by Robin Moore
It didn't take O'Brien and Ripa long to realize what Patsy and Nicky were up to. After dropping his friend, Patsy drove south on Graham Street. The detectives hung back, expecting Nicky to follow the Olds. But Nicky didn't even switch on his headlights.
So O'Brien decided to stay with Patsy, who by then was turning a corner several blocks down Graham.
Hardly had they passed by Nicky, however, than headlights flashed behind them as a car pulled away from the curb. The officers made the same turn Patsy had, and moments later Nicky's Caddy came around the corner.
"Why, the sonsabitches!" O'Brien swore. "Patsy's got his buddy riding shotgun for him!"
"Let's fix that," Ripa commented coolly.
They stayed with the Oldsmobile until it turned again, into a one-way street. Instead of following, O'Brien continued on through the intersection.
The detective studied the rearview mirror. Nicky's car, after hesitating at the last corner, made the turn and went after Patsy. O'Brien jammed to a stop and U-turned, cornering into the street taken by Patsy and then Nicky.
They followed the Cadillac for a while. The procession moved slowly, Nicky keeping pace with the Olds ahead, staying two to three blocks to its rear.
There was no doubt: Patsy was experimenting, trying to determine if there was surveillance on him by using Nicky to watch for any tails. This suggested either that, one, Patsy had cause to suspect heat; or, two, he didn't really know whether the cops were watching him, but he was feeling out the situation preparatory to taking some kind of action. Maybe the case wasn't dead yet, as the increasingly gloomy voices on base radio seemed to imply.
The officers accordingly played the game with a certain relish. Patsy, trailed by Nicky, drove in and out of streets throughout the Williamsburg section, up around Greenpoint, east to the Queens line near Maspeth, finally back along Grand Avenue toward Bushwick. Part of the way, O'Brien and Ripa stayed behind the Caddy, other times they eased ahead and followed the Olds, and then, just when Nicky might be wondering about the car between himself and Patsy, they'd turn off and let the Caddy go by, only to whip around and again wind up tagging after Patsy's "shotgun."
It was after midnight when Patsy and Nicky returned to the luncheonette. Tony was still there.
The three talked a few more minutes before the lights went out and they all got into their cars and started home, Patsy and Nicky in their own vehicles, Tony in his beat-up Chevy station wagon.
On Sunday, January 14, the pattern of the investigation continued to vex the anxious police. Patsy went to his store at mid-morning and stayed there, joined shortly after noon by his wife Barbara.
At 3:00 P.M., the investigators got a further salvo of discouraging news which seemed to intensify their growing hopelessness. First, the Edison Hotel received a telephone call from Mr. Jean Jehan, who said he wished to be checked out of Room 909 and he would send payment by mail within a day or so. He asked that the hotel hold his bags and clothing until he advised where they should be forwarded. The switchboard operator could offer no clue as to the origin of the call, but the assistant manager who actually spoke with the Frenchman thought he had heard an operator's voice interrupt at one point, indicating that Jehan had telephoned from somewhere outside the city. Detectives then searched Room 909 — having thus far refrained from doing so on the off-chance that Frog One might return after all — but they found nothing other than a suitcase and briefcase containing personal items of apparel and toiletries.
Disappointed, they left Jehan's belongings intact.
They had scarcely reported to base when, as if on cue, there were successive reports from the Victoria and Abbey hotels that each had received a Western Union money order — the Victoria from François Barbier, the Abbey from J. Mouren — in the exact amounts due on their respective rooms. Each had requested that the hotel store their belongings until called for. Both money orders had been placed in Yonkers, a suburban city just north of New York. The Yonkers police were alerted, but a check of the Western Union office there turned up nothing more than confirmation that a lone man with what might have been a foreign accent had paid for both telegrams; there was no way of telling where he might have gone after leaving the office. Meanwhile, agents examined the bags and clothes that Frogs Two and Three had left behind. Results again were negative.
