by Tommy Dades
Tommy was incredulous. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “We got Vecchione. He’s got more experience than anybody in state court. If that’s your reason, then we don’t need him.”
Oldham persisted. Feldman just didn’t have the time to focus on this investigation, particularly in the early stages. If any legal work had to be done on the federal level, Henoch could take care of it right away. He could save everybody a lot of time. So Robert Henoch joined the team. And as time passed, Dades began to appreciate Henoch’s tenacity, and the two men became friends.
Ponzi assigned two additional detectives from Joe Hynes’s office, Robert “Bobby I” Intartaglia and Doug Le Vien. Bobby I had retired from the NYPD after twenty-eight years and had been with the DA’s office for nine years. Like the other detectives on the team, Intartaglia had known most of the wiseguys in this case for almost two decades. In the 1980s he’d spent several years investigating a burglary crew known as the Bypass Gang, which specialized in bypassing alarm systems to rob banks and jewelry stores. That was a particularly frustrating investigation; it seemed like every time he got close to making a solid case something went wrong. In October 1987, his key informant, a member of the crew named John “Otto” Heidel, had been murdered. A year later his second informant, Dominick Costa, was shot five times in front of his own house but miraculously survived. Robberies that the squad had been tipped off about were canceled for no apparent reason at the last minute. Meets that had been scheduled didn’t take place. After a while it became obvious to Bobby I that his investigation had been compromised. The worst fear of a good cop had come true: The mob had a source deep inside the NYPD. Bobby I launched an internal investigation, but he was never able to find the leak. To keep the Bypass Gang investigation alive he changed his procedures: He stopped talking about the case on department telephones, he limited his communications to a small group, and he carefully protected his paperwork. It took him almost six years, but eventually he put nineteen members of the Bypass Gang in prison.
He was thrilled when Vecchione told him about the mob cops investigation and asked him to join the task force. As Bobby I began reviewing the progress they’d made, a lot of old questions suddenly had new answers. As a member of the Major Case Squad, Detective Steve Caracappa had had access to all of Intartaglia’s paperwork in the Bypass Gang investigation. It was obvious now. Caracappa was the mole, the spy, the bastard. The skell. Now it was Intartaglia’s chance to get even.
Doug Le Vien, a special assistant to Hynes, had a storied career in the NYPD. In the 1970s he’d successfully worked undercover, posing as a corrupt cop to infiltrate the Luccheses. He’d then served on the President’s Commission on Organized Crime before joining Hynes’s office. Le Vien and Vecchione went all the way back to the old neighborhood in Brooklyn, where they had been classmates in grammar school. Coincidentally, decades later, as both men struggled through difficult divorces, they worked in adjoining offices. They ended up spending a lot of time together, drinking and talking about their divorces and divorce lawyers, which caused them to drink even more. They even traveled together to Italy as part of a group of single men who rented a villa in Bologna. When Vecchione was putting together the task force, Le Vien was an obvious choice. It was a spot for which he had unique qualifications: In the introduction to Mafia Cop, Eppolito’s coauthor, Bob Drury, wrote, “I am forever beholden to Detective (Ret.) Doug Le Vien, the ‘fixer’ who smoothed my research path too many times to recall.” So Le Vien knew the story well, he knew most of the people involved, and he knew this was perhaps the last big case of his long career.
Vecchione also asked one of his assistants, Jim Kilduff, to handle much of the legal paperwork. Kilduff participated in several meetings but eventually left the DA’s office and was replaced by Senior Assistant DA Josh Hanshaft.
On top of the whole pyramid was Brooklyn DA Joe Hynes. When the cold case began heating up Vecchione had laid it out for his boss. Charles Hynes, who had hired Vecchione in 1992—and three months later made him Chief of the Homicide Bureau, the job he held until becoming Chief of Rackets in 2001—was known for giving people he trusted a long rope, and he gave Vecchione permission to stretch it out as long as necessary.
