If Looks Could Kill (30 page)

In some respects, John Zaffino was a smart criminal. During a meeting on July 14 with Christine Todaro, Zaffino kept fairly quiet about his role—if any—in the death of Jeff Zack. While sitting next to Christine in her car, Zaffino screamed at her for ten minutes, hooting and hollering about why he was right and why she was wrong regarding the argument they’d had about Cynthia George on the telephone earlier that day. When he was finished with his earsplitting diatribe, Zaffino told Christine to call him the following day. “OK,” she said.
Jesus. What an animal.

The next morning, they spoke and agreed to meet at the same strip mall in Fairlawn, which had become, by now, a place they could refer to over the telephone without naming it. This satisfied Zaffino. He liked the idea. But what he didn’t know was that before Christine met him on any occasion, she would first meet Whiddon, Felber and other members of the CAPU at a housing development a few miles away from the mall to get set up with a wire. The equipment the CAPU had was outdated and shopworn, several detectives later told me. It wasn’t the best recording gear an undercover officer or informant would hope to have at his or her disposal. On this day, Whiddon strapped a fake pager to Christine’s side and sent her on her way. Felber reminded her, “Whatever you do, don’t get in his vehicle.”

About five minutes later, Christine was sitting inside her car calling Zaffino. When she arrived at the mall parking lot, she didn’t see Zaffino’s black Ford Explorer. “Where are you?” she asked when he answered his cell phone. “I don’t see you.”

Zaffino was just pulling in. He was likely parked across the street in the Wal-Mart parking lot, scoping Christine out as she arrived. “I’m here,” he said.

“Oh, all right,” she said, turning, looking toward the entrance, watching Zaffino pull in, “there you are.”

Zaffino pulled up next to Christine, took a hard look around the parking lot—Whiddon, Felber and the rest of the CAPU surveillance team were in unmarked vans scattered throughout the parking lot and across the street.

Christine sat in her car, expecting her ex-husband to jump out of his vehicle and sit down next to her in her car.

But not today.

“Get in,” Zaffino said from the driver’s side window of his truck.

“What?” Christine yelled back.

They had always met inside Christine’s car. She had never gotten into Zaffino’s vehicle. It was way too dangerous. Inside her own vehicle, Christine had a slight advantage. At least that’s how she felt: in control. With Zaffino at the wheel, she believed she had no chance. On this day, something was up, she could sense it.

“Get in my truck,” Zaffino said again.

Son of a gun, he knows something,
Christine told herself.

Looking around the lot, Christine realized that if she didn’t get into his truck, he would think something was going on. She couldn’t chance it. All the work she’d put into helping the CAPU—in a way, it all came down to this one decision.

So she opened the door to Zaffino’s truck and sat down. Christine was dressed rather provocatively, according to Dave Whiddon, and seemed to do that, he suggested, for Zaffino’s sake, knowing it was what Zaffino would have expected. The listening device—the pager—the CAPU had given her was attached to her waist. Inside the pager was a small microphone. As Christine sat down, Zaffino started the conversation: “I found out today.”

“So why’d you lie?”

“I didn’t…. My lawyer said that before they got to you or one of your friends—” but Christine wouldn’t let him finish.

“No way. None of my friends know anything, John. That’s f- - -ing bull- - - -. You lied to me about that s - - -.” Christine was still using the Cynthia George ruse as her core argument, knowing it would keep Zaffino focused on the one thing she could defend.

Zaffino looked around the inside of the vehicle. “They’re saying all kinds of s- - -,” he screamed.

“Well, they said she’s been to
your
house.”

“You’re the one that lied…,” Zaffino said, losing his train of thought for a moment. Then, “In the snake’s belly in the ground.”

Christine ignored the comment, saying, “Tell the truth.”

“What?”

“Before I get f- - -ing ticked off.”

“I never had anything to do with her.”

“Why was she at your house?”

“She was
never
at my house.” Zaffino was getting louder, more animated.

“Why would they say her name? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why would they say
everything
they’ve said?”

“Why would they say her
name,
John?” Christine was getting heated herself. She knew she was pushing the conversation in a direction she shouldn’t, but with the questions Zaffino was asking, she had to keep him focused on Cynthia George.

“I have no idea.”

“You’re lying to me. You always said I was the liar.
You’re
the liar.”

