The Pretender Read online

  Over the next nine months, Kamal and I met with a shifting ensemble of the Genovese guys in Queens, on Long Island, and down in Florida, maybe a dozen times total. One night early in the story, we had dinner with four of them, maybe five, at the classic, old-style baroque Park Side Italian restaurant deep in Corona, Queens, the heart of mob country. This was the new FBI era in which most UC encounters are covered by surveillance, but there was no way we could have any kind of close surveillance in that restaurant without being burned. Everyone in the place was Italian, part of the neighborhood, many of them presumably tight with the family, if not made. A couple of new, square guys sitting alone at a table would never have passed muster. When I went downstairs to the men’s room, one of my new associates escorted me. Then Nicky Gruttadauria joined us at the base of the stairs. He was about sixty, and short, in good shape for his age, exuding Italian bonhomie. As we came back up, he put his arm over my shoulder. We had hit it off right from the beginning, but this was still totally out of character. Then his hand moved up and down by back, the beaming smile never leaving his face. We sat down at the table. Evidently he was now satisfied that I wasn’t wearing a wire, and he had good reason to be. I wasn’t wearing a wire. It would have been foolish to do so. The risk was just too high, given the venue and the fact that Kamal and I were still establishing trust, and we didn’t anticipate any major evidentiary conversations anyway. It was too early for that.

  As we ate pasta, drank our Chianti, talked, and laughed, the thought crossed my mind: these guys have slaughtered other guys (no doubt including snitches, rivals, and worrisome business associates) with baseball bats … I’m over fifty and eligible to retire … what am I doing here? Do I have rocks in my head?

  I didn’t have a car for the TURKEY CLUB meets. I was using a late-model BuCar for routine noncovert getting-around-town (aboveground, at least), and I did not need the hassle of caring after two cars. But no car was no problem, legend-wise, because Daniel was supposed to be out of town most of the time anyway, traveling all over the world on big deals. Sometimes I used a limo to attend a meeting. Uncle Sam could foot that bill. Once I was short of time and needed to meet Kamal and Nicky at the Garden City Hotel in Long Island, which was owned by other mobsters. Case agent Holmes suggested that one of his squad-mates drop me off. In front of the hotel. In his BuCar! No thanks. The agents in that room just didn’t understand why that plan was a patently terrible mistake. In fact, they were wondering what was my problem. So we were off to an inauspicious start. This was my first clue (in what was to become a series) that the first word of the TURKEY CLUB code name might have been unwittingly appropriate for this investigation. The agent ended up dropping me at a nearby coffee shop, which I entered from the rear parking lot. I sat there for twenty minutes sipping espresso and reading the Times, then hailed a cab for the short ride to the hotel where I met Kamal and Nicky, who pulled up in a Jaguar. Also present that day was another key player in the UC op: François, Daniel Martinez’s Canadian connection who was bringing us some merchandise of interest.

  François worked UC for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We had met the night before at a hotel in Manhattan. François was traveling with Jean-Pierre Petit, his “cover agent.” Belying his surname, Jean-Pierre was tall, thin, with shaggy blond hair accenting a good-natured smile and calm demeanor. I learned that all Mountie UCs work in a two-officer team, consisting of a professional full-time UC and a professional full-time cover agent. The cover is always in close proximity to the UC, running interference with the case agent, surveillance team, managers, any and all who might place the interests of the investigation above the safety and well-being of the UC. The cover makes sure that all the necessary gear is provided, handles administrative matters, and is the UC’s lifeline and mother hen. Pretty sweet for the UC, in my estimation, leaving him free to do his job. Score one for the Canadians—though they were still losing the game with me, thanks to the performance of their bureaucracy in the ill-fated SUNBLOCK collaboration. These two fellows had little in common with the Mountie officers I had met during that otherwise very successful op. But this was not a surprise. Covert operators are a subset of whatever organization they belong to, having more in common with each other, even across jurisdictions, than with other members of their home entity. In the eyes of the case agent and management, the UC is simply another investigative tool: the most expensive, resource intensive, and trusted, the most reliable asset in the courtroom—but also the least trusted by much of management. Our hobnobbing with the criminals can’t help but result in some cross-contamination, or so the upper managers believe. Nor are the UCs fully integrated into the squad culture. Most other agents who can’t imagine talking to a drug dealer, mobster, terrorist (other than on the other side of a bolted-down table in a locked interrogation room) often have difficulty comprehending and relating to the UC who appears to easily while away the time of day with the denizens of the dark side. At the Mounties’ hotel, we were old hands (Kamal was not present) at an arcane occupation whose actors were few and far between, spending the evening together, exchanging anecdotes over a room-service dinner—a pleasant and instructive experience.

