The Linda Wolfe Collection

by Linda Wolfe

  It was a long letter, and he sat late into the night in the nearly deserted building composing it. “You expected me to give you everything I’ve collected and learned for $20,000?” he wrote. “Are you stupid or do you think I’m stupid? I may be a shitkicker but I’m not a dumb shitkicker.”

  The letter continued:

  It took me a year and over 1,000 miles in a rented car going between the Big Apple and New Jersey. I spent days in flea bag motels, and a hundred hours parked in New York City watching your comings and goings. I made over 100 phone calls to track you and make a record of your habits.

  I got into Val’s house on Rosewood Lane, and spent over three days parked in front of the Sutter house waiting for the two of you to be there alone during the day because you didn’t leave on enough lights at night when you were screwing. And then I had to rig up a remote camera in the house because I couldn’t take pictures from the outside because you kept the fucking blinds drawn. And I had to wait until you came back without the kids.

  Did Purdy sound sorry for himself? Well, why shouldn’t he? He was supposed to be dying. His creative imagination afire, Sol continued with the litany of the detective’s efforts.

  I had to buy expensive recording equipment. And climb through backyards to tape you at your house (When I was at Rosewood a jogger questioned me—when I was in your backyard one of your gardeners spoke to me—I had to con my way out of both situations). I spent over ten days on Long Island living like a hobo. I think that’s what got my diabetes kicked up (I was out of commission for most of June and July. I guess you thought I was out of business.)

  I had to buy expensive bug transmitters and bribe my way into your boyfriend’s apartment. I was there twice (once the cleaning lady Maria caught me coming out but I conned her too). I got great audio. Your boyfriend has a good sense of humor but he also has a lot of gas. (You saw me once when you were waiting in the lobby, but you were too busy looking in the mirror).

  I went to your hotel twice (I couldn’t get into your room but one of your doormans [sic] brought me into your lobby and was going to let me talk to your young lady—as he called her). I left notes for you on both my visits and tipped your doormans [sic] pretty good. I told Ramon that I was going to be walking Jessica home from school afternoons when she got back and when he noticed I had no teeth and a big gut (water from the diabetes), I promised I’d have false teeth and would lose the gut so as not to embarrass her.

  Do you think I went through all of this for a shitty $20,000? I saw how and where you shopped. $20,000 is loose change to you. When I need more, I’ll be back, if I don’t croak. At least your $20,000 bought you some quiet. If I hadn’t got it, everyone you know and everyone your husband knows and every member of every board you belong to would have received wonderful material like this. And I would be going back on some future date with $200,000 or Jessica. You were smart to pay the $20,000.

  He’d written so much, but the letter wasn’t done. It needed a picture, the kind of picture he’d been telling Joy all along that he had of her. Something shocking and pornographic. Taking out his pack of Raunch-O-Rama cards, he chose one that showed a woman masturbating a man, photocopied it, and attached it to the letter. Then he added:

  I know you don’t think this picture is of you. But it is. His hand is on your head and you are holding his wad. (He’s definitely not from Texas.) The next picture in the series, you’re putting his wad in your gobbler.

  I’ve got two others where he’s mounting you. You look pretty good in all except one. I took a lot of pictures but only four are recognizable. Next time I’ll give you the stuff, but it will cost you more than another $20,000. You see, I was paid a little by someone else, but like this letter tells you, I put in a lot of work and I’m very sick.

  The photostat is lousy—you look better in the picture.

  Now he was done. He signed the letter with the loopy signature he had once copied from David Samson’s bar application.

  But what if she didn’t leave him the money tomorrow? What should he say to her then? Remaining in his chambers, he composed yet another letter to cover that possibility.

  This one was shorter and more brutal than the first. “You stupid lousy cunt,” he wrote. “I’m going back to Texas now. You better hope I die soon because if I don’t you’ll wish you were dead. You better kiss your daughter good night every night.”

  Then, at last, he was finished.

