The French Connection

by Robin Moore

  The 1st Precinct station house filled a small square block on the river end of the street. It was a dreary greystone structure dating back to the turn of the century, if not earlier. Every room was paneled with dark wood, had high ceilings and faded green plaster, and with the big sparsely furnished assembly room with scarred wooden floors, gave the immediate impression of a police station in the movies of the thirties. On the street level was a waist-high wooden rail fence facing the main doors in front of a tall, massive desk, behind which loomed the head and shoulders of a blue-uniformed sergeant who scanned each entrant with sad eyes as though he had seen everything twice and wished that he didn't have to again. The rest of the main floor, out of view, was sub-divided into patrolmen's lockers, supply rooms, offices, interrogation cubicles and prisoners' cages. A creaky wooden staircase with heavy mahogany banisters led to the precinct detectives' squad rooms and pistol range on the second floor. At the second-floor landing, the finger on a crude black-and-white poster pointed up the stairs: NARCOTICS BUREAU.

  The third-floor landing was almost a twin of the one below. A washroom faced the staircase, flanked by a relatively modern water cooler and cork bulletin boards covered with Wanted sheets, mug shots and artists' sketches of sour-faced fugitives, mimeo-graphed procedural bulletins and, tacked in a corner, handwritten notices of Police Benevolent Association activities or upcoming Communion breakfasts. To the right of this central corridor was a large room —an area, really — partitioned at eye level into rows of small cubicles large enough for one or maybe two desks; half of these were occupied at any one time by trim-looking men mostly in their twenties and thirties. They talked quietly into telephones, or pored over sheaves of typewritten pages, or transcribed handwritten notes into legible reports. Their main traits in common were the stubby .38 revolver each had holstered on his hip and the expressionless face.

  Otherwise, one felt that if they got up and left the building en masse, they would present all the variety of a crowd in a city street. Some dressed in dungarees and leather jackets, some in casual but neat sports outfits, others in jacket-and-tie business suits; several wore the exaggerated costumes of modish "swingers." Some were fair and Anglo-Saxon-looking, some swarthy Latins, a few were Negroes. Haircuts ranged from close-cropped to shaggy and flowing; they were tall, short, lean, husky and portly. Few looked like cops. Many of these men were the Narcotics Bureau's strategic undercover operatives, assigned to move surely along the web of narcotics traffic by passing for spiders themselves. Others were "field" detectives, who stalked the city's pushers and users openly. Some were headquarters personnel.

  Deputy Chief Inspector Carey's office in the far corner was entirely enclosed. It contained a large, worn desk, a bookcase, two windows, one high in the wall, the other looking out over the elevated South Street Viaduct and the piers pointing across the East River to downtown Brooklyn. On one wall just inside the door, where the chief could see it from behind his desk, was a large blackboard charting the current roster of the bureau. And framed four-feet-square against the left-hand wall there was a hand-lettered genealogy of a subculture which no cop publicly admits exists: THE MAFIA (U.S.). Heading one of the subordinate "families" was the name Angelo Tuminaro.

  When the new Police Commissioner, Stephen Kennedy, had brought Ed Carey in to head up the Narcotics Bureau in 1958, the unit appeared to be suffering from a letdown of interest on the part of entrenched department brass. Narcotics did not become a major factor in crime until after World War II; before the war it had been under the jurisdiction of the so-called Vice Squad, along with gambling, prostitution, pornography and similar "social" offenses.

  A special Narcotics Squad had come into being in the late forties when it became obvious that the international Mafia had turned full-scale attention to traffic in drugs as an enormously profitable means of financing not only its myriad illicit enterprises but also its entry into "legitimate" commerce.

  The original Narcotics Squad, later to be renamed Narcotics Bureau, consisted of a couple-of-dozen hand-picked police officers who knew little about the wily intricacies of narcotics smuggling and had to learn by experience.

  The squad grew rapidly in a vain effort to keep pace with the tremendous build-up in the narcotics traffic through New York. The city had become the narcotics centre of the Western Hemisphere: one half or more of all users in the United States were clustered in the Metropolitan area, and perhaps seventy-five to eighty percent of all illicit shipments entered the country through the port and airports of New York.

