***
When Peter got back together with Mike, Guy and Dave to compare research notes, it was quickly agreed that photos and prints of the two wine store robbers should be sent to Giuseppe Martini, their INS expert in Italy, to show to the Naples authorities, it case the two were members of one of the Camorra factions. During one afternoon, at INS headquarters in Albany, Dave Grace and Henry Bradley were telling Peter about additional background information on the Camorra that Giuseppe Martini had sent them, including a batch of photos of big hitters in the Camorra organization.
Dave was placing the large glossy portraits in front of Peter one at a time as Henry identified and described each character. Peter’s head snapped back with a shout, as a photo of a man whose entire nose had been violently removed, leaving a huge, grotesque scar above his mouth and two holes where his nostrils would have entered his scull.
Peter’s head snapped back in revulsion. “What the hell..?”
Dave, maintaining a deadpan expression remarked, “Bad coke habit,” and walked away.
Meanwhile, negotiations were underway for a possible plea bargain that would include Madonna participating in interviews with police and Immigration and Naturalization Service as well as Italian authorities. As the holidays were almost upon them, discussions and arrangements slowed to a crawl due to absences and other commitments of the essential parties, not to mention the essential parties they would be attending.
Most of the courts in the county were closed and the County Municipal Center was sporting its Christmas decorations. Peter was starting his last day of work before his trip to Florida by walking around the building, delivering his wife’s nut wreaths to various departments that Peter worked with. To add to the incongruity of a First Assistant District Attorney jovially delivering Christmas treats to every manner of civil servant, Peter wore a Santa Claus hat with large black Mickey Mouse ears. Several employees had mentioned that he had worn the same hat last year and Peter decided that this would become a county tradition. His brother-in-law in Orlando had an identical hat that he wore during his last work day before Christmas break to his job at a major defense contractor.
Peter and Eileen drove out on their trip to Florida on the 15th. The first leg of their journey to Orlando took 23 hours, and they arrived happy, bleary-eyed and convinced that they smelled like goats. The vacation went much as planned, and they returned on January 2nd, to find that three feet of snow had landed on their house in the meantime, like in a Peanuts cartoon where suddenly,, out of nowhere winter arrives and there are snow banks and Christmas lights everywhere. After taking a nap, Peter donned his snow gear, looking odd with his new sun tan and still buzzing from all the caffeine he had consumed to make the drive, and tromped out to clear the driveway and walks and to scrape the snow off the lower three feet of the roof so that ice dams would not build up, causing possible water leakage into the house.
As he trudged back into the house, he realized that the spirit of the holidays had begun to dissipate, especially since there was another three to four months of snow to go. Still in all, they’d had a wonderful vacation, and the memories of the Christmas decorations at Walt Disney World, would make him smile for quite some time to come. His sister assured them that Disney had an enormous warehouse dedicated to the holiday decorations that went up just before Thanksgiving and came down in January. The Drake family would also celebrate another Christmas as soon as the large boxes, containing the gifts they had received down South, arrived via UPS.
Returning to his duties after the holidays, Peter was somewhat refreshed and relaxed, a state of affairs that he knew would not last long.
One additional present came into effect on New Year’s Day. He was now going to get a substantial raise, bringing his salary in line with other First Assistants in nearby counties. The person Peter had replaced as First Assistant District Attorney was independently wealthy and had never clambered for a raise during her long tenure in that position. As a result, Peter’s salary had been only slightly higher than he had been earning in Albany County as a new and inexperienced ADA. With a growing family, Peter’s family actually qualified for food stamps at one point, although they had never applied for them. To avoid this state of affairs, Peter had recently begun to moonlight outside of the legal profession, selling mail order products. Although he was still in the beginning stages of this project, his boss, the District Attorney, had let word of Peter’s second job get around to members of the County Board of Supervisors. DA Corcoran, normally something of a non-entity, used the embarrassment value of the situation to cajole the Board into approving a sizeable raise for Peter. Peter and Eileen were sure looking forward to being financially secure for the first time in their marriage.
Peter had to shift mental gears when he met with the Capital Region narcotics task force and discussed an upcoming eavesdrop investigation against a cocaine ring run by three brothers. In addition to the regular task force members, the meeting was attended by Lieutenant Bob Robson, representing the State Police, Investigator Bob Roebuck from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Lieutenant Bruce Hall, for the Warren County Sheriff’s Department.
“So we are in agreement that we should set up a wire on Ralph Perot’s home phone?” said Bob Robson.
Bruce nodded his agreement. “We have got buys into a couple of the brothers, but the best way to get evidence of the full extent of the conspiracy and its members would be to work a wire and end it with a series of search warrants. It’s just that we haven’t done a wire in this county in a long time. The Feds have done a couple, but we haven’t.”
