Wiseguys in the Woods

by John P. M. Wappett

  “You lower the chain and steel bar through the ice, which in this case is about 14 inches thick, and once the bar is fully past the ice, we can then pull on the chain and the bar will be flat against the ice and the hoop secured at the top.”

  “Yeah. Like the little chain and bar on a tie tack, that you stick through a buttonhole on your shirt so the tie doesn’t flap around,” announced a clearly impressed Peter.

  Shawn smiled, “I like that. I’ll have to remember that for the class I teach on this type of dive. You see how they are pulling on the chain? They move the hook on the steel hoop as close to the ice as they can and connect the hoop. It is the steel hoop that we tie off the safety lines on. The reason it is big is so that it is easier to tie to when your hands are numb and the rope is stiff.”

  Peter could see rough welds on the hoop and guessed it wasn’t manufactured. “So where did you get that anchor contraption?”

  From the way Peter had said that, Shawn knew that Peter had guessed, and that pleased Shawn all the more. “I had heard of one used by the RCMP’s in Ontario, so I got together with a friend who is a welder and this is what we came up with.”

  The pride in his voice made Peter smile. “Damned clever, that!” Impressive things of a mechanical nature, brought out the “English” in Peter’s speech as they always reminded him of his Dad, whose appreciation of such innovation Peter had inherited. Peter’s dad had been raised in Newcastle, England, surrounded by ship building and all the mechanical innovation and ingenuity that came with it. A bit of that had rubbed off on Peter and his siblings.

  Their conversation was then cut short by the jagged roar of the chainsaw that another team member wielded to cut through the ice and connect the three auger holes. As he completed the last of the cuts, the triangle of ice broke free and sank slightly compared to the rest of the ice and Peter noticed that it was bobbing slightly. Several team members then took four-foot poles and together pushed the triangle of ice down until it cleared the surrounding ice. It was then slid under the main ice next to the hole.

  “Why did they do that rather than lift the block of ice out?” asked Peter.

  Shawn chuckled, “To start, the block weighs a couple hundred pounds. When the search is done, we can just slide the block back out from under the ice. It will pop back up into the hole and, within a few hours will re-freeze back into place. That way no one will fall in afterward.”

  “You guys think of everything.”

  Shawn nodded, “A lot of people have given this work a lot of thought. That’s for sure. There is not a large margin for error.”

  ***

  It was just after 6 A.M. when the first phase of the search operation got underway. Aside from some wind-whipped cirrus clouds, the dawn-reddened sky was clear as the icy air they were breathing. While the first team of divers got into their gear, other team members prepared the safety lines, tying them off at the anchor hoop and then fagging each of the four lines from the anchor to the hole.

  Peter had looked up the term, which had a nautical origin. He had thought it meant to separate the strands that combined to make a rope, but the divers were using it to refer to the act of laying out the rope in a back-and-forth manner like ribbon candy. This insured that the ropes won’t tangle or snarl when played out, even if stiff from the cold.

  Shawn came over to Peter, handing him a large, steaming coffee. “It’s a beautiful morning to be out on the lake, isn’t it?” His cheerfulness invited a grumpy response from Peter, who was not a morning person even under ideal conditions.

  “Piss off!” muttered Peter, which triggered laughter from the dive team members within earshot.

  The two looked over at the trailers and they saw the first four-man team come out of the vans and begin to walk toward them. “So what kind of specialized equipment are they using in this God-awful weather?”

  “William is modeling the latest and most chic diving outer wear. It is all the rage in Monte Carlo this year. Seriously, though, these new dry suits are an incredible improvement over the wet suits we used to use. They’re professional quality and are much warmer and more durable.”

  Shawn walked around behind Bill and pointed to the end of the hose leading from his air tank. “Now this regulator is also designed for cold weather work, keeping water out of it so it won’t freeze open or shut. Even so, in the weather we have today, the divers have to remember to not clear their regulators by breathing in and out before they go under, which they would normally do. The moisture in their breath will hit the sub-zero metal of the regulator and form ice crystals instantly. They can then jam the regulator. Nothing good comes from that.”

  As the dive team finished their preparations, Peter saw the support members tying the previously fagged safety lines to rings on the front of the divers’ belts.

  “Why aren’t those tied in the back, where they’d be out of the diver’s way?”

  “Very good!” nodded Shawn. “In fact, they used to be, but if it comes undone, the diver might not know, until it’s too late. If he can’t reach the ring, he can’t re-tie it, and it is harder to reach around behind you if you want to signal by tugging the line.”

  “What kind of signals would the diver need to use?”

  “The diver team decides on these before the work begins. I am a big believer in KISS, so we only have a few signals. I debate this point a lot, with other dive teams and rescue squads. Some of them have ten or more signals and keep a chart tied to their weight belt for reference, like those play cards on the quarterback’s forearm.”

  “Yeah.” laughed Peter. “I remember ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid’ from my Army days. So what will they use on this search?”

