Christmas Eve, New York, 1970. By the middle of that cold, bleak afternoon, what little remained of the holiday spirit had begun to dissipate in the angry heat rising from the shoving crowds of frantic shoppers filling the stores and sidewalks, among the staggering drunks spilling out of office buildings after a little too much partying, even in the scowls that had replaced the broad smiles of the street-corner Santa Clauses whose ringing bells and loud “ho-ho’s” had begun to take on a threatening timbre, demanding that passersby drop something into the pot.
That afternoon there were not many detectives in the offices of District Attorney Frank Hogan’s rackets bureau on Leonard Street in downtown Manhattan. Some of the sixty-odd investigators assigned there were on vacation and many more had somehow managed to break away early. The few who straggled back after lunch scratched away at paperwork, one eye fastened on the clock, wishing the hours away until it was time to quit work, go home to the kids, maybe finish trimming the tree and putting out the presents and have a couple of days to forget about work. In that nearly empty office, about the last thing anybody wanted as dusk settled over the city was to see somebody walk in with a problem he wanted solved right away.
So there were inward groans when Assistant District Attorney Gerard Hinckley strode through the door. Just behind him was a man who had the look and the smell of an expensive lawyer, the kind who doesn’t show up at the district attorney’s office bearing holiday largess, or even season’s greetings; the kind who appears only when there is trouble. That he was the bearer of bad tidings was apparent from the look on his face, from the purposeful, tight way he walked. Hinckley and the attorney headed directly for the private office of Inspector Paul Vitrano, the commanding officer of the detectives in the rackets bureau, and disappeared inside, closing the door behind them.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and Vitrano stepped outside. His eyes moved slowly around the room, searching. Nobody wanted to meet that gaze. “Carey,” he called. “Montello. Come in here. I want to see you. Now.”
Detectives John Carey and Lou Montello looked at each other and sighed, rose slowly from their desks and crossed the room to Vitrano’s office, followed him inside. “We’ve got a little problem,” he said. “I want you guys to get on it.”
He introduced them to a very disturbed and angry lawyer who wanted action and who wanted it immediately. He represented the Playboy Club on East Fifty-ninth Street in Manhattan. Some tough punks, he said, had been making a lot of trouble and they had to be stopped. Though he had just learned about it, and, of course, had immediately brought the news to the district attorney’s office, the hoodlums had appeared at the club a few months before, had forced their way in and, through threats and violence, had been trying to take it over and had come very close to doing just that. They had the club management so terrified that they were able to do just about anything they pleased. Their friends had been named to positions of trust and control. Anytime they walked in, they demanded, and got, free meals and booze. With no interference from the frightened management, they sold marijuana, cocaine and pills right out in the open and operated a flourishing loansharking business at the bar and from a center table. Anyone who tried to interfere, who even voiced a mild complaint, was bullied, threatened and beaten. This open and arrogant display had been enough to drive some customers away.
Even the bunnies were not immune. They were, in fact, special targets. The hoodlums had been supplying them with drugs and pills, had been forcing narcotics on them, turning some of them into users. And they had been pressuring some of the bunnies into becoming high-priced hookers, part of a stable for which they pimped, this despite a rigid club policy against any bunny even dating a customer. A few of the girls had objected and threatened to carry their complaints to the authorities if they weren’t left alone. The result had been beatings so severe that the girls had been unable to work for days afterward, and warnings that this was only a sample.
The situation had become so serious that unless something was done immediately, the future of the Playboy Club itself could be placed in jeopardy.
It was not a new story to Carey or Montello, or to anyone in the rackets bureau. They had been hearing numerous tales for years of young toughs loose in the city shaking down nightclubs, restaurants and bars, extorting protection money, taking clandestine control, building stables of expensive prostitutes from among the girls who worked or hung out in those places. For some of the young hoodlums, this seemed a good way to make a reputation, to impress the bosses of the city’s Mafia families and so win themselves entrance into the organized crime syndicate. Though essentially a free-lance operation, it was carried out with at least the tacit approval of the syndicate rulers, who, naturally enough, expected a share of the take. It was lucrative, but it was also more than a little dangerous for those who tried it, especially for those who figured they didn’t have to cut the bosses in, who thought if nobody knew they were scoring or how much they were scoring, they could pocket the take. A few who had tried had ended up in the trunks of abandoned cars.
