Funeral Hotdish (9 page)

Hell, he’d have to hurry to make the pheasant season that closed in early January. He couldn’t miss that, too. He loved pheasant the way his grandma made it, baked with cream of mushroom soup. Give him baked pheasant or deer sausage and he was a happy man. Those thoughts bounced around his head as it cleared from the drug haze.

He decided it was time to go home.

Ben spotted him twenty dollars for gas and wished him luck. Crabapple headed off, sure that whatever waited for him wouldn’t be so bad. He’d faced bad scrapes all his life. This was simply the latest one.

“I’m just not lucky,” he said, and everyone agreed he was right.

But he had gotten lucky when he found that the clean-cut kids in Northville liked to break out now and then, and he could make extra money selling weed. When the casino went in, the Indian kids had money to join the party and his business had boomed. Then along came these wonderful little pills, and for once in his life, he was sure he was holding a full house. Until, shit, that went south, too.

He stopped at Burger King on his way out of town, treating himself to a malt along with burger and fries, and talked to himself all the way home—promising he was done with the drug trade and vowing he’d deny everything and it would go away. He’d convince Huntsie to take him back and he’d work his ass off at the shop. Someday he’d own his own place. Be his own boss. That would be great. He’d find himself a girl—not like Poodle, but a real nice girl—and he’d get married and have kids and he wouldn’t run out on them or treat them bad.

Life didn’t have to be a toilet. He could change that. He could clean up. He could sober up. He could leave the bad hand he’d been dealt behind him and chose from a clean deck.

As Darryl “Crabapple” Harding pulled onto Interstate 94, he was full of piss and vinegar and sure that everything would be okay.

Chapter Eight

Wednesday, October 20—Sunday, November 21, 1999

The fifth floor of the Phoenix Police Department’s headquarters is a hallowed place. The floor houses the homicide division. The floor where all important police briefings are given. The place where the medical examiner meets every Wednesday morning with officers to go over the priority of forensic tests. The room where wiretaps are monitored. In short, this is the heart of fighting crime in the nation’s sixth-largest city.

Joya had never been allowed up here before, not even when she was investigating the morgue. Stepping off the elevator today, she expected to see more than gray metal desks overflowing with file folders, battered chairs in the conference room, and a coffee-stained carpet. Even so, she felt glad to finally reach this inner sanctum. She almost didn’t make it.

There had been hell to pay when Rob revealed what had happened to his superiors. Officers could hear the police chief screaming behind the closed door and more than one thought it might cost Rob his job. Joya was summoned—she smiled to herself, imagining how she’d tell the chief she was too busy that day to come over for a visit. Maybe she would have tried it, except she knew it would hurt Rob.

When she walked into Chief Tomayer’s office, two things struck her. The room itself looked like a country club smoking lounge, big leather chairs around a massive oak table, a desk in the back that was clean as a whistle. This was a man who ruled by meetings, not paperwork. Photos of the chief with every important person in Arizona covered the walls—all smiling, all puffed up. Joya couldn’t read the award plaques from a distance, but she fully expected one declared that Chief Tomayer walked on water. The chief himself looked regal—all he needed was his hat—and pranced like he was ready to take her to the woodshed. Only his jaw muscles gave him away as he ground his teeth continually.

Lawrence Tomayer had a Hollywood-handsome face. Standing six-foot-five, maybe two hundred pounds, black hair specked with gray, cool blue eyes, a chin dimple that Kirk Douglas would envy, he was a fine specimen of a man. Joya guessed, correctly, that he’d tasted success early in life and never lost his appetite. She’d seen him triumph at City Council meetings, milking money for his department from a dry cow. Other city departments envied the pull he had at City Hall. He was not only Phoenix’ top cop, he was Phoenix’ top dog.

Joya was both pleased and anxious to see him now grinding his teeth. Venting. Threatening. “No possible way, young lady. You cannot be inside this investigation. That’s absurd. When it’s all over, then I’ll give you access to my men. But not before then.”

“That sure doesn’t work for me,” she told him, pretending to be calm and collected when she was praying he couldn’t hear her heart pounding. Even for an experienced, tough reporter with awards and a fierce reputation, when it came to facing off against that uniform, that badge, that gun and all those medals, it was as intimidating as hell is hot.

She knew she held all the cards, and now she had to be careful. Like the song says, K
now when to hold
’e
m, know when to fold
’
em, know when to walk away, know when to run.

“I know Sammy the Bull is in town. I’ve seen him. I know he’s supposed to be hiding out under the witness protection program. I know your department thinks he’s running an Ecstasy drug ring. I know you’ve got other federal agencies working with you—not the FBI, but everybody else. I know all that right now, and the only way I don’t write that story is if we work together.”