“Just keep a couple of things in mind.” warned Peter, who had become something of a specialist in eavesdropping during his drug prosecutor work in Albany County. “Wiretaps can give really powerful evidence but the wire gives you a narrow field of vision, like looking at a football game through a long pipe. What you see, or in this case hear, is very clear, but you can’t see to either side without moving the pipe. On a more practical level, we need to remember to follow the statutes to the letter, in this state more so than anywhere else. Because wiretaps are considered the ultimate Fourth Amendment intrusion, the Court of Appeals does not condone even minor slip ups.”
“What kind of slip ups do you mean?’
Peter replied, “The best example is that the Court order will allow for 30 days of interceptions. On that 30th day, you must shut down and disable the wiretap equipment, seal all of the recorded tapes and bring them to the issuing judge to be sealed, along with a bunch of paperwork. If you are off by a day, the evidence will be suppressed and all your work wasted. That is why you first make sure that the 30th day does not land on a weekend or holiday or with the issuing judge out of town on vacation. The only time that a delay of one day has EVER been allowed was on a wire done down on Long Island. On the 30th day a hurricane hit the island and paralyzed transportation and communication. Even so, the Court only forgave the delay because the hurricane had taken an unpredicted change in direction to hit the island.”
Bob Robson said, “We will just have to make sure we do it by the book.”
Peter then arranged to hold several meetings with all of the officers who would be under the muffs, that is, listening with earphones to the intercepted telephone conversations. These meetings, called minimization briefings, were to instruct the police officers on how and when they could listen to and record conversations. His prewritten speech would advise them that if a phone call turned out to be between the target and his lawyer or clergyman, the equipment had to be turned off immediately.
The officer could periodically turn it back on momentarily to make sure that someone else had not come on to the line, but that was the extent of it unless evidence developed that the lawyer or clergyman was involved in the crime. Even phone calls between conspirators had to be minimized to a lesser extent, when they were talking about something innocent like painting their mother’s house or some such truly benign and unrelated matter. The spot check
s could be more frequent, though, because the house painting discussion could be a ruse or a code.
The attendance sheets for these meetings, together with a copy of Peter’s speech would become evidence that would be submitted to the Court to show compliance with the statute.
Once again, the next morning, Peter had to drop everything he was doing to cover the cases in Glens Falls City Court. Fortunately, there were only a few, although the cases involving persons who had not made bail took some extra time, as the jail transport was being slowed by a building snowstorm that was forecast to become a blizzard.
The drive back to the office was slow and treacherous as heavy amounts of fluffy snow with driving wind was mischievously building walls of drifting snow across the roads, even minutes after a snow plow had been through. Even though the air was cold enough that the snow was not sticking to his windshield, the sheer volume of small flakes made visibility nearly impossible, as they came at the windshield and then veered up and over, or to the side, reminding Peter of the movie special effects of a spaceship travelling at warp speed through clusters of stars.
Strangely enough, Peter knew that those special effects were inaccurate. If you were travelling at light speed, only the stars to your left and right would be white. Because of the Doppler Effect, the stars ahead of you would range in color from green to blue to purple and disappear altogether directly in front of the ship, as the bandwidth moved into ultraviolet. The opposite would happen behind the ship with star colors going to red and then infrared. How about that for useless, trivial knowledge?
The darkened and silent office areas that he trudged through told him news that was confirmed by the large note that his secretary had left on his desk, that the County Administrator had closed the building to allow employees to fight their way home before the roads became impassable and darkness fell.
Shaking off his own covering of snow, Peter shed his cold weather garb and sat down to check his messages before he again braved the elements to go home and start digging out his own driveway, again. On the off-chance that Mike Connolly was still at his desk, Peter returned his call.
“Geez, Mike. I thought I was the only one stupid enough to still be working in this storm,” Peter started. “So what’s up?”
Mike replied, “Actually, I was just getting ready to head out. I called because I got a very strange call from our OC expert, Giovanni Falcone, this morning. He told me that his meeting with Guy and Dave and me brought back a recollection of some intercepted conversations that had been overheard during the Pizza Connection investigation, during the summer of 1985. They didn’t mean much to the guys under the muffs since they did not pertain to drug smuggling operations. Some guy named Bruno was calling around to several old-timers in the Genovese and Columbo families, trying to find anyone who might know whether a Pietro Sciabelli had been at any of the mob meetings in 1957 or ‘58. Giovanni passed this on, remembering that Madonna had been going by the name Bruno Sica at the time of these calls.”
Peter said, “Did the pen register on the eavesdropping equipment show the phone number used by this Bruno?”
‘Yeah, but it only came back to a phone booth in Brooklyn. We’re checking the date of the call to see if it corresponds with times we know Madonna was in Brooklyn.”
“Okay, Mike. For now it’s just another question without an answer. I’m going home to crank up my snow blower. I suggest you do the same. They’re saying we could get yet another two feet or more by the time the storm’s done. Life in the friggin’ North Country.”
