The Pretender Page 14

  So here we were, Alicia and I sitting in the Jeep, facing north and just a couple of car lengths back from East Houston Street, with a good view of the intersection. We waited. Where was Kuris? We waited some more. Not particularly concerned. Patience. A disregard for punctuality seems to be prerequisite for a street criminal. Finally, half an hour after Kuris was supposed to show, my beeper went off. Kuris. I had the lunch-box cell in the car, but there was no coverage down here. I called back from a pay phone on the corner.

  “Hey, Alex, sorry, man, I’m running late, I’m on my way … still in Queens. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  “No problem, but I’ve got another meeting later, and it’s something important.” On the street, that reads as “potentially very profitable.” “So if you’re not here by two, two thirty, I’m going. Also, I don’t really want to be sitting here all afternoon with you-know-what in my car.” A not-too-subtle reminder that if he doesn’t get moving both, Alex and the $10,000 will no longer be waiting. To kill time and update Vicki and Dave, Alicia and I drove around for a while until I found a block with cellular coverage. I called in. Their cell was working at their spot, so they would stay right there. The Secret Service was, at least in theory, being kept up to date by Vicki, who was in radio contact with their case agent. Then Alicia and I drove to Katz’s, where she stayed in the car while I bought us one of their renowned huge pastrami sandwiches. Now I am hungry. Amped up, of course, but also hungry. (Another basic lesson in Marc’s UC 101—eat when you have some free time; once things get rolling, it may be hours before the next opportunity.) In front of me on line, a long-haired tourist wearing an imitation FBI-blue raid cap smiled at me. Things were beginning to take on an unreal feel, like a bad dream where things don’t quite make sense. Back in the Jeep, I flipped on the transmitter’s switch and headed to Vicki and Dave’s parking spot.

  “Hey, guys, radio check, please flash your headlights as we drive by so we know you’re picking us up.”

  No flash of headlights.

  “Shit! Let’s try again. Kuris should be arriving soon, I don’t want him to get there and leave.”

  Around the block, another radio check, again no response. I couldn’t stop and talk to them, I didn’t know if Kuris had any of his people in the area. We drove back to our original spot. A few minutes later, Kuris pulled up and parked across the street, walked over, all smiles and apologies, and took up his position next to my window.

  “Alex, I’m getting bored.” Alicia’s signal for possible danger.

  I looked up the street. Across the intersection at East Houston, parked by a hydrant, was a beat-up sedan with a dark-skinned Hispanic at the wheel and another in the backseat. Just sitting there.

  Kuris spoke first. “Listen, Alex, I didn’t have time to go get the fifties. Why don’t you come with me and we can go get them?”

  Forget it. Not happening. Never get into his car. A few years later in Philadelphia, Bureau UC Chuck Reed would die for violating that cardinal rule of survival. I related that tragedy. “No way. I’m not leaving the Jeep here.”

  “Okay, okay, no problem, just follow me.”

  “Follow you where?”

  “Williamsburg.”

  Then he was back in his car, pulling out. The car with the two UNSUBs (BuSpeak for Unknown Subjects) started to move. I pulled up behind Kuris.

  I barked to Alicia, “Try and call Vicki.”

  No luck.

  “If anybody is picking us up on the transmitter, flash your lights.”

  No flashing headlights.

  The Williamsburg of the mid-nineties wasn’t the reclaimed, gentrified, yuppified neighborhood of artists and coffeehouses. It ranked with Bed-Stuy and East New York for an astronomical homicide rate and all variety of violent crime. Were we headed to the source of the counterfeit currency? Or were we en route, alone, with $10,000 cash—real money, not fake—to a heavily armed reception committee? Alicia was silent. If she had any reservations, she would keep them to herself, but she knew another of my cardinal UC rules: Never let the subject dictate the time and place for a meet. She also knew that six years earlier, UC Everett Hatcher of the Drug Enforcement Agency had been murdered after responding to a beep calling for a meet “right now.”

  So what was I doing? I was on the verge of violating a cardinal rule, that’s what I was doing. Moving slowly along the narrow, twisting streets of Lower Manhattan, we approached the Williamsburg Bridge and the point of no return. The traffic light turned red. I shifted the Jeep into park, opened the door, and strode up to Kuris, sitting at the wheel waiting for the red ball to turn.

