Alphaville: 1988, Crime, Punishment, and the Battle for New York City's Lower East Side

by Michael Codella; Bruce Bennett

  “What do you have?” I asked him.

  What Benton had was a civilian informant. Like everyone else busting drug dealers, DEA relied heavily on snitches. The NYPD was such an enormous sprawling ocean of manpower and a cluster fuck of paperwork and bookkeeping that Albany tended to rubber-stamp budget increases as long as there was money enough in the state kitty to cover them. DEA was small but growing and had the budget needs to prove it. The agency was fully accountable to the lawmakers that approved their annual operating stake. Gio and I were basically making a career out of not being accountable to anyone but our own consciences. DEA agents didn’t have that luxury and their snitches had to have their papers in order.

  The agency was new enough that there was a streak of administrative realism guiding what they did and how they did it. DEA standard operating procedure made the post-Knapp rules and guidelines that hamstrung NYPD drug busts seem old fashioned by comparison. According to the rules, we could only offer registered in formants a pile of forms to fill out and the promise of some reward money down the line. On the q.t., of course Gio and I offered our secret legion of helpful ears and eyes twenty dollar bills from our own pockets and the occasional opportunity to sell a little longer after we left or keep a few of the bags we found on them provided the info they shared was worth it.

  DEA cut straight to the chase with their informants. They recruited their CIs not from the street but from where people were most willing to work out a deal—the courthouse. Most DEA CIs were collared perps and accessories looking to cut or eliminate jail time by helping Uncle Sam take out bigger fish. Also, DEA offered their rats money—real money based on performance—and they delivered. Civilian informants working for DEA were paid a bounty—a commission percentage based on the quantity and value of material and cash seized over the course of a successful investigation.

  The upside for the Feds was that a good reliable CI could help them fast-forward through months of footwork and surveillance. A guy who had been in the game for long enough to get jammed up by the Feds could bring even the greenest agent closer to taking down a dealer just by shaking a hand and making a buy. Using someone from outside also reduced potential physical risk to the agents. The downside of DEA’s CI outreach was that, as I’d learned on Avenue D, “reliable” and “civilian informant” were often mutually exclusive terms. People like Lydia who I had talked to every week and to whom I had personally funneled my own cash in trade for info couldn’t even bother to tell me that there was a hit out on me and my partner until we asked face-to-face.

  A few years later when I started doing undercover work with DEA, I also discovered that legitimately papered CIs and the accountability that comes with them force a lot of supervisory daylight into an ongoing investigation and can stifle an agent’s resourcefulness and creativity. I didn’t like being watched and resented answering to anybody when I did undercovers. Those operations were stressful enough without having to justify every move to someone in an office. When I was my own undercover, posing as a wiseguy, I could say or do anything I wanted.

  It turned out that the guy Agent Benton had on hand, identified in the mountain of legal documents to come as CS-1, was good. He was from Jersey and had tripped up on a federal narcotics rap. Rather than do time for the guys who had stood to make the most money before their deal soured, CS-1 helped the government strengthen its case and ensure a conviction. When DEA offered him a chance to actually get paid to do the same thing for complete strangers, he jumped. CS-1 hung around drug dealers all the time anyway, so what the hell? It beat working and he liked the money. By the time we met him, CS-1 had already lent a paid hand to nearly a half dozen other drug cases that had all concluded in convictions or solid pleas.

  DEA’s civilian informant knew how to walk the walk and talk the talk. He would need to keep walking, talking and dealing with the Third and D crew until he hit somebody heavy enough to deserve a wiretap. DEA wanted to use CS-1 to establish ties with guys who had so much going on that they could catch them with drugs, cash, and guns and slap them with multiple count drug indictments. They were going to do what they did best, perform a long, slow, careful investigation and fill a steamer trunk full of corroborative evidence from three basic sources—testimony from their CI, surveillance via covert observation and wiretap, and solid, by-the-book arrests of everyone involved so far reaching and well supported that once they were in custody the bad guys would either cop pleas and rat on each other or they would go far, far away for a long, long time. Gio and I offered to get the ball rolling by figuring out who in the Third and D crew Benton’s rat should talk to first. It was our job to point out a dealer CS-1 could use as a boost to get to someone farther up the ladder in Davey Blue Eyes’s organization than Joco and Campos.

