The Butcher (11 page)

Jim and Tom were not happy about this. He knew this decision was politically motivated—that the FBI wanted to get it over with more quickly. Jim and Tom felt that Manny would be able to bring them still bigger, more dangerous fish if they'd just give it some time, if they just let it play out.

Be that as it may, the order was irreversible, and both the FBI and DEA mechanized as swiftly as they could to bring down as many bad guys as possible. There were numerous wiretaps up because of Vinnie DeMarco bringing Manny Adamita to Jim and Tom's attention, and the potential for a substantial number of arrests was great if they played their cards right. They were ready to pounce, all coiled muscle.

It was decided they should get as much bang for their buck as possible and Jim passed word to Manny via Vinnie that Jim and Tommy wanted to buy a kilo of heroin. At this point, Manny was so at ease
with Tom and Jim that he readily came to meet them carrying the kilo of nearly pure heroin. Jim and Tom had checked into a fancy suite at the Parker Meridien Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Manny was all hugs and kisses. He kept kissing them over and over again, as is the Sicilian way, told them it was great that they had met, that it was great to have friends you could trust, that the world was a rotten place, and that they could all make money without worry. He kissed them again and again, often using the word
paesan.

“So,” Tom said after a drink and far too many kisses, “do you have a package for us?”

“Sure, sure, yeah, I do. I got it in the car.”

“Well, you want to bring it up?”

“Sure, yeah,” Manny said, and left to go get the package from the car, having no idea that he was about to walk into a lion's den. Agents followed him to his car and watched him get a package from his trunk then reenter the hotel, get on the elevator, and make his way to Jim and Tom's room, where he knocked on the door.

Jim opened the door and Manny walked in.

“Like I promised!” Manny said.

Jim opened the package to make sure it was heroin and then came the moment when reality hit Manny Adamita like a lightning bolt. Jim Hunt turned to him, suddenly dour, and said, “Manny, we're DEA agents. You're under arrest,” stern and strong and deadly serious.

Manny went from his original ruddy, dark color to chalk white. Inside, his stomach twisted into a knot. His hands trembled.

“You're…kidding,” he barely managed to say in a weak voice.

“No…we aren't kidding,” Tom replied.

 

Over the next several days, two hundred men were arrested both here in the United States and across the globe—all because Vinnie DeMarco agreed to help Jim Hunt and Tommy Geisel.

B
ecause of the excellent work of Vinnie DeMarco in helping with the arrests of Manny Adamita, Paulo Rizzuto, and a trainload of drug dealers stateside and abroad, he was allowed to plead guilty and received probation…got a sweetheart deal. Vinnie had become very fond of Jim Hunt and Tom Geisel. He thought of them more as trusted friends and confidants than as cops. Therefore, it wasn't surprising that several months later, when a friend of DeMarco's needed help, he reached out to Jim and Tommy and asked for a meeting—only this time it involved one of the most infamous murderers La Cosa Nostra ever produced, opening a door into a Mafia cemetery the likes of which the world had never known.

Jim and Tom arranged to meet Vinnie in a luncheonette in Brooklyn. Vinnie told them a friend of his was in “real bad” trouble. “I wouldn't come to you guys, bother you with this, but he's a good kid,” said DeMarco. “He's gotten into something bad over his head. He's gotten involved in…with a real bad dude. He's scared shitless. He owes him money for some drugs. This guy not only kills people for the Bonannos, but he kills for other families as well. He enjoys killing. He cuts them up. He's known as Whack-o.”

They looked at each other. There was a heavy silence. What
DeMarco was saying, both Jim and Tommy felt, had the ring of truth—there was a fear and apprehension about his face and in his eyes, in his every gesture. They had come to know him well through working on the Pizza Two case. What Vinnie was trying to do here was use Jim and Tommy to protect his friend, Angelo Favara, not only from “Whack-o” but from Angelo himself.

“How can we help?” Jim asked.

“Well, it's a touchy situation. I don't want to see the kid get killed. See…see the problem is—the kid wants to take out the guy before he strikes. He wants to hire a killer. What I'm saying is the kid needs help. He's looking for…well, to be honest with you, he wants to kill this killer before the killer kills him, ha ha. I know it sounds nuts, but it's what's happening,” he said.

