Connor O’Brien looked across the candlelit table at an absolutely stunning Laura Russo, who was smiling demurely at him. It was as perfect an evening as he could imagine. Diamonds of light sparkled in the wine goblets set in front of them. Around them handsomely dressed diners spoke only in hushed tones, to a background of soft classical music, punctuated on occasion by the distant clatter of silverware. He found it almost impossible to take his eyes off her. Jim Slattery, dressed formally, a white towel draped over his arm, poured champagne for each of them. Connor lifted his glass and said softly to her . . .
“I mean, you wouldn’t have believed that fat slob. You should have seen him. Little Eddie was so hopped-up it was like he was shooting caffeine.”
The deep gravelly voice punctured O’Brien’s daydream and brought him back to reality. He and Russo—who was actually wearing a white turtleneck sweater—were sitting at a table in the back at ManPower, a gay bar in the West Village, with Jim Slattery and Special Agent Victor Valone. Valone was one of the bureau’s most promising young undercovers, having successfully infiltrated Henry “the Hammer” Franzone’s Freemont Avenue crew, where he was known as Vito Valentine or Vito V. To maintain operational security, his true identity was known to very few people other than Slattery, his supervisor, but he had agreed to a sit-down with O’Brien and Russo to help them close their case. Holding this meeting in the back of a Greenwich Village gay bar substantially diminished chances that they would be spotted.
Valone was describing the scene inside the social club the afternoon following the killings at the gas station. The agents had seen the official transcripts, but Valone put flesh on the bones. “The guy was so happy to still be breathing that he couldn’t stop telling the story. I mean, he even acted it out in like charades for the Duke. I swear to God, he lay down on the floor and made these like real ugly faces. And all of those guys around, they were making up jokes. Like Georgia One-Time goes, ‘Hey, hey, I guess the Russian was pressed for time,’ and then somebody else goes, I think it was Lenny, ‘The Russian can’t come, Tony, he’s got a pressing engagement,’ or ‘You gotta say this about that guy, he definitely has a one-track mind.’”
Slattery laughed happily in all the proper places. Watching him, O’Brien decided that his laughter was as much real as it was supportive. There was no question about it, Valone’s imitation of the Freemont Avenue crew really was funny, but Slattery was the kind of supervisor who would laugh at Little Lulu if he thought that’s what his agents needed to hear. One thing Connor O’Brien knew for sure: After what Slattery had done, he was entitled to laugh long and hard. The man had put his career on the line in the most courageous way: He had nothing to gain personally and his reputation and career to lose. If everyone worked out perfectly, no one would ever see his fingerprints. Only if the whole operation went to shit would his involvement become known. Nobody at headquarters was going to risk their own career to defend him. If this plan had failed, he would have paid for it big-time. And if the whole story ever became public, he would still be as vulnerable as a turkey the day before Thanksgiving.
After O’Brien and Russo had set the showdown in motion by meeting with San Filippo, Slattery had picked up the telephone and pulled the twenty-four-hour surveillance off the gas station. He’d made up some bullshit excuse to get the agents away from there and didn’t assign replacements. And with that action he had cleared the path for the bloodbath. It was an incredibly gutsy thing to do but absolutely necessary. For the plan to work, the agents working the stakeout had to be removed. If they had been there when the shooting started, they would have been forced to respond. It was a bizarre situation: FBI agents could have screwed up a deadly operation simply by doing their job, by trying to save lives. The setup was the gunfight at the Not So O.K. Corral.
If the media ever found out that Slattery had handed the Russians to the Mafia, that he had made murder possible, both he and the bureau would have been sliced, diced, and tattoed. Calling it a scandal would be like calling Vietnam a skirmish. And Special Agents O’Brien and Russo would have fallen into that infamous category best known as “What ever happened to?” If the real story was discovered, both of them had a real good shot at a secure job stamping license plates under federal supervision.
The only thing that could have saved Slattery was the growing suspicion in the bureau’s personnel division that he never actually existed, as all traces of his paperwork had disappeared. It would have been extremely difficult for the bureau to fire someone who wasn’t anywhere.
O’Brien and Russo had spent the night waiting anxiously with Slattery in his office, listening to reports on an NYPD radio. The best news they could hear was none; if the cops got a “shots fired” call, Slattery could start packing. Fearing it was going to be a long evening, O’Brien had brought in a couple of six-packs of Coke and big bags of potato chips and pretzels. The early part of the evening was quiet. In addition to the usual domestic disputes, missing children, car accidents, animal attacks, heart attacks, muggings, and excessive noise disturbances, a naked man in Brooklyn was seen walking down Kings Highway carrying a machete, an unidentified man in the Bronx was spotted going up to a rooftop with either “a small woman or a large child who was crying,” two women in Queens were brawling surrounded by a group of men who apparently were betting on the outcome, and in Manhattan residents of a brownstone on East 77th Street were terrified because a resident’s exotic snake had escaped its cage and crawled into the ventilation system.
