Chemical Cowboys

by Lisa Sweetingham

  Later that same day, Kristen went into labor. Like the first time, the couple had opted to wait until delivery to learn their child's gender. Around 7:30 p.m., Gagne met his son.

  He had been nervous, thinking about what it would mean to be a father to a little boy. Beyond the coaching, hockey games, and Little League, raising a boy felt like more responsibility, heavier territory. He wanted to be a good father.

  As he watched his son sleeping, swaddled in a blanket, Gagne was overwhelmed with emotion, a sense of accomplishment and pride. His family felt complete now.

  It was a good day.

  V “THE AMERICANS

  ARE INVOLVED?”

  105 THE NEW RULES

  OF ENGAGEMENT

  RETIRED ISRAELI NATIONAL POLICE detective Amram Edri is a compact, muscular man who chased after Jerusalem's most notorious gangsters back in the 1970s when he was a little swifter of stride. During his twenty-five years of service, Edri's car was burned, his tires were slashed, his home was ambushed, and his two young sons escaped kidnappers who tried to drag them into a car. Even now, as a rough-around-the edges septuagenarian, Edri has retained his Charles Bronson-esque mystique. Bad guys cross the street to avoid crossing his path.

  Edri was holding court in a Jerusalem hotel lounge one January morning while Gadi Eshed and a few INP colleagues sipped from dainty coffee cups and revisited the evolution of the Mafia wars with the elder statesman. The rules of organized crime in the 1970s had been very clear, Edri said. The families had fought to control their geographic territories and if you dared to cross the border you would be killed. But by the time Eshed and his colleagues began targeting the modern organized crime families, the rules as Edri knew them had changed. Families still fought to protect monopolies over illegal ventures, but now they also fought over legitimate businesses such as recycling, egg production, vegetable markets, and casinos abroad. If one family puts its tentacles into a new legitimate frontier, you don't dare to cross into that territory.

  The methods of control have also evolved. The old gangs were uneducated and rarely planned out their attacks. They'd be sitting around when someone—usually Edri's rival, Micha “the Lion” Levi—got the bright idea, “Hey let's go ambush Edri's house,” and off they went. Levi even knocked on Edri's door once as a prelude to an ambush.

  The new generation, however, is treacherous and sophisticated. They carefully plan every step, waiting months or years to assassinate rivals. They hire savvy attorneys. They know their rights and they exploit the vulnerabilities of the anti-crime and anti-money-laundering laws.

  The tools of liquidation have sharpened. In Edri's day it was bare hands, pistols, and kidnappings. The height of technology was a hand grenade placed under the victim's car clutch, set to go off within seconds of releasing the pedal. Today's mafiosos install remote-controlled bombs in the headrest of the driver's seat and shoot at rivals with light anti-armor weapon (LAW) missiles—shoulder-launched, high-explosive antitank long-range rockets.

  Increasingly aggressive weaponry meant the mobsters had to secure heavier armor. By 2000, Ze'ev Rosenstein was never seen without bodyguards—at least two in front and two behind. He had a special Mercedes S320, 3,200 cc, custom built with an armored chassis, armored windows, and bulletproof tires.

  Edri's life is simpler now that he's off the streets and has time to play with his grandchildren. But retirement doesn't come with any such guarantees for the bad guys. Not even for an old man like Edri's rival, Micha “the Lion” Levi, who was shot in the back on June 27, 2003, while vacationing in Eilat. Three days later, in a totally unrelated attack, Ze'ev “the Wolf” Rosenstein almost joined the Lion.

  106 THE TRAVEL AGENCY

  THE TEL AVIV DISTRICT police station on Dizengoff Street sits on a well-manicured thoroughfare alive with café culture, family-run shops, bohemian youth, glitter, and grit—the Sunset Boulevard of Tel Aviv.

  Gadi Eshed was at the station on the morning of June 30, 2003, in a meeting with Avi Noyman, head of the investigation department at the Tel Aviv Central Unit, when a bomb blast shook the station windows.

  “Not again,” Noyman said. The officers were certain it was a terrorist attack. But then a dispatcher barked out the address of the explosion: “Ha’ Taarouca 3.”

