by Landon Beach
Nolan brought his hands down in a smooth motion, eventually interlocking his fingers and then resting his bearded chin on them. “It takes some getting used to. But you won’t be alone. Every confidential informant has to interface with two contacting agents. Whenever you meet with Nineteen, you have to have another agent from our branch with you. Good old MIOG rules, you know? Don’t want a single agent getting too comfortable with his informant.”
The MIOG was the FBI’s Manual of Investigative and Operational Guidelines—a rule book that outlined the conduct of special agents. Nolan’s admission of adhering to the rules relaxed Patrick. There were some agents who had long since abandoned reading, let alone knowing, the MIOG. And a few of those agents were now dead or no longer with the FBI. Who will I get paired with? He got along fine with three of the agents, but the other two were megalomaniacs—climbers who thought they were the reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover. Relax, boys and girls. We’re in Detroit. New York City is where the career escalator is. He tensed back up. Should he ask? More questions at this point could make him seem weak.
Just let him do the talking.
“Brittenhoff and I had been meeting with Nineteen, but now that he’s been transferred, it will be the two of us until I leave. Then, you’ll be able to pick whomever you want.” He swung his beefy legs over the side of the desk and walked toward the wet bar. “Got anybody in mind?”
Of the three agents that he was comfortable with, Maggie Schiff seemed the most competent and the toughest. And, he was sure that none of the dishes in the sink that he had thrown away were hers. “I think Schiff would be up for it.”
Nolan opened a bottle of Kahlúa and brought it over to Patrick. “A little eye-opener in your coffee?”
Patrick took a gulp to clear some room, and then Nolan poured in a finger.
“I think Schiff’s a wise choice,” Nolan said, returning to his desk. He poured a finger in his own coffee and screwed the cap back on the bottle. After stirring the mixture with a Bic pen, he took a pull and then started in on Detroit’s—and quite possibly the entire United States’—most valuable organized crime informant.
He was officially known to the Bureau as DET 1989-C-TE, a man known only to other members of the Detroit FBI Field Office as “19.” Nolan’s predecessor, James Carr, had been approached by Nineteen in the fall of 2000 when the informant was a capo in The Detroit Association. It had been a surprise because Nineteen was a made man and high up in the organization, but, as Carr learned, it was becoming more and more popular for organized crime members to break the law of Omerta—the law of silence or code of secrecy. Omerta’s literal translation meant “to be a man,” and part of being a man in organized crime meant that one did not talk at all if one was arrested. However, when faced with never leaving a cell for the rest of one’s life, some members had chosen to cut a deal and spill their guts. Some had been relocated via the Witness Protection Program, and some had decided to return to their cities and live out the rest of their lives as respectable citizens. And then there were some like Nineteen who became informants as an insurance policy.
When an informant did this—switched over before being arrested—it opened up interesting possibilities but also necessitated strict rules. For instance, the informant could be authorized by the FBI to still participate in criminal activities. The first type fell under the ordinary category—crimes of the misdemeanor variety that could be authorized by the Detroit office. The second type fell under the extraordinary category, meaning a heightened risk of violence or significant financial loss to a potential victim. These could only be sanctioned by the special agent in charge, who had to also have the approval of the relevant U.S. attorney. In either case, homicide was never authorized. If the informant ever crossed this line, then the deal would be off, and the special agent in charge could be charged with murder.
“Thankfully, Nineteen has stayed in his lane the entire time I’ve been running him,” Nolan said.
“Who is he?” Patrick asked.
Nolan took a sip. “He’s one of the highest-placed informants this nation has ever had in an organized crime family, including New York.”
And I’m about to be working with this guy. Great. Patrick then thought about the risks he would be taking. He thought about his family.
“At one time, I thought he might climb to the head of the family, which would have made him the highest placed informant ever. Yes, we did have ‘Little Al’ D’Arco, who was the acting boss of the Lucchesse Family, and Joseph ‘the Ear’ Massino, who was the boss of the Bonanno Family, switch sides, but they turned informant after their reigns were effectively over. No one has been an informant while still running the family. Could you imagine having a major city’s godfather as an informant? We could learn so much more about how Cosa Nostra operates on a national and international level.”
