There was never a doubt that the success of the investigation would ultimately hinge on turning somebody. Coffey’s hunch had begun it, but it had been only an intuition that had panned out. The wiretaps and the bugs had provided details and evidence and given direction, but much of what had come over them was cloudy and enigmatic. The computers and the tedious paperwork and physical surveillance had turned up links and patterns. But it was not enough. If they were ever to know all the trails, understand them well enough to follow them to their endings and so amass the evidence that would stand up in court, they would have to turn somebody on the inside. It would not be de Lorenzo or Rizzo or Tortora or anybody high up in the conspiracy. No matter what, there was no hope that any of them would talk, reluctantly or willingly. The first turning would have to be someone near the bottom, trapped so tightly in a net that he had no hope of escape or exculpation. Faced with the certainty of long years in prison, he would be given the choice: take the fall or become an informer and perhaps go free or even enter the federal witness program and begin a new life under the aegis of the government. He would obviously have to be a weak link taken at the moment of his utmost peril, someone whose fear of prison was so great that it outweighed his fear of the deadly revenge of Rizzo and the syndicate. That first turning was the essential one, for even if the pigeon could give little himself, he would surely lead them to others ever higher in the chain until all the pieces would come together.
As the investigators listened to those taps, as they observed those in Rizzo’s circle, as they pieced together the computer printouts, the target seemed apparent: Freddy Mayo. “All you had to do was take one look at him, listen to him whine about his troubles over the phone, look at his yellow sheet,” Coffey says, “and you knew that prison wasn’t in his plans for a lifestyle.” In the years between 1969 and 1972 alone, the forty-one-year-old Mayo had been arrested eleven times, almost all as a result of his dealings in stolen and forged credit cards and airline tickets. He was under indictment, was awaiting trial, and he was terrified at the thought that he would be convicted and sent away. Mayo would certainly crumble if he were picked up once more, and especially if the bust were for something even more serious than possession of stolen and counterfeit instruments and theft of service—something like narcotics. By himself, Mayo might be minor, but he would be the first card in the house of cards, would start the inevitable fall.
They would watch and pick their moment, and in the spring of 1972 they were in no hurry, were content to pile up what they could from the taps and bugs and other sources, hoping to at least make a start down every major avenue. Then the moment picked them.
Near the end of April, Rizzo answered the phone in Jimmy’s Lounge and heard a voice with a British accent ask, “Vincent?”
“When did you get in?” Rizzo asked. “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day.”
“Noon,” the Englishman said. “Is there any news yet?”
“Not yet,” Rizzo said. “Benjamin had to go back to Philly a little while ago. He’ll be back tomorrow. We ought to know somethin’ then, maybe the next day. But we gotta meet. You come down here tomorrow and we’ll get together.”
The next morning, soon after Rizzo arrived at Jimmy’s Lounge, Marty de Lorenzo drove up, got out of his car, went inside, joined Rizzo in the back room. A few minutes later, Benjamin turned up, followed almost immediately by a nattily dressed, slim, elderly little man. The four huddled in that back room. What they said was drowned out by the blaring jukebox.
The conference lasted about an hour. The little man was the first to leave, hailing a cab outside the bar and heading toward midtown Manhattan. Across the street, Coffey and Tamarro were waiting in Coffey’s car, which had been repaired. They tailed the little man to the Diplomat Hotel. A glance at the guest register produced the identification: Tony Grant of 2 Sherwood Court, London, England. The name meant nothing. Coffey and Tamarro decided it must be a phony, but, to be sure, they asked Interpol whether the international police agency had any information about an Englishman named Tony Grant.
The reply came back the next day. Tony Grant, Interpol said, was a name often used by a sixty-two-year-old native of Liverpool whose true name was Hyman Grant. He had several other aliases, including Hyman Clebanoff. At times he claimed to be a self-employed jeweler, and he was, as it happened, very familiar with precious gems. He also represented himself as a master tailor, and it was apparent from the care he took with his dress that he knew a lot about good clothing. But his main occupation was as a swindler, confidence man and forger who operated on an international scale. He was known to authorities throughout the civilized world and had a criminal record dating back to 1934. It would be impossible to recount all the deals with stolen and counterfeit securities and currency that Grant had worked, Interpol reported, and while in recent years, centering his operations out of Argentina, he had managed to avoid arrest, he was wanted by Portuguese authorities for swindling a gullible couple out of a horde of valuable jewels with payment of $20,000 in counterfeit United States currency.