  “Hey, Kuris, I’m going back to where we met. I’ll wait for you to bring the bills.”

  “Come on, Alex, it’ll take two hours, then I’ve got to go back and forth, and it’s going to be rush hour. You can just get them now and it’s over.”

  “I’m not going to Williamsburg. Look, Kuris, I trust you. You’re my friend. But I don’t know who these guys are, and I don’t trust people I don’t know.”

  The other vehicle was clearly also following. I gestured at them. Kuris smiled, said nothing.

  “If you want this to go down, you’ll have to bring me the bills back by East Houston. I’ll wait for an hour and a half, then I’m gone.”

  I got back in the Jeep. Cardinal rule reinstated. The light turned, Kuris continued straight through the intersection and onto the bridge, I turned right and drove back to our original spot. In the passenger seat, Alicia was visibly relieved. Meanwhile, the Secret Service guys (as I learned later) were not visibly relieved. Instead, they were visibly annoyed. At the post-op debrief, they argued that they’d had me in sight and already had cars crossing the bridge. They were on the verge of finding the source of the fifties. Maybe, I replied. Or maybe they were on the verge of a serious firefight with a Dominican street gang looking for easy pickings on the other side, and two out-of-contact FBI UCs caught in the middle. No, thanks.

  Within a couple of hours, after a beep to let me know he was on his way—please don’t leave, Alex (he did actually say “please”—very surprising)—Kuris returned, alone now, with the bills. He knew I would be pissed by the delays. Had I left, he would have been in an awkward spot with the counterfeiters waiting for their money. We traded our stacks of bills and went our separate ways.

  And while it took a little more work, the Secret Service found the source, and at no additional and unwarranted risk. Carefully surveilling Kuris after the next two or three buys, they eventually succeeded in identifying his suppliers in Brooklyn and finding their lair. The next step would be a large-scale buy, one large enough to virtually guarantee that the suppliers would be on hand when their middleman, Kuris, returned with the real cash. Or the suppliers might even be somewhere close by to the actual transaction to make sure Kuris didn’t have a change of heart about parting with such a tidy sum. And it would be a tidy sum indeed, $100,000 in real USD (“D” as in dollars, Secret Service lingo, of which I’m sure they have more than enough, like the Bu). It would buy one million USD, in queer fifties—significantly enhancing the charges that would be filed by the prosecutors.

  For a buy of this size, the Bureau (or in this case, the Secret Service) will usually provide “show money.” Which, as the name implies, is to be used for that purpose only. It is not intended to “walk.” The meet will be a “buy-bust,” with no chance that the money is lost. Even concluding the buy and letting the subjects drive two blocks before they’re arrested, thus giving the UC time to drive away and establish plausible deniability (The cops showed up! Thank God I was already gone!) is against the rules. At no time is the real money out of the UC’s control.

  So on a beautiful April afternoon, Alicia and I and a knapsack full of $100,000 cash were en route to the same Lower East Side location in my red Cherokee. The Jeep was virtually bristling with weapons. I carried a concealment fanny pack designed for large caliber pistols, a recent acquisition from Guardian Leather, manufacturer of my
gift to Alicia (purchased with BuMoney), the pistol-concealing purse. I also carried my “ballistic portfolio,” this UC’s all-purpose accessory: the sturdy black high-grade nylon portfolio, whose straightforward design made it suitable for both an upscale office and the mean streets. As noted, it featured a level three (virtually impenetrable) bulletproof panel, a Velcro seam concealing a Sig Sauer 9mm loaded with sixteen rounds. In my fanny pack was my Bureau-issued 10mm. It carried only ten rounds (the bullets were so large the magazine had to be single-stacked and thus had a limited capacity), but it was an awesome instrument capable of devastating effect. (I was disappointed when the Bu abandoned it in favor of the new .40 caliber.) The flip-up console between the Jeep’s front seats held my old Walther PPK. Alicia carried a 9mm in her Guardian Leather purse, and she had another pistol within easy reach in the glove compartment. And on the rear seat, covered and concealed by a blanket, was an old-fashioned bulletproof vest.