  The large windows of the grand dining room at the Garden City Hotel overlooked a parking lot. As a sophisticated cosmopolite wearing an elegant blue suit over a dark gray pullover, I thought that eyesore diminished the panache of the place—this wouldn’t happen in France, that’s for sure—but whatever. I didn’t allow it to come between me and Nicky. By this juncture in the investigation I’d been with him quite a few times. We liked each other. Waiting for my Canadian friend, we drank San Pellegrino and chatted about his home in Florida (shared with his very attractive, very young, very blond wife) and his Jaguar (his favorite topics, all three, as I had already ascertained). When my cell rang, on schedule, a brief conversation in French confirmed that my man François would arrive shortly—while also reconfirming my authenticity as a native French speaker. A few minutes later, François’s entry into the dining room was dramatic, as he’s about six four, with wall-to-wall shoulders, a long, jet-black ponytail, dark beard, and piercing blue eyes. His English is thickly accented.

  After minimal pleasantries, I asked François to show Nicky what he had brought us by way of a sample. He casually reached into his jacket, produced a small pouch of rolled burgundy velvet, and handed it across the table. The nearby tables were unoccupied; there was no real concern of prying eyes. Nicky untied the lace and unrolled the velvet on the tabletop. We were looking at a dozen, maybe fifteen glittering diamonds. Also glittering were Nicky’s eyes.

  “No problem,” he said immediately. “I have a jeweler on 47th Street, he can handle them. No matter how hot.”

  François and I had a quick exchange in French and agreed to leave one jewel with Nicky, to show our good faith. François then rolled up the velvet. True to form, the mobster accepted the diamond and didn’t make much of an effort to pick up the tab, small as it was. But Kamal was happy to pay. We were in good shape. Our bona fides were firmly established. The fix was now in.

  For all of five minutes. Then … after shaking hands and making arrangements to call and set up the sale after Nicky had vetted the merchandise with his jeweler, François and I walked out the front door of the Garden City and walked to the parking lot in front. Kamal and Nicky stayed behind in the restaurant. As François started the engine of his covert red Jeep Cherokee (awakening memories of my covert red Jeep Cherokee, from years before), a group of maybe ten earnest-faced, clean-cut young men approached from different directions. Some wore T-shirts and baseball caps, a few carried handi-talkies. What the—! My mother could have ID’d them as some kind of law enforcement or military personnel. In fact, they were our colleagues: the FBI case agent and his squad-mates.

  “How’d it go?” one asked.

  François and I stared in horrified disbelief. This was so pathetic I was embarrassed for the FBI. François immediately bellowed, “DO YOU THEENK MAYBE WE CAN TAL
K ABOUT ZEES SOMEWHERE ELSE?”

  “Oh, gee. Sure. Sorry.” They ran back to their BuCars and drove off to regroup somewhere.

  Had Nicky seen the show from the dining room that overlooked this parking lot? Maybe one of the doormen? Or valet guy? Hey, boss, guess what I just saw? Had Kamal and François and I been burned? We’d know soon enough. As François and I drove off, I bemoaned the state of the new Bureau, specifically the missing street smarts of the new generation of agents who couldn’t shoot straight. This was my first long-term UC role since the start of the new millennium, since 9/11, and after a five-year hiatus from the world of covert ops.