  By the mid-fifties, the Narcotics Bureau had over two hundred men in the streets, about one percent of the total police force; but theirs was an increasingly discouraging assignment. Appetites of addicts for drugs, and of the underworld for the huge profits, had expanded the traffic beyond effective control by law enforcement agencies. The preventative struggle was bogged down in the time-consuming, often fruitless harassment of street-corner "pushers" and low-level gang "connections" with only a rare windfall that might provide a glimmer of the vital but always elusive sources of supply.

  During the same period, there seemed to be less than general agreement within high police circles as to the extent to which the fearsome rising incidence of crime of all types could be linked significantly with the surge of narcotics traffic. Different commanders held varying theories, with some of the more traditional minded tending to play down specialization in narcotics investigation in favor of tried-and-true tactics of a broad frontal assault on crime. When Carey took charge in 1958 the bureau had been depleted to 164 men. Morale was not high: he found many officers who were discouraged by the seeming futility of their objective. They had lapsed into contenting themselves with a self-limiting "quota" system of arrests; few were exerting any effort or ingenuity beyond minimum performance.

  But Carey had several things going for him in reshaping his new command. For one, he was a favourite of the commissioner, Kennedy, an intellectual but steel-hard administrator who did subscribe to the probability that much new crime, organized and otherwise, was feeding upon narcotics. Kennedy gave Carey complete freedom in the matter of reorganizing his personnel, and in dramatizing to the public the peril with which they were faced.

  The new chief took almost a year to learn his subject and his assignment. He learned to know his men intimately, transferring some out and bringing in others. He began to form and nurture a small cadre of his most purposeful and energetic detectives into an "elite" squad called the Special Investigating Unit, whose unilateral objective henceforth was no longer the routine drug traffic in the streets but the "big" scores, the tracking and smashing of the "higher-ups" — the higher the better.

  Finally, Carey strengthened the local bureau's relations with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The Federals had resources, manpower and equipment that the locals could use to advantage. The New York police had information, contacts and certain legal leeway — such as court-authorized wiretap-ping — that the government agents found useful.

  At least weekly, Chief Carey met with the Federal Regional Director, George Gaffney, to trade reports and strategy.

  With this new vigour and esprit, the drive against narcotics had begun to show strength both in the arrests of important distributors and renewed public awareness of the frightening dimensions of the problem. The police began to receive indications, in fact, that the older-generation Mafia were becoming discouraged with the future of the narcotics business, as the law probed closer to the core of leadership. Word was seeping out that the veteran Dons, many of whom had long since turned substantial outlaw profits into the establishment of their now equally profitable legitimate "cover" businesses, had grown to feel that their ill-gotten respectability was increasingly facing unnecessary jeopardy. Many either were "retiring" their narcotics franchises, turning them over to younger, more reckless "family" members, or liquidating their interests altogether, thus opening their preserves to new management by a new pirate breed of Puerto Ricans and expatriat
e Cubans.

  Because of this continuing changeover, the operation that Detectives Egan and Grosso, along with Agent Waters, had stumbled upon assumed perhaps even greater significance: the key figure, Patsy Fuca, was related to the old boss, Little Angie. If the thing proved to be as big as the police had come to suspect, any major arrests and convictions could possibly enable them to pull the aging, worldwide syndicate fabric apart. Accordingly, for the past four months Chief Carey had granted Egan and Grosso and the S.I.U. team wide latitude, as George Gaffney had also done with his force of Federal agents.

  During this time, Egan and Grosso had maintained tight rein over the investigation with respect to keeping manpower to a minimum, for fear of betraying surveillance prematurely; but now, following the telephone call to Patsy at his store, which indicated strongly that something important was about to happen, they decided to go to Lieutenant Hawkes and request all additional aid possible, starting at once. At eight-thirty on Wednesday morning, January 10, they met at Narcotics Bureau head-quarters with Chief Carey, Hawkes, Sergeant Fleming of S.I.U., and Director Gaffney, Frank Waters and Special Agent Ben Fitzgerald of the Federal Bureau, to plan new strategy and the personnel assignments. Carey ordered that every member of his 200-man squad, unless critically committed to other key investigations, stand by to assist on the Fuca case at any hour anywhere in the city. Gaffney also detached all available agents in the New York area. In all, a force of some three hundred detectives was thus organized.