As Coffey read that dossier, he had a gnawing sense that he had come across Tony Grant before. The name Grant meant nothing to him; it was the first name, Tony, and the combination of Tony and England, Tony as an Englishman. But the connection kept eluding him the harder he tried to establish it. He put it aside, went on to other things and then, in an idle moment, a certain conversation came back to him. He rushed to Leonard Street, dug up the transcript of Rizzo’s meeting with Ense and Barg in Munich.
ENSE: Well, the first time when I met Benjamin before, in London … before we started this deal …
RIZZO: You mean with Ricky and Tony?
ENSE: Yes. Tony, Ricky, Benjamin, some people else, I don’t know them, Maurice and me. The first man I met there was called Dr. Ledl. And this guy was a friend of Ricky.
RIZZO: Right.
ENSE: And couldn’t speak to Ricky because Ricky doesn’t speak any German and he doesn’t speak any English. And Ricky said to me, “Please ask him what does he want. What does he want for his friends in Rome?” So, I learned they had a deal in Rome, this deal would be made with his people in the Vatican, and Dr. Ledl said, “Okay, I need this merchandise.” … Tony, Jerry and Dr. Ledl and Maurice and me, and two … other German people … I sent them by car to Rome.…
Could this be that same Tony? Coffey’s intuition said he was, and if that was so, then maybe what he was doing in New York had something to do with that still-mysterious deal in the Vatican, and even with other deals with Benjamin, Ricky Jacobs, with the Germans, with Rizzo, and even with things they knew nothing about. What was certain was that Grant was in New York about something big, perhaps something on an international scale. Otherwise there would have been no reason for Marty de Lorenzo to have been present at that morning meeting in Jimmy’s Lounge.
They would stick to Grant and see where he would lead them. But in Tony Grant they were dealing with a man who had been in the game a long time, a man who rarely took chances unless the payoff was more than worth the risk, and even then only with caution. No sooner had Coffey and Tamarro placed him in the Diplomat Hotel than he moved to another hotel, shifted residences constantly every few days, never staying in one place long enough for a tap or a bug to be planted until, in early May, he paused, checked into the Commodore Hotel and remained.
Events started to accelerate in what at first seemed unconnected directions. Rizzo called Sam Salli, the Buffalo Mafioso who was a prime supplier of counterfeit currency, turning it out with his own printers and engravers as well as importing it from Canada.
“Sam,” Rizzo said, “I’m callin’ for Uncle Marty.”
“Yeah,” Salli said.
“We need some merchandise.”
“Sure,” Salli said. “How much?”
“Two packages,” Rizzo said. “One for eighty, one for six hundred.”
“You got ’em,” Salli said. “The usual price, one for ten.”
“No argument,” Rizzo said. “Only they got to be good.”
“All my stuff is good,” Salli said. “You know that.”
“Not the last batch,” Rizzo said. “I had somebody take a look. He said all they was good for was to wipe your ass. Uncle Marty was very upset. This has got to be good.”
“Believe me,” Salli said, “I’ll get you the best. I’ll even deliver it personal.”
“How soon? We need the merchandise fast.”
“A couple of days,” Salli said. “I’ll let you know when I’m comin’ down.”
For those familiar with Sam Salli, there was little mystery in that conversation. Rizzo wanted two packages of counterfeit money, one for $80,000, the other for $600,000. He had no objection to paying Salli’s asking price of ten percent of the face value, or $68,000.
A few days later, Salli made the trip into New York from Buffalo, met Rizzo in a room at the Hotel Piccadilly in the Times Square area. The exchange was made, out of sight and hearing of Rizzo’s trackers. Though they knew what was going on in that hotel room, and though they knew that the briefcase Rizzo carried away with him contained $680,000, in counterfeit bills, they made no move to intercept him and seize that money. It was more important to find out what those bills were going to be used for.
What that transaction did accomplish, however, was to bring new forces into the chase. The Secret Service, charged not merely with protecting the President and other high government officials but also with protecting United States currency and investigating any suspicion of counterfeiting, was notified. Its resources and agents joined those of the FBI and the Manhattan district attorney.
While he was awaiting Salli’s arrival, Rizzo had some orders for Freddy Mayo and Jimmy Heimerle, though when he gave them there was no hint that there was a connection. He told the two travel agents to book flights to San Francisco and to Miami, using their stolen credit cards, airline tickets and validating machines (it was just another example of Rizzo’s willingness to take unnecessary risks if he could save a penny in the process). There were to be two reservations to San Francisco and three to Miami, separated by several days.
