The Big Scam Read online

  7

  ALTHOUGH THEY HAD BEEN HEADQUARTERS supervisors together in Washington, Bernard Dreagen had not seen or spoken to Charles Lansing in almost three years. Their career paths diverged when Dreagen was promoted to the coveted position of administrative ASAC of the New York office, while Lansing, his junior in years, continued his duties in Washington, awaiting any similar opportunity. With the sudden, dramatic arc in his career, Dreagen placed the memory of those left behind into his mental shredder, making room only for those who could bring future advantage. But today was the first day of the month-long inspection, a time when authority’s pecking order was annoyingly jumbled.

  As Lansing entered the office, Dreagen rose dutifully and offered a practiced smile along with his hand. “Chuck, how are you?” From the crooked grin on Lansing’s mouth, Dreagen sensed that he, like all inspectors, expected to be treated with deference.

  Lansing was wearing the unofficial uniform of FBIHQ: a blue blazer, medium gray trousers, white shirt, and a regimental-stripe tie with just enough red not to call attention to itself. His hair, sandy and thinning, was frozen in place by some kind of fixative that left his shining scalp substantially more noticeable. Dreagen ran his hand gratefully through his own thick, dark hair.

  “I’m good, Bernie. How about yourself?”

  Dreagen held his arms out to encompass his unlimited good fortune. “The center of the universe, my friend. Center of the universe. How long have you been on the inspection staff?”

  “This is my third time out.”

  “And you’re finding it…?”

  “Uneven. One minute everything’s running like a solid gold Rolex, the next, you’re feeding some guy’s career into a wood chipper.”

  That Lansing had used the word “career” implied a threat. It meant the “guy” was management. Street agents, those rank-and-file men and women whose only responsibility was to investigate and solve cases, weren’t thought of by managers as having careers. Lansing’s reference indicated that he had come here to commit the misdemeanor of inspection extortion. He was looking for an informant who could relieve him of the inconvenience of tediously going through files to determine which agents could be taken out.

  Dreagen wondered if he had become a target. The grin he’d screwed onto his face weakened and slipped away. Hopefully Lansing had other priorities, because Dreagen wasn’t ready for another confrontation. He had just come from SAC Hansen’s office, where it had been explained to him, in relatively unpleasant terms, that he had no right to convert to his own use a Mercedes or any other seized vehicle in the FBI’s possession. The ASAC then made the mistake of arguing that the “Bureau dregs” under Nick Vanko’s supervision were irresponsible and had probably wrecked the car on a whim and then deceived the SAC as to how it happened. “You’re the admin ASAC, you have no idea what that squad does. Just handle administrative matters. Leave the heavy lifting to the real agents.” The SAC, a veteran of clashes with ambitious men, knew that Dreagen would not hesitate to seek revenge for the minor whipping on those he perceived as responsible. “And stay away from them. If you have any problems with Vanko’s squad, come to me, and I’ll handle it. Do you understand?”

  Dreagen put the smile back on his face. “So what brings you here, Chuck? Am I in trouble already?”

  “I really haven’t started yet, so it would be premature to try and answer that.”

  With a little bit of playful suspicion, Dreagen said, “Small FBI. We used to work together, and you draw me for the inspection.”

  “If you’re asking me if I arranged this assignment—guilty. I thought since we were in the same unit once, we might be able to give each other a hand.”

  “And what am I giving you a hand with?”

  “Any areas that you might think need my attention.”

  “And I would do that—why?”

  “I imagine that unless you drop one in the end zone, you’ll be going out as a SAC before much longer.”

  As veiled threats went, this one wasn’t very artful. Apparently, in too big a hurry to get himself promoted, Lansing was making the deadly mistake of not observing the speed limits of ambition. Too many shortcuts, especially in the FBI, inevitably led to biting oneself in the ass. Dreagen knew how to use this against someone, but he had also learned that a hook was best let out slowly. “In other words, you want me to do your work for you.”

  “I would think that someone in your position would want to ensure that any impending air strikes were as surgical as possible.”

