Grace answered, “Yes, your Honor. We are hoping to intercept him before he can accomplish his mission.”
“Very well. Then why don’t you two sit and let me review the papers.” Without another word, he accepted he folder from the AUSA and walked around the desk and sat down, facing the two and began to read. For the next 15 minutes, they sat silently, watching Judge Cabaye, as he read the affidavit, then the warrant and then pointing at passages in each document with either hand, clearly comparing each to insure that every item authorized in the proposed warrant was supported by the affidavit.
With a quiet sigh, Judge Cabaye set the affidavit and supporting papers to one side and moved the arrest warrant and search warrant to the middle of the desk.
“Alright, I believe that everything is in order and I approve these warrants. I was pleased to note that you have abided by my preference to have such search warrants executed during the daytime.”
“Yes, sir.” In that instant, Dave understood why he had been driven 50 or so miles out of his way. This was the one judge who would not overrule this policy, no matter what Dave might say, because it was his policy. As to why Glinda North insisted on this limitation on the search warrant, Dave neither knew nor cared.
The return trip was an exact replica of the earlier one. When he was dropped off at the parking lot where his car had been left, he drove directly to the Springfield PD station. Mike and the SWAT team sergeant were there, but young Guy had decided to keep the beat cop company as he surveilled the elderly couple’s house.
Mike and Dave took a walk around the station and Dave filled in his partner on his trip to Pittsfield. They agreed to put aside the questions raised by the AUSA’s behavior, in order to focus on grabbing Cava.
Back in the station, they resumed planning the raid on the house. Since 7 A.M. was the earliest they could execute the warrant, they decided to do precisely that. They would have uniformed officers block off the nearby streets an hour before the raid, thereby limiting the passing traffic. When they finished their plans, Mat and Dave located a quiet corner of a room and stretched out to get quick naps, as they had been going nonstop for nearly 36 hours. Sergeant York woke them up two hours later and they drove to the rally point, a parking lot a couple of blocks from the target residence.
The roadblocks went into effect without major headaches, and at 7 A.M. Mike, Dave and Guy joined the six members of the local SWAT team and they were able to gain entry by getting the elderly couple to open the door and then step outside with one of the SWAT members, while the rest deployed into the second floor of the house. As luck would have it, they found Cava in the room the couple described, still sleeping off a night of drinking. Dave waved with the flat of his hand to indicate to Mike that he could do the honors and Mike cuffed Cava and sat him up in the bed.
In the meantime, the SWAT team members were scouring the upstairs, finding several passports in different names, but all bearing Cava’s photo. They also recovered a supply of cash from Italy, Switzerland, Venezuela, and the U.S. Most of these items were located in hiding places throughout the second floor of the house. Although no weapons were found, two state-of-the-art bullet proof vests were discovered in Cava’s suitcase. These were Bianca full jackets with zip out bulletproof vests and all of the officers were drooling over them.
As they had obtained an arrest warrant for Cava, his constitutional right to counsel had been triggered and the upshot was that he could not be questioned unless he waived this right, which he could only do that in the presence of an attorney. By 10:30, Dave, Mike and Guy had wrapped things up at the house, including the taking of statements from the elderly couple, who both claimed to be simply augmenting their retirement by renting out a room in their house. The three exhausted cops briefed AUSA North for the upcoming arraignment.
When arrested, Cava had two counterfeit passports, his real passport and four forms of currency. Using the information on the bogus passports, Dave and the Albany INS field office had been able to reconstruct Cava’s route. After flying to Zurich, Switzerland, Cava had changed passports and had flown to Caracas, Venezuela under a false name. He changed to his other false identity and then flew to New York City. Once through customs, he reverted to his true identity and caught a commuter flight to Springfield, Massachusetts.
While he had no weapons on him when he was arrested, the bulletproof vests spoke volumes about his intentions. He was held without bail on a number of local charges based on possession of forged documents. The local prosecutor from the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office was very helpful. Cava was then to be taken to federal court for additional charges pertaining to the counterfeit passports and his illegal entry into this country. An extradition detainer had been lodged at the local jail, as Italy wanted him on murder charges.
The trio was really starting to fade from lack of sleep by the time Cava was arraigned in the federal court in the afternoon. They weren’t so far gone, however, that they didn’t notice how AUSA Glinda North took it upon herself to hold an impromptu press conference following the arraignment, in which she graciously accepted all the credit for the apprehension of the international assassin. Sleep or no sleep, Special Agent Grace and Senior Investigator Connolly could not let this hijacking of their case go unchallenged.
Through their colleagues in the Springfield PD, who were equally pissed at the federal prosecutor, Mike and Dave were able to collar a number of the local new reporters. Dave, who felt personally betrayed by Glinda, as a fellow Fed, addressed the reporters to fill them in on the background of the case that had led to the contract given to Cava. Dave laid it on thick with the press, praising the Springfield PD, the SWAT team and the neighborhood milkman, everyone except Glinda friggin’ North. By the end of the press conference, they had reached the end of their rope and were driven by delighted Springfield cops, to their hotel and some terribly overdue sleep.
