CHAPTER 69
We’re in high season,” said the Alitalia ticket agent in barely understandable English. “If you no have reservations two weeks in advance it is impossible to find empty seats. All flights are one hundred percent full.” She placed the edge of a hand on her neck in emphasis.
“So what do we do?” Green asked, befuddled and panicky, Ali-Ben standing next to him hunched over the counter.
The fashionable ticket agent, in a navy blue jacket, white crepe blouse, and a red scarf tied around her neck, shrugged indifferently. “Boh.”
Green and Ali-Ben were clueless as to what she had said; boh is Italian slang expressing, Who knows? It’s not my problem.
They had to leave Italy, and fast. Actually, they had to flee Europe, period. The Italian authorities would transmit to Interpol the two Americans’ status as persons of interest, and an expanding dragnet throughout the continent would be at the fugitives’ heels within the lifespan of a bee.
Normally, the pretty ticket agent, her face a rainbow of colors—cherry-red lipstick, black mascara, and rouge on the cheeks—would’ve aroused the sex buffs, Green and Ali-Ben, but this was not the time for that. She seemed fascinated by these dark-skinned travelers. “I see if we have seats on flight out of Malpensa Airport in Milano.”
Green and Ali-Ben sucked in their breath as her fingers flew across the computer keyboard. “Yes, you can get on flight this afternoon at 1:35. You can board a domestic flight from here to Milano at 10:55.” She looked at her wristwatch. “You have time to make it if you hurry.”
Green shook his head in confusion. “Wait, wait. Run that by me again.”
“You have forty-five minutes to catch next domestic flight to Milano, and at 1:35 you can take international flight to New York Kennedy Airport.” She smiled and pushed out the inside of her jaws with the tongue, a subliminal signal of attraction.
“Awl right! Les do it.”
The brunette ticket agent typed into her keyboard and generated boarding passes, Green and Ali-Ben’s crisis seemingly over. Green leaned into the counter, imbibing the lady’s perfume, and asked, “Uh . . . you ever come to New York?”
She lifted her eyes from the computer screen and blinked her long lashes. “Why you want to know?”
“Well, maybe I can show you aroun’ Manhattan,” Green said, a wide grin opening on his lips.
The young lady tilted her head as though she were apologetic. “Sorry, Signor Green. Is against company policy for Alitalia employees to socialize with passengers.” Again, she pressed the tongue inside her jaws, cheeks heaving as if she were rolling a penis in her mouth.
He wrote his name and phone number on an old boarding pass and passed it to her. “If you feel like breakin’ the rules, call me. It be worth it.”
Earlier that morning, Green and his brother-in-law Ali-Ben had hustled the Dutch floozies onto a KLM aircraft bound for Amsterdam. And in three hours, the two Americans would be on a Boeing 747 in flight to the good ol’ USA. But that might be like jumping from the frying pan and into the fire.
Meantime, arrivederci Roma.
NEW YORK, MID-JULY, 1972
District Attorney Hogan and his deputy, Doug Pope, were lunching at a luncheonette in Foley Square. They were in a relatively private booth surrounded by the working-class customers who were employed at the court complex a short distance away. The hissing of frying bacon in the background and the salivating smell that came from it pricked Pope’s craving for eggs and pork bellies. Hogan didn’t have much of an appetite and dug into the crux of things. “Doug, the pressure from Judge Tyler regarding the Comfort-Nalo case is mounting. He’s about to grant the Motion to Suppress. And I can’t for the life of me imagine why he’s indulging Comfort and Nalo’s lawyers.”
“Nah, nah. We gotta stick to our guns,” Pope said.
“We gotta stick to our guns? Our guns have blank bullets,” Hogan countered. He flipped his palms upward. “This judge has backed us into a corner. We have no choice but to capitulate and negotiate the four-year term with Greenspan and La Rossa.”
Pope tapped his chest. “Are you telling me to concede to those two hoodlums’ stipulations?”
Hogan wagged his index finger. “No, I’m not telling you. I’m ordering you to do that.”
“Bobby,” Greenspan said over the phone, “tomorrow we’ve been called to Judge Tyler’s chambers.”
