Club Kid Michael Alig had christened the Tunnel's Police Room in honor of the botched NYPD raid back in September 1995. The yellow caution tape and barricades left behind had been refashioned as decorative motifs. Stickers that read “Drug Use Will Not Be Tolerated” were stacked in such a way that the word “Not” was obscured. Gagne was impressed by Alig's creativity.
The Police Room gatekeeper was a towering drag queen named Gravity. Thin and strong, well into her thirties, Gravity was at least six feet tall barefoot, but she preferred platform heels. She always remembered Gagne and Germanowski on their return visits. Especially Gagne.
“There you are! I've been looking for you,” Gravity said one night as the agents passed by. She was wearing a tight police shirt with a plastic NYPD badge and a police hat. A billy club hung from her waist. She grabbed Gagne by the arm while her other hand reached for his crotch. Gagne resisted the urge to roll his fist into a ball.
“I'm with somebody,” Gagne said in a fake fey voice.
“Is he with you?” Gravity asked Germanowski.
“Not me!” Germanowski said as he blew a kiss at Gagne and walked away.
Germanowski enjoyed dangling his “boyfriend” out to Gravity like chum, watching him squirm as he got molested. Gagne employed his “keep talking” trick, engaging Gravity in conversation while evading her big octopus hands. Germanowski would eventually tire of the torture and come back to collect him.
“He is with me,” Germanowski said. “I just wanted to give you a minute to enjoy him.”
“Oh, thank you, child,” Gravity purred.
“Dude,” Gagne whispered to Germanowski, “I'm going to kick your ass later.”
“All right,” Germanowski said, pretending to flirt with Gagne in front of the other boys.
“Can't you play the jealous type?” Gagne would plead.
Their partner, Jay Flaherty, would join them on occasion, but Flaherty never dressed up or painted his nails.
“It's just a whole different world that I never knew existed,” Flaherty said to his partners after a couple of visits. “It's different. I guess I'm not really crazy about the people. It's not like I can ask them what the score was in the Knicks game.”
Their boss, Lou Cardinali, was supportive, but he pushed them to hurry and finish the case as he rushed through embarrassing payment vouchers for rubber clothes and makeup.
“How can I send this to the front?” he yelled at Gagne one day. “You're buying clothes for undercover at the pet store?”
Gagne scratched his head as he studied the receipt. “Oh, yeah! I had to buy a dog collar.”
When Germanowski came to work with a dyed blond stripe down his head, Cardinali ordered him to wear a hat.
“And if you see anybody from the front, any executive staff walking around, turn around and run the other way,” Cardinali said. “Go in the bathroom, the elevator, I don't care—just run.”
Cardinali dropped into Limelight one night to see what his agents were up to. He hung out by the bar and watched as a performer took the stage and sat down in front of an electric synthesizer. The man banged away on sound-effects keys—crash! smash! bang!—as he screamed at the top of his lungs into a microphone: “I fucking hate you! I fucking hate you!” and broke beer bottles over his head as a finale.
“What the hell is this?” Cardinali mumbled to himself.
A clubgoer sitting next to Cardinali turned to him and asked: “Man, is that talent or what?”
“You guys are outta your minds,” Cardinali told the agents the next day. “Just get this case done.”
Gagne and Germanowski were in uncharted territory, and every time they'd get a break, Gagne would declare: “See? It's a sign.” Like the time they discovered that directly across from Tunnel was the FBI's car maintenance garage. The FBI agreed to let them use the corner lunchroom to set up surveillance equipment—a low-tech time-lapse video camera trained on the window of Gatien's office. His shades were typically closed, but on April 12, at about 11:00 p.m., the blinds were open and he was sitting at his desk. Germanowski and Gagne were watching from their FBI-sanctioned perch when Ga-tien appeared to lift a silver tray up to his face.
“Did you see that?”
“How could I see it? You have the binoculars. Gimme ‘em.”
“Hold on, hold on.”
“Would you give me the fucking things?”
“He just did a fucking one-hitter. I saw him.”
“I didn't see it. I could only see his head go down.”