  Michael Chertoff drove from New Jersey to Manhattan early the next morning. He knew that Sol had instructed Joy to put twenty thousand dollars in used hundreds and fifties in the manila envelope he’d sent her from Reno, and that he’d insisted she have her doorman Ramon put the envelope in the cellar entrance to Shanley’s laundry shop today at precisely ten-fifteen. He knew, too, that the FBI had arranged to have all of that take place this morning. So he was hopeful that sometime after ten-fifteen, Wachtler—or possibly an accomplice of his—would pick up the money. If and when that happened, they would have Wachtler. They would have him not just making threats but actually completing an act of extortion.

  In Manhattan, Chertoff reported to the New York FBI’s command center. The FBI had launched a massive operation to track Wachtler that day. Forty agents would be keeping him under surveillance out in the field, some of them in cars stationed near Wachtler’s home in Albany or Joy’s home in Manhattan, others on foot—there was a fellow in jeans and a casual jacket who was standing near Shanley’s laundry, and another biding his time at a table in a nearby pizzeria. In addition, numerous FBI officials would be monitoring and directing the field from their headquarters, the command center, a tiered room equipped with the latest in expensive technology.

  Chertoff, when he entered, saw glittering and futuristic technology—communications-control panels, TV monitors, walkie-talkies, two-way FM radios that would encode every word transmitted from the field agents to the command center, giant screens on which the progress of today’s manhunt would be projected, and banks and banks of telephones. He had never seen so many phones in one room. But only two of them seemed to be in use, he noticed. At least, virtually everyone in sight was crowding around only two phones, the ones with open lines to the field agents. At one of them, Ronald Mahaffey, the New York FBI’s coordinator for violent crimes, was calling out the most important reports coming in from the agents.

  Chertoff joined the tight cluster of men listening to Mahaffey and greeted those he knew, among them James Esposito, New Jersey’s top FBI man; Jim Fox, the head of New York’s FBI; and Manhattan’s U.S. attorney, Otto Obermeier.

  One of the first reports Chertoff heard as he joined the group threw him for a loop. The agent stationed near Shanley’s was radioing that there was someone dressed in western regalia parked nearby. “A cowboy!” he was shouting. “There’s a cowboy out here in a disabled car!”

  Chertoff did a double take. Was there really a David Purdy after all? But the cowboy, a man in a Stetson hat, proved to be merely a tourist, an unfortunate fellow whose car had broken down. A tow-truck operator soon towed him and his car away.

  About a half hour later, Wachtler was spotted coming out of his house in Albany. “He’s in his car,” an agent parked on the roadway just outside his property radioed. “He’s driving himself. He’s heading south.”

  There was a long downtime after that, as Wachtler drove toward the city. Chertoff, trying to relax, shot the breeze with the FBI men, drank coffee, chewed a bagel.

  Joy was hearing the radioed reports too. She was sitting in her living room with Brzezinski and Fleming, and they were explaining to her what the agents were doing and what some of their lingo meant.

  Fleming thought she seemed wonderfully calm. In part it was because things were coming to an end, he figured, so soon she’d be getting some relief from the anxiety that had plagued her for months. But in part it was because there was no more for her to do. Everything was out of her hands. It was as if she was an outsider now, a spectator watching events play
out.

  At ten o’clock, her doorman, Ramón, set out for the cellar entrance to Shanley’s, two blocks away.

  Ramón reached Shanley’s in just a few minutes. He looked around him, then nervously set down on the cellar stairway the manila envelope with its twenty thousand dollars in used bills. The agent on the street radioed Mahaffey that the envelope was in place, and Mahaffey tersely relayed the message to Chertoff and the others. Just then, an agent who had been following Wachtler down the New York State Thruway from Albany called in. Wachtler, he reported, had pulled over to a rest stop in Ramapo, New York, about a fifty-minute drive from Manhattan.

  “He’s sitting in his car,” Mahaffey relayed. “He’s getting out of the car. He’s going to a pay phone. He’s dialing a number.”

  Suddenly, there was a call from an agent monitoring the beauty salon near the spot where the money had been dropped. “The receptionist at the hair salon is coming out,” he radioed. “She’s picking up the envelope. She’s going back into the shop.”