“What about?”
“If I were to guess, Mr. Hogan has folded and will go along with the four years we asked.”
Comfort, Nalo, and the attorneys were late arriving in Judge Tyler’s chambers. They pulled up chairs and sat across from Pope and McMillan. His Honor was behind his desk, busy blowing into the damn pipe, his cheeks expanding and retracting as he sucked in air to vent the unlit tobacco. Forty-five seconds of this, and everybody’ eyes were rolling. Here he goes again with that stinking pipe. A sudden coughing fit sent the judge into spasms as he rapped his chest, those before him looking on helplessly. “Want a glass of water, Your Honor?” Pope asked.
The hacking persisted a while longer, and Judge Tyler’s eyes were tearing. The hacking stabilized, and he cleared his nose. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Excuse me. So where were we?”
“Well, we reached an understanding with defense counselors,” Pope said in a manner inferring that if he had his druthers he wouldn’t have agreed to it.
His Honor had a quizzical look as though he were baffled, and La Rossa stepped in, “Judge, myself and . . .” pointing at Comfort’s lawyer, “Counselor Greenspan, and the District Attorney’s Office did draft a plea agreement for your approval.”
“When you say you drafted a plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office, are you telling me that Mr. Pope had no input?”
Pope spoke up on his behalf and said, “I’m acting on the orders of Mr. Hogan. But I per se would never have . . .”
Tyler cut him off. “It’s irrelevant, Doug. If District Attorney Hogan sanctioned the arrangement that’s all there is to it.” He nodded at Greenspan and La Rossa but omitted Pope. “So let’s hear this deal, Counselors.”
Comfort and Nalo, the former decked out in a light-brown suit—the creases of the pants as sharp as a knife—and the latter in a tan sport jacket and a crimson shirt, were ecstatic at the judge’s restraining of Pope.
La Rossa opened his briefcase and withdrew a typed sheet of paper, a synopsis of the plea bargain he, Greenspan, and Hogan had forged through Pope as an intermediary.
“Your Honor, these are the stipulations we came to terms with, so far,” La Rossa said in the gust of a victor.
CHAPTER 70
JULY 16, 1972
Alitalia flight 7602 from Milan Malpensa International Airport to New York JFK was about to touch down on runway 22L. As the Boeing 747 neared the apron of the runway, decelerating to 130 knots, its nose tilted upward at a thirty degree angle, the landing wheels screeched, skidding for more than four hundred feet, blue smoke from the burning tires engulfing the belly of the fuselage. Once the mammoth aircraft was anchored to the passenger terminal, Al Green and Ali-Ben made way through the crowded cabin and disembarked.
At a customs checkpoint, an agent cleared the two, and they tramped to the baggage area on the lower level of the international terminal. “Nothin’ like breathin’ da air in the good ol’ USA,” Green said, sighing blissfully.
“You ain’t kiddin’. I feel like kissin’ the ground,” Ali-Ben said.
But here in America Green and Ali-Ben would have to hide from Frankos the Greek—and whomever else.
Summer vacations, miscellaneous recesses, and routine delays prolonged the plea negotiations. The defense lawyers had to consult their clients whenever a stumbling block arose, and Pope had to confer with Hogan at every step of the bargaining sessions. And because of the volleying back and forth, summer had waned, and the early fall season was homing in.
In Judge Tyler’s tobacco-scented chambers, La Rossa was specifying, for His Honor’s benefit
, the provisions of the plea deal. Tyler asked, “Mr. La Rossa, may I have a copy of those stipulations?”
“Certainly.” La Rossa slid the three-page agreement across the judge’s desk.
For three or four minutes Tyler perused the documents and read the content aloud. He began, “The defendants shall be confined for an indeterminate sentence of two to four years in a state penitentiary. Judge Andrew Tyler’s recommendation for release at the earliest parole eligibility will be attached to the court’s commitment decree.” He removed his glasses. “So far, it looks good.” He replaced the spectacles and coughed. “Excuse me. I’ll proceed. Defendants shall receive unconditional immunity for any known and unknown crimes they may have committed, abetted, conspired, or implicated in.” The judge looked at his audience and nodded. “I’m also in accord with that.”
