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  Michael wouldn’t talk to me about how the money got switched or about the lollipop I saw on the ground where Stuckey got shot, but Michael did feel sorry for Stuckey. He even asked Pike to initiate a special investigation to find Stuckey’s killer.

  Everyone celebrated one of the biggest cases in the Bureau’s history. But I still had questions. How could Stuckey, a two-bit con artist, talk his way into one of the biggest Mafia moneymen in New York City? Did he have inside help? How did the mob money get switched? Besides me, Michael was the only other person who handled the money. Did he switch it when he carried both the gym bag and attaché case from the office to the meeting in Times Square? Could Michael have predicted what would happen if the money was switched? How did Stuckey end up carrying a phone book? Why didn’t the killer take Stuckey’s briefcase? Did the killer already know what was in it? Who told Stuckey to wait for me? Was someone setting him up to be killed? Why wasn’t Michael mad at Dewey for complaining about the case to Pike? Why would Michael ask Pike, who is the dumbest supervisor in the office, to investigate Stuckey’s murder? Most of all, what happened to the fifty thousand dollars I had laundered? I was ashamed of my thoughts … Michael was the best agent in the bureau and everyone knew it. Dewey had said Michael was “never wrong.” I told myself that I was lucky to be his partner. I would never betray him like Dewey did. I wanted to learn from Michael.

  I kept my questions to myself – I didn’t want to ruin the case with accusations that I could not prove. Also, I had signed an investigation report stating that I had sole custody of all the money prior to the buy. Worse, the phone message would only implicate me in Stuckey’s killing. Finally, Stuckey was killed – more than fifty blocks uptown – at the same time all the agents were in the office talking to Turko.

  Turko’s Mercedes was now government property. An agent who made a big case got a bonus of being allowed to drive any car that was seized. However, Blanker wrote a memo to Michael, saying that he wanted the Mercedes for himself. Michael just threw the memo in the trash, had the window fixed, and tossed me the keys! It made being Michael’s driver more fun.

  One night about two weeks after the Turko case I drove Michael uptown to the Tremont section of the Bronx to meet an informant. The whole area was deserted and looked like it had been bombed. Most of the buildings were dark, roofless shells. I knew from the neighborhood it would be one of his secret meetings. Michael told me to wait in the car while he met the informant on a dark street corner.

  I watched in the rearview mirror as the two men met in the shadows of the streetlight and I remembered the two promises Michael had made to Stuckey, “This will be your last case and you will not have to testify.” I could see Michael talking and smoking a cigarette. I watched the bouncing little orange dot as he laughed and waved his arms. The other man kept pulling at his mouth; he was sucking a lollipop.

  FIRST CASE

  The dinners at the Heidelberg remained confusing to me, and yet, in hindsight, they should have been the easiest to understand and explain to Daisy. The meetings were discussions about what was true or false, which lies should be believed, who could be trusted, and how much support should be given to active cases being conducted by the Bureau. At various times, agents argued who should or should not be reported as the source of information. I knew these decisions meant life or death to someone in the street. Pike and the other supervisors didn’t really care about the safety of the agents and were too dumb to control complex investigations. I understood what Turko meant when he said, “Take the small fish, that’s our understanding.” In order for 90 Church to survive as a government agency each group had to make at least five cases each month. It was easy to make the cases against junkies. The Mafia would not retaliate against the agents as long as we just took the “small fish.” It was easy to understand why the agents needed to conspire amongst themselves to plan cases. But there was also a conspiracy within a conspiracy. Sometimes, like the Stuckey case, things appeared simple but were not.

  To Daisy, the meetings seemed just a waste of time, a place to complain about the job and work up enough courage to be disrespectful and disloyal to Blanker, Pike, and the other Bureau supervisors.

  Daisy came to accept the late hours, the smell of booze, and my growing fits of depression. But she still wondered why the Bureau would tolerate people like Dewey who did nothing except bet on sports, and why no one could see that Michael was an alcoholic. I twisted my stories to convince Daisy that everything was as it should be, and that I had finally become a federal agent fulfilling my lifetime dream of fighting for truth, justice and the American way. For a while, at least, she was proud of me. But I knew, sooner or later, she would not understand.