Almost nine months had passed since Betty Hydell had told Tommy Dades she could identify Eppolito and Caracappa. The team of veteran investigators was in place, the paperwork was beginning to pile up, they had the scent—and if they all did their jobs and had a little luck, they were going to break the biggest scandal in NYPD history.
CHAPTER 6
The task force met in secret in a conference room just outside Vecchione’s office. Unlike the lavish meeting rooms of private industry, with highly polished mahogany tables and comfortable high-backed chairs, warm lighting, carefully chosen art on the walls, and all the amenities of power looking out over the grandeur of the city, this room was strictly government-issue. Eight unmatched metal chairs that had been pulled from other offices were scattered around a white coffee-stained faux-Formica rectangular table in the bright, fluorescently lit windowless room. The white walls were bare. It was a space for work.
As Dades glanced around the conference room that first morning he took a long and deep breath. Here we go again, he thought. It had been almost ten years since he and DEA agent Eric Stangbey had put together an officially unauthorized task force consisting of gung-ho federal drug busters and dedicated New York City cops. Dades and Stangbey just happened to meet one day, found they liked each other and had much in common, and decided to work together. Just that simple. What made their plan work was the enthusiastic cooperation of their bosses. In particular, U.S. Attorney Jim Walden had been unusually supportive. Normally a U.S. Attorney doesn’t deal directly with city cops—but Dades and Walden worked together almost daily for five years. The team solved several murders and put forty members of the Lucchese crime family behind steel, and Dades ended up with a wall full of plaques and commendations given to him by the FBI, the DEA, and the U.S. Attorney, Eastern District.
Most often, though, combined agency task forces don’t work. But the Mafia cops team was a real odd one because of the way it had been banged together. No one remembered anything quite like it; it consisted of a city detective, investigators and attorneys from the Brooklyn DA’s office, and investigators and at least one attorney from the federal prosecutor’s office. There were a lot of people with significant accomplishments—and sizable egos—in that room. Tommy knew the investigation could go very well—but if a turf war broke out it also could fall apart pretty quickly.
Certainly Mark Feldman was a key player. Tommy liked Feldman, and he trusted him, but Feldman wasn’t Jim Walden. He played much more by the rules. And unlike Walden, who settled any agency disputes right down the middle, if people started angling for power Dades knew which way Feldman was going to fall—and it wasn’t in his direction.
The first meeting started well enough. There was unanimous agreement that the task force would focus on the Jimmy Hydell murder. And everybody understood the importance of secrecy. They were about ten minutes in when things started falling apart. Dades started asking Henoch what he figured were some pretty simple questions about the way the investigation would proceed: If Burt Kaplan flipped, would they get to talk to him? Could Vecchione put him in front of a grand jury?
Simple questions, but Henoch was noncommittal, saying, “Well, I don’t really have the power to make that decision.”
Dades was furious. He had worked with the U.S. Attorney’s office more often than he’d worked with the Brooklyn DA, yet Henoch was treating him like some inexperienced kid. “Listen to me, there’s no fucking way you were sent here by Feldman without having discussed that. It had to be discussed.”
Henoch repeated his answer. Dades persisted and finally exploded. “If you can’t answer a fucking question,” he yelled, “what the hell are you here for?”
Ponzi glared at Dades. His meaning was clear: Don’t start.
Henoch said
evenly, “We’re here to set the up the guidelines on how this investigation is going to proceed.”
When Tommy began responding, Henoch interrupted him, trying to take control. Vecchione jumped to Tommy’s defense, telling Henoch, “Just hold on. Let me tell you what the story is.” Vecchione backed up Dades completely. “We’ve got a deal with Feldman,” he explained. “We’re going to get this case first and then if you can do anything with it you’re going to go after us.”
Henoch grimaced, telling Vecchione, “I don’t know anything about that. Maybe that’s the deal you have with Feldman, but nobody told me anything…”
Tommy threw up his hands. “Oh man, this is bullshit! I’m fucking useless here.” He walked out of the room.
Ponzi went after him and grabbed him in the hallway. “What is wrong with you, Tommy?” he asked. “What was that all about?”
