Shakedown Read online

  Eddie Sands checked his wristwatch. It was almost four-thirty. "I've got a time factor, hon. I love you more than ever."

  As Monica made kisses into the phone he set the receiver back on the hook.

  He hurried back to the car and sped out of the parking space, heading straight for the Harbor Freeway. Arriving in San Pedro, he steered across the Vincent Thomas Bridge to Terminal Island. On Ferry Street he parked the sedan behind a rusting cargo container sitting in an abandoned marine-salvage yard. With the engine running, he removed his gun, handcuffs, and bullet pouch, then used a screwdriver to remove the Nevada license plates from the sedan and install California plates. He placed all the items along with the briefcase in the trunk of the vehicle, then closed and locked it.

  He checked his wristwatch, noted that it was ten minutes before five, and broke into a jog down Ferry Street. He ran past a deserted tuna cannery, breathing hard. As he approached the black rocks at the water's edge, he veered left past a large green metal sign which read "Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary." He crossed the prison parking lot and went up the steps of the prison's administration building, a brownstone structure which, without its high fences and gun towers, could easily have been mistaken for some prewar educational institution.

  Entering through the main door, Sands stepped into a reception area where a muscle-bound black guard sat behind a bulletproof glass partition reading a paperback book titled Ripley's Believe It or Not. As he approached, the guard looked up at him, pressed a lever. Slowly, a door of bars to the right of the guard station began to roll into the wall.

  Sands entered, moved down a short hallway to a door above which was a stenciled sign. It read "Work Release Program-Inmates Only." He entered a musty-smelling, crowded room. He stripped off his civilian clothing and arranged it on a hanger. After placing the hanger on a long rack fashioned from half-inch pipe, he took a place at the end of a line of naked prisoners.

  As he reached the front of the line, a flashlight-toting guard, known because of his height, girth, and general demeanor as the Little King, barked his usual: "Hands on top of your head, hands down, shake your hands through your hair, turn around, bend over, spread your cheeks."

  The Little King's flashlight clicked on, then off. Sands stood up, and, as a prisoner behind him submitted to the same humiliation, he moved into the next room and donned his baggy denim prison clothes. He used a government ballpoint pen to fill out a preprinted form titled "Inmate Work Release Activity Report." Completed, it read as follows:

  Where did you report for work today?

  Mel's Used Cars and Rental Service

  1400 South Central Avenue

  Los Angeles

  What kind of work did you perform?

  Used-car salesman

  What hours did you work?

  7:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

  With the knowledge that the ex-con manager at the used-car lot would cover for him if questioned, he tossed the completed form into a brimming wire basket on the corner of the table.

  Then he headed back to his one-man cell.

  There Eddie Sands reached for a transistor radio on the shelf above his bunk. He adjusted the dial to the Dr. Paul Lofgren show. Lofgren, a mellow-voiced talk-show psychologist, calmly asked a woman caller when she had first had sex. Without a hint of embarrassment in her voice the woman said it had happened when she was seventeen years old in the backseat of a car. Holding the radio to his ear, Eddie Sands leaned against the bars as Dr. Lofgren and the woman continued to talk. He closed his eyes and imagined himself in the backseat of his car with his high school girlfriend, whom he had not thought of in many years. He removed her blouse, then her brassiere. Young, hard-bodied, she lifted one leg at a time as he pulled off her panties. She was wet and he could smell her. Now she was Monica.

  Dr. Paul Lofgren signed off the air, and there was a blast of rock music. Immediately, Sands turned off the radio, set it back on the shelf. He rolled up his sleeves and washed at the sink. Using a clean towel, he dried his hands and face thoroughly and lay down on his bunk. Lying there, with the indentations in the two-inch mattress he'd been sleeping on for eighteen months fitting his back perfectly, he concentrated on familiar sounds-the murmur of television sets and radios echoing along the cell block, muffled conversations, the ever-present thumping of metal pipes which seemed to emanate from the prison cement like a mysterious heartbeat. He closed his eyes and imagined a naked Monica straddling him, lowering her breasts to his face, whispering to him.

  Then a familiar buzzer sounded three short bursts. It was dinnertime.

  THREE

  The prison dining hall, a high-ceilinged room filled with round Formica-covered tables, was crowded. The walls were covered with crude inmate-art murals which depicted muscular black and brown men pulling ropes and lifting beams. As Eddie Sands moved along the busy chow line, black and brown men who looked much less athletic than the figures in the murals used slotted serving spoons to fill the indentations on his plastic tray with the stock items he had vowed to never eat again once he was released: tasteless macaroni, white bread, canned peaches, soggy broccoli.

  Carrying a brimming tray, he moved to his usual table in the voluntarily segregated white area of the hall. Having taken his seat at the empty table, he picked at his meal.

  A few minutes later, Pepper Lopez, a wiry Mexican with long, slicked-back hair and crooked teeth, came to the table. He set his tray across from Sands and sat down.

  "Tell them I'm through with work release," Sands said. "They can sell it to someone else. I'm not long for this place."

  The Mexican chuckled, showing his teeth, as he pushed food here and there on his tray. "What are you talking about, man?"

