90 Church Page 7

  Then he got serious again and said, “One other thing, very important: dangerous people always smile when they talk about serious things. Never, ever trust a smiling face; it could cost you your life someday.” He rubbed his chin. “Dewey smiles, doesn’t he? But Dewey is a psychotic killer. That’s why he smiles. You must do everything he tells you to do if you want to stay alive.”

  TRUST

  It was now winter again. I had been an agent at 90 Church for more than a year and a half. I got a thousand-dollar raise, which was less than an ounce of heroin cost and what was spent every night on our junkie cases. Pike told me to work with a hippie-turned-drug-dealer. His name was Calvin. One of his customers turned him into the Bureau. Cleophus “Cleo” Brown, a black undercover agent, bought two ounces of heroin from Calvin. He was not really considered a major dealer so we turned him into an informant. At first he was afraid, but I touched his forehead to mine, hugged him, and looked straight into his eyes and said, “I will protect you.” I won his confidence and we made our plans.

  My first question to Calvin was who was his source? His answer stunned me; it was Pepper’s connection, Mars La Pont. We met Mars the next afternoon, at a dark, quiet bar in the Village, not far from Pepper’s apartment. Calvin told Mars I had spent time with him in the West Street penitentiary and was his new partner. It took a few minutes, but Mars remembered me and Maureen. He smiled, “Oh yeah, pretty, pretty woman, Scarsdale. We made her dance and crawl. Starbuck bought her from Pepper, made her work for her dope.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked.

  “She cut Starbuck then she do herself. Too bad, good cunt, good money.”

  Mars seemed okay with me at first then got skeptical as we began negotiating for a buy of heroin. He said he had also been in West Street too and remembered the never-ending choice of either potato salad or coleslaw. It was either potato salad or coleslaw at every meal, even breakfast. I laughed and agreed. I could feel the friendship and connection with Mars. This was my second undercover buy and I was good at it and getting better. Mars said he would make arrangements to deliver an ounce of heroin for three thousand dollars. He told me to meet him at Calvin’s apartment the next day at four o’clock. I agreed, and said I would bring the money. I felt good about the deal and was going to get revenge for Maureen by sending Mars La Pont to jail.

  It was extremely cold in New York that week. That afternoon Daisy had called and said there wasn’t enough heat in our apartment, so I went home early to buy an electric heater and look after her and Mark. Daisy was pleased that I came home and it broke a period of silence between us. At about 8:00 that evening Calvin left a telephone message for me, saying Mars La Pont wanted to talk to him and that I should call him back. He wanted me to be there at the meeting. I was too busy trying to repair my relationship with Daisy to return his call.

  The next morning, I picked Michael up and told him how well things went the day before. Today I would be making a buy of heroin. I told him about Mars La Pont’s initial suspicion but then us bonding over choosing either the potato salad or coleslaw while in jail. Michael turned to me and said, “Three meals a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, West Street Penitentiary serves potato salad. No coleslaw ever. No choice.”

  I tried to call Calvin, but there was no answer. Finally, around noon, Dewey and I went to his apartment. No one answered the door, but Dewey slipped the lock with a special hook made from a putty knife. I searched the apartment while Dewey went to the kitchen to find something to eat.

  I found Calvin outside on the fire escape; they had taped his wrists spread-eagle on the steel railing. Something was stuffed in his mouth and covered with tape. They had ripped his shirt and pants off and pulled his underpants down around his ankles. Bound to the railing, cold and naked, they had thrown water on him. My innocent hippie friend who trusted me sat in a pool of gray ice frozen blue. His wide blank eyes stared at me. Dewey climbed out through the window, eating from a box of cookies, and said, “Jesus Christ, what a way to go. He’s a fucking popsicle. It must have taken him hours.”

  I just stared back into Calvin’s eyes. I had never seen a look like that before, a blank dark stare. This was my fault; he was dead because of me. I said I would protect him. I told Dewey I would get Mars for this. “How could they do this to someone?” I asked. “How can we just do nothing?”