  As we drove under the girders of the elevated FDR Drive, passing Dumpsters and abandoned automobile remains, all was quiet … until we heard the peremptory bleep of a siren and a flashing red light appeared in the rearview mirror. What the—! I came to a stop—no need to pull over, there were no other cars in sight—and a uniformed officer approached, his partner standing by their radio car keeping watch. Observing me and my long ponytail driving a nice car and with a more attractive companion than he was ever likely to run across, he was instantly unfriendly. With all the hardware in the car, I didn’t want to start off this encounter as Alex. If the situation escalated, it would be impossible to then convince the two uniforms that I was not a hoodlum, but rather blah blah blah …

  “Hey, officer, sorry to put you to any bother, we’re both undercovers, Bureau undercovers, and we’re on our way to a meet.”

  “This is a one-way street. Can I see some ID?” I reacted with barely controlled total disbelief. This underpass was a “street”? I did have my Marc Ruskin creds with me. In the glove compartment. And I should note that BuPolicy prohibits simultaneously carrying the undercover ID and the true ID. Which makes sense in a deep-cover scenario, but the policy can be significantly counterproductive, and even perilous, in routine UC operations. UCs with weapons but without the FBI creds would routinely be subject to the risks and aggravation of being arrested by local police. So was I violating policy, holding both in this scene below the FDR Drive? Well …

  “Nope,” I replied.

  “I’ve got it.” Alicia pulled her creds from her purse, handed them to me, and I showed them to the cop. He looked, scowling, more angry now. Probably getting more irritated as he realized that he was about to lose a potential collar—this sleazebag in the sweet Cherokee must be doing something illegal. He reached out for the ID.

  “Afraid I can’t let go of these. Against the rules.” This was not what he was expecting. He was fairly young, and fairly short, and no doubt did not enjoy being looked down on by the UC in the SUV with the gelled hair.

  “Who are you going to meet with? Where?” Where was this going?

  “Afraid I can’t tell you.” The clock was ticking, and these cops didn’t seem about to let this go. Speaking for the sake of the transmitter, I said:

  “Can someone drive up and explain to these guys what’s going on?”

  “Who are you talking to?” asks Short Cop, angrily.

  Before I could answer, two G-Rides screeched to a stop, one by the radio car, one by our interlocutor. The Secret Service case agent barked at the cop, who then gave me an I’ll-see-you-again look, and they were gone.

  A short fifteen minutes later, the Jeep was back at our usual spot, on the left side of the narrow street, facing the intersection at East Houston, about five car-lengths back, when Kuris and Paco arrived together. Kuris passed us slowly, continued toward the intersection, then pulled up on the right and parked. He strode rapidly to the Jeep, but Paco stayed by their car, jumpy, pacing back and forth.

  Before my old lady Alice had time to move to her customary backseat backup position, Kuris had opened the rear door and taken his seat in that location, which was bad enough, but he was also sitting on the body-armor. He carried a satchel. My backpack full of cash was in the footwell between Alicia and the console. I opened it and showed the contents to Kuris, who beamed and handed me the satchel. Full of fifties.

  “Do I need to count this?”

  Kuris made a what-are-you-talking-about face, and I smiled.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  We talked about future business. More counterfeiting, guns, DMV stuff. It goes without saying that I was not very comfortable with Kuris sitting directly behind me, particularly in view of what was about to happen, but there was nothing I could do about that now.

  The transmitters were working that day. My code for the Secret Service guys to initiate the arrests was:

  “See you when we get back from Miami.”

  Which I said. Instantly, the scene exploded with sirens, G-Rides, and BuCars speeding up from all directions and screeching to a stop, red balls flashing. In all, the backup force numbered about twenty FBI and Secret Service agents. On the street, Paco froze and was no problem. Kuris jumped out of the car (to my relief) and ran, though not far. Agents grabbed him. Other agents yanked me and Alicia out of the Jeep, pushed us onto the hood and made a show of yelling and fumbling with cuffs. As I had specifically instructed in the pre-arrest conference, we were not to be cuffed until after Kuris and Paco were secured. The last thing I wanted was for a firefight to break out with me and Alicia scurrying for cover with our hands cuffed behind our backs. (This is a good example of the kind of detail the UC is responsible for making clear beforehand to any and all backup and surveillance teams.)

