But the linchpin of Rather’s plan was his intention to make use of the state’s conspiracy statutes, something he had discussed at length with Arsenault. Dugan had never heard of them. Rather explained that conspiracy laws, like the federal racketeering statutes known as RICO, allowed prosecutors to indict suspects strictly on the basis of their membership in a criminal organization. Defendants are normally tried for the commission of discrete, so-called substantive crimes—murder, assault, the sale or possession of drugs—and the evidence used to convict them must relate to those specific acts. But to obtain a conspiracy conviction against a member of the Cowboys, Rather needed only to prove that he had knowingly furthered the interests of the gang’s drug operation—say, by loaning them a car, or buying the vials they used to package their crack, or paying the utility bill for one of their stash houses.
Dugan immediately saw the advantage in investigating and prosecuting that kind of case. It would be far easier to implicate the top-level Cowboys who insulated themselves from the gang’s illegal activities and never touched the drugs or money or tied themselves to their enforcers. And the stiff penalties carried by a conspiracy conviction would give him leverage in “flipping” low-level gang members, arrested for otherwise minor crimes. But the best part of Rather’s legal strategy was already familiar to him.
For years Dugan had been doing conspiracy-style investigations. Like the best detectives, he was an obsessive gatherer of information. He looked at a suspect’s bank account, the cars he drove, where he’d been ticketed, the restaurants and clubs he patronized, his associates, whom he’d called when he’d been arrested, what schools he’d attended—the kind of information that might lead him to an informant and help him solve a case, but was often inadmissible in a courtroom. Suddenly, he realized, those details were not only relevant but vital to a prosecutor trying to demonstrate to a jury the existence and structure of a criminal organization, how it formed and operated. In the space of an hour’s conversation, Rather had turned Dugan’s investigative dross into evidentiary gold.
At the first meeting, Rather was somewhat vague about the details of HIU’s plan. He had little idea of the size of the gang, guessing there were somewhere between fifteen and twenty members. Nor did he know all the principals or their relations. But the underlying assumptions to his approach got Dugan’s attention. Homicide detectives rarely worked with their counterparts in Narcotics, partly for bureaucratic reasons, but also because Homicide looked down on Narcotics. The Department had recently begun making drug investigators detectives after eighteen months’ service, as a way of inducing officers into dangerous undercover work. Veteran detectives who’d waited ten and fifteen years for their gold shield felt that their new colleagues were underqualified, and shunned them. More unprecedented in Dugan’s eyes, however, was the idea of lumping Manhattan and Bronx cases together in the same indictment. Cops from different boroughs occasionally shared information, but there was no mechanism, no formal protocol—except under extraordinary circumstances—for co-authoring investigations within the Police Department. Yet Rather seemed confident that HIU could assemble the necessary task force and that Manhattan would take the lead position.
When Dugan left HIU with Dimuro, his head was spinning. Rather had turned his skepticism into optimism and given his investigation a new sense of direction. He felt the pressure to make arrests lifted; now he could take a step back and encompass a “broader view of the situation.” What’s more, he liked Rather personally. He seemed very sharp and attentive. Perhaps most important, he shared Dugan’s enthusiasm for the case.
THE CARGILLS also liked Rather. He had called them to brief them on their son’s case, and they drove down to HIU with their eldest daughter one afternoon in early February. Innes had been in Boston the night before on business, had downed a bottle of scotch before getting a few hours of fitful sleep, then risen at 4 A.M. so he could put in a morning’s work at his office in Tarrytown. Now tired and hungover, he listened to Rather as he described the gang he thought was responsible for David’s murder and recited the names of the men who may have taken part in the shooting—Sepulveda, Polanco, Platano. Cargill couldn’t grasp what Rather was telling him; it just seemed surreal. What possible connection could men like these have with their lives, with their son’s life?
