The members of the Violent Felony Squad take a perp’s continuing freedom as a personal affront. Danny Rivera and his team were becoming frustrated by the fact that they had been unable to get any firm leads on Hector Garcia’s location. If we could take him down it would blow open the whole gang and help us nail Levit “Scooby Doo” Fernandini. Although they’d been chasing Hector for months and months, putting pressure on their own snitches, the VFS’s efforts had come to nada. But I had an idea.
I suggest that it’s time to do a little wallpapering. Detective Vic Gomez and I could cover every foot of Creston Avenue with “Wanted” posters of Hector, offering a two-thousand-dollar Crime Stoppers reward for information leading to his capture. Our chances of actually catching him this way are virtually nil, but the real idea is to raise up his pals. Without realizing their phones are “wired,” they might just ring him and tell him that The Five-O are on his case again—allowing the FBI to trace the location of our hit man’s cell phone. “Hey, why not, Luke?” FBI Agent Waller says with a shrug. “It might work. Let’s run it and see where it takes us.”
“What do you think, Rod?”
The other agent laughs at the simplicity of the plan, but is all for it. “Me? Hey, you know that I’m all about the teamwork, guys. Yeah, buddy, if you think it’s worthwhile, we can try it.” Riveros and Waller hit the wires. Gomez and I take to the streets. We’re not long into the operation when I spot a short, dark-haired female aged about thirty trying hard to look casual, her cell phone in hand, watching our every move. I recognize her immediately from the giant poster plastered over one wall of the FBI field office. It’s Karina Olivera—Levit’s girlfriend—a most trusted member of his gang. She is clearly conducting a little countersurveillance, a common move when we stake out a perp.
I walk towards her, smiling, trying to appear as casual as I can.
“Excuse me, miss. Could you take one of these flyers? We’re looking for the guy pictured.”
“Sure, Office-ah. Thank you. Can I get a few of those? Maybe I’ll recognize this boy.”
“Of course. Thanks for your help, have as many as you like,” I reply.
Olivera walks away with a small bundle of posters stuck under her arm, her cell phone glued to her ear once more. One hour and one coffee later, my cell phone chimes. If my hunch has proved right, our break has come early. It’s Riveros.
“Luck o’ the Irish, Luke. It worked, it worked!” he says gleefully. “Your girl just called Levit, and he reached out to his amigo, pronto. Pack your bags, buddy. We’re off to the Caribbean.”
Our wiretaps revealed the precise location where the call was received as 15-10 Calle Calais in Carolina, San Juan, Puerto Rico. The teams sat down and worked out how best to apprehend Hector without tipping him and Levit off that the FBI were on their tail.
After weighing the pros and cons, we decided to see if we could use the Bronx district attorney to go through the motions of prosecuting our hit man for one of the murders he had committed back in Creston, rather than applying for a federal warrant, which might get out and tip off Levit.
I rang Ed Talty, now heading the DA’s Homicide Division, a clever attorney whom I had worked with a lot down the years, and asked him for a solid favor. I told him that we would eventually “writ” our suspect over to the feds, and that he could drop his charges, but I didn’t even hint that I was working as part of a task force on a federal case, because there would be little in it for his office.
Talty agreed to hand the case over to his ADA Nancy Barko, the veteran prosecutor whom I had worked with before. She brought Hector’s case before a grand jury, in absentia, where he was charged with second degree murder, second degree attempted murder, and assault in the second degree. Supreme Court Judge George Villeras agreed with our evidence and signed a New York State warrant for his arrest.
We spent the next day getting the paperwork arranged for our flight arranged and obtaining the signatures allowing us to carry our pistols on the aircraft. Victor and I headed to the airport in good time for Flight 707 to San Juan and we bumped into William “Gonzo” Gonzalez, one of the two VFS guys who would back us up on the manhunt. We were browsing the magazines in the gift shop when I noticed what Gonzalez had brought along for the trip.
“Jesus, Gonzo! What do you want that thing for?” I asked in amazement, staring at the MP5 submachine gun peeking out from under his jacket.
“Eh? This? Firepower, buddy, firepower. Ain’t nobody gonna get the jump on Gonzo, bro. I’ll sit on it on the plane,” he responded, eyes glinting as he lightly fingered the trigger.
We left on different flights, but I am guessing Detective Gonzalez got an upgrade to first class that morning without even having to say a word. Gomez and I touched down at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport, and barely had we left the front gates before I was saying a prayer of thanks that Gonzo and his equally well-armed VFS colleagues were with us for the operation.
