I met Vinnie at the FBI office in Newark a few weeks later.
“Kid, you need a legend,” Vinnie said.
“What’s that?”
“Come up with a name,” Vinnie said. “And then leave the rest to us. We’ll make you real.”
It was pretty much what I did with Rico Jordan, but I didn’t know the terminology. I picked an old family name and cooked up a story about a property manager who didn’t want to bother with the visa process because getting people in from the Middle East was a pain. I was looking for a way around immigration laws. Vinnie loved it.
The next week I pulled into an abandoned strip mall in southern Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. It was a crisp day in early fall of 2008 and I was going to meet Ali—the gang’s leader.
The strip mall was deserted. I pulled around the back. A fleet of government sedans with blacked-out windows and antennas sticking out like porcupine quills was parked behind the empty stores. Everything screamed feds.
I knocked on the back door and an agent showed me to a makeshift command center. Computers and recording equipment were set up on plastic folding tables. All the FBI agents were in 5.11 Tactical pants and blue polo shirts.
I sat down on a folding chair and started to put on my wire. The case agent, Victor, began to go through the operation. I was headed to a hookah bar owned by Ali. He usually arrived in the early evening for dinner. My job was to meet him and start building rapport.
“These guys are your backup,” the agent said, nodding toward four guys in polos. “Where do you want us to set up? There is a parking lot in front of the place.”
It was culture shock. I was used to my guys. My spotters could blend into the neighborhood. They looked the part and knew the streets. These guys looked like lawyers or accountants with guns.
“No,” I said. “How about you guys stay here. If you want to drive up and down the highway, be my guest. Don’t pull into the parking lot. Hell, don’t get those vehicles near that parking lot. I’m a new face. If they put together a new face with your cars, this case is over before it starts.”
The FBI guys looked around. I could tell they thought I was a diva. I was. But I was also the guy going into the bar.
“We’ll do it your way,” Victor said with a shrug.
The hookah bar was tucked into a modest shopping center with a grocery store, a sandwich shop, and a pharmacy. The place was packed. I checked my watch. It was barely five o’clock.
—
Don’t these people work?
The cacophony of backgammon and card games and the low roar of men arguing sports and politics over thick Turkish coffee hit me when I stepped inside. The clank of spoons hitting cups of the thick brew mixed with the smell of coffee and roast meat attacked my senses. Waitresses moved around the room delivering plates of food and drinks from the bar.
Ali was supposed to arrive in a half hour. I wanted my face seen first. At the bar, I ordered a plate of kofta, a grilled dish of minced meat made from a mix of lamb and beef and served with tzatziki, or yogurt sauce. I met a Turk who ran a construction crew. He was sipping a cup of coffee. I introduced myself. He asked me what I did, and all of a sudden my legend kicked in.
A waitress brought over my food, and I turned and surveyed the room. The only open table was in the back. I walked over and put my plate down. I got looks from everyone in the room.
Who are you?
I sat down with my back to the front door and started to eat. I wanted to look like a guy enjoying a meal, not a cop. As I dipped into my kofta, I felt someone standing behind me. I cut another bite and then looked over my shoulder. Ali had a grin on his face. Do you have any idea how badly you messed up? it said.
Ali was in his late forties. His dress shirt was unbuttoned one or two buttons too far. A shock of gray hair peeked out of the fold of his shirt. His more-salt-than-pepper hair was slicked back and his cheeks had a calculated level of scruff—more groomed than missing a razor. Fit and lean, Ali could handle himself.
I heard Rico Jordan in my head. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
My new legend said the opposite.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Is this your table?”
“It is,” Ali said. “But you’re already eating.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll stand by the bar. I’m sorry.”
I started to gather my plate and utensils.
“No,” Ali said. “Finish your dinner.”
My Middle Eastern manners kicked in.
“Sit with me,” I said. “Please. I didn’t mean to take your table and interrupt your dinner.”