O’Brien remained hopeful that they would sit there all night without knowing what happened at the gas station. If Vaseline was left standing, there was little chance he’d report the attack. There was no way the Russians wanted the cops anywhere near the gas station. Bobby Blue Eyes would just disappear: buried, burned, chopped, or dropped. He’d be given “the Hoffa.” But if it was Bobby who survived, he’d have a much tougher time getting rid of the body or bodies and would probably be forced to leave them there. So unless the Russians provided special janitorial services, somebody would discover the carnage and make the call.
Three bites into a half-pepperoni with extra-cheese pizza O’Brien asked Slattery, “You got a horse in this race?”
Slattery shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
“Gees, you’re tough,” Russo responded with a touch of disbelief. “How about rooting for the old home team, you know?”
O’Brien frowned at that thought. “You mean like be true to your wiseguy?” He turned to Slattery and said in a slightly condescending tone, “She’s just a sentimental fool. Besides, she thinks he’s sort of cute.”
“Fuck you, O’Brien,” she said, and at that moment she meant it. Then she pleaded her case to Slattery. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” She looked at O’Brien and added, “Least it is to most people.” Then, back to Slattery, passionately, “Just look at the facts, Jim. We got this guy by the balls. And whenever we need to, all we’ve got to do is squeeze.” O’Brien winced and she ignored him. “He knows damn well that we can put him in a hole for thirty years to life. He’ll have to talk to us. The Russian doesn’t owe us a thing.”
Jim? She called him Jim? Now, let’s just hold it a second here, O’Brien thought. She’s feeling pretty confident this evening, isn’t she? And in fact, he knew, she was probably right. Ole Bobby boy could certainly help them out from time to time. But he also knew that it didn’t matter to Slattery. As always, Slattery had his eyes fixed squarely on the bull’s-eye. So long as somebody got killed in the gas station, and naturally the more bodies the better, it’d be a long time before the Italians and the Russians trusted each other again. If ever. Cosentino’s dreams of an alliance controlling the billion-dollar bootleg oil business would be finished. This had all the makings of a beautiful feud. And that result was all Slattery cared about.
Admittedly O’Brien did hope it was Bobby who walked out of the gas station, and while Slattery would never admit it, Connor suspected he felt the same way. It wasn’t simply the devil-you-know kind of thing, it was also the devil who knows all his fellow devils and speaks your language.
O’Brien was finishing his second slice when the police radio crackled with a report that an intruder with a knife was trapped in the vestibule of a brownstone on West 19th Street. Now, there’s an easy one, he thought, no moral ambiguity there. Bad guy holding a weapon, caught in the act. Beautiful.
Every man and woman working in law enforcement loves that kind of case. It doesn’t require any soul-searching. There’s a bad guy waving a knife? You do whatever’s necessary to bring him down. You become the bad medicine. Every cop knows the first order of business: Do harm to the bad guys before they do it to you. No shades of gray. It’s those other types of cases that cause you to lie awake at night. This one, for example. This case had started so simply, a missing person case. Find the professor? That part was easy; everything that came with it was hard. It had taken more twists than a Philadelphia pretzel to get them from the Country Club to the meeting with San Filippo.
Maybe what was bothering O’Brien the most was that he had so willingly gone along with Slattery’s plan. No questions, no reservations. In fact, he didn’t just acquiesce, he had enthusiastically participated in it. Worse, he hadn’t felt a pinprick of conscience. O’Brien adhered to a strict rule where pizza was concerned: two slices and done. And rarely more than once a week. Not this night, though. He finished his second slice and without any hesitation went for a third. Well, he decided, after you’ve broken every rule in the book—in all the books—by setting up a guy to kill or be killed, it’s easier to have that third slice without feeling guilty.
He’d relived that walk and talk with San Filippo in his mind maybe a hundred times. Had they been straight with him? The honest answer to that, he had decided, was absolutely yes and no. Yes to the girl, no to Skinny Al. What’d they have on Skinny Al’s murder really? A bullshit remark made in anger and repeated by Gradinsky. That was it. More than enough to make a DA laugh if you tried to make a case out of it. But that wasn’t the way they’d presented it to Bobby Blue Eyes. For him it was the whole ball game, the whole shebang, a fait accompli. One commie killer delivered on a silver platter, s’il vous plaît. Oh, and by the way, here’s where you find him. O’Brien wanted to believe that San Filippo was so determined to avenge the murder of the girlfriend that he would have gone ahead with or without the skinny on Skinny Al. But Skinny Al’s murder gave him cover within the family. His killing was, literally, a lifesaver. San Filippo was a bright guy; he must’ve figured that out right away. What he didn’t know was that the evidence proving that the Russian did it was as strong as air.
O’Brien wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of questions about that meeting in a courtroom. Um, tell me, Agent O’Brien, does the phrase “aiding and abetting” mean anything to you? He was pretty certain that the right answers were the wrong ones.
Sometimes he could just kill for a good old-fashioned perp with a knife.
