For more than two years, ever since that night he had followed Philip Crespino in the freezing rain to the Columbia Civic League Club and watched that clandestine conversation with Vincent Rizzo, the investigation had been Coffey’s obsession. They had been years when he had played his hunches and they had almost always panned out, years filled with high drama and low comedy, with intense gratification and crushing frustration. There had been months of plodding along twisted and tangled pathways that seemed to be leading nowhere, and moments of sudden and startling breakthrough and discovery. There had been much elation and no little trauma. Often during those years, as the scope of the hunt and its consequences became clear, he had been convinced that this was what he had been born to do, that this would be the capstone of his career. And now it was over, ended not with the glittering victories he had foreseen but on a sour and cynical note. He could no longer deny what he had not wanted to believe: there are people so powerful and so highly placed that they are impervious to the law, and that society’s rules and codes do not apply to them.
The long struggle and its small rewards had exacted a heavy price. There had been none of the glory and honor that so many had anticipated in those early days when the first hunches were turning to reality, when the revelations were spewing forth from the phones in Jimmy’s Lounge. There had been no smashing of important parts of the organized syndicate and its rackets. There had been only some ephemeral advances and a few words of praise from Hogan and Vitrano and then assignment to another case.
And there had been personal agonies and tragedies. Those endless hours on the chase, those days when home and family seemed only a distant dream, had cost one detective his marriage, had sent the wife of another into the hospital, emotionally distraught. Even Coffey, despite the strength of his own will and his own marriage, and the support of his wife and his family, had not been immune. He had gone to Europe that last time in November flushed with hope and expectations for the future. His wife was pregnant again. He had returned to discover that in his absence she had suffered a miscarriage and had kept the news from him, so as not to turn his mind from the work he had to do. He had returned, too, to discover that while he was gone there had been a fire in his house and that tragedy had been averted only by the quick reactions of his older son.
Had he been a different kind of man, the disillusionment and the personal ordeals might have been enough to send him walking away, not just from this case but from the police force and the wars that inner compulsion had for so long led him to fight. The system itself was designed to deflect and thwart those who reached for that goal and so he knew that the most he could ever hope for were small and temporary gains.
But the police force was Coffey’s life. Somebody who cared had to do that job despite all the frustrations and setbacks, somebody had to remain and carry on, hope that someday, somehow, things might change. Coffey knew that change would come only if those who cared remained. The job was too vital to be entrusted solely to the timeservers and the cynics and those who were in it to get only what they could out of it. If he and others like him turned away, who would stand for society against the barbarians at the gates and within the city?
So, he would stay and do what he had to do and try as best he could to put aside the bitter memory of the end of those years. Perhaps it was a good thing, though he did not think so at the time, that he was about to be leaving Hogan’s office, the scene of those struggles. In May, after seven years on the district attorney’s squad, a long-awaited promotion to sergeant finally came through, and under police department regulations, that meant the end of his tenure on Leonard Street. Promotion required a return to uniform for at least six months and a transfer to some other assignment. It mattered not at all that Hogan wanted to keep him and that he wanted to remain or that there were people like Vitrano and several others who argued to keep him. It was a rule and an unbreakable one.
Coffey looked at the packed boxes beside his empty desk, boxes full of the memorabilia of half-forgotten, more innocent days when he had been so sure of the rightness of his course and the dedication of those who traveled with him. Just before he left the office for the last time, Hogan summoned him. The door was closed and they were alone. There was a hug, some private words of gratitude for all that had been accomplished, expressions of regret for what could not be done and had to be left unfinished. The Vatican affair was passed over with only a shrug of resignation.
“Joe,” Hogan said, “the one thing I wish is that I could keep you here with me. But you know I can’t do that. I can’t go against that department rule.”
“I understand that, Mr. Hogan,” Coffey said.
“I won’t even be able to bring you back here at the end of the six months,” Hogan said. “The department only lets me have three sergeants and there aren’t going to be any openings.”
“I know that, too,” Coffey said.
“But I don’t want you to worry,” Hogan said. “I’m going to make sure you end up in the right place. As soon as your six months in uniform are up, you’re going to go to work for Mike Armstrong.”