And then the seemingly unrelated elements began to merge. Mayo and Heimerle themselves boarded the plane for San Francisco. They were going, it was learned later, as couriers for de Lorenzo and Rizzo and they were carrying with them a package of $600,000 in counterfeit bills. When they arrived in San Francisco, they immediately got in touch with two of the city’s leading mobsters, Joseph Calise and William Mizono, who picked them up and escorted them to the Mark Hopkins Hotel. A Japanese businessman was waiting for them in a suite. The counterfeit package was turned over to him. The next day, the businessman was on his way back to the Far East, to spread those bills around on the black markets in Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Mayo had hardly returned from that mission to the West Coast before he was off again, this time heading south to Miami. With him were Rizzo and the Englishman, Tony Grant. And with them, concealed in a suitcase, was $80,000 in counterfeit money. They went directly from the airport to the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach. Grant checked into a room on a high floor overlooking the ocean. Rizzo and Mayo checked into another a few floors below.
They had been tailed all the way by two of Hogan’s detectives, joined in Miami by local FBI agents and Secret Service men. But everything was happening too fast. There was no time to get a court order and plant bugs and tap phones. They could only wait and watch from the lobby, and wonder what was happening in those rooms on the floors above. Even from that isolation, though, the little they saw led them to strongly suspect that narcotics were involved. They would learn the details months later.
That afternoon, a South American walked into the Deauville, stopped at the desk, asked for Mr. Grant’s room, spoke briefly over the house phone before riding up in the elevator. He was an Argentinian named Carlos Canonico, a stranger to Rizzo and Mayo but not to Grant. Canonico was a close associate of Adolf Soboski, another Argentinian Grant had come to know very well during his frequent trips to and from Buenos Aires and especially during his residence there in the late 1960s. Soboski just happened to be the biggest South American source for cocaine, and anyone who wanted to import large quantities of the drug into the United States had to deal with him.
Canonico was in Grant’s room for fifteen or twenty minutes, then Grant took him down the few floors to meet Rizzo. The introductions made, Canonico reached into his pocket and pulled out a package of Marlboros, dropped it on the, bed. Rizzo retrieved it, tore it open. It was filled with a white powder. Rizzo sniffed the powder, then handed the pack carefully to Mayo and ordered him to sample it and give his opinion.
Mayo took a taste tentatively. “Well,” he said, from limited experience, for narcotics were not his thing, “it tastes like cocaine to me.”
“It is,” Canonico said. “It is pure.”
Rizzo was satisfied. He opened the suitcase and took out the package of $80,000 in counterfeit money and tossed it to Canonico. It was payment for one kilogram of pure cocaine. The arrangements had been made by Grant with Soboski. For Rizzo, this was a bargain. Perhaps Soboski, and Canonico, could distribute those counterfeits in Latin America and elsewhere for close to their face value. But Rizzo had paid Salli only $8,000 for them, while a kilo of pure cocaine was going on the New York market for $66,000. And that hardly touched its true value, for that kilo could be cut twelve times before it was finally sold on the street; thus nearly $850,000 could be realized from the sale of that single kilo of cocaine.
Rizzo, however, did not deal in small things, like a single kilo of narcotics, and so what was happening in that hotel room at the Deauville in Miami Beach was merely a sampling session, an opening to bigger things. Rizzo was about to make a major move into the cocaine market. If he was satisfied with the quality of the merchandise Canonico showed him, then he was prepared to use Soboski as his source for some very large shipments. And he was satisfied.
Before Canonico left the room, arrangements had been made for the immediate purchase of eight more kilos of pure cocaine, to be paid for partly in counterfeit money and partly in real bills, and to be delivered in New York within ten days. And a second and larger deal was set in motion, one that, because of its size, would take longer to complete and would require some intricate logistics. Rizzo ordered from Soboski eighty-two kilos of pure cocaine. Street value: about $70 million.
If the aroma of narcotics was now fragrant, still those on the outside, the investigators, got only the scent, knew none of the details. But they were convinced a major delivery was imminent. Why else would Grant remain at the Deauville while Rizzo and Mayo returned to New York? Why else would Rizzo call Grant every day asking for news?
Then, as the week was drawing to a close, the phone rang in Jimmy’s Lounge. It was Grant calling from Miami Beach. Contact had been made, he told Rizzo, and so he and his South American friends were about to drive north and would like to meet Rizzo on Saturday to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion.
