Circle of Six (35 page)

I watched the other five men surround me; they took their jobs and my apparent
murderous reputation
very seriously. Did the NYPD deem me a security and flight risk? I wondered why IAD had six cops surrounding me, and I was the only detective in all of New York City working the investigation of a dead cop. My day just kept getting worse. I told the lieutenant I would not open the door for him; I knew what it was he was after.

“If you don't open the car door, we are going to arrest you now, then, we'll get a warrant to open up the car. It's your choice.”

I wasn't being an ass, but I had an acute understanding of the law. I said, “I'll open the car door, and I hope your little tape recorder is rolling, because I want it on record that I'm submitting to your request under duress.”

I opened the door and stepped aside. The lieutenant reached in, pulled the plate out, and after a brief examination of it, he said, “You're gonna have to accompany us.”

I couldn't fathom that my career had ended surrounded by IAD cops. I asked, “Am I under arrest?”

His answer was frighteningly cold, “Not yet.”

“What about the car?” I asked.

“If you don't allow us to drive it back to our office, one of my men will have it towed. Again, your call.”

I did as asked, following the men who were guarding me in a perfect by-the-book V-formation. I thought of Foster, who was probably holed up in his shoddy room; he was certainly not under such dedicated security. I sat in the back of the unmarked car. Neither Francis nor his driver said anything as we drove to the Internal Affairs Division. The high-alert security detail continued as we entered the nondescript building. I was led into a back office where the lieutenant remained compact with his dialogue, “We are conducting an investigation. I need to make some calls.”

“I need to make a call as well.”

“I'll send in one of my men, who will bring you to a phone.”

I knew their phones were retrofitted with recording devices, and I wasn't about to talk on an open line. “All due respect, I'd prefer to make my call from a pay phone.”

“As you wish,” he said, closing the door behind him.

The office windows faced the street. I noticed one of the IAD men securing Lynn's car. Another cop crossed the street with a real plaque, placed it on the dashboard, locked the door, and both men hustled back into the building. A police plate wasn't available for a murder investigation, but one was perfectly free to lock up a cop.

Two men came into the office. One jerked his head at me, indicating I follow them out. They led me to an outside pay phone, where again, they stayed very close. I called Jim Harmon, told him my circumstances. “They did what?”

I heard his voice raise as his thoughts came together, “Just...don't...just sit tight; don't worry!”

I severed the line and followed Tweedledee and Tweedledum back up to the office. I wondered who set me up. Could it have been the DTs on Foster's detail? Maybe, they could have seen my bogus parking permit and called it in. Or immediately following the
padded sit-down
with the borough commander, maybe he directed Muldoon to station somebody at the exterior of the DA's office. The maybes were endless. I'd just collected way too many enemies on my quest to collar Phil's murderer.

I had barely sat back down in that office when I heard what sounded like a cattle drive. Someone screamed, “Where's Detective Jurgensen? We wanna to see him now!”

I stepped out of the room. I was surrounded by ten cops, none of whom I'd ever met. Each of these men had their shields pinned to their suit jackets, not one of them above the rank of patrolman, which didn't seem to matter to them. One of the men pointed at me and said, “Randy, get whatever you came here with and let's get the fuck out of here.”

The irate—outranked—cop spun on Francis, who was holding onto a phone receiver, caught off guard by the stampede. “Are you charging this detective?” the cop demanded.

Francis placed the phone in its cradle; he shook his head, completely sideswiped by the no-nonsense PBA man, “No, not at this time.”

The cop jerked his thumb at me, “Good, we're leaving. If you got any charges pending, refer it to the office of the PBA.”