The first call came over the radio long after the pizza crust was stone-cold. “Unusual activity reported at a gas station on Brighton Beach Boulevard.” Two squad cars took the call. It was the address that caught Russo’s attention. But there wasn’t anything they could do about it, except wait. FBI agents couldn’t respond to a seemingly ordinary NYPD radio call without attracting a lot of unnecessary attention.
It took almost forty minutes for the first patrol car to get to the scene. There was no sense that this was any kind of priority call—except to the three people sitting in Slattery’s office. But within a few minutes the cops were moving at hyperspeed. “We got four men down,” one of the cops reported in a nervously high-pitched voice. “Send the meat wagon. Shit, send everybody!” And then, just barely on the professional side of hysteria, he added, “You better get some gold badges down here right away. I never seen anything like this.”
These police officers had absolutely no idea what they had stumbled into. To them it probably looked very much like a robbery gone real bad. The existence of a lavish conference room hidden in the rear would certainly raise their curiosity—it was pretty obvious this wasn’t any ordinary gas station—but their initial assumption would most likely be that the Russians were running a gambling or drug operation. And that assumption would serve to support the robbery theory.
It was that last line, “I never seen anything like this,” that sent cops scurrying to the scene. On the job cops see just about everything imaginable. It’s the stuff they talk about quietly in the locker room and the bars. They see so much of it that eventually they become inured to human depravity. So when one of their own makes a claim like that, they respond. They all want to see something they’ve never seen before.
The remnants of Slattery’s sense of self-preservation still proved stronger than his curiosity. An FBI supervisor showing up uninvited at an NYPD crime scene would certainly be noticed, so O’Brien and Russo went by themselves. By the time they got there, the gas station had been transformed into a crime scene. In addition to about two dozen officers and detectives, at least six different NYPD units were on the scene. Still, a steady stream of police cruisers and ambulances continued to arrive, some of them with their sirens wailing as if getting there quickly would make a difference. Spotlights had been set up on tripods, giving the gas station an otherworldly look of artificial light and elongated shadows. Yellow crime scene tape had been stretched between poles and trees to create a security perimeter, keeping the curious onlookers and the rapidly gathering—and loudly complaining—media storm at a distance.
The place was an organized mess. Radio reporters screamed questions at anybody looking even mildly official who passed within shout-shot of their microphones. The bodies had not yet been removed, and chalk outlines were being drawn around them. It would still be several hours before they were transported to the morgue. Forensic teams had been assigned to each body, officers were conducting an inch-by-inch search both inside and outside to collect all possible evidence, all types of measurements were being taken, photographers were recording the crime scene for potential use in a courtroom, in a corner of the garage an officer from media relations was helping a lieutenant prepare a statement, a department chaplain was wandering around to provide counseling for any officers disturbed by the brutality, and out on Brighton Beach Boulevard officers were trying to keep traffic moving past the scene.
In the hubbob O’Brien and Russo faded easily into the scene. Having worked in New York for several years, O’Brien knew a few of the cops, and they accepted his presence as normal procedure. Russo, however, was a new and pretty face, and several detectives made a point of introducing themselves. When either agent was asked what they knew about the Russians, they responded simply, “You know, they were around some people.” Inevitably the cops nodded. Even if they didn’t know, they knew.
O’Brien and Russo went around back first. They still didn’t know the identity of the victims. The small men’s room was lit up brighter than a movie set. The first victim was wedged between the toilet bowl and the wall. He’d been shot once, the bullet going right through his mouth, exiting the back of his head. That shot had obviously been fired at close range—there wasn’t room for any other possibility. His mouth was open, a line of caked blood running from his mouth onto his lap, and a splash of dried blood was on the wall behind him. A small piece of gold, apparently the remnants of a gold tooth, rested on a crease in his shirt. An automatic weapon lay at his feet. O’Brien recognized the victim as the attendant who’d flirted with Laura. That he had obviously been sitting on the toilet with his gun on the floor made it clear to O’Brien that he had been totally surprised.
Normally, several hours after a killing the odor of death would already be permeating the air, but in this case the stench of urine was so strong it overwhelmed everything else.
O’Brien recognized the smell of the restroom from his previous visit. In his notebook he’d described it as “Eau de Yankee Stadium.” “The guy must’ve had a wooden nose,” he whispered in Russo’s ear. “You see who it is?”
She grimaced. “Yeah.” She had not seen enough dead bodies to have become comfortable with the sight.
O’Brien said judgmentally, “You ask me, he looked a lot better with the gold teeth.” He took her arm and urged her forward, into the conference room. “C’mon.” He was eager to see the hidden room. Big picture, little picture, he had been fooled completely, never suspecting there was a larger room hidden behind the bathroom. How the hell do you miss seeing a door? he asked himself. But he had no answer. Apparently they’d intentionally made the bathroom as disgusting as possible to discourage people from spending a second more than necessary there.