“Does he have money?” Jim asked.

“I don't think so much.”

“Who's this guy? Who's this killer you're talking about?”

“Tommy Pitera,” Vinnie said. “He's got a bar over on Avenue S and he's big into drugs. He's with the Bonannos.”

“Is he made?” Tommy asked.

“I'm pretty sure he is,” DeMarco said, his voice taking on a serious tone like that of a doctor bringing bad news.

This was interesting to the two agents. An observant onlooker would have seen a hint of excitement in both their eyes. Jim Hunt asked, “What's your friend's name?”

“Angelo Favara.”

Jim and Tom were thinking this might lead to something big. They knew for a fact that the Bonannos were heavy into drugs; they knew for a fact that the Bonannos were responsible for more heroin and cocaine being brought into the United States than all of the other families put together. They were the go-to guys for drugs. The fact that DeMarco said this Pitera guy was with the Bonannos was what further piqued both Jim and Tommy's interest. Maybe, Jim reasoned, the door could slowly be opening on another very large case. Even
after the French Connection case and after the Pizza Connection case, Jim knew damn well that the Italians were still bringing huge amounts of drugs into the country, that the Italians were beginning to work with other ethnic groups—particularly Colombians. The Colombians, he also knew, had raised the level of their business acumen to such a high degree that the Italians saw them as viable business partners, not out-of-control cowboys like the Dominicans, the Mexicans.

Vinnie now, for the first time, sheepishly confessed to Jim and Tom that he had told Angelo that they were hit men, that they had killed a witness in a murder case against his son. Some months earlier, Vinnie's son had been in jail for murder and was released because a witness backed out of testifying. Vinnie—wanting to keep Angelo Favara out of trouble, wanting to protect him from himself—had lied to Angelo and told him Tom and Jim had killed a witness against his son in the murder rap.

“Okay,” Jim told Vinnie, “set up a meet.” Looking forward to where this would lead, though wary and on guard.

 

Rota's was on East Tremont and Castle Hill Avenue in Parkchester, the Bronx. It was a nondescript bar with a thirsty blue-collar/middle-class clientele. The lights were low. There was a mirror behind the bar.

When Jim and Tommy arrived, they were in disguise, dressed in faded jeans, beat-up boots, their hair long and raggedy. They sported beards. These two had an uncanny ability to alter their appearance. They spotted Angelo Favara at the bar. He was in his late thirties, slovenly, ill kempt, pale with dark circles under his eyes. He had messy black hair. He was five seven. He was what Jim called a “street monkey.” Drinks were ordered. Tommy and Jim had beers. Angelo drank hard alcohol. Angelo was tense and uptight. He was a worried man. His eyes moved back and forth like two small, nervous fish. During Jim's professional career, he had met dozens of men like this. They had the world on their shoulders, were about to make a life change,
were about to put their lives in the hands of others. There was no doubt in his mind that Angelo Favara was a scared man. After making some small talk, Angelo got right down to it. He had a lot on his mind and was anxious to express it.

“You guys come highly recommended. I trust DeMarco. He knows what he's talking about. I got myself in bad trouble. I'm the first to admit I've made mistakes. There's this guy in Brooklyn named Tommy Karate. He's a killer. I mean a stone-cold killer. He enjoys killing people. For him, it's not a job, it's a pleasure. Everybody in Brooklyn knows it. He not only kills people but he cuts them up.”

Here, Angelo looked at Tom and Jim's reaction. He saw nothing. He waited for a response.

“And what do you want from us?” Tom asked.

“I don't want to die. I want this guy dead; I want him killed. I'll pay, I can pay.”

Chuckling, Jim leaned forward as though he was afraid of being recorded and said, “Look, we don't know you and you don't know us. We are very good at what we do. We are professionals. We don't come cheap. You got money to pay us?”

“Well, um,” Angelo began, unsure of himself. “No, I don't have the money right now, but I'll get it.”

“How much do you owe him?” Jim asked.

“Oh, about eight thousand.”

“That's not much,” Jim said.

“No, it's not, but when you don't have it, it's a lot.”

