The Butcher Read online

  “Are you sure?” Jim asked, always wary.

  “They say it’s there,” the informer said.

  Jim well knew that they could be running into a situation where the Dominicans were looking to rob them; that there were no drugs; that this was, in fact, a rip-off. It had happened before. DEA agents were killed in situations in which they thought they were buying drugs only to have the dealers turn on them, shoot them dead, and steal the money.

  This was a risk they would have to take this night. Would they be facing a compliant dealer or a dangerous predator? There was only one way to know for sure. The Colombian informer, Jim and Tommy and the rest of them knew, had proven himself reliable in the past. With that, Jim and his team headed into the tenement and started going upstairs cautiously, guns drawn. They were in plain clothes but had badges on chains around their necks. Unfortunately, just as they were moving up the stairs, the Dominicans were coming down. They were startled by the agents and hightailed it back up into the stash apartment. Hearing this, Jim and his people ran full out, got to the landing, and burst into the apartment. As they went, Jim grabbed one of the Dominicans and brought him to the ground, cuffed him, and handed him off in fluid, amazingly fast movements, almost as though it were a magic trick, all the while the agents yelling, “Policía! Policía!”

  Jim and Tommy Geisel now ran to the back of the apartment looking to get the other two. In the far rear room, there was a window open and a fire escape. The agents could see a bad guy making for the window. Jim bolted forward and dove on the bad guy. Tall, wiry, very strong, every sinew and muscle in the man’s body fought Jim as Jim continued to shout, “Policía! Policía!” Wanting to end this quickly, Jim struck him in the head with his pistol, but the dealer furiously fought back and their life-and-death struggle continued. The bad guy didn’t acquiesce. Jim was forced to strike him over and over. The bad guy knew there was a hidden assassin in the closet whose job it was to kill, to kill indifferently, to kill efficiently, and the bad guy wanted nothing to do with the murder of a cop.

  As Jim was grappling with the man, Geisel had been searching the kitchen. Now he moved back toward the bad guy. As Geisel went to help Jim, some ten steps away, DEA agent Bruce Travers, a dark-haired Irishman with a muscular build, opened a closet door Tom and Jim had passed. At first glance he saw nothing. He was about to close the door when he thought he discerned, in the weak light of the stash apartment, a human form and, suddenly, the outline of a gun—pointing at him. As he raised his own firearm, there was a deafening explosion. The bad guy was low in the closet, pointing the gun up when he fired. He had in his hand a .357 Magnum. The Magnum’s slug tore into the bottom of Bruce’s jaw, drilled through his face and came out right below his eye. Bruce went down. He didn’t quite look human anymore. In the darkness and in the life-and-death havoc, Jim Hunt did not know who was firing.

  “That us or is it them?” he called out.

  The assassin in the closet now stood straight up. Though he had just shot a cop in the face, he was not finished. He could see, from where he stood, the doorway and outlined in the hall light was the informer and Group 33 boss Ken Feldman and Agent Jon Wilson. Without hesitation, he raised the .357, took a bead on the informer, and fired. The informer went down, muscles torn and shredded, bones broken.

  Tommy Geisel now aimed at the closet and opened fire with equal ferocity. Hunt was still fighting furiously with the perp on the floor. Feldman and Wilson also began firing at the closet. Between Geisel, Feldman, and Wilson they fired twenty-one rounds. In the small, hard confines of the tenement, the shots were loud and resonating. The small, empty apartment reeked of gun powder. The assassin was hit three times. Neither Tommy nor Jim knew that a steel support pillar for the building had stopped most of the rounds. Had the pillar not been there, the assassin would surely have been dead. As it was, he survived.

  Jim Hunt was very fond of Bruce. Jim viewed him as a younger brother, an eager, trusted protégé. He was one of the nicest, most giving men Jim had ever met and here he was now lying on the floor, a remnant of who he had been, his face destroyed, a large pool of blood surrounding him. Knowing that seconds mattered, knowing that Bruce’s life was hanging by a thread, Jim and Tom picked Bruce up and seemed to fly down the stairs. An ambulance was summoned but they could not wait. They knew in that time they could lose their brother. They put Bruce in the backseat of an unmarked DEA vehicle and sped over to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital some thirty blocks away, at points in time hitting 110 miles an hour. As they went, they called DEA headquarters, who in turn called the hospital, and word was sent that a cop had been shot—shot in the face.

