by Robin Moore
Still, it is not easy to get a warrant to tap a phone.
There must be sufficient reason to believe, established by precedent and tangible evidence, that the telephones to be wired are used by suspected felons or conspirators and could lead police either to their apprehension or to prevention of additional felonies. It must also be shown that the telephones themselves are used to further illicit enterprises.
This last point can be a bit tricky to substantiate, but, depending upon the circumstances and the applicants, most judges will issue the warrants.
Vince Hawkes took his facts to the department's Legal Bureau, where an affidavit was drawn and presented formally to a justice of the State Supreme Court. Within thirty-six hours, a court order was signed authorizing taps on Patsy Fuca's telephones.
Securing the legal authorization was only the first, if one of the biggest hurdles. Next the department contacted the New York Telephone Company to ascertain the coded "pairs" for the Fuca phones — two key digit screws in the central panel box through which every telephone installation is fed, and which once hooked into, can put that instrument on monitor. With that knowledge, plus information as to where the feedboxes were located, the mechanics of installing the taps became the responsibility of the technicians of the C.I.B., the department's ingenious Criminal Intelligence Bureau. Their problems were twofold; they had to gain access to a telephone's central box which is usually on or close to the premises under surveillance; and they had to select the most convenient, undetectable site, preferably not too distant, in which to install the listening device with its automatic tape recording equipment. This sometimes required stringing telephone lines surreptitiously for many city blocks, over rooftops and through back alleys.
Wednesday afternoon, October 11, of that week, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso met a C.I.B. team on Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn, a few blocks from Patsy's luncheonette at the corner of Maujer Street.
The location chosen for that "plant," or listening post, was the basement of the modern apartment project across from the store. One of the C.I.B. men went to have a chat with the janitor of one of the buildings who was told only that the police were con-ducting a secret investigation and needed a quiet place at which to rendezvous. This janitor was nervous but cooperative, and he showed them an unused storage room in a remote corner of the basement.
Now they had to get to the feedbox of the two telephones in the luncheonette, which was situated on the exterior wall in an alley behind the store. This part was, as usual, less ticklish than it sounds. Two C.I.B. men merely walked into the luncheonette and identified themselves as telephone company checkers to the elderly man behind the counter. (He was checked out later and found to be Barbara Fuca's stepfather, Joe Desina, who frequently relieved the Fucas when neither could be in the store.) Going to the rear of the luncheonette, one "repairman" examined the two public telephones while the other continued out into the alley behind the store. Quickly, the latter opened the narrow, three-foot-high panel box containing twin vertical rows of digital screws.
From information gleaned from the telephone company, he located the two key "pair" screws, and to these he hooked the bared ends of two wires. Then he rejoined his companion inside, and they walked back through the store and out the front entrance.
Within moments, they had re-entered the alley from behind the luncheonette and were camouflaging the wires now attached to Patsy Fuca's telephone call box.
Feeding their dual lines from one telephone pole to another across Maujer Street, the C.I.B. operatives strung them into the apartment house basement, where the narcotics detectives waited. The wires were attached to twin recorders — marked Luncheonette One and Luncheonette Two — and they waited to run a test. The automatic machines were activated only when a tapped telephone was in use and even then a human monitor did not have to be physically present. Whether anyone had the ear-phones or not, all incoming and outgoing calls were recorded on perforated tape, which also provided the advantage of enabling the police to decipher numbers dialled on the telephone in question.
Finally, one machine began to whir. There were a series of clicks as tiny holes were punched unevenly in the moving tape. They played it back. It was a customer in the luncheonette calling his wife. The plant was operative.
The next morning, Eddie and Sonny again met a C.I.B. team, this time in southern Brooklyn, and much the same manoeuvres were employed to effect the wiretap on Patsy and Barbara Fuca's home telephone at 1224 67th Street. The plant was set up in the basement of a building around the corner from the Fuca residence. Egan or Grosso would check it several times a day.