Both agents were stunned at the opulence of the hidden conference room. It was like walking through a bodega into Versailles. The large conference table as well as the paneling on the walls was a rich mahogany. Several avant-garde sconces affixed to the walls provided warm recessed lighting. There were two rows of chairs; eight tall leather chairs were around the table while a second row of smaller leather chairs—obviously seating for the assistants—was about four feet farther back. The room was crowded with the law. Several people were busy collecting evidence, while gawkers were hanging around to get a better look at the bodies.
The room had been shot up. O’Brien counted a line of seven bullet holes running right through the center of the table and several more holes going up the far wall. There were at least as many holes in the wall behind him and the ceiling, apparently made by the Russians returning fire. Most of the holes had already been circled and numbered in black marker for investigative purposes.
At first O’Brien saw only the body seated in the leather chair. The victim was partially visible, turned at an angle away from the door, his chin slumped onto his chest. Seen from this angle, he could have just as easily been sleeping as dead. He asked Russo, “Recognize him?”
She shrugged, then shook her head.
The plush carpeting on the floor absorbed much of the normal conversation, so even with more than a dozen cops working there the room was funereally quiet. “’Scuse me,” a detective said to O’Brien as he walked out carrying a clear plastic bag presumably filled with evidence. O’Brien politely stepped to the side to let the officer pass—and that’s when he saw the second body sprawled beneath the table. He moved a couple of steps closer. The carpet around the body was saturated with blood. The victim was lying on his stomach, his face practically buried in a pool of his own blood, making it impossible to identify him from across the room. It didn’t look like San Filippo, but O’Brien took a couple of steps closer to be certain. Russo was a step behind him.
Much of the torso was hidden by the tabletop, but the back of his head and his shoulders were visible. “It’s not him,” O’Brien said, with more relief in his voice than he intended.
Russo grabbed hold of his forearm. Her eyes were riveted on the body. “It’s him,” she said.
O’Brien was surprised at the intensity of her reaction. “No, it’s not,” he insisted. “It doesn’t look anything like him.”
She dug her nails into his arm. In her mind she was considering her fate. “No, no, not San Filippo.” She closed her eyes and took a controlled breath. “Connor, that’s the guy who tried to break into my apartment.”
“Oh gees,” he said involuntarily. “Are you sure? I mean, how can you . . . It can’t be.” She had never seen him so clearly flummoxed. “How . . . I mean, are you really sure about that?” His mind was racing, trying to find a rationale that made sense. What the hell was a Russian gangster doing trying to break into an FBI agent’s apartment? That was supposed to be the Mafia’s job. It made no sense at all.
“I’m positive. It’s him.” There was no doubt in her voice. “I saw the back of his head when he went down the stairs. Believe me, that’s him.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the body, and deep in her mind all she could hear was a woman’s long, awful scream.
A burly detective whom O’Brien had met at the beginning of his career during a bank robbery hostage situation squeezed between the two agents and the table. “How are you doing?” O’Brien said as the guy pushed by, identifying himself.
“Yeah,” the officer said, “I remember. The Chase chase. How’s it going?”
Good, O’Brien told him, then asked, indicating the body on the floor, “You ID that guy yet?”
The detective glanced at the corpse. “He’s some Russian guy.” He flipped open a spiral notbook. “Cher-nan-ko. Alexander Ivan Chernanko. He’s got a hack license in his wallet but . . .” He shook his head. “He sure isn’t dressed like a cabbie, is he?”
Laura finally looked away. “Any idea what happened here?”
The detective frowned. “Who the hell knows? These guys, they’re into anything where they can make some money.” He waved his hands to indicate the shot-up room. “I mean, c’mon, look at this. Looks like they really pissed somebody off.”
O’Brien chuckled. “They sure did a job on them, didn’t they?”
The detective raised his eyebrows. “On these guys? You kidding me? This is nothing, this is just the appetizer. You didn’t see what they did to the other guy yet, right?” As he said that, he pointed toward the garage.
O’Brien and Russo shook their heads in unison, like the Captain and Tennille.
The detective let out a long, respectful breath. “Man, go get yourself a ticket. I promise you, this is one you ain’t ever gonna forget.”
While they had been in the back room, the police had used sawhorses to create a corral for the media. “Multiple homicides” is a magic phrase for reporters, always drawing a big crowd. As O’Brien and Russo walked around to the front, reporters shouted the headline questions at them—who, how, and how many—as they did to every cop who passed. The two agents ignored them, unobtrusively keeping their heads down.
Some smart cop had taped sheets of newspaper over the office windows to prevent photographers from using a telephoto lens to shoot inside, but it made the office feel even smaller and more confined. So many police officers were standing around it looked like a cop convention. A thin trail of blood led from the office into the garage, and a cop standing in the office repeatedly warned people about stepping in it. O’Brien and Russo carefully avoided it as they walked into the garage.
The first thing they saw once inside the garage was a late-model luxury car sitting on the ramps of the hydraulic lift, raised about three feet off the ground. They walked around to the rear of the car. O’Brien saw the body first. “Oh man,” he said, sucking in a mouthful of air, “oh Christ.”
“What?” Russo started to ask, then saw it. She covered her mouth with her fist.
