The Best American Crime Writing 2006 (32 page)

When Ponzi announced the news, the men in the war room broke out in a cheer.

For the next three months, Intartaglio met several times a week with the old man.With a squad of federal marshals stationed outside, they sequestered themselves behind closed doors, not too far from the Brooklyn prison where Kaplan returned each night. The talk, fueled by food and drink, flowed freely.With Kaplan as his guide, Intartaglio went back over the gangland wars he had lived through in a previous life. Missing pieces were filled in and mysteries explained.Yet of all the ancient episodes that these rambling sessions brought back to life, two shootings held him like a magnet.

In his mind's eye, Intartaglio could once again see the thick fog rolling in. He was on the roof of New Dorp High School, on Staten Island, peering across the street as best he could on a night in October 1987. He and a team from the NYPD's Major Case Squad were staking out a garden store called Frank's. Informants had told them that the Bypass Gang, a mobbed-up group of thieves who had found a way to defeat sophisticated alarm systems using electronic devices, were going to strike. The gang, the police believed, was raking in tens of millions of dollars, and the word had come down from One Police Plaza: Get those crooks!

Suddenly, the microphone the techies had planted in a flowerpot on top of the store's safe started broadcasting: tap, tap, tap! It was the sound of the gang coming through the roof-and the signal the police had been waiting to hear. A police helicopter swooped toward the roof. Squad cars rushed from their hiding places.

But no one had counted on the fog. It had sheathed the island in a dense black veil. In the darkness, the Bypass Gang escaped.

That same month, John "Otto" Heidel, a safecracker who was cooperating with the police on the Bypass case, was gunned down. He bent down to examine the flat tire on his car and a fusillade of bullets riddled his back. A year later, another informant, Dominick Costa, got shot five times as he pulled into his driveway. Somehow, he survived.

After those two shootings, Intartaglio knew "without a doubt" that there was a leak. Something was rotten in the department. Now, fifteen years later, he felt able to confirm his suspicions: Stephen Caracappa had been a detective in the Major Case Squad.

For Doug Le Vien, the hit on Eddie Lino back in November 1990 gave a definitive shape to his wary thoughts about the department. He had gone over the crime-scene reports at the time and seen right away how it must have gone down. The black Mercedes pulling obediently to the side of the road on the Belt Parkway. Lino lowering his window.And the shooter squeezing off nine bullets at close range. Mortally wounded, with his foot on the accelerator, Lino had crashed into a schoolyard fence. At the scene was a wristwatch the shooter presumably had lost as he fled. Lino, it seemed, would have never stopped his car and rolled down his window to speak to another wiseguy. But he would have for someone flashing a badge.

At the time, LeVien had called up a buddy who was advising the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau. LeVien listened carefully as his friend shared a similar fear. Then the friend spoke the unspeakable: "You're right. I think a cop whacked Eddie Lino."

To this day, Joe Ponzi wears a gold ring with his eighty-year-old father's shield number. In fact, he had first met Lou Eppolito when the detective worked under his father in a Brooklyn precinct. Now his thoughts focused on the two accused cops.Why did they do it? he kept asking.

Back in 1984, when Internal Affairs had suspended Eppolito for several months for passing intelligence files to Rosario Gambino, a major Mob heroin trafficker, Ponzi felt the detective was getting a bad deal. Sure, Lou was full of himself, a slow-witted, self-aggrandizing onetime muscleman going quickly to seed, a "parade cop" who seemed more intent on collecting headlines and medals than collars.

Still, the way Ponzi looked at it, the department was coming down on him not because of anything Lou had done but because of who he was: the son of Ralph "Fat the Gangster" Eppolito, a Gambino-family killer, and the nephew of James "Jimmy the Clam" Eppolito, a genuine power in the family. When Lou threw himself a fund-raiser-a "racket," as cops call their shindigs-to help him make ends meet during the suspension, Ponzi was one of the several hundred people who bought a ticket. And when a departmental trial cleared Lou and he went on to be promoted to detective second grade, Ponzi thought justice had been done.