The taps on the telephones at Patsy's luncheonette and his home had remained in operation throughout the investigation, but hardly anything of use was ever detected. The automatic tape monitors, played back several times daily, recorded mostly conversations that were either irrelevant to the case or that consisted of unintelligible monosyllables. This Sunday evening, however, with the Frenchmen all having left the scene, an interesting exchange did take place.
The call came in to one of the telephones in Patsy's store. The caller obviously was Giant. The suave gentleman was extremely concerned about what had seemed to be undue police attention upon Patsy's operations. Nervously, Patsy tried to alleviate the Frenchman's fears; if the heat were on, Patsy certainly knew that his uncle, Angelo Tuminaro, would not hesitate to cut him out of this deal and the whole "family" business as well, and advise him to go out and get a job — like sweeping subways. Frog One suggested that it might be wise to postpone negotiations.
Patsy's greed, on top of his dread of jeopardizing his newly promising position of eminence in the narcotics trade, thus led him to a decision that in the end proved to be a major factor in compromising Tuminaro's junk trade and the international syndicate feeding it: feverishly, Patsy assured Jean Jehan that the police were only interested in certain paperback books he was selling which had been judged pornographic. At first the Frenchman was incredulous that the American police would waste their time tracking down purveyors of dirty books. But this book, Patsy hastened to argue, was disgusting even to him. It was called Tropic of Cancer.
Somehow, the sophisticated French narcotics czar, Jean Jehan, was convinced, and he agreed to pursue negotiations with the youthful manager of the Tuminaro narcotics ring.
On Monday morning, January 15, a meeting was held at Narcotics Bureau headquarters in the 1st Precinct station house. Present in Lieutenant Vinnie Hawkes's office was essentially the same group of detectives and Federal agents who had met there five days earlier to map out strategy that would destroy Patsy Fuca and his associates. In grim, quiet voices, they discussed what ways and means were left them to salvage the long investigation.
That Patsy was now a major dealer in narcotics was not questioned. That Patsy had been on the verge of concluding a major transaction with the French connections was also beyond doubt. The pivotal question was whether the Frogs' abrupt departure signified that the deal had been culminated, the junk having been delivered and paid for in part. But perhaps they had been scared off before the exchange could be made. The only other alternative was that they had been disturbed by police surveillance but had not aborted their plans as yet and were regrouping for a final exchange of smuggled heroin for Mafia money.
As for the first possibility, that the shipment already was in Patsy's hands, this would mean that the suppliers, the Frenchmen, had left with short dollars.
Police knew that the modus operandi in narcotics commerce resembled a pyramid. The connections to whom Patsy sold junk were given a price per kilo, pegged to current demand, and before the shipment they would give Patsy "front" money, a down payment on the total to be paid, pending safe delivery and verification of quantity and quality ordered. After the day or two it usually required for these wholesalers to distribute the marked-up merchandise to their own customers, they would come back to Patsy with the rest of the "bread." And so it went down the line, to the pusher on the street corner dealing in consignments of "nickel" ($5) bags of heavily cut heroin.
Meanwhile, at the top of the pyramid, where the big financing occurred, Patsy dealt in similar fashion with his suppliers. When they produced the shipment ordered, Patsy had to make a minimum down payment, and, after he had successf
ully delivered the goods to his preferred customers — never any more than five or six big operators — he would complete the payoff to the French manufacturers. The wholesale price to Patsy for such a formidable shipment as the rumoured fifty kilos would have amounted to about half a million dollars at the going rate. Patsy would have been expected to put up about half, or perhaps even $300,000. Normally, after unloading their illegal cargo, the suppliers could either afford to relax and wait around to receive their full instalment, or if the receiver were a particularly good and reliable customer, they could wend their way home, confident that full payment would be forthcoming.
But if there were any conflict, as the police speculated there had been in this instance, the Frenchmen might be uneasy about departing with only partial payment from Patsy. The police also considered the recent rumours both that Patsy was having money troubles and that certain connections had been dissatisfied with the quality of his last delivery.
Frank Waters had one idea about where to look for the junk. It was still a very long shot but at least based on something more substantial than pure theorizing.
