More than ever, the DEA was working the Pitera case. Little by little they heard things through the grapevine that they had set up all throughout Brooklyn. They now had both the Just Us and the Cypress Bar and Grill bugged as well as a nightclub Pitera owned called Overstreets. They knew Pitera personally spent little time in the Cypress, but still they hoped to garner something they could use against him. He had bought Overstreets with the proceeds from his drug-dealing enterprises, showing good business acumen. Overstreets was a hot discotheque on the second floor of a building on Eighty-sixth Street and Fourth Avenue. Cash in hand, young people lined up there every night to party. It was popular, a moneymaker. Drugs were also sold at the club. By now the government also had listening devices in Pitera’s car and in his associates’ cars. The government had come to know, however, that Pitera was wily in the extreme. When he said something incriminating in any of the cars, he always had, as a matter of course, either static on the radio or the radio was so loud his words were lost. Rather than be disappointed, the task force was more motivated—more driven. They felt he was challenging them, daring them.
When they had him under surveillance and he met with different members of the Bonanno crime family, they constantly saw him covering his mouth as he talked. Mind you, this was in the street, with cars and cabs and buses passing by, but still there was Tommy Pitera concerned about surveillance, concerned about being bugged, concerned about having his words pulled out of thin air. There was equipment that could do that but not on the scale that Pitera seemed to think possible. The more the DEA watched him, the surer they became of everything they’d heard about him.
Conversely, Pitera sensed the presence of the cops. In that there were approximately nine people from Group 33 observing him, it didn’t take long for a street-savvy mafioso like Pitera to know which way the wind was blowing. He didn’t, however, know specifically what branch of law enforcement was sniffing around, but he knew he was being observed, watched, and scrutinized. They could have been NYPD Organized Crime, the FBI, or the DEA, he knew. Whoever they were really didn’t matter to him—they all wanted one thing and that was to put him away, to garner large headlines in the papers. That’s what they were after—press, not justice, he believed. Whenever there was a Mafia bust, it was always front-page news, the leadoff story on all the news channels. The government waved around mafiosi as though they were flags. It helped bolster their careers, everyone knew, and it helped bolster their budgets when it came time to divvy up money in Washington. They were, Pitera believed, selfish and self-serving, dictatorial and one-sided. It was not about the rule of law, Pitera believed, it was about headlines; it was about hanging the scalps of mafiosi out in the light of day for all to see and know and smell.
Contrary to what Pitera believed, for Jim Hunt and Tommy Geisel, it was all about the rule of law. It was about protecting society from career criminals; it was about getting killers off the streets; it was about keeping chaos at bay and the streets safe.
Back to basics—Jim and Tommy continued to cop cocaine and heroin from Angelo Favara. Angelo sometimes bought the coke from Judy Haimowitz and sometimes bought the drugs directly from Pitera. Thus, little by little, as though putting together a complicated puzzle, they were building a case against Judy Haimowitz—and against Pitera. The government knew that Judy would readily turn when confronted with serious jail time. However, she was not the kind of witness who could make or break the case against Pitera. They needed substantially more. Pitera had never been there when they’d bought drugs from Judy or Angelo nor had he personally sold the agents drugs.
They encouraged Angelo Favara to arrange a large buy with Pitera, but Pitera had come to view Angelo as trouble. He kept Angelo at bay, at arm’s length; he didn’t trust him. When Pitera looked at him, he saw a weasel or, worse still, a rat. Nevertheless, the DEA agents encouraged Angelo to talk to Tommy about arranging a big buy, if not from Tommy, from any of the people who worked for Tommy. If Angelo managed, as he did, ultimately, to cop drugs from people who worked for Pitera, conspiracy laws would kick in and they’d have Pitera by the proverbial balls. Any angle they, the DEA, could exploit, they would. If Jim Hunt had learned anything over the years, if Jim Hunt had garnered any insights from being the son of the revered Jim Hurt, it was to work as many venues, leads, and opportunities as possible, not to discount anything. The more hot pokers you had in the fire, the better.
One of the people who worked for Pitera was Andrew Miciotta. Andrew was an intricate part of the drug-dealing constellation that Pitera had created. Jim Hunt and Tommy Geisel managed to, initially, buy heroin from Andrew via Angelo. Eventually, Andrew, a short, stocky, balding man, agreed to meet with the two agents and sell them heroin directly. They were not interested in Andrew, as such—they wanted his boss. They wanted Pitera.
For Jim Hunt, bringing down Pitera was not about press or promotion or a feather in his cap. He genuinely hated bad guys—especially drug-dealing mafiosi.
He felt Pitera was contributing to the downfall of the community in which he lived; he felt that all the Piteras of the world were about chaos and disorder and the breaking of the rules and regulations that governed a well-run, civilized society. The fact that Pitera was definitely connected to the Bonanno crime family amplified their efforts one hundredfold. This was not some renegade tough guy willing to take chances and sell drugs. This was a member of an organized-mechanized, international underground society that would rape and pillage, steal and rob, suck the lifeblood from everything it got its hands on. This was a fire-breathing dragon and Jim Hunt was intent upon lopping its head off.