Now he had other thoughts. Perhaps Eppolito had been rotten all along. Perhaps he had been leading a double life since the day he joined the department, in 1969. He was his father's son. Or maybe the Internal Affairs investigation and the suspension had pushed him over the edge. Made him a killer for the Mob. Ponzi was not sure he would ever know.

Steve Caracappa was even more perplexing. He seemed in every way an unlikely friend to the ebullient Eppolito. Caracappa was dour, reserved, a rail-thin presence who looked as if he'd had all the life squeezed out of him."The Undertaker," fellow detectives called him. Sure, he had been arrested on a burglary charge in his youth. But he had served in Vietnam, and, by all accounts, he was a good cop and a skillful, conscientious detective. Was it really his watch that had been left at the Lino hit, as the precinct scuttlebutt had it at the time? Was he the leader of the two? Perhaps, Ponzi speculated, the old adage was true: Still waters run deep.

But after eighteen months of his team digging up the past- "We're archaeologists," Intartaglio jokingly said-Ponzi had worked his way to several certainties.The two retired detectives, he felt, were traitors-and killers. And the time had come to bring them to justice.

In retirement, the two former detectives, bound by friendship and their secrets, stayed close. In 1994, Eppolito moved to Las Vegas, settling into a big bright house with a five-foot fountain on the lawn and baronial columns flanking the entrance.The Cadillac in the pink cobblestone driveway completed his idealized picture of gaudy success. Caracappa and his second wife followed a year later, moving into a more modest home across the street.

Starting in the fall of 2004, the task force, assisted by local DEA agents, began keeping a close watch on the two men.And they also began looking for a way to gather evidence about what the pair were up to in good-time Vegas. An inspired plan was hatched. Eppolito's book had set the investigation in motion, providing both Casso and Betty Hydell with a name to match the husky face.And now, John Peluso hoped, Eppolito's book would bring him down for good.

Posing as a high-flying Hollywood producer named Steve Corso, a DEA agent phoned Eppolito and announced that he was interested in making a movie based on Mafia Cop. He'd be coming to town and would like to meet.

That was all the starstruck would-be actor and screenwriter needed to hear. Eppolito had hovered, fierce, bloated, and largely mute, in the crowd scenes of a handful of Mob movies, starting with Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990), and had written a predictable and sentimental tough-guy feature called Turn of Faith, which had gone straight to DVD. But Eppolito had even larger ambitions. He just needed his break. Over the next few months the "producer" spent many days and evenings with both of the retired detectives and their families. And all the time he had a Kel transmitter about the size of a pack of cigarettes taped to his chest. Nearly every word they spoke-close to seventy-two hours' worth-was recorded.

A convivial Eppolito bragged about all the wiseguys who were still his pals. He also reminisced about cops looking up license-plate numbers as favors. And when Corso, one swinger to another, asked Eppolito if he could score him some crystal meth-a bunch of his Hollywood friends were coming to town and wanted to party, he explained-Lou said, No problem.With the help of his twenty-four-year-old son, Anthony, the deal was done, according to authorities.

Several days later, the task force moved in for the arrests. Corso invited both Eppolito and Caracappa to dinner on March 9, 2005, at Piero's, a flashy Italian place not far from the Strip. As the two men walked in, Peluso followed, talking into his cell phone, seemingly arguing with a coldhearted girlfriend. Not far behind him was Intartaglio.

Just as Eppolito and Caracappa were about to give their names to the maitre d', Peluso, gun drawn, announced, "You're under arrest." DEA agents seated at the bar rushed over and slammed the former detectives against the wall. Eppolito and Caracappa stared at each other as if in shock.Then they surrendered without a word.

As they were led handcuffed to the waiting unmarked cars, the maitre d' rushed after them. "You've got to give me their names," he insisted to the agents."I need to cancel the reservation.This is a busy place."

"Pick up the papers tomorrow," a gleeful Intartaglio shot back. "You want their names, read the front page."

As the case moves to trial, the task force is still fighting. Only, now they're battling among themselves-for the spoils.

"True crime," as the genre is called by eager publishers and producers, is truly big business. Once the story broke-cops accused of murder! cold-blooded mafiosi! intrepid investigators!-phones started ringing.

