Mob Rules

by Marc Rainer

“Have a good trip home, Vic.”

  Beretta sat back down to finish his drink. He weighed his options, then decided to start at a high limits blackjack table.

  I’ll try my luck in there first, then back down to the 100% video poker machines if I start losing at the table.

  Gainesville, Texas

  “He just checked in,” Jose Velasco said into his cell phone. He kept an eye on the motel room door from his car, parked in a slot down the row in the motel parking lot. “How soon can we get the plane up in case he wants to leave tonight?”

  “Shouldn’t take very long,” Foote replied. “Airport’s not far off. If he leaves, we make the call and they get airborne. They’ve got a monitor in the plane for the GPS on the Camry just like the one we have in the car.”

  “I’ll leave the monitor on for the GPS on his truck, just in case, and I’ll turn our other laptop on for the one in the Camry,” Velasco said. “You still at the other motel?”

  “Yeah,” Foote said. “Where else would I be?”

  “Dunno. Thought you might’ve headed for that fast-food chicken joint.”

  “I do have some regard for our relationship, Jose. I don’t want to have to hit every rest stop between here and KC. Swing by and pick me up after you see him leave. I’ll be ready to go.”

  Velasco was about to end the call when he saw Tyler P. Cannon, IV, come out of the motel and get into the Camry.

  “Be ready now, amigo,” Velasco said. “We’re rolling.”

  Kansas City, Missouri

  “We already got lucky,” Trask said. He and Cam Turner sat in the chairs in front of J.P. Barrett’s desk.

  “How’s that?” the U.S. Attorney asked.

  “We just got off the phone with Foote and Velasco. We were all expecting Cannon to head up I-35 to Wichita and then into Kansas City. Our problem with that route would have been deciding where to pull him over. If we did it on the Kansas side, you’d have some calls to make to your counterpart in Topeka, and—if the District of Kansas wanted to play in our sandbox—that could slow everything down. If we waited until he hit the Missouri line on I-70, everything would be very visible. Any traffic stop we made would have been right in the heart of the metro with thousands of vehicles passing our subject. Odds of a leak getting to our other targets would have been huge.”

  “Where is he going, Jeff? You know my concerns about that dope getting away from us.” Barrett was up and standing, starting to do his nervous walk by the window.

  “He turned east on I-44 instead. If he’s still headed this way—and we have no reason to believe otherwise—then he’ll be turning north on 71 after he gets to Joplin. There are a hundred miles or more of rural, lightly-traveled road between Joplin and our metro. We plan to have the Highway Patrol pull him over in an appropriate spot. We’ll be heading that way shortly to minimize the holding time on Cannon while we try and spin him. We have a proffer letter prepared and ready for him to sign. If he does the smart thing, we can do a controlled delivery to his customer here—probably Collavito—without any suspicious delays.”

  “What if he has customers in Joplin? Why would he go there instead of just staying on the interstate?” Barrett was still staring at the river.

  “Maybe he’s varying his route because that’s the smart thing to do. Maybe he’s just sick of running up and down I-35. Who knows? At any rate, we have the plane in the air, and Foote and Velasco on the ground tailing him. They’re both tracking the GPS on his Camry. The plane will stay in visual contact to let the chase car know if he so much as shakes anyone’s hand at a gas station. It’s not a perfect situation—nothing is—but it’s as tight a surveillance noose as we can pull around him without getting burned.”

  “Okay.” Barrett turned away from the window, and Trask felt himself relax along with his boss.

  “Mike Furay and Tommy Land are going south with us,” Trask continued. “They’re bringing a couple of chem suits, just to make sure nobody gets contaminated with fentanyl.”

  “Good,” Barrett sat back down behind his desk. “Be your most persuasive self, Jeff. Let’s spin this guy and put a lid on this.”

  Trask and Cam piled into the back seat of Furay’s car when it pulled to the curb in front of the courthouse. Sgt. Tommy Land was riding shotgun. They headed eastward on I-70 a few minutes before turning south on U.S. 71.

  Cam pulled a road map out of his briefcase and began to study it.

  “You lost already, Cam?” Land asked. “We’re not even out of town yet.”