Michael Armstrong had been special counsel to the Knapp Commission, which had conducted a searching inquiry into corruption in the New York City Police Department. He had just then been appointed by the governor as district attorney for Queens County, to replace Thomas Mackell, who had been indicted on charges of corruption. Armstrong had appealed to Hogan for help in setting up a solid, experienced and incorruptible staff. Hogan obliged. He sent one of his most trusted aides, John Keenan, to Queens to become Armstrong’s chief assistant. Now, he said, he was going to tell Armstrong and Keenan that the sergeant who could help them establish a crack investigative team was Joe Coffey, and they could have him the moment his six-month tour in uniform was over.
Coffey thought that the best going-away present Hogan could have given him. He put on the uniform with the sergeant’s stripes and went up to his assignment in the Twenty-fifth Precinct in East Harlem, sure that he would be there only until November, and then would be back in the detective division, back in the war against organized crime, this time as a sergeant and a boss in the office of the Queens district attorney.
He was in East Harlem only six weeks when he got a call from Vitrano. The grand juries had finally completed their work on the securities cases. A press conference had been called to announce the indictments. Since Coffey had done so much work, had been instrumental in breaking the cases, Vitrano wanted him to be on the platform when the announcements were made, along with Tamarro, Edward Shaw, head of the Strike Force, Aronwald, Goldstock and Alfred Scotti, Hogan’s chief assistant.
Coffey arrived about an hour before the press on that July morning in 1973. Aronwald was waiting for him and beckoned him into a private office. “There’s something very important I want to say to you before the press conference starts,” Aronwald began.
“Yeah?” Coffey said. If he had once had considerable respect for Aronwald, that feeling had died when he had read the reports of those sessions in the Vatican.
“Under no condition,” Aronwald ordered, “are you to talk to reporters, before, during or after the press conference. Do you get that? There is going to be no mention of any involvement by the Vatican. We do not want the Vatican brought into this in any way except the way we mention it. Do you understand that?”
Coffey made a sour face. “You’re not my boss,” he said tersely. “I’ll talk to anyone I want.” He turned and walked out.
Still, he made the decision that he would be discreet, would follow instructions and make no waves. But he had no intention of telling Aronwald that and giving the attorney any sense of pleasure and power. It was just that he thought it would do no good to rake through those ashes, would only make trouble that could not be resolved.
Through that press conference, he stood with Tamarro at the rear of the dais and listened. There was at least a little satisfaction in hearing that sixteen persons had been indicted for dealing in stolen and counterfeit securities, including nine Americans—Vincent Rizzo, Ricky Jacobs, Jerry Marc Jacobs, Evelyn Jacobs, William Benjamin, Patty Marino, Louis Gittleman, Peter Raia and Dominic Mantell—and seven Europeans—Tomasso Amato, Remigio Begni, Mario Foligni, Tony Grant, Leopold Ledl, Marina Neubert and Ernest Shinwell. Among the things they had done, Aronwald announced, were to cash stolen securities at various banks and brokerage houses in the United States and Europe, lend for a considerable price stolen securities to a co-conspirator in Germany named Alfred Barg, use stolen stocks as collateral in banks in Panama and try unsuccessfully to sell counterfeit bonds to the Vatican.
When the press conference was opened for questions from reporters, there were only a few regarding the Vatican, and they were passed over lightly and obliquely and nobody bothered to press very hard.
As Coffey was starting to leave, one of the detectives from Hogan’s office who had worked with him on the case approached. “Joe,” he said, “would you do me a favor? A guy I know from the Wall Street Journal is here and he wants to ask you a few questions. Would you mind if I brought him over?”
“Sure,” Coffey said. He would talk to the reporter, but if what he was after dealt with the Vatican, Coffey was determined to remain silent.
That, however, was not the reporter’s interest. “Are you the cop who went to Germany and tailed all those people over there and did all the wiretapping and bugging?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I have just one question. How the hell could you possibly keep those people under surveillance when you didn’t know the language or the geography?”
“It was simple,” Coffey said. “I didn’t do the visual surveillance. The Germans assigned sixteen of their own detectives to do that.”
“Thanks,” the reporter said and walked away.
The next morning, a story appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It quoted Coffey about the surveillance. But it also went on to say, “Mr. Aronwald emphasized at a press conference that the indictments did not say that a fence actually existed within the Vatican. But a source close to the investigation in Europe said a man of the cloth within the Vatican was suspected.” That source was not Joe Coffey.
Aronwald read the story. Coffey had hardly reached his desk in East Harlem before the attorney was on the phone to him. “I told you not to talk to reporters,” Aronwald shouted.