Saturday morning, Hogan’s men were ready. If they did not yet know where the meeting would take place, they were sure it would not be hard to find out. Coffey parked his car across the street from Rizzo’s home and waited, prepared to tail him wherever he went and then get word to Sergeant Bob Nicholson and the other detectives. Patty Marino drove up in Rizzo’s Mercedes. Rizzo appeared, got in beside Marino, and the Mercedes started north. Coffey moved after it, keeping a block behind. It took him only a few minutes to realize that Rizzo was wary, was on the alert for a tail. The Mercedes made sharp turns, squared blocks, veered in and out of traffic lanes. Coffey could see Rizzo’s head turning, watching through the rear window to see if they had a tail, if they had shaken it. At that moment, he was glad he was alone; two men in a car would have been a sure sign to Rizzo that he was being followed.
The Mercedes accelerated, screeched around a corner into Thirty-first Street. As Coffey turned the corner, he saw the Mercedes come to a sudden stop at the end of the block. He braked, pulled into an empty space at the curb a few hundred feet behind. Rizzo got out of his car and started to walk slowly back along the block. Coffey slumped down behind the wheel, trying to make himself invisible while still being able to peer over it. Rizzo kept walking toward him, getting closer. About twenty-five feet from Coffey’s car, he stopped, stared at it, squinting to peer through the front window. Coffey slumped lower. Rizzo saw no one. Apparently reassured, he turned and headed back to the Mercedes, got in and the car started up. Coffey waited until it had turned the corner before starting his own car and taking off in pursuit. He spotted the Mercedes again heading north and kept pace with it.
The Mercedes finally pulled into the parking lot at the Americana Hotel on Seventh Avenue. Marino took the parking stub and he and Rizzo went into the hotel. Coffey followed. From a phone in the lobby, he called the waiting Nicholson and within fifteen minutes the hotel lobby was filled with Hogan’s detectives.
Rizzo and Marino had been the first to arrive. They went into the French Quarter restaurant off the lobby and took a large table. They did not have long to wait. Tony Grant appeared, accompanied by two Argentinians, Raul Crotti and Andres Puchet, agents for Adolf Soboski. There were greetings, introductions, the ordering of lunch. There was some intense conversation. No detective was close enough to overhear; most were in the lobby, a few at other tables around the restaurant, watching. They saw only one thing that seemed significant: Crotti took a piece of cardboard from his pocket, a parking stub, and handed it surreptitiously to Marino, who shoved it into his own pocket.
The lunch went on and on. Coffey started to grow concerned. The hotel had so many exits that it might be possible for somebody to slip away unnoticed. He went to Nicholson. “Look, Bob,” he said, “I’m going to go and sit on the Mercedes, just in case.”
He went to the parking lot, got into his own car and waited. Suddenly, Rizzo appeared, alone, got into the Mercedes and drove off. Coffey had no time to alert those still watching the table in the Americana; he had to move with Rizzo, and Rizzo took him on a weaving, twisting, circuitous half-hour ride downtown, to Fourteenth Street and Third Avenue—to the Blue Seas restaurant. Rizzo parked and went inside. Coffey parked across the street, rushed to a pay phone. He called Dick Tamarro at home, told him what was happening, and Tamarro said he would be there as soon as he could. Then Coffey called the Americana. “I had made no arrangements to let them know I would be calling,” he said, “but Bob Nicholson is a pretty sharp guy. He’s got a brother who’s a doctor, so I had the hotel page a Dr. Nicholson. He picked up the phone and I told him the story. I said when the rest of them leave, in case you lose them, they’re probably coming here, to the Blue Seas.”
A half-hour later, Tamarro now with him in the car, Coffey saw a cab arrive at the Blue Seas. Grant, Crotti, Puchet and Marino got out and went inside. A little while later, Nicholson and the other detectives appeared. “We lost them,” Nicholson said, “Did they show?”
“Yeah,” Coffey said. “They’re all inside.”
Should they move in? “We wanted to go in there and find out what was going on,” Coffey says. “With the South Americans, we knew they must be dealing big in narcotics. But we couldn’t do it. We couldn’t afford to make a move that would blow the whole thing. We had to lay back, watch, pick up what we could and add it to everything else.”
They would learn later that what they had been watching were the details of the delivery of the eight kilos of cocaine and the payment for it. The money, in real bills and counterfeits, had been stashed at the Blue Seas and Crotti and Puchet had made the cab trip there to pick it up and deliver it later to Soboski. The cocaine was in the trunk of a rented car that Crotti had parked at the Americana, the parking stub for which he had handed to Marino. Sometime that evening, Marino returned to the hotel, picked up the car, managed to elude his trackers as he drove away with the cocaine.
