“Eh, we can’t discuss anything about evidentiary matters and admissions the suspects might’ve made.”
O’Neil had saved Hodge from the journalists’ lizard tongues. But not exactly because the next question was, “Mr. Hodge said, and I quote, ‘. . . the organizers of the robbery are in custody . . .’ But now, Lieutenant O’Neil, you referred to them as suspects. Do you have a solid case against the defendants, or is it circumstantial? And why has the FBI closed the investigation?”
Damn it! How does this pack of hound dogs know the Feds quit? O’Neil’s face flared to a warm red, Hodge now practically hiding behind him. The deputy commissioner was owl-eyed, cowering with the humiliation of a man whose penis suddenly softens during intercourse.
The lieutenant covered the mic and whispered in Hodge’s ear, “Sir, eh . . . I think we should cut this short.”
Hodge swallowed hard and nodded. He readjusted the mic to his height, and palms out at shoulder level, said pathetically, “That’s all, folks. We’ll keep you posted if there’s anything new.”
To the reporters’ chagrin, O’Neil, Hodge, and McMillan, a shamed trio, their self-indignation pruned, walked off the podium like three dogs who had been clawed and roughed up by alley cats.
“We were told this was going to be a comprehensive conference,” shouted an ABC correspondent, waving a notepad high above his head. “I got one more question, please. Have the police recovered the stolen jewelry?”
Competing with the rest of the harried media clique, who were outshouting one another, a New York Post writer said loudly, “Uh, I have another question, too. And this is for Mr. McMillan. Sir, is the DA planning to plea-bargain with Mr. Comfort and Mr. Nalo? Or is he confident his prosecution will prevail at trial?”
“Lieutenant O’Neil, I just want to ask, have you located the stolen items?” asked another.
As Hodge and his mouthpieces faded into a long, light-deprived corridor, the torrent of inquiries poured out onto the empty podium, echoing in the cavernous reception hall.
Irate as a constipated bull, DA Hogan walked up to his television and switched off the eight o’clock news, nearly breaking the tuner dial. He called Keith McMillan at his home.
“Hello, McMillan here.”
“Whose idea was this sham on the news just minutes ago? And why didn’t you inform me of it?”
“The police commissioner instructed Hodge to do the press conference, Mr. Hogan. But it was in poor judgment. I showed up to make sure those morons Hodge and O’Neil didn’t get clobbered by the press.”
“Those two imbeciles’ egos are bigger than their brains. So much for keeping the arraignment quiet.” The second Hogan terminated that call, the phone rang, startling him. It was Doug Pope.
“That was a dumb thing Hodge and O’Neil did.”
“It was more than dumb, Doug. It was idiotic. By the way, have you arranged to get Comfort and Nalo into a lineup?”
“I did, Mr. Hogan. It’s set for the day after tomorrow. The arraignment will be tomorrow morning.”
“Good. If you’re religious, this is a good time to pray that one of the hostages will come through with a positive ID.”
CHAPTER 51
On the evening of January 11, 1972, the sheriffs transported Sammy Nalo to the Tombs. The guards there completed the receiving and registering ritual: supplying the new inmate the jailhouse green jumpsuit, his last name stenciled on it, a blanket, sheets, a towel, soap, and toothpaste and brush. By then, it was too late for dinner at the chow hall, and two correction officers walked Nalo to his cell. He flung the blanket and sheets on his bunk, and lay on it, thinking about on which floor Comfort might be housed. Comfort, too, couldn’t sleep; his eagerness to talk to Nalo had been stirring him, and figured that Nalo should already be somewhere inside the Tombs.
The following morning at 7:00 A.M., the time came when, at breakfast, Comfort sighted Nalo’s bald white scalp. He was two tables to his right, and Comfort raised an arm. “Sammy.”
Nalo pivoted behind him and grinned. He picked up his food tray off the table and went to sit beside to his friend. They shook hands and hugged. “What the fuck has been goin’ on, Bobby? What the fuck happened when Paolino met the fence? Did he or you fess up to anythin’?”
“Hell no. I denied, denied, denied. What about you?”
“I didn’t tell ’em shit.”
