Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel (27 page)

O’Brien had arranged a meeting for us with Jack Longhorn, the Special Agent in Charge of the Carlos Gonzales case.

I’d not had many dealings with the FBI. But I knew the bureau was in flux. The FBI’s director in Washington, D.C., was on the verge of being canned. A new president had been elected and he wanted to appoint his own director. O’Brien had told me that rumors were rampant inside law enforcement that the New York FBI office was going to be gutted. That meant Agent Longhorn was in a tenuous position. “You’re only as good as your last big arrest,” O’Brien explained. “That means Longhorn might be under pressure to make the Gonzales case into something bigger than it actually is so he can impress his bosses in Washington, D.C., and get a promotion rather than a transfer. Word is that he’s gunning for the top job, running the office.”

We’d asked for the meeting to exchange information since the FBI already had Gonzales locked up at Metropolitan Correctional Center. I felt obligated to tell Agent Longhorn that I was about to indict Carlos Gonzales on abuse charges. I didn’t want to get into a jurisdictional dispute with the bureau.

During our ride, O’Brien offered me a tip. When it came to sharing information—the FBI was all for it—
at least when it came to the bureau getting information
. But the FBI was never forthcoming in its dealings with local cops. It always kept its cards close to its vest. It was the biggest nonsecret in law enforcement—the FBI felt superior.

O’Brien had me convinced that our encounter with Longhorn was going to be adversarial. But when we entered his office, he welcomed us as if we were long-lost relatives. Lanky and in his late thirties, Longhorn had a thick southern drawl that he’d acquired in his native Ardmore, Oklahoma. He also prided himself on his folksy chatter.

“I’m having a cup of joe,” he said. “Would you like one? It’s fresh.” He brought a glass coffeepot from a sideboard over to his desk, where he filled two Styrofoam cups. Smiling, he said, “Now, Detective O’Brien and Miss Fox, how can the bureau be of service to you today?”

“We’ve come to talk about Carlos Gonzales,” I explained. “I plan to have a Westchester grand jury indict him on twenty-two counts of rape, sodomy, incest, and physical abuse of his teenage daughter.”

“Whew,” Longhorn responded, blowing air through his lips. “Little lady, did you just say twenty-two counts?”

“Yes, all involving his teenage daughter.”

“Well, I’ll be danged,” Longhorn said. “Crimes, like chickens, always come home to roost.”

What, exactly, any of this had to do with chickens was beyond me, but I smiled and said, “I wanted to coordinate our efforts. I know you have first shot at him and I don’t want our prosecution to get in your way on the drug charges.”

Agent Longhorn thought about that for a few moments and then said, “You’re right. Our case does take priority, but we’re still putting it together.” He paused, as if he were in deep thought, and then said, “You know what, Miss Fox, I’ve got an idea. Let’s say you indict him on those charges. Then he’s got us to worry about and you, too. He’s going to feel even more pressure. You know what they say about pressure?” He smiled, revealing a row of perfectly formed teeth. “It makes eggs crack.”

I was not a fan of Longhorn’s folksy wit. The moment he mentioned putting pressure on Gonzales, I suspected he was thinking about offering the accused a plea bargain. “Mr. Longhorn, you’re not thinking about cutting a deal with Carlos Gonzales, are you?”

Longhorn gave me a pained look. “Miss Fox,” he said sternly, “let me tell you a bit about the kind of animal we’re dealing with here. But first, I need you to promise what we say in this room stays in this room, because I’m going to share bureau intel with you. You okay with that?”

“Of course.”

“In 1975, a well-known drug dealer in the town of Medellín, Colombia, was murdered by his up-and-coming rival, Manuel Rodriquez. We believe Rodriquez is slowly taking control of all drug trafficking in Colombia and is hoping to form a cartel to distribute cocaine inside the United States.”

He handed me a file marked FBI/INTEL. “Take a few moments and read this,” he suggested.

The file contained a detailed report about Rodriquez and how he was smuggling thousands of pounds of cocaine from Colombia into southern Florida via Panama. He had a fleet of planes and helicopters at his disposal. The report described Rodriquez as a ruthless smuggler who was known to either bribe or murder anyone who got in his way, whether they were police officers, judges, or politicians.

Longhorn said, “Our sources have told us that Rodriquez wants to expand into New York. We know that Carlos Gonzales was selling cocaine out of his jewelry shop. If we can show that Gonzales was in cahoots with Rodriquez, well, that would make our case against Mr. Gonzales rather important now, wouldn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we wouldn’t just be dealing with a little old neighborhood drug pusher now, would we? We’d be dealing with a possible New York City cocaine connection right to the Colombian cartel of Manuel Rodriquez.”

“So how do you want to proceed? How can we both go after Carlos Gonzales without stepping on each other’s toes?”

Leaning forward, Longhorn asked, “Miss Fox, you ever heard ‘You can’t make cookies if you don’t have the dough’? We’re still piecing together our cases, still collecting the dough, so if you want to hold Carlos Gonzales’s feet to the fire, then light your match. You take that slick bastard down and then we’ll come in and finish him off.”

At this point, Longhorn actually winked at me. It wasn’t a sexual wink. It was more like the sort of wink that fraternity brothers might give each other because they both knew a secret handshake. I interpreted his wink to mean: You can trust me and I can trust you, Miss Fox. We’re on the same team.