While Marino was weaving through Manhattan traffic that Saturday night with his load of cocaine, Grant was back in his room at the Commodore, making a phone call. He reached Freddy Mayo and asked if Mayo could get him a ticket on a Braniff flight leaving for Buenos Aires the next morning. Over one of the taps, the listeners heard Mayo confirm the order and say that the ticket would be delivered to Grant before he left for the airport.
The district attorney’s office was immediately informed and Inspector Vitrano sent out a hurried call for Coffey. “Joe,” he said when Coffey arrived, “pack your bags. You’re leaving for Argentina in the morning.” The trip to Munich in February had shattered forever the ancient code; no longer would there be any hesitation about sending a New York cop out of the country on a case.
But Coffey did not want to go to South America. It was not that he spoke no Spanish; his lack of German had not hindered him in Munich. It was that something else was happening that might necessitate another sudden trip to Europe.
Rizzo had been growing increasingly perturbed about the behavior of his German friends over the previous several weeks. When Heshy Lebensfeld told him that he was on his way back to Europe, Rizzo had asked him to stop in Munich, see Alfred Barg and “ask him how much money did he put in my account in the Otto Dierks and Company Bank. And, Harry,” he had added, “have him give you the deposit slip for what he put in.”
But Barg had deposited no money after that initial payment into Rizzo’s account, and Rizzo wanted to know why. Several times, he ordered William Benjamin to call Barg in Munich, tell him to stop playing around and do what he agreed to do or something unpleasant was likely to happen to him. Benjamin reported back that he had tried several times, had been unable to reach Barg; the German was always someplace else—one day in France, another out of the office, never near a telephone. “I can’t get through,” Benjamin complained. “Now there’s only one thing has to be … Someone has to go out and lay the law down and make a procedure which has to be followed every week, and if they don’t do it then you gotta take action about it, ’cause I’m fed up with the bullshit, every fuckin’ day I’m makin’ telephone calls.”
There was obviously only one person who could lay down the few and be heeded, and that was Vincent Rizzo himself. Rizzo began to give indications that he was about to do just that. And then he indicated that he was going to bring in even bigger guns to force the issue. He called Marty de Lorenzo and urged him to accompany him to Germany, saying that maybe de Lorenzo’s presence, and his position, would make the difference and get them what was coming to them.
Thus, Coffey was convinced that at any moment Rizzo and de Lorenzo would be on their way to Munich. If they were to go, then he wanted to go with them. That was a side of the case, or cases, with which he was now expert, and he had established a rapport with his German counterparts that would take someone else time to pick up.
Vitrano and Goldstock agreed. Coffey should wait, prepare himself for that flight to Munich. But somebody had to tail Grant to Argentina. If he was involved in major narcotics, they wanted to know about it. “Send Jimmy Rodriguez,” Coffey said. “When it comes to undercover work, there’s nobody better. And he speaks Spanish.”
On the morning of Mother’s Day, 1972, Rodriguez and Larry Mullins were in their seats on a Braniff flight to Argentina, just down the aisle from Tony Grant. In Buenos Aires, they were met by local agents of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. (With the indications that a major narcotics deal was in the works, that federal agency had also been brought into the hunt.) Rodriguez and Mullins were in Buenos Aires for a week, working closely with the BNDD agents. They received only minimal assistance from Argentine authorities. They followed Grant everywhere, and he was a busy man indeed—meeting regularly with people they could not identify, and seeing Adolf Soboski very often. But there we’re few clues as to what those gatherings were about.
It was only a little later that they learned the details. Grant and Soboski were making the arrangements for the purchase of those eighty-two kilos of cocaine and setting up the means to get them into the United States. They found a way. Soboski purchased a house trailer, secreted it in the jungle along the border between Paraguay and Chile. With the connivance of the former head of the Chilean narcotics enforcement bureau, the cocaine was smuggled across the border into Paraguay and then hidden inside the trailer. The intention was for the trailer to make an innocent journey up through South and Central America and cross unmolested into the southern United States.
Those secret arrangements made, Grant returned to New York. Rodriguez and Mullins, uncertain as to what, if anything, they had actually witnessed or learned, followed on the same plane.
Coffey was not there to greet them. He was in Munich. Two days after Grant had left New York for Buenos Aires, Rizzo called Lufthansa and made reservations for himself and de Lorenzo on a flight to Germany scheduled to leave the following day.