"Since last November," the agent spoke up, "I've been bugged by that Canadian car that Patsy drove over to Cherry Street and we sat on. Remember, it turned out to belong to this guy Maurice in Montreal, who happens to be a big peddler up there. And then it disappears”.
"I felt sure then — we all did — that somehow that Buick figured in the shipment down from Canada. I know, we tossed it and found zip. But we didn't really have a chance to take it apart that night. And what happened right after that? The panic goes off. There's junk for everybody. Now, here we are two months later, and the word's out that a new load is coming in; and now people are bringing bread to our friend Patsy; and who comes to town but a bunch of Frenchmen. And where do they come from, two of them anyway? Montreal, Canada."
"So you're suggesting that the key this time might also be a Canadian car?" Ben Fitzgerald asked.
"It's a thought," Waters shrugged. "Maybe even the same car. What was it, some light-coloured Buick?"
"A tan nineteen-sixty Buick, an Invicta," Eddie Egan answered. "But I think different. I have an idea the junk will turn up at Patsy's old man's place out in Brooklyn."
"And where do we look for this mystery car?" inquired Vinnie Hawkes, breaking the silence that followed Egan's speculation.
"I don't know," Waters replied, "in garages, in the streets. The first place I'd look would be around Cherry Street, South Street, around there."
"Christ, we could be looking till nineteen seventy," Egan declared.
"Could be," Waters agreed, frowning at Egan, "but what the hell are we doing now? We're just sitting, twiddling our thumbs — since the last Frog skipped."
Egan's ruddy face turned a shade whiter, a sure indication of a rise in his famous temper. "I only let one get away," he said with exaggerated politeness.
"All right, let's knock off the bullshit," snapped Lieutenant Hawkes. "We've all screwed up one way or another on this one."
"What do you think, Vinnie?" Ben Fitzgerald interjected. "Is it worth putting out an A.P.B. on a car of this type? I know it's way out, but . ."
"Well, I can't see as we have anything to lose. Who knows what might turn up?" Hawkes scribbled " All Points Bulletin — Buick" on his pad. "What else?"
"I have a suggestion," Sonny Grosso leaned forward. "Since all we can do is wait for somebody to make a move — assuming the thing isn't dead already— and," he glanced at Egan, "while we're looking for this Canadian Buick, I think we ought to cut back surveillance on Patsy. If we did scare off his friends, what with a couple of hundred fuzz running around, Patsy's going to be playing it real careful now".
"We might be better off just having a light tail on Patsy. We can keep tabs on him, but maybe in a few days he'll start breathing easier, and then make a move."
"Everybody agree?" Hawkes asked, glancing around. "Okay. Sonny, you and Popeye and Frank work out assignments."
"I still say we'll find the shit at Joe Fuca's," Egan growled.
Deputy Chief Inspector Carey and Federal Director Gaffney, who had been holding their own private meeting in Carey's office, strode into Hawkes's office. Hawkes summed up the consensus of opinion for the two bosses.
Carey listened intently, frequently glancing at Gaffney, who nodded assent. When Hawkes had finished, Carey thought about the situation, pacing about among the detectives. He agreed to go along with continuing limited investigation for a few more days. Then, with a serious expression on his face, he pointed out that it was Monday, the fifteenth. At midnight, Thursday, the eighteenth, the search warrants for all the locations under surveillance would expire.
They had been renewed twice for ten-day periods already, he reminded the men. If nothing conclusive happened by Thursday midnight — Carey's stern visage turned from one man to the next in emphasis —he and Federal Director Gaffney would have to pull the men off the case completely. So they had four days to crack the case. Tensely, the detectives and federal agents watched Carey and Gaffney disappear back into the inspector's office.
Later, as Sonny, Eddie and Frank Waters talked about the allocation of local and Federal personnel for the four days left them to hit Patsy's operation, Sonny was vaguely disturbed by a new undercurrent of animosity between his regular partner and Agent Waters, with whom he worked almost as often and equally as well.
