Condemned

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  “Just let them set the thing up. Trust me,” said Nichols.

  “I hear that ‘trust me’ is the way Jewish people say ‘fuck you’.”

  “I ain’t Jewish.”

  They high-fived each other.

  Cali : June 18, 1996 : 6:45 P.M.

  ‘Cali Viejo’, the former hacienda of an old vinca on the outskirts of the present city, was now a restaurant featuring traditional Colombian fare. A cobble-stoned road, over which more than a hundred years of carts and beef cattle had coursed, rose from the entrance. A cow grate of parallel iron bars as wide as the road permitted wagons and cars to pass easily onto the property while containing the cattle. The road coursed through tall trees and lush growth toward the long rectangular hacienda. A cooling stream burbled out of the vegetation, channeled into a stone swale between the road and the side of the hacienda.

  Part of the restaurant was enclosed dining rooms where some of the tables were in use. Around the outside of the dining rooms was a wide, open dining terrace, where tables were set with white cloths under slowly turning fans that stirred the shaded air. Dark-skinned Spanish-speaking waitresses, in white dresses, with colorful bandanas around their heads, smiled and milled between the tables. The road and the clear flowing stream were now bathed in early evening sunlight.

  Adalberto Tarajano, a tall, heavy-set man, snidely known as the White Whale, because of his penchant for dressing in white, today wore white slacks and shoes, and a white guayabera top accented with intricate crocheting. He sat at one of the open air tables with two other men, one thin, young, with a moustache; the other, older, clean shaven. The three of them gave a young waitress their order. Both of the other men, over the shoulders of Berto—which is what the White Whale was called to his face—watched the waitress as she walked toward the kitchen.

  “Berto, you will check with Espinosa in Florida tonight?” said the older man at the table. “I want to be sure everything is correct.”

  “Si!, si!” The White Whale drank a Lulu—a tall glass of vodka poured over crushed citrus fruits.

  “You told him two and a half million?” the older man said softly, “correcto?”

  “Claro—minus a hundred thousand for transportation,” the White Whale added with a smile as he put down his glass.

  “Claro,” said the older man, “as usual.” The younger man silently listened to the conversation. The waitress brought two plates filled with a cold salad of fruits and greens. “Perfecto,” the older man said, smiling at the waitress.

  “Go ahead, start,” said Berto, “I’m going to call right now. Just to be sure Espinosa set everything up. It should happen—” he looked at his watch “—pretty soon, next couple of hours.”

  “What are they, one hour behind?” asked the older one.

  “No, one hour ahead, behind—” Tarajano shrugged, rising—”I don’t know. It’s later there.” He walked toward the edge of the veranda, near the stone road and the stream.

  “May I get you anything, Senor?” said the Maitre’d who was dressed in a white suit with a bright, colorful tie. He stood to the side of a wooden reservation lectern.

  “No, I just want to make a call,” said Tarajano.

  “You can use my phone right here,” smiled the Matire’d.

  “I have my own. Thank you.” He displayed a cellular phone that had been concealed by his large hand.

  “Very well, sir.”

  Tarajano stepped off the stone platform of the hacienda, over the narrow stream, and onto the cobblestones. He pushed the buttons of a phone number in Miami, Florida, pressed the ‘Send’ button, then glanced at the evening sky as he listened to the phone ring. Once. Twice. Three times. In the middle of the fourth ring, he heard Jorge Espoinosa say, “Hello?”

  “Hello, amigo,” said Tarajano. “It’s me, you piece of shit.”

  “Hey, compadre, como esta?” Espinosa had a wide smile. He was about thirty years old. His hair was dark, as was his moustache.

  “Bien, bien, gracias. And you?”

  “Muy bien, muy bien, gracias,” replied Espinosa. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit and a pair of cheap white sneakers as he stood in the middle of a barred cell on the top floor in an otherwise deserted wing of a jail in Raleigh, North Carolina. The door of the cell was unlocked. The phone call had been automatically ‘call forwarded’ from the Florida number Tarajano had dialed to this cell in North Carolina. Espinosa knew that everything said during the conversation was being recorded in an office on the first floor of the prison.