“Don’t you see what they’re doing, Joe?” Tommy responded. “They’re jerking us off. We’re gonna spend more time arguing over who, what, when, and where with the people who’re supposed to be our partners than we will investigating the case.”
“Oh, c’mon, Tommy, he’s just—”
“I’m telling you, Joe, they’re gonna try to take the whole boat away from us. They got Kaplan and Casso and they’re not going let us talk to them. If they can make a RICO out of this they’re not going to let us do anything. You watch.”
Ponzi was adamant that wasn’t going to happen. “C’mon, Tommy, we got a deal with Feldman,” he said firmly. “He’s my friend. I can’t imagine him going back on his word. I’m telling you, just give this a little time. We’re not even near Kaplan yet. When we get to the point we need him, I’m sure things are going to work out.”
Dades didn’t agree. With people starting to stake out jurisdiction in the first minutes of the first meeting, he didn’t see how the situation was going to get much better.
Vecchione was a realist. He was certain the Feds would instantly grab the case if possible, but he just didn’t think it would be possible. “Look at it like this, Tommy,” he said. “Right now Feldman can’t make any kind of case. Gaspipe and all the wiseguys Eppolito and Caracappa worked with are gone. And both of those guys are retired out in Vegas, so they don’t have access to information that anybody cares about anymore. They’ve got nothing to sell and nobody to sell it to. Unless they’ve been incredibly stupid—and I don’t think these guys lasted so long by being stupid—it’s going to be really difficult for Feldman to show a continuing conspiracy. If he can’t prove that they’re still doing bad things he’s time-barred; there’s a five-year statute of limitations on a RICO charge and there’s no way he can make that. So Kaplan’s got no value to him. If the old man changes his mind, Feldman’ll have to give him to us. What else is he gonna do with him?”
Twenty years as a New York City cop had taught Dades several very important lessons about dealing with the federal government: The first one was that the Feds always win. Always. The media stories about the competition between local police forces and government agencies were generally accurate. The Feds had a habit of marching in and taking over. Whatever has to be done for them to get what they want somehow gets done. Promises don’t get kept. Lies get told. Which led to the second lesson: You couldn’t believe what they told you. The Feds owned Casso and Kaplan. They weren’t going to give up access to them without extracting some type of payment. Knowing that, he responded to Vecchione, with very little confidence, “I hope you’re right.”
The way Tommy figured it, some Feds were better than others. As long as he had to work with them, in this investigation he much preferred that the DEA be the lead agency rather than the FBI. “Lead agency” was a relatively important designation. The lead agency gets to call the shots. The lead agency is the core of the operation; everybody reports to them and they get to make most of the decisions. Dades thought it was only fair that the DEA get the lead position because they had originally locked up Kaplan. They had extensive knowledge about the whole case. And he already had a good working relationship with several of the DEA agents who had been involved in Kaplan’s case; while there were several FBI agents he had loved working with—Matt Tormey, Gary Pontecorvo, and Jimmy DeStefano, for example—there were others he’d worked with previously and didn’t want to work with again.
Mark Feldman, who would designate the lead federal agency, was known to favor the FBI. Dades asked him specifically to keep them out of it, pointing out that the FBI had a reputation for jumping into a case, doing as little as possible, and then taking credit for all the success. “These guys on the Lucchese squad don’t know this case,” he said. “[DEA agent] Frank Drew was the one who put Kaplan away. If anybody deserves the right to run this from your side, it’s the DEA.”
This wasn’t the usual kind of DEA operation. Technically, it wasn’t even a drug case. Feldman tried to reassure Dades that the FBI would commit the necessary resources. “Honestly, Tommy, you don’t need worry about it. It’ll work out.”
Dades argued that in addition to Kaplan the DEA had a legitimate stake in the case. Several agency drug investigations had been compromised. Their informers had been whacked.
Feldman and Dades had been friends for ten years. They’d worked together often enough for Feldman to know that Dades could be as persistent—and as irritating—as a summer cough. Finally, he suggested a compromise. It’s impossible to know his reasoning; maybe he still believed the case was a long shot or maybe he’d bought Dades’s argument. He told Dades that if the DEA guaranteed 100 percent dedication to the case, he’d allow them to take the lead. But they had to guarantee dedication and cooperation.
