“You’re not a man,” Rather said at one point, goading Arsenault.
“You want to back that up?” The two men glared at each other. Neither was physically imposing. But Rather was an athlete who dined out on tales of his tough Texas youth, and Arsenault had studied martial arts since he was a teenager. Throughout his life he’d surprised friends and colleagues by standing up to bullies in the schoolyard and the office, and he wasn’t backing down now.
The men edged closer, locked in mutual animus, avatars of opposite styles and points of view: Arsenault—squat, rumpled, a brilliant, blunt pragmatist who regarded the law with skepticism and bent it to his will; and Rather—starched and aloof, a relentless investigator, whose slow, perfectionist approach to casework clashed with that of his boss.
And then as abruptly and nonsensically as it had started, the fight was over. Rather peeled off, calling over his shoulder that it was Arsenault’s case now. Arsenault, after responding that it wasn’t, headed down to Baltimore for the conference.
But Rather was shaken by the argument. He still hadn’t resolved the Fat Danny issue, and now his role in the case, and indeed the unit, was in jeopardy. He called several confidants, including Nancy Ryan, who advised him to stick to his position on Fat Danny and patch things up with Arsenault as best he could. Later that afternoon, he drove down to the conference with Ryan to clear the air with his boss.
Rather tracked down the unit chief in a bar near the hotel conference site. “We have a case,” Rather said, offering his hand. Arsenault shook it, and Rather remained at the bar drinking with Arsenault’s group. But the two men spoke little to each other the rest of the evening, and didn’t discuss the case at all. Whatever trust had existed between them before that morning’s blowup had been irreparably shattered, and nothing the two could do could piece it back together again.
MEANWHILE, the investigation lurched forward, and even accelerated as it approached the final takedown. Don Hill was now working regularly at the unit, and was joined by an assistant from the Bronx, Linda Nelson. Lori Grifa had also come over from Brooklyn, bringing the Michael Cruz shooting and Papito murder cases with her, and Dugan and Tebbens had begun working full-time on the Cowboys. After twenty-five years, Dugan had retired from the NYPD and accepted a job offer at HIU; and Ryan had arranged with the PD for Tebbens to be assigned to the DA’s office on temporary loan. Paired together, the two detectives spent every day tracking down new suspects and witnesses, expanding the case into uncharted areas.
HIDTA’s team had also been busy. First, there was the 300-vial buy one of their undercovers had made from Rennie Harris; then, just weeks later, Eddie Benitez had collared Jose Rios, a Cowboy worker known as “Corky,” transporting eight bundles (800 vials) of crack to Beekman Avenue. Corky began cooperating immediately, calling Pasqualito to report the loss of the bundles while HIDTA’s detectives listened in.
The investigation seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Nearly every day that summer Rather, Hill, and Grifa sorted through mountains of evidence involving more than fifty gang members and hundreds of illegal acts, at the same time prepping and presenting more than a hundred witnesses—many of them reluctant and unreliable—for the grand jury. It was a gargantuan task, especially since Grifa was maintaining a full caseload back in Brooklyn, and Rather and Hill were also supervising several other, smaller investigations.
But the Arsenault-Rather situation made everything more difficult than it might have been otherwise. The poison between them leached into the fissures that develop in the course of any complex investigation, imparting a political dimension to the smallest disagreements. The person most affected was Hill, who had negotiated his office’s cooperation with Arsenault, and now had to deal increasingly with Nancy Ryan, who seemed to support Rather’s decisions at every critical turn.
A typical example was the resolution of the Fat Danny issue. When Hill had shown up at HIU during the week of the MAGLOCLEN Conference expecting to craft an indictment with Rather against Fat Danny, he found that Rather had gone to the conference himself, without leaving Hill so much as a telephone message. Worse, on his return to HIU the following week, Rather told Hill he’d decided not to indict Fat Danny before the takedown. Hill was furious. He knew that Rather had been delaying, that he had reservations about the plan, but Hill had never doubted Rather’s intention to honor what Hill thought was HIU’s commitment to the Bronx. When pressed, however, all Rather would say was “that’s the way Nancy wants it, and that’s the way it has to be.”