Later Arsenault and Quinn joined them and explained HIU to the family and how they intended to proceed. Anne, still abusing pills and alcohol, seemed in a state of shock; at one point she told Arsenault that she had to stop herself sometimes in the morning from walking upstairs to wake David up. “It was one of the most emotionally draining nights,” Arsenault recalled. “We’re used to family members who won’t even come in, or when they do, they want to know: When am I going to get my car back? When am I going to get the gold out of his teeth? When we have legit people in, it’s easy to get crushed by the weight of the tragedy. I told Terry: Thank God not all the victims’ families are like this, it’s just too heart-wrenching.”
A WEEK LATER, Dugan and Dimuro, at the insistence of their captain, set out to interview Lenny Sepulveda, the head of the Cowboys, at Ogdensburg State Prison in northern New York, where he was serving out a year’s sentence for gun possession. Dugan was not happy about the interview. The division captain had wanted them to rattle Lenny’s cage, perhaps hoping for a quick resolution of the case. But from the little Dugan knew of Lenny—he still recalled the terrified expression in Platano’s eyes as he informed on his boss—he didn’t expect to get much. Against Platano they’d had leverage. They had nothing on Lenny, other than Platano’s exculpatory statement and some sketchy, conflicting FBI reports. Besides, Platano was an enforcer. Lenny was the boss of a big, complex organization: he wasn’t likely to break under questioning. It would be an eight-hour drive for nothing.
Dugan and Dimuro’s real concern, however, was that talking to Lenny was premature, a strategic mistake. They could tip off Lenny to the leads they were pursuing, and unwittingly expose weaknesses in their case. But despite Dugan’s agreement to share information with Rather, Cargill was still a police case, and Dugan had little choice other than to obey his senior officer.
AT THE PRISON, the guard showed them to an eight-by-eight-foot cubicle off the main area. The room had gray cinder-block walls, a metal table, and three metal armchairs with vinyl cushions. A small window cut into the outer wall gave a view over the roof of one of the cellblocks, a wedge of pale, bright sky. Dugan and Dimuro arranged themselves at either end of the table and set up a chair between them facing away from the window for Lenny.
Dugan’s first impression of Lenny as the gang leader entered the room was physical. A rock-hard heavyweight with a square head and heavy eyebrows that knitted together over penetrating eyes and rugged features, he looked huge. In fact, he seemed bigger than he was. According to arrest records, he was five-eleven, an inch or two smaller than Dugan himself. But Dugan’s impression was not uncommon. Lenny had an aura of intensity and threat that shrank the space around him. People routinely added three and four inches to his height.
Dimuro motioned him to his seat, and made the introductions, identifying Dugan as a detective with Manhattan North Homicide.
“One of the big guys, huh,” Lenny said.
Dugan suppressed a smile. Lenny might not tell the detectives anything, but he wasn’t going to jerk them around either. “What’s this about?” he asked.
“We believe you might be able to help us in some cases we’re working on,” Dugan said.
Lenny paused a moment before responding. “I don’t think I can help you with anything,” he said. “What kind of cases?”
“Homicides.”
“Yeah, I can see that.” Lenny sat back in his chair, his arms folded in front of him. Nonetheless, he seemed interested in what the detectives had to say, a deal maker considering his options.
“We know that you have knowledge about people who have been killed,” Dimuro said.
“What makes you think tha
t I know anything?”
“Some people we’ve already interviewed.”
“Like who?”
“We can’t tell you that,” Dimuro said.
The conversation circled around several times before Dugan, sensing Lenny’s frustration, decided to change tack. He began asking him questions about his background—where he was born, grew up, went to school. Lenny answered minimally without volunteering any extraneous information. He’d been born in the United States; his parents had separated when he was two. He’d lived at several addresses in Washington Heights, finally settling at 640 West 171st Street. He’d attended George Washington High School. He was vague about his friends from the block, and Dugan didn’t press him. By rights, Lenny could have ended the interview anytime he wanted.
“Do you have any children?” Dugan asked him then.
“Yeah, a daughter.”
“Look, Lenny,” he said. “We have evidence against you in a number of cases—we’re not going to divulge which ones. If we develop something big, you may never see your daughter again. You may never see your child again. We know that you have knowledge of certain homicides. And there’s going to come a point in time when it’s too late for you to help yourself.”
