by Robin Moore
They also found a small diary, filled with cramped French. There was nothing else among his things that seemed of immediate importance. Downstairs, the officers inquired about Angelvin's car; but the front desk reported that when the gentleman had checked in he had mentioned nothing about garage service.
They telephoned back to Hawkes at East End Avenue that the Commodore appeared to be a blind alley. Then, barren of immediate direction, they stood by the assistant manager's desk, pondering glumly what to do next.
"We should never have stopped them," Sonny complained. "We've probably blown it for good now."
"Well, you said to hit," Waters remarked.
" I did? Why, you silly bastard, you wanted to hit! I was afraid that — "
"Officer?" It was the hotel manager. "Telephone for Detective Grosso . . . "
Hawkes was calling, shouting into the phone.
Sonny leapt straight up with a whoop: "Six kilos and still coming!" He danced about the desk, almost yanking the telephone to the floor. "Popeye! Fantastic!" he cried. "What a score! Okay, right, we'll be up."
Slamming down the receiver, Sonny turned to Waters, his pale and tired face now a grinning beacon. "Popeye did it! He got Patsy and his old man!"
The agent's eyes were popped and shining bright. "Where?"
"The old man's cellar. And there's more coming out of the ceiling."
Waters did a little jig, pounding Sonny on the shoulders. "Oh, boy! Oh, boy! "
"How about that!" Sonny cried, hugging the smaller man. "And we thought we blew it!" He placed his hands on the Federal agent's shoulders and leaped over his back. Not to be out-done, Waters leapfrogged over a crouching Sonny. "And now we got Patsy and the Frenchmen!" Waters spun a pirouette in the centre of the lobby, oblivious to the people staring at their uninhibited antics.
"It's a good thing we did hit them," Sonny gloated.
"I kept trying to tell you that," laughed Waters.
"You? You were the one who wanted to lay off them!"
"Me? Are you kidding? I wanted to bust 'em all the time!"
"I'm the one said let's hit," Sonny blazed. "Come on now, Frank!"
At 2:00 P.M., after his conversation with Egan, Chief Carey called Chief of Detectives James "Lefty" Leggett at the 240 Centre Street headquarters of the New York City Police Department, and advised that a seizure had been made at 245 7th Street in Brooklyn. This necessary bit of police procedure was responsible for Jean Jehan, "Giant," escaping from the city with what the police later estimated could have been as much as half a million dollars of Mafia money. This was in the black satchel which Egan had seen him carry away earlier in the day. The money would have gone to the policemen's widows' fund had he been apprehended.
At the chief of detectives' desk there is a direct line to the pressroom, and within minutes of the call from Chief Carey every newspaper, radio and television station in the city had reporters rushing out to Joe Fuca's house. Radio and television sets were blaring reports by mid-afternoon and the late editions of the afternoon papers carried the full story. Presumably Jehan heard the news and left the city instantly, even as detectives were searching in the sixties and seventies from York Avenue to East End for the recognizable dapper Frenchman who was close to the top of the crime syndicate hierarchy.
Meanwhile, thirty minutes after talking to Egan, Chief Carey arrived at the Fuca house, even while the press and television cameramen were gathering. The detectives had turned the Fuca basement into a shambles, clawing not only bags of heroin from the ceiling but rifles, pistols, bayonets, and hand grenades. Chief Carey strode into the kitchen, threw a look of disgust at the drunken Joe Fuca and went down to the basement. He picked his way through the rubble toward Eddie Egan.
"Eleven kilos of heroin — and enough guns and ammunition to wipe out a rival 'family,' Chief," Egan boomed in satisfaction.
Carey shook his head in disbelief. "This is the biggest haul we've ever made in one place!"
C h a p t e r 1 8
Dick Auletta and Bill Bailey had by this time escorted Patsy and Barbara Fuca to their house. A surprised and frightened maid who had been baby-sitting watched in shock as the two narcotics officers began a thorough search of the house; Patsy and Barbara watched glowering. After an hour's search yielded nothing incriminating, Agent Bailey, looking about for any hiding place they might have missed, found himself staring at the squawling infant in the baby carriage. He gestured at the carriage and told Barbara to pick up her child.
