The Infiltrator, page 27
Kathy and I resumed our social contact with Juan and Clara Tobón. We met them for lunch at the Rusty Pelican. Over stone-crab claws at a casual lunch, Tobón whispered in my ear. Alcaíno had at least $50 million hidden in European bank accounts, he believed. Tobón had worked closely with Alcaíno on a number of deals, and during the past year he’d given Alcaíno more than half a million to finance the purchase of an anchovy-packing plant in Buenos Aires — a front for his transportation line.
Bingo!
Tobón had just given me the last piece of the puzzle. How many anchovy-packing plants could there be in Buenos Aires with a container headed to a major city in the Northeast? Casals’s earlier slip gave me a hunch that Alcaíno’s route probably involved anchovies, but now I had the whole story.
Tobón explained that the factory commercially packed large tin cans of anchovies, some — but not all — of which contained cocaine. But they were having problems. They had recently lost a load headed to Europe. And the Colombians who financed Tobón’s now seized Cessna Citation were hunting him and his family. Alcaíno and Nasser had offered to have them whacked, but Tobón preferred to resolve this issue without violence. To recoup his losses, Tobón was making arrangements for me to launder about $300,000 a week for Nasser, provided I shared my profits with him.
I couldn’t wait to get to a pay phone.
“I just had another meeting with a close friend of Alcaíno,” I said to Loreto in New York. “I’ve got some more information for you that you need to get out in a bulletin to the Customs inspectors. Alcaíno’s load of dope is hidden in a container full of large cans of commercially packed anchovies sent from a plant in Buenos Aires. Each can weighs about ten kilograms, and some of the cans contain bricks of cocaine. This load should be coming into New York or some port in that vicinity any day. You’ve got to get everybody hunting for that container. There’s not much more time before it will clear Customs.”
“We’ll do everything we can to get the word out to every major port on the East Coast,” he said, hanging up and instructing one of the agents in his group to get the bulletins out.
“I’ve got a bowling match tonight,” the agent said. “Getting that notice out would take me hours. I’ll do it tomorrow morning.”
Tommy blew his New York cork, “If you fucking leave this office without getting that done, you’re looking at thirty days without pay, and I’ll make your life so miserable you won’t have the strength to ever pick up another bowling ball!”
The updated bulletins went out that night.
While our office closed in on Alcaíno’s anchovies, Gonzalo and Lucy Mora flew from Medellín to Miami. They had family in town, and Mora needed to give an updated accounting of the checks. To keep Lucy busy, Kathy and a new undercover agent, Millie Aviles, shopped and socialized with her.
Playing the role of one of Emir’s girlfriends, Millie was a natural. A bright, dark-haired Spanish speaker from a small town near Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, she had only earned her agent’s badge eighteen months earlier, but she was already taking on a seasoned agent’s long-term undercover role. A dangerous situation, but many native Spanish speakers found themselves in this position. Because of their language skills, the front-office brass often threw them into big cases with no concern about the risks of deep-cover assignments. To make matters worse, she was also working undercover as a full-time employee at the Nevele Hotel in the Catskills in upstate New York on another case.
Along with an accounting of the checks and deals of the past few months, Mora also brought a lot of concern. He was wide-eyed and trembling when he talked about Don Chepe. “Mr. Bob, you have to understand. Our competition — his name is Eduardo” — Martinez. “He’s the individual who handles all the interests for Don Chepe’s organization. He is the one who has always created problems for us.”
Martinez, Mora explained, had worked with Don Chepe for ten years and worked with his people in New York who claimed to have seen DEA agents watching the $2 million pickup last month. It was Martinez who ran to Don Chepe with this claim, and Mora thought Martinez had lied to undermine our business.
If he only knew.
“Don Chepe has six or seven secretaries” — money managers — “in his business,” Mora continued, “and all of them fall under Eduardo. When we arrived to take away his piece of the pie, at first it was all right. But during the three months when they were continuously giving us money, I’m sure that he made a plot with the secretaries … like the problem in New York that they were following him.”