Putting their holiday plans aside, Carey and Montello went up to the Playboy Club to see what they might learn. It wasn’t much. Most employees wouldn’t talk to them. Those who did merely denied that anything out of the ordinary had been going on. The club, they said, was operating just as it always had. The idea of anyone trying to step in and take over was ridiculous. But the bunnies, nearly all of them, were terrified, some so frightened they refused even to talk to any cop. Most of those who agreed to be interviewed insisted, like the others who worked the club, that there was no trouble; nobody had been offering them drugs or pills, nobody had been trying to force them to use narcotics, and, certainly, the idea that anybody had been trying to turn them into prostitutes or call girls was too absurd even to discuss. The bruises that were evident on some? They hadn’t come from fists or blackjacks or any weapon; they were the result of easily explained accidents—a fall down a flight of stairs, a stumble on some uneven pavement, something like that.
But there were a couple of bunnies who were angry and upset enough so that their fear receded just a little, far enough so they talked in private and off-the-record. Though they would not name any names and refused to look at mug shots in the police files, they did confirm what the Playboy attorney had said.
If the bunnies, out of that very real fear, would not cooperate, then perhaps something could be learned just by hanging around the Playboy Club at night and pretending to be customers. That was the next course Hinckley and Vitrano decided to follow. Carey and Montello were ordered, and it was an order they accepted without much reluctance, to go up to the club and eat, drink, take in the entertainment—and watch what went on. To give this the air of a party—a group of unattached men out for a good time on the town—a couple of other detectives would get a chance at the fun along with them.
One was Joseph Coffey. In his four years on the rackets bureau squad, he had emerged as one of the stars—a detective whose memory for people, events, dates and linkages was almost photographic, a detective who seemed always to find himself in the right place at the right time, a detective whose hunches seemed to pan out and who had that innate and essential ability to see through bland surfaces to the hidden core. He had already played major roles in several investigations into organized crime, had been instrumental in the investigations of Cuban terrorists and violence by the Black Panthers. At six feet four inches, with curling black hair and rugged Irish good looks, moving with a litheness and grace, he looked more the professional athlete than the cop. Coffey could act the part of a Playboy regular with ease, could probably pass undetected in that circle, and with his memory he might be able to spot, recognize and catalogue any of the hoodlums who showed up.
“Be our guests,” the Playboy attorney offered. “Everything is on the house. If you can stop this thing and put those guys where they belong, it will be cheap no matter what it costs us.”
“Go on up there,” Hinckley said. “Pretend you’re having a good time. See what’s really going on and if anything happens while you’re there, make a summary arrest, on the spot. But the Playboy Club pay the bill? Never. The district attorney’s office will pay. Nobody picks up the tab for the men who work for Frank Hogan. He wouldn’t stand for it.”
“That’s ridiculous,” the detectives said. “A night at the Playboy Club could cost a small fortune, and if this thing lasts a while, it could cost the office a large fortune. Why not let the club pay the bill? Who’s it going to hurt?”
“No way,” Hinckley said. “That would be corruption, to let somebody else pay for our men during an investigation. This office will pay the bill no matter what it costs.”
One night soon after Christmas, Carey, Montello, Coffey and a couple of other detectives had a little party at the Playboy Club. They ate, they drank, they enjoyed the entertainment and the ambience. And they learned nothing they hadn’t known before. When the bill arrived at Leonard Street, it turned out that Hinckley’s unbending attitude, his insistence that the rules in Hogan’s office were unbreakable, had cost the district attorney more than $400. There was some grumbling, especially since the office was on a meager budget. Still, the office paid and, despite the continuing offers of the Playboy Club to pick up all the costs no matter how high, it continued to pay all during the month-long investigation, though after that initial party, only Carey and Montello enjoyed the club’s food and booze on a regular basis.
Although those evenings at the Playboy Club were little more than watchful relaxation for the detectives, they were a welcome break from the office’s complex and difficult investigation into racketeering in the city’s meat industry. They got to know the bunnies well, though despite that increasing familiarity, the bunnies did not bend enough to offer any help. It hadn’t taken more than a few minutes from their initial appearance for the word to spread that the cops were in the place, looking into the rumors and reports, looking for confirmation and evidence, ready to make an arrest at the first sign of trouble. So, whenever the detectives were at the club, the hoods were not, and on those nights when something kept them away, the hoods invariably turned up and the trouble erupted again. It was frustrating. It was a pattern the detectives could see no way of breaking. As long as they were there, everything would be peaceful. The moment they were gone, there was going to be trouble. But there was no way they could be there all the time. The office didn’t have enough detectives to handle all the other work. What they needed was a break, perhaps somebody who would not be afraid to open his mouth before a grand jury and at a trial.