At first Barbara refused, and Auletta approached the carriage with the obvious intent of removing the baby himself. Barbara hastily picked up the baby.
Auletta carefully stripped off blankets and mattresses. There was a finger hole in one corner of the plywood bottom; pulling it up, Auletta found himself staring at two .38-caliber revolvers. He grinned at Bailey, who took a look and flashed a wide smile. They both turned to Patsy and Barbara. Patsy maintained a sullen silence.
Auletta next called Joe Fuca's house and asked for help in searching Nicky Travato's place. Egan told him to get over to Travato's and whatever detectives he could spare would meet him there.
A minute search of Travato's dingy flat, four blocks away on 66th Street, turned up two one-ounce plastic packets of heroin in the pocket of Barbara Travato's coat hanging in her clothes closet. Nicky took the blame for the presence of the drug, and the detectives agreed that his wife probably was blameless.
"Hey, Nicky," Auletta grinned sardonically as they led the swarthy longshoreman downstairs to their car.
"What would Little Angie do if he knew you and Patsy were running an ounce business by cutting the family's inventory?" The look of fear on Travato's face answered the question eloquently.
At the Fuca house back on 7th Street, Eddie Egan handed Jim Hurley the search warrant, with only hours of validity left to it, for Tony Fuca's place in the Bronx.
Hurley telephoned Tony's apartment and his wife answered. Tony wasn't home. They needed him —chances were Peggy Fuca didn't know what was going on, and the warrant was only good once. The officer hung up without identifying himself. Then, over the radio, Hurley called the car that was supposed to be sitting on Patsy's luncheonette. Sure enough, Tony Fuca was there, still oblivious to what had been happening.
Hurley and two other detectives made the twenty-minute drive from Brooklyn, up through Queens, to the Bronx and parked outside Tony's building. They sat there for two hours, wondering nervously whether Tony would come home before their search warrant expired at midnight, when a radio call from the car outside the luncheonette reported that Tony had just been relieved by Joe Desina and had left.
Twenty minutes later Hurley watched Tony pull his car up in front of the shabby building on Bryant Avenue and walk into the front door and up the stairs. The detectives waited another fifteen minutes, then made their move. They pushed their way through the lower door, walked up the stairs to the fifth floor and pounded on the door marked 5-C. Tony Fuca opened his door, and the detectives burst inside.
While Hurley read the search warrant to the scowling Tony and a thoroughly cowed Peggy Fuca, the others began a methodical search. After every closet, cupboard and recess had been searched, they began on the furniture. Inside the seat cushion of the sofa, they founded a loaded .38 revolver and three one-ounce bags of heroin and another glassine envelope containing half an ounce more.
"So Patsy's put you in the ounce business," Hurley sneered. "Kind of dangerous, isn't it, Tony?"
Peggy Fuca seemed genuinely astounded at the discovery. Tony, confronted with the evidence, absolved his wife of any guilt, and the detectives decided that she, like Barbara Travato, had no knowledge of the conspiracy.
Meanwhile other detectives had been dispatched to pick up Barbara Fuca's father, Joe Desina, at Patsy's store. And in Manhattan, a platoon of city and Federal officers still were scouring the East End Avenue area from the sixties to eighties for Jean Jehan.
At Joe Fuca's house, Egan was triumphantly des
troying the walls and ceilings of the basement, when a detective came to the door and called down, "Eddie, there's a call for you." Egan made his way through and over the dusty mounds of debris and up to the kitchen.
At the sight of the redheaded detective, the animal snarls of Joe Fuca reached a crescendo of hostility. Egan cocked a threatening backhand and picked up the phone. It was Vinnie Hawkes.
"Popeye, we're still trying to find the big boy in this operation. And now we find there's another Frenchman lives on the fifteenth floor of No. 45 East End."
"Hey — !" Egan remembered the first time he had followed Patsy to the address and observed him getting into the elevator which, the indicator revealed, had stopped on the fifteenth floor. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.