“Didn’t make the cut?” Patrick said.
“Technically, he could still be named, but I think it’s a long shot now.”
“That’s why you’re not happy with Ciro Russo being head boy.”
“Yeah, I suppose. Thought Nineteen would have been the one named.” Nolan opened a drawer and pulled out a file folder. “But, even with a Top Echelon Informant, there is still a lot that is out of our control.” He rubbed his hand down the spine of the folder. “You finished with the file on your childhood friend yet?”
After putting the boys to sleep last evening, he had disguised his half-hearted motivation to make love to his wife with a full-hearted effort. Finally getting somewhere, his knee had made a strange click, and his erection had vanished like a polar bear in a snow storm. With a bag of ice wrapped around his knee by an Ace bandage, he had hobbled up the stairs and finished going over the file on his one-time friend, GiGi Rizzo.
“Yes,” Patrick replied.
Nolan handed him the manilla folder, and he opened it.
“Who’s this?”
“A lost drug runner.”
“What you mean lost?”
“Can’t find him.”
Patrick pulled out a small color photograph that was paperclipped to a larger black and white photograph. He crossed his legs and propped the photo up against his leg.
“The smaller photo is him, and the larger one behind it is his grandfather.”
Patrick slipped off the paperclip and set it on Nolan’s desk. The smaller photo was of a man wearing Ray-Ban clubmaster sunglasses with a reedy face, dimpled chin with black whiskers, and a head full of black wavy hair. The mouth was neither in a smile nor a frown. He flipped the photograph over and saw a name written in pen. Nico Colombo. Below it was a date. 11-5-2016.
The larger photograph looked like the same person except the hair had streaks of gray in it and a cigarette was hanging from the person’s mouth. He flipped it over. ‘Anthony Colombo’—written in cursive—followed by ‘1976’.
“The five families in New York City used to import around ninety-five percent of the heroin coming into the United States,” Nolan said. “Anthony Colombo was in charge of transporting Detroit’s cut. In the early days, he would wait in a marina on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, receive the shipment, and then motor across to a Detroit marina and offload it to The Association’s members for transfer to the local pizza parlors for distribution. Later, when the operation got too big for just him, he was promoted to a leadership position where he oversaw multiple boats that would make the river run. That picture you have of him was when he was at the height of his career and went by the name ‘River Tony.’ Later, he made the fatal mistake of trying the product. Became an addict, jeopardized the entire operation, and overdosed around 1980.”
“I heard that’s what gets a lot of these guys,” Patrick said, taking in the pictures.
“It is. Dealing drugs is high risk, high reward. Even if you have status and are getting rich, you can’t quite escape the operation. For one, you’re always around traffickers who are usually the low men on the totem pole. Because of that, t
hey’d usually make any deal with law enforcement to reduce their time, so you can’t trust any of them. And then, like you just noted, you’re around the stuff so much that your guard goes down, and because the money is good, you decide to just take a small sample or someone who works for you decides to. Then, you or he becomes undependable, like ‘River Tony’ did. I asked Nineteen about it and was told that when a guy starts using drugs, he’s immediately seen as a liability. They become weak and don’t usually hold up. Problem is, there’s someone right underneath him—an unlimited supply of low-life bums—waiting to take his spot.”
Patrick picked up the smaller picture. “And this is his grandson.”
“Yeah. He’s picked up his grandfather’s old sobriquet and is referred to as ‘River Nicky’ in the Detroit wing of Cosa Nostra.”
“What happened to the phrase La Cosa Nostra? You shorten it.” He’d never heard it referred to as just Cosa Nostra before.
“You don’t know? Hoover added ‘la’ because he loved abbreviations. But it’s stupid.”
“Why?”