One of the agents believed he saw Gatien lean down to snort cocaine off the tray using a cylindrical “one-hitter” device. Gatien was about twenty to twenty-five feet from their surveillance post. They had no video to prove it. But Germanowski wrote it up in a report of investigation and Gagne would later swear to the one-hitter incident in an indictment.
Problem was, more than a decade later, each agent would recall the conversation clearly, but each believed that it was the other one who was holding the binoculars. Meaning that both agents saw Gatien with a tray and some kind of head movement, but neither agent could specifically recall seeing Gatien actually snorting drugs through a one-hitter. In retrospect, they would both admit it was a shaky observation, heightened by the fact that they were desperate to catch Gatien doing something illegal.
Confidential sources later told Gagne and Germanowski that Gatien carefully avoided all talk and personal use of drugs inside his clubs.
Outside his clubs, however, Gatien indulged in an expensive crack cocaine habit. Every few months, to let off steam, he would rent a $3,000-a-night, three-bedroom suite at the Four Seasons hotel and go on drug benders. He would invite Michael Alig, Michael Caruso, and other club employees to hole up with him. His credit card added up thousands of dollars’ worth of room service, caviar, champagne, and hookers who accepted American Express. Michael Alig almost died during one of Gatien's hotel parties after he passed out and turned blue from a heroin overdose. Gatien denied ever having a serious problem.
“How am I supposed to be operating four clubs, managing 1,000 employees, and have a crack problem?” Gatien told New York magazine in 2006. “Have I partied every now and then? Yeah. It's been documented. Anywhere from zero to three times a year, I would rent a hotel room and do my thing. Am I proud of it? No. But there it is.”
Among the “documented” evidence the government collected was a Dear John letter Gatien received from the general manager of the Four Seasons on March 23, 1996. The tone of the letter was civil but clear: Gatien had outlasted his welcome.
Dear Mr. Gatien,
As a result of your recent visit, the Governor Suite suffered damage which I have detailed in the attached breakdown. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that we have incurred damages following your visits. …
Gatien's final Four Seasons party had set him back nearly $18,000 for three nights’ stay, room service, phone calls at all hours, gift shop purchases, and repairs to the carpets, silk panels, and entertainment center. A private note was filed in Gatien's guest history profile: DO NOT ACCEPT A RESERVATION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Gatien's hotel bacchanals had reached a destructive crescendo only matched by the chaos in his club empire. In the days of Michael Alig and his merry band of Club Kids, Ecstasy dealing was the province of gentle artistic youths who gave away as much as they sold. But when Michael Caruso entered the scene, he helped to install a new league of pill pushers.
By the time Germanowski and Gagne infiltrated the clubs, it wasn't just wasted Club Kids passing out the love drug for free; it was also serious drug dealers standing in the shadows, not dancing, not drinking, not talking, not smiling. The agents didn't know it at the time, but the majority of Ecstasy in New York was brought in through Israeli organized crime networks. The Israelis sold the pills in bulk to a wide net of third-party dealers who had direct connections to clubgoers, party promoters, and select “house dealers” who could sell drugs under the protection of club secu
rity. The Israeli dealers had managed to evade detection by police and DEA by always working a few layers back, never directly selling in the clubs or on the streets. (The exception, of course, was rookie dealers Ghel and Michel, whose sloppy solicitation of a livery driver put Ecstasy in Gagne's sights.)
By May 1996, the agents were wiretapping the phones of three suspected house dealers: a carpenter and club bartender named William Civalier, a musician and clubgoer named John Charles Si-monson, and promoter Joseph “Baby Joe” Uzzardi.
Uzzardi had attended his first Limelight party when he was a senior at North Caldwell High School in New Jersey. Now, at twenty, he was a New York University student and Ecstasy dealer who promoted his own parties at Gatien's clubs and appeared to be jockeying for the position of heir apparent to Club Kid Michael Alig. Baby Joe wasn't even old enough to legally drink, but he was deeply entrenched in the drug scene. Listening to Uzzardi's wire was sheer tedium—he received hundreds of calls a day from people wanting to be put on his guest list for reduced admission. Gagne began to better understand what it felt like to be in Uzzardi's shoes.
“He's really just, like, this dweeby kid with artistic flair,” Gagne said to Germanowski.