  “One tug will signal the start of a search sweep; two will signal the end of the sweep, at which point the second diver will start his; three tugs will signal that the other diver has finished his sweep; four tugs means ‘I found something!’ and five or more tugs signals that the diver is in trouble. What you have to remember though, is that the line tender actually controls this search with one tug to start a sweep and the paying out of five feet of line to designate the next sweep distance.”

  The four divers entered the lake in a well-rehearsed, almost choreographed routine, with the first search diver jumping in, followed by his line tender who was holding the search divers line. Once those two had cleared the area around the hole, the other searcher went in, with his line tender close behind. The second line tender was handed a large plastic tube tied to another line, which he then took under with him. Finally, the fifth diver, the safety diver entered the water and took up his station just behind the line tenders.

  “What’s with the piece of septic pipe, Shawn?” called Peter, from the other side of the entry hole.

  “If we do find what we think is a hatchet or hammer, we want to maintain its integrity until it reaches the State Police labs, so we will put it in this tube will down below and carry it down to Albany immersed in lake water. Exposing it to the air after all this time might cause it to decompose rapidly, for instance. You are right, though. It is a three-foot length of PVC septic pipe, sealed on one end and threaded on the other with a threaded plug we can screw into the other end to seal it.”

  Peter, Shawn and a few others stood around the hole for a few minutes, but it became apparent that occasional movement of some of the fagged rope and the odd ripple in the water was all that was going to happen for awhile. Peter decided to head down to the office although he would be the first one in. That would give him time to check his feet and make sure that the crunching sound he heard as he walked across the ice was not his toes fracturing in the cold.

  ***

  It was mid-afternoon when Peter got a call from Shawn that the sweep search with the metal detectors had gone without a hitch, but also without success. The divers found several boat anchors, an aluminum drink cooler and a snub-nose .38 cal. revolver, which was on its way to the State Police lab so that the serial number, that had been filed off, co
uld be raised. It might turn out to be stolen or to have been used in some crime somewhere.

  “How are the guys?” asked Peter.

  “Cold, but otherwise, okay. They’ve gone home to soak in hot baths and sleep. In a few minutes, so will I. We will start the manual grid search tomorrow. Based on how things went today, I guess it will take three days to complete the grid search. Some good news is that it is really clear down there. I could see fifteen feet, at least.”

  “That sounds good. Now get off the phone, grab your rubber ducky and thaw out in the tub. I’ll see you up at the vans tomorrow at 7.”

  “Okay. Later.”

  Peter went back to reading synopses of new case law. Even though he still felt chilled to the bone, he was not going to give in and go home. Considering what those divers were going through, he was not going to succumb to a few shivers. He looked at his hot mug of coffee and half-wondered whether he could put it between his feet to warm them.

  Peter picked up the phone after the first ring. Because Debbie had transferred the call to his desk, she had called out to Peter who was on the line.

  “Hi, Bob. What’s going on?” It was Lt. Bob Robson, from the State Police.

  “Peter. I just heard from the team of research interns that we sent out to check on the happenings in 1958, after Apalachin.”

  “Oh yeah. I had almost forgotten about that. Did they have any luck?”

  “That fellow, DiGiorno, that Hall and Saint interviewed, was right on the mark about there having been an anonymous tip received by us at headquarters in Albany. The substance of the tip was that the heads of the Five Families were arranging a follow up to the Apalachin debacle. It was to take place at an exclusive resort outside Oneonta. A large surveillance was authorized and implemented. Nothing came of it, aside from the local tourist industry getting a boost by feeding and housing thirty investigators.”

  “Tanner. Is it just me or is it odd to the point of unbelievable, that your outfit would detail that many investigators and expend that kind of resources in 1958, on an anonymous tip?”

  Peter could hear Bob’s laughter, loud at first, then fading as Bob leaned back in his seat and away from the receiver. “Well counselor it would appear that you are really beginning to understand the Division of State Police. When I heard the interns’ report, I decided to make some inquiries of my own. It turns out that the tip came in to a particular investigator, Stephen Darius, who the tipster asked for by name. Now I can’t find anything that explains this acquaintance or the informant’s identity, but I DID discover that, in 1957, Darius was the partner of the Sergeant who is credited with breaking up the Apalachin meeting. Now how’s that for coincidence?”

  “As they say in the movies, ‘Oh, my!’” Peter was frantically trying to calculate the implications of this disclosure. “So, it sounds like, at least passively, members of the State Police had hidden information about the discovery of the Apalachin meeting, to the point where history had accepted a version of events that was manifestly untrue. The obvious question was WHY?”

  “I know, Peter. I am going to try to find out what was going on back then. I just thought it would be nice to spin your brain around a bit.”

  “Shit, thanks, Bob. Hmm, I seem to be using the word ‘shit’ a lot more since this set of cases surrounding Sica/Madonna started.”

  “That’s okay. We still love you.”