Still, I wanted to make sure I understood exactly what he was saying. “If I move forward with my case, you won’t object to Gonzales being tried in White Plains before your try him here in federal court?”

Longhorn placed his coffee mug down on his desk. “My fellow agents make fun of me because of my homespun sayings, but, I swear, I can’t help myself sometimes. Miss Fox, an old horse gets you where you’re going, only the ride takes longer.”

I gave him a puzzled look.

“What that means is that you go ahead, and after you get him convicted, we’ll prosecute him in federal court.”

He’d just given me what I wanted—the first shot at Gonzales.

“That sounds great!” I said, beaming.

Longhorn stood up, stuck out his hand, and gave me a firm shake. “Glad we’re together on this, young lady. I’m sorry but I have another appointment, but if you need anything from my office, anything at all, why, you just give me a holler.”

O’Brien didn’t say a word as we rode down the elevator and exited the Manhattan skyscraper. As we walked toward a parking garage on Broadway, I asked him why he was so quiet.

“I don’t trust Longhorn.”

“Why not?”

“Dani, I’ve been dealing with these Hoover boys for a long time, and I’m telling you, they come at you with big smiles, big ‘happy to meet you’ grins—but you can’t trust them. It’s not until after they slap you on the back, you realize they’ve just stuck a knife in you.”

“What about that INTEL file he showed me that says Rodriquez might be moving into New York? You don’t believe Gonzales could be the cartel’s contact here?”

“It could all be bullshit,” he said. “I told you that Agent Longhorn was on the hot seat to come up with a big case to impress the brass in Washington. Did anything in that INTEL report actually say the Colombian cartel was moving into New York?”

Now that he mentioned it, there wasn’t any specific mention in the report about Rodriquez moving drugs into the city. Only Longhorn had suggested that connection.

“I got friends at the NYPD,” O’Brien continued, “and they tell me that the mob still controls all the drugs moving in and out of this city. Rodriquez and his cartel may be big in Miami, but if they want to do business here, they’re either going to have to cut a deal with the five families, in which case the NYPD Organized Crime Task Force would know about it, or they’re going to have to muscle in. And if that were to happen, we’d all know about it because we’d have a bunch of dead Colombians and Italians showing up on the streets.”

“You think Longhorn just lied to us?”

“I’ll play nice, okay? I’ll just say he might have been exaggerating. He might be hoping to make Carlos Gonzales into a big witness, a huge catch, just to impress his new bosses.”

The idea that an FBI agent would exaggerate the importance of a case to win political favor with his bosses seemed completely foreign to me. Prosecuting criminals was supposed to be about justice, not promotions.

“Personally,” O’Brien said, “I hope he was full of bullshit.”

“Why?” I asked, surprised.

“Because one thing that INTEL report said that was accurate is that Manuel Rodriquez is a stone-cold killer. He doesn’t care who he murders—cops, judges, prosecutors—and if Carlos Gonzales is in bed with the Colombian cartel, then he could be much more than a pervert who rapes his own kid. He could have important and very dangerous connections.”

30

I thought District Attorney Whitaker was going to have an orgasm when O’Brien and I briefed him about Carlos Gonzales. His face lit up as soon as I explained that Carmen was a sixteen-year-old beauty whose father had beaten her, repeatedly raped her, and then dressed her in her dead stepmother’s clothing and paraded her around Manhattan nightclubs as his girlfriend. Whitaker knew that Carlos Gonzales had been a mover and shaker in the White Plains Hispanic community up until his arrest on drug-smuggling charges. The additional charges of sexual depravity that we planned to file against him were sure to make this case—as only O’Brien could put it—a “tabloid editor’s wet dream.”

Whitaker had Steinberg begin contacting news outlets. Usually, Steinberg notified only local television, radio, and newspaper reporters in Westchester County when we were about to announce a big indictment. But Steinberg sent word to the
New York Post
,
Daily News
, all the supermarket tabloids, and even the Old Gray Lady herself—the
New York Times
.

The day before the press conference, Steinberg held a practice dress rehearsal with Hillary Potts playing the role of a reporter asking questions.

When Whitaker’s big moment arrived, he handled the media masterfully, hitting all the right points, delivering clever thirty-second sound bites that were sure to make the evening broadcast. As for me, I stood quietly behind him watching five TV news crews jockeying for the best angle. Strangely, Paul Pisani was nowhere to be seen, which was a huge relief to me. Given his massive ego and “Mr. Invincible” reputation, I’d expected him to muscle into the case.

The indictment did not identify the teenage victim by name, and because state law prohibits publication of either the name or a picture of a rape victim, she was never identified in the papers.

Everyone in my office gathered together at five o’clock to watch the local news broadcast, and when I appeared on the screen, all the girls and even O’Brien cheered. The room became quiet when the anchorman announced that Gonzales had hired a defense attorney. Alexander Dominic’s fat face suddenly appeared on the screen. “My client is innocent,” Dominic declared.

I couldn’t believe that Gonzales had hired the same bottom-feeding lawyer who had represented Rudy Hitchins as his defense attorney. My only guess was that no one else in White Plains would defend him.