Zaffino started to say something. “The only thing I know about that, uh, anything is—”

But again, Christine wouldn’t allow him to finish. “That’s why you told me to stay out of the Tangier.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Don’t lie to me.”

“We’re not married.”

“We
were
married.”

“Not then.”

Christine continued to call Zaffino a liar, keeping the focus of the conversation on Cynthia. She could tell Zaffino was feeding into it. In this manner, she had control over the situation, which was what she had always tried to maintain whenever they got together.

“You better not have screwed up your life for that thing. I’m telling you that right now.”

“I have done nothing to screw up my life.” He pounded on the steering wheel. “You’re the only one I see digging my grave here.”

Christine talked about Cynthia’s vehicle being spotted at the apartment complex. Zaffino said it was a lie. Then he said he might have worked on Cynthia’s vehicle once—that was maybe why the cops and neighbors thought he was seeing her, because he had done some work for the George family.

Then, “Where’s the money?” Christine asked. She wanted five hundred dollars from Zaffino to pay off several of her mounting bills. It was the least he could do.

Zaffino didn’t answer. He began to look around his vehicle, searching for something. She sensed he was on edge, ready to snap. He had a look about him. Something was on his mind.

Zaffino said he had to use the restroom. Looking toward McDonald’s, two blocks away, he started to drive. “I’m goin’ to McDonald’s.”

“You need to quit lying, John,” Christine said as he exited the mall parking lot, drove a block south, but missed the turn into McDonald’s.

After turning around and pulling into McDonald’s, Zaffino reached into the backseat and pulled out a small black box with an LCD display on its front face. It had a small antenna on the top of it.

“What’s that?” Christine asked. She was alarmed. He was up to something.

Zaffino shut off the truck. Christine could see the van Whiddon and Felber were in pull into the parking lot of McDonald’s. She felt a mild sense of comfort with that, but still knew Zaffino had something on his mind.

“It’s an RF [bug] detector,” Zaffino finally said. He smiled, looking at it. Holding it.

“What’s an RF detector?” Christine asked.

“This,”
Zaffino said piercingly, pointing to the LCD light display, holding the detector in his hand, “is what’s going to tell me if you’re wearing a wire or not.”

Christine froze.
Holy s- - - -.

If John Zaffino managed to turn on the radio frequency (RF) detector, Christine Todaro was in big trouble. “He would have snapped my neck right there in that truck,” she told me later. “For a moment, I didn’t know what to do.”

In the scope of the situation, what
could
she do?

But in a split-second decision, Christine grabbed the RF detector out of Zaffino’s hand as he flipped the on switch and the bars of the LCD screen began to go from right to left (red to green). The unit was on and beginning to figure out that Christine was wearing some sort of listening device—the reason why Zaffino had brought the unit to begin with.

As the LCD lights started to hit the color green, Christine managed to shut it off and throw it into the backseat of the truck—all in one swift, smart motion, while screaming at the top of her lungs, “You bastard.”

“Quit it now,” Zaffino said as Christine tossed it, “you’ll wear my battery down.”

“Remember what I told you. I’m the
only
one you can trust.”

Listening to what was going on, from inside a van nearby Zaffino’s truck, Felber and Whiddon looked at each other.

Zaffino motioned toward the back of his truck, then addressed Christine. He was stunned. All he had to do was reach into the backseat and grab the unit, turn it on and confirm what he obviously knew.

But he didn’t. Instead, Zaffino said, “If that’s what you have to do to make you feel lucky. Make you feel like you’re not talking to the cops.”

Christine said later she believed Zaffino realized at that moment that she was wired. That’s why he brought the unit to begin with—to prove what he already knew. “In some strange way,” she recalled, “I think he wanted to get caught.”

“I’m not talking to anybody,” Christine said immediately, not breaking character. “But I’m going to protect myself, too.”

“Well, that’s like a catch-22, then,” Zaffino murmured.

“No, it’s not…that means I’m going to talk to my lawyer and see what I can get in trouble for and what I can’t.”

“Well, you don’t know anything.”

Zaffino asked Christine if she was going into McDonald’s with him. She said no. When he came back, Christine asked him why he shaved off his mustache. Zaffino was a goatee guy, rarely without one. It was odd for him to shave his face clean.

But then, the conversation shifted back to the cops knowing that Cynthia was at his onetime residence. Zaffino talked about how the cops work—how they like to trick people into believing what they wanted. Christine questioned him on that theory.