A look of unease flickered across Lenny’s face. “What if I do know something?” he asked.
“If you have any knowledge, now is the time to give it to us,” Dugan said. “As we continue with this investigation, we’re going to be speaking with a lot of people. These people may have direct involvement with those cases—and naturally, to exonerate themselves, they’re going to point the finger at you and say that you did it or ordered it. We know that this may not be true. So don’t allow them to get the upper hand.”
Lenny nodded, gazing intently from Dugan to Dimuro. He began to jiggle his leg. “What kind of guarantee could you give me,” he asked, “if I told you something?”
“There are no guarantees,” Dugan said.
Lenny was sitting forward in his chair, his head cupped in his hands, his eyes fixed on Dugan. Then he drew back. “I want to talk to my lawyer first,” he said.
IT WAS nearly dark by the time Dugan and Dimuro emerged from the visitors building. They had spent two hours with Lenny. Neither detective was fooled into thinking Lenny was going to confess to killing Cargill. But Dugan was hopeful Lenny would target his adversaries or the weaker, expendable members of his gang. In fact, they would have to be careful not to become Lenny’s tool, helping him to eliminate his competition. But Dugan was confident any information Lenny gave them would advance their investigation. Each name would lead to several others, and those would lead to still more, each one a potential informant.
As they passed through Ogdensburg and turned in from the river, heading south toward the city, Dugan realized a door had opened and everything had changed. For the last six months he’d been working a homicide, a senseless, tragic one: now, within the last week, his role had expanded dramatically, and he was part of an investigation into a vast conspiracy of crime. He knew he had an enormous drug gang by the tail—he just didn’t know how big it was. The knowledge left him feeling an odd mixture of exhilaration and fatigue. Although he couldn’t know it at the time, these heightened, contrary impulses would in some combination rule his emotions in the years ahead.
WINTER–SPRING 1992
DUGAN RETURNED to the Three-Four from Ogdensburg that evening only to find himself smack in the middle of a new Cowboy-linked murder investigation. The victim, Danny Montilla, was a typical Washington Heights gangster—a big, heavyset 22-year-old Dominican street-hustler. People in the neighborhood called him Madonna because as a kid he had had trouble pronouncing the name of his favorite restaurant, McDonald’s. In the early morning hours of February 2, as Dugan and Dimuro drove upstate to question Lenny, Montilla’s body was found on the side of the West Side Highway near 178th Street, two miles north of where David Cargill had been killed. Montilla had been shot in the head and run over.
Dugan was assigned to assist the precinct detective who caught the case. In the first hours of the investigation, Marlene Sanchez, (a pseudonym), a former girlfriend of Montilla’s, dropped a bombshell on Dugan. She said that Montilla had been with Frankie Cuevas in the Veinte de Mayo, a restaurant in the Heights, just before he was killed.
Could Frankie Cuevas, Dugan wondered, be the dealer Platano claimed was in the car with Lenny the night of the Cargill shooting? “Was Frankie also known as Fat Frankie?” Dugan asked Sanchez. He was, she told him. Frankie not only knew Lenny but had been in business with him for years. Now, however, they were enemies. In fact, Sanchez was convinced Frankie had ordered Montilla killed because although he worked for Frankie, he had also stayed friendly with Lenny and Nelson.
Marlene didn’t know what had caused the rift between Frankie and Lenny, but she was able to fill Dugan in on Frankie’s role in the gang. It turned out that Frankie was not simply an associate of Lenny’s but a major dealer in his own right with an active spot in the Bronx. In fact, she claimed he owned the Veinte de Mayo restaurant in Washington Heights, (in actuality, his brother was the owner). Frankie had his own crew of hired killers, she told Dugan, and ambitious plans to expand—plans clearly in conflict with Lenny’s.
BEFORE Madonna’s murder, Dugan had seen Frankie simply as a witness in the Cargill case. Given what he knew now, he put Frankie near the top of his wanted list. Clearly, Frankie was a prime mover in a simmering gang war.