  “No, smartass, I’m trying to figure the best spot on 71 Highway to do this little dance,” Turner shot back. “Jeff doesn’t know the area that well yet.”

  “I know one thing,” Trask said. “I’ve been all over this country, and I’ve never heard anybody else, anywhere else, call a road, ’71 Highway.’ It seems to be something limited to this area. Why isn’t it ‘Highway 71’ like everywhere else in America?”

  “You’re in Missouri, not America,” Land quipped.

  “Damn,” Trask said. “I told the Attorney General when I was leaving D.C. that I wanted to go back to America.”

  “Maybe next time, hero,” Cam said, still looking at the map. “I think this looks good. Right here, north of Na-vay-da and El Do-ray-do Springs.”

  “What? Spell those,” Trask requested.

  “N-e-v-a-d-a, and El D-o-r-a-d-o Springs,” Turner said.

  “So, it’s not ‘Nevada’ and ‘El Dorado;’ it’s ‘Na-VAY-da’ and ‘El Do-RAY-do?’ Trask asked.

  “Exactly,” Cam answered. “They’re near a town named after the great South American freedom fighter, SY-mon BOL-iver.”

  “Oh my God!” Trask exclaimed. “I never heard of that guy, and I was a history major.”

  “I told you it wasn’t America,” Land said.

  “Across the state, in the boot heel, we have ‘New MAD-drid,’” Cam said, “named after the capital city of Spain.”

  “I’d at least heard of that one,” Trask said, shaking his head.

  “Good. My personal favorite is a little burg over in Osage County,” Cam continued. “It’s spelled ‘C-h-a-m-o-i-s,’ like the town in France or the towel you use to dry your car, but—”

  “But—?” Trask asked.

  “We Missouri natives know that the correct pronunciation of the name of the town is ‘Sham-wize,’” Cam replied.

  “Jesus,” Trask said.

  “Welcome to Missouri,” Furay said.

  “So how far away are we from those places, and where’s our boy Cannon?” Trask asked.

  “We should get to our chosen location about five minutes after a Trooper of the Missouri Highway Patrol pulls Mr. Cannon over for a serious infraction of the state driving laws,” Land said from the front seat. “Troop A—you’ve seen their headquarters in Lee’s Summit—covers that area as well, and they have agreed to assist us.”

  “What’s the infraction?” Trask asked.

  “The trooper will think of something,” Land answered. “I meant, of course, that he would see something.”

  “Of course,” Trask said, nodding.

  About forty-five minutes later, Land answered his cell phone. After a brief conversation, he turned to brief the passengers in the back seat.

  “That was John Foote. A trooper in an unmarked car lit up Cannon about 30 miles north of Nevada. That’s ‘Na-VAY-da,’ Jeff. The trooper pulled him over for speeding. They brought a dope dog up and it alerted on the Camry. They pulled out four kilos of heroin from a compartment hidden in the dashboard behind the glove box. Foote and Velasco caught up to them during the dog search. They took Cannon and his car to a motel on 71. That’s ‘71-Highway,’ Jeff. They’re waiting for us there now. Room 114. We should be there in about twenty.”

  “I hope he doesn’t lawyer up in the meantime,” Trask said.

  “Foote said that they told Cannon to sit still and shut up until we got there, and that we had something he would want to hear before he made any decisions,” Lan
d responded.

  Adrian, Missouri

  Trask entered the motel room, followed by Cam and the others. Cannon was sitting in a wooden chair by a small table. His left wrist was cuffed to one of the table legs. John Foote stood behind Cannon, and Jose Velasco was sitting on the bed.

  “Tyler Cannon, meet Assistant United States Attorney Cam Turner, Supervisory Special Agent Mike Furay, Sgt. Tommy Land of the Kansas City, Missouri, Police, and Jeff Trask, the lead prosecutor in your case,” Foote said.

  Trask just nodded in Cannon’s direction.

  “This is really some bullshit,” Cannon said.

  “Why would you say that?” Trask asked.

  “You guys had me targeted. I was only doin’ five over. That’s usually safe. Nobody gets stopped for five over.”

  “Actually, people get stopped for that all the time,” Trask said. “It even happened to me fairly recently. At any rate, the trooper had you dead to rights on his radar gun, it’s a good stop, and a good search. We’re going to read you your rights now. After that—before you say anything or decide anything—we’re going to show you some pictures, and some other things. After you’ve seen everything, you can decide what you want to do. Fair enough?”