***
Eileen and Peter had gone to the 4:30 P.M. Mass on Saturday, at Our Lady of the Annunciation. The kids were well behaved as usual, though Peter was less so. At one point during the service, Gary was sitting in Peter’s lap, when he pointed up at a banner hanging at the front of the church.
“What’s that say, Daddy?”
“It says ‘alleluia’.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s Latin for ‘yippee’.”
That should have been the end of it, but later on in the service, when the children had switched parents to sit with, Peter noticed Gary talking to her mother. Suddenly Gary pointed up at the banner, and Peter knew he was being thrown under the bus. Eileen’s head whipped around with an exaggerated scowl. Peter turned, smiling angelically and whispered, “I take it you’ve just learned the meaning of ‘alleluia’.”
She muttered back, “Well, at least it wasn’t Uncle Charlie.”
She was referring to his having done something similar prior to Christmas the year before last. Susie had been sitting on her daddy’s lap during Mass on the first week of Advent. As usual, there were special booklets for the Christmas season Masses in the book holders on the backs of the pews. On the cover of the booklet was a Nativity scene, and Susie started pointed to the people depicted in the picture, asking who they were.
“That’s Joseph, and that’s Mary, and that’s Baby Jesus.”
When Susie pointed to the shepherd with a lamb around his shoulders and asked “Who’s that, Daddy?” Peter replied, “That’s crazy Uncle Charlie. They keep him locked in the basement.”
As on the present occasion, the newly educated child felt compelled to share her newfound knowledge with her mother when the children switched laps to sit on. Pointing to the various characters, Susie educated her mother. The expected snap of the head and mock glare followed Uncle Charlie’s introduction to the Nativity.
***
It was during dinner that evening that Peter got the call he had been hoping for. Lt. Bob Robson, phoned to tell him that the crisis had passed and that Cava had been take
n into custody in Springfield earlier in the day. While Bill couldn’t provide many details, he had heard that Cava had had two bulletproof vests among his belongings. Mike, Dave and Guy would have to remain in Massachusetts for a few days, as federal charges were brought against Cava and deportation warrants filed. When Peter thanked him for the call, Eileen’s face brightened hopefully.
“They caught him.”
Chapter 17
A couple of weeks after Cava’s arrest, word came from Madonna’s attorney that Madonna was grateful for Cava’s arrest and that he wanted to show his appreciation by answering some questions that he had previously avoided. His only stipulation was that he wanted to speak to the three who had actually caught Biagio Cava.
The interview was arranged and the three met with Madonna in the otherwise empty visitors’ room. Dave and Mike, who had previously interviewed Madonna exchanged greetings with him and then introduced Guy Lorenz.
“I would first like to thank you for stopping Biagio Cava from coming here after me. He is a wel- known killer and he does not usually fail in his attempts. You must be very good at your jobs to defeat him like this.”
“You have asked me before, why I was interested in the man who had been found in the restaurant in Lake George, the one you named Wally. It is possible that this man may be Pietro Sciabelli, and if so, then he was my father’s older brother - my uncle.”
None of the three cops changed their expressions, but each was startled, as they recognized the name. It was the same one given by Gennaro DiGiorno when interviewed by Lt. Hall and Inv. Saint in the nursing home north of Montreal. It was also the name that a “Bruno” had been inquiring about down in Brooklyn in 1985 that Giovanni Falcone had told Mike and Dave about.
Dave asked, “What makes you think that?”
“It is a long story that started when I was still a boy. My uncle, Pietro and his family lived next door to my home in Avellino, outside of Naples. The families were very close and I spent time with him almost every day, even during the war when the German troops were around. Soon after the Allies arrived, on their push northward toward Rome, Uncle Pietro got a job in Naples, working with the Allies in providing food and other supplies to the soldiers as well as the civilians. His boss was Vito Genovese, who had been brought over from America, along with Charles Luciano, to help the Americans, with the local population.
“At first, Uncle Pietro would go to work in the morning, but be home in the early evening, in time for dinner, which the families often did together. But, after a few months, he began to get home later or not at all. He began to bring home presents of food and other things that were not available due to the war. Real coffee, wine, meats…it was heaven! He always had money and bought nice suits. Eventually, I began to learn that his work with Signor Genovese involved a lot more than acting as a go-between with the Americans and the local authorities. Even as they were assisting the Americans, they were stealing from them. The amount of supplies, food and other material that they were diverting onto the black market was beyond imagination. When the Americans finally acted and sent Signor Genovese back to America, Uncle Pietro was soon muscled out of his black market work and he stopped bringing home the gifts.”
Dave asked, “Just out of curiosity, what kinds of gifts had he been bringing home?”
“Usually it was food, like cases of what you call Spa. Sometimes, though, he brought strange, funny things. One time he brought home Army canteens for each of us kids. He said it was so we could have water with us when we children went out exploring in the countryside.”