  “Rosenstein!” Eshed and Noyman shouted in unison. Ha’ Taarouca 3 was the headquarters of Rosenstein's tourist agency, about one kilometer from the police station. They ran toward the site. The smell of smoke and the sound of crushed glass underfoot intensified as they approached the agency. The first thing Noyman could make out in the haze was the front office doors, mangled and burnt. People covered in blood were staggering in a daze. Sirens blared.

  He's dead, Eshed thought. There's no way Rosenstein could have survived this. But through the smoke, there was the Wolf, hearty and unfazed, a couple of spots of blood on his shirt.

  During the night, assassins had driven a car outfitted with a remote-controlled bomb into the open parking lot and parked it in such a way as to maximize damage to the front entrance of Rosen-stein's office. Rosenstein arrived the next morning in his armored Mercedes, accompanied by two Skoda cars with up to four armed bodyguards in each car. As usual, the guards checked the area first before opening Rosenstein's door. One team entered the office, and Rosenstein followed, with another team behind him.

  But as he had reached the door, Rosenstein's cell phone rang—a call from a business associate—and in the milliseconds before the assassins flicked the bomb switch, Rosenstein had turned and stepped no more than two feet away from the door, out of the trajectory of the explosion.

  The blast was so strong it crushed the armored front door and traveled through the office, destroying everything in its narrow path. Nearly twenty people, including Rosenstein's bodyguards, were injured. The Wolf suffered a cut pinky finger.

  Police had a single piece of evidence—a small black remote control box, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, which had been found across the street by an elderly woman. As the respective heads of the intelligence and investigation departments, Eshed and Noyman worked in lockstep on serious crimes. After several months of investigation, Eshed and Noyman's teams discovered that the remote was made for a specific type of model airplane. They tracked down the model shop and learned the remote control had been purchased two years earlier along with nine others. The man who bought them had used a fake ID, but police were still able to track him down. Police ultimately discovered that the remotes had been paid for by the Abergil clan—Rosenstein's rivals. But none of their sources would testify, and Rosenstein refused to cooperate in the investigation of his attackers. It was the sixth attempt on the mob boss's life.

  107 “THIS MAN IS A LIAR”

  DRUG COPS WILL TELL you that every country has its share of organized crime. Sophisticated organized crime groups operate like sovereign governments, establishing laws and codes of conduct outside their nation's laws. They carry out capital punishment among their members and regulate the crime economy and illicit trade markets. If left unchecked, factions will thrive and infiltrate legitimate government, installing their own leaders and proxies into local and state political positions to further their own interests.

  Organized crime breeds when law enforcement is weak—weak from a lack of police manpower and resources, from inefficient crime laws, from failures in support among the agencies and courts that uphold the laws.

  Israeli police had been so consumed with dealing with Palestinian terror attacks that the organized crime groups were slowly engaging in a brash escalation of the mob wars. The most visible wars involved six main families, including bitter rivals Ze'ev Rosenstein and Itzhak Abergil.

  Rosenstein was the man to kill if one was aiming for the top spot. Abergil and his allies were suspected in a series of assassination attempts against Rosenstein; in one instance, there were two attempts in a single day. Ironically, the police surveillance that so irked Rosenstein saved his life on several occasions when office
rs had thwarted would-be attackers. Rosenstein's allies Haniana Ohana and Felix Abutbul (the notorious diplomat kidnapper) were not as lucky.

  In 2002, Abutbul was gunned down in Prague at the entrance to his Casino Royal—allegedly in revenge for the recent killing of Itzhak's brother Jacob Abergil. About four months before Rosenstein escaped the bomb attack at his office, Ohana was shot to death in front of his wife and child in a parking lot. One of the two assailants, Yoni Elzam, agreed to cooperate and had been expected to implicate Itzhak Abergil in the Ohana hit. But Elzam was mysteriously poisoned to death in his prison cell on the eve of his testimony. An autopsy revealed traces of cyanide.

  Elzam's death underscores a complicated vulnerability in the Israeli justice system: there is no witness protection program. And in a country the size of New Jersey, where would one hide a cooperator? Mob bosses knew that only a dead man would dare to testify. But there have been exceptions.