Thus began, officially, what was to become for Detectives Egan and Grosso, the New York Narcotics Bureau, and, eventually, law enforcement agencies on two continents, a long, tangled expedition into intrigue that in the end would shake the foundations of international crime. But within the first twenty-four hours, the investigation was almost "burned" before it could get off the ground.
The police officers apparently had not been as inconspicuous as they had thought when moving lines and equipment into the apartment house basement across from Patsy's candy store. One of the handymen in the building might have noticed them or perhaps have spied the "Luncheonette" labels. Or possibly the janitor was prone to gossip. In any event, Patsy got wind of the odd goings-on nearby, for on Friday morning Sonny was startled to overhear a call to Patsy in the luncheonette from a man named Louie. They seemed to know each other quite well.
Patsy apparently had telephoned him from outside and left word to return the call.
"Patsy? What's new?"
"Fine . . . Listen, Louie, I need a favour."
"Name it."
"It's my phones here in the store. I want you to look them over."
The other man was silent for a second. "You mean a tap?"
"You know what I mean. When can you come around?"
"Hmmmmm . . . how about Monday?"
"C'mon," Patsy protested. "You can come faster than that!"
"Well, tomorrow's no good, Sunday?"
"Okay, Sunday. Thanks. Howsa family?"
"Oh, everybody's fine, they're — "
"Good. Okay, then I'll see you," Patsy said and rang off.
Moments later, he was dialling again. This time it was to his home. Curtly, he told Barbara of his suspicion that something funny was going on around the luncheonette and warned her not to call him there again until Louie took a look.
Grosso hurried from the basement plant to the hospital, where Egan was stationed at the window of the vacant X-ray room. When he heard the gist of Patsy's two calls, Egan rasped, "Shit!" and slapped the windowsill viciously with an open paw. "How the hell could he have us made so goddamn quick? And who the hell's this Louie?"
"Probably some guy they use who knows phones."
Sonny was thoughtful a moment. "You know, the way he talked, I wouldn't say Patsy is actually on to us yet. He's heard something, and I guess he figures who else could it be but him. But I don't think he knows yet what's happening."
"Well, the main thing is," Egan grumbled, "we gotta bust this plant, get C.I.B. out here and get the taps off his phones." He took another angry swipe at the windowsill. "Not only do we lose our line, but now probably he'll be looking over his shoulders all the time even if his friend don't find nothing wrong with his phones."
"That's what I mean," Sonny said with emphasis.
"But suppose we could persuade Patsy that yeah, somebody around here is hot, but not him? " As he spoke he leaned on the sill, face close to the pane. Egan, watching his eyes, saw that Sonny was not looking toward Patsy's luncheonette but at the row of stores directly opposite the hospital.
"The other luncheonette!" Egan exclaimed, comprehending. "Hey! All anybody knows is some luncheonette is wired. It could work. Let's check it out."
Sonny borrowed a hospital telephone and first called a lieutenant he knew in the Brooklyn North Vice Squad who specialized in bookmakers and off-track be
tting in general. He asked for a rundown on the candy store on Bushwick Avenue across from St. Catherine's. Often such neighbourhood shops in Brooklyn, as in most large cities, were busy exchanges for illegal "policy" numbers or other betting enterprises. Usually, they were small-time, private operations, but the police continually harassed them in order to discourage the syndicate organizers from expanding. In a few minutes the lieutenant came back on the line and confirmed that this particular store had a number of marks against it, although it had not been hit as yet. Sonny then outlined his problem and his scheme. The lieutenant agreed to send some of his vice squad right away to stake out the place and cooperate with the narcotics detectives.
Next, Sonny telephoned his office in Manhattan and filled in both Vinnie Hawkes and Sergeant Jack Fleming, acting boss of the bureau's select Special Investigating Unit, which automatically had become interested in the Fuca case when Angelo Tuminaro's name came up. Finally, he called C.I.B. downtown and briefed them about Patsy's suspicions and the necessity of transferring the apartment-house plant in any event.