“Your Honor,” Pope interrupted, “I’d like to note for the record that I totally object to the acquittal of any unknown crimes.”
This time, Tyler almost tore the glasses off his nose, and waved the papers in front of him. “Mr. Pope, has your superior, the Honorable Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan, consented to these conditions?”
Pope didn’t answer as quickly as the judge wished him to.
“Mr. Pope, did he or did he not?” Tyler asked heatedly.
“Yes, he did.”
“Then your objections are immaterial.”
Immunity for past robberies was of paramount importance to Comfort; those burglaries were currently under investigation, and though he and Nalo had not yet been targeted, they knew the curtain would soon be falling.
The last stipulation was that any federal and state taxes Comfort and Nalo might’ve owed would be forgiven.
Judge Tyler blessed the deal and set sentencing for December 14, 1972.
CHAPTER 71
Sammy Nalo was not definite about accepting the plea deal. The positive side was that he remained free on bail until the sentencing date of December 14, allowing him to mull over the four-year prison term.
On a Wednesday night in September of 1972, Nalo was relaxing drinking a glass of ouzo at his partly-owned club, Port Said, lusting over a belly dancer. Perspiration glimmering her skin, she had spotted Sammy in the audience, and through explicit body expressions subtly dedicated her performance to him. Incited by the dancer’s carnal temptations, Nalo was slipping into a daze when he heard a familiar voice, “Sammy.”
He stiffened into awareness, and rotated his upper torso to look at the caller. It was a trusted friend, Bill Comas, with whom Nalo had traded secrets in years past. He invited Comas to have a cocktail and fantasize about the belly dancer. Nalo and his mustachioed guest talked meaninglessly in broad terms. They did reminisce about a jewelry store they had burglarized in Queens before Nalo graduated to his current specialty, robbing Manhattan’s upper-crust hotels. But in telling Comas the stories of his recent bravados, Nalo did not broach the Pierre or the Sophia Loren adventures. But he did confide to Bill Comas that in the course of the search of his Bronx apartment the cops stole more than a million dollars in diamonds.
“It had to have been those pieces-of-shit cops. Who else could’ve done it?” Nalo said. “Those bastards!”
The dancer gravitated toward Nalo’s table, the spotlight following her, bringing Comas and Nalo out from the shadows. The tempo of the musical instruments increased to a crescendo and then ended abruptly, as did the dancer’s sensual whirls. An interlude of silence stalled the euphoria, and the spectators everywhere in the room could hear Nalo and Comas’s secretive chat.
Comas, round-faced and stout, who spoke with a lisp, lowered his voice and inched closer to Nalo. “Lemme understand something. How’re you know the cops stole your diamonds? I mean, what if somebody who knows you broke into your apartment, went through the joint, and found them?”
“You mean somebody like you?” Nalo said, his olive-black eyes fixed at Comas.
Comas, unsettled, leaned back as if to distance himself from Nalo, and raised his hands, palms outward. “Hey, hey, wait a minute, Sammy. I don’t even know where your apartment is. I mean . . .”
In a motionless stare, Nalo said, “It ain’t hard to find out where I live.”
“Now . . . now hold your horses, Sammy. You and I go back a long . . .”
“I’ve known the best of friends fuck each other, and then they go and get drunk together.”
Comas, his face reddening, couldn’t believe Nalo was blaming him for his stolen gems. “Sammy, I ain’t like that, and you know it.”
From one second to the other, the fury on Nalo’s face changed to a smirk, and he ruptured into a laugh. “Just kiddin’, just kiddin’, pal.”
Comas yelled, “You prick. You goddamn Turk.” Comas, too, laughed, revealing the gap of a cracked tooth. “But like I was sayin’, how’re you know the cops did it?”
“First off, my apartment was not broken into. No sign o’ that. Secondly, only a couple of bitches have been at my pad, and they wouldn’t try anything like that. So if it’s not the cops that took my shit, it must’ve been the FBI. One or the other.”