  About a month after busting Lewis Turko I went into one of the interrogation rooms. When I turned the light on, I saw a man standing in the corner. “Leave the lights off, asshole, and get out.” He was very handsome, dressed in a plaid suit with patent-leather shoes and an open silk shirt. He stared through the darkness at me like a nocturnal animal.

  Michael said, “That’s Danny Cupp. You don’t want to recognize him in the street.” Danny had a reputation as a skilled informant. I’d seen his name in many reports, including being a source of information on Turko.

  I wanted to be part of the war, work with people like Danny Cupp. That night I asked Michael to help me become an undercover agent. He laughed. “No, you don’t. Booze, money, and women will get you. You don’t want to die that way. You think it’s dangerous in the street, with people shooting at you? You don’t know what real danger is. There are worse ways of dying than from a bullet.”

  I didn’t understand. “I’ll take my chances. I want to work undercover.”

  Later that evening Michael and I were driving uptown on the East Side of Manhattan. He told me to pull over to let him out. “Give me your gun and your credentials.” He said.

  Not knowing why, I handed them over. Then Michael dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “You want to become an undercover agent? Okay. Here we go. You’ll do exactly as I say.” He counted out five hundred dollars and stuffed it into my coat pocket.

  “I want you to go out and make a case. I want you to find a drug dealer and I want you to get him to sell you heroin or cocaine, no pot. It’s very simple. Take this money and go into those bars and spend it. Spend every dime of it before you go home tonight; don’t go home until you spend it all. Do not buy transportation, do not buy food, do not buy any tangible product. This money must be spent on booze and fucking women, or whatever it takes to find a dealer.”

  I looked at him. “What if I don’t find anybody tonight?”

  Michael smiled. “Every night from now on – with the exception of Sunday – I’m going to drive you to this corner and give you five hundred dollars and you’re going to spend it just like you are tonight, until you find a dealer or he finds you. Or you die a drunk. Or you give up and quit. Now get out.”

  That night and for the next two nights I went to places like Friday’s, The Dove, or Maxwell Plum’s, but they were filled with people just having fun, young ambitious executives and pretty girls with hang-ups about food and the stars. I would buy them a drink and they would buy me a round. Nothing happened except that I got drunk and made a lot of innocent, nice friends. Finally, I found a place called the El Hambra. The people at the bar had droopy eyes and looked at me with suspicion. I bought everyone a round and no one returned the favor. I knew I was in the right place. I closed the bar down and then someone took me to an after-hours club. By five in the morning, I had spent the five hundred dollars and was so drunk I couldn’t stand up. I was lucky to get home, but I had made progress and planned to return.

  I was thankful that the next day was Sunday. Daisy had planned to take our son, Mark, to Candlestick Lake Park about fifty miles north of the city. She had talked about this picnic for a week. We had the usual hotdogs, chips, blankets, and a grill. Daisy found a grassy picnic area next to the lake. I was so h
ung over that the drive from the city exhausted me. Daisy played with Mark while I lay on a blanket, trying to fall asleep, but the world kept spinning around every time I closed my eyes. By noon Daisy had cooked the hotdogs and prepared lunch, but I had no appetite. Mark gave up trying to play with me and I finally fell asleep.

  A commotion, and Daisy screaming, “My God, no!” woke me up. Mark had slipped off the bank and fallen into the lake. I tried to get up, but I was too dizzy so Daisy had jumped in after him. The water was only waist-deep near the shore. By the time I staggered to the edge of the water, Daisy had Mark in her arms and was wading up through the mud. She got to the shore and I helped them back to the blanket. Mark was fine, he was just shaken up and crying. Daisy was covered with mud. She had lost a shoe. She sat on the blanket, holding Mark and staring at me.

  Then she began to cry, which also made Mark cry louder. “You don’t give a shit about us. You’re too drunk to save your own son. You think you’re a big-shot undercover agent. We’re just in the grandstands to your work and in the cheap seats.”