The nearest ramp of the lift had been lowered onto the top half of the victim’s skull, crushing it into pulp from slightly above the bridge of his nose. The victim’s mouth was open, and a light blue rag was still stuffed into it, the color quite familiar. His facial skin was pulled way back, exposing his teeth and gums. He looked like a skeletal figure drawn by Hieronymus Bosch, the man of eternal agony. It was impossible to identify the victim facially—hopefully some dentist would have his chart—but looking at his body, O’Brien was certain he was taller and thinner than San Filippo.
Several cops were standing around the body, looking down at it like curious visitors to an art museum. One of them was laughing nervously. Somebody forced a joke about having stew for dinner. Russo just couldn’t take her eyes off the crushed skull, her fascination easily overcoming her horror. There had been absolutely nothing in her life to which this might be compared. It was more violent or more disgusting than anything she had ever seen. It was unquestionably unique.
Blood and pulp had flowed out of the crushed head into a murky public, which was outlined by an irregular pattern of white tape affixed to the floor. Several other objects on the floor were also boxed by the white tape, primarily to ensure that no one touched them or stepped on them. One of them, Russo noticed, was the ripped and blackened remnant of a Cabbage Patch Kid. Nudging O’Brien, she pointed to the doll and asked, “What do you think that’s all about?”
At just about any other moment of his life, that might have been a great straight line. He could have reached into his grab bag of snappy comebacks and pulled out the quasi-perfect quip. Not this time, though, not this time. His heart just wasn’t in it. “I don’t know. Nothing probably. Maybe it belonged to one of the mechanic’s kids or something.”
She rolled it over with a steel pencil. “It’s what’s left of one of those Cabbage Patch dolls. The ones they give the name to.”
He got it immediately. “Well, well, well,” he said, looking at it knowingly. “Didn’t we hear something about some guy trying to unload a truckload of those things?”
She looked around at the garageful of detectives poking and prodding and measuring and photographing, searching for that one elusive clue that would put them on the trail of the killer. “Not that I remember,” she replied.
He chuckled, and this time he couldn’t resist. “Right, I don’t remember too.”
The garage continued to fill with cops. Most of them would take a good long look at the corpse, shake their head, then go back to work. A couple of them had to race outside before they lost their cookies. This was rapidly turning into a major crime event. By now the media had learned that these killings had the required gruesome quotient to qualify for the front page, although they didn’t yet have the details. There is nothing like a good old-fashioned gang war to sell newspapers! They were still merchandizing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and that had taken place more than half a century earlier. O’Brien knew the facts of life: Death is a marketable commodity. The more horrid the death, the more valuable it might be. The right quote or photograph or film clip could make a career. So the reporters stuck behind the barriers were desperately trying to make side deals for even a few seconds of access or, failing that, for detailed information. The early bidding was centered around Yankees and Knicks tickets and dinners at trendy restaurants, items that cost the newspapers and broadcast stations exactly nothing. When the reporters got a whiff of what was inside, the bidding would go a lot higher.
As always, O’Brien tried to take in the whole picture, details at six. It was a lot tougher than usual—ignoring a body with a crushed head was about as easy as ignoring the ball at a basketball game. But as he looked around the garage, nothing else of consequence stood out. It was a garage, dirty and drab. As in any repair shop there were quite a few grease-covered tools and rags scattered about. The blue rag again caught his attention. He recognized the color, the Pan Am blue, and figured it was from one of those in-flight blankets that are always a few inches too small, no matter how short you are. There was no obvious reason it would be in the garage, but it made sense: Pan Am flew to Russia from New York.
Among the tools in plain sight were a mallet, several pairs of pliers, a set of screwdrivers, a power drill and a selection of bits, a file, a hacksaw, and a jigsaw. O’Brien clasped his hands behind his back, an old crime scene habit that prevented him from distractedly touching a piece of evidence, leaned over, and examined the working end of each tool. This was one time that he really was apprehensive that he might find what he was looking for.
“Anything?” Russo asked.
“I don’t think so.” He stood up, and with a sweep of his hand asked, “So what do you think of your boyfriend now? He’s got some temper, huh?”
She forced a feeble smile and said sadly, “Men.” She sighed deeply. “Just when you begin to think you understand them, they drop a car on your head.” She swept back her hair with the palm of her left hand. “Seen enough?”
“I guess,” he said. That one little involuntary gesture, that little feminine thing she did, the way she brushed back her hair and then shook it free, that unexpectedly got to Connor O’Brien. It awakened his protective instincts—the whole caveman thing—and made him acutely aware of how close the Russians had come to grabbing her. The questions that followed in his mind were pretty obvious: How close had she come to ending up on that cement floor? How did they identify her? What were they looking for? Did they think she knew where Gradinsky was hiding? And at the end of every unanswered question was the one that mattered: What would they have done to her? He shuddered, literally. It was his job to protect his partner and he had failed. Maybe she would have protected herself. Maybe. “Sure, let’s get out of here.”
He put his hand lightly on her back and gently guided her toward the door in a most gentlemanly way, being very careful to make sure neither of them stepped in the drying blood.