  Chapter 15

  Despite the bitter weather, Peter would have preferred to be at the search site, but he had to give his attention to another matter. In the past two months the drug investigation using the telephone eavesdrops had plowed on with only occasional input of work by Peter. His life had been made much easier by the IBM type personal computers that the DA had bought for Peter and the rest of the staff.

  Unlike a few years ago, where the entire warrant and application, some thirty or more pages, would have to be manually typed each time, he now had templates that he had written and then saved in memory. So when one of the targets whose phone they were monitoring, moved to another apartment, Peter was able to prepare a full set of amended warrant papers in a single day. They had even applied for and executed a sneak-and-peek warrant, allowing police technicians to pick the lock on the door to the defendants’ auto body shop that doubled as a drug warehouse, and install room bug microphones and then leave.

  One innovation that Peter had added to the normal eavesdrop application was what he had dubbed his Basilicato provision. In the case of People v. Basilicato, the state’s high court threw out an eavesdropping warrant and the entire case it created, because the police had intercepted conversations among the defendants standing in a room around the tapped phone that was off the hook. These background conversations were not authorized for interception or even mentioned in the warrant and no amendment to include them had been made. So their interception was not allowed.

  Peter realized that people often talk to others in the same room while also talking on the phone, so he always requested permission to intercept those chats as well. By doing this, he avoided the problem altogether. He had, as a result, been getting phone calls for a couple years from other prosecutor offices that wanted to copy his application template.

  In the present investigation these eavesdropping warrants, together with physical surveillance and controlled drug purchases using informants and undercover cops had paid off and they were now ready to pull the plug on this criminal enterprise.

  Before they shut down the wires , though, Peter had to do his bit and present evidence to a Grand Jury so that he could obtain indictments against the twelve conspirators, which he could then take to Judge Ginola for arrest warrants and search warrants. The idea was to be able to scoop up everyone and all their toys before they knew what hit them. Peter knew how to do theses seemingly complex presentations. He prepared a single cassette with all the pertinent conversations, in the right order to match the proposed indictment. Then, armed with his “Greatest Hits” tape, narcotics lab reports and a few live witnesses, he presented one charge at a time, using the targets’ own words against them.

  At one point, the oldest brother got mad and the conversation became a string of obscenities directed at his brothers. An elderly female juror shook her head and announced, “They should wash his mouth out with soap!”

  Peter smiled at her, “True, but we have something better in mind, don’t you think?” The collective laughter, assured Peter that the jury was keeping up with all the information he was feeding them. Once the presentation was done and Peter had indictments and arrest warrants and search warrants in hand, the drug task force set in motion plans to execute all warrants simultaneously the next morning, beginning at 5 A.M.

  Now Peter was interested in how his warrants were executed, but he was not 5 A.M. interested. By the time he arrived early for work, all but one of the indicted persons had been arrested, and as Peter drove onto the Municipal Center access road, he saw a canary yellow Ferrari, that belonged to the main target, coming toward him, with DEA Agent Bob Roebuck behind the wheel, grinning from ear to ear. Roebuck was leading a convoy of seized vehicles and a rental van which Peter knew to be filled with all sorts of exotic toys that the conspirators had bought with their drug money. The whole lot was being confiscated under federal seizure laws.

  The mid-afternoon arraignment of the defendants before the County Court Judge, was a packed house, what with defendants, attorneys, guards, and a gallery full of the cops who had participated in investigation, including logging time under the muffs.

  When the arraignments began, Peter had stacks of papers to be given to each defendant that included the warrants, applications, orders, witness statements and transcriptions of conversations. Seeing Ed Lima sitting in the front row of the gallery, Peter remembered that there was one part of this type of arraignment that Ed loved. When it came time for Peter to address the Court, he raised the nearly 5 inch thick stack of papers a little higher above the table than necessary, saying, “And at this time,
I ask that the record reflect that I am now (letting go of the stack so that it landed with a loud bang on the table) disclosing warrants, orders and other documents as required by Article 700 of the Criminal Procedure Law.” Looking over at Ed, when he dropped the stack, Peter laughed as he saw that Ed was in ecstasy.”

  ***

  The gurgling sounds Shawn caused when he slowly lowered himself through the triangle seemed as if it was happening some distance away due to the tight fitting hood of his dry suit. As he dropped down into the lake, the air that his body and equipment had forced down into the water surged up around him in a cascade of bubbles. After a few seconds, everything settled down and Shawn could hear the beat of his own heart and the rhythmic gurgle of his exhalation through the regulator. His cautious entry was because the shock of jumping into the frigid water could cause his regulator to stick open, resulting in unrestricted flow of air out instead of just when he exhaled.

  Shawn smiled to himself inside his mask as he recalled explaining this aspect of the search to Peter, who had a real desire to learn new things and a knack for grasping the advantages of tools and methods. The two had been sitting in the van, with Shawn sipping beef broth, and Peter had his ever present coffee.