"Hustle downtown and get a search warrant for Apartment 15C here, and come on up."
"I'm still taking this place apart," Egan protested.
"Why me?"
"You're the expert on warrants. This could be important now. Let the other guys finish the wrecking job." There was authority and finality in the lieutenant's tone.
"Okay, Vinnie," Egan murmured, fighting back his annoyance. "So far the count here is eleven kilos, by the way . . . "
As Egan left the Fuca house, 7th Street was becoming clogged with vehicles, television and radio equipment, reporters, spectators and more cops. This haul ought to be good for great spreads in the papers, Egan thought as he shouldered his way to his car.
Chief Carey would be in his glory.
Egan drove to the bureau at Old Slip, parked and went up to his cubicle of an office where he sat down to write out the necessary affidavit to authorize a search of the premises of Apartment 15-C at No. 45 East End Avenue. Painstakingly, he composed the affidavit. There was reason to believe, he wrote, that there was a direct connection between Apartment 15-C at No. 45 East End Avenue and Pasquale Fuca, who had just been found in possession of eleven kilos of heroin. Fuca had been followed by police officers and seen to be consorting with certain French nationals suspected of conspiracy to smuggle heroin into the United States from France. Fuca had been traced making at least one visit to the fifteenth floor of No. 45 East End Avenue. Apartment 15-C was occupied by a French national.
Egan went on for three quarters of an hour detailing the reasons for the search warrant, then hurriedly telephoned State Supreme Court Judge
Mitchell Schweitzer and asked if his honour would remain in his chambers a few minutes. The judge agreed. But by the time Egan left the 1st Precinct it was 5:30 P.M., and when he reached the courthouse at Foley Square, Judge Schweitzer was walking out of the elevator on his way home. Egan quickly reiterated the importance of the case, and the judge, impatient, returned to his chambers and signed the search warrant. By six, Egan was on his way uptown to East End Avenue.
At temporary headquarters in the garage office at No. 45, the interpreter, Agent Martin Pera, had just arrived and was questioning Angelvin and Scaglia.
Fleming and Hawkes pumped Egan's hand, congratulating him. Sonny and Frank Waters banged him on the back as though he had made the winning touch-down. Egan handed Fleming the warrant, and they went to the office of the supervisor of the building, a woman, who took them up to 15-C.
The occupant was in Mexico on vacation; he had been away for a week. It interested the police that the last time the gentleman had been away was precisely the week in November when Egan and Grosso had followed Patsy downtown and discovered the Buick belonging to the Canadian narcotics connection, Maurice Martin.
A careful search of the luxurious apartment turned up nothing of interest, until Egan picked up a book of matches from an end table. It was from La Cloche d'Or. The cover had caught his attention because he had tailed Jehan to the same chic French cafe the previous Friday night. Now his interest quickened: inserted on the back cover was a small souvenir photograph. It showed two men, and one of them was Giant. He showed the small photo to the building manager. She was unable to identify Jehan, but she recognized the other man as the occupant of the apartment. Controlling his rising excitement, Egan slipped the matchbook into his pocket.
This required a little calm thought, and he didn't want to alarm the woman. Excusing himself, he went into the expensively appointed bathroom. As he sat contemplatively, he pulled his package of Camels and some matches from his pocket, lit up, and smoked for a few minutes. Was it possible that they had stumbled upon the real top boss of this operation? Was this where Patsy had come that day? It had to be: the picture of Jehan seemed to verify it. O.K.
Play it cool. He walked back into the living room. The others had given up on finding anything incriminating. All the detectives followed the manageress out of the apartment, down the elevator and out to the street.
"Well, we got something," Egan said outside, fumbling for the matchbook.
"What?" the discouraged Lieutenant Hawkes inquired. "Could be big. At least it should be good enough to get the guy in for some questions." Egan dug deep into one pocket and then another. The matchbook wasn't there. Stricken, he realized he must have dropped it in the bathroom. And now there was no way he could go back into the apartment. The search warrant had already been executed, he knew another one would not be granted —certainly not before someone would have gone through the apartment to see what the police might have found . . . and discovered the match cover beside the toilet. Frustration knotted inside his stomach as it had so many times during the case, but there was nothing he could do now.