Mora’s trembling increased, and he started to sweat. “The day that man” — one of Don Chepe’s workers — “leaves with the lentils [money] to deliver it to one of our employees … if the law catches them, I’m sure, I’m sure that they won’t even ask me what happened. They’ll just kill me…. Money doesn’t mean anything to him. He’s not interested in money. All that money is peanuts to him…. Five hundred, a million, two million — it’s peanuts…. Mr. Bob, these Colombian drug traffickers are bad. It’s just that the —”
“Gonzalo, my people are pretty bad here, too,” I interrupted, trying to give him a little confidence.
“Correct, correct. It’s Italian style. In Colombia, we’re talking about a 1950s Italian style. We’re talking about the same thing. We’re talking about The Godfather.”
Mora had come to a decision. He was too scared to continue doing business with Don Chepe, a madman whose power in the drug world played second fiddle only to Pablo Escobar and the Ochoas. Mora had many other contacts in the drug business who were much more reasonable. He wanted to continue — but not with Don Chepe. With Martinez in the middle whispering lies, it was only a matter of time before Mora was a dead man.
If I wanted to continue with Don Chepe, he said, I was free to do so through Armbrecht. Mora didn’t want any of the profits or responsibility. I understood and supported his decision.
“My security, my family, my life, my business, my peace of mind are worth more than any more thousands of dollars that we may earn,” he said, visibly relieved.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “That’s more important to us, too.”
Time to change the subject, so Emir wrung him like a paper towel for information on those other clients.
To put Mora further at ease, I called Bilgrami and explained that one of my clients from Medellín was in town. He and his wife invited us to join them, Awan’s wife, and another BCCI officer at their home for drinks. Which led once again to a night at Regine’s. Bilgrami, who at times also had doubts about me, was all over Mora with questions. Since Mora was loyal to a fault, his presence put Bilgrami at ease the same way Mora’s confidence grew knowing that Bilgrami was on my team. They fed off each other.
After the Moras returned to Medellín, I headed back to Tampa for a few days, where, working late one night at Financial Consulting’s office, I left a message for Alcaíno — uncharacteristically absent — to call, forwarded calls to my undercover phone at home, then drove like a madman to shake any tails.
Just before midnight, as I was barely through the door, the strobe light flashed. It had to be Alcaíno.
“How are you?” he asked, friendly as ever.
“Very good, Roberto.”
“I thought you were far away,” Alcaíno said, meaning Europe.
“No, not yet. I was calling about a friend of mine who seems to have been missing,” I said, as he stiffened silently on the other end of the line, “in New York — Roberto is his name.”
He laughed. “You know I got stuck here, and I’m … my girlfriend is ready to have the baby, so that is why we’re hanging loose. So this is the thing. I’ve been going to Boston and going to Philadelphia. I’ve been going all over the goddamn place. One day here and one day there, so hopefully soon she’s going to have the baby, see…. So things are — thank God I have no problem. I’ve been working some, and so this is where I’m being very, very hectic.”
“Does Gloria know about it?” I asked, thinking one of his girlfriends was in labor.
“No,” he said, speaking to me like a father talking slowly to a child. “You know what I’m talking about?”
Oh!
How could I be so stupid? He was telling me the load was in and sitting on the dock. His main buyers were Italian organized-crime guys in Boston, I knew, so he had been in Boston working out logistics. Given what he’d just said, the load had to be at a dock near Philadelphia.
“How’s the plans?” he said, changing the subject to the wedding. “They’re still for October?”
“Oh yes, most definitely …. We’re gonna do it Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning is the wedding. So there’ll be a place there beginning Friday afternoon for you, if we can convince you to take out that much time.”
“I won’t miss that, wouldn’t miss the opportunity,” he said.
Good.
“I’ve got to tell you this,” I said seconds later on the phone to Nelson Chen in New York. “I don’t really want to say it because without your help, it could destroy all the hard work we’ve put in to coordinate the takedown that’s set a month down the road. I got a call. Alcaíno said his girlfriend is pregnant. That was code to let me know the load is on the dock. It’s definitely in. I gave you guys a heads-up on this more than a month ago, but you’ve got to look harder. Based on what he just told me, my guess is that it’s somewhere near Philadelphia. You guys should be looking for a shipping container full of anchovies that has arrived from a packing plant in Buenos Aires. There can’t be too many of those sitting on the docks near Philly.