“Yeah, so?”
“I mean, he's buying expensive clothes, making good money, everybody thinks he's fucking cool because he's a promoter. But listen to him: he's trying to do good in school and maintain some semblance of a student life, but people are calling him at all hours, he's up until four in the morning, banged out on E, and working his parties. You can just tell he's always tired.”
“He's eccentric and pompous is what he is,” Germanowski said. “Are you listening to this right now?” Uzzardi was placing a food delivery order over the wire.
“I want one order of kung pao chicken, but very few peanuts,” Uzzardi said.
“No peanuts?” the hurried order taker asked.
“No, I said very few peanuts. I want peanuts, just very few of them. And I want two egg rolls, crisp but not burnt. Also, I want the chicken to be mild, not spicy.”
Gagne rolled his eyes. Point made. Germanowski couldn't help himself—he put on his best Baby Joe voice, picked up the phone, and dialed the Chinese restaurant back. “Hi! I need to change my order. Did I say mild? I meant extra spicy! The more hot sauce the better. Thanks!”
26 “DON'T TRUST HIM”
ON FEBRUARY 25 AT about 1:20 a.m., Gagne, Germanowski, and informant Sean Bradley were at Tunnel, sitting on couches in the Police Room, watching the drugs go by. A dark-haired man with a pierced nose palmed three white pills into a buyer's hand; a woman passed a joint around; an Asian male inhaled white powder off his thumbnail. Baby Joe Uzzardi didn't seem too concerned, considering the bad news.
Uzzardi told Bradley to let his “friends” know that club management just got word that NYPD was sending undercovers to Limelight to catch people with drugs.
“As long as you guys stay in here, in my room, you'll be safe,” Uzzardi said, believing his VIP lounge was impenetrable to narcs.
Club director Steve Lewis entered the Police Room at 4:05 a.m. and whispered into Uzzardi's ear. At forty-three, Lewis was one of the top bosses at Tunnel and Limelight and worked directly under Peter Gatien.
Uzzardi approached Bradley and the agents with a grim look.
“The police just arrested a few people at Limelight, and Steve wants you to leave in case they come here,” he told Bradley, explaining that Lewis was making him kick out all his personal drug runners—including Bradley. “I told him you weren't selling drugs, that you were just a guest. But he said it didn't matter.”
Germanowski and Gagne shot knowing looks at each other. If club management knew that police were planning an operation at Limelight, then there had to be a snitch at NYPD. DEA didn't even know undercovers would be at the clubs that night.
Drug arrests never slowed down dealing in the clubs for very long. Five days later, on March 1, Gagne bought nine more pills from Uz-zardi at Limelight for $270.
Between March 6 and 8, the agents listened to wiretap suspects Uzzardi, Civalier, and Simonson making deals for the purchase of thousands of Ecstasy pills with cute names like “Cat's Eyes,” “Fruit-loops,” and “Toucans.”
On April 30, Gagne was perched on scaffolding at East 51st Street and Madison Avenue with a camera equipped with a 200 mm tele-photo zoom lens. He snapped shots of Civalier and two dealers meeting in the foyer of St. Patrick's Cathedral and trading cash for drugs.
Over the course of their investigations, Gagne and Germanowski learned that several dozen suspects sold and distributed Ecstasy in the clubs. It seemed as if everyone was getting in on the profits: from hardened cons, bartenders, and bouncers, to college-age clubgoers who lived at home with their parents and hid the drugs in their dresser bureaus, and a pretty twenty-eight-year-old financial analyst for Paine Webber who sold X on the weekends. Even Uzzardi's NYU roommate was overseeing business when Uzzardi was out of town.
Late one Friday night, March 29, Gagne and Germanowski were parked outside Uzzardi's NYU dorm while Sean Bradley was inside playing junior undercover narc. Gagne fiddled with the radio dial, looking for something with a country twang or classic-rock guitar riff. (His partner's preference for hard metal B-sides drove Gagne up the wall.) As he absentmindedly scanned the stations, Gagne was thinking about Bradley's most recent stupid move. Bradley had called the agents to ask “for a friend” how to beat a drug urine test. They knew Bradley had to stay clean as part of his plea agreement, which meant occasional drug tests.