  “Well,” Dewey replied, “just think what you were planning to do to Mars.”

  No one cared about Calvin, or the smiling Mars La Pont, but I did. There was death, misery, and shooting every day. I had tried to ignore it since my first day on the job. I was too worried about fitting in, trying to be an agent. Everyone knew Calvin’s death was not my fault – and after all, it was part of being a narcotics agent. But the next day in the office I asked Michael for his help. I wanted to get Mars La Pont.

  “Why him?” Michael asked.

  “Because he killed my friend and sells dope to innocent people.”

  Dewey roared with laughter, Michael rolled his eyes and said, “To each in their own time.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THINGS ARE LOOKING UP

  LISA MARIE

  Spring came early and I had been an agent for almost two years. Every night I made small buys of heroin from junkies, which did nothing to stop the flow of drugs into New York City, but it did give the Bureau an acceptable case count to justify its existence.

  Daisy didn’t know what to think of my new clothes and renewed confidence. In fact, I had even developed a routine. At least two nights a week I would be home for dinner. The rest of the week she knew to expect me home very late and drunk.

  Mark turned four and we had a party for him: balloons, little friends and a big white cake. It was all terrific, but somehow I felt like a guest. I sat and watched, not really part of anything.

  I had not made a major case on my own. My first encounter with Mars and snorting a line of cocaine was an insignificant memory. My real passion was to bring Mars La Pont to justice for killing Calvin. It turned my desire into an obsession.

  From conversations overheard in the office I knew that some of the agents had an ongoing poker game somewhere in Queens. One night Dewey asked me if I wanted to play. I told him I wasn’t very good at cards, but would like to go anyway. He said that the game was always played at the “clinic.”

  I assumed that the clinic was a medical facility; instead we drove up to a house in Forest Park, Queens. I recognized Michael’s white Mercedes parked on the street.

  “This is a clinic?” I asked. “It looks like a house to me.”

  “It’s a clinic,” Dewey insisted. “It’s the Bureau’s clinic. It’s a medical rehabilitation facility for addicts.”

  “From what I’ve seen at 90 Church, a morgue would be the closest thing to a medical clinic that the Bureau would run for addicts.”

  This made Dewey laugh as we walked up the front steps and entered the two-story house. The inside foyer was completely dark but I could see a light coming from a room off to the left down a hallway. As we walked I heard the rattle of chains. I heard someone call my name in a friendly tone: “Hi, how are you. I’m so glad you came.”

  Out of the darkness appeared a figure and the sound of chains being dragged on the floor. In the dim light I could see a face covered with long horrible scratches. I stared into the bloody face – and recognized Pepper, the Puerto Rican I stayed with in Greenwich Village to learn about drugs. He extended his left hand to me. His handshake was cold and wet. His right hand was handcuffed to a chain, which was locked to a radiator on the far side of the room. Through the darkness I could see an old couch and a small bathroom in back. From the way he looked Pepper had been chained there for days.

  Michael, Silkey, and a stranger sat around a card table in a room further down the hall. A baseball game on TV created a weird, ordinary, background noise. The stranger had a pale, unshaven face, long teeth with a pointed chin, and scraggly hair. Despite his unkem
pt personal appearance he was wearing a starched dress shirt with a bright silk tie. Dewey introduced him as Kyle, a police detective from the Queens precinct. He was also a member of an elite Task Force investigating organized crime. He looked like a huge rat posing as a human by wearing a shirt and tie.

  Pepper could stretch his chain to watch the game as he sat on the floor. As we played cards and laughed, Dewey would yell out to Pepper, “Talk to me, baby, talk, or you’ll spend the next two weeks right where you are. No candy for you unless you’re good. You love candy, don’t you? Tell me you love it. Talk to me.”