“I don’t work for Nancy,” Hill said, flushing. “And I don’t work for Morgenthau either.”
In fact, it was unclear who Hill worked for. His first loyalty was to his bosses in the Bronx, but they were only peripherally involved in the investigation, and Arsenault, whose judgment Hill trusted, was apparently out of the decision-making loop. Otherwise Hill regarded Rather as an equal partner, and resented his using Ryan as a hammer in the disputes between them. In Hill’s opinion, she was an outsider to the case, and her intervention not only gave Rather an unfair advantage in their dealings but suggested that the Bronx was a junior partner in the investigation.
Unable to make headway with Rather, Hill stormed out of the unit and went for a walk to try to cool down. He knew that his office had gone too far down the road with HIU to pull out of the case now. But his relations with Rather would suffer from that point on, and for a few precarious moments he considered taking the Quad and trying it back in the Bronx. Lori Grifa recalls working at a desk outside Rather’s office with Hill’s assistant, Linda Nelson, when Hill strode angrily past. “Well, it’s been nice working with you,” Nelson said to her.
Grifa had been having her own problems with Rather. Courted assiduously by him for the two Brooklyn Cowboy cases her office controlled, Grifa and her supervisors struck a deal with HIU: they would let Manhattan have their cases, and Manhattan would allow Grifa to present them to the grand jury. But once she settled in at the unit, she became a de facto member. She loved the work she was doing there and developed close relationships with Quinn and Arsenault, who invited her to stay on through the summer and help with the grand jury. Grifa cleared it with her office, but apparently nobody informed Rather. In fact, he was saying goodbye to her after she’d finished her grand jury presentation, when Grifa told him she was staying on. “Like hell you are,” he snapped.
“It’s already decided,” Grifa shot back. “If you don’t like it, talk to Walter.”
Rather simmered down quickly, and by the summer’s end he would even encourage her to continue working with the unit after the grand jury. But the damage had been done, and it was clear to Grifa in the succeeding months that Rather did not want her there. No doubt Rather resented the summary way in which Arsenault had added another prosecutor to his case, even one willing to accept a subordinate role; and he seemed to regard Grifa’s good relations with Quinn and Arsenault with mistrust. Whatever his reasons, they added another layer of dissension to the already beleaguered unit.
With the investigation unraveling, Ryan stepped in. But her efforts to ameliorate the tensions were unconvincing, and may even have made things worse. When Arsenault angrily confronted her about countermanding his orders regarding the arrest of Fat Danny, she told him: “You’ve got to back up your own assistant against out-of-county prosecutors.” Then she called Hill down to her office after his blowup with Rather and went back over their reasons for not indicting Fat Danny—mainly that they wanted to protect the secrecy of the grand jury proceedings. But Hill left unpersuaded. In his view, Fat Danny was already under indictment in the Bronx. Recasting the Quad or some other violent act as part of a narcotics conspiracy involving Fat Danny was not going to jeopardize the investigation.
Ryan also called Barry Kluger, the Bronx DA’s executive assistant, and made an appointment to see him on July 23, the morning after her conversation with Hill. According to Ryan, it was a courtesy visit, an attempt to explain her decision to her co
unterpart. The meeting was cordial. Kluger agreed to go along with Ryan’s strategy, and even said he’d call Globerman to reassure the judge that an indictment was forthcoming. In exchange, Ryan agreed to a deadline for the takedown—September 14—and promised to beef up the surveillance on Fat Danny. But according to Hill, Ryan had neglected to inform him about the meeting in advance of her coming, further alienating the Bronx prosecutor. (Ryan recalls she informed Hill in advance of the meeting.)
Later that afternoon, Ryan called the main players in the case to the eighth-floor conference room. The meeting dealt with tactical matters—her decision on the Fat Danny issue, expanding the search for Pasqualito, preparations for the now-imminent takedown—but was also Ryan’s way of consolidating her control over the case and getting everybody on the same page.