Ali moved to one of the open seats. He signaled the bar with a wave and sat down. A waitress came out a minute later with a plate of mixed kabobs with rice and a plate piled high with fresh vegetables. That spoke volumes and he knew it. Between bites, I told him how I was in town looking at some properties. A friend told me about the restaurant. I decided to stop for a bite on the way home.
“I didn’t realize how crowded it was,” I said. “I didn’t mean to step on your toes by sitting here.”
Ali just shook his head.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “You didn’t step on my toes. How is your food?”
“Spectacular,” I said.
And it was. It was the only thing I wasn’t lying about. Over tea, I started to dump more of my legend.
“I’m having trouble finding workers,” I said. “Good Muslim brothers.”
“That is a problem,” he said.
Ali told me he owned two restaurants as well as a cell phone shop nearby. We talked about the area and business opportunities. He liked being seen as a player with his hand in as much of the action as possible. So I did what I do. I made him like me. I made him laugh. I made him feel happy to be around me. I made him feel good about himself without kissing his ass. At the end of the meal, he gave me his contact information. Cell phone. E-mail.
“Next time you call me,” he told me, handing me a card with a couple of numbers written on the back, “I’ll take you to a better spot for dinner. I’m a part owner there too.”
“I’ll call you when I know I’m coming back,” I said, shaking his hand.
An hour later, after making sure I wasn’t followed, I sat down at the abandoned strip mall. The 5.11 pants were huddled around me as I debriefed. I walked them through the room, giving them details about the patrons and Ali.
“Should we record this?” one of the agents asked.
“No,” I said. “We recorded the meet. I’ll write a detailed report of the other stuff.”
I saw a couple of agents exchange glances when I got to the part about Ali’s table.
“You sat down at his table?”
“There was nowhere else to sit,” I said. “What do you want me to do? I went there to eat. I couldn’t stand at the bar. That would be weird.”
I handed the agents Ali’s card.
“Holy shit, he gave you his personal cell?” an agent said. “We didn’t have that number.”
Victor high-fived a fellow agent. It was so dorky it made my teeth itch.
“Hey,” I said. “Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks just yet. I just got a phone number.”
The air went right out of the room. They didn’t get the reference. Pulp Fiction. The Wolf.
Two of the agents looked horrified. One guy put his hands in his pockets and looked down at his boots. Victor, who was trying to be cool, looked away. I didn’t know what to do. Explaining the joke felt weirder.
“I’m out of here,” I said, patting Victor on the back. “I’ll get you that report.”
I got in my car and drove off. I could only imagine what they told Vinnie. During the investigation, Victor kept him in the loop. He called me a few days after I met Ali with some pointers. He told me if I did well, there was a good chance I could do some work on the dark side of the house.
“The dark side?” I said.
“The FBI is split into two,” Vinnie said. “We have a CT [counterterrorism] side of the house and we have a criminal side of the house. Right now, you’re helping the criminal side. Do a good job on this case and you’ll get a chance at the CT side.”
I was used to doing drug operations. In the drug world, it was hurry up and make the buys because funding and manpower were always at a premium. The FBI’s mind-set was slower. Undercover work was an art form. I had months to ingratiate myself. Become friends. Be there for them. Then take them down. My legend had to be fully rounded. It couldn’t be like Rico Jordan—an attitude with a name. It had to be a real person. A guy Ali liked.
After several more meetings at the hookah bar, we met at his Turkish restaurant. It wasn’t far from the hookah bar but didn’t cater to an almost all Middle Eastern clientele. Ali again had the best table in the place, toward the back and away from the noise of other diners.
Dinner was a whole fried fish. It sat in the middle of the table. We picked at it with our hands. Plates of fresh vegetables and bread crowded around the fish platter. As we ate, I had to make up stories about a fake wife and a fake uncle who owned the properties. Some of the stories were taken from my own life with the details switched. At the end of dinner, Ali took out a bottle of raki, or Turkish moonshine. He poured a few glasses, for me and some of his associates. When he added a little water to it, it turned milky.
