The Good Guys Page 38

  The detective let out a long, respectful breath. “Man, go get yourself a ticket. I promise you, this is one you ain’t ever gonna forget.”

  While they had been in the back room, the police had used sawhorses to create a corral for the media. “Multiple homicides” is a magic phrase for reporters, always drawing a big crowd. As O’Brien and Russo walked around to the front, reporters shouted the headline questions at them—who, how, and how many—as they did to every cop who passed. The two agents ignored them, unobtrusively keeping their heads down.

  Some smart cop had taped sheets of newspaper over the office windows to prevent photographers from using a telephoto lens to shoot inside, but it made the office feel even smaller and more confined. So many police officers were standing around it looked like a cop convention. A thin trail of blood led from the office into the garage, and a cop standing in the office repeatedly warned people about stepping in it. O’Brien and Russo carefully avoided it as they walked into the garage.

  The first thing they saw once inside the garage was a late-model luxury car sitting on the ramps of the hydraulic lift, raised about three feet off the ground. They walked around to the rear of the car. O’Brien saw the body first. “Oh man,” he said, sucking in a mouthful of air, “oh Christ.”

  “What?” Russo started to ask, then saw it. She covered her mouth with her fist.

  The nearest ramp of the lift had been lowered onto the top half of the victim’s skull, crushing it into pulp from slightly above the bridge of his nose. The victim’s mouth was open, and a light blue rag was still stuffed into it, the color quite familiar. His facial skin was pulled way back, exposing his teeth and gums. He looked like a skeletal figure drawn by Hieronymus Bosch, the man of eternal agony. It was impossible to identify the victim facially—hopefully some dentist would have his chart—but looking at his body, O’Brien was certain he was taller and thinner than San Filippo.

  Several cops were standing around the body, looking down at it like curious visitors to an art museum. One of them was laughing nervously. Somebody forced a joke about having stew for dinner. Russo just couldn’t take her eyes off the crushed skull, her fascination easily overcoming her horror. There had been absolutely nothing in her life to which this might be compared. It was more violent or more disgusting than anything she had ever seen. It was unquestionably unique.

  Blood and pulp had flowed out of the crushed head into a murky public, which was outlined by an irregular pattern of white tape affixed to the floor. Several other objects on the floor were also boxed by the white tape, primarily to ensure that no one touched them or stepped on them. One of them, Russo noticed, was the ripped and blackened remnant of a Cabbage Patch Kid. Nudging O’Brien, she pointed to the doll and asked, “What do you think that’s all about?”

  At just about any other moment of his life, that might have been a great straight line. He could have reached into his grab bag of snappy comebacks and pulled out the quasi-perfect quip. Not this time, though, not this time. His heart just wasn’t in it. “I don’t know. Nothing probably. Maybe it belonged to one of the mechanic’s kids or something.”

  She rolled it over with a steel pencil. “It’s what’s left of one of those Cabbage Patch dolls. The ones they give the name to.”

  He got it immediately. “Well, well, well,” he said, looking at it knowingly. “Didn’t we hear something about some guy trying to unload a truckload of those things?”

  She looked around at the garageful of detectives poking and prodding and measuring and photographing, searching for that one elusive clue that would put them on the trail of the killer. “Not that I remember,” she replied.

  He chuckled, and this time he couldn’t resist. “Right, I don’t remember too.”

  The garage continued to fill with cops. Most of them would take a good long look at the corpse, shake their head, then go back to work. A couple of them had to race outside before they lost their cookies. This was rapidly turning into a major crime event. By now the media had learned that these killings had the required gruesome quotient to qualify for the front page, although they didn’t yet have the details. There is nothing like a good old-fashioned gang war to sell newspapers! They were still merchandizing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and that had taken place more than half a century earlier. O’Brien knew the facts of life: Death is a marketable commodity. The more horrid the death, the more valuable it might be. The right quote or photograph or film clip could make a career. So the reporters stuck behind the barriers were desperately trying to make side deals for even a few seconds of access or, failing that, for detailed information. The early bidding was centered around Yankees and Knicks tickets and dinners at trendy restaurants, items that cost the newspapers and broadcast stations exactly nothing. When the reporters got a whiff of what was inside, the bidding would go a lot higher.

  As always, O’Brien tried to take in the whole picture, details at six. It was a lot tougher than usual—ignoring a body with a crushed head was about as easy as ignoring the ball at a basketball game. But as he looked around the garage, nothing else of consequence stood out. It was a garage, dirty and drab. As in any repair shop there were quite a few grease-covered tools and rags scattered about. The blue rag again caught his attention. He recognized the color, the Pan Am blue, and figured it was from one of those in-flight blankets that are always a few inches too small, no matter how short you are. There was no obvious reason it would be in the garage, but it made sense: Pan Am flew to Russia from New York.

  Among the tools in plain sight were a mallet, several pairs of pliers, a set of screwdrivers, a power drill and a selection of bits, a file, a hacksaw, and a jigsaw. O’Brien clasped his hands behind his back, an old crime scene habit that prevented him from distractedly touching a piece of evidence, leaned over, and examined the working end of each tool. This was one time that he really was apprehensive that he might find what he was looking for.