“You can tell me whatever you like,” Coffey answered. “But you don’t run my life and I don’t answer to you. The man asked me a legitimate question and I gave him an honest answer. Besides, what’s so bad about what I told him?”
“Do you have any idea what you’re going to cost me because of what you said?” Aronwald raged. “Now I’m going to have to subpoena all sixteen of those German detectives and bring them over here to testify at the trials.”
“Just a second, Mr. Aronwald,” Coffey said. “If you ever go to trial, you’re going to have to subpoena them anyway, because of the surveillance they did. But I seriously doubt whether you’ll go to trial, because I think that with the evidence we got for you, those guys are all going to take a fall. So, don’t bullshit me that because I talked to a reporter I made a lot of trouble for you.”
Aronwald had only one more thing to say that morning. “Let me assure you, Joe Coffey, that you will never get out of uniform again. That’s a promise. You’re going to stay right where you are for the rest of your time on the police force. I mean it. I can make sure of it. And I’m going to.”
Coffey was right. The German cops were not subpoenaed because there were no trials. A close look at the evidence convinced most of the American defendants and their attorneys that it would be useless to fight. Except for Patty Marino, who was on the run and had not been caught, and Evelyn Jacobs, whom the government decided not to prosecute, all pleaded guilty and stood silent while the judges handed down sentences.
Benjamin got a year, to run concurrently with a seven-and-a-half-year term he received after pleading guilty to narcotics charges. But Benjamin decided that the prospect of prison was not pleasing, especially for a man of his advanced years. In exchange for freedom and a new life as a protected witness, he turned informant.
Jerry Marc Jacobs was given three years’ probation, and his father, Ricky, had two more years tacked onto the terms he was then serving in California.
Louis Gittleman was put on probation for five years.
Dominic Mantell went to prison for three years.
Peter Raia went away for four years.
Vincent Rizzo had another five years marked against him, though those years would run concurrently with the sentences he had already received for the other crimes.
As for the Europeans:
Shinwell remained in prison in Luxembourg and, when released, returned to his home in England. Requests for his extradition were not pressed.
Tony Grant, when he finished talking, hurried to Kennedy Airport, boarded a plane for home and vanished somewhere in England.
Leopold Ledl finished his time in prison in Vienna and returned to his home in Maria Anzbach and picked up his trade. Because of his cooperation, no attempt was made to extradite him.
Requests to Italian authorities to pick up Amato, Neubert and Begni were ignored. Begni went on with his career as a stockbroker. Amato and Neubert faded from sight. A few years later, Coffey heard they were in South America, doing as they had done before.
No attempt was made to bring Mario Foligni to the United States to stand trial. He had, after all, cooperated with American authorities. And, in Italy, he continued to wield influence, to run his companies, to maintain friends in the best circles. And he got into politics, setting up the ultraconservative Catholic-oriented New People’s Party, becoming its spokesman under the banner “The man with clean hands.”
About the only one in Italy who paid any price was Monsignor Alberto Barbieri, unindicted in the United States because his identity was not known. The penalty he suffered, however, grew not from his part in the securities swindle but from the fact that the Vatican eventually tired of the many shady deals which had his imprint. He was fired from his job with Edizione Paoline and defrocked. “If something went wrong,” Barbieri, now a layman, later complained to a reporter for Stern magazine, “they always blamed me for it. But the storm will subside and then the church will take me back.”
Coffey’s prediction, then, was right. But that did not deter Aronwald from carrying out his threat. Aronwald was close friends with Michael Armstrong, and called to tell the new Queens district attorney that he would be making a big mistake if he took Joe Coffey because Coffey had a big mouth and liked to talk to the press.
So, Coffey was stuck in uniform in East Harlem’s Twenty-fifth Precinct. For the next two years, he wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake in staying a cop, wondered if there was any chance ever to get back into plain clothes so he could do the kind of work at which he had proven himself so expert. The road to Queens had been sealed off by Aronwald. (Later, however, he and Aronwald would patch up their differences and their disagreements would vanish, and he would become friends with Mike Armstrong, and John Keenan would tell him sadly whenever they met, “Joe, I owe you one because of what happened.”) For a time, he thought he might be summoned back to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Vitrano put in regular requests for his transfer back to the squad and so did others in the office. But at first there were no openings for a sergeant and then Hogan was dead and Vitrano retired and a new district attorney with new men was in charge, determined to build his own staff with loyalty to him. And then a new mayor was in office and a new team in command of the police force, a team that did not look kindly on the detective division and set up rigid rules governing who would get in. Coffey was on the outside and there were only two ways to get back in and regain his gold shield: to spend two years in narcotics, where corruption was almost endemic, or in internal affairs, where the main job was investigating fellow cops. Coffey wanted no part of either. So he resigned himself to a life as a uniformed sergeant, to doing what he could in that job and trying to bury the disappointments.