The instant those plans were known, Coffey, pausing only long enough to pack his suitcase, was on his way. This time, he had company: Mario Trapani, the detective he had worked with undercover at Ponte’s restaurant. The FBI had been asked to send Dick Tamarro along, too, since Tamarro was the agent most deeply involved and so most knowledgeable. But the FBI, like the New York police before Coffey’s initial trip, had an inviolate policy of refusing to send its agents outside the country. They relied instead on the agents in place—those assigned to embassies and missions overseas—even though they might know nothing about the investigation. Permission for Tamarro to go along was denied.
The Munich police, Coffey’s friends now, were waiting, and this time there was no need to persuade them of anything. Rizzo and de Lorenzo were booked into the Bayerischer Hof Hotel. The phones in their suite were tapped; in the bedroom a bug was planted in the lamp on the table between their beds.
Within minutes after they arrived, Rizzo called Barg and Ense, demanded that they appear at the hotel immediately, told them there were things that had to be settled and he would brook no more delays. Rizzo’s tone was enough to win prompt acquiescence.
Coffey and the German detectives gathered around the monitors in their room down the hall, expecting a replay of the scene at the Palace Hotel in February with, perhaps, more revelations. They got nothing. The bug had been planted in the bedroom; the conversations took place in the living room.
But Barg, Ense, Rizzo and de Lorenzo did not stay in the suite long. Using all his charm, Barg insisted that they be his guests for dinner at the Excelsior Hotel. Barg was nervous, shaking, terrified. Through that dinner, Rizzo rarely smiled and generally behaved in such a manner as to give Barg good reason for his terror. De Lorenzo merely sat and ate and looked on, smiling benignly, nodding now and again. But his presence added weight to Rizzo’s demands.
During that dinner, Heshy Lebensfeld suddenly appeared, saw them, joined them for coffee, and then took de Lorenzo off with him, leaving Barg, Ense and Rizzo alone. Barg had a suggestion. Perhaps Rizzo would agree to drive with them out to Barg’s home in Gruenwald, a Munich suburb, meet his family and, in the privacy of his study, try to find a solution to their problems.
The hour in his own study was hardly a pleasant or reassuring time for Alfred Barg, nor for his friend, Winfried Ense. Rizzo told them bluntly that he had run out of patience. He would tolerate no more delays in settling accounts. Why, he demanded, had Barg put only a few deutsche marks into the account that had been opened in early March? Why had Barg not made the payments he had agreed to make? Now, Rizzo said, he had brought with him a very important man, the man they had had dinner with. This was a man who enjoyed his own home and surroundings, who would travel long distances only in cases of extreme need. And this was the man to whom the money was owed. The only thing that would save Barg and Ense from more trouble than they could possibly imagine was the immediate payment of the $350,000 that was long overdue.
Barg stammered that unfortunately he was not in a position to pay that kind of money then. Perhaps Rizzo would accept some valuable jewelry he had in his safe as part payment?
Rizzo refused. He was not interested in jewels. He was interested in money. Period.
Barg had another proposal. Perhaps Rizzo and de Lorenzo would accept a binding letter that would guarantee them a share in the profits of the Bel Air vacation homes project in Montpellier? Since the homes were just then being built and only the first ones had been sold, it might be a little time before the profits would begin to flow. But, from the projections that had been made and from all indications, Bel Air was going to be an extremely profitable venture and the Rizzo-de Lorenzo share would earn them at least $1 million within the next five years. And to demonstrate his good faith, Barg offered 14,000 deutsche marks (about $6,000) to pay for their expenses on this trip to Germany and for their trouble.
If the offer was legitimate and prospects as real as Barg said they were, and the papers he showed Rizzo seemed to indicate that, this counterproposal was enticing, indeed; especially since there seemed little hope of wringing $350,000 in cash out of Barg and Ense at that moment. Rizzo, however, did not commit himself immediately. He said he would discuss the proposition with de Lorenzo and get back to Barg with an answer. But Rizzo’s reaction was enough to convince Barg that he had won at least a temporary reprieve. He and Ense drove Rizzo back to Munich, took him to a favorite café for a nightcap and then dropped him off at the Bayerischer Hof.
When Rizzo put Barg’s offer to de Lorenzo, Uncle Marty bought it. The next morning, both appeared at Barg’s office on the third floor of Tengstrasse 38, and when they departed it was with a contract, in the form of a letter, cutting them in on the profits of Bel Air. It must have seemed a satisfactory solution to everyone at the moment, for over the next few days, Rizzo and de Lorenzo did little but enjoy themselves, taking in the sights, the restaurants, the night life.