  "I'm getting out on an appeal."

  "What kind of an appeal?" Lopez said as he folded a slice of white bread and took a large bite out of the middle.

  "What's the difference?"

  "I'm getting out in two days myself, man," Lopez said. "Maybe I'll look you up."

  "Feel free," Sands said, though both he and the other man knew they would probably never see each other again.

  The modern Las Vegas Federal Courthouse, situated within view of the downtown casinos, was less than crowded.

  John Novak, a clean-featured man who moved with the confident gait of a soldier (hell, fifteen years in the FBI wasn't that much different than fifteen in the army), made his way down a marbled hallway past courtroom doors. Though he felt at home in such public places, as well as in all types of underworld nests, he was no longer affected very much by either. He had come to know the shared secret of all veteran cops-that the face of crime wouldn't be changed one iota by his efforts.

  His general appearance was not distinguished by any noticeable trait. Though he wore wing-tip shoes, a bland necktie, a suit purchased in a discount clothing store-attire that in a courtroom crowd would have rendered him invisible-a trained observer would never mistake him for a lawyer, court clerk, or defendant. It was the mournful, piercing quality of his eyes. Like the eyes of most cops, they reflected world-weariness and a heart hardened to the fact that the endless platoons of criminals and victims, defense lawyers and prosecutors, cops and special agents, parole and probation officers, judges and jailers, would continue to march long after he was dead and gone.

  He had brown hair, which was graying prematurely, and the solid build of a wrestler. He was proud that as a student at Pennsylvania State University he had wrestled his way to the national collegiate wrestling championship in the 165-pound class.

  He was no longer disappointed that the nights he had worked without overtime pay, that the stress which had caused his divorce (a marriage counselor told him he hadn't been home long enough to notice the deterioration of his marriage), that the sixty-three days he had spent in the Queen of Angels Hospital recovering from a punctured lung after a knife attack by prison escapee Durward Elroy Huggins, who later escaped again, that all those sacrifices and the indiscriminate transfers to various po
sts of duty which circumscribed him at age forty-one to being an apartment-dweller with nothing more to his name than a .30-30 deer rifle, some utilitarian furniture, and a gold wristwatch given to him as a birthday gift by judge Lorraine Traynor, were meaningless in the big picture.

  But even with this dark, though in his mind quite realistic, view, he still held the hope that the hoods he went after would at least have had their asses puckered knowing that John Novak, a Philadelphia policeman's son who had been the first in his family to graduate college, had worked on the case.

  He reached a door at the end of the hall marked "Lorraine Traynor-U.S. District Judge." He carefully opened the courtroom door a few inches, peeked in. The judge, an attractive woman of his age with striking blue eyes, looked down from the bench and made eye contact with him. She gave a subtle nod. Quietly, he closed the courtroom door and made his way to the parking lot outside.

  A few minutes later, as Novak sat in his government sedan smoking a cigarette, Lorraine Traynor, having changed from her judicial robe into a dark skirt and sweater, made her way down the courthouse steps and headed toward the sedan. She climbed in the passenger door and, having glanced about to make sure no one was looking, kissed him on the cheek.

  "So where have you been for the past week?" she said as he started the engine.

  "Working on the Parisi case."

  "The Parisi case. Everyone is working on the Parisi case.

  "Did you miss me?" he said with a wry grin.

  "Not at all."

  Novak steered onto Fremont Boulevard and drove past a block filled with garishly decorated marriage chapels, pawnshops, and fast-food restaurants.

  "The senior judge called me in yesterday. He told me that the other judges frowned on the fact that I was dating an FBI agent."

  "What did you say?"

  "I told him my personal life was none of his business," she said. "When do you get paid?"

  "Day after tomorrow."

  "Then you probably don't have enough money to take me to dinner tonight?"

  "Right."

  At Novak's modestly furnished apartment they headed straight into the bedroom. Lorraine Traynor moved past an unmade bed to a dressing table. She unfastened the pearl necklace she was wearing and set it next to a framed photograph of Novak with his father and brother in their police uniforms. "I learned something about you the other day," she said.

  "Whatsat?" Novak said as he unfastened his necktie and tossed it onto a chair.

  "Someone told me you were transferred from the FBI office to the Organized Crime Strike Force because you were having simultaneous affairs with two female agents." She unzipped her skirt. It dropped to the floor. She stepped out of it.

  Novak's shirt, trousers, and underwear piled up in the chair.

  Lorraine Traynor lifted the sweater over her head. She wore no bra. "Did you hear what I said?"

  Novak moved to her. From behind, he cupped her breasts.

  "Why won't you answer me?" she said.

  "Shut up," he whispered softly as his hands slid down between her legs. She turned to him. As they kissed, Novak felt her nails dig into his back.

  On the bed they screwed fiercely, and a perspiring U.S. District Judge Lorraine Traynor, her legs raised in the victory sign, gave little pleasure yelps as the bed rocked and they inched closer to orgasm.

  After lovemaking, she hugged him tightly.

  "I want you to help me write an affidavit for a bug," he whispered.

  "Who's the target?"