San Juan had police cruisers on every corner, lights ablaze, and armed cops standing to one side, hands on hips, pistols prominently displayed in holsters to show the local gangsters that the PD were ready to fight fire with firepower. The homicide rate there was about a thousand per year. What should be the fun capital of an island paradise was just like the Bronx, but on a really, really bad day. The FBI had just finished one of the biggest investigations into police corruption in its history, ending with a three a.m. raid across Puerto Rico. In total, eighty-nine local cops and several corrections officers were arrested and charged with offering to protect undercover federal agents posing as drug dealers looking to hire muscle.
In San Juan we trusted nobody, and I slept with one eye open for the couple of nights we spent there. Agents Riveros and Waller dressed down and left their sharp suits back in the Big Apple. They told anyone who asked that they were NYPD detectives and left the talking to me. From our hotel, I picked up the phone and reached out for help to the DEA agents from the Caribbean Division and the U.S. Marshals, along with a few trustworthy members of the local police. But like DA Ed Talty back in the Bronx, they had no idea that this was an interagency task force. Even if we caught him, just one throwaway comment in front of Hector could result in his alerting Levit Fernandini and potentially ending the investigation. Any leak would see his associates dump their phones, grab whatever cash they could, and kill anyone likely to sell them out, before dropping off the map.
Though we knew where Hector was staying, cell phone towers are rare enough in the mountains of semirural Puerto Rico—meaning we could only get an approximate location for his phone. We needed much more before we could swoop. The DEA and Marshals were friendly and cooperative and willing to wait for me to give the go-ahead. But the hours dragged on into a day, then turned into a second, and we still awaited confirmation of our target’s location.
As patience waned, frustration levels rose, and all eyes turned to me.
U.S. Marshal Tim Callahan, just arrived from Mexico, set off into the countryside on foot to see if he could pin the signal down. He carried a backpack with a portable tracking device but had little success. Any vehicle with a larger rig approaching Hector’s hacienda would be spotted immediately, so for an accurate fix we ramped it up—literally. Back in the Bronx we’d used helicopters and offshore boats to track Hector, but Callahan had a better idea. He offered to loan us his jet.
“Luke, this is getting us nowhere. I have a pilot and a U.S. Marshals plane on the runway in Tampa. I’m going to call him up and get him to fly on a direct path over this address. If Garcia is there we should get a hit on the phone.” Callahan made the call and ultimately won the day. The pilot had to stall until the local rainstorms lifted but soon the jet took off from Florida on its two-hour flight to our coordinates.
Federal agencies often call on U.S. military aviation for backup, but the paperwork involved can take days when only minutes are available. Callahan’s assistance that day was critical and prompt.
We used that time to make one final check on the equipment and climb into our SUVs parked up close to the University of Puerto Rico. On its campus, some students were studying forensics and criminal justice; one mile away we hoped our killer was busy studying the latest episode of MTV Cribs—not peering through the blinds ready to bolt or blast his way out.
Inside the jeeps the atmosphere was quiet and tense. All of us wore ballistic helmets and Kevlar body armor. Between the DEA and the U.S. Marshals, we had enough small arms to start a Central American revolution. The agents were checking and rechecking 9mm MP5s, 5.56mm M4 assault rifles, and Remington 12-gauge pump-action shotguns. In addition, we all had various semiautomatic pistols, as did the local Puerto Rican police accompanying us.
We sat in silence. Four miles above us the Triggerfish signal locator hurtled towards Hector at hundreds of miles per hour. Callahan hung on at the end of the line, waiting for the news which would dictate the success, or failure, of this entire mission. Suddenly he was animated.
“He’s there! The pilot got a hit on the phone! He’s in the house. Go, go, go!”
Our convoy took off at speed and in less than two minutes we’d reached the location. As the first truck hit the driveway, several of our guys piled out and charged towards the door. They advanced behind ballistic shields with their weapons drawn in case anyone inside decided to fight it out. I was in the second SUV, just seconds behind, and we arrived in time to see Hector stumble out the back door and run for the hills. Racing behind him came maybe two dozen cops and agents, all screaming at him to surrender.
With over twenty guns aimed at his head our hitter decided the odds, for once, weren’t in his favor: 539 days after shooting two people dead in New York, Hector Garcia raised his hands before being knocked onto his knees, handcuffed, and placed under arrest. I waved the warrant in his face as he coughed through the dust kicked up by our boots and was put in the jeep.