  The special agent in charge of the New York Drug Enforcement Administration field office made a few calls first to Washington, then to our chief, and within a few days, Gio and I were deputized, assigned to Group 34 of the NYDEA field division, given two “G rides” (our own cars—mine was a brand-new Camaro), beepers, federal ID, some papers to sign and send to NYPD human resources and to our union, and more free rein to put the Lower East Side scumbags away than we ever could have dreamed of. It was like Christmas. We had a task force bullpen set up in a room at DEA headdqarters with desks, phones, and a bulletin board covering one wall. I took a three-by-five index card, wrote “Davey Colas” on it and pinned it to the top of the board.

  Once officially signed on, we began a series of trips up and down the avenue and through the projects in an unmarked van with black tinted windows that DEA kept in a lot on the West Side Highway. The van was a conversion job that looked like a fuck-truck party mobile, with a captain’s chair and a bench seat that turned into a bed in back. But, like Davey’s armored Chinatown special it also had special shocks, a periscope that peeked out from a nondescript moon roof, and the quietest air-conditioning system I’d ever heard. It also had a bank of still and video cameras, which we trained on the Alphaville dealers as CS-1 sat in the big chair, sipped on a Sprite, and paid careful attention to the bad guys we pointed out. Back on Fifty-seventh Street we reviewed the tapes and stills like game films, compared notes, and prepared a list of who’s who in the Avenue D dope racket.

  We decided that a good place to start would be with Jimmy Rivera. Jimmy was a Third and D regular, one of the hit squad who put Big Arthur Washington down, and one of the whiners that bitched to Davey about going halvsies on having Gio and me killed. I’d heard that he was mostly making volume sales to out-of-the-neighborhood guys since we’d made the D a hard place for him to run dealing spots himself. Jimmy was good with material and guns and bad with money and had gone to nearly everyone around who could hook him up with quantity. On our advice, CS-1 introduced himself to Eggie—a punk in Jimmy’s circle who started out doing hand-to-hands for Jimmy back when it was easier to sell on the LES. CS-1 told Eggie that he wanted to score quantity, and let it become clear that he was hoping to make a solid connection for Chinese smack to sell in Newark, Patterson, and Trenton. Today he just wanted a few packages. Down the line, well…Our guy was smooth. He looked and sounded the part because he had lived it and Eggie took him to see Jimmy himself. CS-1 exchanged about three grand in cash for three hundred bags of dope with Jimmy, who was impressed enough with how our man carried himself and how green his money was that he gave CS-1 his beeper number and told him to beep him directly when he wanted more material.

  A few deals later, Benton, another agent, Gio, and I sat in the van and watched CS-1 cross Avenue D with Eggie and Jimmy and shake hands with a guy that we knew all too well. Animal knew us, too. He was a big, mean, dark-skinned guy who loved guns, cars, money, and hip-hop and was too smart to ever visit the avenue with anything we could nail him for. He’d been on the scene almost as long as Davey himself and had made Davey millions in street corner and bulk dope sales. If Animal had any inkling that we were on the other side of the tinted glass in a government vehicle alon
g with two DEA guys, one of whom was snapping pictures, and that the guy he was shaking hands with was also on the DEA payroll, we would’ve known it. CS-1 would be dead and we would be in pursuit. Animal reassured Jimmy’s new best friend that he could hook him up with unit-sized weight of Chinese heroin and the four of them, CS-1, Animal, Eggie, and Jimmy smiled together like they were posing for the pictures Benton’s man took.

  A week or so later, CS-1 sat opposite Animal at a table in a White Castle on Queens Boulevard below a sign reading burgers for breakfast, why not? Our guy had a main mission—to make a quantity buy from Animal smoothly enough that Animal gave him his phone or beeper number, but not so smoothly that the seller got nervous. CS-1 was a natural. Whatever bounty he stood to collect at the end of the road was going to be worth it. Inside the White Castle our guy and Animal went around about price and quality. “That your car,” Animal asked in a lull, pointing out to a white Maxima in the parking lot.