“Well, what do you want from us?” Jim said bluntly.

Angelo said, “Well, I thought because of your relationship with Vinnie, you might do this for free.”

Both Jim and Tommy laughed at Angelo's audacity. He obviously wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, they both knew. That was irrelevant. What was relevant was that he could bring them to something bigger.

“Why don't you work it off? It's not that much. Get some stuff
from him, off it, do it a couple of times, and you'll be free of him,” Jim said.

Angelo looked at them. “The problem with that is it's easier said than done. I get the coke and I end up doing it and then I end up owing them more money. I swear I have every intention of giving him what's due, but then one thing happens and another thing happens…I lost a child, I don't know why I'm talking about this now, but I lost the child because of SIDS. It's a hard thing to get over, but when I do coke, I don't feel anything. I feel numb.”

This, of course, was the age-old problem of drug abusers—they could not control what they did and how much they did it. An addict put not only his or her life on the line but also the lives of his or her children, spouses, parents, and on and on. It was for these reasons that for the most part, the DEA stayed away from addicts. Here, now, what Jim and Tom were looking at was a drug-using lowlife who had gotten himself in trouble and was trying to weasel his way out of it.

Jim said, “We're always looking for something good, good dope. If this guy has good stuff, we'll take some off his hands. We'll buy it directly from you.”

“Really?” Angelo said, brightening up.

“Sure. We'll take all you can get.”

“Okay,” he said. “I can do that. No problem.”

As Angelo talked, they drank. He finished his drink and had another. The more alcohol he consumed, the looser he became with his mouth. He kept going back to Pitera. He kept talking about what a dangerous, bad, stone-cold killer he was. Nearly every other word out of his mouth was
killer.
He described him as a martial arts expert who loved to murder people.

“He's pale like a vampire,” he said.

Ultimately, arrangements were made for Jim and Tommy to meet with Angelo in Brooklyn. They would meet a woman named Judy Haimowitz, who, according to Angelo, was one of Pitera's dealers.

W
hen Jim Hunt and Tommy Geisel finished with Angelo, they discussed what they heard on their way back home. They believed they were onto something. Both Jim and Tommy, however, were naturally skeptical. Often street people embellished and exaggerated to such a degree that they were living in a fantasyland. But there was something about what this Angelo character said about Pitera that not only had the ring of truth but had an innate sense of dread, a sense of foreboding about it. Whether or not that was all in his own head or was reality, they'd soon find out.

The following day, Jim and Tommy reported to DEA headquarters on Fifty-seventh Street. They repeated what they had learned to their boss Ken Feldman and their colleagues in Group 33. Everyone agreed it was certainly worth pursuing and pursuing in a large, serious way. They ran a search for Pitera's file and checked his record. Interestingly, he had no police record, but they found out he was a highly trained black belt in karate who had studied martial arts in Japan for some two and a half years. He was also known to hang out with members of the Bonanno crime family.

When Tommy and Jim next went to meet Angelo in Brooklyn's Gravesend, they were not alone. They had backup with them. Excited by the prospect, by the potential enormity of this case, they made their way to Brooklyn via its Belt Parkway. They went under the grand
expanse of the Verrazano Bridge, the Narrows Straits on their right, Bensonhurst on their left. They got off at the Cropsey Avenue/Coney Island exit, took a left, and made their way into Gravesend. There were two vehicles: the one that Tommy and Jim were in and a van with four other agents. They were each heavily armed. Never knowing what they would face, they were on guard. Even if a small part of what Angelo said about Pitera was true, this could very well turn into a dangerous situation. They all realized you never knew what you were walking into. What seemed like an innocuous situation could turn deadly at a moment's notice.

More than anything else, Pitera's association with the Bonannos caught and held their interest in a huge way. This could very well be the chink in the armor of the Bonanno family that they, the DEA, had been looking for; this might very well bring down the whole family if they could get the goods on Pitera; if they could turn Pitera and make him spill the beans…tell all he knew. It stood to reason that if Bonanno underlings were selling drugs, everyone in the family from the boss on down not only knew about it but had given their blessings, their advice, their protection. In other words, it was not two or ten or several dozen members of the Bonanno crime family hustling drugs. What was happening here, the reality of what was going on, was that the whole family was a well-lubricated machine whose by-product was a huge amount of heroin and cocaine. Jim and Tom well knew that the pipeline that Carmine Galante had constructed at the behest of Joseph Bonanno in the 1950s was still running.