  When they pulled up at the emergency ward at Columbia Presbyterian, there was a team of a dozen nurses and doctors waiting for Bruce. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. He wanted so badly to tell them that he had another gun strapped to his ankle, that he didn’t want to get shot while the orderly was taking it off, but he could not talk. His tongue was destroyed. His situation was so dire, his life precariously hanging by a thread, that doctors were forced to cut open his trachea, giving him a tracheotomy right there in the street. A plastic tube was forced down his throat and his lungs were given desperately needed oxygen. He drifted off into a deep, comalike sleep.

  In no time, some fifty anxious, worried DEA agents had gathered at the hospital. They were as close as brothers and sisters and they stayed there all night long. Because of the brilliant efforts of the surgeons and nurses, Bruce’s life was saved. Higher-ups in the New York office of the DEA arranged for a plane to pick up Bruce Travers’s parents in Boston, where he was born and raised, and fly them and his brothers and sisters and fiancée to Teeterboro Airport, where they were placed in an SUV with a souped-up engine and were sped, sirens screaming, lights flashing, to Columbia Presbyterian.

  When, later that day, Bruce woke up, he was in a fog, though he could make out his whole family gathered around the bed. His father took his hand. He said, “You’re going to be all right, son. You’re going to be all right.” Bruce had no idea how his family had so quickly been summoned and were there, but he was grateful, deeply and profoundly grateful. He tried to talk but could not.

  When, in Washington, D.C., President Reagan heard what had happened, he insisted on placing a call to Bruce. He wanted to talk to him. The phone at his bedside rang. Bruce’s father answered. He was shocked to hear President Reagan on the other end. He explained that Bruce couldn’t talk. President Reagan told Bruce’s dad that he was “extremely grateful” for what he’d done, that he and Nancy sent their support and love and prayers. Everyone was very touched, very moved. Mr. Travers thanked the president and hung up.

  “It’s a hell of a thing,” Mr. Travers said to his son. “A hell of a thing.”

  Jim Hunt was deeply touched by what happened to Bruce Travers. He had become close to Bruce. Bruce had a wide-eyed enthusiasm. He was not a cynical, hard man who was a product of the streets like many with years in law enforcement. He was a gentleman, though a particularly tough, resilient individual.

  The doctors told Jim and all his colleagues that Bruce was still in danger, that Bruce could “still die.” If he survived, he would have to undergo “many operations” to regain a face similar to the one he had once had.

  Many in Group 33 went to church and lit candles and prayed for their colleague, prayed for their friend. Bruce was liked by everybody. Just how truly heroic Bruce Travers was would not be made clear for some months, for the pain and the discomfort was just beginning. He still had fourteen major operations ahead. When police ballistic experts re-created the shooting using triangulations of trajectory, they came to know that the shooter had been crouched down, and when he fired the .357 Magnum, the bullet went up into Bruce’s lower jaw and burst out of his face, just beneath his eye.

  As it happened, the assassin in the closet had been paid to do exactly what he did. His job was to shoot and kill anyone who tried to impede the selling of the cocaine. He, Jim kne
w, all the agents knew, was from another culture, another mind-set. From where he hailed, from the place he came, life was cheap; life was worth nothing. What struck them all as odd, though, was that he had to know Bruce and all the rest of them were cops. They were yelling, “Cops! Cops! Policía! Policía!” over and over.

  Yet, still, he pulled the trigger without a second thought.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PIZZA TWO

  The Perfect Storm was out hunting again. Jim Hunt and Tommy Geisel were about infiltration, surveillance, and arrests. Disguised as street thugs, they were ideal partners. At any given time, Tommy Geisel and Jim Hunt were juggling numerous cases, different bad guys, different scenarios involving various drugs and ethnic groups. Any of these cases could be deadly, and they took necessary precautions—the best of which was to strike first. Neither Jim nor Tommy would allow a bad guy to get the drop on them. Jim and Tom, however, were not about confrontation, not about being quick-draw cowboys. They were consummate con artists; they could talk the stripes off a running zebra. They, the Perfect Storm, were about gaining trust and getting bad guys to believe that they were all outlaws.