  Two months after the Wolf's office was bombed, a convicted murderer from the north named David Attias claimed he had had a secret meeting with Rosenstein years earlier during a weekend furlough. (Israeli prisoners, even those serving a life sentence, may apply for a “vacation” every three months—a benefit many Israeli police officers find troubling.) Attias said the mob boss had personally asked him to whack the brothers Jacob and Itzhak Abergil. Rosenstein was arrested based on Attias's confession. The media were rabid: this was it, the papers proclaimed—police had finally caught the Wolf.

  But Eshed, Noyman, and their boss, district commander Yosef Sed-bon, were skeptical from the start. The police had been watching the mob bosses for so long, they knew their codes and business practices—and Rosenstein would never deal directly with a hit man. Even meetings between the big bosses, for instance, are carefully arranged. Bodyguards check each other first before the CEOs arrive. They don't like to sit inside; they prefer to walk and talk, especially along the beaches in Tel Aviv. And when they talk, they keep their faces toward the Mediterranean, to avoid any potential lip readers with binoculars watching from hotel windows. Rosenstein seemed distinctly paranoid. He would hand cash to employees wordlessly and walk on, as if handing a ticket to a bus driver.

  Eshed and Avi's teams pulled up Attias's cell phone records and ran down the facts of his story. It didn't add up. Attias was sounding more like a prisoner who was trying to earn benefits. When confronted, Attias admitted he had made the whole thing up. Rosenstein was freed after spending two days in police custody.

  The most surprising part of the Attias episode for Eshed and Noy-man was that Rosenstein had talked. Suspects in Israel, like in the United States, have the right to remain silent. On previous arrests, when Rosenstein was brought in for questioning, he would simply write on a white sheet of paper: “My wish is not to say a word.” Police would sit with him for hours, peppering him with questions, and day after day he said nothing. He'd simply tap an index finger on the paper or hold it up in response. It would drive the detectives crazy.

  But when he was picked up over the Attias accusations, Rosenstein was unusually vocal.

  “This man is a liar,” he told the officers. “I have never met him. Bring him before me. I will confront him.”

  Of course, he was right. But within days of Rosenstein's release, the assassins were back on his tail. Attempt number seven would set a new bar for recklessness in the mob wars.

  108 THE CAT WITH SEVEN LIVES

  THE ARMORED CONVOY PULLED up to the currency exchange shop on Yehuda Halevi Street at lunchtime on December 11, 2003. Rosen-stein was a regular customer at the boxy little money store located on a busy sidewalk lined with cafés, a hardware store, and a tailor.

  Rosenstein entered with his bodyguards, went up to the window to change his money, exchanged a few words with the owner, and then turned to leave. As Rosenstein approached the front glass door, someone watching from a safe distance hit the switch of a remote control. A powerful blast ripped through the shop, sending shrapnel flying, demolishing several storefronts, collapsing the second-floor concrete balcony above the money changer, and shattering windows along Yehuda Halevi. Rosenstein sustained only minor injuries to a hand and a leg.

  Police later theorized that assassins who had been tracking the Wolf's routine had surreptitiously installed a bomb on the change shop's awning. But Rosenstein—who possessed either keen intuition or uncanny luck—realized that he had forgotten to say something to the shop owner. He turned back inside the store, away from the path of the bomb blast, just seconds before the explosion.

  At least eighteen people were injured and three died—innocent bystanders who were walking past as Rosenstein stepped into the kill zone. Among the dead was the change shop owner's son.

  —————

  The per capita murder rate in Israel in 2003 was just 3.01 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. (The U.S. rate was 5.7; in the Netherlands it was less than 1; Ecuador's was 15.) Israel handled 163 murder cases that year, not including an additional 213 murders from Palestinian terror attacks. (A comparably populated American state, Georgia, reported 656 non-negligent homicides.) Israelis enjoy relative peace despite the constant threat of terror attacks. But as Police Chief Sedbon puts it: “In Israel, the media and the people suffer terrorist attacks, they suffer deaths from car accidents, of which there are maybe ten or more per week. But they cannot suffer criminal warfare that kills one innocent person.”