  Individual radio cars were to be fitted with taping equipment to record all communications between units working on the case. The Federal offices at 90 Church Street were chosen as the central command and communications post because of the superior facilities there; a base radio system was set up, through which all reports and advices were to be transmitted by police and agents alike to the three pivotal officers, Egan, Grosso and Waters.

  Shortly after noon that Wednesday, the tenth, Grosso and Waters, having tailed Patsy Fuca from his home in Brooklyn, were parked near a construction site on East 45th Street in Manhattan, just east of Vanderbilt Avenue. The area, at the rear of Grand Central Station, was busy with trucks and barricades, as workmen banged away on the finishing touches to the new Pan-Am Building. Grosso and Waters were growing anxious as they watched the main entrance of the Hotel Roosevelt, half a block west between Vanderbilt and Madison Avenue. They had staked out Patsy's house early that morning, and finally followed him to midtown. Patsy had parked his compact Buick illegally in a No Standing zone opposite the Roosevelt and entered the hotel. Ten minutes had passed, and he had not reappeared.

  Sonny opened the door of the car. "I'm going to take a look," he said edgily. He walked along the south side of 45th Street until he was directly across from the hotel entrance. Patsy was not in view, but it was about lunchtime, and office workers were beginning to fill the sidewalks. Sonny decided he had better chance a look inside the lobby. He crossed 45th Street, pushed through the revolving door, started up the broad carpeted stairs to the main level . . . and stopped dead still.

  What halted him was the imposing figure descending the stairs — a tall and awesomely distinguished-looking man with luxuriant gray hair under a black homburg, a black cashmere overcoat with velvet collar, striped gray trousers, a black walking stick swinging jauntily from one hand, and pearl-grey spats.

  Sonny stood immobile on the steps, watching the man, who might have been sixty, pass him. He was smiling now at someone below, one of those polite drawing-room smiles that could impart warmth or frostiness with the slightest variance at the corners of the mouth. Sonny glanced down the steps. Patsy was standing at the foot of the stairs, also smiling, only on his face it could just as easily have been a leer.

  The two shook hands and turned to go out into 45th Street. Sonny retreated down to a side door, reaching the sidewalk just as Patsy emerged from the revolving door behind the tall man, and strode quickly back toward Waters' car, glancing over his shoulder a couple of times to keep them in sight. They were strolling toward Madison Avenue. Sonny tumbled into the seat beside Waters. "Did you see that? "

  "Yeah. What is it?" the agent grinned.

  Patsy and his companion now had sauntered back in front of the Roosevelt and stood to one side of the entrance in the subfreezing cold, deep in conversation. The stranger certainly seemed to be well above the class of acquaintance with which the detectives had associated Patsy. "I'll bet that's the guy who called yesterday," Sonny mused. He wished somebody had invented a way to read puffs of winter breath, in the same way one could interpret sign language or Indian smoke signals.

  "Looks like the first team is coming into the game," commented Waters.

  A few minutes past twelve-thirty, Patsy and the man in black turned and walked briskly across the street to Patsy's blue compact. In a moment, they had joined the strangle of traffic inching its way west across midtown Manhattan. Waters and Sonny followed, several car lengths behind.

  It took more than twenty minutes before the Buick drew up on West 46th Street between Eighth Avenue and Broadway, near the rear entrance to the Edison Hotel. The dapper stranger stepped out, went around the car, leaned into Patsy's window for some parting word, then grandly entered the hotel. Patsy drove off, now headed east. Farther back on 46th Street, nearer Eighth Avenue, Sonny sprang from Waters' car and hurried toward the Edison. Waters headed out after Patsy.