  “Anything?” Russo asked.

  “I don’t think so.” He stood up, and with a sweep of his hand asked, “So what do you think of your boyfriend now? He’s got some temper, huh?”

  She forced a feeble smile and said sadly, “Men.” She sighed deeply. “Just when you begin to think you understand them, they drop a car on your head.” She swept back her hair with the palm of her left hand. “Seen enough?”

  “I guess,” he said. That one little involuntary gesture, that little feminine thing she did, the way she brushed back her hair and then shook it free, that unexpectedly got to Connor O’Brien. It awakened his protective instincts—the whole caveman thing—and made him acutely aware of how close the Russians had come to grabbing her. The questions that followed in his mind were pretty obvious: How close had she come to ending up on that cement floor? How did they identify her? What were they looking for? Did they think she knew where Gradinsky was hiding? And at the end of every unanswered question was the one that mattered: What would they have done to her? He shuddered, literally. It was his job to protect his partner and he had failed. Maybe she would have protected herself. Maybe. “Sure, let’s get out of here.”

  He put his hand lightly on her back and gently guided her toward the door in a most gentlemanly way, being very careful to make sure neither of them stepped in the drying blood.

  Only on television and in the movies are all the loose ends tied up at the end of a case. In reality, even after the best possible outcome there are always questions that will never be answered. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, although it can lead to some uneasy moments during a trial. What makes it difficult is the fact that criminal behavior isn’t predictable. Criminals follow no discernible patterns. Motives tend to be more ragged than smooth; they have a lot of sharp edges in unexpected places and very often don’t seem to make sense. Sometimes even criminals are perplexed by their own actions. So chances were pretty strong that Connor O’Brien and Laura Russo would never know why the Russians had attempted to break into her apartment.

&nb
sp; As they strolled in thoughtful silence toward their car, the herd of reporters shouted questions at them: What’s going on in there? How many bodies? Is it true you found a bucket of severed hands? One reporter for a local TV station seemed especially furious, screaming at them in a vaguely threatening tone that his viewers had “a constitutional right” to see film of the dead bodies.

  O’Brien fell asleep easily that night, although as he later admitted to Russo, “I dreamt about dragons all night.” Russo decided to sleep on her living room couch for reasons she could easily explain. But she was awakened several times by clanking sounds coming from the aged heating pipes and noises either real or imagined from the hallway.

  The next few days raced by in a bureaucratic blur. O’Brien and Russo spent long hours in the office preparing voluminous reports in which they told the story of the operation in complete detail. They attended numerous meetings with FBI and NYPD officials alarmed by the possibility of an Italian-Russian criminal alliance, as well as Federal Department of Transportation executives investigating the billion-dollar bootleg fuel oil business. But in all the reports they filed, and during all the meetings they attended, they never mentioned having met with Bobby Blue Eyes San Filippo.

  The “Brighton Beach Massacre” did make a front-page splash. The New York newspapers and local news stations reported that the killings were the result of “a turf war threatening the increasingly homogenous community” (New York Times) between Russian gangsters, “many of whom spent years being tortured in Russia’s infamous gulags” (New York Daily News), for control of “the lucrative drug business” (New York Post) in the “ethnically isolated Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn” (Village Voice). They got most of the gory details of the killings right but failed to get any photographs inside the garage. An NYPD spokesman announced that detectives had developed “significant leads” and had “several suspects under surveillance.” They anticipated making arrests within the next few weeks. But he added that Brighton Beach remained “a safe neighborhood in which local residents play an active role in protecting people and property.”

  Slattery guided them through the bureaucratic maze. Having traveled this road before, he knew all the dangerous curves. A task force consisting of FBI, NYPD, and DOT investigators, in addition to federal prosecutors, had been set up to squeeze every last bit of juice out of this case. Slattery had somehow managed to mollify a score or more of ambitious FBI officials anxious to get their names associated with this investigation; he set up those meetings that couldn’t be avoided and made sure O’Brien and Russo got all the support they needed to ensure that their reports were as complete and accurate as possible. But as he knew, “possible” covered a lot of territory.

  He also made certain that his agents remained in the center ring as the investigation got rolled up. At lunch on the third day, for example, he brought them up-to-date on the complicated life of Professor Peter Gradinsky. The professor had taken a few days to settle into his new life. It appeared that he was considerably more frightened of his wife than of the entire Mafia. He asked the bureau to arrange his first meeting with Grace in prison so there might be a thick piece of Plexiglas between them when he told her about Natalie’s pregnancy. When he was informed that prison was much too dangerous for him, he reluctantly agreed to meet her at the safe house—on the condition that an armed agent remain with them.

  As it turned out, the professor had little to fear from his wife. Having experienced what life would be like without her husband, Grace Gradinsky was in a deeply forgiving mood. With the agent sitting between them trying hard not to be noticed, Peter Gradinsky told his story as he wanted it to be. “Remember all those papers I was bringing home? The ones marked Top Secret?” he said as honestly as he could lie. “I’ve been working undercover for the FBI for the last fourteen months. I infiltrated the Mafia and the Russian gangs.” As the clincher he added, “I love you very much. Really I do.”

