“I could use some fresh air,” Stern answered.
They walked through the lobby, and out onto the Lexington Avenue exit of the hotel. A few steps farther on the sidewalk, four uniformed policemen encircled Towson and Stern. In seconds, two of the cops manhandled Stern and swiftly handcuffed him. They jostled him into a cruiser, folded him into the rear seat, and slammed the door shut, bystanders watching the arrest.
It was an oddity to see the glaringly attired Stern in colorful garments, owl-eyed and frightened as Towson ambled toward 51st Street as if he were window shopping. This was dumbfounding to the cuffed Stern. Why was he arrested and treated as though he were Public Enemy No. 1? And why was Towson walking away from this?
Stern asked what the charges were against him, but the lowly police officers couldn’t elucidate on what was in store for him. One of the more sympathetic cops said, “We don’t have any information for you. We’re just carrying out orders. Once you get to FBI headquarters, they’ll tell you everything.”
“FBI!!!!!” exclaimed Stern, his pulse beating faster than a drummer.
In Roland’s suite the phone rang, and Fradkin and Paolino gazed apprehensively at one another. The individual who had answered their knock reappeared and picked up the handset. “Hello.”
The call originated from a phone booth on 51st Street, where Harry Towson was. “Lieutenant O’Neil?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“This is Harry. A couple of minutes ago, your people got Bert Stern,” said Towson, an FBI informant. “You know what to do next.”
Unbeknownst to Fradkin and Paolino, NYPD Lieutenant Don O’Neil was posing as a colleague of Roland, who was actually FBI Special Agent Jack Goodwin. In the room adjacent to where Fradkin and Paolino awaited the supposed Roland were O’Neil’s four detectives, who had been eavesdropping on the unsuspecting pair. They were also monitoring the phone lines in Roland’s suite and knew Stern had been apprehended.
Fradkin and Paolino were growing edgier by the second. Roland’s lengthy bathroom visit was becoming a farce. More demoralizing, the pink-faced man, who had purported to be Roland’s something-or-other, had disappeared, for a second time, into another part of the suite. Indeed, Lieutenant O’Neil was in the bedroom phoning his men next door, giving the order to proceed with the raid.
“What the hell is Roland doing in the bathroom so goddamn long?” Paolino murmured.
“And where did this other guy go?” Fradkin asked.
The answers came within two or three seconds as the stillness exploded into a whirlwind of action. The door burst open and four men charged in, guns drawn, looking as if they were about to unload a barrage of bullets. At the same time, Roland/Goodwin rushed out from the bathroom, and O’Neil ran in from the bedroom. “Hands up and don’t move,” Agent Goodwin said commandingly.
Fradkin, a law-abiding citizen, felt his legs as rubbery as worn chewing gum. Hands up high, the bottom of his shirt now loose and disheveled, he said, “I . . . I don’t know why you’re doing this to me. I’m . . . just an appraiser. I’ve never been in trouble. I gotta sit, or I’m gonna pass out.”
“Maybe you never got into trouble before, but you’re in deep, deep shit now,” O’Neil said.
“Can I please sit?” Fradkin pleaded.
“For cryin’ out loud, let him sit. He’s an older guy,” Paolino said fearlessly. This wasn’t new to him, and he did not cower.
“Where are your partners?” Goodwin asked Paolino.
“What partners?” Paolino remarked stoically.
Goodwin pointed at the briefcase. “Look, we have reliable sources that are in a capacity to attest precisely from where those diamonds were taken. So save yourself and admit it.”
Hands still up, Paolino said, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, my friend.”
The six law enforcement agents closed in and handcuffed the two suspects. This undercover operation was a joint venture between the FBI and the NYPD. Agent Goodwin, the leader of the sting, told O’Neil to inspect and inventory the gems inside the briefcase, Fradkin’s precision scale standing not far from it. O’Neil said to Goodwin, “I don’t know much about diamonds, but I’ll have a specialist in the department check this out. He’ll prove they came from the Pierre.”