  “Everything okay?” Looking back toward the open dining room, Tarajano could see that his two companions had begun eating their salads. The older man was speaking; the young man was nodding.

  “Yes, of course,” said Espinosa. “I gave them the beeper numbers and the code to punch in that you and me agreed on. The shirts should be delivered to our friend any time now. Maybe happened already.”

  “You told them to take one shirt from the top?” said Tarajano.

  “Of course,” laughed Espinosa. “We are great lovers, but having new shirts helps.”

  “Claro, claro. They are to keep a quarter of the shirts for themselves, and the balance they send home.”

  “Everything as usual, amigo,” said Espinosa.

  “I’ll call you later, maybe in an hour. You should know by then, no?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Great. Talk to you later,” said Tarajano.

  Espinosa hung up the phone, and pushed open the barred door to the cell. He walked to the end of a row of empty cells, and pushed open another barred door outside of which was a desk with another phone. He picked up that phone and waited.

  “Yeah?” a man said in English with a Southern drawl.

  “You get that?” said Espinosa.

  “Sure did.”

  “Okay. Can you call Virginia for me?”

  “Sure. Who you want to talk to?” said the southern drawl.

  “Hasheider.”

  “Hold on.” After a few moments, the southern drawl was back on the phone. “Hasheider stepped out. He should be back in a minute.”

  “Could you tell him to call me, I want to tell him what went down.”

  “Already left that message.”

  Espinosa walked back to his cell and sat on the iron bed. He picked up the pocket novel he had been reading and was just getting back into the thread of the story when a phone rang. He trotted to the desk outside and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Hasheider,” said a man’s voice. “You wanted to talk with me?”

  “Just got a call from down south, about the two and a half mill in New York.”

  “What about it?”

  “They’re going to call back. Want to know what happened?”

  “You’ll tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” said Espinosa.

  Alejandro Espinosa had become a Confidential Informant for the D.E.A. after he had been arrested by D.E.A. Special Agent Hasheider for possession of thirty kilos of pure cocaine that had arrived in Virginia by boat from Cali. At that time, Espinosa had been living in Virginia under an alias to avoid homicide charges that were outstanding against him in North Carolina. Caught red-handed with the cocaine, and facing at least twenty years in federal prison, Espinosa immediately began to cooperate with the D.E.A. and Agent Hasheider. In exchange for a promise of a lighter sentence and anonymity—he would only be an informant, provide information, without having to be a witness required to testify against the people on whom he informed—Espinosa agreed to work for the D.E.A. once released on bail on the drug charges, providing Hasheider with information about upcoming shipments of cocaine and stashes of currency.

  It was a nice, sweet arrangement for a while. Espinosa had been able to provide the D.E.A. with information about a thousand kilos of imported cocaine and ten million dollars of cash, before an eager-beaver warrant officer from North Carolina queered the deal by arresting Espinosa on the pending North Carolina homicide ch
arges. After Hasheider talked to the North Carolina people, he assured Espinosa, (who was now in jail in North Carolina), that this situation was just temporary. His work for the Feds was too valuable for him to remain in jail.

  At the moment, however, Espinosa was a little pissed that Hasheider was taking so long with the red tape to get him out. The sons of bitches were able to arrange to have a phone with call forwarding from Florida put into his cell, arrange for him to occupy an entire wing of a jail, so other prisoners wouldn’t catch on to what was going on. So, how come they couldn’t get him the hell out of jail? After a while, Espinosa figured that Hasheider probably liked having him where he could be kept under very close scrutiny. When confronted, Hasheider said it was taking longer than he expected to get the North Carolina people to back off the homicide charges. Recently, Hasheider said he was going to work a deal so that Espinosa would plead to lesser charges in North Carolina, and any sentence Espinosa might receive in North Carolina would be served in the federal prison system concurrent with his federal sentence—if there was one.