  It wasn’t clear that she believed him, but she did accept his story without asking a single question. “I really missed you,” was what she told him.

  He explained to her that he was in what was called protective custody, which he described as a sort of friendly arrest. The bureau was going to move him from New York to San Diego, where he would spend at least the next few months being debriefed by the FBI, giving them all the details of his undercover work. While he was in protective custody, he wouldn’t have to go to work and the government would pay all his expenses. Basically he was going to lie in the sun by the pool and answer some questions. He’d emphasized that he had specifically asked for a place with a pool. And then the professor looked at her lovingly, took her hand—the agent sitting between them figured he was about to tell her about his affair with Speakman—and asked Grace to come with him. “I want us to start a whole new life together,” he said, adding romantically, “in the sun.”

  And as the agent explained later, he never saw the rest of the story coming. The professor continued, “I want us to be a real family. You know what? I’ve got this crazy idea.” He paused, as if this thought had just popped into his head. “It’ll be absolutely perfect. Perfect.”

  She was enthralled. “What? Tell me.”

  With all the enthusiasm he could muster he blurted out, “Let’s adopt a baby!”

  The agent didn’t know who was more surprised, Grace or her. At first Grace was flustered, telling him that she was too old to raise a child, but by the time their meeting ended and she’d gone home to pack, she was convinced this was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Finally she was going to be a mother. She did wonder if they would be eligible to adopt a baby. “Let’s be honest,” she said. “I’m already in my . . . my early forties.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” he reassured her. “You know, with all the work I’ve done for the government, I think they owe me a pretty big favor.”

  Professor Gradinsky remained in custody at an undisclosed location, pending his relocation. Russo was duly impressed by the man. “I can’t believe he’s actually going to pull this off.”

  O’Brien said he was betting against him. “You don’t really think Natalie’s just going to hand over her baby, do you?”

  As impossible as that seemed, Laura Russo believed that where the professor was involved, pretty much anything was possible.

  In fact, the professor’s situation was probably not as dire as it had originally appeared. After a few days it became apparent that he probably wouldn’t have to testify against the Mafia. Few—if any—prosecutions would result from this operation. The Russians’ bootleg fuel operation was as dead as they were, so none of them would go on trial.

  Several charges could be brought against Tony Cosentino, but the only one that really had a chance to stick was conspiracy to defraud the government. And that would be tough to prove—it’s almost impossible to prosecute someone for what they might do in the future. The most Gradinsky could do was put Cosentino at meetings in which criminal activity was discussed, but thus far there was no corroborating evidence. It was kind of a murky area and it looked like Cosentino was going to skate.

  The professor also had nothing to fear from the Russians, obviously, and not a whole lot more from the mob. The Freemont Avenue crew had no interest in him, and Cosentino couldn’t afford to make a move until he got a good look at the hand he was playing. And when he realized it was good enough to keep him in the game, it was pretty doubtful he’d risk drawing the joker.

  In Washington there was considerable debate about just how much information to provide to the NYPD and the Brooklyn DA’s office. It was apparent that a pretty solid murder case could be made against Bobby Blue Eyes San Filippo, but any investigation and trial would inevitably involve the conduct of James Slattery, as well as Special Agents Connor O’Brien and Laura Russo. There were rumors bouncing around headquarters that Slattery had provided confidential intelligence to Mafia soldiers. If that was true, Slattery would be indicted. If convicted
, he might end up serving more time than any member of the family. And while there was a reasonable chance that San Filippo would be convicted, there was little doubt that the bureau’s already fragile reputation would be devastated. This was a story the media would love: the FBI feeding information to a known killer, resulting in three deaths. That would sell newspapers for months.

  The trade-off, destroying a respected supervisor’s reputation and perhaps resulting in a criminal prosecution, as well as greatly damaging the bureau’s reputation, in return for putting a wiseguy in jail for killing three gangsters, didn’t seem to balance out. While the final decision about just how much cooperation the bureau would offer local authorities would be made by headquarters, there was no great clamor for Slattery’s head. Even if they could prove he existed on paper.

  So until one of the local authorities came up with irrefutable evidence that the rumors were true, headquarters would watch with interest and shallow enthusiasm—and without volunteering any additional information.

  There was a pretty strong chance the NYPD would never be able to make a case against San Filippo. Generally mob hits don’t get solved. Nobody ever got arrested for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, for example. This one quickly faded back several pages in the newspapers. Without a single lurid photograph to print—not even the blood-soaked carpet being carried out by a grim-faced detective—this story just didn’t have that old pizzazz. Four Russian bad guys got whacked. Nobody much cared. It wasn’t going to cause a problem for the mayor or chief of police if these killings went unsolved.

  San Filippo would walk. Nobody in the bureau was taking any bets on how long, though. The Russians would have to go after him. They had to retaliate. Even Vaseline’s enemies. If the Mafia was permitted to destroy a multimillion-dollar Russian operation and kill four men without paying a price, the life of every other Russian gangster would be in jeopardy. That was a fact of family life.