Lieutenant O’Neil’s buoyancy and swagger was the product of his ignorance in the diamond field. First and foremost, no means were available for an expert to identify loose gems. Secondly, the majority of the victims, even if they could recognize their stolen belongings, had declined to file a police report. For personal motives, as previously mentioned, they denied having incurred any losses. As for Fradkin, whom Goodwin and O’Neil viewed as the weak link of this sting, they couldn’t intimidate him into informing on Stern, Paolino, and anyone else who was part of this “gang of hotel thieves.” The shaken appraiser, who was on the verge of tears, didn’t know from where, or how, or who had acquired the stones. He was here simply because he’d been hired to do his job.
Goodwin said to O’Neil’s detectives, “Frisk these perps thoroughly.”
That drove Fradkin to tears. “I’m not a perp, whatever that means.” He nodded at the briefcase, his shoulders heaving. “These people are paying me to appraise those diamonds over there. That’s all. I don’t know anything else.”
Jack Goodwin did not heed Fradkin’s appeal and signaled the detectives to frisk him, which produced nothing. But upon poking into one of Paolino’s pockets, they found a hotel receipt from the Royal Manhattan that had been paid an hour earlier. The name of the guest listed was D. Paolino. “What’s this?” O’Neil asked wryly, flipping over the invoice two or three times. “Who else has been staying with you at the Royal Manhattan?”
The color left Paolino’s face. I wish that damn Jill hadn’t reminded me to take the hotel receipt. “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about.”
O’Neil passed the receipt to Goodwin. He examined it as if it might’ve been encoded and printed with invisible ink and shook his head in disbelief. “Mr. Paolino, you gotta stop playing games. How can you say you don’t know anything about this hotel bill that has your name on it?” Goodwin waved the receipt close to Paolino’s face. “Here, look, it’s made out to you.”
Paolino strained not to appear frazzled. “Maybe . . . maybe you made it up.” He raised his eyelids at the detective who had searched him. “Who’s to say that your guy here who just went through my pockets slipped it in there?”
“Maybe this and maybe that,” O’Neil said. Then he turned to Fradkin, whose eyes were watery. “What about you, you know who was stayin’ at the Royal Manhattan besides your pal Paolino?”
“I . . . I don’t even know where the Royal Manhattan is. I told you Bert Stern hired me to do an appraisal job.”
Goodwin took the baton. “Mr. Paolino, listen good. Speaking of your associate, Mr. Stern, we already arrested him, and right now he’s at FBI headquarters on 69th Street. He told my colleague that you had other accomplices staying with you at the Royal Manhattan.” This wasn’t true, though it’s a typical interrogation ploy designed to frighten a suspect into an admission. This ruse is effective on inexperienced criminals, but Paolino was too seasoned to fall for it, though on learning Stern had been collared a rush of diarrhea was boiling.
At this stage of the inquiry, Goodwin discounted Fradkin as a coconspirator but pressed on interrogating Paolino. To ease the tension, he called him by his first name. “Dom, we’re going to get the whole story from Stern. It’s just a matter of time before he folds. So why don’t you make it easier on yourself and help us? Tell me who was behind the Pierre job, and I’ll see to it that the prosecutors go easy on you.”
Repressing a surging bowel movement, Paolino said, “If you’re so damn sure Stern will tell you what you wanna know, why are you asking me to help you? Let Stern help you.”
O’Neil said, “Enough. We’ll get the truth. We’ll start by snooping around at the Royal Manhattan. How’s that?”
> “Do whatever you want. But right now, I gotta go to the bathroom before I shit all over the floor.”
Two detectives walked Paolino to the bathroom door and unlatched his handcuffs. O’Neil, upbeat at the finding of the hotel invoice, phoned his desk sergeant at the 19th Precinct on East 67th Street and dispatched two cruisers to the Royal Manhattan. He said to the desk sergeant, “Tell whoever you’re dispatching that I’ll be on my way to meet them there.”
Paolino was done in the bathroom, and the detectives re-handcuffed him. Outwardly, he upheld his composure, appearing as cool as a block of ice, alluding he hadn’t a care in the world. Inward, well that was a different story; Paolino knew O’Neil would surprise Comfort in his room at the Royal Manhattan.
CHAPTER 41
O’Neil consigned Fradkin and Paolino to Agent Jack Goodwin and hastened to West 45th Street for the Royal Manhattan. There two uniformed officers and two detectives were waiting for him in the lobby by the check-in counter. “What’s this all about, Lieutenant?” asked Detective Will Bannon, a body-building, hefty young stallion. His coworkers had nicknamed him “Bannon the Cannon.”