By Saturday noon, under the joint surveillance of vice squad detectives and Eddie and Sonny, a number of unsavoury looking characters had been observed in more-or-less furtive comings and goings in the decoy luncheonette. And finally they spotted one known bookie with a long record of arrests who huddled with the proprietor, probably laying off bets. "That should be good enough," one of the vice cops said, and he and two comrades tumbled out of the hospital and, with intentionally overplayed dramatics, ran toward the luncheonette. As prearranged, two radio cars, sirens wailing, raced down Bushwick Avenue and squealed to a stop in front of the store. A knot of gaping spectators gathered quickly on the sidewalk, chattering and trying to manage a peek inside. Then, as the uniformed patrolmen made a show of holding back the onlookers, the detectives came out with their two unhappy prisoners, the bookie and the proprietor. As they led them to one of the waiting cars, one arresting officer, grinning to his companion, commented in a voice that carried to all in the vicinity:
"Someday these guys are gonna wise up about popping off on the telephone!"
"Yeah," the other said, "they won't have telephones where they're going!"
Within an hour, back at the basement plant, Sonny's recorder whirred again. It was Patsy, calling home. "Relax, baby," he told his wife cheerily. "That thing I was worried about yesterday, about the phones? It's beautiful. It was the guy down the block, the other candy store. The fuzz just burned his book. We're clean. I better call Louie."
The most important goal in the thinking of the detectives was some lead to the whereabouts of Little Angie Tuminaro, and in the days and weeks that followed Egan and Grosso grew bolder in their efforts to get close to Patsy. The detectives began visiting the luncheonette personally. Egan arranged with a hospital orderly to borrow two white jackets, and they dropped into the store daily along with other hospital personnel who frequented the place for cigarettes, a magazine, or to gossip during a coffee break.
The first time Eddie and Sonny went in, Patsy was behind the counter. The officers were nervous, and found it difficult to bring themselves to sit face to face with the man they had been observing clandestinely for two weeks. But Patsy was busy, and he didn't notice them any more than any other customers. The next day Patsy wasn't in his shop; the place was tended by the old man whom the C.I.B. agents had seen, Barbara Fuca's stepfather, and the short, stocky dark man who had been with Patsy and his wife that first Sunday when Eddie and Sonny started their surveillance. But the following day, a Sunday, their imagination began to be rewarded.
The detectives, in their white jackets, were hunched over the fountain about noontime, nibbling Danishes and sipping coffee. The youngish stocky man, who had proved to be Patsy's brother, Tony, was behind the counter. Patsy was just visible seated at a white porcelain-topped kitchen table in the back room, facing front, partially hidden by a rumpled green curtain separating the alcove from the rest of the store. There was only one other customer, a girl, browsing through the paperback book rack.
Suddenly, Egan became aware that Sonny, seated nearer the street door, had tensed and half turned his body toward the rear. Two men were entering the luncheonette. "Harlem connections!" Sonny murmured, lowering his head further.
Egan glanced idly at the newcomers and understood. They were hard-looking types, dark-haired and sallow-skinned, the sort a cop marks automatically as hood. And Sonny's terse exclamation added up to the warning that these were guys he knew from the old neighbourhood, who would more than likely know him, too. But the men had eyes for no one but Patsy in the back room. They strode past the counter without hesitation and sat at the table behind the half-drawn curtain. Egan saw the one who sat alongside Patsy place a bulging brown paper sack on the table.
The three chatted for a few minutes. Then the man opposite Patsy stood, his back to the store, and seemed to half crouch over the table. Egan could see Patsy leaning forward, intent on whatever was being shown him. They're slicing bread — it's a payoff, Egan thought, and almost immediately his guess was verified when the one standing sat down and the detective caught a glimpse of Patsy stuffing a last handful of cash back into the sack.