Dades had his deal—now all he had to do was convince the DEA to accept it. None of the agents with whom he’d previously worked were in the kind of management position to make that decision. The natural choice was John Peluso, the assistant special agent in charge of the DEA’s Manhattan office. Peluso was a well-respected veteran of the South American drug wars, but Dades believed he was the wrong choice for this job. He told Vecchione, “Peluso don’t know the difference between a wiseguy and a Jamaican posse.”
Instead, he reached out to DEA agent Timmy Moran, who was working in Las Vegas. Moran flew to New York to meet with Mark Feldman. Dades picked him up at the airport, drove him to the meeting, and then drove him right back. Moran was in New York long enough to agree that the DEA would dedicate its complete resources to the operation. Timmy Moran became the face of the DEA, returning to Vegas to begin taking a good long look at Eppolito and Caracappa.
Moran learned almost immediately that the two cops had forged some good contacts within the Las Vegas Police Department. He didn’t know who they knew or how well they knew them. He didn’t know which Vegas cops could be trusted with confidential information. So he warned Dades that if the team in New York intended to keep the investigation secret they had to stay far away from the LVPD.
Timmy Moran did something else: He took a leisurely drive past Eppolito’s house one afternoon just to look the place over. It was basic procedure, the kind of thing any good cop would do at the beginning of an investigation. Get to know your subjects. Moran noted there were several cars in Eppolito’s driveway and wrote down the license plates. When he got back to his office he ran the plates through the DEA’s computer system. All standard stuff. You just never know.
Minutes after getting the results he called Dades and said, “You’re not gonna believe this one, Tommy.”
Tommy was sitting at his desk in the Intel Division. His retirement papers had already been filed and he had only a few weeks left in his NYPD career. He’d already started cleaning out his desk. “What ya got?”
A slow drive past Eppolito’s house, a license plate number in a computer, and just like that the entire investigation got turned upside down. “There was a car in Eppolito’s driveway when I went by there,” Moran told him. “When I ran the plate bells started ringing. You ready for this? The car belongs to a member o
f the Cali cartel.”
Dades took a long, deep breath. Eppolito was still in business.
The Cali, Colombia, drug cartel was the major leagues of drug operations. The DEA originally had been pulled into this investigation by Dades, as much to keep the FBI from grabbing control as to put two dirty cops in prison. But this discovery changed everything. For the DEA this was no longer just about Eppolito and Caracappa; this was a pretty good indication that the Cali cartel was operating in Vegas. Almost immediately Moran and the FBI began setting up a major undercover operation.
The bureau recruited fifty-nine-year-old Steven T. Corso Jr. to try to get close to Eppolito. Corso was kind of a strange choice to be dropped into the middle of a major criminal investigation. He had been a partner in a prestigious New York accounting firm until 2002, when he’d been caught by the FBI with his whole arm in the till. Corso turned out to be a degenerate gambler, and to support his habit he’d stolen more than $5 million from his clients. Corso’s only shot at getting out from under was to roll over. Rather than go to prison, he’d agreed to work as a confidential witness for the bureau under federal protection. The FBI had planted him in Las Vegas, where he’d opened an accounting office and became known around town as a guy who knew how to make numbers jump. That proved to be the perfect bait for wiseguy types who were looking for an edge. Few of those tough guys believed a certified public accountant would have the cojones to wear a wire for the FBI and DEA against legitimate mobsters. The IRS? Okay, maybe that was believable.
It turned out Corso was a natural. In fact, he had just finished participating in an FBI investigation of the boxing industry, in particular the operation of promoter Bob Arum, when he was approached by the DEA. The plan was irresistible. Corso would befriend Eppolito and eventually offer to sell his screenplays to rich investors. It was artistic justice: Eppolito had scammed women into paying him to write screenplays by promising to get the movies produced; now the government was going to try to get Eppolito by proposing to get those same screenplays produced.