“Here’s my problem. The agents in Detroit fucked us and exposed our entire operation in their affidavits. It’s an act of God that those affidavits are still sealed and won’t be released until the takedown, but you know how that goes. The only thing between those affidavits and the street is a clerk that’s supposed to safeguard them. We can’t go through that again. You’ve got to cover my ass and keep any mention of the undercover operation out of any search warrants you decide to file. The best-case scenario is that you guys file an affidavit confirming that a routine Customs inspection stumbled on the load.”
“Don’t worry,” Chen said. “We’ll watch your back. You know you’re doing the right thing, don’t you?”
I had to think before I could answer. I knew I was doing the right thing, yes, but a single misstep by any one of a hundred officers who knew about the operation could get me, Emir, or somebody else killed. “Yeah, I know I’m doing the right thing. I just need you to look out for me, and I need time. If you guys find this load, please give me at least a day before you take him down. I don’t want to be the last one he talked to about this when he gets popped. I’m going to call Tommy now and explain this all to him, but I called you first, Nelson, because you’re the person I trust the most in New York. I’m counting on you.”
“Okay, don’t worry. I promise you the right thing will be done on this end.”
I dialed Loreto and explained everything to him.
The next day he called back. “We’ve got it — congratulations.”
The shipment contained 2,475 pounds of pure cocaine — at the time, the largest seizure in the Northeast, worth over $23 million.
It was odd, though. I felt happy for everyone who had worked so hard to make this happen, but I couldn’t allow myself to exhibit any of that glee. It was out of character. I had to stay focused and deal with this as Bob Musella: a friend of Alcaíno and part of his organization. This news would devastate Alcaíno, Casals, Mora, Tobón, Zabala, and dozens of others, and I was too tired to celebrate one minute and jump back into panic the next. Easier to remain stoic and deal with facts.
“How are you guys going to deal with this?” I asked Loreto.
“The agents in Philly are trying to muscle this case away from us and take the seizure on their turf,” he said, confirming my fear, “but that’s not going to happen. We put the bulletins out when you first gave us the leads on this load. This is our trophy. Alcaíno will be expecting the freight forwarder to have the trucking company deliver it to a warehouse on the Lower East Side. We’ll make the delivery, and when he shows up we’ll bag him. We’re coordinating with DEA. After the arrest, we’ll do a search warrant on his Thirty-fourth Street apartment. The Tampa office is coordinating with L.A. They’ll hit his house in Pasadena, his jewelry store in L.A., and anything else they can find. We’ll seize every asset we can lay our hands on.”
“Arresting him is one thing,” I said, “but the buyers of this load are big-time Italian mobsters in Boston. Isn’t there any way you can try to sit on this for a while to see if you can nab him delivering to them?”
“Rudy Giuliani is our U.S. Attorney here in Manhattan. This guy likes publicity. I’m telling you right now: The front office isn’t going to let this load leave New York. This is where they want the press conference.”
“Let me know when you take him down. In the meantime, I’ll call in any intelligence we get undercover.”
“I’ve got an idea about how we can have eyes and ears on the ground in both Miami and L.A.,” I said to Kathy after breaking the good news. “You don’t have to do this. If they figure out who we really are, it wouldn’t have a pretty ending, but I think we’re in solid with these people…. Call Gloria Alcaíno. Tell her you’re having second thoughts about the marriage because of what I do in the business. Tell her that you were wondering if she would be willing to allow you to come out to L.A. and spend a little time with her to get her counsel. That way, if Alcaíno smells a rat and sneaks out of New York, you’ll be in a position to hear and learn exactly what he’s doing. I’ll stay in Miami and keep my ear to the ground with Zabala and Tobón. What do you think?”