They had forgotten about breakfast and debriefed one another. The chow hall, as in all prisons, was loud, with the ceaseless clattering and clanging of eating utensils, and everyone outtalking the other. When finished eating, every inmate had to account for and turn in his knife, fork, and spoon at the door, a measure to curtail the risk that they’d be smuggled out and used as weapons.
Comfort said, “Let’s go to the recreation room so we can talk without all these ears trying to listen.”
They walked up to the guard who was collecting the utensils and chucked theirs into the three designated canisters, where the knives, forks, and spoons were sorted and later cleaned by inmates on the kitchen detail. In the rec room, the two partners in crime sat in a corner. It was relatively quiet. The rowdies were either still sleeping or eating breakfast, though a prisoner whose tattoos defaced his body head to toe had already switched on the television. And the first card game of the day was underway, which meant the first fist fight of the morning would be erupting shortly. That’s prison life.
Nalo affectionately slapped Comfort’s bicep. “So how have they been treating you?”
“You know, the usual cop tactics, threatening and pressuring me into confessing. Bluffing me, sayin’ they have this and that.”
“Yeah, same shit with me,” Nalo said. “But I gotta tell you. This was the first time I dealt with the FBI, and they’re a whole different breed then those dumb New York cops.” But Nalo was unaware that one of “those dumb New York cops,” namely Detective George Bermudez, was gloating over the million dollars in jewels he had reaped from his apartment. As they were comparing notes, Nalo became somber. “We gotta assume they got Paolino. That’s where all this must’ve started from. You think he gave us up?”
Comfort shook his head. “Absolutely not. He and I go back a long, long way. I don’t have a clue what went down, but I’d bet my balls Dom Paolino would never talk or rat anybody out. Maybe they were tailing Stern, or maybe that guy Roland, who I didn’t trust, turned out to be an informant. Who knows? But you can bet your bottom dollar Dom is not the one who started this whole mess.”
“What if they put him under the hot lamp, would he melt?”
“Dom has been in the hot seat before. They couldn’t crack him,” Comfort said, lighting a cigarette.
Nalo moved in closer and said in a low voice, “Bobby, if you’re right, they got nothin’ on us. Nothin’!”
“That’s right. All we gotta do is stay calm. And even if they put us in a lineup, I doubt anybody can point us out. If they do, our lawyers will easily confuse any eyewitness, and twist things around.”
“I think you’re right. But right now, I wanna go take a shower. I’ll catch you later.”
“Before you go,” Comfort said, “How did they find you?”
“I got no idea. It might’ve had to do with the Loren job. This FBI agent, Matt Hammer, might’ve been onto me for that, and somehow connected me to the Pierre.”
“All right, Sammy. I’m going to the commissary to pick up a newspaper. I wanna see if there’s anything new about us.”
Today’s headlines in the papers sure had an outrageous new eye-opener about Sammy Nalo.
CHAPTER 52
On the second page of the Daily News, the headline read:
$750,000 IN GEMS FROM THE PIERRE RECOVERED
Comfort read the article and was stunned, perplexed, and a pang reeled him into a boiling rage. He read it over again, and his disbelief deepened.
The recovered jewels consisted of a single seventy-eight-carat diamond necklace owned by the infamous New York socialite, Aleksan
dra Petranovic. A restaurateur, Louis Peppo, whose bar and grill was in downtown Detroit at Cadillac Square, had surrendered the choker to the local FBI office. What an uncanny coincidence for this three-quarter-of-a-million-dollar piece of jewelry to surface nowhere else but in Detroit, Nalo’s hometown. Comfort dissected every sentence of the Daily News story, and now knew that this necklace was the piece Nalo had slipped into his pocket in the vault room back at the Pierre. At the time, Comfort had thought his eyes deceived him. He’d never guess his old pal, Sammy, with whom he’d been on top of the glorious peaks, and down through the arid valleys, would steal from him. Despite Comfort’s high regard for Nalo, he had cheated him. But this shocker didn’t end there.
Days prior to his arrest, Nalo had telephoned Louis Peppo, who was an acquaintance since his childhood years. Under the guise of proposing a business venture, he urged Peppo to fly to New York. He landed at LaGuardia, Nalo met him, and they drove to a hotel. They had dinner, talked about Nalo’s proposition, one he had contrived, and at the end of the evening he gave Peppo a sealed, eight-inch-by-twelve-inch package. “Louie, take this to Detroit and keep it safe.” Nalo tapped the parcel. “What’s in here is very, very dear to me. Somethin’ my mother gave me before she died and can’t be replaced. It ain’t worth much, but it’s got a lot of sentimental value to me.”
