Deep Cover
Edward Bungert
© Edward Bungert 2013
Edward Bungert has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 2001, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1993 by Penguin Group
This edition published in 2013 by Endeavour Press Ltd
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Extract from Stranglehold by Edward Bungert
Chapter 1
I arrived at eight forty-five A.M. An envelope had been placed on my desk, probably the night before. I imagined Higgins, the desk sergeant, swearing as he signed for the delivery, then asking one of his men to drop it on my desk. "Fucking feds think we're this guy's personal secretary," he had probably said, even though it had been more than six months since any hand-delivered correspondence was sent to me. I placed my jacket on the back of my chair and read the neatly typed label: MARTIN J. WALSH, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION-CONFIDENTIAL.
I sat down and picked it up, my elbows resting on the desk as I read the label over and over again. Could 1 finally be getting a new assignment? I wondered. For three years I had been working as a liaison agent with the Los Angeles police department. A joint task force had been set up in response to a wave of bank robberies, muggings, and assaults believed to be the work of a leftist group called The People's Movement. I had coordinated efforts between the Bureau and the LAPD. Within two years the group had been so well infiltrated that nearly a quarter of their membership were either undercover police or FBI.
Aside from a few arrests for the Bureau and some requests for information by the LAPD, the past year had been uneventful. I still had a desk at the police station, but my phone seldom rang. I was all but forgotten, except for the direct deposit of my biweekly pay. I often wondered what would happen if I stopped showing up. Would anyone at headquarters ever notice?
Inside the envelope was a memo from the district chief ordering me to report to Senior Agent Richard Atwood. Atwood? That's the Organized Crime Unit. My wish could be coming true. Finally, some investigative work that would allow me to utilize the criminology techniques so painfully acquired in numerous courses and seminars.
I put my hands behind my head, tilted my chair back, and thought, Whatever it is they want me for, it's got to be better than this assignment. But the little voice inside my head reminded me: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
After an hour of fighting Los Angeles traffic, I arrived at the Federal Building. I parked my silver Dodge Spirit ES in the subbasement lot. For the last six years, Amy and I had driven secondhand wrecks. This was our very first new car. I wiped a smudge from the side-view mirror as I locked the door. I fumbled for my identification card to summon the elevator to the basement. Nervous anticipation almost immobilized me. All the years of training and experience suddenly seemed dwarfed by self-doubt.
As I rode up the elevator, part of me wanted to run straight back to my do-nothing, go-nowhere job at the police station. Part of me also needed to know what lay ahead.
When I approached the reception desk on the eighth floor, I was greeted by a pleasant-looking woman in her early forties.
"Mr. Atwood is expecting you, Mr. Walsh. You can go in," she said warmly. "It's the second office on the right."
"Thank you," I said.
The window in Atwood's office door had a hairline crack, which made a pattern resembling that of the profile of a person's face. I found myself staring at it, my hand on the doorknob, when the sound of At-wood's voice brought me back into focus.
"Come on in, Martin!" he said robustly. His voice was hoarse from years of smoking cigars.
"Good morning, Mr. Atwood. You... wanted to see me, sir?" I said. Calm down, for Christ's sake. You've been out of the academy for over six years. Stop acting so tense.
He motioned for me to sit in the chair across from his desk, and he lit his cigar.
Atwood's office was a shrine to his career. Awards, citations, press clippings, and photos covered the walls. He also had the most incredible collection of police department patches I had ever seen. Many agents collect and trade them like baseball cards. He must have had a thousand of them.
"Cigar, Martin?" Atwood stood, leaning over his desk. He held the cigar between his index finger and what was left of his left thumb. I remembered hearing that he had lost it while investigating the Petricci organization in New York. He'd been assigned to get in tight with Fortunato Petricci, the then Godfather, and gather evidence to convict him of racketeering. While working as Petricci's number-two man, Atwood found himself in the middle of a squabble between the Petricci and Bonavici crime families. He was jumped by a couple of Bonavici thugs and they sliced off his thumb with a tin-snipper. They must have figured that if they could show Petricci how easily they could get to his number-two man, he would curtail his expansion into the firearms market. The story around the Bureau was that even as they were threatening to cut it off, Atwood had told them to go fuck themselves.
"You might want to start, Martin." He laughed, and then started to cough violently.
"Would you like a drink of water, sir?" I said.
Atwood motioned no with his good hand and cleared his throat. He spit into the garbage pail and fell back into his desk chair.
"I'm gonna give these things up someday," he said, taking a puff on his Macanudo.
"Martin, you are, of course, familiar with The Henchmen?"
"Of course. I mean... yes, sir!"