And Coffey stewed. It was all happening in secret, out of his sight and hearing. Nothing was coming over the bug except those late-night reflections by de Lorenzo. Further, something important was about to take place in New York. During one of his regular calls to Vitrano, he learned that Hogan’s office had received a tip from an informant, and the tip had been confirmed by a guarded telephone conversation overheard in the Stuyvesant Town plant, that Mayo and Grant were about to take part in a large narcotics exchange. On Saturday, May 20, they intended to drive to Philadelphia, pick up a shipment from Benjamin and carry it back to New York. The decision had been made to intercept them. Trapped with narcotics, Mayo would certainly turn, and with luck they might also be able to turn Grant, and that might open more doors than they dared speculate about. Coffey was not about to miss that. He told Trapani to stay in Munich, keep watch over Rizzo and de Lorenzo just in case they did something else, while he made the first available flight home.
Reaching New York late on Friday, Coffey rushed to Leonard Street, spent the rest of that night and most of the next day going over the plans for the bust.
Early Saturday morning, Mayo and Grant set out for Philadelphia, met Benjamin, turned and started back for New York. They were tailed all the way, word of their movements radioed back regularly. When they turned off the New Jersey Turnpike to take the Goethals Bridge to Staten Island, Coffey and the other detectives made their move. In two unmarked cars, they sped to Staten Island, intercepted Mayo and Grant on the expressway crossing the island. Mayo turned the car off the expressway onto the Staten Island streets, desperately trying to lose them. The two unmarked cars stayed with him, came up on him on a narrow dark street, forced his car over. The detectives leaped out of their cars, surrounded their target, threw open the doors and ordered Mayo and Grant out.
Mayo took one look at the threatening men around his car, was convinced they were hijackers come to seize the narcotics he had supposedly picked up in Philadelphia and then kill him and Grant. He started to whimper, to shake uncontrollably. He began to plead. He was so terrified, he wet his pants, a dark wet stain spreading across the front and down his legs. When the shields were flashed at him and he was told he was under arrest, he started to laugh with hysterical relief. All the time, Grant merely stood to one side, silently, calmly, stoically, ready to accept his fate without a murmur.
Mayo and Grant were searched and handcuffed. No narcotics were found on them. The car was searched thoroughly. Still no narcotics. The pickup in Philadelphia had been aborted, Benjamin telling them he had heard there might be some trouble and so the delivery was being called off for the time being. Still, the evidence that had come from the wiretap and from the informant’s tip was enough to permit an arrest on charges of narcotics conspiracy. The two were put in separate cars and driven to Leonard Street, kept apart and questioned.
Coffey and another detective went to work on Mayo, sure this weak link would collapse without any sweat on their part. They were right. Faced now with the certainty of long years in prison, Mayo buckled, leaped eagerly at the idea that he might be able to make a deal, might even, if he told all he knew, find shelter in the federal protected witness program and so be able to disappear beyond Rizzo’s reach.
In an unbroken monologue, he spilled all he knew about the stolen and counterfeit airline tickets and credit cards. He talked about his trip to San Francisco with Heimerle, his meeting with Calise and Mizono and the passing of the counterfeit bills to the Japanese businessman at the Mark Hopkins. He talked about his trip with Rizzo and Grant to Miami, the session at the Deauville with Canonico, the deals that Rizzo had made for the importing of cocaine from Soboski in South America. He talked about Heimerle, Patty Marino—about everything and everyone he knew. But when the questioning turned to Europe, to Munich and Rome, to securities, Mayo could only shake his head. “I don’t know nothin’ about that,” he said. “I wasn’t part of that and they didn’t tell me nothin’ about that. All I did was fix the tickets and get the flights.”
So, even though Mayo provided solid evidence in a dozen areas, he still left an essential area empty. But, as they had thought, he was that essential first card in the stack. It was time to run to Grant, to put pressure on him, for there was no doubt that he knew much more than Mayo about many things. Grant was lodged in the Tombs, and every day Larry Mullins or another of Hogan’s detectives went to see him, to try to persuade or force him to talk. But Tony Grant was no Freddy Mayo. He had been in prison often enough to have lost his fear of bars and cells. He had no answers to any of the questions. He offered only a knowing smile. For Grant was sure he had nothing to worry about. He had done enough for Rizzo to be sure he would not languish in the Tombs or go to prison, that Rizzo would supply whatever he needed. He was sure he could depend on Vincent Rizzo.
But Rizzo did not appear. Rizzo sent no one to see him. Rizzo sent no lawyer to defend him. Doubt began to seep through Grant. He sent a message from his jail cell. He was a chain-smoker and was suffering without his cigarettes. Would Rizzo please send him some. Grant waited. There was no reply. He sent out another message, this time a demand that Rizzo send him a carton of cigarettes. Rizzo did not reply.