They met Angelo in the basement of his house on West Eighth Street. It was unkempt, dirty—a mess. It didn't take long for Judy Haimowitz to show up. She was short and overweight and had a full head of hair that went every which way at once. Angelo introduced her to the agents. She was nervous. It was immediately apparent to Jim and Tom that she was not a professional, hardcore dealer as such, that, more than likely, she was somebody who got caught up in drugs because of her abuse of drugs, the world of drugs…the milieu of drug
abuse. Without speaking to one another, Jim and Tom knew that their job would be to relax her and set her up, use her to get bigger fish. They sat down. Pleasantries were exchanged.

“I've got the stuff,” Judy offered before going to her pocketbook. She riffled through her bag, and as she fumbled for the heroin, a gun suddenly fell out of her pocketbook. The gun hit the ground. It was a .25 automatic. Tommy and Jim and Angelo looked at one another. This was more comical than dangerous, the agents thought.

“Oh, I'm so sorry!” Judy said before picking up the auto and putting it back in her bag.

“Don't worry,” Angelo put in. “She's good people. Frank Gangi is her boyfriend. Real stand-up guy.”

Glad the gun was away, they all laughed somewhat nervously. Judy handed the heroin to Jim. He looked at it with great intensity, as though he was an expert geologist studying an uncut diamond.

“Looks real good,” he said. Judy Haimowitz was paid. Though she was a small player in a life-and-death game, because of Agents Hunt and Geisel, she would, ultimately, play a significant role in the story of Tommy Pitera.

They now discussed Jim and Tommy meeting Pitera; it was Pitera they wanted. Angelo explained to them that Pitera was paranoid, suspicious, very wary of meeting strangers. He was very fond of saying—Angelo said—“If I don't know the cunt they came out of, I don't want to know them.” Still, Angelo said, he'd do what he could to set up a meeting between Pitera and Jim and Tom.

The deed done, Jim and Tommy made for the sidewalk, walking along a driveway that separated Angelo's place from the house next door. It was quiet, the night clear, stars shining in the black sky. The smell of Italian cooking, tomato sauce and basil and garlic, wafted seductively through the air. As they reached the sidewalk, they ran into a tall, dark-haired, attractive woman.

“Is Judy inside?” she asked the agents.

“Yeah, she is,” Jim said.

She thanked them, smiled, and walked toward the house. She had, Jim was sure, a Canadian accent.

One way or another, Jim and Tom thought, they would manage to get the goods on Pitera—if possible, get him holding drugs. At that point, they had no idea just how cagey and cunning, treacherous Pitera was. They headed back to DEA headquarters, where they handed in the dope they had bought, which would be tested for content and purity. As it happened, it was particularly good heroin, with a 20 percent cut on it.

They already had Judy Haimowitz. She had sold them both drugs. They had each seen her carrying a gun. However, rather than bust her now, they would diligently and slowly work her.

The game was afoot.

 

Later that evening, Judy Haimowitz went to the Just Us Bar, where she found Frank Gangi. Gangi was a tall, thin, muscular man with particularly broad shoulders. His hair was thick and jet-black. Judy told him about the sale and the two guys from the Bronx she met. She then told Gangi that Angelo had used his name, said his name to these two guys—that he, Gangi, was a stand-up guy.

This was bad form, Gangi knew. You don't go throwing around people's names. He immediately called Angelo and told him to come to the bar. When Angelo arrived there, Gangi berated him for using his name and suddenly gave him a hard smack across the face.

“Don't ever fucking use my fucking name, you understand, you little fuck?”

Angelo was not only hurt by the slap but angered and incensed and embarrassed. He was soon heard telling people that he was going to go get a bat and break Frank Gangi's head open. Angelo Favara was all about bluster and hot air; he was not a tough guy. He was a drug abuser who got caught up in the world of drugs. They, Jim and Tom, would use him, make him a stepping-stone.