  Up in Ramapo, at the rest station, the agent who was watching Wachtler provided a counterpoint. “Wachtler’s pacing up and down next to his car,” he radioed. Then, “He’s going back to the phone.”

  The agent outside the beauty salon saw the receptionist reenter the shop. Then he saw her walk to a wall phone. “She’s talking on the phone,” he called in. Then, “She’s disappearing into the back of the shop with the envelope.”

  Was she an accomplice? Chertoff wondered. He wanted the FBI to let the receptionist go about her business, to see if she and Wachtler were going to meet somewhere. But Esposito had a different view. “Maybe the woman’s just a dupe,” he suggested. “But anyway, we’d better follow the money. It could get split up back there. It could disappear. Let’s have an agent go in and get the package.”

  “It’ll blow the set,” Chertoff argued. “If anyone was going to come in and get the money, they won’t do it if there’s an agent inside.”

  But Esposito’s view prevailed, and shortly an agent went into the shop, retrieved the money, and interviewed the woman who had gone out to get it. Soon, he was radioing in her story. The receptionist hadn’t known the caller, he radioed. But the caller knew her. “Is this Yesim Oklu?” he’d asked when she’d first picked up the phone. Then, he’d told her he was Mr. Samson and that his car had broken down on the highway, just when he was due into the city to pick up a package. He’d asked if she could get it for him and promised that if she did, he’d give her a big tip when next he came in. That’s why she’d gone out and gotten the package. Then when she brought it back, he’d asked her to open it. That’s when she’d gone to the back of the shop to ask the shop’s owner whether she should follow the caller’s instructions. But he’d said she shouldn’t, and she’d told the caller this, and he’d said okay, he’d send someone else, a “Miss Heather,” to pick up the envelope shortly.

  Chertoff, hearing her tale, realized that she hadn’t been in league with Wachtler. She’d been an innocent—a helpful—bystander. But he was still worried that Wachtler might have an accomplice.

  Now an agent following Wachtler on the thruway saw him stop at an A&P in Scarsdale, not far from his daughter Lauren’s house. “He’s tearing up some paper,” the agent radioed. “He’s throwing it in a trash can.”

  “Get it!” “Get it!” several people in the headquarters shouted, and Mahaffey directed the on-site agent to do so. A moment later Mahaffey was reporting that the pieced-together scraps of paper said, “You stupid lousy cunt. I’m going back to Texas now. You better hope I die soon because if I don’t you’ll wish you were dead. You better kiss your daughter good night every night.”

  Chertoff breathed a sigh of relief. The evidence that Wachtler had been writing the notes to Joy was now overwhelming.

  “What’s bothering you? You seem very blue,” Lauren Wachtler said to Sol only a few minutes after the agent at the A&P read the contents of the torn letter to Mahaffey. Sol had driven from the supermarket to Lauren’s house.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “Something’s bothering you,” Lauren said. “Do you have a headache?”

  “No.”

  But Lauren was sure there was something wrong with her father. He’d arrived with presents for her daughter, and he’d sat down with a children’s book to read the little girl a story, but no sooner had he gotten a few sentences out than he’d jumped up and begun walking around the room. And then he’d sat down and started reading again. And then jumped up again. She’d never seen him so distracted. Though, if she stopped to think about it, he’d been distracted and scattered for some time now. Always going from one thing to another, with no real continuity.

  Lauren didn’t spend the whole time of her father’s visit in his company. A friend of hers, a decorator, was over at the house too, and at one point she and the decorator left the room. “Your father’s so good-looking,” her friend said when they were alone. “And so wonderful with your daughter. He’s terrific!”

  Lauren shook her head. “There’s something bothering him. I don’t know what it is.”

  Sol didn’t stay at her house long. After three-quarters of an hour, he said he had to go into the city. And by twelve-fifteen, he was in his car again.

  Lauren, who had an errand to do, got into her car too and drove as far as the highway, with him following her, and then he headed down the road to New York.