His girlfriend, Monica Callow, was terrified. She was also restrained for our safety, but we had no intention of charging her. We chose to leave her alone in the house, frightened and confused, as we took Hector to the Extradition Office in San Juan. We were guessing and hoping she’d call Levit’s wiretapped cell and read him the name off the NYPD card I’d placed in her hand.
Thirteen hundred miles away, FBI agents in downtown Manhattan listened on their headsets and they were on the phone in minutes with good news. Monica had just rung Levit to tell him Hector’d been popped by the Po-Po. The same technique we’d used handing out the Crime Stoppers flyers in Creston Avenue had worked here, too—but in a slightly more high-tech, jet-set way.
Back in New York the wires were humming. Levit was highly agitated, already calling his lieutenants and his lawyer to tell them the bad news about Hector. Right then Garcia was a heck of a lot calmer than his soon-to-be-former boss, sipping a Coke in our custody.
There was little to be gained from leaning on our prisoner, so I pulled up a chair and asked him if there was anything else that I could do. I told him we could draw up a cooperation agreement with the Bronx DA. I made no mention of the FBI—the warrant we’d served was the one from DA Talty.
I took a photo of Hector from my jacket pocket and turned it faceup. I slid it across the table next to his half-empty can and looked him in the eye.
“Yo—I am not that man, the man you cops think I am,” he said, taking another gulp and returning my stare. “I gotta take orders, jus’ like you. I got a wife, man. I got a kid, and my homeys know where my family is at, up in Boston. I don’t do as I’m told, I’m dead. I talk to the Five-O, and they dead. I gotta jus’ do my time, like a man.”
He did not realize that he was saying exactly what I wanted to hear. Hector’s only concern was his family’s safety, not his loyalty to his boss, so when we got the others behind bars, Hector should cooperate and help us keep them there.
We left our prisoner in the care of the local cops, and Gomez and I went to sample some local rum to celebrate. The next day we flew back to JFK and set up a meeting with O’Toole, Masella, and the others involved to bring them up to speed. Two years after he’d shot up Boutiqua 31, the killer responsible was finally in custody. But Levit and the other members of the Creston Crew, although unnerved by the arrest of their key enforcer, had no idea that it was anything other than an NYPD operation.
I went down to meet with ADA Nancy Barko and tell her how we’d got on. She was delighted that Hector was in custody, but she, too, had no idea of any federal law enforcement involvement in his location and arrest. She grew more animated during our conversation at the prospect of prosecuting him for the double homicide. But our focus remained on Levit and his crew.
Taking down multiple targets involves huge planning, even more so when organized by the feds, so a lot of calls and meetings took place over the following days. Even the smallest detail was not left to chance, as the Job coordinated with the local FBI field office, resulting in a big boost for agents’ smiles and air miles all over the country as they packed their famous blue jackets with the bold yellow letters and flew in from Washington, D.C., Boston, and cities in other states to back up the local field offices with the simultaneous raids which would take place in New York, Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico.
The tactical commanders decided that six a.m. on Wednesday, July 13, 2011, would be Zero Hour. The early start was carefully chosen, as there was every chance that the targets would resist, many of them facing life in prison with little to lose by shooting it out. At about a dozen addresses in the Bronx, police cars, FBI SUVs, and trucks full of federal SWAT team members quietly pulled up to the perimeter as dawn approached. It would be the last daybreak Levit Fernandini ever saw as a free man.
Snipers were set in position on nearby rooftops and FBI helicopters hovered overhead, searchlights trained on the back doors and yards should anyone try to bail out the rear. Nearby our mobile command centers—large articulated trucks—coordinated the joint police and federal operation, the captains sitting inside sipping their cappuccinos. At six a.m. exactly we got the call to move in, and I joined tens of police officers and agents who swarmed on 2600 Creston Avenue. The raid was led by members of the FBI Regional SWAT team and NYPD ESU, who stormed the building. We screamed at the dazed residents to lie on the floor and cooperate or they would be shot.
Levit Fernandini, for years the most ruthless and terrifying man on the Bronx streets, complied without a whimper. Faced with an army of assault rifles, half blinded by arc lights dancing along the walls, he and his crew did exactly as ordered. They were handcuffed, placed under arrest, and given their Miranda warnings. We recovered several firearms in the raid, but not one shot, to my knowledge, was fired. In the days that followed, Hector Garcia unveiled information which led to me deciding to end my career in the NYPD.
But for now there was still the matter of that email from Sergeant John Griffin blinking in my in-box, telling me that Nancy Barko was looking for a copy of the Puerto Rico warrant and wanted to have a chat about “jurisdiction . . .”