  Or was it just me? As an old-time UC, had I become a bit of a prima donna, adamant that all my operational requirements be met, reasonable or not? During my first Safeguard assessment since my return, back on the examinee’s side of the desk, the psychologist was alarmed. On the standardized test, I had spiked, maxed out, in the “Needs to exercise control” measurement. I called around to full-time UCs who had been continuously operational in the course of my passages through JEH and OCONUS. The feedback was not encouraging. One of them, Zhang Lu Yi, a native Chinese UC with a thick Mandarin accent, said he was now a tech agent and explained, “No way will I do a UC now. These agents won’t listen, they know everything. Learned it from TV. I’m not going to get killed, at this point, for no good reason. Listen to me, come out here to the tech squad, then retire in one piece.” Which was to say, retire, period, as opposed to, say, being dragged off the stage in a body bag.

  Sound advice. Budget issues resulting in a long hiring freeze had produced an unforeseen (at least by me) problem. There was a dearth of mid-career agents. That meant few mid-career UCs and few mid-career case agents, field agents, surveillance agents. The bulk of the twenty-first-century Bureau was made up of old-timers and rookies. And the new generation were patterning themselves after the special agents of Hollywood and the STARZ network, rather than the other way around. For the time being, however, I was stuck. Deeply entrenched as Daniel “Don’t Dare Call Me Danny” Martinez, the refined jewel thief, it would have been impossible to extricate myself from TURKEY CLUB without losing face. I could only mitigate the risks, up to a point. However, I was significantly irked to find myself with hard-case professional assassins on my left, amateurs on my right, all the while holding the hand of a good-natured neophyte UC, full of enthusiasm and still-unrealized talent.

  We got lucky that afternoon. Neither Nicky nor any of the doormen or valet guys had spotted the FBI rubes, so we got away with that dangerous error in the parking lot, but the TURKEY CLUB mistakes piled up. After each one, I called supervisor Kevin White.

  “I’ll talk to them,” he said.

  I’m sure he did, but nothing came of it. Still, the sting progressed, despite everything.

  For the meet with the jeweler who would fence the diamonds, Nicky called Kamal the day before and suggested an address in Manhattan. One block from my mom’s apartment! Why not have the meet at her apartment and save me the trouble of watching over my shoulder for the next twenty years? Kamal, tell him it won’t work. Say that Daniel’s got to meet someone all the way on Wall Street just before. That we’ll all have an expensive lunch in the Financial Center. Explain the situation to Holmes for me. No word back from Kamal. The next morning, late, I got a call from Holmes. Could I help out Kamal with the meet? In an hour—one hour to prepare for a meet with members of the Genovese LCN family. Where? At the original location a block from my mother’s building. I stared at the handset, not certain as to whether to merely hang up, or … Instead, I politely declined. Holmes conceded that he had been informed by Kamal of my problem with that address, but from his tone it was clear to him that I was simply not being a team player.

  From my perspective, it was increasingly clear that for the case agent and his squad-mates, this whole thing was no more real than a film or a video game. As soon as the players were off the set, they no longer existed. They were no longer a threat. The meet with the fence from 47th Street went ahead as planned, without Daniel Martinez, whose absence was of no concern to the other players. Kamal had the diamonds. The fence studied the stones, hemmed and hawed, and all parted company without reaching agreement. With that deal still pending, Kamal and I had told Nicky that we had a volume of cash coming in from various deals and needed to have it laundered through some “legitimate companies” and then taken out of the country. We could work something out, Nicky assured us. The Genovese had an “interest” in the Café by the Sea, a restaurant in Freeport, Long Island. Nicky would bring along Kim Brady Land, the owner. The meet was set for the Garden City Hotel once again, 9:00 p.m.

  In the lobby, Kamal and I were met by two of Nicky’s soldiers. With long black leather coats and greased-back hair, they were unlikely to be mistaken for tourists. As my comfort level with the TURKEY CLUB squad was about zero, I was equipped with a .40 caliber Sig Sauer in my old portfolio, as well as my Glock M27 (the one I had fired in Buenos Aires). The rationale for carrying the portfolio: it contained $15,000 cash for the first laundering transaction. In the unlikely event that Nicky’s men were to pat me down (maybe not so unlikely, after the friendly hug in the restaurant), well … I was carrying a gun. So were they, without a doubt. Their concern would be for a wire, some sign that I might be an informant—fatal—or a UC—probably fatal. (Some traditional La Cosa Nostra mobsters, the bosses in particular, understood that killing a fed would result in catastrophic repercussions.) They didn’t pat me down.