Yes, one or the other. But a trap was being set in place. Nalo could not have envisioned that Comas was Agent Hammer’s paid informant. Hammer, still tracking the Loren case, and convinced that Nalo had been the engineer of that robbery, told Comas to rekindle his friendship with him for the express purpose of eliciting incriminating information.
“If the cops or the FBI found the diamonds, they would’ve turned them in. Right?” Comas said.
“Yeah, maybe an honest cop. But how many honest cops are left in this city?”
“And you doubt that it might’ve been someone else?” Comas asked.
“It’s not that I doubt it might’ve been somebody else. I know it wasn’t anyone else but the cops or the FBI.”
That was what Bill Comas needed to hear.
CHAPTER 72
Bill Comas, his thin nose snorting due to a cold, was in a phone booth on the corner of 92nd Street and Second Avenue. “Hello, Mr. Hammer. Bill here.”
“Everything all right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“You need to see me, Bill?” asked Agent Hammer.
“Yeah, as soon as possible.”
“All right, Bill. I’ll see you at Elaine’s in twenty minutes.”
Elaine’s, a restaurant on the southwest corner of 88th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, fancied an eclectic cuisine. Over decades, it had become a lair of writers. The restaurant adopted celebrity authors, and not-so-famous ones. It was also a sanctuary for self-proclaimed writers, and those starving, unpublished souls who ate there at the generosity and expense of the overweight proprietress, Elaine Kaufman. Elaine’s featured a bar, a dining room, and a secluded alcove reserved for household-name authors and personages of notoriety. A cabal of Daily News reporters, a raucous clan who fancied themselves as writers, fritted away time at this New York attraction, mingling with the bona fide authors.
Hammer locked the door to his office and undressed, shedding his suit. He dressed in dungarees and a plaid, short-sleeve shirt. To complete his disguise, he donned an orange-and-blue Mets baseball cap and sneakers. The FBI assumes immeasurable caution not to uncloak an informant’s cover. If a targeted suspect learns that he, the informant, is cooperating with a law enforcement official, such exposure could lead to deadly consequences.
Comas’s attempt at flying incognito was lame: dark wraparound sunglasses, a brown beret, and a green polo shirt, the collar up, enclosing his bony neck. He and Hammer were at a table in the semiprivate corner of Elaine’s main dining room. The daily midday customers filled the large part of the seating capacity. At the bar, the drinkers indulging in a liquid lunch stood three deep, vying for the bartender’s attention. The special of the day was Long Island caught sole fillet in a lemon butter sauce garnished with anchovies, an aromatic recipe that lured in the regulars.
“What’s going on, Bill?”
Hammer adjusted into the chair and clasped his hands as if poised for a long-winded story. “I can’t wait to hear it.”
“Last night I was with Sammy the Arab.”
“Oh!” Hammer exclaimed, surprise in his tone, eyebrows rising.
“Yeah,” Comas nodded. “He told me that a couple o’ days before you and Detective Bermudez arrested him, he had hidden in his apartment—he didn’t tell me exactly where—about a million bucks in jewelry.”
Hammer curved down his lips. “Really!”
“Oh, yeah. When Sammy made bail and went to his pad, guess what?” Comas sipped water and whispered, “His stash was gone. Gone!” He spread his arms. “Gone, just like that.”
Hammer gnashed his teeth and banged on the table top, the water decanter and glasses shaking. He raised a hand as a sign something had just dawned on him, but he didn’t want to share it with Comas. Bermudez. That no-good bastard! He had to have been the one who took those jewels. He was the only one left alone to guard Nalo’s apartment. That crooked punk! He nodded as the whole picture was sharpening to a clear focus.
“Sammy said one of the cops or maybe one of you guys from the FBI might’ve done it,” the informant added, not meaning to place Hammer on the defensive.
“Nalo is fifty percent right,” Hammer said with the assertion of someone who had nothing to hide. “It certainly wasn’t me or anyone else from the FBI for the simple reason that we were never alone in the apartment. Someone from the NYPD was always present.” He sat straighter and regarded Comas with a cop look. “Bill, did Nalo say anything about the Loren or the Pierre robberies?”
The Pierre Hotel Affair Page 29