“Şerefe!” he said.
Cheers, or literally, to honor, in Turkish.
We all drank. It tasted like water with a kick. After a couple of glasses, Ali started to talk about his time in prison. He had been convicted of passport fraud. An informant—a rat—dimed him out.
“Fucking rats,” I said. “I hate them.”
Ali stopped talking and looked at me. I had yelled it so loud I’d startled him. Hell, I startled myself. A silence fell over the table. I took another bite of fish.
What the fuck was that? I thought.
“Excuse me,” I said.
I was drunk. It felt like someone tipped the room on its side. I practically dove into the bathroom. Gripping the sink with one hand, I splashed water on my face.
I hate rats? What is wrong with you? Why is your face so red?
The agents listening to the wire told me later they couldn’t stop laughing. When I got back to the table, Ali eyeballed me for a second. When it was clear I wasn’t wasted, he was ready to do some business. He explained how the immigrants fly into South American countries with no visa requirements. He gets them to Mexico and trucks them into Texas, where he gets them fake identities. That was enough to lock him up. We had everything on tape.
After Ali was arrested, Vinnie called me with an offer. The New Jersey State Police had asked the FBI to do a weeklong undercover school. The Bureau agreed, as long as I could take one slot. As a student. At first I balked. I had ten years of experience. What was I going to learn in a school?
“Yeah, I know,” Vinnie said, anticipating the pushback. “But there are some FBI-type scenarios I’d love to run you through. I want my guys from Headquarters to take a look at you in action.”
They wanted to see if I could come close to passing the FBI Undercover School. The weeklong course at the New Jersey State Police Academy was intense. We did classroom work and role-playing. The scenarios ranged from drug buys—which were second nature—to murder for hire. I impressed the powers that be and got a formal offer from the FBI. They wanted me to join the Bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a local, state, and federal law enforcement partnership spearheading the fight against terrorism. I had to go through all of the background investigations and polygraph tests before I received my security clearance.
The final hurdle was the FBI Undercover School. It didn’t matter that I passed the state version. To work as an undercover in the FBI, you have to be certified. The school has a 50 percent graduation rate. It’s a small and elite fraternity.
The location of the FBI Undercover School alternates among major American cities. It’s two weeks of the most intense training I’ve ever received. Every minute was planned. If we weren’t in a classroom learning about techniques, we were practicing them in role-playing scenarios. Sometimes it was a fake bar meeting. Sometimes a meeting in a hotel room. Since the techniques are being used every day to keep America safe, I won’t get into too much detail. By the end of the two weeks, I was exhausted both mentally and physically. But I also felt more confident in my abilities. One of the proudest moments in my career was getting pinned.
I returned to the Newark office after training. The FBI is a collection of kingdoms. Each special agent in charge runs his region. Everyone is territorial, and Vinnie kept me on a tight leash. He had one of the few Arabic-speaking Muslim undercovers and wasn’t keen on letting me out of his sight.
But Headquarters had other plans. They were putting together a counterterrorism undercover unit. I nicknamed it the “Dirty Arabs Group.” It was designed to eliminate the red tape and bureaucracy of getting an undercover in front of a potential terrorist on U.S. soil.
I met the team in Los Angeles. We were headed to the Howard Fine Acting Studio and then to our first briefings. Our acting coach, Howard, had trained some of the biggest names in Hollywood. He shut down his school for the week to work with us.
Howard taught us how to tap into emotions that we already had and use them to be believable. He helped us focus on character so our legends came to life with real emotion. I have no doubt his training saved my life as much as any training I got from the FBI.
Before we left Los Angeles, our supervisor held a final meeting. We gathered around a conference room table as he read down the caseload.
“I need someone in Chicago,” he said. “And we need a couple of you guys in Jacksonville. A DirecTV installer saw a map of a military base along with ‘religious paraphernalia’ in an apartment.”
I knew right then I was going to want every case. That this was where I belonged.