Once outside, one of the PBA men handed me the car keys. I removed the IAD plaque still on my dashboard, laid it on top of a nearby mailbox. At Harmon's office, he remained somewhat levelheaded. I knew that he was knee-deep in the case, preoccupied though supportive. He assured me that they could do nothing to me, and that I had the complete backing of the DA's office. In other words, the NYPD could charge me, but the district attorney's office would never prosecute me, which sounded awfully close to a kneecapping as opposed to a bullet behind the ear. I was comforted by the fact that I wasn't going to face jail time for forgery; however, the job ran to the beat of its own drummer. I knew I was eventually going to be brought to the trial room on an array of departmental charges, and there wasn't a damn thing the DA's office could do about it. I needed to get a trial room attorney to cover my ass. I knew exactly who would gladly work my case: retired Inspector Jack Haugh. When I broke down the turn of events for him, he didn't seem all that surprised; after all, he'd worked with the very same men who were surely part of this kill-campaign against me. He told me he'd work the case pro bono, and then insisted that we reveal everything, from start to finish, to
The New York Times
. Harmon asked to wait on the newspapers until after the trial. Haugh agreed and told me to call him immediately, when I was formally charged.

The end was near.

After that, from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning till the moment I closed them at night, the immediate thought was where and when
it was going to happen.
Are they going to collar me publicly, news cameras soft on Farrakhan, surrounding me as I surge into the DA's office like a criminal?
It would give them the audiovisual they would use to further stink up the case. Or would the job send DTs to my house late at night, backed up by Big Bertha, some helicopters, and for effect, 10k arc lights set up around the perimeters of my closely knit community. The neighbors would think they were living next to a rogue double agent,
I always knew that hippy, Jurgensen, was dirty
. The paranoia would last eighteen months. In that time, I lost twenty pounds. My health began to wither away, all stress related ailments, some debilitating.

By November of 1976, Foster started to feed off the cops' negative energy. I tried, as best I could, to make light of it, but we had been into this for the better part of three years. I wanted to get on with my own life as much as he did. The difference between us: I could—within reason—come and go to my own bed as I pleased, Foster could not. Yes, he was collecting a per diem (a modest weekly stipend), but this life in no way mirrored—nor intended to—what he potentially could've achieved and earned in the three years since being sequestered. Both Foster and Loretta began looking at the security around them as an inconvenience. Loretta began taking the Metro-North trains and express buses up to the safe house. Bored by the long monotonous ride, she'd invite her friends to spend the weekends. I decided to step up my involvement with Foster. Yes, he'd been with me the better part of all my days and most of my nights, but now I'd have to be there when he was tucked into bed at night, and at his bedside when he awoke in the morning. This would guarantee two things: continuity and diversion.

We were close to making our case. It was time to finalize the entire discovery regarding Foster. In other words, he had to fill out a prepared in-depth questionnaire as to what he had done for us in the past three years: where he was living, was it suitable for him, were we paying him, etc. This would all have been asserted by the defense anyway; we were preempting them so that later they couldn't accuse us of buying him and his false testimony.

I was driving to Harmon's office, Foster on the passenger side, shotgun lying on the seat between us. We were heading south in the left-hand lane of the Taconic Parkway. I was trying to steer clear of any heavy dialogue. I knew it was going to be a long day of questions and answers, and I figured on saving it for Harmon. I didn't notice the black sedan, lagging three car lengths behind and two lanes to the right. I'd like to say that the assassin was
very good at being undetected, but when it came right down to it, I should have noticed them. It was complacency on my part. I heard the squeal of tires to my right. I looked up from the radio, which I'd been fumbling with. In the corner of my eye, I saw the nose of the car, unmistakably a Lincoln Continental, moving closer to the passenger side. Instinctively, I reached for the shotgun, and in my haste to position it out the back window, I swung it across the front seat, breaking the rearview mirror and pistol-whipping Foster. It opened a huge gash under his left eye. He slammed back against the seat, then he bent down, trying to stem the bleeding. That was lucky, because had he not inadvertently dropped his head, the assassin would've had a clear shot at him. The driver was now directly to my right. The rear window of his car was lowered just enough for me to catch sight of the cut-down rifle. I screamed, “Stay fucking down, and don't get up!”