  Normally Dreagen loved the masculine metaphors of management argot. It was as cool as a guy wearing a fifteen-dollar tie could get. It was their secret handshake, not understood by the unwashed masses, that seven-eighths of the agent population—the portion of the FBI iceberg that floated beneath the waterline of importance. But Lansing, having the advantage of being stationed at Bureau headquarters, the seat of the insider dialect, was too current, too practiced in its use. Dreagen decided it was banal and elitist. “So I’m looking at a pass…for my entire part of the office’s operation.”

  “It’ll add at least a month to your life.”

  Lansing was right; the inspection had a way of suspending time for everyone while those four adversarial weeks ground nerve endings into a fine powder. Besides, ASAC Dreagen needed to settle a score he had been ordered not to. Here was someone offering to do it for him, and it would take absolutely no investment on his part. “Okay, I’ve got something, but when you go for them, you and I never had this conversation.”

  “Them?”

  “That’s right, them. An entire squad. And, if you’re thorough enough, you may be able to get just about every person on it. But first you’ve got to convince me this won’t come back to me.”

  “How would it? Why would it?”

  “I’m sorry, hypothetical questions aren’t what I need—I need collateral.”

  Lansing hesitated, eyeing the ASAC closely. “This is that good?”

  “It’ll make you employee of the month. Have you ever heard, in the history of inspection, of an entire squad being gutted? And not just censored; I’m talking about actually getting some of them fired.”

  “Seems a little too good to be true.”

  “What you have to remember, Chuck, is that one-tenth of the agents in the FBI are in this division. Hell, there are almost a hundred different squads. That’s going to produce some serious personnel problems. And in New York, the most serious are all buried on one squad.”

  “What kind of problems are we talking about?”

  “You name it, everything from total incompetence to having a screw loose to criminal behavior.”

  “Criminal behavior?”

  “One guy is about to be sent out there while OPR’s looking at him for insider trading.”

  “Insider trading? How would an agent have access to that kind of information?”

  “He was working as a UC at a brokerage house.” Lansing’s eyebrows raised. “I’m telling you, you’ll have a field day. Fish in a barrel.”

  “Who’s the supervisor?”

  The ASAC was aware that the requested “collateral” had not been provided, but he wanted Lansing to believe that he had outmaneuvered him. “Nick Vanko.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “A ghost. I’ve never seen the guy. In fact, I’ve never even talked to him. The squad works out of an off-site.”

  “Why off-site?”

  “They’re tasked with special projects. And before you ask, I don’t know what that is. I think it’s mostly surveillance, photographic assignments, odds and ends like that. But I’m not positive.”

  “And they need a separate office for that?”

  “I’ve wondered the same thing, and whenever I ask, I’ve been given the distinct impression that I didn’t want to know.”

  Lansing’s lips tightened with determination. These were exactly the kinds of potentially embarrassing things an inspector worth his salt uncovered. “Well, it sou
nds like something I’m going to want to find out.”

  “Let me warn you, Chuck, you’re going to get the runaround. I get it when I ask, and I’m on the home team. Maybe they’ve got something on the SAC because anytime somebody tries to hold them responsible for anything, he jumps up in their defense.” Dreagen thought throwing the SAC in as a possible trophy couldn’t hurt.

  “I’ll stay out there the entire month if I have to.”

  Perfect, Dreagen thought. All today’s problems were about to take each other out.

  8

  THE MORNING’S TABLOID HEADLINE READ:

  MOB GOES FROM MAKING LICENSE

  PLATES TO…MAKING LICENSE PLATES

  In an almost bullying departure from the delicately hammered rhetoric of FBI spokespersons everywhere, James Wade of the Manhattan office was quoted in the article as saying, “Because we feel the FBI is largely at fault for the lack of entrepreneurial opportunity that organized crime faces these days, we’re going to urge the United States Attorney’s office to show Mr. Baldovino some leniency. Possibly allow him to plead to a lesser offense, something like interstate transportation of counterfeit instruments in a pink cake box.”

  Released that morning on bail, Manny Baldovino stared out the narrow front window at the Sons of Catania Social Club. Some of the others from Mike Parisi’s crew sat around a table behind him, arguing and laughing over a pinochle game. Never before had Manny understood the luxury of their idleness, and he now admonished himself for not enjoying it more when it had been his. He stood close enough to hear them, but kept his back turned in self-exile as punishment for embarrassing himself and his friends.