  Federal arrestees are always transported one per car, with one agent seated directly behind the driver, and the subject, hands cuffed behind his back, seated in the right-rear seat (not behind the driver). A third agent in the front passenger seat is optional. Two NYPD detectives had been killed a few years earlier when the arrestee sitting alone in the backseat strangled the driver with his handcuffs chain. The car immediately careened off the Grand Central Parkway and crashed into the guardrail. The arrestee disarmed the second detective and emptied the revolver. Yes, the detectives had cuffed him with his arms in front, not behind his back, in violation of policy and common sense. But he’d been so polite and cooperative.

  As Kuris was driven away for processing, the driver explained to the other agent—for Kuris’s ears, of course—that “the Cuban and his girlfriend” were being taken directly to court for extradition to Florida on fugitive warrants. Thus accounting for our absence and preserving our cover.

  Kuris’s eventual comeuppance was particularly sweet. Over time, he had grown more conversational, aiming in part to impress Alex Perez, that ruthless Miami expat with the sexy moll usually by his side. As it turned out, he had talked much too much for his own good, with repercussions beyond what I could have imagined. The damaging (for him) conversation was in his so-called office about four months before his arrest, when Kuris went off on “faggots and queers.” As Marc Ruskin, I don’t countenance such bigotry, but as Alex Perez I had to. No choice. My role required that I demonstrate as often as possible common values with my subjects in order to maintain trust. Every culture and subculture has its own markers, if you will, its own rules for inclusion and exclusion. Every culture also deals in stereotypes regarding the markers of all the other cultures and subcultures. These are facts of life, and in the UC world, we don’t have the luxury of taking the high road. The truth is, we use these stereotypes. We have to. Make the wrong first impression, and there will never be a second meet, there will never be a second chance. Perhaps this sounds politically incorrect, but for UC ops, especially, ethnicity must always be considered for purposes of developing a successful scenario. (The new federal guidelines regarding the profiling of targets for investigation in the first place are a different matter entirely.) An example is the BLUE SCORE st
ing, discussed at length in a later chapter, in which a black UC intentionally answers the phone call with “Yo!” Our man knew the caller was one of the targets in that sting—a police detective—and we thought that detective probably expected and needed to hear the stock, clichéd black slanguage, and our UC was going to give it to him. Just one word, but an important one, as we will see.

  Individuals have their markers, and UC operatives take advantage of them. Kuris’s homophobic rant was a golden opportunity to do just that, so I made myself complicit: I agreed with him. I identified one of his markers and then mirrored it back to him. If I had allowed Marc Ruskin into the exchange and challenged Kuris’s bigotry—well, nothing blows trust more quickly than an ill-timed cultural faux pas that doesn’t account for what people are expecting to see and hear.

  However, instead of verbalizing that agreement I just smirked and nodded my head in silent but vigorous assent. Alicia, who was also present, and knew the drill, smiled and chuckled quietly. The “drill” reflected a hard-learned lesson in the UC trade—any taped conversation has two audiences: the one in the present and the potential one in the future, that is, the jury. Even if jurors have been told (and they should have been told) that I’m playing the macho role with a macho target, my in-character references to, say, a particularly shapely young lady passing by might not go down well with some jurors. I made that kind of mistake once or twice and thereby made otherwise good recordings aggravating for the AUSA prosecutors (not that I minded aggravating the AUSAs when I thought it appropriate, but I didn’t go out of my way to do so). A tape doesn’t record hand gestures and facial expressions, and I learned that nonverbal communication could often serve the purpose when on the street, without tainting the recording. When lounging with a few runners in the park by the Yonkers DMV when that particularly shapely young lady passes by, I would outline an hourglass with my hands. Julio, Carlos, others might laugh, make some crude remarks, but I would just smile. To future listeners—other agents, prosecutors, managers, finders of fact, judges—Alex had simply been present, an observer.