“Because ‘la’ means ‘the.’ Cosa Nostra means ‘our thing.’ So, La Cosa Nostra translates to ‘the our thing.’ Ridiculous, right?”
Patrick gave an embarrassed laugh.
“Not the only thing that Hoover did that didn’t make sense.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, just when we were starting to make progress, he put us at a disadvantage. In the early sixties, he authorized the illegal placement of bugs, and, man, did they start giving us tons of information that we could use to fight crime. But, a lot of the information was embarrassing because we had so many of our elected officials tied up with organized crime, bribery, you name it. They could have made a monument to the unethical behavior that was going on. So, LBJ cut it off in 1965, and the Bureau got clobbered. Who knows what could have been done or prevented had we remained serious about taking the fight to the criminals back then? Hell, that move by LBJ set us back twenty, thirty years.”
“I’ve never heard that story before,” Patrick said. In fact, all he remembered about Hoover was from his initial training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia—the sixteen-week course that transformed him from a civilian to an FBI agent.
In 1934, Hoover had demanded that the Bureau of Investigation, BI, be given a new name. And so, his third-highest Bureau official Special Agent Edward Tamm came up with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Patrick had additionally been told in Quantico that the initials also stood for Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity. When he had taken the oath and sworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, he had wondered, for just a moment, how many FBI special agents would embody those traits. He had been optimistic that many would since only one in twenty applications to be a special agent was accepted. When he joined, approximately one-third of the Bureau’s thirty thousand personnel were SAs. His experience had now taught him that every SA had at least one of the traits, some had two, but very few had all three. From what he had observed of Nolan, he surmised that Nolan was one of those few.
“I’m not surprised. We don’t necessarily lead with all of our vulnerabilities and mistakes.” Nolan took a gulp of coffee. “Nowadays, CN has different names in different areas of the country. Detroit, ‘The Association.’ In Chicago, it’s ‘The Outfit.’ In New England, it’s ‘The Office.’ Buffalo, ‘The Arm.’”
Patrick flicked the picture with his right middle finger. “So why is this guy lost?”
15
FBI Detroit Field Office, Michigan
3 Days Ago…
Patrick watched as Nolan took a watch out of his top desk drawer and started to fiddle with the dial instead of answering the question. After watching the senior agent for a few seconds, he realized that he had never seen Nolan with a watch on. A guy usually picks up on what type of watch another guy has on, or at least the guys he knew did—probably due to thousands of years of conditioning that prompted a male to measure himself against all other males. Cut the psychological eat or be eaten bullshit already. He went back to observing Nolan work on the watch and wondered if Nolan would ever answer his question.
He’d been fascinated with watches since he was a boy and had dreamed of owning an expensive one to pass on to the upcoming generations of Bruno men. Last Christmas, he had approached Tara with the idea. “Sure, babe,” she had said. “But how much are we talking?” When he had replied that he wanted a Rolex Sea-Dweller—44mm, oystersteel, black ceramic bezel with luminescent display, D-blue dial, oyster bracelet, waterproof up to twelve thousand eight hundred feet, thirteen grand—she had turned ghost white. The conversation had ended there, and instead of the best dive watch in history, Santa had brought him a two-hundred-dollar Casio, which was water resistant up to 660 feet. “Maybe when you retire,” she had whispered in his ear as the boys opened the rest of their presents.
Nolan turned his wrist and Patrick got a clear look at his mentor’s watch. A Rolex Submariner. Not in the Sea-Dweller stratosphere but a close second.
“Like it?” Nolan asked.
Patrick laughed. “Was I drooling?”
“Naw, just staring,” Nolan said. He put the watch on and admired the look of it on his wrist. “Got it from my dad when he passed away.”
“Looks brand new,” Patrick said.
Nolan paused, then looked at Patrick and said, “Only had it for about five years. The old boy had the longevity gene in spades—ninety-three. And he only purchased it with five years left on his timeline. Never understood why he bought it then.” He took one more look at it. “Anyways, just got it back from being serviced for the first time. Rolex service center crooks. Talk about a price tag! Eight hundred big ones, gone like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.