In fact, news of the case leaked even before the indictment was announced. CBS's 60 Minutes, according to people close to the investigation, planned to be in Las Vegas to witness the arrests. It didn't take a furious Mark Feldman, of the U.S. Attorney's Office, long to react. First, he made it clear that any reporters and cameramen on the scene could be prosecuted for impeding a federal investigation.Then, convinced that someone in the Brooklyn D.A.'s office had begun whispering to a CBS producer in an attempt to grab the glory and the rich deal that would inevitably follow, he called up Joe Ponzi.Your men are off the case, Feldman announced.

But it was too late.The gold rush was on.Tommy Dades, having retired from the D.A.'s office, scored first. After a busy week of meetings, Dades wound up cutting a lucrative deal with Warner Bros. for a potential movie. He talked to various publishers and is presently firming up a book deal. At least one member of the Brooklyn D.A.'s office has been, through his agent, talking to publishers and movie people but will not sign anything until given permission to do so. "How can Joe Hynes, the Brooklyn D.A., allow this?" demanded Arnold Kriss, one of the candidates running against Hynes in this year's primary. "The case hasn't gone to trial and his man is out selling the story." Through a spokesperson, Joe Hynes declined to comment.

William Oldham, of the U.S. Attorney's Office, signed a book deal with Scribner, and as a result is said to have been asked to retire. ("Call my editor, and if he says it's okay, I'll speak with you," he told Vanity Fair when reached at his federal office shortly before being forced out. In the end, neither Oldham nor his editor would comment.)

The talented veteran Mob author and screenwriter Nick Pileggi is doing a script "inspired" by the case for Columbia Pictures. Jimmy Breslin, the grand old man of tough-guy prose, is writing a treatise on the modern Mafia which focuses on the alleged killer cops for HarperCollins's literary imprint Ecco. Even Eppolito, although behind bars, was finally getting interest in the screen rights to his book. Universal played with the idea of optioning Mafia Cop, but then dropped it as other studio deals fell into place.And the deal-making is not done. Studios and publishers continue to "take meetings" with investigators who worked on the case. (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that the writers of this article have also been approached and done a bit of zealous approaching.)

Big cases also attract big lawyers. Both of the defendants are represented by attorneys who know how to put on a show and clearly enjoy doing it. Bruce Cutler, who came to fame with his bombastic, in-the-government's-face defense work for John Gotti, is representing Eppolito. Caracappa's case will be argued by Ed Hayes, a self-invented package of street smarts, mercurial temper, and flash tailoring. Cutler and Hayes are the sort of canny, insider lawyers who play not simply to the judge and jury but also to the press gallery.

Yet, as a result of the wads of movie and book money some of the investigators have stuffed into their pockets, Cutler and Hayes will have more to work with than they had previously anticipated. "All of a sudden these cops and prosecutors get Kaplan to talk and now they're making money off of it," Hayes gripes. "It sure seems to me like they had a real vested interest in getting him to say exactly what they want him to-so they can run off to Hollywood. Sure, cops and prosecutors sell their books. But never before the trial. These guys are potential witnesses. Now what's a jury going to think of them and their so-called objectivity?"

And that is not the only problem facing the government. In all his months of debriefing, Kaplan, Vanity Fair has learned, never disclosed that during the 1980s he had been a confidential informant (C.I.) for the FBI.

According to a retired Major Case Squad detective who worked hijacking cases, "There's no doubt that Kaplan was working [for the FBI] as an informant." Another retired organized-crime police supervisor agreed that the FBI "was using Kaplan as an informant. If they say otherwise, they're lying." And the FBI agent identified by three sources as Kaplan's handler confirmed his role: "He worked as a C.I. not just for me but also for an agent in New York." A week later, however, the FBI agent changed his story and denied that he had ever used Kaplan as an informant.

Nevertheless, Kaplan's alleged lack of candor raises disturbing questions for the prosecution about his credentials as a witness. "His [Kaplan's] failure to disclose his status as a C.I. to his current interrogators is a clear indication of his desire to keep something secret," says an indignant Hayes. "The question is what.The crux of this case will be to answer that question." The defense attorney adds, "If he lied to the government in order to keep secret criminal activity to his profit or to whomever is holding his money, then his current testimony is worthless."