  Outside, evenly scattered clouds, their undersides flat and gunmetal gray, covered the neighborhood with alternating patches of dry, blanched sunlight and pewtered opacity. Back in the kitchen, sauce was cooking. The oily singe of garlic, the sweet pungency of tomatoes—it reminded him of Sundays at his mother’s house, the ultimate safe harbor of his life. Squinting out at the recurring cycle of light and dark, he imagined each a silent frame, each a day and then a night, flickering by, distancing him from his problems.

  “Hey, Manny, quit watching out the window,” Gus Dellaporta said. “You expecting the FBI? Oh no, that’s right, you wouldn’t know them if you saw them. For future reference, they’re the ones with the cake boxes.” A spattering of laughter erupted as Baldovino turned around and waited while his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light. Dellaporta sat with his thick hands folded gently in front of him like a boxer lowering his arms to taunt an opponent with superior skills. But Baldovino could see that it was not done maliciously, but rather to show him he was among friends, and the mistakes they all made were inherent in trying to exist outside the law. Dellaporta was calling for return fire.

  “If all it took was cake boxes to figure out who the FBI was, Gus, you’d be the most valuable guy in the outfit.”

  Even Dellaporta had to laugh. “Come on and sit down. Use those hands for something besides slapping yourself around. Play some cards. This’ll go away, you just have to get off it.”

  Dellaporta stood up and stretched. As always, he was wearing a sport coat over his 270 pounds, this one powder blue. It was all he ever wore, even during a snowstorm. He squatted down and bounced to loosen his heavily muscled thighs. For his size, he was remarkably light on his feet. At parties or weddings, those who knew him looked forward to the moment when he had had enough to drink to step out onto the dance floor. Once he did, no matter how many times they had witnessed it, his friends could only shake their heads at the apparent suspension of the physical laws of the universe as he floated above the hardwood surface with an endless string of eager women.

  While Baldovino didn’t consider himself especially insightful when it came to people, his bridge phobia had made him aware of the mind’s ability, in times of stress, to hide larger problems behind smaller ones. Subsequently, he had discovered an anomaly of omission within the Gus Dellaporta mystique: as big as he was, no one ever saw him eat. At restaurants or any occasion at which food was a focal point, he would just sit and drink whiskey, and not as much as an olive would pass his lips. For Manny, the conclusion was obvious—Dellaporta had to be a closet eater. And whatever drove him to overeat was also driving his need to hide the act itself. If no one saw him, then it wasn’t really happening. There was no visible cause, so the effect really couldn’t be considered a weakness. Somehow Gus Dellaporta was just a big man.

  While Manny was not a person who found pleasure in another man’s misery, he found it reassuring that even the most respected of his associates had problems. He liked Dellaporta. There was a gentleness about him that in rare, unguarded moments escaped almost unnoticed. Baldovino gave him a slightly sad but appreciative smile and turned back to the window.

  “Manny, if you think this is embarrassing, have Jimmy tell you about his career in—the fuck you call it, Jimmy?”

  “Countersurveillance.”

  “Yeah, countersurveillance. Tell that story.”

  Jimmy Tatorrio straightened with a storyteller’s pride. “This is what started that whole thing that ended the other night at the Mohegan Sun. It happened when we were still at the old place. In fact, I think my fuckup is why we moved out.” Some of those who knew the story started to laugh, indicating that Tatorrio was improvising on an old theme, adding a characteristic twist of self-deprecation. “Nino had the crew then. He was a great captain, but if things didn’t go right, he could be one mean SOB. God rest him. So, at the old joint, we had this jukebox, and it never worked right. I think we robbed it. One day Nino finally tells someone to call and get the ‘damn thing’ fixed. It wasn’t me he told, so, you know me, I’m paying absolutely no attention. That weekend, I think it was Labor Day weekend—whatever it was, Monday was a holiday, and this is a Friday when he orders it fixed. Saturday night I’m out all night. But I left my car at the club, so I get dropped off. It’s just starting to get light, which means it is now Sunday morning. What comes next, a guy with one brain cell would have figured out, but naturally I didn’t. I come around the corner and there are these two guys knocking on the club door. One old and one young. I walk up and ask, ‘You the guys to fix the jukebox?’ The older one—in hindsight—looks like I just put the barrel of a nine-millimeter in his mouth. ‘Ah, yeah, that’s it, we’re here for the jukebox.’ So being a good soldier, even though it wasn’t my job, I take out my key and let them in.”