  “Yeah,” our informant replied.

  “That’s a fresh ride,” Animal observed.

  “Brand new, yo,” CS-1 said. A new car, especially a tricked-out Maxima like the one CS-1 drove, reeked of legitimacy, and CS-1 had mentioned he was in the market for one at their previous meeting. He’d actually already owned it for a month before our investigation even began, but as far as Animal was concerned he’d bought it since their last meeting. Smart.

  Compared to how most civilians behave in their personal and professional lives, on a social and business level, drug dealers tend to be assholes. They’ll threaten, whine, show up late, and routinely shortchange each other. A common mistake that cops make when they do undercover buys is simply being too together. Cops don’t haggle, have all their money carefully counted out and ready, and agree to whatever time and place the seller suggests for a meet. Crooks, well, they’re just fuck-ups mostly, and doing business their way was like pulling teeth about 90 percent of the time.

  CS-1 fidgeted in his plastic banquette seat, looked away, and fiddled with a waxy onion ring in the cardboard container in front of him.

  “What’s the matter?” Animal asked him.

  “This place makes me nervous, that’s all. I don’t like talking business with all this fucking glass everywhere.”

  Animal smiled. “We got a place near here. It’s more private. You’ll like it. It’s your style.”

  Future lawbreakers take note—all it takes is five, maybe ten minutes to do an effective countersurveillance. Next time you go to a meet to sell a felony quantity of smack—use some common sense. Get to the meeting place early and have a look around. Even if you live around the corner from where you’re doing business, go home via a highway and pull over to the shoulder at some point along the way. Change your rendezvous location at the last minute. Be unpredictable.

  If Animal or one of his guys had arrived a few hours early, cruised through the White Castle parking lot, done a little due diligence and made a note of the cars in it and parked across the street they would’ve seen two rides that were worth discussing. One was a tinted-window conversion van that had been on Avenue D a lot lately. The other was an unmarked DEA Impala. Animal and CS-1 got in their cars and Animal took the lead out onto Queens Boulevard. The DEA car followed but the van stayed put. It wasn’t a long trip. Just a few blocks away. Animal led our guy to a garage building labeled Tony’s Custom Speed Shop.

  Animal made the most of thug life, he was tall and muscular, looked great in gangster threads and gold jewelry, talked about money, pussy, drugs, and guns constantly, and worked overtime to remind the world that he was a badass—which, in all honesty, he was. We were positive he’d done nearly a half-dozen shootings. His partner, Guerro, who Animal introduced to CS-1 inside the shop, dressed like he went to work in an office. He was slightly built, no more than five foot five and was soft-spoken no matter what the topic.

  Guerro and the co-owner of the speed shop, shook hands with our “guy from Jersey who buys ounces,” as Animal called him. Told that their guest was into cars, the co-owner, who we also knew from the Avenue, gave CS-1 a tour, pointing out a cobalt-blue 1980 Porsche Turbo Carrera (“Does zero to infinity in like ten seconds flat!”) another new Porsche in red, and a recent model Mercedes with tricked-out bumpers and fenders, a spoiler, and a lighting rig that made it glow purple from underneath at night. The co-owner estimated the net value of the three cars to be about $350,000 and explained that while Animal supplied Chinese heroin to Manhattan and the Bronx, he personally dealt the junk that was flooding the projects in Queens. Jersey was wide open as far as he and Animal were concerned. Once the tour was concluded, the four men went into the garage’s office to discuss prices.

  An ounce would set our man back $5,100. They would knock off the extra one hundred in multi-ounce buys. A brick (a 700 gram unit) would be $90,0000—$89,000 per if he bought three bricks at a time. A new CD stereo with a multidisk changer and huge bass speakers for his Maxima would set him back $150—the nice-guy price. CS-1 left Tony’s with the price quotes and Animal’s beeper number and the instructions to key “666” into the phone when he called.