  "Tony Parisi."

  "I thought you told me he uses different phones?"

  "That's why I want your help."

  They climbed out of bed, took separate showers, and dressed.

  In his small but relatively neat kitchen, he made drinks as she unwrapped a small beef roast and popped it into the microwave oven.

  "Who else are you seeing?" she said on her way to the sink. She turned on a faucet.

  He handed her a drink. "No one."

  "I don't care. But I want you to tell me."

  "Why?"

  "What's the big difficulty in making a case on Parisi?" she said in order to change the subject.

  "Parisi seems to know what we're going to do before we do it. It's as if he has an instinct."

  After dinner, Novak cleaned off the kitchen table and for the next hour or so recited facts about Parisi's criminal activities to Lorraine as she scribbled the draft of an electronic eavesdropping affidavit. Finally, the affidavit was finished. Completed, it read as follows:

  The following affidavit is in support of a request for a court order to use electronic means to eavesdrop on one Anthony Salvatore Parisi.

  I, John Novak, hereby depose and say:

  I am a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation presently assigned to the Department of Justice Strike Force Against Organized Crime and Racketeering. I have been so employed for more than fifteen years, specializing in organized-crime cases while assigned to the New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles field offices. Due to my experience and training I have been qualified in various federal courts as an expert on organized crime, and specifically, the criminal syndicate known commonly as La Cosa Nostra or the Mafia.

  For the past eighteen months I have been assigned to an investigation of one Anthony Salvatore Parisi, aka Tough Tony, whom I know to be a ranking member of the Vacarillo La Cosa Nostra crime family.

  Approximately fifteen months ago, numerous reports were received by the FBI from persons holding management positions in various Las Vegas casinos that they had been victims of extortion perpetrated by representatives of the Vacarillo crime family. Many of the extortion threats were made by associates of Anthony Parisi who are known to me. Many of the threats were made by one Vito Fanducci (FBI #929486133), whom I know to be an employee of Parisi and who has, in the past, acted as a "muscle" and collector for him. Both Parisi and Fanducci are convicted felons who have served sentences for both Interstate Travel in Aid of Racketeering and Second Degree Murder.

  Following these initial extortion reports, there in fact were three murders (see the attached police reports) of casino employees who held supervisory positions in Las Vegas casinos. Two of the victims were casino count-room managers and one was a pit boss. Subsequent investigation determined that all three decedents had refused to go along with extortionate demands made by Parisi through his underlings. Also, physical evidence gathered during the investigation of the murders showed that all three victims were murdered in the same manner: gunshots to the head as they were either coming from or going to the casinos where they were employed. After this, confidential sources in Las Vegas casinos reported to me that the three casinos involved began secretly paying extortion money to Parisi on a regular basis.

  Since that time, I have used every standard investigatory technique in an attempt to gather evidence of Parisi's involvement in this continuing criminal enterprise, namely extortion involving Las Vegas casinos, but to no avail. Parisi operates out of rooms authorized for his use by various hotel/casino managers who fear recrimination if they contact the authorities and uses house phones to conduct his illegal business in order to avoid having his discussions of criminal dealings detected by means of a court-authorized wiretap. During this time, all extortion victims or other witnesses whom I have interviewed have refused to testify against Parisi in open court because they fear for their lives.

  It is therefore my belief that the installation of listening devices, including a wiretap on the telephone instrument in whatever room Parisi is currently using at the Stardust Hotel, would assist in the gathering of evidence of violations of the federal law being committed by Parisi and his cohorts.

  They moved into the living room, and like some dumpy married couple, as Lorraine put it, they lounged about and watched television-a B mystery movie which Novak figured was better than anything else that was on.

  "Do you actually enjoy your work?" she said as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

 
; "How do you mean?"

  "I mean, if you finished law school you could be a lawyer."

  Novak shook his head. "The whole judicial system makes me sick."

  "But you are part of the judicial system."

  "Wrong. The judicial system lets crooks out of jail. I put them in jail."

  "So as a judge, I guess I'm the person who decides whether someone is or is not a crook."

  "Wrong. You're someone who lets the crooks out of jail."

  "I also send crooks to jail."

  "Do you think Parisi is a crook?"

  "Everyone knows he's a crook. He's probably the biggest crook in Las Vegas."

  "Then why don't you put him in jail?" Novak said.

  "Because it's not part of my job."

  "But on the other hand, if I arrested him and failed to follow correct procedure you would let him out of jail, right?"

  "That's our system."

  "See what I mean?"

  Though it was something she seldom did, Lorraine Traynor stayed the night.

  FOUR

  Early the next morning, Novak drove Lorraine Traynor to the federal court-house. She said, "Don't be such a stranger," as she gathered up her briefcase and purse. She touched her lips briefly to his cheek, climbed out of the car. Novak checked his wristwatch, pulled into traffic. He believed in arriving early to meetings with informants.

  And Novak knew informants were the name of the game. They were the lifeblood of every prosecution, and thus a constant source of strife and bitterness among the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the U.S. Treasury's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the investigative arms of the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Labor-all the competing agencies that staffed the Organized Crime Strike Force.