Madonna returned to his story. “As our soldiers returned home after the war, jobs became harder to find. In 1952, Uncle Pietro sailed to America and soon began to work for Signore Genovese again. My aunt Maria would receive weekly letters from him, usually with U.S. money in them. He wrote that he was a member of the Genovese family and I learned that this was one of the five families in La Cosa Nostra, which is Sicilian for ‘this thing of ours.’ Even though his family missed him, he was doing a good job caring for them and seemed to be trusted by Don Vito. Things were going good for Uncle Pietro until 1958.”
Madonna paused and took a sip of water from the plastic cup before him.
“By then, it was all starting to change for those involved with the families in Sicily, in Naples and in America. Americans wanted the heroin from Asia and the money they were willing to pay made many want to be in the business, especially the young soldiers. Some of the old men did not want to poison people or the families that way, but slowly they were giving in to the money. Meetings were held in Palermo and in America to decide if the families would be in the business and how the business would be run.
“In his letters to my aunt, Uncle Pietro said he was very angry with those who were pushing for the selling of the heroin. Years later I learned that he had a girlfriend in New York. She died from the heroin and perhaps this is why he felt so angry. His last letter said he had stopped a big meeting in the woods north of New York and that he was going to try to stop another one. He ended his letter saying that he was driving Don Genovese to Lake George and then to Montreal and that he would send presents from those places. No presents ever came, and no more letters from my uncle.
Since that time, I have honored a promise I made to my aunt, before she died, to find Uncle Pietro and to bring him home. I have spoken to anyone I met who had come from America or Canada if they knew anything about him, but this is where the trail ends. Alphonso’s has a long history with the families, so when I heard of the body being found in the wall, I thought it might be Uncle Pietro.”
Mike responded first, as Guy stood up and left the interview room. “That doesn’t tell us anything about why you’ve been living up here in the boonies of upstate New York, rather than some cozy big city, but as for Wally and your Uncle Pietro, I guess there’s no harm in telling you that we think you are right about them. We have information that suggests that the guy in the wall was named Pietro Sciabelli. Now you realize that there wasn’t much left of him after all those years, so we may never know for sure. What can you tell us about him? Let’s start with a physical description and what kind of clothes did he tend to wear.”
“Uncle Pietro was of average size. He always wore suits made for him by a tailor in Naples. His shoes were also custom made by a Naples cobbler. We heard that even after he left for America, he would regularly order additional suits and hand made shoes from these men.”
“What about jewelry or tattoos?” asked Dave, getting an immediate reaction from Madonna.
“Yes. He had a small tattoo on his arm, of my aunt’s name, Maria. He had once told me that he had gotten drunk and got it done on a dare. He and some friends had wandered into a tattoo store down by the docks in Naples. His only jewelry was a wedding band, but he might still have been wearing a chain around his neck with one half of a token on it. My aunt had the other half and gave it to me. It is with my other property that was taken when I was arrested.”
“Did it look anything like this?” asked Guy, who had re-entered the room and was holding out a blown up photograph of the pendant found on Wally.”
The cliché that the silence was deafening would not have been out of place at that moment. As the cops looked at Madonna, they could detect no movement at all. And then, of all things, a tear formed below his right eye and dangled for a moment before meandering down his face. Madonna made no move to brush it away and, in fact, still made no motion at all. Finally, he reached a shaking hand toward the photo, which he took and brought up close to his face.
“Si! It is Uncle Pietro’s part of the token.” A sad smile brushed his lips. “Zia Maria, I have found him at last. Can you tell me how he died?”
Dave and Mike glanced at each other and then Mike looked at his protégé, Guy. Then Dave gave out a quiet sigh and turned to Madonna. “According to our pathologist, your uncle was murdered. Someone garroted him and then hid him in the wall of the restaurant. We have obtained two witness
accounts, one from the son of the owner of the restaurant. The son was a boy at the time. The other witness is an old man who was part of the group that was meeting at the restaurant that week. He was also the brother-in-law of the owner.”
At this moment, Dave decided to break with normal procedure and give out the name of a source. While this was normally not done, he had a hunch that Madonna’s response might be worthwhile. “He told us that in 1958, he was a soldier in the Caruana-Cuntrera family from Montreal and he told us what he heard and overheard about what happened to your uncle. According to him, your uncle got caught trying to sabotage a proposed meeting, just like you said. He was killed for it. Mr. DiGiorno also told us…”
Madonna jumped out of his seat. “DiGiorno? Gennaro DiGiorno? He told you that he did not know who garroted my uncle? This is a lie! DiGiorno was an assassin for that family and his specialty was using a garrote made from the guitar string of the guitar that belonged to his first victim. It is said that the guitar player had raped DiGiorno’s little sister and that DiGiorno avenged this by using the man’s own guitar string to kill him.”
Wiseguys in the Woods Page 25