Four Casios, Patrick thought, looking down at his wrist. And that’s just the cost of a tune-up. When he looked up, he noticed that Nolan had caught him assessing his own timepiece.
“Where were we?” Nolan asked. “Oh right, our missing drug runner. He inherited the business from his father a few years ago, but he’s shifty. Hard to find. Been looking for him for the past year. We had some intel he had a sailboat that he was using to run special shipments across the river, but we’ve never seen him, let alone caught him. That picture came from Nineteen.”
“And Nineteen didn’t know where to locate him?” Patrick asked.
Nolan exhaled. Not a gesture of annoyance at the question, Patrick guessed, but, perhaps, rather an admission of limitations. “Nineteen doesn’t know everything.”
Pleased that he had read Nolan correctly, he added, “Or tell everything.”
“True. All part of the Top Echelon Informant game. Sometimes Nineteen gives us a gold mine, and sometimes it’s silence.” Nolan pointed at the photograph. “If we can find him, though, we might get a better glimpse at how they’re currently transporting the junk from Canada to Detroit. I think the fleet of boats days are over, but you never know because the stuff is still flowing in.”
“Crime is fluid.”
“Ha! You bet your ass it is. Always mutating to exploit some other loophole, and, unfortunately, new demographics.”
“Or take advantage of new technology.”
The room was quiet for a moment. They stared at each other.
“Indeed,” Nolan finally said. “Probably why it’s time for me to get out of the game—seen the writing on the wall for a while now. A lot of the work nowadays is done by bureau computer nerds who sit behind screens and try to hack the mafia’s computers, which are used to run gambling online through foreign countries. I guess we’re making a dent in their armor, but to me, the action will always be in the field.” He paused. “A lesser man wouldn’t admit to this, but my field work in running Nineteen is probably the only reason I’ve been able to stay on as long as I have. Don’t regret one day of it. Besides, gambling isn’t where the real fight is. In Detroit and the other major U.S. cities, CN is still an integrated member of the power hier
archy—law enforcement, politics, business, philanthropy, you name it. But the mafia still has strength because of its unparalleled drug infrastructure. Easy to crack some of the networks and distribution systems.” He lifted the mug to his mouth. “Hard to crack ‘em all.”
“I once read that on one side of the morality spectrum, you have what the law forbids. On the other side, you have what a portion of our citizens crave. And in between those is organized crime.”
“Couldn’t have said it better. Sicilians are like libertarians; they distrust government and loath its interference in their own lives. But, when the public wants something bad enough, they’ll go wherever they need to go to get it.”
“And even if it sabotages their fellow human beings. Drugs destabilize neighborhoods in a hurry.” He stopped, now realizing that he had leaned forward and was starting to raise his voice.
Nolan drank and then smacked his lips. “Personal experience?”
Patrick thought of his niece. The day she was born, her first steps, her phone calls to him about Corduroy the Bear. The way her smile melted him when she had lost her two front teeth at the same time. Then, there were the frantic calls from his sister-in-law. The crying. “Yeah,” Patrick said, lowering his voice.
“Sorry,” said Nolan.
Patrick took a sip. There was nothing else to say on the topic. He felt exposed because of the personal connection, but there was no denying it or trying to explain it away. “I’m sure ‘River Nicky’ is also running cocaine.”
“Assuredly. When it gets here, Nineteen told me that it gets sold in usually three ways: weight, eight balls, or pieces.”
He was familiar with the terms from his Nashville days. ‘Weight’ meant that the coke was sold on the streets in quarter, half, or full kilo amounts. An ‘eight ball’ was one-eighth of an ounce—around 3.5 grams of coke. When the cocaine had been broken down into smaller quantities, it was considered to be in ‘pieces,’ normally a gram, which were sold in individual packets for around twenty bucks. “And the Detroit Police?”