The chief glared like he wanted to find some reason to arrest her.

She recognized the look. But she had an ace in the hole. Here was a police chief whose department intended to humiliate the FBI by arresting their all-time favorite snitch before they knew what hit them.

In public, no law enforcement agency will speak badly about another. But in private, other peace officers hate the FBI. They’re renamed “Fucking Bumbling Idiots,” notorious for being selfish and never sharing information back. As one rap goes, “We’re the FBI—we’ll give you the sleeves off our vests.”

So what the Phoenix PD was planning to do took balls. And balls are connected to the ego.

Joya played her ace. “If anyone can pull this off under the noses of the FBI, Chief Tomayer, it’s your guys. Now, if the Scottsdale police were trying to do this, I wouldn’t even bother working with them, because those buffoons couldn’t find their way down a lighted runway. But Phoenix PD is a different story. You’re probably the only police force in this state experienced enough to do this. I can’t think of anyone else that’s got the balls—excuse me, sir, I mean the skills.” She paused for effect. “Now,
that’s
the story I want to tell. We’re not just talking about an arrest—we’re talking about an incredible undercover effort to stop a major crime. The public needs to see that. They need to see the Phoenix Police Department at its best. The bragging rights you guys will earn with this are incredible. The public’s going to eat it up. You’re gonna look great. It’s one helluva story.”

She watched the slow smile warm his eyes as her flattery took the edge off. She had him.

“If you think you don’t like this, you should have heard my editor,” she confided, rolling her eyes at the mighty battle she’d already fought back at the paper. “I’ve convinced him that this is a fabulous story that we can’t break until Sammy is behind bars. But my editor only buys that if he knows I’m inside, getting the scoop on this case. If he thinks you’re trying to stiff me, he won’t let me hold off. Now, neither of us wants that. You have my word. You have his word. You just have to keep up your end of the bargain.”

Sensing agreement, she spoke slowly, laying out her plan. “Let me hang out and watch what happens. I promise I’ll stay out of the way. You won’t even know I’m around. I won’t bother your guys if they don’t want to talk to me. But someday, Chief, the public will eat up the story of how dogged you guys were to catch Sammy. They’re going to lap up every morsel about how smart you guys were. And I personally can’t wait to see those FBI guys with egg all over their faces.”

She was convincing and she was right. There weren’t many other options. She and the chief shook hands. When they walked out of his office, a half-dozen officers busied themselves, as if they hadn’t been eavesdropping. Rob looked like he’d put down a five hundred-pound weight.

“You son of a bitch, this might actually work to your advantage,” one of the detectives whispered to Rob as they took the elevator up to the fifth floor.

***

Joya quickly learned the first lesson of detective work: it amounts to hours and hours of tedium. Worthless tedium. She thought they’d catch him red-handed—tipped off by wiretaps that told when a drop was coming and where. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near that easy.

The first couple weeks, not much happened. Nobody was making any drug deals, nobody was talking about Sammy. The word “bull” was never uttered.

She was given a gray metal chair at the back of a small, windowless room and told to stay quiet. There was usually one guy at the large monitoring desk filled with recorders. Sometimes the officer wore a headphone so only he could hear what was being said over the tapped line, but normally, it was turned on for the room to hear. Detectives popped in now and then to see what was going on.

The captain in charge clearly didn’t like having her there. When she brought in a cup of coffee, he barked, “Don’t spill that.” When she had a coughing jag, he snarked, “If you’re going to make noise, get out of here.” She learned the first day that when they brought in sandwiches for lunch, there wasn’t one for her. So she packed her own lunch and acted like she wasn’t a stranger in a strange land.

Then came the second lesson of detective work. Sitting for hours, getting nothing of value, inspires war stories about days when something actually happens. And in this case, the guys doing the telling were sometimes the guys who had stumbled onto Sammy with all innocence, just as she had.

She’d eventually write:

The first time Phoenix undercover agent Jim Cope was told the drug ring he was trying to bust was headed by Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, he thought it was just puffery.

Having grown up in New Jersey, Cope certainly knew the reputation of the Mafia underboss who’d become famous turning on John Gotti and sending the “Teflon Don” up the river.

But come on, this is Phoenix, Arizona. This is a drug ring catering to the Rave and Scottsdale club scene. Cope has no reason to believe Sammy can be anywhere near the state. Besides, the guy is in his fifties now—far too old to be clubbing it.

“I thought, if I went back and told the guys that Sammy the Bull was involved, they’d laugh me out of the station house,” Cope remembers. “They’d think I was nuts.”