Ryan, however, said nothing explicit about her expanded role in the investigation. Indeed Grifa sensed from her tone—at times scolding and sarcastic—that she was distancing herself from the unit. Even more mysterious was Rather’s mood. On what should have been a triumphant occasion for him, the coronation of Ryan as case supervisor, he seemed morose and uncommunicative. Dugan, who liked Rather and enjoyed working with him, was shocked when he saw Rather outside the conference room before the meeting. “He had several days’ growth, his tie was askew,” Dugan recalls. “He could barely nod when I said hello. He just sat there head down, staring at the floor, as if he had more important things to think about. He almost needed to be asked into the meeting.”
Once there, he was silent. “I poked him several times under the table because I wanted him to back me up on some things I was speaking about, but he didn’t respond,” Dugan says. “I was amazed. I kept asking him if he was all right, and he just nodded.”
Rather seemed to recover his spirits quickly. But the long hours—he often worked through the night at the office—and constant wrangling took its toll. At different times he seemed to be at war not only with Arsenault but also with Quinn, Hill, Grifa, and Rorke; and through the summer he became increasingly uncommunicative. He already spent the bulk of his days outside the unit attending the grand jury proceedings or consulting with Ryan on the eighth floor, and in August, with the grand jury on vacation, he shut himself in his office to write a prosecution memo, a summary of the events of the case. By the end of the summer, he had almost no contact with Arsenault, and at times he would take off without notice. Dugan once spent a day trying to locate him, finally tracking him down through his cell phone to a stream near his home upstate, where he’d gone fly-fishing.
Rather recalls that summer as the best and the worst of times. His schedule was grueling—he admits taking the rare day off when the opportunity arose—and he felt that Arsenault and Quinn had turned the unit against him. But he was proud of the work he was doing with the Cowboys and in his other cases. “I had great investigations popping everywhere,” he recalls. “I felt everything I touched was gold. I was doing really good work and I knew it … You aspire to those moments when everything comes together … I was making tough decisions: Put a pen register [a device for identifying incoming and outgoing call numbers] here—it happens. Buy this guy—boom, it happens.”
But his colleagues formed a less rosy assessment of the case. The unit was split into two camps without clear lines of authority, or often even communication. Dugan and Benitez got into the habit of preparing two reports, one for Rather and one for Quinn. At times Hill and Grifa found themselves thrust into the grand jury with a witness they’d had no time to prepare, increasing the probability of mistakes and inconsistencies that could haunt them later at trial or on appeal. And Arsenault was edged out of his oversight role almost completely. As fall approached and Rather was drawing up the final indictment, Grifa had to sneak Arsenault copies of her current drafts, and then present his corrections and recommendations to Rather as her own.
Worst was the mood in the unit. “The morale was deteriorating,” Luke Rettler recalls. “Just walking through the office you could feel it. By the end of the summer, everyone was just dragging through to the end. Usually it’s the opposite. Everything builds up to the takedown, the crowning moment when you arrest the guys you’ve been investigating for months or even years, and you bring them in and see them for the first time when they’re stunned, when they realize their lives will never be the same, these guys who were just out in the streets killing and selling drugs and living incredibly high.
“But it wasn’t like that. The morale was so bad, guys were like, ‘Let’s just get this over with.’ You’d see Walter with his shoulders beaten down. Even Mark and Garry, who are very upbeat guys, were very quiet. They were doing all this hard work and not getting the benefits, worrying about what’s going to happen. The focus had changed and there was a real foreboding about once we do this, what’s going to happen next?”
TAKEDOWN
SEPTEMBER 1993
A MONTH LATER, on the morning of September 14, Mark Tebbens arrested Fat Danny Rincon. Accompanied by six HIU and HIDTA investigators, he swooped down on the Cowboy leader as he exited the Bronx Supreme Court building surrounded by his family and lawyers. “You have the right to remain silent,” one of the detectives intoned, as two others struggled to cuff the 300-pound Rincon. “Anything you say may be held against you in a court of law …” True to his name, Fat Danny was so broad it took two pairs of linked cuffs to bind his hands behind his back.
It was a cool, clear, sunny day, the first fall-like day of the year. Summer was ending, and so, it seemed, were the Cowboys. Fat Danny was the first arrest of the takedown. If everything went according to plan, the next few hours would be the final hours of freedom for the gang whose reign of terror had lasted more than seven years.