“I’m all for it,” she said. “The Alcaínos don’t suspect us in the least, and we’ll have all our bases covered in case things go different than planned. After we get clearance from our people in Tampa, I’ll call her and set it up.”
It was crucial to be as close to Zabala and Tobón as possible when Alcaíno was arrested, so I called Zabala with news that my people in Chicago had taken pictures of the Hurtados that he needed to confirm before we grabbed them. I also told him he needed to pick up $150,000 and hold it for a day. Then I told Tobón I was ready to take the first shipment of money from him on behalf of John Nasser in Colombia.
The anchovy net was closing on Alcaíno, our first big catch. Kathy headed solo to Pasadena where Juan and Clara Tobón were staying with Gloria Alcaíno and her two daughters. She confessed her second thoughts while keeping one ear open for calls from Alcaíno. But Alcaíno was too busy to call.
On a balmy, clear September afternoon, Alcaíno was waiting in a suit and tie at a Chelsea warehouse when a truck arrived pulling a flatbed carrying the forty-foot container packed with tens of thousands of pounds of anchovies. Just as Tobón had said, each box contained several large tins, commercially packed; no one would otherwise suspect a thing. Anchovies in salt, under the brand name Dipez, manufactured by Mar del Mar, S.A., in Buenos Aires.
Customs and DEA agents posing as workers at the warehouse began unloading the truck. Alcaíno was already sweating the two extra days it took to get the freight forwarder to release the container for delivery. He had almost abandoned the deal, but he had invested too much in the load and transportation line.
As the boxes shifted from the truck to the warehouse, though, he noticed peculiarities about the warehouse men. These were new faces. Too many gringos. Tall, athletic, short hair, beepers. They were too well dressed; they didn’t have laborers’ hands. Men who offload trucks — mostly Hispanics or blacks — wear dingy clothes, have weathered hands and faces and scraggly hair. These guys were educated — their vocabulary was too good, and they kept trying to engage him in conversation.
“You know,” a nearby worker said to him, “I hear that a lot of times people will try to smuggle drugs into the U.S. by hiding it in shipments like this.”
Alcaíno’s face froze.
The cats were playing with the mouse, he realized, so he stepped to the side of the loading dock and immediately called his girlfriend at his midtown apartment. “Cecilia, listen to me closely. The package was delivered, but I think it has been spoiled due to the intense heat. You know that ugly guy wasn’t supposed to get involved, but I think he’s gotten right in the middle of everything. You need to make sure that the apartment is spotless, because I think they may visit there eventually. Also, since the air conditioner is broken there, and it is probably going to get very hot, why don’t you take out the trash and find someplace comfortable to stay. I’ll call you when I’ve figured these things out for sure.”
Cecilia threw everything she could find in her suitcase — a triple-beam scale, lead ingots, a few kilos of coke, some cash, and records of prior drug sales. She ran down the stairs to the basement, walked from the garage, and entered the sea of millions of New Yorkers on the street. She found a cheap hotel and waited.
While agents struggled with the boxes, Alcaíno slowly walked around the corner, trying to act as cool as he could. Out of sight, he jumped in a cab, sped to his apartment, packed a bag, and quickly reappeared on the street. Agents watching the building saw him flag another cab and head to LaGuardia. At the terminal, he dashed into an elevator, went down to the ground floor, and got in another cab. The agents who followed him to the airport didn’t see him leave, so they jumped on aircraft eyeballing passengers to see if he had snuck on a flight. Meanwhile, Alcaíno had returned to his apartment, where some of the agents who had stayed in case he returned took him down.
By the time Alcaíno was in cuffs, Kathy and Juan and Clara Tobón were getting ready to leave Alcaíno’s house in Pasadena and head to the airport. She needed to get out before agents showed up to search the house. She thanked Gloria for her support and said it was time to come home. I picked them up at Miami International and we headed to Tobón’s house, where he revealed his feeling that Alcaíno had problems. He’d spoken to Alcaíno on the phone and could feel the tension. In Pasadena, Gloria had noticed strangers in sedans near their home, possibly taking pictures.