Drug gangs were constantly fighting, and with no organizing body like the Mafia’s Commission to settle disputes, violence became the final arbiter. The quarrel between the Cowboys and Yellow-Top that led to the Quad murders in the Bronx was but one example of that violence. Earlier that fall, two months before the Quad, George Calderon, a self-styled drug czar who exacted a toll from street dealers throughout the South Bronx, sent a squad of hit men to Beekman Avenue to intimidate the Cowboys, resulting in an extended, Beirut-style firefight embroiling dozens of gunmen from both gangs. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt. But cars all along the block were pockmarked with small-arms fire, and police later recovered hundreds of shell casings in the street.
Unlike other gang wars, however, the rift between Lenny and Frankie involved the breakup of partners. The war that unfolded promised to be vicious and protracted.
Going over Cuevas’ rap sheet, Dugan discovered that Frankie had been convicted on assault charges when he was 19 and sent to state prison for nine years. And he learned from Sanchez that Cuevas’ drug business was centered at the Bronx intersection of Watson and Manor avenues, the heavily trafficked corner that Dugan had observed just days before when he scoped out the block where Platano’s girlfriend’s family lived.
Using the Cargill investigation as a lever, Dugan next began a preliminary investigation of Raymond Polanco, reputedly the third man in the Cargill murder car. What he discovered was a killer no less violent than Platano or Frankie. Crazy Ray, as he was known on the street, was not only a citywide firearms trafficker—supplying guns and grenades to numerous gangs—but the owner of several crack and heroin spots in Brooklyn. Cops in the 84th Precinct, where Polanco lived, told Dugan that Polanco ran the Gowanus projects, a public housing development in southeastern Brooklyn, and was officially a suspect in several murders. Unofficially, they claimed, he had engineered dozens of homicides, and had been shot numerous times himself. In fact, he now walked around with a colostomy bag.
Dugan had no idea where all this information was leading, but his instincts told him to keep digging. He decided to stake out the Veinte de Mayo and the corner of Watson and Manor. In the following week, he spent several long nights tailing Polanco in Brooklyn as he made his rounds of bars, bodegas, and sales spots. It was the kind of surveillance work that is tedious and uneventful, but it yielded important insights into the different groups and their relationships. With the license plate numbers he’d noted, Dugan was able to compile a fuller list of the Cowboy players and associates. By pulling
up their parking tickets, summonses, rap sheets, and photos he discovered their hangouts, their criminal activities, whom they were arrested with, as well as whom they called when they were arrested.
Slowly, a picture began to emerge of three interlocking gangs: Polanco’s gang in Brooklyn, Frankie’s on the corner of Watson and Manor, and the Cowboys, or Red-Top, on Beekman Avenue. Frankie’s and Lenny’s crews seemed to intermix in the 170s in Washington Heights. Polanco had family that lived next door to Cuevas on 174th Street, and a few years back he had been arrested on a rape charge with Daniel “Shorty” Gonzalez, a manager for the Cowboys and an alleged shooter in the Quad. He was also said to be selling guns through Reuben Perez, the Cowboy-connected dealer who operated on the corner of 174th and Audubon. And Platano, Lenny’s top enforcer, was linked to Cuevas’ spot on Watson and Manor through his girlfriend, who hailed from the block.
FEARING THINGS were about to explode, Dugan tried to keep close tabs on Platano, who was back on the street. Dugan had learned from FBI reports that he was planning a trip to Florida in mid-February to sell his white BMW, which he apparently felt was too hot. But Platano seemed to have lost the fear he showed while he was under arrest in New Jersey. He told friends that the police had no hard evidence connecting him to any crimes. He made it clear he intended to keep his court dates in Bergen County on the drug charge. It was his first offense, and he felt that if convicted, he would get a light sentence.
Gangbusters: How a Street-Tough Elite Homicide Unit Took Down New York’s Most Dangerous Gang Page 10