  Earlier in the afternoon, Kamal had been provided with two miniature digital recording devices—the latest thing. With a four-hour capacity, there would be a backup, should the need arise. Resembling a cell-phone battery, they added no risk. Even if found, carrying spare batteries was not uncommon in lower-tech 2005. With Kamal doing the recording, I would be doing the transmitting—and transmitters could now be easily detected by commercially available scanners. Was I being overly cautious to imagine that made members of the Genovese LCN organized crime family, with long experience of FBI intrusions into their business affairs, with long experience with betrayal by trusted colleagues (Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano is one turncoat who comes to mind) might take some inexpensive precautions when dealing with these two relatively recent, non-Sicilian, not-even-Italian acquaintances? No matter, I would wear the damned transmitter. The contact agent handed me the box with the transmitter and extra batteries (real batteries, thank you very much). Kamal got the latest thing, I got a 1970s-era vintage beeper. One of the large ones. One of the cheaper ones, which did not have real beeper functionality—just the series of dashes painted on the display, as I’ve described and derided much earlier in this narrative. With the handy belt clip. Just to make sure that everyone could see that in 2005, cash-rich international jewel thief and fence Daniel Martinez carried not a BlackBerry, for example (they’d come out a couple of years earlier, while the iPhone was still a couple of years in the future), but a pitiful fake beeper with the series of dashes painted on the display.

  It was laugh or cry. I did a bit of both—then took action. At the first opportunity, en route to the hotel, the beeper went into the portfolio. The quality of the transmissions might suffer, but at least it would not be in plain sight. Following the pattern from SUNBLOCK, I was picked up by the Dominican limo driver at 125th Street in Manhattan. (Yes, the same driver used for many of the trips to meet with Gong’s man, Richard, at one of the hotels near LaGuardia.) He was, a good driver, with a sense of humor, and he still did not mind the obviously shifty nature of the passengers we might pick up and drop off in the course of the night, nor the evolving itineraries. Actually, I was more comfortable with my driver than I was with Holmes’s squad-mates on Long Island. At least the driver had no capacity to compromise Daniel’s identity (which he didn’t know) and leave me walking into a lethal reception committee.

  Daniel would be footing the bill that night at the Garden City. The Leather Coats remained in the lobby.
Nicky was already in the living room in one of the luxury suites, drink in hand, when Kamal and I strode in, flush with cash. Kim Land, the restaurant owner, greeted us enthusiastically, with dollar signs almost flashing in his eyes, and why not: a significant infusion of cash was imminent. A few of Nicky’s colleagues sat around the large coffee table, and we shook hands warmly with Fat so-and-so, Crazy whatever, Trigger-happy first-name-ending-in-a “y”—all middle-age men who could have been warming up for a Knights of Columbus lodge dinner. No surprise. They would always be gruffly friendly, in their avuncular style—up to the moment when the mask dropped and the nightmare would begin. (In Goodfellas, the made men are amiably chatting with Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) until one second before the bullet hits the brain.) Kim Land did not appear to be Italian, though I guess his grandparents could have arrived at Ellis Island as the Landinis. Tall, with medium-length curly hair, he had the easy smile and bonhomie that are the prerequisite to the management of a successful restaurant. Kamal and I sat down at the coffee table, sipping the Chianti poured by Nicky, paid for by Daniel, and soon the conversation turned to dollars and cents. I had spent a few days reading up on the restaurant business and had talked to a chef friend, owner of a popular Manhattan eatery. Enough to ask a few probing questions and comment knowledgeably on Land’s responses and claims. The assembled mobsters nodded knowingly, approvingly, and grunted almost on cue. I was making the intended impression: I was nobody’s fool when it came to placing the hard-earned proceeds of my shrewdly successful schemes. A thief like me—of my obvious caliber—had choices. I wouldn’t patronize just any laundromat. I’d be careful. My new friends would have been suspicious if I had not asked such pertinent questions.