Then Christine told him to “quit lying” so much. She knew he was seeing Cynthia. Just ’fess up and be done with it. It was no big deal. Christine didn’t care.

“Listen to me,” Zaffino said, ignoring the comment about Cynthia, “the way you talk on the phone, you’re feeding me to the wolves.”

“Well, I get pissed at you.”

“So it’s OK to feed me to the wolves?”

“I’m not feeding you to the wolves, John. Somebody else is talking and it’s
not
one of my friends.”

“I know somebody is talking, but I don’t know who it is.”

For about ten more minutes, they went back and forth. Christine would call Cynthia a “cheater,” and Zaffino would claim he knew nothing about her. Then Zaffino, in a patronizing fashion, repeated what Christine had been saying for the past few days—that she wasn’t about to go to jail for him.

“That’s correct,” she kept saying.

“And,” he added, “what you’re going on is what somebody else told you. So, if someone calls me and says, ‘Hey, your old lady, your ex old lady, she’s a whore, she’s got HIV, she’s got f- - -ing AIDS, uh, she killed some guy.’ Would I believe them?”

“No.”

“OK. Now you’re going to believe that stuff about
me?
”

“Well, it’s an awfully big,
big
coincidence that she’s at your house,” Christine said, staying on the Cynthia George theme.

Sometime later, “You’re so superficial, you don’t realize it.”

“Huh?” Christine replied.

“Look at, look at, look at…if they pin this on me, I’m gone for life,” Zaffino said.

“I understand that.”

“And maybe the electric chair. But the only thing between me and there is
you.
”

“No,
her.
”

“No, you.”

“No, her.”

“No—”

“Bulls- - -. Don’t pin that on me. It’s bulls- - -,” Christine challenged.

“The only thing that would ever put me in prison and to death is you.”

“I’m getting out. I don’t buy that. No. You better check her out and find out what her lips are saying. OK?”

“I know she’s—”

Christine wouldn’t let him finish, saying, “You…don’t even know that snob. You don’t even know she’s a whore. That’s how stupid you are. What, are you stupid? I don’t understand you, John.”

Zaffino yelled, and then explained that if Christine could only keep her mouth shut, none of what was going on would continue. She told him again to go in and talk to the cops. He had nothing to worry about if he didn’t do anything. But Zaffino said his lawyer advised him not to do that. Christine, finally realizing she was getting nowhere as far as an admission, said, “I’m getting those bullets back from my dad and I’m giving them back to you and you can do whatever you want with them.”

“They’re .32s, dear,” Zaffino said in a jarring, sarcastic tone.

“Well, I don’t care.”

“If I were you, I’d leave them there and I’ll come and get them.”

“No.”

Zaffino kept warning her, saying that if she went and picked up the guns, she was getting herself even more deeply involved, adding, “It’s like a plague, man,” regarding his troubles with the law.

“Yeah, you
are
the plague.”

“I guess I can’t stay out of trouble, no matter where I go.”

As the conversation wound down, Zaffino reminisced about the days when they were married, saying it was all right for him to “f---” his ex-wife, they didn’t need to be married.

“You wish,” Christine said.

“What if I knocked on your door tonight? In about five hours?”

“Well, you think so? Like I said, you’re the plague. You’re staying away from me, dude.”

“Pull the skirt down, put in a CD,” Zaffino said softly.

“Do not get me worked up now.”

“I better calm down before you kick me out the door.”

Christine laughed.

“Then why are you encouraging me to do it?” Zaffino said.

“Oh, I’m
so
sorry….”

“You know how that voice gets [to] you.”

“Uh-huh. Now you gotta calm down.” Christine paused.

Zaffino pulled out of McDonald’s and drove back to the mall parking lot. As Christine stepped out of his truck, she promised she’d call later.

“Talk to you then,” Zaffino said as he pulled away.

Christine composed herself before she left. Close call. She was overwhelmed.
That’s it,
she told herself,
I’m not meeting him anymore. Too dangerous.

“Christine Todaro,” Dave Whiddon told me later, “was the most courageous witness I had ever seen. She showed a tremendous amount of tenacity and fearlessness. She was incredible. But we knew then, once John Zaffino pulled out that bug detector, that she could never meet him again.”

With no admission from Zaffino, where did it leave the case the CAPU was building against him?