I sure was familiar with The Henchmen. These guys were the most notorious motorcycle gang in the country. I had personally handled the liaison efforts between the LAPD and our offices in a case involving Henchmen just eight months ago. Three of those boys are now doing twenty to life for killing a guy who they said was breaking into their clubhouse. They murdered this poor bastard by hanging him from the ceiling by his feet and playing piñata with his skull. Two of the bikers actually had pieces of the guy's brains sticking to their clothes when they were arrested. When the LAPD requested information from the Bureau on the two suspects, we supplied them with details of six different cases in which the two bikers were wanted for questioning.
"There is sufficient evidence, Martin, that motorcycle gang members have heavy ties to organized crime. By the way, it's 'Richard.' Can that 'Mr. Atwood' and `sir' shit, okay?"
"Sure, thanks."
"We have reason to believe The Henchmen are involved in extortion, murder for hire, arson, and a host of other nasty activities. Let's face it. It's never been a secret that these guys are criminals. Only now it seems they've become well organized and have expanded their operations to major cities around the country. A sort of Mafia on wheels. Take a look at these."
He tossed four black-and-white photos to the edge of his desk. I picked up snapshots of the bodies of two Mexicans who had been murdered three weeks ago.
"What a mess," I said. "I read the police report on this one. These guys actually had their testicles cut off. Their throats were cut, and the medical exam
iner found evidence that they were tortured for hours before they were finally killed."
"Exactly," said Atwood pointedly. "There's only two possible reasons for this kind of overkill. Either the killer or killers wanted to send a message, or they're complete psychopaths. Or both."
"And you think The Henchmen did this?"
"Damn right I do, Martin. Nobody goes farther, faster, and more viciously than The Henchmen. And a witness saw two bikes outside the victims' apartment building around the time of the murder. She said the riders were wearing colors. Her description of their jackets matched The Henchmen's insignia very closely."
"I don't remember reading that in the police report," I said.
"That's because it wasn't there. We conducted our own investigation."
"Isn't this a local matter?"
"Not since we've learned who the Mexicans were. They were identified as Pedro Morales and Juan Mendez. Both from Queens, New York. Both suspected of running drugs and guns around the country. They were known to have frequented The Henchmen's clubhouse in New Jersey."
"A little interstate commerce," I said.
"Precisely. We suspect The Henchmen operate cross-country, moving drugs and weapons and generally controlling activities in some areas—either in concert with or in the place of traditional organized crime."
Atwood looked me up and down, the way an inspector general surveys his troops. He wants me to go out, I thought to myself. This son of a bitch wants me to go out! No way! I'm married and have a kid. Investigations are one thing. You interview potential witnesses, question suspects, study documents, make reports. But undercover? Deep cover? No thanks.
"Mr. Atwood, if you're thinking of sending—"
"Martin!" he interrupted powerfully. "First of all, it's 'Richard,' remember? And I would like to give you the opportunity of a lifetime. A chance to make supervisor. You can write your own ticket. Any assignment. Anywhere."
Supervisor. Any assignment. I felt myself being drawn in, seduced by the promise of a promotion. A second ago I'd been ready to flatly refuse. Now I wanted to hear more. It can happen like that, in a moment. Sometimes things that are the furthest from your mind pop in and Blam! your whole life is never the same afterwards.
I thought back to the time in my life when I'd first decided I wanted to work in law enforcement. I was nine years old. On my way home from school I found a wallet with over eighty bucks in it. Eighty bucks! To a nine-year-old that was all the money in the world. There was no identification in the wallet, only a receipt from Jovino's Shoe Repair. I wanted so badly to run to the nearest toy store and buy Mr. Machine, the walking, talking robot, but part of me wouldn't go for it. I ran straight to the shoe shop and Mr. Jovino identified the owner through the repair ticket.
The owner turned out to be a retired Treasury Department agent by the name of Roger Wolfe. Wolfe had spent much .of his career as an investigator for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, often going undercover in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to bust up moonshine operations. He told me that I was made of the right stuff: integrity and brains. He gave me a ten-dollar reward and told me he could use some help around his house on the weekends if I was interested.
The pay was fifty cents an hour, and every Saturday from then until I went away to college I mowed Roger Wolfe's lawn, painted, scrubbed floors and, when I was really lucky, helped him clean and oil his gun collection. On those occasions Mr. Wolfe would tell me stories of how he and his special team broke up moonshine operations in Mississippi, and how they were considered the real "Untouchables" by the press. Becoming a government agent was all I thought about. To me there could be no better life than one spent enforcing the law. Integrity and brains.
Atwood stood up, walked over to the window, and looked out.
"We want these bastards, Martin," he said with his back to me. "And I think you'll be the man who gets them." Atwood turned abruptly and looked straight at me. My move. I could have said, "No, thank you" and walked away. Instead I blurted out:
"What do I have to do?"
Atwood opened his eyes wide, and the left side of his mouth twitched to form a satisfied smile.
"You have to disappear, Martin. Become part of their world."
"Why me... Richard?"