He had been in uniform for two years when the Puerto Rican terrorists blew up Fraunces Tavern, a historic landmark in Manhattan’s Wall Street area. Somebody in the police department remembered that Sergeant Joe Coffey had worked on terrorist cases in Hogan’s office, and that Coffey was something of an expert on terrorists and the way they worked. The summons went out and suddenly Coffey was back in the detective division, a supervising sergeant coordinating the investigations.
The years that followed were years of success, honors, promotions and a certain fame. He handled the Fraunces Tavern investigation and then the terrorist bombing at LaGuardia Airport, moved on to become night operations supervisor, a key man in the citywide hunt for the “Son of Sam” mass murderer, a job he performed with such facility that he was promoted to supervisor of detectives. By the spring of 1978, he had become commanding officer of the Organized Crime Homicide Task Force for the city, a special assistant to the chief of detectives. His fame and his reputation spread both within and without the department. More and more often, his name appeared in the newspapers as the cop behind the breaking of important cases, the cop who always gave straight answers to embarrassing questions. More and more, the television cameras sought him out when the views of an important cop were needed on a major issue. The reporters had come to know that from Coffey they would not get the official line, what the department wanted said; from him, they would get bluntness and honesty. When asked about the effectiveness of security for visiting dignitaries, for example, he said there was no way it was possible to completely protect anyone from an assassin who was determined to kill and was willing to sacrifice his own life in the process. It was not the answer that pleased his superiors, for they boasted constantly of the effective security measures they took for important visitors. But they had come to know that the only way to gag Joe Coffey was to order him not to speak, and if they did that, it might create more trouble than letting him talk.
Coffey, then, had reached a kind of pinnacle. He was where he wanted to be once more, where he could use all he knew and all he had learned to the best purpose. It was not even such a bad thing to have come to the realization that there would be no decisive victories, that all he could do was deal with matters as they came up, to try to anticipate, to man the walls and keep the invaders at bay.
But over all he did, there continued to hang the shadow of the Vatican affair. His mind kept returning to it; he never ceased wondering if somehow he might have done something that would have made it come out another way. Even had he wanted to forget it, though, it would have been impossible. Wherever he turned, there was something that brought it back.
For instance: Soon after he was assigned as a sergeant to the Twenty-fifth Precinct in East Harlem, reports of the investigation into the still-unsolved murder of Michael “The Animal” Affinito crossed his desk. Since it touched on the cases he had worked on in Hogan’s office, he was temporarily detached from East Harlem and sent to the Bronx on special assignment to look into it. He, after all, knew that Rizzo had ordered that murder; Tony Grant had told him that. But there was no corroboration. Then William Benjamin turned and the reports of Benjamin’s revelations were handed to Coffey by one of his friends in the FBI. Reading them, he came upon the corroboration he was seeking: Benjamin’s tale of how he had complained to Rizzo after his beating in Raia’s shoe store and Rizzo’s prompt ordering of Affinito’s murder. With Benjamin as a witness, Coffey could now go to a grand jury, seek Rizzo’s indictment for murder and so put the man in jeopardy of a twenty-five-year-to-life sentence that would not run concurrently with his other terms. Coffey went to his friends in the Strike Force and asked them to bring Benjamin in as that witness. But Benjamin had vanished into the protected witness program. The government refused to produce him. And so the indictment was never brought and Rizzo never went to trial for Affinito’s murder.
For instance: In December 1979, a case was dropped on Coffey’s desk in the Organized Crime Homicide Task Force. A man named Louis Milo had been found murdered in the trunk of his car. The name was not unfamiliar. Milo was the New York printer who had turned out the counterfeit bonds for the Vatican. For a day, Coffey looked in vain for a possible connection. But Milo had been murdered because of money he owed and because of his links to a pornography ring.