  Interestingly, most bad guys who dealt with Jim and Tom took a shine to them. They never bullied anyone, never called anyone names. They were always professional and polite and would go out of their way to do what they could. They knew, in the long run, they would create a network of individuals much more inclined to help them. It wasn’t so much that Jim and Tom were nice guys. They were interested in developing informers and people who would “assist rather than resist,” as Jim put it.

  One of the largest, most important cases the DEA ever had was created as a result of Jim Hunt and Tommy Geisel convincing a bad guy to cooperate. This case was called the Pizza Two. It involved the importation of heroin by Sicilians into America. It was called the Pizza Two because some of the players were the same individuals involved in the original Pizza Connection case.

  Jim and Tommy’s involvement in the case was spurred by one Vinnie DeMarco—who would become a direct link to Tommy Pitera. Vinnie was a maître d’ at the Embassy Terrace catering hall in Brooklyn, a place where mafiosi tearfully married off their sons and daughters. Vinnie was fifty-five years old, though appeared older—the skin on his face loose and sagging.

  Vinnie DeMarco’s son Benny had been fronted one pound of pure heroin by one of these Sicilians. His name was Salvatore Canavo. He was a cold-blooded mafioso, cut from the hard stone of Sicily, a large heroin dealer. Canavo hung out on Bensonhurst, Brooklyn’s Eighteenth Avenue; he was one of the individuals who supplied heroin to the Gambino family. Vinnie DeMarco’s son Benny was not a professional dealer. He was not a hardcore bad guy, and when he tried to sell the heroin, make a few bucks on the side, he was ripped off. He now owed some seventy-five thousand dollars to Canavo.

  In sheer desperation, Benny turned to his father for help. Though his father was basically a working stiff, he still knew the way of the street. He loved his son dearly, knew his son had fucked up, and was intent upon getting him out of trouble. He told Benny he would go to Canavo and tell him that he’d pay it off a little at a time, maybe two thousand dollars a month. Grateful, his son cried and held his father. With that, Vinnie DeMarco went and saw Canavo. He pled his case, said he would pay off his son’s debt, swore on his dead parents’ graves that he would make sure the money was paid. Canavo, cold, aloof, and reptilian, said, “Oh yeah? How about this…you owe me the money now. Your son’s off the hook, but you—I want the money from you.”

  Boxed into a corner, Vinnie DeMarco agreed to pay him off as soon as possible. Little by little, every week, DeMarco brought Canavo money. Canavo kept a ledger book, and every dime he got from DeMarco, he’d deduct from the original amount. Problem was that DeMarco earned so little working at Embassy Terrace that Canavo became impatient. To help expedite paying off the debt, Canavo suggested to Vinnie DeMarco that he sell drugs. Reluctantly, DeMarco agreed. The sooner he got Canavo off his back, the better.

  Initially, Canavo fronted DeMarco several ounces of heroin. Not knowing anything about the business, not knowing who wanted heroin, not knowing that the DEA had plants all over the New York tristate area, DeMarco ended up selling the drugs to a DEA informer. Before he knew it, he was under arrest. DeMarco had never been in trouble in his entire life. He was shocked and distraught and seemed to have aged ten years overnight. He cried uncontrollably in front of Jim Hunt and Tommy Geisel. When they checked his record, they realized he was a civilian, that he was a hardworking man. When they heard his story of woe, how his son had gotten him into this, how he had tried to protect Benny from Sicilian vipers, they felt bad for him. They offered him a deal.

  Jim said, “All right, look…we know you aren’t a bad guy. We are going to give you the opportunity to help yourself. We want you to set up Canavo. Keep buying drugs from him. We’ll provide you with the money. Record him, and whatever you do to help us, we’ll help you in a big way.”

  This was a golden opportunity for Vinnie DeMarco. He went about the business of setting up Sicilian heroin dealer Salvatore Canavo with enthusiasm. Canavo, in turn, said he would have someone who worked for him, Paulo Rizzuto, contact him and that he would provide all the heroin Vinnie needed. With that, Vinnie called Jim Hunt and Tom Geisel and told them what happened, told them about Paulo. This is what Hunt and Geisel were always looking to do: parlay one person against another and another and another, working their way up the food chain.