  Espinosa hoped that this two and a half million in cash they had seized today would be enough to get him out of the Can. If it wasn’t, Hasheider could go fuck himself for the next deal.

  “You make the seizure already?” Espinosa asked.

  “They surveilled the exchange about an hour ago. They haven’t made the raid yet. Want to let the guy feel nice and comfortable at home. Then they’ll drop in on him.” Hasheider said, pleased.

  “Don’t forget my end,” said Espinosa. “I gotta pay my lawyers.”

  Espinosa received ten percent of any seizure the D.E.A. made from his information. This had been Hasheider’s idea. He told Espinosa to demand a finder’s fee from the D.E.A. before he agreed to work for them. Which he did. He didn’t bother to tell the D.E.A., however, that Hasheider and his local cronies kept half of his end.

  “Don’t worry. It comes off the top before they voucher the money.”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking. I mean, everything is nice for you, for the rest of the guys involved in these raids, right? So, what am I still doing in this stinking North Carolina shit house?”

  “I told you I’m working on it. Should be a couple more days.”

  “It better be. Otherwise, I’m going on strike.”

  “Really?”

  Neither one knew who really had the advantage in this situation.

  Sunnyside, Queens : June 18, 1996: 9:35 P.M.

  Six undercover D.E.A. Task Force Agents in civilian clothes walked stealthily up the stairs of the tenement building. A distinct aroma of spicy Spanish food filled the stairwell. Spanish television could be heard through the doors of the apartments the Agents passed on the way up. At apartment 4R, the group stopped and huddled around the door, mouthing silent instructions to each other, and pointing to Agent Mulvehill, the large, beefy second-in-command to Supervisor Becker. Mulvehill was wearing a dark windbreaker with ‘D.E.A.’ emblazoned in large yellow letters on the front and back.

  Mulvehill pointed to Bill Santiago, a D.E.A. Agent with the El Dorado Joint Task Force. Lou Castoro, another D.E.A. Agent from Becker’s squad, an N.Y.P.D. detective, a N.Y. State Police Trooper, and an A.T.F. Agent made up the rest of the group in the hallway. Mulvehill pointed to himself, and then the floor, indicating that he would remain where he stood, in front of the group. Mulvehill then pointed to Santiago, then his own mouth, then made open and closed movements of the fingers of his pursed hand, to indicate that Santiago should do the talking to the closed door. Santiago, a light-skinned Hispanic, with grey, short, cropped curly hair, nodded. Mulvehill looked at each Undercover Agent. They each nodded.

  Mulvehill knocked on the door of apartment 4R.

  There was silence within. Mulvehill knocked again, hard.

  “Quien?” said a woman’s voice from within.

  Mulvehill pointed to Santiago. “Tengo un pizza,” said Santiago.

  “Pizza? You order a pizza?” the woman inside said to someone in Spanish. There was a muffled voice. “We didn’t order pizza,” she said through the door.

  “Apartment 4R, Quesada, right?” Santiago said through the door.

  A door lock was twisted from within. Mulvehill nodded an alert to the others, then braced himself. He checked to make sure that his badge—which was on a chain around his neck—was clearly visible. Another lock on the door was turned. The door opened a couple of inches.

  “D.E.A.! Open up!” Mulvehill said harshly to a short woman with dark eyes and hair, pushing his bulk up against the door, forcing it open. Other officers were pushing Mulvehill forward through the doorway.

  “Que pasa?” said a man with bare feet, wide-eyed, rushing into the kitchen of the apartment, where the front door was located. “What do you want?” he said in English, studying the badges of the officers who were now standing in his kitchen.

  “We want to look around,” said Lou Castoro.

  “Look around? For what?” said the man. “There’s nothing here.”

  “We think there is,” said Mulvehill. “If you have nothing to hide, it’ll only take a couple of minutes for us to look around. There’s a search warrant on the way. So we can get this over with now, or we can wait around right here for a couple of hours until the warrant arrives.” Two members of the group were already probing into the kitchen cabinets, under the sink, inside the oven. Two others made their way into a hallway and further into the apartment.