  “Why not?” Cannon asked, trying to raise his palms up to the ceiling. The left one stopped half way up, snagging the top of the table leg with the handcuff chain.

  “Good.” Trask nodded approvingly.

  Trask opened his briefcase and pulled out a series of 8x10 prints. The first was a shot of Cannon standing beside his pickup in the parking lot behind McElhaney’s. He was handing a small duffel bag to Little Dom Silvestri. Trask turned the photo on the table so that Cannon could see it right-side-up.

  “People have been watching you for months, Mr. Cannon,” Trask said. “Months. You can see that this photo—and several others I have to show you—are all date and time stamped.”

  I don’t have to mention at this point that the person watching on that day and time was Marylou Monaco, Trask said to himself.

  He read Cannon’s face and eyes. Cannon’s forehead creased just enough for an instant to let Trask know that the first shot had found its mark. Cannon’s eyes then steeled.

  Here it comes, the tough guy, Trask thought.

  “So what? So I know Dom Silvestri. That means nothing.”

  Trask sat back on the edge of the bed and looked at Cannon before shifting his gaze to Foote.

  “We find four kilos of heroin in this guy’s car, we know he’s been dumping the stuff to Little Dom for months, and we get ‘so, what?’” Trask smiled calmly at Cannon. “Time for an educational seminar.”

  Trask opened a copy of a thick, paperback statute book. He turned to a page pre-marked with a post-it note, put the book on the table, and spun it so that Cannon could read it.

  “Your picture isn’t on that page, Mr. Cannon, but it might as well be. If you’ll take a look at the highlighted language there, you’ll find that it describes you pretty well. For starters, if you had possessed or distributed just one kilo of heroin, you’d be facing not less than ten years in the federal pen. When the book uses the language ‘not less than,’ that’s what we call a mandatory minimum. That means that even if you draw the softest federal judge on the planet, under the facts of your case, that judge would have no choice but to give you ten years.”

  “If I was convicted,” Cannon said.

  “When you are convicted,” Trask corrected him. “The conviction rate in federal court is pretty far north of ninety percent.”

  “And Mr. Trask’s conviction rate is pretty close to one hundred percent,” Cam Turner noted.

  “Now, Cam, Mr. Cannon is thinking about some things,” Trask said. “First, he’s thinking that we might not have any heroin on hand other than what was just taken out of his car outside. He’d be wrong about that, of course, since we know who his customers have been in Kansas City, and since we’ve been buying from them on the street.”

  Trask noticed that Cannon slumped ever so slightly.

  “Second,” Trask said, “he’s still thinking that he could get our search of his car suppressed. He’d be wrong about that, too, since all the court cases dealing with these scenarios say that it doesn’t matter what we knew about him before we stopped him, as long as the reason for the stop—speeding—was legitimate. We have a freeze-frame of his car speeding, and that will be the end of that suppression motion.”

  Cannon’s gaze fell to the floor. It took several seconds for him to look up again.

  We could stop now, and we’d still have him, Trask thought. Time to ice the cake.

  “Mr. Cannon is also thinking that because he’s been doing some business in Kansas City with some real hard cases—Mafia guys like Little Dom—that maybe they’d have an out for him. Maybe they could buy a juror or two, fix the trial, that sort of thing. He’d be wrong again. This isn’t New York, and he hasn’t been dealing with Gotti.”

  The others were all nodding as if Trask was teaching them, too.

  “By the way, Mr. Cannon,” Trask said, “John Gotti himself was convicted and died in the joint.”

  “That’s riiiiiight,” Land drawled slowly, as if he’d just remembered the fact. “He sure did.”

  Cannon rolled his eyes.

  “Mr. Cannon is also thinking that tough, made guys like Little Dom would never say anything about him, and that he’d be expected to keep his mouth shut about them.”

  “That’s true,” Foote said, joining the play.

  “He’d actually be right about that,” Trask said. “Little Dom will never rat him out to anyone.”

  The apparent concession pushed Cannon off-balance. His head rolled to the side a little, and the crease re-appeared on his forehead.

