It didn’t take long for Jim and Tommy Geisel to again cop from Judy Haimowitz. Angelo was with them. Angelo, again, could not set up a meeting with Pitera. Still, Jim and Tommy felt that what they were doing was now slowly and methodically building a case that would ultimately end in the arrest of not only Pitera but the people he worked with, his minions, and the people he worked for, his bosses. This time Judy Haimowitz was more relaxed. She readily handed over the drugs. She asked them if they’d like to do a toot. They declined. Here, now, was a very slippery road. Dealers liked to see their customers get high in front of them. Cops, for the most part, would not use drugs. Jim and Tommy had been in this position before. They had a pat answer, viable and ready.
“We got serious business later and can’t party right now,” Jim said.
“Okay, next time,” Judy said.
With that, Jim and Angelo and Tommy were soon back outside. Angelo promised he would arrange for them to meet Tommy. He seemed sincere, though his words did not ring true to the seasoned agents.
Jim and Tommy and backup agents from Group 33 began surveillance of Tommy Karate Pitera’s bar, the Just Us Bar. They quickly noticed that it wasn’t a crowded, loud place. It was a quiet neighborhood bar on a residential street in the heart of Gravesend, Brooklyn, more like a social club than a public bar. Curious, wanting to know themselves what was going on inside the Just Us Bar, Jim and Tom made it their business to learn as much about the bar and Tommy Pitera as possible.
What Pitera had done, somewhat comically—when a civilian came into the bar—was charge exorbitant prices for a drink or beer. Pitera really meant this place was just for them, thus his calling the bar the Just Us. What the bar was all about was creating a hangout for Pitera and his crew, his customer base—anybody in La Cosa Nostra. It was the squares, the “civvies” as they called them, they wanted to keep out. The patrons who did enter the bar were rough and talked like they were right out of central casting for a mob movie.
Interestingly, it wasn’t only men who hung out there. So-called guidos—Cadillac-driving, pinkie-ring-and-gold-chain-with-medallion-wearing, blow-dryer-using, Sergio Tacchini sweatsuit-clad men—hung out here. But there were also women who came into the bar, women who belonged, women who were part of the culture of Bensonhurst and Gravesend—guidettes. These women spoke the same vernacular as the men. For them, made men were very appealing. They had money and were oversexed. The women unapologetically teased their hair and wore five-inch heels with pants so tight it looked as though the seams would burst at any moment. Their makeup was overt and in-your-face, their eyeliner caked on, their lip liner mismatched to their lipstick. Their nails were fake, airbrushed, and ridiculously long. For these women to date or even marry a made man, a lieutenant, a captain, was a goal in life. No matter how you cut it, mob guys, mafiosi, had money to burn. One of the places they most liked to spend money was on women, lavishly and without reservation.
As Jim and Tommy observed the bar, learned about its rhythm and pace, they saw these women, heard them talk, and were…amused. They appreciated them for who they were. They didn’t necessarily judge them or make fun of them, but they thought they were comical and harmless, which, for the most part, was true. However, tragedy, sudden and amazingly violent, could strike these women at any time. By becoming involved with mafiosi, they were entering a world where, at a moment’s notice, they, their boyfriend, or husband could be murdered.
Murder was as intricate a part of that life as silk socks and diamond pinkie rings. If any woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time, she could get killed. If she did something excessively disrespectful, she could get killed. For the most part, the mob did not kill women. But still, when tempers flared and bullets flew, anyone could die.
One weekday evening, while Jim and Tom observed from a car across the street, Pitera walked into the bar. Jim and Tommy had seen photos of him and he was very easy to discern. His face was white like chalk, stern and stoic. He had receding straight black hair. Even in the dim light of Avenue S, they could see his eyes, a piercing blue. They stood out on his face like headlights. It was obvious he was an athletic man, wide-shouldered and muscular, well coordinated and comfortable in his own skin.
Tommy and Jim viewed Pitera only as part of something larger. It was the something larger they were after: not only the heads of the Bonanno crime family but the other heads as well. They knew, for instance, that many of the captains in the Gambino family were moving drugs. They knew, too, that John Gotti’s brother Gene was a drug dealer. They knew that Gambino captain Eddie Lino was a drug dealer. They knew that they all worked together, hand in hand, that they were all part of a large, tightly woven cabal. What Tom and Jim were after, the reason they were sitting there, was to gather irrefutable evidence that would hold up in a court of law, against the blistering scrutiny of mean-spirited defense attorneys.
They, Jim and Tom, were consummate professionals. They were not in a hurry. They would put in as much time as necessary, unlike the case in most law enforcement outfits, where everyone was in a hurry, everyone was looking for headlines, everyone was looking for the positive publicity that goes along with a big bust. Crime fighting was political. The more accolades any given agency received, the more funding they were given, the more respect they received. The DEA, however, was more about working cases patiently and professionally until they came to true fruition. Not only did this work well as a matter of policy, but when they did move, when they did make arrests, the arrests stuck. Bad guys went to jail. That’s what they were after, getting bad guys off the street once and for all.
Both Jim and Tommy could sense in their bones that something substantial was happening here. Yet, still, they had no idea just how diabolical and dangerous and what a menace Tommy Pitera really was.
Pitera and a few other men exited the bar and hung out in front of it. They smoked cigarettes, talked quietly among themselves. At one point, Pitera seemed to stare across the street, stare at the Cadillac in which Jim and Tommy were sitting. It was as though he knew cops were in the car, though he did not know if it was the FBI, NYPD Organized Crime Unit, or the DEA. Whoever they were, he wanted to defy them, treat them as though he knew who they were and why they were there, and almost dare them to do something.