  Paulo came to the Embassy Terrace to meet with DeMarco. He had a heavy Italian accent, was a “greaseball,” as DeMarco would later refer to him. Without preamble or hesitation, Paulo assured DeMarco he could get all the heroin he wanted. That same week, Jim arranged for DeMarco, Canavo, and Paulo to meet at the My Way Lounge in Brooklyn. Jim wanted to see who this Paulo character was. Jim managed to have DEA photographers take clandestine photographs of both Paulo and Canavo. Now, for the first time, they realized who Paulo Rizzuto was—he was one of the original Pizza Connection participants who had managed to get away. This added a whole new element and sense of importance to what DeMarco had initiated.

  Now Paulo began to supply DeMarco with pure heroin that DEA labs told them was high-grade Sicilian dope. It seemed Paulo had an unlimited supply. One night, Paulo showed up at the restaurant with still another Sicilian, a guy named Manny. Again, DEA photographers captured his likeness, and within two days, they knew his real name and identity and criminal background. They were shocked to learn that this was none other than Emmanuel Adamita. He, too, had been a major player in the Pizza One case. He had been arrested both in the United States and Sicily and miraculously had escaped from both a Sicilian prison and an immigration prison hospital in Florida. This was a big fish, a giant white shark. This, also, was a classic example of how the DEA fought the war on drugs. They went from a small fry to a white shark.

  Interestingly, Manny Adamita was directly related to Carlo Gambino’s family, cousins of brothers John, Joseph, and Rosario Gambino. Adamita had also once been a driver and bodyguard for Carlo Gambino. Now, suddenly, the DEA again had a major player in their sights. Rather than jump on him, collar him, and haul him off to jail, it was decided that they’d keep working him and see where he led them.

  Vinnie DeMarco continued to buy heroin from Paulo and Manny, and the case became more solid with every purchase, more solid with every day. DEA surveillance photographed Manny going into the Garage Sale café in Brooklyn, which was owned by Tony Spuvento, a member of the Calabrian Mafia known as ’Ndrangheta. Here, Manny said that the Gambinos were looking to buy large amounts of marijuana and they had people, “good people” all over the country, looking to cop. Vinnie immediately saw an opportunity to further ingratiate himself to the DEA, to the government.

  “I’ve got friends who’ve got all the grass you want,” said Vinnie. “They bring it up from Florida and the Carolinas.”

  Manny was interested, and Vinnie said he would set it up. When V
innie told Jim and Tom about this latest development, they were all ready with a plan that would further ensnarl Manny and company. The well-lubricated workings of the DEA kicked in and DeMarco was told by Jim and Tom to arrange for Manny to be brought to a hotel in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where he, Tommy, and a third DEA agent by the name of George Ellin—the head of the DEA in Charleston at the time—would be waiting for them disguised as major players in the pot business.

  George Ellin was a tough-looking government agent with dark hair. He was a specialist and his specialty was endearing himself to drug dealers. He knew the walk, the talk, the culture, and he was often brought into cases in different parts of the country to convince bad guys that they could deal with him, and ultimately they would end up being brought down and sent to prison. If the DEA had a De Niro, George Ellin was he.

  The DEA always has “props” ready for just such a case. They would use a confiscated speedboat that could go up to 110 miles an hour on the water and cost half a million dollars. They would use a warehouse filled with twenty thousand pounds of high-grade marijuana. These were props that could convince the most cynical of drug dealers that Tom and Jim and George were major players, the real thing—trustworthy.

  Manny readily agreed to go to South Carolina. They checked into the Intercontinental Hotel. The room had a large terrace, where they had drinks. Both Jim and Tom were lounging around the pool, drinking and making it seem as though they were having fun, flirting with women at the pool. They took on the demeanor of carefree, wealthy pot dealers. Up on the terrace, George Ellin began his shtick, first talking about sports, the weather, fishing; it was good, he knew, to slowly work his way to the reason why everyone was there. While he was building a rapport with the Sicilian, he suddenly noticed—all an act—Jim and Tom down by the pool.