Quinn had been preparing arrest folders in anticipation of the raid since July 1. In addition to the usual pedigrees, the files included information about where subjects hung out, with whom and at what times. Rather’s final indictment named 35 defendants. Some, like Lenny and Platano, were already in jail; a few others, who had open warrants, had been arrested ahead of time; and Nelson and Pasqualito were known to have fled to the Dominican Republic. Quinn prioritized the remaining 20-plus gang members still on the street, and began to draw up an attack plan in late August.
September 14 had been selected as the takedown date because it allowed Rather enough time to complete the grand jury, and still ensured that the weather would be warm enough to induce gang members to gather in the street, making them easier targets for Quinn’s men. But Hill, always suspicious of Manhattan’s penchant for publicity, noted that the date also coincided with the post-Labor Day news cycle, when wealthy, influential New Yorkers return from their summer vacations. In his view, the investigation could have been wrapped up four to six weeks earlier. As it was, Rather barely made it by the fourteenth. He presented the last of 84 witnesses the week before, and on Friday, September 10, the grand jury voted a fifty-eight-count indictment that included nine murders and numerous other violent acts.
Four days later, in a lot behind the Cotton Club on West 125th Street, Quinn assembled his troops—ten HIU investigators, Eddie Benitez’ eight-man team, and some twenty additional HIDTA officers drafted for the takedown. He’d already divided them into a dozen or so squads, and now he went over their assignments and the targeted schedule of arrests one last time. There wasn’t much to say. Many of the men had been working on the case for more than a year and had made extraordinary emotional investments in its outcome. For months, Benitez had been doing surveillance drive-bys on his own time. Tebbens had been crusading against the Cowboys since arriving in the 40th Precinct four years before. Quinn made sure everyone’s radio was tuned to the same wavelength. “Let’s get them all,” he said.
After the police collared Fat Danny, they radioed teams watching the apartment of Jimmy Montalvo, the top Cowboy manager known as Heavy D. They nabbed Montalvo, known to be a late riser, while he was still in bed. Then the teams went after lower-tier gang members, s
imultaneously hitting their residences and sales locations. Quinn and Tebbens trolled the streets around Beekman Avenue in a van picking up strays; Tebbens became so excited by the prospect of arresting gang members who had evaded him for so long that he snapped a handgrip he’d been exercising with. By midnight Quinn’s men had 28 of the 35 indicted defendants in custody.
Back at HIU, Dugan processed the incoming prisoners, fingerprinting and photographing them, separating the leaders and top managers. The unit had been converted into a miniature precinct house, the interview rooms and prosecutors’ offices serving as holding pens. Dugan introduced himself to each new arrival, calmly, straightforwardly explaining the seriousness of the charges against them. “You’re not going to be released,” he told them. “This is not like what you’ve experienced in the past.” To the lower-level workers, he added: “Now, we’re primarily interested in homicides. We know you didn’t do any, but we know that you may have knowledge of some.” Then he handed them Rather’s card. “When you realize you’re the only one who can help yourself, have your lawyer call us.”
Because the gang members had already been indicted, HIU’s investigators were barred from questioning or even taking statements from them without their lawyers present. Rather turned the prohibition to his advantage. He told the defendants that his case was so strong he didn’t need their admissions, that he would leave the room if they tried to confess or even speak.
But it was Quinn—gravel-voiced, streetwise—who delivered the most convincing blow to many of the eventual cooperators. He told them they were facing the city’s toughest judge, recounted the Gheri Curl trial, and ticked off the 100-and 200-year sentences handed down to the defendants. “My detectives have spent more time investigating cases than you’ve been alive,” he told them. “You’re not playing with precinct cops, with rookies. You don’t see many men around here without gray hair.” Then he repeated the charges against them, and the number of years they could spend in jail if convicted. “Can you handle that?” he said. “If you can, don’t call me. Don’t make a deal. But if you decide to make a deal, you better get on the train first, or you’ll be left on the platform.”
Gangbusters: How a Street-Tough Elite Homicide Unit Took Down New York’s Most Dangerous Gang Page 23