“We have to search a room on the twelfth floor. Number 12022. It’s likely that one of the Pierre’s perps might be hiding in there.”
“Got a warrant?”
“Don’t need one. This is not a residence, and I have sufficient probable cause,” O’Neil answered in a cocky way. He talked to the concierge of the hotel, who gave him directions to the manager’s office, a spacious two-room workplace deep in the east wing of the lobby. The door was open, and O’Neil stepped through it. Three women were behind desks, two on the phone. The one who wasn’t asked, “May I help you, sir?”
O’Neil pecked at the badge pinned to his lapel. “I’m Lieutenant Don O’Neil from the 19th Precinct. Where’s the manager?”
The young lady was taken aback with this cop’s downright rudeness. “The manager is on a long distance call. Can I be of assistance?”
“No. I need to speak with him. Tell him it’s an urgent police matter.”
“Uh . . . the manager is a woman, sir,” the receptionist said modestly.
O’Neil couldn’t have fathomed a female in such a position of responsibility. “Oh. Eh, then tell her I’m here.”
The receptionist stepped away and knocked on the frosted glass door of the manager’s inner office. And O’Neil muttered in a hush, “A woman as a hotel manager! What’s this world coming to?”
Four to five minutes passed, O’Neil pacing and huffing as if he were an expectant father, and General Manager Celeste Hagen, a self-asserting, auburn-haired specimen in her early forties, presented herself and said, “I’m Celeste Hagen. What can I do for you?”
O’Neil wasn’t prepared to see a perfectly proportioned, designer-dressed female in this function. “I’m, eh . . . Lieutenant Don O’Neil, and I . . .”
The three hotel employees covertly listening, Ms. Hagen interrupted him and in a smooth monotone voice asked, “May I please see your photo ID?”
He flaunted his gold badge. “This is my badge, Mrs. Hagen.”
“It’s Miss Hagen. And despite your shiny gold badge, I do need to see your police ID.”
She had disarmed O’Neil, ruffling the lieutenant’s masculinity and fending his arrogance, as it became noticeable that everyone in the room was reveling in the exchange. He took out his wallet and slipped out the photo ID Ms. Hagen looked at it and batted her curled eyelashes. “When was this picture taken, twenty-five years ago?”
“Eh, no. The department’s policy is for all personnel to take new photos yearly,” O’Neil said defensively, his voice cowed. “Why do you ask?”
“Because the face in this picture looks like it could be that of your grandson.” Ms. Hagen, sharp and witty, had not only clipped the Lieutenant’s air of grandeur, but also humiliated him.
When she had had enough fun, she did coordinate for an assistant manager to accompany O’Neil and his underlings to room 12022. They boarded the elevator for the twelfth floor, and Ms. Hagen’s aide, using a staff key, unlocked the door. Bannon the Cannon, his muscular biceps skintight beneath the sleeves of his blue polyester jacket, twisted the brass knob, and his leg, strong as a steel ram, kicked the door open. He and the other brawny two-hundred-and-fifty-pounders charged in with the mass of four bulls, arms outstretched, revolvers aimed ahead. O’Neil, not as husky and the oldest on his squad, was the tail of this line. Bobby Comfort, lying on the sofa, feet up on a hassock, was multitasking, watching television with one eye and scanning the New York Times. On hearing the loud battering and seeing the door swing open, practically dislodging from the hinges, Comfort sprang off the couch, arms down and rigid, hands balled into fists, his body instantly taut.
O’Neil yelled, “FREEEEEZE!!! Hands up.”
He and his backup crowded Comfort, Bannon manacling his wrists. The lieutenant patted him down and removed the wallet from his rear pants pocket. Scouring the side pocket, O’Neil found three four-carat emeralds. “What do we have here?” He held one of the emeralds between his thumb and forefinger and raised it up to the light in the window. He stared at it, twisting it this way and that way. “These are mighty fine gems, Mr. Comfort. Guess they belong to the Pierre’s guests, eh?”
“Wishful thinking,” Comfort said. “Keep dreaming.”
The lieutenant gave the emeralds to Bannon. “Put them in a plastic bag. The DA will love to see those.” O’Neil then rifled through Comfort’s billfold and smiled wickedly as he saw his New York State driver’s license. “Well, well, well. What’re you know, the slippery Bobby Comfort from Rochester. The famous jewel thief. You did look familiar. But I thought they locked you up a couple of years ago and put you on ice for a long time.”