  “That’s not because Little Dom is such a stand-up guy,” Trask said softly. He leaned closer to Cannon’s face. “It’s because he’s dead. His don doesn’t like his little soldiers slinging dope because it’s bad for their juice bar businesses. Us law enforcement types start tightening things up on the joints, and the Mob loses money. Fat Tony Minelli found out that Dom was selling your heroin, so he had him whacked.”

  Trask reached back into the briefcase and pulled out one of the crime scene photos from Beretta’s office at the Bottoms. The photograph showed Dominic Silvestri, Jr., lying in a pool of his own blood, his eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. An entry wound was just to the left of the left eye socket on the body, making it appear at first glance that Little Dom had three eyes instead of two.

  “Shit!” Cannon exclaimed involuntarily.

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about them shooting you,” Trask told Cannon. “Even with all the time you’ll get, they don’t allow the other inmates to have guns in federal pens. If the mob wanted you dead and you were inside, it would have to be something slower. They’d either beat you to death, strangle you, or do it with a shiv. Remember, they’d have no less than ten years, and probably more, to get that done.”

  “Are you sure about that number, Jeff?” Cam asked.

  Right on cue, partner, Trask smiled to himself.

  Trask sat upright, as if he was considering something.

  “Thank you, Cam,” Trask said. “I was about to mislead Mr. Cannon, and I wouldn’t want to do that.”

  Trask pulled the federal statute book back out from under the photos on the table. He pointed to a second highlighted section.

  “Mr. Turner was reminding me of something,” Trask said. “You see, Mr. Cannon, some of the heroin you and your partners have been selling had been laced with fentanyl. Very nasty stuff. Your dope went out on the street, people took it, and at least a couple of those users died after using it. This part of the law right here doubles the mandatory minimum sentence to twenty years if your dope killed someone. So, at best, you have to do twenty years, even though you’d probably get a lot more time than that, probably life. At worst, the mob guys who might want you dead because of the embarrassment you’ve caused them
could have twice as long to make that happen.”

  Cannon sat for more than a minute before he spoke. “What do you want?”

  Kansas City, Missouri

  “Okay, heads up.” Supervisory Special Agent Michael Furay called his conference room to order. Trask, Cam Turner, Ronnie Lincoln, Bubba Smith, Sgt. Tommy Land, Billy Graham, and Jose Velasco all looked up from the table in the center of the room, which was located on the second floor of the FBI district headquarters.

  “Here’s where we are—I think—Jeff or Cam can correct me if I’m wrong on anything. Anyway, Jeff spun our boy Tyler Cannon like a top. John Foote is babysitting him in one of our interview rooms downstairs. Cannon has agreed to make a delivery for us tonight to Sammy Collavito at his residence. We have a signed anticipatory search warrant and an arrest warrant ready to serve on Collavito. Once we see that the dope goes in with Cannon, we can execute the warrants. If the dope doesn’t go in the house for any reason, we do whatever is necessary to secure it and arrest Collavito, regardless of where he takes possession of the heroin. How am I doing so far?”

  Furay looked at Trask, who flashed him a thumps-up sign.

  “Our goal on this is kind of different,” Furay continued. “Based on what Cannon told us in the motel room down south, he’s supposed to go from here to New York—Brooklyn to be exact—where he’s supposed to drop the other half of this load. So, we want to do this deal at Collavito’s house tonight as quietly as possible, so that Collavito or his neighbors don’t get all worked up, and so that neither Sammy or anybody else has a reason to call ahead to his friends in New York and warn them. Instead of our normal show of force, we go in quietly after the dope goes in, arrest Sammy, secure the heroin, and let Jeff do his magic dance with Collavito just like he did with Cannon.”

  Furay put an aerial image of the Collavito residence on the screen behind him.

  “Bubba, you’ll take the rear of the house just in case Collavito decides to run out the back. You can park your van in the school parking lot here behind the house. It’s elevated a bit, so you should have a good view of the rear of the house over the top of this privacy fence. Cannon tells us that Sammy lives alone, so if anybody hits the back door running, it’ll be Sammy. No wife or kids to concern us this time, and since he’s expecting Cannon, we don’t think he’ll want any additional witnesses around.”