  Manny turned around and smiled at the tempo of Tatorrio’s storytelling, now knowing where it was headed.

  “So I’m following them around, asking if they need anything. The next thing I know, I’m standing there at the jukebox holding the flashlight for the young one, and he’s fucking around behind it. You know me, I’m talking a mile a minute, never wondering where the other one is. Twenty minutes later the old one walks up and says to the young one, ‘You’re done, aren’t you?’ in this voice that’s really saying, Let’s get the fuck out of here. So me being the gentleman that I am, I offer them a drink. The old one gets this goofy look on his face and says, ‘Sure, why not?’ So we go to the bar and I pour shots all around. Not that I needed any more. Then I ask them how come they’re there so early on a Sunday morning. The young one thinks for a second and says, ‘Our boss, he found out who the club belongs to and didn’t want any problems.’ So I’m thinking here we go again, getting something because of who we are, but at the same time, you don’t want to make enemies over a fucking jukebox, so I pour them another drink. An hour later I’m even more fried, and these two pricks are so bad they can’t find the front door. Anyway, they leave and I pass out on the couch.”

  Dellaporta said, “If you think this is funny with Jimmy telling it, what do you think the FBI version sounds like?” More laughter erupted around the table.

  “So now it’s Tuesday, the day after the holiday. I come in late in the afternoon and everybody’s there. I’m saying hello to everybody, and Nino asks whoever about the jukebox, an
d whoever says, ‘Yeah, the guy came Friday and fixed it while I was here.’ ”

  Everyone was laughing now, even those who had heard the story before. “Being the moron I am, I’m wondering why this guy is lying about him getting the jukebox fixed. I’ve actually got my hand in the air, about to say, But I took care of that on Sunday. Suddenly the light goes on. To make matters worse, Nino’s standing—actually leaning—on the jukebox, and he’s talking about some late payments on bets. So I bolt over to the machine and play a song. Nino looks at me like I’m the rudest prick in the world. He goes in the back room. I say something clever like, ‘This isn’t loud enough’ and go behind it like I’m looking for the volume knob. I’m trying to remember where the young guy was working and I can’t see anything that looks like a bug, not that I knew what one looked like. Then it hits me, the young guy was the decoy; the older one was planting the bug. So now I don’t have a clue where it might be. I thought he might have been in the back, and naturally now Nino is in the back talking business to a couple of other guys. What was I supposed to do? Tell Nino? He would have killed me, and I don’t mean the nice kind either. So I decide I’ve got to get everyone out of the club. I think, I’ll call in a bomb threat. I know it sounds stupid, but, in case you haven’t been listening, this story isn’t about me being smart. But we had just robbed a couple dozen cases of booze, so the guys are in there drinking it up. A bomb could go off and they wouldn’t leave. The only thing I know that’ll beat free booze is free food with free booze. I tell everyone I had hit the trifecta over the weekend and was taking them all to dinner wherever they want. They can’t get to the cars fast enough. I explain to them I’ll meet them there because I’m expecting a call. As soon as they’re out the door, I called my lawyer and had him bring over his electronics guy to sweep the place. It cost me two grand because of the short notice, but he finds the bug back in the office. Now, by the time I get to the restaurant—and naturally it’s one of the most expensive in Manhattan—the bill for drinks and appetizers is already thirty-five hundred. These pricks are buying for the house. They said it was punishment for me not being a proper host. Of course they’re just busting my balls, trying to make sure my good fortune is completely bled dry. But I figure, what the fuck, I can’t get too mad, that’s who we are. And, of course I’ve only got about twelve dollars on me. So I’m fucked. I’ve got to come up with the cash or explain why I pulled everybody out of the club. Okay, Manny, at that point, who had the bigger problem, you or me?”