"Well, for one thing, your knowledge of motorcycles. Your age and physique also make you perfect for it." He began to glance through a file on his desk. "Says here you're a karate champion, and an ace motorcycle mechanic. I understand you paid your way through college by working at a motorcycle repair shop."
"Part-time, yes. I haven't been on a bike in almost ten years though," I said. I had never thought I'd get back into bikes like this. My heart was pounding and my palms were sweaty, as I listened to Atwood explain this assignment.
"Here's the deal, Martin. You go under for six, eight months, tops. You contact me and two or three other case agents only. You can call home, but no visits. We can't risk your being tailed. I'm sure you wouldn't want that, either."
I nodded.
"If any emergency comes up at home, we'll bring you out. If things get too hot, we'll bring you out. You'll get paid automatically through a special account. Not too different from how we do it now. All the other details of your assignment will be determined and fully disclosed during your training."
Atwood returned to his chair and folded his arms, waiting for my reaction, for questions. I couldn't focus on a single one to ask him.
"Okay, I'll do it," I found myself saying. "When do I start?"
Clearly Atwood sensed I was uneasy, and he warmly assured me that he would be there for me and my family.
"We're partners now. From now on your concerns are my concerns. Take the rest of the day off, then report to Dalton Leverick tomorrow morning at the Brentwood facility. Dalton is our resident expert on motorcycle gangs. He'll teach you everything you'll need to know, and then some."
Atwood stood up and opened the door. "By the way, stop shaving. We have to make a biker out of you."
All the way from Atwood's office to the parking garage I wondered whether I'd done the right thing. I was tempted to run back and tell him to forget it. I drove the car out of the garage into the bright afternoon sunlight. The reality of the commitment I had just made hit me hard. The drive home seemed unusually long, as I wondered how I was going to explain this to Amy.
Bumper-to-bumper traffic gave me time to rehearse—"Amy, I've just accepted a dangerous assignment"; "Amy, I'll see you and Alex in six months"; "Amy, I have an opportunity to do something really important"—but there was going to be no good way to say it.
My concentration was broken by the rumbling of two motorcycles passing the stalled traffic between lanes. "These lawless punks think they own the highways," I said out loud. My thoughts raced back and forth between the bikers and my family. I remembered an incident where one of the Henchmen had killed a woman and her four-year-old son. The papers said she had tried to run away, from the biker and he'd shot them both. Suddenly I was angry. At that moment my personal crusade for law and order became more important than the prospect of a promotion. I hated these low-lifes and all they stood for. As the bikers rode away I pointed my finger like a gun, as a child would play cops and robbers, until they were completely out of sight. Hating them was an easy way to justify my decision to go after them.
I arrived home at two-thirty in the afternoon. I must have sat in the car for forty minutes before I decided to go inside and tell my wife that her husband was about to take off for six months. When I walked in, Amy was in the family room playing with Alex, our four-year-old son.
"Hello, Martin," she said affectionately. "You're home early. What's wrong…?"
"Nothing," I said, trying to sound surprised at her question.
"After eight years of marriage, I can tell when something isn't right with you."
She had me pegged. "Alex, why don't you play in the yard for a few minutes while Mommy and I talk," I said. With a little coaxing from his
mother, he complied.
"It's about an assignment. A good one. One that will lead to a promotion and security for our family."
Amy frowned. "I don't understand," she said. "Exactly what kind of an assignment? What will you have to do?"
"I'm being assigned to an undercover operation. It's not much of an operation actually, just an information-gathering assignment." I thought I could lessen the impact—play down what my actual duties would be. I couldn't tell her I would be rubbing elbows with the lowest form of scum the stinking streets have ever produced. "I have to gather evidence against a motorcycle gang. It's really no big deal. I just can't live at home for a while."
Amy's look turned sour.
"How long is 'a while'?"
"Six... eight months, tops."
"Bullshit. Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!" she yelled. "I'm not going to stand for having you away from home for six months. Six months? Jesus Christ, Martin! What the hell do I tell Alex?" She turned away from me and looked out the window to where he was playing in the backyard. "Do I say, 'I'm sorry, son, but you can't see Daddy for the next two hundred nights because he's off chasing some bad guys around and can't come home'?" she asked sarcastically.
I put my hands on her shoulders, and for a moment we both watched Alex roam the yard in search of new and different stones for his collection. I gently turned Amy around and kissed her softly.
"I love you," I said. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't think it was the best thing for our future."
"This is unbelievable, Martin. If you go, I don't see you for half a year. If you turn it down, you'll resent me for denying you this opportunity to advance in the Bureau. Alex and I lose, either way." She pushed away from me, looking down and shaking her head. "Do what you have to do." She then joined Alex in the yard.
We didn't say much to each other for the rest of the evening. Long after Amy had fallen asleep I was still awake, staring at the ceiling and thinking just one thought: What the hell am I getting myself into?
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