“I understand, Sammy. It’ll be safe with me.”
Peppo flew back to Detroit and tucked the package in his bedroom closet. Before doing so, he couldn’t restrain his curiosity and opened it. He saw a heavy, white velour pouch tied at the end. He unraveled the knot and gulped hard. He had in his hands a gleaming diamond necklace, one so large, “he’d never seen even in the movies.” Peppo had no wisdom about diamonds, but he knew this choker must’ve been worth an arm and a leg. Nevertheless, no notions of foul play crossed Louis Peppo’s mind; he and Nalo had been elementary schoolmates, and Peppo trusted and admired him. Maybe, as Nalo had said back in New York, this necklace was his mother’s, a family heirloom.
Three days had passed, and as Peppo walked past a newsstand the Chicago Tribune headline immobilized him dead in his tracks.
SORECHO ‘THE ARAB’ NALO ARRESTED IN NEW YORK IN
CONNECTION WITH THE PIERRE HOTEL ROBBERY
Peppo, an honest, bread-and-butter businessman, his record unblemished, was rocked, and his knees began knocking, dreading of being implicated in this nationally ill-famed crime. And fearing the worst, he didn’t waste a minute telephoning the Detroit FBI office to cleanse his conscience. But, to ADA Pope’s disenchantment, Peppo, not to suffer legal and physical consequences, declined to sign a sworn deposition as to how the necklace happened to be in his possession.
Nalo stepped off the row of shower stalls, a tattered green towel wrapped around his waist. Comfort, who’d been waiting at the door-less entrance of the stalls, called, “Sammy.”
“Are you goin’ in to shower?” Nalo asked.
Comfort said nothing but spread the New York Post across his chest. He glowered at the betrayer, and Nalo’s eyelids blinked faster than a flashing traffic signal, his face reddening as he read the headlines. “What . . . what the hell is this all about?”
“That’s what I want you to tell me.” Comfort slapped the newspaper on Nalo’s bare stomach and jerked his chin at it. “Go ahead, check out the whole story. You’re gonna love it, Sammy.”
Nalo’s radar detected bitter mockery. He leaned his shoulder against the wall and warily scanned the article. He read halfway into it and looked at Comfort. “I . . . I don’t get it. Where uh . . . where the fuck did this necklace come from?”
Gritting his teeth, Comfort said, “Cut the bullshit, Sammy.” With two fingers, he jabbed Nalo’s chest. “I thought I’d seen you inside the vault shoving that goddamn necklace in your pocket. I just wasn’t sure. That’s why I didn’t have it out with you before.”
Nalo lowered his head in shame. “I . . . got so much pressure on me from these bookies that . . . I mean . . . Bobby, I was gonna tell you, and I would’ve straightened things out with you.”
That was a serenade Comfort had heard many a times before. “Yeah, sure, sure. You were gonna tell me, but when? When you came to see me in my coffin to pay your last respects, is that when you were gonna tell me? After I’m dead, that’s when you were gonna straighten things out with me?” Raising his voice, he repeated, “After I’m dead, right Sammy? Not while I’m alive. Only after I’m dead.”
“You’re overreacting, Bobby.”
Comfort banged his fist on the wall. “Overreacting! You think I’m overreacting? If anything, I’m underreacting! I should have your throat slit ear to ear in your cell in the middle of the night. That’s what I should do.”
“Bobby, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry . . . it won’t happen . . .”
“What’re you think is gonna happen when Al Green finds out that you fucked him and all the other guys? He’s gonna say, ‘How about that lowlife Sammy? He pocketed the most expensive piece. I bet he and his buddy Comfort must’ve both been in on it’. See, Green’s gonna blame me, too. And the satchel with millions in jewelry we gave him to hold for us, guess what? You can forget about it. Green’s gonna say, ‘Fuck those two pieces of shit. I’m gonna stick it up their asses’. And you and I will never see him or our jewels ever again. And all because you took something for yourself.”
“Bobby, look . . .”