Only on television and in the movies are all the loose ends tied up at the end of a case. In reality, even after the best possible outcome there are always questions that will never be answered. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, although it can lead to some uneasy moments during a trial. What makes it difficult is the fact that criminal behavior isn’t predictable. Criminals follow no discernible patterns. Motives tend to be more ragged than smooth; they have a lot of sharp edges in unexpected places and very often don’t seem to make sense. Sometimes even criminals are perplexed by their own actions. So chances were pretty strong that Connor O’Brien and Laura Russo would never know why the Russians had attempted to break into her apartment.
As they strolled in thoughtful silence toward their car, the herd of reporters shouted questions at them: What’s going on in there? How many bodies? Is it true you found a bucket of severed hands? One reporter for a local TV station seemed especially furious, screaming at them in a vaguely threatening tone that his viewers had “a constitutional right” to see film of the dead bodies.
O’Brien fell asleep easily that night, although as he later admitted to Russo, “I dreamt about dragons all night.” Russo decided to sleep on her living room couch for reasons she could easily explain. But she was awakened several times by clanking sounds coming from the aged heating pipes and noises either real or imagined from the hallway.
The next few days raced by in a bureaucratic blur. O’Brien and Russo spent long hours in the office preparing voluminous reports in which they told the story of the operation in complete detail. They attended numerous meetings with FBI and NYPD officials alarmed by the possibility of an Italian-Russian criminal alliance, as well as Federal Department of Transportation executives investigating the billion-dollar bootleg fuel oil business. But in all the reports they filed, and during all the meetings they attended, they never mentioned having met with Bobby Blue Eyes San Filippo.
The “Brighton Beach Massacre” did make a front-page splash. The New York newspapers and local news stations reported that the killings were the result of “a turf war threatening the increasingly homogenous community” (New York Times) between Russian gangsters, “many of whom spent years being tortured in Russia’s infamous gulags” (New York Daily News), for control of “the lucrative drug business” (New York Post) in the “ethnically isolated Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn” (Village Voice). They got most of the gory details of the killings right but failed to get any photographs inside the garage. An NYPD spokesman announced that detectives had developed “significant leads” and had “several suspects under surveillance.” They anticipated making arrests within the next few weeks. But he added that Brighton Beach remained “a safe neighborhood in which local residents play an active role in protecting people and property.”
Slattery guided them through the bureaucratic maze. Having traveled this road before, he knew all the dangerous curves. A task force consisting of FBI, NYPD, and DOT investigators, in addition to federal prosecutors, had been set up to squeeze every last bit of juice out of this case. Slattery had somehow managed to mollify a score or more of ambitious FBI officials anxious to get their names associated with this investigation; he set up those meetings that couldn’t be avoided and made sure O’Brien and Russo got all the support they needed to ensure that their reports were as complete and accurate as possible. But as he knew, “possible” covered a lot of territory.
He also made certain that his agents remained in the center ring as the investigation got rolled up. At lunch on the third day, for example, he brought them up-to-date on the complicated life of Professor Peter Gradinsky. The professor had taken a few days to settle into his new life. It appeared that he was considerably more frightened of his wife than of the entire Mafia. He asked the bureau to arrange his first meeting with Grace in prison so there might be a thick piece of Plexiglas between them when he told her about Natalie’s pregnancy. When he was informed that prison was much too dangerous for him, he reluctantly agreed to meet her at the safe house—on the condition that an armed agent remain with them.
As it turned out, the professor had little to fear from his wife. Having experienced what life would be like without her husband, Grace Gradinsky was in a deeply forgiving mood. With the agent sitting between them trying hard not to be noticed, Peter Gradinsky told his story as he wanted it to be. “Remember all those papers I was bringing home? The ones marked Top Secret?” he said as honestly as he could lie. “I’ve been working undercover for the FBI for the last fourteen months. I infiltrated the Mafia and the Russian gangs.” As the clincher he added, “I love you very much. Really I do.”
It wasn’t clear that she believed him, but she did accept his story without asking a single question. “I really missed you,” was what she told him.
He explained to her that he was in what was called protective custody, which he described as a sort of friendly arrest. The bureau was going to move him from New York to San Diego, where he would spend at least the next few months being debriefed by the FBI, giving them all the details of his undercover work. While he was in protective custody, he wouldn’t have to go to work and the government would pay all his expenses. Basically he was going to lie in the sun by the pool and answer some questions. He’d emphasized that he had specifically asked for a place with a pool. And then the professor looked at her lovingly, took her hand—the agent sitting between them figured he was about to tell her about his affair with Speakman—and asked Grace to come with him. “I want us to start a whole new life together,” he said, adding romantically, “in the sun.”
And as the agent explained later, he never saw the rest of the story coming. The professor continued, “I want us to be a real family. You know what? I’ve got this crazy idea.” He paused, as if this thought had just popped into his head. “It’ll be absolutely perfect. Perfect.”
She was enthralled. “What? Tell me.”