  My hangover was so bad that I couldn’t say anything back. After a while they both stopped crying and Daisy just looked at me with a cold stare. Then she said, “There’s no room anymore for Mark and me is there? What’s in your mind right now? Drug dealers, Michael, Dewey? Tell me, because it’s not us.”

  “No, that’s not true. You’re all I think about.”

  The lie stunned her. She began packing up everything and stuffing the bags and grill in the car. On the way home she never said a word. She just sat in the car with the mud drying on her legs and looked out the window. I did care, but she was right; I wasn’t thinking about my family.

  I kept thinking about the El Hambra bar. I was thinking how I would show Michael and all of them I could be like Danny Cupp. I would show Michael and all of them I could do it. They’d forget about how I had pissed my pants. I was not going to be the office joke forever.

  * * *

  On Monday night Michael drove me to the same corner, counted out another five hundred dollars and told me to get out. Normally, I drank vodka and 7-Up, but after a while the sweet soda made me sick, so I just drank straight vodka. After two more nights of this, with no luck in meeting a drug dealer, I was thrown out of the El Hambra. I had laid my head on the bar and fallen asleep.

  I was already known as a big spender so the next night they let me back in. I made a friend, Elliott Goldstein, a talkative young advertising executive. He was involved with a girl who lived in the area and made friends easily. Elliott kept visiting the men’s room. We had a good conversation and I kept buying him drinks. We talked about sports, girls, booze, work, everything.

  Finally, he said, “Do you want a line?”

  I knew what he was talking about. “Yes.”

  He reached into his pocket and slid a small glassine envelope across the bar. “Here. This is for you.”

  I went into the men’s room, but put the envelope in my pocket and came back, pretending to wipe my nose. “Thanks, Elliott.”

  The next morning I gave Michael the envelope. “See, I made my first case.”

  “You idiot, he gave you the drugs! You’re as guilty as he is. You’re supposed to buy the drugs. You didn’t give him any money.”

  The next night Elliott introduced me to his assistant, who introduced me to one of her girlfriends from the same ad agency: her name was Ricky, a redhead with brown freckles, very pretty. Her whole personality seemed calculated to please me. She had no opinion or desire of her own. Ricky was like a bowl of peanuts on the bar – help yourself, they’re free, no obligation. It was the first time I cheated on Daisy. It wasn’t easy or fun. I didn’t love Ricky. I was on the job. It didn’t seem to count. Like a lot of things going on in my life, I buried the guilt by justifying it as part of the war on drugs. The four of us partied for the next two nights. I bought the drinks and Elliott gave everyone coke to snort. I would go in the men’s room and pretend to use it. I was actually having a good time.

  On the second night I asked Elliott, “Where do you get the snort? I can’t let you keep giving them to me for free. Let me buy some.”

  “I’ve got a friend in Queens, he owns an Italian restaurant. Well, it’s really a pizza parlor. He says he knows John Ormento, the mob guy. But, look, no way am I gonna sell you nose candy. I’ll give it to you, but I’m not going to take your money. I’m not a dealer, just an ad exec.”

  “Then this party is gonna have to stop. Come on, be a friend and let me pay for some.”

  I spent one thousand dollars on the first buy. Elliott said he had never done anything like this, and took no profit. We all partied on. We went to the Tropicana and Basin Street, and I picked up every tab. Finally, I persuaded Elliott to sell me two ounces of coke for two thousand dollars. Again, he said he hated doing it but he would do it for me and make no profit; after all, I was his friend.

  Two nights later, Dewey Paris and agent Johnny Greenway conducted surveillance while I paid the money to Elliott. I felt pretty good about myself. I gave the evidence to Dewey and said, “My reward for making this case will be that I can stop drinking myself into a stupor every night.”

  Dewey laughed. “This is bullshit. This is training. This is not a major case. This guy is a meatball. We can’t use him; he’s a waste of time. Michael will give him to Pike to play with.”