  Cell phones were still a novelty in the late eighties but, like an increasing number of dealers, Animal had one early on. If there was a number to put up on a wiretap that was it. Since it was a mobile, Animal could use it from anywhere. And like cell users everywhere, he made calls on impulse. If something pissed him off, he was worried, or felt like bragging, he made a call. It was an instant gratification and release that would hopefully make him careless, incline him to slip into incriminating language, and say things he should keep to himself or wait to share until he was face-to-face with his boys.

  Dealers like Animal and Guerro were in a constant state of paranoia. It’s unreal the assumptions and activities that guys with that much to gain and lose will get into. That craziness poses some risk to an undercover. But our guy was cut from the same cloth. He could distinguish bullshit from fact and a flight of anxiety from concrete reality pretty well. The fact is that between greed, loyalty, and trust issues, their own drug and booze habits, and trying to maintain a kind of hypervigilance that most human beings can’t healthily sustain 24-7, these dudes were already in a kind of prison. Through CS-1 we began to rattle that cage.

  The next move would be to make a quantity buy. CS-1 beeped Animal, typed in the number of the beast, and got a call back on Animal’s cell within minutes. Over the course of a half dozen more calls the two arranged to trade a paper bag with twenty-two grand in it for an eighth ounce of smack at the White Castle on the boulevard. Animal pushed the rendezvous once. When our guy bitched about it, he casually explained that he and Guerro were meeting up with their Chinese connection and putting together a quantity deal of their own. Very interesting.

  Animal and Joco met CS-1 in the White Castle parking lot the following evening and went inside together. They left separately after Animal told our guy that he didn’t have the dope with him, asked him to front the twenty-two grand and CS-1 told him to go fuck himself. We knew from the exchange of calls that Animal needed to put together cash to make his quantity score. The truth was that we would’ve been only too happy to front the money, but the government paperwork hadn’t come through and Animal changed the script without warning. Government undercovers are usually so leery of letting the money they signed for walk that smart and suspicious dealers will sometimes demand front money as a test.

  This wasn’t a test, it was mismanagement. Animal really just needed the cash. So, when the agents that followed him from the White Castle discovered a knapsack in the back of a 240SX outside Tony’s with $68,000 in it, we decided that keeping it would probably put revealing pressure on Animal and keep him bitching to our guy.

  Sure enough the next time they spoke, Animal complained that Feds had taken some of his money (a drop in the bucket compared to the cash he likely had on hand from his dope spots) and that they would do the eighth deal as a straight exchange after all. Due to the hassles he was encount
ering, Animal made it clear that the price would have to be twenty-four grand, not twenty-two.

  That night as we watched across the street from Animal’s house in Bayside, our guy handed the dealer a paper bag of cash and received a ziplock with a 106-gram brick of 86 percent pure heroin in it. Animal counted the money right there in the open.

  “What the fuck? There’s only twenty-two Gs here!”

  “I’ll get you the rest later,” CS-1 told him.

  “The fuck you will, nigga! In front of my own motherfucking house you playing with me? Fuck you! I’ve killed people for less!”

  “Don’t fucking freak, yo, I’ll get you the rest. I’ll get it.”

  “You sure ass will. You fucking even speak to me again without that two large in your hand and I’ll fucking shoot you right then and there!”

  He didn’t have to. Animal got his two grand and CS-1 got the numbers of the three errand boys sent to collect it. The goal was to secure a wiretap of Animal’s cell phone. Once we did, these other numbers would join a master list of people we could compile evidence on and eventually collar. The great thing about running a wire is that every phone call is always two-way. If people are doing business they’re going to have to talk on the phone. These guys weren’t just dealing quantity to people like CS-1; they were also running their own dope spots on the avenue, in Brooklyn, and in Queens. Once we tapped the right line, we would be in essence searching multiple “rooms” with a single warrant. Knocking out Animal and enough of his associates would dam up the flow of retail dope in PSA 4 and paralyze Davey Blue Eyes.

  Wiretapping has been around for as long as there have been phones. Before Miranda and the other legal decisions that narrowed the legal definitions of entrapment and legal search and seizure, wiretapping restrictions, like search restrictions, varied state to state and were routinely redefined and overruled in various courtrooms and state houses. The evolution of privacy guarantees associated with the notion that the police or the government can listen in on phone calls has kept pace with the rest of civil liberties law.