  Was Lauren “Miss Heather”? Chertoff wondered for a moment. But no, he decided. She’d driven off in a different direction.

  At one o’clock, he heard that Wachtler, who had reached the city, was parking at Second Avenue and 88th Street. Then, “He’s getting out of his car,” an agent radioed Mahaffey. “He’s putting on a cowboy hat.”

  “Are you sure?” Chertoff heard Mahaffey ask the agent who was radioing in his observations.

  “Yes,” the agent said.

  “What’s he doing now?” Chertoff heard Mahaffey ask.

  “Putting on an overcoat,” the agent radioed. “And a string tie.”

  “He’s putting on a what?” Fleming said to Brzezinski. “A string tie?” He and Brzezinski had been ordered to leave Joy and go downstairs once Wachtler had started heading for the city, and they were sitting with two other agents in a car parked a block from Joy’s house, avidly listening to the radioed reports. “He’s dressing up as Purdy!” Brzezinski cheered. Fleming began to whoop and give the other agents high fives. “He’s gonna do something now, for sure,” he said. “Maybe he’s gonna come for the money!”

  Eager to know what was going to happen next, the carful of agents kept their ears glued to the blow-by-blow radio bulletins coming from uptown. Wachtler was taking an envelope out of his car, they heard. Wachtler was flagging down a taxi. Wachtler was leaning into the cab and engaging the driver in conversation.

  “What’s that all about?” Fleming said.

  “Beats me,” Brzezinski said.

  A moment later, they heard, “Wachtler’s giving the cab-driver the envelope and a ten-dollar bill. Hey, the taxi’s taking off.”

  As soon as he heard that, Fleming knew what Wachtler was up to. “That envelope’s going to Joy!” he exclaimed.

  Brzezinski knew too. “I’m going for it,” she said, and was out the door of the car before Fleming heard from uptown that Wachtler had gotten back into his car and removed the cowboy hat and tie.

  Brzezinski, dodging pedestrians now, raced to Joy’s building. She arrived seconds after the cabdriver dropped off the envelope with the doorman. “I’ll take that,” she said in her most authoritative tone, and flashed her identification. But the doorman was new. Someone she hadn’t met before. He refused to hand it over.

  They didn’t have doormen back home in Milwaukee, but Brzezinski hadn’t been spending her days on Park Avenue for nothing. She’d learned a few things about dealing with doormen, and she said in a commanding tone, “This isn’t a matter for discussion!”

  He gave her the
envelope.

  Back at the command post, attention had momentarily coalesced around the cabdriver. After dropping off the envelope, he’d pulled away from Joy’s building and picked up a passenger.

  “Let’s pull him down,” one agent said.

  “No,” Chertoff said. “Let’s wait and see what he does. He could be an accomplice.” He was almost positive Wachtler had an accomplice. For one thing, during one of the phone calls Wachtler had made as Purdy, the FBI had thought they’d heard a woman’s voice in the background. For another, his letters had come from places he hadn’t been. Like that letter from San Antonio. Chertoff, not knowing about the helpful stewardess in the Denver airport, pleaded with the agents to hold off on stopping the cabdriver.

  But a moment later, the cabdriver dropped off his passenger and picked up another one. Chertoff realized it was unlikely he was an accomplice. Not if he was just going about his business.

  Fox directed an agent to stop the driver.

  But now the tension in the room increased, grew virtually palpable. Word had just come in that Wachtler, who had stopped for a while at a gas station, was heading out on the FDR Drive and onto the Triborough Bridge toward Long Island.

  So he isn’t going to pick up the money now, Chertoff thought. Maybe he’s planning to come back later. Or send someone else. Or maybe he’s not going to get the money at all. If he doesn’t, do we have enough to prosecute him?

  All around him, the FBI men were saying they did, and that it was time to arrest Wachtler. But although a part of Chertoff thought they might be right and knew that if they arrested Wachtler now, they’d have a strong case, a practically unbeatable case, another part of him wanted to keep the surveillance going. Wanted to see what Wachtler was going to do next. Wanted to know for certain whether he had accomplices.