So the police sergeant asks around, quietly, cautiously. More names keep coming up and the questions keep mounting. Is Sammy in Arizona? Why is he here? What’s he doing? Does he have a son named Gerard? Is that the Gerard Gravano who’s making the club scene with a druggie named Mike Papa?

Joya knew exactly how the cops felt. She’d sold this story to her editor on the basis that Sammy
was
heading up this drug ring. Now she was discovering the police still weren’t sure. Jesus, she thought, maybe this drug stuff is all a wild goose chase and the only story here is simply that Sammy’s in town. But she didn’t let on to anyone back at the paper that she had any doubt about this story. Her gut told her the pompous guy in the coffeehouse wasn’t a solid citizen—he loved his bad-ass reputation. And Rob assured her that all his senses told him Sammy was involved in drug activity.

Others weren’t so sure.

“No, we don’t know Sammy’s involved at all.” Joya felt her stomach fall when the hostile captain shared his thoughts. They were sitting in the monitoring room one day when nobody was saying anything important on the taped phones. The captain—tall, skinny, cold—had told her he never wanted his name in any story, and she agreed. She could quote him, but not name him. So far he hadn’t said anything worth quoting, but he clearly had been in on this stakeout from the start. She had to find a way to soften him up, so she started small talk.

“You’d think for something this important, they’d give you guys a better room to work in,” she joshed. “Look at this place. It could be a cave. No windows. Egg-carton walls. Uncomfortable chairs. Bet they haven’t painted for years. They should give you guys big, plush chairs and decent coffee. Now, that would make monitoring wiretaps more pleasant.”

The guy actually smiled. Small win. Then she posed a simple question. “Were you surprised to find Sammy had gotten into drugs?”

That’s when he unloaded, and Joya prayed her big “scoop” wouldn’t come back to bite her.

He said, “We know guys are bragging in the clubs that they’ve got a ‘New York guy’ as their backer, but really? You know how guys will say almost anything to get laid. So are these guys hinting about Sammy to up their odds of scoring? Or are they really working for Sammy? It’s easy for a twenty-year-old kid to say ‘I’m backed by Sammy’ and poor Sammy doesn’t know a thing. I know these kids are dirty, but is there new dirt on Sammy? I still don’t know.”

She saw him watching her face and he seemed to enjoy the dismay she couldn’t hide.

“But we had to look into it,” he added.

“When’s the first time you thought it might be true?”

“When we found his whole family was here.”

“His family’s here? I heard they refused to go into the witness protection program with him.”

“Well, they did come. His ex-wife, Debra, has a restaurant in Scottsdale. Get this, it’s called Uncle Sal’s Italian Ristorante, and guess what the slogan is? ‘The best kept secret in Scottsdale.’” They both roared.

Tracking the fifty-ish Debra, with her big hair and New Jersey nails, took one trip to the Corporation Commission that keeps records on Arizona businesses. Hanging around at Uncle Sal’s soon revealed the pretty thirty-ish woman with an endowed chest and low-cut blouses was daughter Karen. And nobody could miss the twenty-four-year-old tintype of his father, Gerard.

To top it off, Detective Cope thought the Marathon Construction Company in Tempe sounded familiar. Wasn’t that the name of Sammy’s construction company back in New Jersey? Another trip to the Corporation Commission found the firm had opened in 1995 and was owned by “Jimmy Moran.”

“We staked out Marathon,” Cope told Joya, “and one morning this forty-thousand-dollar Lexus drives up and out pops Sammy, wearing a white tee-shirt and black leather jacket. He looked just like his picture in the book. You’d have to be blind not to see it was him.” She knew the look.

“We sent someone in to price a remodel job, and sure enough, Sammy introduces himself as Jimmy Moran.”

Discovering Sammy was indeed in town was enough to launch a full-press investigation.

“Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier just to go to the FBI and ask them if they’d stashed Sammy here in their witness protection program?” she asked the captain one day, pretending to be clueless.

“Go to the FBI? Are you nuts? The first thing they’d do is run to Sammy and tell him Phoenix PD was looking at him. Or they’d move him out of town. Talk about queering the whole thing. No, of course we wouldn’t go to the FBI.”

Joya already knew that, but the quote was worth her guise of innocence. The more she got this guy to talk, the softer he got on her being around.

She also knew Phoenix PD had gone to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Customs. All were in on the hunt. “This is
our
case,” another officer stressed, pounding his middle finger on the table.

She knew something was up the first time she heard the name “Shorty Whip Wop.”

“Are they talking about who I think they’re talking about?” she gingerly asked.

“Who do you think it is?” the captain quizzed.

“Sammy.”

He cocked his finger at her like she’d hit the target.

“Boy, if he knew that was their name for him, he wouldn’t like it,” she declared, and the captain laughed. Another small win.