  “My kids are in there,” said the man.

  “We can do this the hard way or the easy way,” said Mulvehill. “Tell us where the money is and we won’t disturb your kids.” Two little children came to curtains separating the kitchen from a hallway to the rest of the apartment. Upon seeing the police, the children began to cry and run toward their mother. She gathered them and carried them inside.

  “Tell them everything is okay, so they won’t be frightened,” Santiago called to her in Spanish. “Tell us where the money is, and we’ll be finished right away,” he said to the man. “Don’t put your kids through this.”

  The man shrugged, as if he didn’t understand what Mulvehill was saying.

  “One of you guys that speak the old Espaniol, explain what we want to this guy,” Mulvehill said over his shoulder as he followed the other officers into a living room where a television light flickered in the faces of the children clinging to their mother. The Agents began to rummage in the room. The first two officers now invaded a back bedroom. They began looking around the room, under the bed. The Police detective opened a closet in the corner of the room.

  “Hello, hello,” he said in an affected British accent, as he pulled out a blue New York Yankees duffel bag by a shoulder strap.

  “Looks interesting,” said the other officer. The bag was dropped on the bed. The detective zipped it open. “Bingo!” he shouted, seeing a stash of currency bundles inside the bag. The other officers and the man of the apartment came into the bedroom.

  “Don’t know what we’re talking about?” asked Mulvehill. He smirked. “You got anymore of this stuff around?” he demanded.

  He shook his head, a sour look on his face.

  “Don’t lie to us again and make it worse,” Mulvehill warned him.

  “That’s it,” said the man.

  “Don’t bullshit us,” said Castoro in Spanish. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “The rest of what? That’s all there is.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure. Sure.” The man sat dejectedly on the bed.

  “Where did you get the cash?” demanded Mulvehill, now standing over the man and the bag on the bed. “Whose is it?”

  “Not mine,” said the man.

  “Not yours?” said Castoro. “What are you doing, holding it for somebody? Who are you holding it for?”

  The man shrugged.

  “Don’t give us a shrug. We want answers. If you want us to get out of here, you better tell us what we want to know. Where did you get this st
uff? We know it’s not yours. This money comes from drugs, right? You have drugs here?”

  “No drugs.”

  “We find drugs around here, you’re going to jail for twenty years. Even without any drugs, we got you on money laundering; you’re going to get seven to ten. You’re in a deep pile of shit unless you help yourself, your wife, the whole family.”

  “My wife? She has nothing to do with this.”

  “Yeah, who does then? You better start coming up with answers.” The other Task Force members were still rummaging through the apartment, opening every compartment, looking under every piece of furniture.

  “I got it from some guy I met in the bar on Northern Boulevard watching Mexican football. He said I could make some money. What I have to do, I asked him. He said I had to pick up a package and give it to another guy. I didn’t even know what was in the package.”

  “Bullshit,” Mulvehill said bending down right into his face. “What bar?”

  “Los Gates.”

  “Yeah, and what was this guy’s name?” said Castoro.

  “I only know him as Flaco.”

  “What’s the rest of his name?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the guy.”

  “Where does he live?” asked Mulvehill.

  “I don’t know. I just meet him in the bar.”

  “How do you get in touch with this guy Flaco?”

  “I don’t. He said he’d get in touch with me and tell me what to do.”

  “Bullshit,” said Castoro, rummaging on the shelf in the bedroom closet. “You want us to believe that you met a guy who gives you a million, maybe two million bucks in cash, and you don’t know who he is, or where he lives?”

  “That’s the truth,” the man said defiantly.

  “How much is in there?” said Castoro.

  The man shook his head and shrugged.

  “You’re lying to us again,” said Mulvehill. “You’re only making it worse by lying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are!” said Mulvehill loudly, digging his face right up into the man’s face.

  The loud voices from the bedroom brought the wife into the room. She hung back, watching the police and her husband. The frightened children trailed after her, still snuggling against her, their wide eyes peering out at the scene.