“Yeah, I remember that,” Bannon said.
“But this time, Mr. Comfort, you ain’t slipping away. We got you good,” O’Neil gloated. “Don’t we, Detective Bannon?”
Bannon the Cannon had no clue what O’Neil had on Comfort, and answered not too convincingly, “Guess so.”
Comfort, his heart palpitating, saw the lieutenant rank on O’Neil’s nametag and said in a forced calmness, “You got me good? What exactly do you have on me, Lieutenant?”
“We know you and your gang did the Pierre holdup.”
“Oh, yes. The only thing I did was to read about it in the papers. What proof you have I did it, Lieutenant? And may I please sit?”
O’Neil placed his palm on Comfort’s chest and pushed him into the sofa. “Sure you can sit. Be my guest. As far as evidence, we got plenty of that.”
Comfort was looking up at the standing cops. “Such as what?”
In a stab at coercing him into confessing, O’Neil rocked his head as if he were about to bullet-point a lengthy list of witnesses and evidence. He clapped his hands once. “Number one,” the lieutenant began, counting, “many of the hostages said they’re sure they’ll pick you out in a lineup. Number two, you left fingerprints behind. And three, one of your cohorts has given you up.” O’Neil gazed at Comfort to read his reaction, but none came forth. “You think we need more than that to send you away for thirty years?”
“I’d like to have a cigarette, please,” Comfort said.
“Unshackle him,” O’Neil said to Bannon.
Now unfettered, Comfort asked, “Anybody got a cigarette?”
O’Neil gave him one and flicked a lighter. Comfort inhaled deeply and looked at the floor, thinking in silence. He saw through O’Neil’s deceptions and contrivances, and understood clearly that most of his claims were outright lies. But he knew something must’ve gone wrong at the Summit; how else would the police have known he was staying at the Royal Manhattan? Comfort let out a fog of smoke and studied O’Neil’s thoughts. “Tell me Lieutenant—not that I’m admitting to anything—but who supposedly ratted me out?”
O’Neil glanced at the others. “Should we tell him? Well, why not?” he said, answering his own question. “How about Dom Pa
olino?” And he smiled at Comfort in a way to mean he had more compelling testimonies. “You do know Mr. Paolino, right? He happens to be from Rochester, too. What a coincidence!”
At the mention of Dom Paolino’s name, a quake set off in the pit of Comfort’s stomach, a shot of blood heating his temples. Could Paolino have confessed to attempting to sell a handful of gems from the Pierre?
Unlikely.
Assuming it was true that Paolino had been arrested, Comfort deduced, he, Paolino, was not in possession of incriminating items; the loose diamonds in his briefcase couldn’t be attributed to the Pierre theft or any outstanding robbery case. Furthermore, he was not a greenhorn petty thief. Dom Paolino—Comfort’s longtime, faithful friend and godfather to his child—was a streetwise, leather-skinned wheeler-dealer unafraid of a weekend confinement in the county jail—a worst-case scenario. Because O’Neil and his muscle-bound but brainless detectives couldn’t possibly have been armed with evidence to uphold an indictment, the investigators would’ve had to release Paolino within seventy-two hours. Another flaw in the lieutenant’s accusation was the fact that he did not mention Sammy Nalo, nor any of the other gunmen. If Paolino had cracked and confessed, he would’ve revealed not only Comfort’s name but Nalo’s as well.
The same theory applied to the possibility that Bert Stern also had been ensnared by O’Neil or the FBI. In addition to Comfort, Stern would’ve named Nalo. And if the appraiser had been thrown into the mix, he was harmless; the poor man was in the dark about the Pierre siege and, for that matter, did not know Comfort even existed, thus he was not a liability.
In respect to fingerprints, this was a figment of the lieutenant’s imagination; Comfort and his robbers had worn gloves throughout the robbery. Lastly, O’Neil’s assertions in respect to the hostages nailing him in a lineup, too, were improbable. Comfort did not directly handle the captives, and they never had a clear glimpse of him. Any time he had stepped foot into the alcove, they were sitting on the floor facing the walls.
The Pierre Hotel Affair Page 16