I slammed the brakes, jerking the wheel hard to the right. My front fender clipped the Continental's rear, which had the car momentarily swerving through two lanes. I waited for the driver to slow down, falling side by side with my car again. I swung the shotgun to the front, over Foster's back, and shoved it through the passenger side window. The wheelman steadied the car, made a quick U-turn off the grassy knoll and back onto the northbound side of the parkway in a dangerous but successful getaway. I held Foster down till I was sure we weren't still being followed and were completely out of harm's way. Both of us were shaken. That morning, something was taken from Foster, something we all take for granted until we lose it—youthful invincibility. From that moment on, Foster understood the game we were both in was for keeps. There was a group of men who would stop at nothing to keep him from testifying against Dupree.

After relaying the botched hit attempt to Harmon, detectives from the detail had to find us another safe house. The assumption was that Loretta may have been followed or one of her girlfriends inadvertently gave up our whereabouts. If Foster felt constrained before, after this latest leash pulling by the NYPD, he was going to feel as though he were buried alive.

Harmon was beginning to split about twenty-five percent of his time working with Jack Haugh on my case. This made for a chaotic atmosphere inside Harmon's tiny office. While Foster sat at one desk, prepping for his court deposition, Haugh and I sat at another, preparing mine, which sometimes cross-pollinated into theirs. As I sat there justifying my actions to Haugh, all properly documented, I realized that the shame of losing the job paled in comparison with the fact that I was going to lose my pension.
Eighteen years invested in a career, and it was suddenly tossed into the wind, along with my health benefits, which, had I remained the twenty years, I would've held onto for life. This was especially agonizing since Lynn and I were having a baby. Having to start all over scared the shit out of me. That was the way Muldoon and the rest were going to
take me to the mat
. They were going to completely erase me from their databank.
If Randy Jurgensen didn't work for us, then all he said against us was total nonsense, just another disgraced cop with an axe to grind.

Our new safe house was another poorly insulated bungalow in a town called Shrub Oak. It wasn't too far from the Peekskill address, but it was a more rural type of place. The security detail had a hard enough time finding the place in the day. At night, it was almost impossible.

One night I was having trouble sleeping. Around five in the morning, I decided to go up to the safe house and prepare Foster for the discovery questionnaire. When I arrived, I was shocked to find Foster unguarded. We hadn't been at the address long enough to have a phone installed, so there was no way Foster could call anyone for help. He seemed to have been up the entire night, scared to death. I assumed he thought the security men were bought off, and that at any moment the FOI were going to tear down the doors. His only defenses against a possible onslaught were a chewed-up wooden fungo bat, and his Koran. I knew he was at his breaking point. Now he had reached his threshold of pain.

We drove to a diner. Foster ate while I made call after call, trying to track down anyone from the detail. Apparently, there had been a miscommunication between the men as to which team was working the midnight tour. It was nearly eight in the morning and the next tour wasn't due in till eleven. I had to wait with him till then. I called Lynn, but there was no answer. I called our neighbor, who also wasn't home. Finally I called my mother-in-law and was told to go to St. John's Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, because Lynn had delivered our first baby boy.

We were polar opposites, Foster and I, two extremes of the day's society. I witnessed my son for the first time, not in the presence of Lynn or immediate family, but in the presence of Foster. The realization that I missed Randy's birth gave me a feeling, not of guilt, but of regret. That was a moment that could never be duplicated. I was angry that I had given myself so completely to the case, as was my father-in-law, and rightfully so. Lynn was his daughter, and he knew the strain that my job had put us both under. This should have been the most joyous moment of our lives,
and it had turned into uncomfortable silences. Jimmy Aurichio was also present. He was probably called when I couldn't be reached. I recognized his discomfort of being caught in the middle. I felt like a stranger among the people I loved the most. I was ashamed and embarrassed at having made such a mistake, the mistake of choosing my duty as a cop over my duty as a husband and a father. I asked Jimmy to take Foster back to the safehouse, and for the next five days I did nothing but stay at Lynn's side.