“For your friend?” Germanowski had been at his desk, talking on speakerphone, with Gagne leaning over his shoulder.
“Um—one of Jessica's friends,” Bradley mumbled, putting the onus on his girlfriend.
“Okay, here's the deal.” Gagne shot his partner a go-with-me look. “There is one way. It's a special drink your friend has to make.”
“Okay. What is it?”
“Well, first,” Germanowski piped up, “you gotta mix one cup of warm olive oil with three tablespoons of Texas Pete's hot sauce.”
“Olive oil?” Bradley said.
“Yeah. See, the olive oil will get right into her bloodstream and it's thick enough to stay in it for days, if not weeks, and then all the hot sauce will dilute whatever else is in her system.”
“Olive oil and Texas …” Bradley was writing it down.
“Texas Pete's hot sauce,” Germanowski said, trying not to laugh as Gagne nudged him.
“Wait,” Gagne said. “You forgot the vinegar.”
“Right. The vinegar, very important.”
“After you mix the olive oil and the hot sauce,” Gagne said, “then you gotta stir in eight ounces of vinegar and a handful of crushed almonds.”
“Crushed almonds,” Bradley carefully recited.
“Tell your friend to drink it all in one sitting,” Germanowski said.
“And then immediately eat a glazed donut,” Gagne added.
“Got it. Thanks, guys!”
As much as the agents enjoyed putting one over on their trouble-making protégé, Gagne sensed an incurable duplicity in Bradley. Something just wasn't right.
“Don't like him,” Gagne told his partner in the car that night outside Uzzardi's dorm.
“C'mon, don't you feel bad for the kid?” Germanowski said. “No dad. His mother doesn't care about him. He'll latch on to anyone who pays attention to him. Nobody in the clubs likes him because he's Sean Bradley; they like him because he'll bring in counterfeit money and forty Ecstasy pills and give it all away.”
“Don't trust him,” Gagne said.
Germanowski didn't trust Bradley either. But he took him on in a personal way, tried to be a mentor to him, even spoke on his behalf to an admissions counselor at a junior college when Bradley decided he wanted to go back to school. Germanowski thought the kid just needed a chance.
At about 11:35 p.m., Uzzardi and Bradley exited the dorm and got into a brown Buick driven by another s
uspect. They drove up Third Avenue, stopped at 33rd Street, and pulled up next to a parked gray Mazda. The dreadlocked dealer in the Mazda nodded at them and then led the caravan to an apartment building on East 66th Street. Bradley and Uzzardi were told to wait in the car while the dealer and his posse went inside.
By midnight, the deal was done and the players and cars dispersed. Bradley told Uzzardi he was heading home, then he jumped in a cab to meet Gagne and Germanowski back at DEA. Bradley told the agents that the other dealers had sold Uzzardi 1,230 pills called “Golds,” which they had just purchased from an individual who lived in the 66th Street apartment building. Uzzardi would sell three hundred Golds at Tunnel that same Friday night. The next day, Uz-zardi's wire was burning up with bad news: the Golds were laced with LSD. “Everybody got sick last night… the whole Tunnel was sick. Tunnel is not a good place to do acid.”
Uzzardi was furious. He wanted only the best Ecstasy at his parties. But there was little he could do about it. He knew he was buying drugs from people who boasted a history of assault charges. He wasn't about to go looking for the mysterious source at the 66th Street apartment. Gagne and Germanowski stayed focused on the clubs rather than spin off a separate investigation into the Golds dealer. They just didn't have the resources to follow every single lead. But if they had, they would have eventually discovered that the source of the LSD-laced pills was Oded Tuito's New York soldier, Steve Hager.
27 THE ECSTASY CONNECTION
STEVE HAGER KNEW THAT his presence intimidated people. At six foot four, he was the tallest member of his family. His T-shirts were XXXL, and he weighed over two hundred pounds. A thin scar ran along the left side of his face. He had a husky, thick-Hebrew-accented voice that would rise in anger at the slightest provocation. In truth, however, Hager was more bark than bite: the scar on his face was from a benign childhood accident and his menacing voice was betrayed by a slight lisp.
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