More days passed and the realization gradually reached Grant that he had been abandoned. He sent out a different message. He would, he told the authorities at the Tombs, like to see some cops.
This was the hoped-for break. Mullins dashed to the Tombs, took custody of Grant, hustled him back to Leonard Street, ushered him into an office where Coffey and Assistant D.A. Ron Goldstock were waiting.
“You wanted to see us?” Coffey said.
Grant looked at him, at Mullins, at Goldstock. “Have you got a cigarette?” he asked. Coffey took out a pack, handed him one, held out a match. Grant inhaled deeply. He smoked it down to a minute butt, in rapid puffs, as though convinced there would never be another. When only ash remained, he looked at Coffey. Coffey shook a second cigarette from the pack, held the match while Grant lit it, then handed the pack to Grant.
“You wanted to see us?” Coffey said again.
Grant was in no hurry. He inhaled his cigarette, relishing the taste, examined the glowing butt, inspected the room and his interrogators. At last, he said, “Do you know Vincent Rizzo?”
“We know him.”
Grant made a sour face. “That man,” he said, “is a cheap son of a bitch. I’ve never known anyone so cheap. Do you know, I asked him for some cigarettes and he was too cheap to send them. He never even had the decency to send a reply. And after all I’ve done for that man.”
“Is that right?” Coffey said. He looked at Goldstock and Mullins. They kept their faces emotionless, struggled to conceal the excitement that was building.
“Oh, yes,” Grant said. “Believe me, I’ve done plenty for him. I can help you. I can give you Rizzo.”
“Is that so?” Coffey said. “How?”
“I can tell you whatever you want to know,” Grant said. “Just ask me.”
“About what?”
“About everything,” Grant said. “I was in on most of it, and what I wasn’t in on, I know about. I know you know about drugs. That’s why you were waiting for Mayo and me when we came back from Philadelphia. But do you know about Soboski? Do you know about the trailer that’s waiting in Paraguay? I can give you the details.”
“What about Soboski?”
Grant spelled it out for them—how he had negotiated on Rizzo’s behalf with Soboski for the purchase of eighty-two kilos of cocaine, and arranged for its shipment into the United States concealed in a house trailer.
(That information was immediately passed on to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Acting on it, BNDD agents in South America sped to the jungle along the border between Chile and Paraguay, came upon the trailer precisely where Grant had said it would be. But when they searched it, they found nothing. A message was flashed to New York that the tip must be wrong, the trailer was clean. Hogan’s office flashed a return message: the tip was correct; the cocaine was hidden in the trailer; if necessary, the trailer should be torn apart. The BNDD agents took the trailer to pieces. Concealed within its walls were the eighty-two kilos of pure cocaine. Within weeks, Soboski, arriving in the United States on a visit, was in custody, charged and then given the choice of spending most of the rest of his life in an American prison or becoming an informant. He decided to talk, and so turned from major supplier of illegal narcotics to the American market to major supplier of information about the intercontinental drug traffic.)
“What else?” Coffey asked.
“I’m sure you know about the deal in Panama,” Grant said, “the thing with Shinwell and Ricky Jacobs and the rest. I wasn’t part of that, but I learned about it and I can fill you in. And the deal in the Vatican? You must know about that. I’m sure, though, you don’t know everything. But I know enough about what Rizzo and Ricky Jacobs and that Austrian, Dr. Ledl, were trying to do. I can tell you. Gentlemen, just ask me and I’ll tell you everything I know about Mr. Vincent Rizzo. It will be my pleasure to give him to you. But, please, just one thing in return. I would like you to keep me supplied with cigarettes.”
So, Grant turned—not, like Mayo, to save himself, but to gain satisfaction. Rizzo was going to discover that his refusal to meet Tony Grant’s simple request would cost him a lot more than the price of a pack, or even a carton, of cigarettes. With Grant’s turning, major obstacles were cleared away and the road to the center was clearly marked. All along that road, with Grant as a guide, they would come upon others who, to save themselves or to gain a measure of their own revenge for slights and injury, would run, too, and make the road smoother, wider, easier to navigate. The thousand strands began to come together; a picture began to emerge; the patterns, lines and connections began to take on an understandable shape.
Most of the events had happened long before Coffey or any investigator had had any awareness of them, had stumbled on the first clues. So, though it might all be history to Grant and the others who would provide the narrative, to those who listened, it had the fascination of immediacy and freshness, as though the events were being played out before them as they occurred.