For instance: In 1978, an article appeared in Stern magazine that dealt with the Vatican affair and the stolen securities racket, and pointed to the involvement of Ense, Barg and Guschall. Questions were asked of German authorities as to why these men were still running around loose. The government responded to the pressure by indicting them. Coffey and Tamarro were subpoenaed as government witnesses. Both were outraged. The three Germans, after all, had been promised immunity in exchange for their help in the American investigation. Promises made in the United States, they were told, carried no weight in the Federal Republic. The three Germans had to be brought to justice. Coffey and Tamarro were ordered to make the trip to Germany and testify. Ense, Barg and Guschall were convicted and sentenced to short prison terms.
For instance: Just before Easter 1981, Coffey received a call from his friends at the Justice Department. They wanted his help. A banker in Milan had been receiving calls from America that were so threatening he had gone to authorities for help and had given them permission to tap his phone. The taps had picked up two calls made to the banker in Milan a few days before from a Holiday Inn in Rockville Center, New York, and the content seemed to point back to the old Operation Fraulein case. Coffey was asked to listen to the tapes, determine whether he could identify the voices of the callers or come up with any links.
There were no preliminary greetings in those telephone calls. When the banker picked up his phone, an American voice said, “Why don’t you do what I ask? You see what you’re causing me? You’re going to make me lose everything.”
“What can I do?” the banker asked.
“You should get ahold of these people and start working on these documents for me.”
“You never told me what you want from me,” the banker insisted.
“I want you to straighten out things with the banks over there,” the American said. “I tell you, you get in touch with who you have to get in touch with. You know who you have to get in touch with. And you ask what you can do. If I hurt you, don’t you want to hurt me?”
“I am not hurting you.”
“You are hurting me. Very bad. Indirectly, you know where my money is at.”
“I don’t know anything,” the banker said.
“The only way I can get my money,” the American said, “is if this man, and you know who I’m talking about—”
“I told you already,” the banker shouted into the phone, “I have nothing to do with Mr. Sindona. I never had anything to do with him. I don’t know anything about him.”
“I think you’re a nice man,” the American said. “I’m a nice man. But let me tell you something, if I get hurt—”
“I don’t know anything about that. If you gave money to Mr. Sindona and Mr. Sindona hasn’t given the money back to you, I don’t know what to do. Because you are a fool to lend him money.”
“Then I am a fool. Don’t you be a bigger fool. I’m desperate, and if I’m desperate and if I have to suffer, I’m going to make other people suffer, too.”
“Look here, please,” the banker pleaded, “I don’t know what to do.”
“All right,” the American said. “You take care. You have a nice Easter.”
Five minutes later, the banker’s phone rang again. This time, the voice from America was different. It said, “You got a call from a friend of mine today. Forget about the documents. You’re going to have to learn the hard way. Someone’s going to have to get hurt. Maybe even die. My friend, he says, forget about the documents. You’re going to have to learn the hard way. Remember your son and your daughter. Remember your family. They’re going to be hurt, because you’re hurting us.”
“Listen to me,” the banker begged. “Can’t you listen to reason? I don’t know anything about what you’re talking.”
“If you don’t know, don’t worry about it,” the second caller said mildly, with practically no emotion. “You’ll have to learn the hard way. That’s the way you want it, that’s the way it’s going to be. Have a nice Easter. Have a nice Easter.” And he hung up.
Perhaps the banker had a nice Easter. But a few days later, his house was burned down.
When he heard those tapes, Coffey could not be certain. But he had a hunch, and he trusted those hunches, that what they were about probably could be traced back a decade. It would, though, be up to the Justice Department and the Italian authorities to find out for sure.
For instance: When Pope Paul VI died, there were many Vatican watchers who predicted a quick end to the career of Bishop Paul Marcinkus. His position and power had grown from his intimate and abiding relationship with Pope Paul. A new pontiff would surely go through the records carefully and, if only because of the vast sums Marcinkus had lost the Vatican through his dealings with Michele Sindona, would strip the bishop of his major jobs and shuffle him off into some dead end where he could do no more harm. Pope John Paul I, of course, had no time to do anything. But, many Vatican experts agreed, it would not take long for Pope John Paul II to look over the records of the past and do what ought to be done. Nevertheless, time went by, and Marcinkus remained in charge of the Vatican Bank, and acted as the new Pope’s bodyguard as he had for Pope Paul.