Patsy rose then, holding the paper bag. He nodded coolly and said something to the two men before they turned and walked back through the luncheonette and out into the street. A minute later, Patsy donned a heavy gray overcoat and emerged from the alcove. "Tony," he said to the stocky one behind the counter, "watch the store. I'll be back."
He went out. Egan and Grosso saw him turn the corner of Maujer Street.
Egan slipped off his stool. "See you in the ward."
As Egan left, Sonny called after him: "You owe me a coffee and rolls."
As Egan trotted across the street to his Corvair, parked in front of the hospital, Patsy was just starting his Oldsmobile, halfway up Maujer. Egan, still in the white doctor's jacket, tailed him to his house on 67th Street. He watched Patsy carry the brown sack filled with currency inside. Now we are starting to get someplace, the detective was thinking: Patsy is the guy the connections bring the bread to.
Having had the chance to survey Patsy's store, Eddie and Sonny now pondered how they could reasonably get a look inside his home. Two mornings later, Barbara Fuca offered the entrée. A check of the recorded tape in the 67th Street plant revealed that she had called Macy's and ordered a hundred and eighty-seven dollars' worth of draperies, to be delivered no later than the following afternoon. Egan telephoned the chief of security at the department store and elicited the information that the merchandise was to go out the next morning via United Parcel Service. He then contacted U.P.S. and learned the approximate time when the particular delivery truck would reach the vicinity of 67th Street and Twelfth Avenue and what route it was likely to take.
The following afternoon, Egan and Grosso intercepted the U.P.S. van a little less than three blocks from 1224 67th Street. Egan showed his shield and explained obliquely that they were on police business and wanted to borrow the truck for a half hour or so.
He told the disturbed driver to call his security chief to verify. A few minutes later, he requisitioned the driver's brown jacket and peaked cap. Egan climbed into the van and drove off, while Sonny solicitously led the bewildered man to his own convertible parked on 65th Street near Tenth Avenue.
Egan arrived at the Fuca residence with the boxed drapes about 3 P.M. Barbara let him in. She wasn't bad-looking, but her hair wasn't bright blonde now, nor bouffant; it was short and unkempt and, Egan was surprised to note, really a dull mousy-brown. So she wears wigs! Good to keep in mind.
Egan lugged the large package into the living room.
The house appeared to be beautifully furnished, a professional job. There was a thick white rug, antique furniture with rich blue upholstery; they seemed to favour hanging chain lamps, and the brass or gold or whatever it was gleamed as though it were well cared for. Egan thought, in this kind of layout a woman would have to ke
ep her own kids locked in the attic. But another woman was sitting on the sofa, and there were two small children on the floor, crayoning in colouring books. He remembered that the Fucas had only one baby, under two years, so these had to belong to the other woman. His practiced eyes also noticed something else: underneath the front window, barely noticeable behind white draperies, were wires leading to a burglar alarm terminal. Patsy was a cautious man.
It was a C.O.D. delivery, and Barbara went to the French provincial desk at the other end of the living room. She pulled open a drawer and then reaching inside — as Egan watched unobtrusively — she seemed to grope for a concealment of some kind; she found it, and a second hidden drawer slid out beneath the first one. Egan had to keep his hooded eyes from showing surprise because he had seen this kind of device before, a secret trap which was the specialty of a particular Italian carpenter who worked only for important members of the Mafia.
Barbara took a handful of bills from the hidden drawer, counted out a hundred and eighty-seven dollars and handed it to Egan. He asked her to sign a copy of the receipt and thanked her. She smiled, and he tipped his cap to the other woman. The children had never even looked up.
What Eddie and Sonny surmised from this episode was that whether or not Patsy knew it, his wife did know of his secret cache of money. The two detectives now assumed that not only was Patsy in the habit of keeping large amounts of cash in his house but that he himself might be delinquent in keeping up to date on how much he did have.