  Now I understood the clinic. While the agents played cards they’d ask Pepper questions, then look at each other for a consensus on the value of the information. Pepper knew the only way to go back on the street to his precious fix was to provide enough information to buy his release, and every day without his heroin his torture grew worse.

  Pepper rambled on about his drug connections and old news that was of no interest to anyone. Then he began listing the names of his customers. Every once in a while Kyle or Silkey would stop him and ask him to talk more about one of his junkie friends. Finally Pepper pulled taut on the chain and lay in the floor in a fetal position. The game and the jokes around the table continued while he lay on the floor, crying like a baby and scratching himself bloody. Accustomed as I was becoming to life on the street, the oddity and the pitiful sounds of excruciating pain coming from the other room – from someone I knew – unnerved me.

  Eventually Pepper started to talk about a female junkie. She had her own money, dressed well, and drove a new car. Still no one showed any interest, even when Pepper said he thought she had mob friends.

  Finally Michael said, “What’s her name, Pepper? What’s her name?”

  “Her name is Scalopinni. Lisa Marie Scalopinni. No, wait, maybe it was Scarluci.”

  Everyone froze. Kyle looked at Michael and Dewey. Dewey laid his cards on the table, got up and walked into another room. I knew he was calling the office to talk to one of his file clerks. He came back within a couple of minutes.

  The card game continued. Pepper crawled off to a dark corner and I could hear him crying softly and thumping his head against the wall.

  Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. Dewey left the table to answer it. When he returned, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. He unlocked Pepper’s handcuffs. Then he went over to a wall cabinet, opened up a drawer and handed Pepper a manila envelope. Pepper’s hands were shaking and covered with blood as he tore it open and dumped the contents on the table: a knife, wallet, money, and several bags of heroin. There was also an eyeglass case. I knew it contained needles and drug paraphernalia. Pepper grabbed it first, still on his hands and knees, and crawled to the bathroom and closed the door.

  After about ten minutes he came out, walked down the hallway and out the front door without saying a word, like nothing had ever happened.

  The moment Pepper walked out the door, the card game was over. Kyle, Silkey, and Michael looked at Dewey. Finally Kyle said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

  Dewey shook his head and stared down at the table. “It’s Domenic’s kid. It’s his daughter.”

  Michael looked at me and said, “Tomorrow morning you’re moving back in with Pepper.” Everyone around the table laughed – except Kyle, who didn’t understand the humor.

  Dewey looked at Michael and said, “What do you want to do here?”

  Michael rubbed his chin, “We need to think this out. The first step is that Pepper has to get a new drug connection.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “And here it is.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about; they all smiled and chuckled.

  Michael went on. “You’re the new drug connection. Move in with Pepper. Let him introduce you as his connection. You’re going to be a drug dealer. Lisa Marie is a junkie. She betrays everybody. Let nature take its course. She’ll betray Pepper and want to deal directly with you” – he extended his hand like a claw and snapped it closed in a tight fist – “then we’ll have her. With her we’ll have the old man. My God, Domenic moves millions of dollars in drugs each year. He is part of the Magaddino family.”

  Dewey said, “We need a gypsy.”

  “Yes, we need a gypsy,” Michael agreed, “and with her we can even get papers. This could go big. We have to go on record as soon as possible. There will be no deals.”

  On the way home, I was too embarrassed to ask about the “gypsy” but Dewey explained that the clinic was a house seized by the government in a drug case years ago. Not only was it a good place to play poker, it was also a safe house to hide people. He said, “It’s a good place for junkies to talk, particularly when they’ve been ‘rehabilitating’ for a few days. You’d be surprised what you can learn. I think it does them good to be away from the street and drugs. Don’t you?”

  In my mind’s eye I could still see Pepper’s bloody face ripped open by his own fingernails. I wondered how many other junkie informants had been “rehabilitated” at the clinic.

  After explaining the case to Daisy and promising to call every night I moved into Pepper’s Village apartment the next day.

