprised long silence, then Dewey reached across the table and twisted Turko’s nose until it bled.

  Turko, with his hands cuffed behind him, stood up and roared like a wounded grizzly bear.

  The revised plan was just as good as the original one; in fact, it was much better. Everyone except Michael knew that Stuckey didn’t have the courage to go through with it anyway. But now Stuckey could return the money to Tommy One-Finger and say that he had no part in Turko’s arrest. He would be safe – maybe even a hero – for backing out of a drug set-up and saving the mob’s money. Stuckey had conned Michael and would go right back to selling drugs and conning more people.

  Michael was only credited for making the right decision when the case began to fall apart. The only thing Blanker said to Michael was that he was lucky, and that in the future he should take Pike’s orders and work harder to control the cases. Pike was actually disappointed that the case got turned around and ended so well.

  The next morning the Bureau held a press conference. It was one of the biggest cases of the year and the evidence was overwhelming. Lewis Turko was part of the Vito Genovese family engaged in worldwide criminal activities. Pike took the credit and did all the talking, along with Blanker. The six kilos of heroin, the money and the green gym bag were all laid out on the table. An enlarged photograph of Turko and a chart of the Mafia’s family tree was mounted on an easel. Blanker never mentioned Michael, and laughed with the reporters as everyone gathered.

  But now I realized there was something very wrong about the money: it was the crisp new twenty-dollar bills, bundled in brown-and-green bank wrappers! Before, it was in the black attaché case, but now it was in the green gym bag. I had overlooked it the night before when Turko was staring at it on the conference table. This was Stuckey’s mob money from the black attaché case, not the small denominations I had laundered and should have been in the gym bag! As I wondered how the money got switched from one bag to another I felt a sinking premonition of things I didn’t want to know. I walked back down the hall, hoping to find Michael, but he had already left the office. On my desk was a pink phone-message slip for me. It was a call from Stuckey, received by the agent on night duty at the office. The message read: Where are you? Hurry up; I want to get this over with. The time was 1:30 in the morning – an hour after Stuckey panicked and disappeared into the subway at Times Square, carrying the attaché case filled with Tommy One-Finger’s new money … that was now on display in the conference room!

  As I stared at the strange phone message the phone rang. I took a call for Michael from the NYPD. They had found a body in the trunk of a car at 145th and Hudson River. It was Charlie Stuckey.

  Agent Silkey and I drove uptown immediately. The crime scene was roped off with yellow tape and Stuckey’s car sat in the center of the barricade under the highway overpass. They had already taken Stuckey away; it was obvious what had happened. There was blood inside the trunk, and there were six bullet holes through the trunk lid.

  I looked down and saw a lollipop lying on the ground, covered by hundreds of tiny brown ants. I thought it was an important clue; maybe the killer had been sucking on the lollipop. I showed Silkey but he just laughed. “Lollipop, lollipop, what are you, fucking Sherlock Holmes? What does a lollipop have to do with anything?” He stepped on it. It stuck to his shoe.

  Silkey asked the cops if they had tossed the inside of the car. The lead detective replied, “No. We show him listed with you guys so we called you. He got whacked last night at about two a.m. The watchman in the building over there heard the shots, he even called it in. But you know shots in this
area happen every night. We were too busy. Our patrol found him this morning and called you after a check of his driver’s license. There’s no doubt he’s your man, Charles Stuckey.”

  Silkey and I walked up to the side of the car and looked in. We both saw it at the same time and stared at each other: the attaché case was in the back seat!

  Through clenched teeth, Silkey whispered, “Get the fucking money, leave the case, stuff it in your shirt. I’ll keep them busy.”

  He turned and walked toward the cops and soon they were huddled in a circle laughing at Silkey’s jokes.

  I unbuttoned my shirt, got in the back seat, and popped the gold latches of the case. Inside was a phone book! A phone book and nothing else. I walked over to where the cops were still laughing with Agent Silkey and signaled him to get back into our car.

  “No money, just a phone book,” I said.

  Silkey pounded the steering wheel. “What the fuck, it was never our case, but shit we came close to making a few dollars! When Michael’s running things there are always dead bodies and missing money, every time something, always very weird.”

  As we drove back to the Bureau, I kept thinking about Stuckey’s phone message; why was he waiting for me? Now I began to seriously wonder about the money. None of it made sense. I was the only one who had custody of both the gym bag and attaché case until I gave them to Michael.

  Then we walked into Group Two and learned that Tommy One-Finger was dead, killed along with three others – all mob hits. Now I knew why the money was switched. Turko and his Mafia friends recognized Tommy’s new twenty-dollar bills on the conference table, then again on the evening news and in press photos. Since it was Tommy One-Finger’s new money that set Turko up for the bust, Tommy had to be in on the set-up. Tommy had paid for it with his life. Everybody was happy. The Bureau had an airtight case and no one cared about Stuckey. He wasn’t needed. All the other mobsters were blaming and killing each other. Icing on the cake.