That afternoon, Sonny assigned himself to watch "lightly" over Patsy out in Brooklyn, and Egan made the rounds coordinating continued stakeouts of the Frenchmen's erstwhile hotels. Waters and Detective Dick Auletta meanwhile prowled the streets of the lower Manhattan area where two months before they had played hide-and-seek with Patsy and the Canadian Buick. And there, about 4 P.M., they made an interesting discovery. In a small, wooden garage on the property of a service station on South Street, just off Jefferson, the officers saw Tony Fuca's old Chevrolet station wagon. The entire bureau had been puzzled over what had happened to the Canadian car in the short time they had left it unguarded back in November. Tony, who frequently worked on the docks of the Mexican Line, virtually across South Street from where the car had disappeared, might have been the one who had disposed of the Buick!
No doubt it had been Patsy's responsibility that night to pick up the sedan and authenticate its having been loaded, or unloaded, but surely he was not willing to risk arrest for possession, that's what handy-man Tony was for. It now appeared that Tony must have been waiting in this garage only a block and a half away when the detectives following Patsy had discovered the Buick. Waters and Auletta now guessed that Grosso and Egan probably passed within a few yards of Tony when they had cut through this very gas station, just after Patsy and the two girls took off in his other car. The little goon must have waited in the garage all those hours until he saw the detectives' two cars leave just before dawn. Then, gambling they hadn't left anyone behind, Tony had crept out and managed to drive the Buick off in the few minutes it had taken Waters to return to his office and send another agent back.
The officers decided that Patsy's brother needed more personal attention than had previously been tendered, so they sat on the old garage containing Tony's Chevy.
Most of Monday, Patsy did not stir from his store in Brooklyn. Detective Jimmy O'Brien had been watching the place alone when Sonny Grosso and Agent Jack Ripa joined him in mid-afternoon. They waited, not really sure what they expected Patsy to do; from time to time, one or another went into the luncheonette for a snack or to browse through magazines, but none of them gained any hints as to their subject's intentions or state of mind. Patsy seemed untroubled.
A little after 9:30 P.M. Nicky Travato arrived in his old Cadillac, which he parked outside the store.
Minutes later, Patsy came out and got into the Caddy and drove off, heading toward the Williamsburg Bridge. Leaving O'Brien behind, Sonny and Ripa followed, excitement awakening in them now because this was the first time in three days that Patsy had shown any i
nterest in leaving Brooklyn.
The detectives trailed him at a comfortable distance into Manhattan, off the bridge and uptown on the East River Drive. They saw him exit at 61st Street and turn up York Avenue. Patsy eluded them briefly, but then they spotted the gray Cadillac being backed into a parking space on York just north of 77th Street.
By the time they had a chance to manoeuvre into a closer position, Patsy himself had been lost from view.
Sonny and Ripa drove a few blocks up York, and through some of the cross streets, but, unable to find Patsy, they returned to keep watch on the Caddy.
About ten-thirty, Patsy was observed walking back down York Avenue toward the car. He swung the Caddy around and headed back downtown, re-entering the drive at 62nd Street. Where had he gone for that half hour?
As Sonny and Ripa tailed Patsy south on East River Drive, Frank Waters and Dick Auletta were crossing the Manhattan Bridge toward Brooklyn behind the 1949 Chevy station wagon driven by Tony Fuca. After they had waited for some six-and-a-half hours with a patience that impressed even themselves, Tony had materialized out of the darkness by the little garage at the corner of the now darkened service station, and with a flourish had driven his car away and onto the bridge. It was a strange hour for Tony, who lived in the Bronx with his wife and two children, to be going out to Brooklyn, Waters and Auletta noted; but in this investigation, strange things never seemed to cease happening.
Tony drove off the bridge onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, northbound, directly to his brother's luncheonette in Williamsburg, arriving shortly before 11 P.M. Nicky Travato was alone in the store. Waters and Auletta pulled into the grounds of St.
Catherine's Hospital across Bushwick Avenue, where by their radio they knew that Jimmy O'Brien was staked out, recently joined by Eddie Egan. Within ten minutes, Patsy drove up in Nicky's Cadillac, followed presently by Sonny Grosso and Jack Ripa in Sonny's white Olds. While the three in the store talked, the six officers brought each other up to date across the street.