It was more than a month before the break finally came. Carey and Montello were off on another job. The toughs put in their appearance and Went into their usual act. A group of West Point cadets was having a little celebration in the club that night. The hoods decided the cadets deserved their special attention. There were some sarcastic comments about Boy Scouts. They were ignored. The remarks got rougher, more pointed, more personal until the cadets could no longer ignore them and began to respond. That was what the hoodlums had been waiting for. One of them went after a cadet with his fists, broke a whiskey bottle over the cadet’s head and left him on the floor, bleeding and unconscious.
This was not, of course, the first time something of the sort had happened. In the past, though, the battered patrons of the club had decided the best course was to tend to their bruises and stay away from the club rather than risk another confrontation with people who were obviously looking for just that. Indeed that was the cadet’s first reaction. But, unlike most customers of the Playboy Club, he was vulnerable because of what he was—a cadet at the United States Military Academy and a future officer of the United States Army. A couple of days after the beating, Carey and Montello heard about it, passed the news to Vitrano and Hinckley. Hinckley made a call to officials at West Point. They called the cadet in, advised him strongly to cooperate with the Manhattan district attorney, ordered him to New York to tell his story and identify his assailant. With obvious reluctance, he obeyed his orders. The man he identified was Donald Viggiano—a small-time punk with a record of minor crimes, a Mafia hanger-on who was out to make an impression that would win him favor with the bosses.
On February 8, 1971, a grand jury handed down an indictment of Viggiano for criminal assault. But Viggiano was nowhere to be found. For about three weeks, the cops looked for him but he showed up in none of his usual hangouts. Then, early in March, on a miserable winter day, Viggiano was spotted. It was early in the evening and someone who recognized him called in to say that he was sitting alone in a car on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. Carey and Montello went out to get him. The car was still parked at the curb, Viggiano still behind the wheel when they arrived. They pulled open the door, told him he was under arrest, and read him his rights.
Joe Coffey looked up from his desk and spotted Carey and Montello as they brought Viggiano into the office. He and several other detectives had been working late, trying to decide whether it was time to venture out into the miserable night for the trip home or wait it out and pray that the rain would begin to taper off. The quiet of the office was broken by the appearance of Viggiano in custody. Coffey and a couple of others rose and wandered over to watch as he was booked, fingerprinted, photographed.
“About your car, Viggiano,” Carey said.
“It’s not my car,” Viggiano said.
“No? Where did you get it?”
“Borrowed it from a friend.”
“Yeah? What’s the friend’s name?”
“Crespino. Philip Crespino. It’s his car.”
Coffey nudged Carey. “What’s with the car?”
“In the back,” Carey said. “We found a blackjack, a bunch of credit cards and airline tickets. You know they’re hot. Also a little junk.” If the car had been Viggiano’s, he would have been in serious trouble. That it belonged to somebody else meant he couldn’t be touched because of what had been found in it, and neither could the owner.
But the name Crespino touched something in Joe Coffey’s memory—a faint notion that he had heard that name before. A quick check of police department files turned up a yellow sheet, but it contained little of importance, only a record of a few minor offenses. Coffey was sure there had to be something more. He made a few phone calls, asked a few questions and a picture of Crespino began to take shape.
He was a tall, hulking man in his early forties, with a perpetual sneer. (“The kind of guy,” Coffey would say a long time later, “who when you meet him you want to punch his lights out on first sight.”) He was a mechanic for the New York City Transit Authority, taking care of the buses in a garage on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He also took care of a few other things: he ran a shylocking operation for transit workers out of that garage, and had a piece of another in Little Italy, where his swaggering presence was cause for fear and concern among his customers. He seemed to enjoy using his massive fists, sometimes with a club or blackjack in them, on people who were slow in their payments almost as much as he enjoyed collecting his vigorish. He was, the story went, a low-level soldier in good standing in the Genovese family, knew his place, split his take fairly with those in power above him, and carried out whatever strong-arm errands he was assigned.
That Viggiano was using Crespino’s car and claiming him as a friend obviously linked the two, and what had been discovered in the back of that car tied them to things of considerably greater moment than a little extortion and assault at the Playboy Club; it tied them to people on a level above them in the syndicate hierarchy. This was a lead that might point somewhere and Coffey wanted to follow it. He went to Inspector Vitrano.
“We have to call this guy Crespino and tell him we’ve got his car,” he said. “Why don’t we tell him to come down now and pick it up, and when he gets here, put a tail on him and see what turns up?”
Vitrano considered that for only a moment. “Good idea,” he said. “Get on it. Pick a couple of guys and move.”
The call was made. The detectives in the office split into teams, went down to the street, got their cars, parked them pointing in different directions around the spot on the street where Crespino’s car had been parked, so that when he drove off at least one team would be able to pick him up and follow. Then they waited.