With all the enthusiasm he could muster he blurted out, “Let’s adopt a baby!”
The agent didn’t know who was more surprised, Grace or her. At first Grace was flustered, telling him that she was too old to raise a child, but by the time their meeting ended and she’d gone home to pack, she was convinced this was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Finally she was going to be a mother. She did wonder if they would be eligible to adopt a baby. “Let’s be honest,” she said. “I’m already in my . . . my early forties.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he reassured her. “You know, with all the work I’ve done for the government, I think they owe me a pretty big favor.”
Professor Gradinsky remained in custody at an undisclosed location, pending his relocation. Russo was duly impressed by the man. “I can’t believe he’s actually going to pull this off.”
O’Brien said he was betting against him. “You don’t really think Natalie’s just going to hand over her baby, do you?”
As impossible as that seemed, Laura Russo believed that where the professor was involved, pretty much anything was possible.
In fact, the professor’s situation was probably not as dire as it had originally appeared. After a few days it became apparent that he probably wouldn’t have to testify against the Mafia. Few—if any—prosecutions would result from this operation. The Russians’ bootleg fuel operation was as dead as they were, so none of them would go on trial.
Several charges could be brought against Tony Cosentino, but the only one that really had a chance to stick was conspiracy to defraud the government. And that would be tough to prove—it’s almost impossible to prosecute someone for what they might do in the future. The most Gradinsky could do was put Cosentino at meetings in which criminal activity was discussed, but thus far there was no corroborating evidence. It was kind of a murky area and it looked like Cosentino was going to skate.
The professor also had nothing to fear from the Russians, obviously, and not a whole lot more from the mob. The Freemont Avenue crew had no interest in him, and Cosentino couldn’t afford to make a move until he got a good look at the hand he was playing. And when he realized it was good enough to keep him in the game, it was pretty doubtful he’d risk drawing the joker.
In Washington there was considerable debate about just how much information to provide to the NYPD and the Brooklyn DA’s office. It was apparent that a pretty solid murder case could be made against Bobby Blue Eyes San Filippo, but any investigation and trial would inevitably involve the conduct of James Slattery, as well as Special Agents Connor O’Brien and Laura Russo. There were rumors bouncing around headquarters that Slattery had provided confidential intelligence to Mafia soldiers. If that was true, Slattery would be indicted. If convicted, he might end up serving more time than any member of the family. And while there was a reasonable chance that San Filippo would be convicted, there was little doubt that the bureau’s already fragile reputation would be devastated. This was a story the media would love: the FBI feeding information to a known killer, resulting in three deaths. That would sell newspapers for months.
The trade-off, destroying a respected supervisor’s reputation and perhaps resulting in a criminal prosecution, as well as greatly damaging the bureau’s reputation, in return for putting a wiseguy in jail for killing three gangsters, didn’t seem to balance out. While the final decision about just how much cooperation the bureau would offer local authorities would be made by headquarters, there was no great clamor for Slattery’s head. Even if they could prove he existed on paper.
So until one of the local authorities came up with irrefutable evidence that the rumors were true, headquarters would watch with interest and shallow enthusiasm—and without volunteering any additional information.
There was a pretty strong chance the NYPD would never be able to make a case against San Filippo. Generally mob hits don’t get solved. Nobody ever got arrested for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, for example. This one quickly faded back several pages in the newspapers. Without a single lurid photograph to print—not even the blood-soaked carpet being carried out by a grim-faced detective—this story just didn’t have that old pizzazz. Four Russian bad guys got whacked. Nobody much cared. It wasn’t going to cause a problem for the mayor or chief of police if these killings went unsolved.
San Filippo would walk. Nobody in the bureau was taking any bets on how long, though. The Russians would have to go after him. They had to retaliate. Even Vaseline’s enemies. If the Mafia was permitted to destroy a multimillion-dollar Russian operation and kill four men without paying a price, the life of every other Russian gangster would be in jeopardy. That was a fact of family life.
Admittedly O’Brien and Russo continued to wonder about Bobby Blue Eyes. It was impossible to suddenly forget all about him. That would be like listening to the 1812 Overture and leaving before the cannons and bells. It just felt incomplete. The daily reports from the Country Club were filled with interesting tidbits—it was like a mob gossip column—but not nearly enough to satisfy their curiosity.
Which was why Slattery had arranged this very meeting at a gay bar with Special Agent Valone. But O’Brien and Russo were stunned when Slattery introduced them to him. Neither agent ever suspected that the somewhat dense ass-kissing Vito V was an FBI undercover agent rather than a legit young wannabe. And they were duly impressed. Looking at him, O’Brien figured him at twenty-six or twenty-seven, mostly because he knew it would have taken him several years to complete his training, get this assignment, and gain admittance to the social club, although he looked more like a teenager struggling to look old enough to buy a six-pack. The age didn’t matter at all, O’Brien decided. Special Agent Valone had more balls than a bowling alley. And his were bigger too.