  Sonny reached the hotel lobby just in time to spot the tall man going out the main door on 47th Street.

  By the time the detective had hustled through the lobby and emerged on 47th, the man had walked almost to Broadway. Now the old boulevardier was meandering, taking in the sights and sounds of gaudy, brassy Times Square, which by day always had struck Sonny as blowsy, like a prostitute with too much mileage on her and a hangover to boot. He appeared oblivious to the attention of passersby, many of whom eyed him with a mixture of admiration and curiosity. At least he shouldn't be tough to tail, Sonny thought. He traversed the Times Square-Duffy Square area, where Broadway cuts across Seventh Avenue, and paused at shop windows or by billboards in front of movie theatres. The guy's killing time, Sonny judged, staying a block or so behind. The man strolled back to the west side of Broadway and made his casual way uptown. At the corner of 48th Street, he stopped a moment to gaze into McGinnis's Restaurant, then went on. At 51st Street, he re-crossed Broadway, going east again, keeping the same easy pace. Finally, after almost an hour, at one fifty-five Sonny watched him enter the Victoria Hotel at 51st and Seventh Avenue.

  The detective waited on the corner a few discreet moments, then followed inside. Up a flight of stairs, in the main lobby, the tall man had seated himself on a settee facing the elevators. Sonny wandered to the newsstand. Within a few minutes, the man rose to greet another individual advancing across the lobby.

  This was a considerably shorter man, about five-seven, Sonny estimated, and much younger, perhaps in his early thirties. Hatless, he was clean-cut, except that he wore his dark brown hair somewhat fuller than did most Americans of his age, more in the European style; his clothes were also black and well cut. The tall one seemed to show more genuine pleasure in seeing this individual than he had in meeting Patsy. They embraced each other's shoulders lightly, then, after chatting for several seconds, they walked out of the hotel together.

  Sonny now followed the two back to Broadway and down to 48th Street, where, to his mild surprise, they entered McGinnis's Restaurant. This was a big, informal place that featured strictly American food, hamburgers and hot barbecue sandwiches.

  Having thought the pair were foreigners, quite possibly French or Italian, Sonny thought they would have chosen an eating place more of the continental type. They went downstairs to McGinnis's small, quieter dining room and were given a table by themselves against a wall. Once they appeared to be settled, Sonny went to a telephone on the main level and called in to base, requesting that they send somebody to help him cover the restaurant.

  Then he himself
went downstairs, where he claimed a small table only two removed from the subjects and to their left. They were talking animatedly in what, from the occasional words he could hear, Sonny identified as French, although some of the inflections struck him as less nasal and more guttural than the polite French he remembered having heard before.

  When a waiter came, the tall one ordered a sherry for himself in accented English and a bottle of imported beer for the other. Sonny studied the menu, waiting to see if they were going to order food.

  In a little while they did: two luncheon plates. Sonny then decided on a beefburger and cup of tea. He ate slowly, timing his lunch to the leisurely pace of his subjects. He refrained from studying them closely, but when he did let his eyes stray toward the two, Sonny could see that they had unfolded a large sheet of paper, roughly legal size, and were tracing their fingers over it this way and that, as though it were a map or a plan or a sketch of some kind.

  It was almost 4:30 P.M. when the older man called for their check. Sonny immediately rose, left a couple of dollar bills on his table, and went upstairs and out into the street. Lounging against a lamppost facing the door of the restaurant, with an open newspaper in his hands, was a familiar burly figure — Eddie Egan. Sonny walked over and stood alongside him, his back to the restaurant, as though waiting for the traffic light to change. Without giving any sign of recognition, Sonny murmured: "In a minute two guys in black are coming out, an old one, tall and classy, and another guy, short, younger. You take the little one. I'm sure they're foreigners. Mine was with Patsy earlier."

  "Mm-mmm — here they come," Egan warned, not seeming to have taken his eyes from the newspaper before him.

  The subjects paused at the corner, conversing quietly, then shook hands and separated. The tall one ambled down Broadway, and Sonny stepped out behind him. The other headed east across Broadway, with Egan in his wake.