  “He’s going to lead us to someone big, I know it. His connection owns a pizza parlor in Queens. This could be a big case.” I wasn’t going to let Dewey or anyone else take away my accomplishment. “Everyone has to start some place.” I began to think that Dewey, who had never made a case, might be jealous, Elliott was a drug dealer, and I was making truth out of all the lies I had been telling Daisy.

  In the office the next day, Michael typed out the report with the fastest two-finger pecking I had ever seen. It said that I drank no liquor of any kind during the investigation and the purchase of drugs by government funds was for the first buy and $5,500 for the second buy. I signed the report even though the first buy was only $1,000 and the second was $2,000. What difference did it make? Selling coke is illegal; price has nothing to do with the crime. I compared all the money Michael had given me and the real cost of the coke that I bought from Elliott, and it matched. My travel expenses were the maximum $20 a day and I was issued a government check for $160. Why not cover my liquor expenses by inflating the cost of the drugs? It all seemed to make sense.

  Weeks later, as I passed one of the interrogation rooms, I saw someone I thought I recognized; I wasn’t sure at first because his face was misshapen, puffy, round, and red. There was blood trickling from the side of his mouth. It was Elliott, sitting in the dark. Pike had beaten him. Elliott was now an informant. His advertising job was now a hobby; his real job was to find the dealer uptown who sold him the drugs and to turn him over – and that would only be the beginning. Pike wanted Elliott back on the street, doing drugs and finding drug dealers. Elliott just looked at me with a blank, unbelieving stare. I walked away from a man who had only wanted to be my friend.

  A LESSON

  My progress did not impress Agent Michael Giovanni. He asked me if I had second thoughts about continuing to be an undercover agent. I didn’t. Then I asked Michael if he had put any other agent through this $500-a-night routine to find a drug dealer.

  “Yes. Dewey, but he only lasted one night.” Michael laughed. “That son of a bitch Dewey, he took the five hundred dollars and gave two hundred to the beat cop to help him find a dealer. Then he bought a hundred dollars’ worth of coke and gave the cop the collar! Then the son of a bitch pocketed the rest of the money and went home. You can’t trust that Dewey, you can’t train him either, he’s very tricky.” Michael began laughing even harder. “He went undercover and got himself a drug dealer in about two hours and stole my money.”

  My training continued a few days later when Michael took me to a dry-cleaning shop in Harlem to buy clothes. He wanted me to look like a drug
dealer. The clerk waved us on into the back room. Michael asked my size and picked out four suits, all of them shiny mohair, black or gray, all dark colors. I put one of them on, along with a bright shirt, no tie, and my wing-tipped shoes. I looked ridiculous. Michael dug into his pocket and paid five one-hundred-dollar bills for everything and we left.

  As we walked to the car Michael looked at me. “Well, you’re almost there. Let me tell you a few things. You must look at people. Look at them hard. Never talk first, never interrupt. Let them talk; find out what they have to say. Look at their eyes, but never in their eyes, or you’ll get fooled. Do they stare back at you, or look down like a liar? Look at their hands, their fingernails. They’ll tell you if they’re self-confident. Truly dangerous people are always self-confident. Their hair and what they’re wearing will tell you if they believe in their own future or if they’re just a stupid junkie on their way to hell. You can always tell when a man is carrying a gun just by looking down at his pant cuffs and his shoes. If he’s wearing a gun, one pant leg will droop more than the other. Not one thing, but many things together, will tell you if a man is lying. You must be able to feel if someone’s lying to you. After a while you’ll know. Knowing when people are lying will help you to lie better. Never be afraid to lie, it’s what you do. Lie all the time; lie to everybody, it’s good practice. Truth is not important. Your lies are your reality and the world you live in. The most important thing to remember is that criminals think the worst about everything and everybody. They think everyone is just as bad as they are and out to get them. If you remember this you can always outsmart them.

  “Another thing, carry lots of cash – flash it, show it off. Someday it will save your life, because people don’t think straight when greed sets in. Greed makes them forget all the things that are important – like not getting caught.” Then he chuckled. “But soon you will learn that money will have no value to you. Spending your life trying to get money is silly.”