“Eddie just couldn’t shut up about it,” Valone reported. “It was like he was living on borrowed breath. He needed to get it all out. It was like an eruption of nervous energy. But Bobby . . . you know, truthfully Bobby’s not a bad guy . . .”
Except, Connor thought, for the occasional mass murder.
“. . . but this wasn’t him. It was like he was there but he wasn’t really there, if you know what I mean. They didn’t just blab out all the details, they didn’t tell me anything, just that something big went down. We didn’t know the whole story until it was in the papers.”
O’Brien asked, “What about Two-Gun? You hear anything about him?”
Valone in person was quite different from Valone on tape. Russo was surprised that she had been completely fooled by him. The warm-up act turned out to be the star of the show. “And Franzone, how’d he react to the whole thing?” she asked.
Valone sipped his watered-down rum and Coke. “Bobby and Franzone spent a lot of time holed up together. I can’t tell you what they were talking about, but whatever went down between them, Franzone was pretty pleased. There was definitely a lot of hugging going on.” He paused and smiled at his next thought. “Now, Two-Gun Tony, that was a whole different thing. He was totally boxed in. Figure it out, when you’re playing for the visitors and the home team gets whacked, people are gonna figure that your team had something to do with it. I think it’s fair to say that Cosentino was sweating caviar. Eddie was telling me that Cosentino called Franzone four or five times minimum, and then one of his guys, Joey Black, showed up at the club with an envelope.”
“Cosentino was making a payoff?” O’Brien asked. “That’s interesting. For what?”
“Nah, it wasn’t a payoff.” Valone pressed his thumb against his index and middle fingers and shook them like he was talking to the dice. “It was a tribute. That was the beautiful thing about this all. No matter how pissed off Cosentino was, and you know he had to be steaming, he couldn’t touch Bobby or Eddie.” He waved his hands in the air. “I mean, what they did was completely the right thing. These guys had whacked Skinny Al, so we . . . you know, I mean them, the wiseguys, they had the right to get even. But there was a lot more than that involved. Now, this is according to Franzone. He called us all together for a meeting.” He looked at Slattery. “I’m sure you guys got this one on tape, right?”
Slattery nodded, then told O’Brien and Russo, “We got the transcripts in this morning. If you want to see them, I got them back in the office.”
Valone continued, “Cosentino figured the Russians might be coming after his crew, so he wanted to have as many friends as he could get. He needed Franzone. That meant he couldn’t touch Bobby or Eddie. In fact, Franzone told us that Cosentino was making noises about going into the fuel oil business together. It was pretty amazing.”
“So what about San Filippo?” O’Brien asked.
“That was the piece of resistance. Franzone knew how much he owed Bobby.” He paused and shook his head at the wonder of fate. “So they opened up the books for him. Bobby’s gonna get made.”
O’Brien and Russo stayed at the bar a lot longer than they had planned, even after Slattery and his star undercover had left, even after the place had filled up and Russo was getting a lot of curious glances. While O’Brien was busy pontificating about the symmetry of it all, Russo took a good long look at him. She noted that he used the same word, “fairness,” in three consecutive sentences, something he would ordinarily not do. There was a lot to like about the guy, she finally decided, although he could probably do some work on his sense of humor. He was unusually quiet—for him—in the car. He was definitely glad for San Filippo. Bobby Blue Eyes was a stand-up guy. Being made, being inducted into the Mafia, came with certain privileges—and it just might save his life one day.
For O’Brien, San Filippo might prove to be an extremely valuable connection. Bobby was moving up the ladder toward real power in the family. And there was no way he could ever tell anyone about his connection to the bureau—a situation that might prove extremely beneficial to the bureau in the fugure. It was decided, as Slattery explained, “to leave him there and let him grow.”
More than all that, though, Connor O’Brien was contemplating the irony of the situation. Growing up, he’d played all the fighting games: cowboys and Indians, Superman and Lothar, Star Fleet against the Romulans, Yankees and the Red Sox, the FBI against the mob. And in all those games it had been easy to separate the good guys from the bad guys. Almost always, he played the good guy. As a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation he was no longer playing a game. He had become a good guy.
He was sorting all this out in his head as he drove uptown. It turned out that sometimes, to be a good guy, you had to do bad things. In this case, for example, to achieve an important and legitimate objective, he’d sort of pushed a guy into a shoot-out. People had died. And they had died brutally. Connor knew that he’d broken all the good guy rules and gotten away with it. And the only reason he was able to do it was that the bad guy was true to some strange family code. All that stuff about honor and loyalty that they believe in.
Sometimes good guys do bad things, and maybe sometimes the bad guys do the good things. A couple of drinks after a long drought can make a situation like this seem pretty complicated.
O’Brien was so deeply immersed in his thoughts that he drove right past Laura’s block. He was almost to his own apartment when he realized his error. “Oh man,” he told her, “I’m sorry. I don’t know where I was.” The smile on her face was so welcoming that he completely forgot she was his partner in the anticrime business. He sighed and corkscrewed up his courage. “Want me to take you home?”
She looked at him like he was crazy. “Forget about it,” she said.