  Like clockwork, that afternoon Lisa Marie called and wanted to make a score. Pepper told her he didn’t have any drugs but that he was going to meet his connection in Midtown. Lisa Marie said she wanted to meet his drug source and score before everything got sold off to other customers.

  That evening I met Pepper and Lisa Marie Scarluci in an upscale bar in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Her appearance was not what I had expected. Thin and rather homely, her long nose had a crook at the top like many ethnic Italians. She let us know she had her father’s affection. Lisa Marie had only one fault: she loved to party. She had progressed from pot to cocaine and now to heroin. Her drug habit embarrassed her to the point that she scored from Pepper, rather than getting it from anyone in her father’s circle, to keep it secret from her family.

  For the next two weeks Dewey instructed me on exactly what to say to Lisa Marie when Pepper and I met with her, usually two or three times a week. At first I told her that I was living in Baltimore but staying with Pepper for a month or so. Then I told her I respected her father even though I really had no idea who he was. I said someday I hoped I’d do business with her family. Just as Michael had predicted, Lisa Marie Scarluci eventually betrayed Pepper and told me not bring him to our meetings. Lisa Marie was lying. Pepper was lying. Dewey was lying. I was lying. There was no room for the truth anywhere and it was all going to get worse.

  MOON

  Domenic Scarluci was the topic at the next dinner meeting at the Heidelberg. Not only did he control a huge drug operation, he also ran numbers, prostitution, hijacking and murder for hire. He lived in Queens, as did many of the other Mafia families. His three-story house was walled in with tight security, and he had good relations with the local police to ensure his security and privacy.

  The Scarlucis were very close to the Charles Moon family, another Mafia group, who sold heroin supplied by Domenic Scarluci. Charles Moon had a son, Bobby, who did most of the legwork for his father. Bobby Moon was a childhood friend of Lisa Marie’s, and provided security for the drug deals. Bobby had killed at least eight people for the Columbo family. He was a gun for hire and his family was proud of him.

  Dewey presented the case. His background information on the Scarluci and Moon families was very professional, with files, family trees, enlarged photographs, and copies of earlier surveillance reports. Dewey even had the dinner catered by the Crescent Moon Café on Broome Street in lower Manhattan, a restaurant owned by the Moon family.

  Dewey explained that in the first phase of the operation I would continue to develop a relationship with Lisa Marie, and Kyle would get a gypsy into Scarluci’s home.

  I soon found out what a gypsy was when Dewey placed a metal container about the size of a cigar box on the table. It was a small tape recorder with a sound-activated microph
one that could record conversations in a room, and on the telephone line. Once installed, you could call the phone number that was being tapped and activate the machine so that it rewound and played two hours of its contents back over the phone at a high speed in a matter of minutes. The receiving tape recorder would then be played at a slower speed so it could be understood. It was simple, brilliant and cheap to make, but crude compared to the equipment used by the FBI and CIA. It was called a gypsy because it was illegal. If the Bureau had to explain where it got its information the agents would have to claim that it came from an informant who was a ‘gypsy’ and could not be located to testify.

  Michael ended the dinner presentation by warning everyone that, except for Kyle, we could not trust the NYPD. Furthermore, the case was confidential and not to be discussed with anyone at 90 Church until we had a plan of action. Once we had information from the illegal gypsy we could use it as probable cause to obtain a legal warrant. Lisa Marie would be the major source of information.

  Getting the gypsy placed at Scarluci’s home was easy, but a little brutal. Dewey set up 24-hour surveillance at Domenic’s home. We soon learned that there was a live-in maid so the house was almost always occupied. The only exception was twice a week when she left the house to do grocery shopping.

  A few days later, the maid, an elderly woman, was mugged on her way to the grocery store. She was taken to the Queens precinct to look at photographs of possible suspects. While she was there the police found her purse in a dumpster several blocks away from where she was robbed. Kyle personally returned the purse and apologized for the loss of her cash, and her black eye. However, everything else was still in the purse – keys, wallet, etc.