In the late fall of 1979, Pope John Paul II arrived in New York on his jubilant and triumphal tour of the United States. Joe Coffey was assigned to be one of his bodyguards. At the airport, as the Pope descended from his plane, Police Commissioner Robert Maguire stepped toward him from among the waiting dignitaries, to make him welcome and to assure him that the New York police were at his command. A large, burly bishop moved quickly forward to block the approach, put a massive hand on Maguire’s chest and shoved him forcefully away. Maguire was enraged. He turned to Coffey, who was standing nearby. “Who is that man?” Maguire demanded. “I want to know his name.”
“Oh,” Coffey said, “I can tell you that. That’s Bishop Paul Marcinkus. Give me some time and I’ll tell you all about him.”
There was one more confrontation at the very end of the visit. As the Pope was leaving, he beckoned those who had been near him through his stay, to give them a personal blessing, to permit them to kneel and kiss his ring. As Coffey started toward the Pope, Marcinkus blocked his way. “No cops,” the bishop said.
It appeared that the Vatican watchers were wrong. If anything, Marcinkus’s power and influence seemed to be growing and he had successfully deflected all the charges and rumors that had swirled around him and his rule over Vatican finances. Constantly at the Pope’s side during the unceasing papal journeys around the world, Marcinkus was the man in charge of making all the arrangements. And in the fall of 1981, he moved up into an even more powerful position in the Vatican hierarchy. Pope John Paul II promoted him to archbishop and named him pro-president of the pontifical commission for the Vatican city-state. He had become the mayor of Vatican City, had total command of all its finances and general administration and was responsible for the Vatican’s buildings, museums, newspaper, radio station, bureaucracy and three thousand employees. He had become the third most powerful man in the Vatican, behind only the Pope and the cardinal secretary of state, and his elevation to cardinal and the donning of the red hat seemed imminent.
But, early in the summer of 1982, the Vatican was suddenly awash with a new scandal and at last Marcinkus’s role could no longer be ignored; his position was becoming untenable. The scandal, with echoes of the Sindona affair, surrounded Milan’s Banco Ambrosiano, the country’s largest private bank. As the result of more than $1.25 billion in unsecured loans to Latin American subsidiaries, the bank was on the verge of collapse. The bank’s president, Roberto Calvi, suddenly disappeared from Milan, turned up in Vienna and then in London, where he was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge, his pockets stuffed with bricks and a ticket for a flight to Rio de Janeiro.
Investigators from the Bank of Italy moved in, and were soon using the words “swindle” and “fraud” to describe what had been going on. And they began to unearth some strange connections. Control of Banco Ambrosiano had only recently been acquired by four unidentified Panamanian companies through Ambrosiano’s Bahamian subsidiary, the Cisalpine Overseas Bank of Nassau. On the board of Cisalpine sat Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. And his Vatican Bank not only had been a shareholder in Banco Ambrosiano and engaged in several joint ventures with it, but had guaranteed those dubious Latin American loans through a letter of patronage. But once the Italian investigators arrived at Vatican City, Marcinkus was unavailable. He “preferred,” said one Italian report, “to remain in hiding,” issuing only his opinion that “these are things that happen only in Italy.” His aides at the bank agreed to be interviewed, and then flashed a letter from Calvi—though they would not hand it over—that relieved the Vatican Bank of its pledge to guarantee those $1.25 billion in loans.
In the Vatican, there were reliable reports that the Pope’s confidence in Marcinkus had been badly shaken as a result of the revelations about this affair—so shaken that he was planning a drastic revision in the structure of the Vatican Bank’s administration, with control removed from Marcinkus and put in the hands of the secretary of state, and that he was considering ordering that the bank honor at least part of its commitment to Banco Ambrosiano.
As for Marcinkus himself, his reign appeared at an end. “It is becoming more and more likely,” Vatican sources said at the end of the first week in July, “that the Holy Father will dispose of the good bishop,” the disposition possibly taking the form of a promotion to some higher, if less responsible, position far removed from the Holy See.
It had, then, taken nearly a decade before anyone in authority in the church took credence in the stories and the mounting evidence about Marcinkus. But the day had come at last. And in New York, Joe Coffey finally smiled just a little.
For instance: One day in the late spring of 1981, a friend from the FBI called Coffey. “I thought I ought to tell you,” he said, “Rizzo’s out. He was just paroled. He’s back in New York.” No one convicted in the tangled affair that had begun on a cold rainy night so long before remained in prison now.
“Should I be worried?” Coffey asked.
“I don’t know,” his friend said. “If I were you, I might be.”