Crespino appeared about an hour later, went up to the district attorney’s office, signed the release for his car, got the keys and made his way out of the office toward the elevators. The call went out to the detectives: “He’s on his way down.”
Crespino appeared, saw his car, got in, sped out into the rain and the blackness of the night, heading north. A block behind, Coffey and his partner, Anthony Saraniero, kept pace. Crespino had no sense that he was being tailed, made no effort to shake his pursuers, drove directly through the rain-slicked streets to the Columbia Civic League Club on Twelfth Street just east of First Avenue. He parked, got out, went into the club. Coffey parked directly across the street. He and Saraniero slumped down, watched and waited.
Within a few minutes, Crespino, wearing the now-soaked three-quarter-length black leather coat he favored, emerged from the club. With him was a man in a white raincoat. The beam from a streetlight on the corner caught their faces for that moment, until they moved beyond it, into the shadows. The moment was long enough for Coffey to recognize Crespino’s companion. He was Vincent Joseph Rizzo.
Though a known member of the Genovese family, Rizzo was not then considered a man of particular importance or especially high rank. “We knew him,” Coffey says, “but we didn’t think he was anybody special. He was around a lot. We knew he was a wheeler-dealer. We knew he was a good earner for the mob. We knew he was into a lot of different things, like shylocking, running guns to South America back in 1967, other stuff. But we didn’t think he was very high up.”
Watching Rizzo and Crespino as they came out of the Columbia Civic League Club, as they stood talking in the rain, Coffey had a sudden intuition that everybody had underrated Rizzo and that they had stumbled onto something of considerable importance. He and others who were investigating organized crime were very familiar with the Columbia Civic League Club. It was not just a standard Mafia hangout; it was one of the few places where members of all five New York families, especially those in the upper echelons, were wont to gather, talk, drink, make their plans in some measure of safety, away from prying ears and eyes. Strangers were not welcome.
Knowing that there was no reason Crespino and Rizzo could not have remained inside where it was dry and comfortable and secure, where they would be among friends and cohorts, Coffey tried to understand why they had decided to go into the freezing rain to have their talk. What was so important, so confidential that they could not talk about it inside?
For ten or fifteen minutes, Rizzo and Crespino stood in the shadows, in that drenching rain, talking intently. The conversation ended abruptly. Rizzo gave some orders to Crespino, then watched as Crespino got back into the car and drove off.
“The hell with Crespino,” Coffey said to Saraniero. “Let’s sit on Rizzo and see what he does.”
Rizzo stood at the curb, watching as Crespino’s taillights grew dimmer and then vanished into the darkness. He started back toward the club, stopped, turned and strode diagonally across First Avenue to a drugstore, went inside, and headed for a telephone booth. It was another anomaly. Why would Rizzo go to the drugstore to make a phone call? Why not to the club?
Coffey looked at Saraniero. “Tony,” he said, “get over there, go into the next booth, and see what you can pick up. What number he calls, what he says, anything.”
Saraniero stepped into the booth next to Rizzo’s just as Rizzo was beginning to dial. He had a clear view of Rizzo’s back, of the phone, and was able to see the numbers as Rizzo’s finger spun the dial. When it was checked out later, the number turned out to be that of the L and S Coffee Shop at 201 Avenue A, only a block away; it turned out, too, that Rizzo owned the coffee shop, owned the entire building as well, and lived there with his wife. Saraniero was able to pick up only a few broken phrases from the conversation: “I’ll be over in a little while.… No, it doesn’t look too bad.… Yeah, he was just here.…” Then Rizzo hung up, left the phone booth, recrossed First Avenue, went back into the Columbia Civic League Club.
Coffey and Saraniero remained in their car for another half-hour. Rizzo did not reappear. There was nothing more for them to do, so they drove back to the office, checked in, and went home for the night.
The next morning, Coffey went in to see Inspector Vitrano, made his report, and concluded, “I think we ought to get on Rizzo right away.”
“Why?” Vitrano asked.
“I’ve just got a hunch something big is going down.”
“What have you got besides a hunch?”
“That’s all. But I’m sure of it. I’m sure we ought to sit on Rizzo and see what develops.”
Vitrano shook his head. “It’s not enough, Joe. We’ve got too much to do in this office right now and you know it. We can’t spare a single man. I think we’ll just stand on the Viggiano indictment and let it go at that, get back to work on the meat thing.”
Coffey argued. Vitrano would not give. “Forget it,” he said. “Let’s get on with what we have to do.”