  In 2003, criminal warfare resulted in the deaths of ten innocent bystanders. The change shop attack on Rosenstein—attempt number seven—was a turning point in the Mafia wars, and a new phrase was coined: “criminal terror attacks.” Newspaper editorials across Israel questioned whether police were up to the job of fighting them.

  In response, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the internal security minister, Tzahi Hanegbi, to “use all measures to stop this dangerous development.” INP officers embarked on a wide crackdown on the business of organized crime, closing down some four hundred illegal gambling dens and three hundred brothels.

  But as the bomb smoke cleared and the trauma of the event faded from memory, a shift in perception was building among younger Israelis: Ze'ev Rosenstein slowly gained cult figure status as the boss who couldn't be killed. He was strong, famous, rich, and untouchable.

  When the tabloids caught on to Rosenstein's growing underground popularity, he was dubbed in headlines as “The Israeli Gotti” and “The Cat with Seven Lives.” His son's wedding hit the gossip pages. He was seen on the street having coffee with a famous singer/comedian, Nansi Brandes, and youngsters ran up to ask for an autograph, not from Brandes but from the Israeli Gotti.

  Gadi Eshed's colleague Avi Noyman had followed Rosenstein's rise to power since joining the police force in 1987. Noyman has a shaved head, blue eyes, a gruff throaty voice, and an angular face that brings to mind those stony Moai monoliths of Easter Island. In his years of chasing mobsters, Noyman felt fear on the job just once, in the late 1980s, when he was a part of a team of officers watching Yehezkel Aslan—the man whose murder outside Pisces restaurant in 1993 vaulted Rosenstein to top boss. Police had been trying in vain to arrest Aslan, even pulling him over at night just to see if they could get him on drunk driving charges. Aslan quickly wearied of the hassling.

  “I'm very pleased to know you, Mr. Noyman,” Aslan said one evening. “I'm sure you have very cute kids that you love. I wish you to continue to love them.”

  Years later, Noyman was having a quiet Shabbat meal with his family when his inquisitive seven-year-old son asked him out of the blue: “Dad, what about Rosenstein?”

  Noyman was taken aback. For twenty years, his family had rarely asked about his work. But it seemed like every child in Israel knew the name Ze'ev Rosenstein. If he'd run for office—he was a registered Likud party member—he could have won. The public loved him, and some reporters began to ask why the police were hounding Rosenstein.

  The police believed Rosenstein murdered his way to the top—but they hadn't been able
to pin any criminal activity on him since his armed robbery conviction in 1978.

  Rosenstein's denying any knowledge of his attackers only played into his mythology. “I do not wish it on anyone to go through what I'm going through now,” he said in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, the most widely circulated Hebrew paper in Israel. “One blow after another and I don't know where it's coming from.”

  Eshed and Noyman felt a special responsibility to the Rosenstein case. They had spent hours each day carefully planning their investigations, determining what targets they would intercept, and identifying weak links in the chain. They worked together in a style that Eshed liked to call a “salami system”—a sliced-up, step-by-step plan, carried out in small pieces. And like Al Capone with taxes, if they couldn't get the Wolf on the crimes of murder, extortion, bribery, or illegal gambling, then they would go for the Ecstasy connection.

  109 “NO DEAL”

  BARUCH DADUSH WAS A car dealer who'd met Ze'ev Rosenstein in downtown Tel Aviv in the mid-to late 1990s. The two became fast friends, business partners in a car wash, and eventually partners in Ecstasy deals. But for the last two years, Baruch Dadush and his brother, Ilan, had sat in prison for their roles in the Lübeck warehouse seizure that netted 1.6 million Ecstasy pills. In April 2004, Tel Aviv district court judge George Kara found the brothers guilty of international drug trafficking.

  Baruch's attorney paid a visit to Eshed and Noyman after the guilty verdict to obliquely suggest that Baruch might have information to trade for a reduced sentence. His client had sensitive information, the attorney said. Not to testify to, but to share. Intelligence about “the big guy.”

  “Who is the big guy?” Eshed asked, slightly amused.