Hawkes checked in with the Narcotics Bureau and found that all the suspects in the case had been rounded up and taken to Old Slip for questioning.
They left additional officers in the area to be on the lookout for Jehan, and then he, Fleming, Egan, Grosso and Waters cruised down the East Side Highway to Old Slip.
By the time they arrived at the Narcotics Bureau, it was bedlam, with two stenographers desperately trying to record the confusion. Patsy and Barbara Fuca had been the first prisoners to arrive. From their house, they'd been taken to Brooklyn's 61st Precinct, then in mid-afternoon downtown to the 1st Precinct.
When Joe Fuca's wife, Natalie, returned to her home, to find it surrounded by curious passersby and a gaggle of reporters, she was detained with Joe. The old Italian couple with some difficulty had been manoeuvred, hysterical and screaming, from the house on 7th Street into police cars and sped across the bridge to lower Manhattan and Old Slip. Nicky Travato and Tony Fuca were also brought in after being booked at their local precincts; but both their wives had been allowed to stay home. Scaglia and Angelvin had been taken to the 24th Precinct on 68th Street in Manhattan for booking and then were also brought downtown. Now the Narcotics Bureau was more active than it had been at any time since its inception.
The largest single confiscation of heroin yet made in the United States had been brought in as evidence against the suspects.
It was almost nine P.M. when Egan and his group arrived and pushed through the mob of photographers, television cameramen and reporters clamouring for more news about the arrest. As they struggled to get up to the third floor of the old 1st Precinct building, Joe Fuca could be heard still screaming in a frenzy. At the landing between the second and third floor, Fuca broke away from the detective holding him and kicked the cameraman who had just taken a flash picture of him. This knocked the camera out of the photographer's hands, and it fell down the stairwell to the marble ground floor with a crash. Egan started toward the old Italian, but Joe, spying the redheaded Irishman moving on him, shrank back and quieted down.
The Narcotics Bureau officers had managed to separate the suspects, holding each one in a separate cubicle office. Those who had been active in the case went from one office to the next, asking each prisoner questions, trying to fit the facts of the case together.
Natalie Fuca's hysterical shrieks knifed through the building. They reached a crescendo whenever she caught a glimpse of her son's wife, Barbara, who acted the "tough broad" role, chewing gum, swishing her hips
and swearing profusely at everyone.
"She's the who-er, the cheap who-er!" Natalie screamed. "It's you what got us in thisa mess. Pasquale, why you marry thisa cheap bum who-er?"
Egan and Grosso finally maneuvered Barbara and Patsy Fuca into the same cubicle and began questioning them. Not unexpectedly, Patsy was a tough customer to crack.
"What are you talkin' about?" he shouted. "I don't know no Frenchmen. Why don't you go catch a murderer instead of buggin' me?"
"Don't tell us you weren't driving Nicky Travato's Cadillac up around Forty-five East End Avenue," Egan bellowed. "Remember seeing me in the garage office?"
Patsy stared at the detective. "I thought you looked familiar."
"And how about this: the doctors?" Egan taunted.
"Sonofabitch!" Patsy exclaimed. "You guys used to come into my place from the hospital!" He turned to Barbara. "I always thought there was something funny about those fuckin' guys!"
But although obviously surprised at the officers' knowledge of his activities, Patsy would admit nothing. The detectives gave him very convincing arguments that at that moment Nicky was incriminating him, but still he refused to weaken. Teams of detectives moved from one suspect to the next, trying to squeeze out every additional bit of information they could, with little success.
And then Chief Carey called a meeting of all detectives involved in the case in the front office. In all there were almost ninety city detectives and Federal agents on hand. For an hour he patiently pieced all the facts of the case together, still trying to find out where Angelvin fitted in, dismissing the officers one by one as they told what they knew and had seen. Finally there were only five men left: Detectives Egan and Grosso, Lieutenant Hawkes, Sergeant Fleming and Agent Waters.