“Life in the North Country for sure. Later.”
The streets were nearly deserted at 4 P.M., as the little, red Mazda Protégé skittered about on the snow-covered road, its front-wheel drive keeping it moving, but not by much. Peter’s drive home, that usually took less than five minutes, took more like fifteen and then he had to park on the street as the end of the driveway had a wall of packed snow higher than the nose of his car, where the street plow had gone by.
As Peter climbed over the snowy barrier, he wondered if everyone had the same obstacle or did it only happen to Democrats. In Warren County, that was a distinct possibility. Forty minutes later, Peter had cleared enough snow to get is car off the street, so that the next plow wouldn’t clobber it. Another half hour and he had the sidewalk to the front door clear. The upper part of the driveway had already accumulated another four inches, but Peter put away the snow blower, knowing he’d be back out later in the night.
Dinner that evening was accompanied by the soft hiss of heavy snow brushing against the glass doors in the kitchen. Peter described for Eileen an incident in County Court yesterday, at which time he discovered an attorney that Peter thought might well become a good friend.
At Special Term, there was an appearance by an attorney who had recently moved into the area from Brooklyn, having previously been an Assistant District Attorney in the DA’s office down there. Peter had already met him briefly and the two, with their similar backgrounds and experiences, had hit it off immediately. The new kid on the block, Jeff Henderson, was representing a fellow who had been charged with Grand Larceny for having stolen the copper pipe out of a group of under-construction homes in a development. While out on bail for this felony, the guy had gotten pulled over for DWI, although his BAC reading was marginal.
After introducing himself to Judge Ginola, Henderson was invited to describe the plea offer that he and Peter had agreed to.
“Your Honor. Following discussions with First Assistant DA Drake, my client has agreed to the following disposition, subject to your approval. That my client would plead guilty to the single Class E felony of Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree and receive five years probation and be required to make restitution. This plea would also satisfy the pending DWI charge in Glen Falls.”
After a brief pause during which there was complete, and slightly awkward silence in the courtroom, Peter leaned over toward the defense table and, in a loud stage whisper said,
“That’s GlenSSS Falls, you flatlander!”
The courtroom exploded into laughter, and although the judge joined in, he then admonished Peter.
“Mr. Drake! That was uncalled for.”
“But, your honor! Everyone in this room was thinking the same thing. The only difference is I had the guts to say something.”
As the gallery settled back down to quiet chuckles, Peter and Jeff grinned at each other and Jeff shook his head in mock disbelief.
Eileen put the kids to bed as Peter watched the evening national news. Peter then went up stairs to do his part of tucking them in. He stood at the edge of Susie’s bunk bed, which Peter had built, along with her desk and drawing easel. After asking her about her day, he ended with having her say her prayers and then his customary closing:
“Time for you to do night-night. You stay in bed. No talking. You have nice dreams. You play with the angels. You close your little pretty-girl eyes. And what else?”
“I love you.” She replied on cue.
“I love you, too.”
Walking down the hall, Peter expected to do much the same with Gary, although he was still learning his prayers, particularly the Lord’s Prayer. Peter led his son through the “Our Father” and then Peter went through his “Time for you to do night-night” routine. Just as Peter got to the part where he said “I love you, too.” Gary asked him a question:
“Daddy, What’s on it?”
“What’s on it?”
‘Yes, Daddy. What’s on it?”
“What’s on what, Gary?”
“The bread.”
“What bread?”
“Our daily bread.”
“Oh. Uhh, peanut butter, Gary.”
“Okay. Night-night, Daddy.”
Peter trudged downstairs, shaking his head and wondering how he ever could have felt a moment of happiness before he had a family of his own. And Eileen had hinted the other day that life might become even better still.
Chapter 13
As the county staggered its way through the brutal weather of January, the police were being stretched thin by the combination of highway mishaps, manning the drug case wiretap, follow-up research on Sica/Madonna cases and all of the regular crime work. The afterglow of the holiday season had long since faded into the colorless expanse of endless white.
One set of questions finally got some answers when the task force heard back from Giuseppe Martini. The two wine store robbers who had confronted and spoke to Madonna were positively identified as Camorra shooters who were known to be affiliated with the Zaza clan of the Nuova Famiglia, headed by Michelle Zaza. Zaza, was a major figure in the NF, and purportedly was unique in that he had not only been sworn into his own Camorra clan, but had been “made” into the Sicilian Corleonese family. Not only did that explain why they might be seeking to take out Madonna, but it also partially explained what Jennifer Smith heard when one of the robbers said something that sounded like “za za” to Madonna. Giuseppe brought home the significance of the New Family confederacy of clans by describing a single judicial seizure in Italy last year. The assets of just one of the clan heads, Lorenzo Nuvoletta had resulted in the collection of holdings valued at $240 million, and Nuvoletta was not even the top dog.
Wiseguys in the Woods Page 18