Disgusted, Comfort threw his burning cigarette butt on the cement floor, snuffed it under his shoe, and heavy-stepped to the rec room.
NICK SACCO
Bobby Comfort was right. I was still in Miami, but I had found out through one of Furnari’s connections that when Al Green and Ali-Ben read about the necklace, they flew off to Europe. And if Germaine and Visconti would’ve gotten their hands on Nalo, they might’ve boiled him in oil. Furnari and I didn’t care; who were we to bitch? We had hoarded more of the Pierre loot than we ever expected, not to mention the $4,500,000 in stones we got back from the Rochester gangster, Piccarreto. We split that with Visconti and Germaine. But Frankos, who was counting on getting his end from the batch that Green and Ali-Ben were supposedly safekeeping, must’ve been pissed as hell. And if I ever feared a man, I’d have to say it was the Greek. Frankos could rip your heart out before you felt the pain.
CHAPTER 53
Vexed by his partner’s duplicity, Comfort couldn’t close an eye throughout the night. Nalo though, instinctively unscrupulous, didn’t lose a minute of sleep. At 4:00 A.M., correction officers woke him and Comfort, and told the two inmates to prepare for court. They’d be arraigned that morning at 9:30. “You gotta be ready in a hour, Comfort. Let’s go,” said the six-foot-three, three-hundred-pound black correction officer. His tonality had the standard rudeness of a prison guard, the self-empowered attitude that said, I don’t care who you are. In here, you’re under my thumb.
“Learn to be polite and know how to treat people. And maybe you’ll amount to more than a three-dollar-an-hour babysitter for convicts,” Comfort said.
“Like I said, you got a hour, and not a minute mouh. Ready or not, Imma comin’ to git you.” The correction officer’s hint at his mean streak didn’t faze Comfort.
More ballsy, he had to have the final volley in this exchange and said, “By the way, learn to speak English. Lucky for you, the state takes care of unskilled jerks like you.”
Comfort stayed in the shower for less than forty-five seconds, hurrying out, chattering teeth. Hot water at the Tombs was a scarcity, and often in the middle of January the floor in the shower stalls iced. “Brrrrr! This place ought to be shut down. The conditions in here are deplorable,” Comfort complained to a prisoner of Argentinean origin as he stepped off the stall.
“Deplorable! What’s that mean?” asked the Argentinean in a dumbfounded stare.
“Never mind.”
As Doug Pope had orchestrated it, the delivery of Comfort and Nalo to the courthouse part of the complex was guarded but uneventful. No phot
ographers, no reporters, and no pests of any kind. They were ushered into the courtroom in shackles, clanging along in green jumpsuits and plastic sandals. They were led to sit at the defense table, and now all the players were in their respective chairs. Judge Andrew Tyler, a tawny-skinned African American, a crop of frizzy gray hair whitening his scalp, was on the bench. ADA Pope represented the People of the State of New York, and Leon Greenspan, a real estate lawyer, stood for defendants Comfort and Nalo. When it came to practicing law, Counselor Greenspan was more comfortable with land deeds than ill deeds. But Comfort intentionally retained a non–criminal attorney so that in the event of a trial and conviction, he could invoke the ineffectual rendering of counsel as a basis for an appeal. Three days ago, Greenspan had conferred with Comfort in the attorney conference pen at the Tombs, though they hadn’t formulated any particular strategy. But following the arraignment, Comfort, who was far better versed in criminal law than Counselor Greenspan, was contemplating filing DA Hogan’s anticipated worst nightmare, a Motion to Dismiss.
“Defendants please rise,” Judge Tyler ordered.
Standing beside Greenspan, Comfort and Nalo faced His Honor, who glanced curiously at the defendants as if to ask, Have we met before in some social setting?
The court reporter nodded at Greenspan to go on record as the defense attorney. He acknowledged her smilingly and said, “My name is Leon Greenspan, and I’m filing a notice of appearance on behalf of the defendants.”
“Duly noted,” the judge said.
ADA Pope, in a shiny, brownish suit that changed shades as the light reflected off it from different angles, rattled off a litany of felony charges, chiefly Possession of Stolen Property.
Judge Tyler removed his glasses. “Anything else, Mr. Pope?”
The Pierre Hotel Affair Page 22