The Coffey Files (31 page)

Joe was truly rested when he and Pat returned to Levittown two weeks later. Life had been easy for the past month. The demons of David Berkowitz, Archbishop Marcinkus, and the oddball collection of Mafia killers and informants were behind him, put to rest for the time being. The green-eyed monster was also at rest. His enemies within the police department could rejoice at his retirement. He was at peace with himself and anxious for a fresh start with a new boss.

The first morning home Joe drove to the local bakery for fresh rolls for breakfast and stopped at the post office, where his mail was being held while he was away.

A short time later he sat at the kitchen table going through the junk mail that had accumulated when he spotted a thick envelope from the New York Telephone Company.

“Pat, I thought you paid all the bills before we left for Florida,” he yelled to his wife, who was in the laundry room busy with the clothes left in a heap by Steven and Joseph III.

Before she could answer, Joe had the envelope open. Immediately he knew what he was looking at, and his freshly tanned face turned ashen. The telephone company was notifying the Coffeys that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York had subpoenaed a copy of the phone numbers called from the Coffey residence for the past eighteen months. Copies of Kathleen Coffey's calls were also being provided. The letter mentioned the name of the assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the investigation. Joe knew the man was the head of the anticorruption unit.

Joe Coffey was very familiar with the paperwork in his hands. It was a common practice while investigating a criminal suspect to try to find out whom he was calling from his private residence. This method was used when there was not enough cause to get an okay for a wiretap. The telephone company was required by law to provide the information to the police. The law also stipulated that the customer must be notified when the investigation was completed. Many mobsters sent to prison by the Coffey Gang had at one time or another opened similar notifications at their kitchen tables.

When Pat came in from the laundry room, she was frightened by the look on her husband's face. She noticed the telephone company letter crumpled in his fist. “Are you all right?” she asked, fearing he may have had a heart attack.

Moments of silence passed. After what seemed like an eternity Joe said, “I'm all right. I just can't believe it.”

Pat poured a cup of coffee for herself and made tea for Joe as he explained what the letter from the phone company meant.

“Who wanted these records?” Pat asked.

“The FBI.”

“The FBI? Weren't you just working with them?”

“Don't remind me. I was just trying to forget it,” Joe answered, as he reached for the wall phone.

“Don't get excited, Joe. Why don't you call Giuliani? You always said you could trust him,” Pat implored.

That's who Joe was calling. He dialed his old office number and asked to speak to Giuliani. A secretary told him the U.S. attorney was not in. Coffey then asked for Barbara Jones. He was told she also was not in. “Then get Walter Mack on the phone,” Joe demanded.

The call was transferred to Mack's office. Coffey did not even give his old friend a chance to say hello. As the phone was picked up, Joe said, “Walter, it's Joe Coffey.”

But Walter Mack was used to unexpected confrontations and he tried to give himself some thinking time. “Joe, how have you been? What's the matter? You can't stay away from the office?” he said.

Joe also knew how to play that game. He was not about to be put off by small talk while Mack figured out his story.

“Walter, stop the bullshit. Why have my telephone records been examined? Why was I the subject of an official investigation by the Justice Department?”

Mack knew it was time to deal with the issue. But he tried once more to avoid it. “Listen Joe, forget it. It's over. It meant nothing.”

“Walter, I haven't gone senile in a month. Don't tell me it's nothing. I'm coming over to see Rudy.” Then he slammed the phone down on his friend.

Driving as if he still had a light and siren on his car, Joe made it into the city in about thirty minutes, and during the trip he grew even angrier. He realized he must have been passed over for the job on Jim Harmon's presidential commission because at the time he was supposed to be hired, he was under investigation by Giuliani. While he was chasing the Ruling Commission of the Mafia, his colleagues were chasing him. He knew from his own experience that they must have even been tailing him as he drove around pursuing homicide suspects.

Coffey parked in the space reserved for U.S. marshals and barged past the lobby receptionist up to Walter Mack's office.

Again Mack asked Joe not to push. “Forget it Joe, please let it go,” he said.

“Are you kidding? You think I can let something like
this
go?”

“Joe, we had no choice. Last year—July of '84—the FBI informed us that a reference to you was picked up on the bug in the Palma Boys Social Club. We had to check it out.”

“That's bullshit. What kind of tape? What was on some bullshit tape?” Joe demanded.

“I'm sorry, I can't tell you that,” Mack responded.

“Fuck you. What do you mean you can't tell me that? It's bullshit and you know it. Get Rudy and Barbara Jones in here.”

“Joe, they are not around today. Please let this thing drop. You have some powerful enemies over there. We understand you feel betrayed,” Mack said. “But believe me,” he continued, “we aren't proud of what we had to do. We were working with you every day. We were taking everything you had to offer and all along we knew this day would come. We knew the FBI would have to clear you and we knew you would find out about the investigation. If it were me, you would have had to do the same thing.”

Joe knew Mack was right. The Famous But Incompetents left them no choice. Now he understood why Giuliani threw the party for him and why Barbara Jones spoke so glowingly. Now he knew what “the other thing” was that Art Ruffles mumbled to Ken Walton one month earlier at the Ocean Club.

Once more Joe asked Mack to reveal the specifics of the tape. He wanted to know what was on it that could make everyone so suspicious of him.

“Joe, the only thing I can say is you made some powerful enemies along the way,” Mack said.

“Yeah, I guess you're right. But it's a bitch when you think you're on the same side,” Joe sneered.

With that Mack turned his palms towards Joe and said, “It's a tough game, Joe, on both sides.”

That signaled the end of the meeting. Mack rose and escorted Coffey from the office. On the way out Mack asked when Joe was going to start working for Ron Goldstock. “Not soon enough,” he replied. The two shook hands as Joe left the building.

About a month after he began working for Goldstock, Joe learned that the son of an old friend, Detective Ron Cadieux, who worked the Castellano case, had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Joe attended the funeral on Long Island and saw many of his former colleagues there. After the services he and Ken McCabe were talking in the parking lot when they saw FBI agent Art Ruffles and Walter Mack.

As Ruffles walked past, McCabe turned to Joe and said, “I couldn't believe the feds chased that Palma Boys thing.”

“You know about that?” Joe said. “Tell me about it.”

“I thought you knew. Didn't you get it from Walter Mack?” McCabe responded.

“No way. He wouldn't give me shit. Nothing but bullshit. I don't know
what
the tapes said.”

McCabe told him. There were actually two references to Joe Coffey on the tapes, and both times a Genovese capo named Tony Rabito referred to the fact that Joe Coffey was with him and that he could handle Coffey.

“You've got to be kidding. You know who Rabito was talking about?” Joe said to McCabe.

McCabe did know. Everyone involved in organized crime investigations in New York knew that there was a half-assed hood in the Bonanno family named Joe Coffey. They knew that he was a two-bit mob guy who ran errands for Rabito. Because he was half Italian and half Irish he could never become a “made” member of the Mafia and he was always looked upon with suspicion by the other soldiers. Rabito was constantly in the position of defending him, and it was a running joke among the NYPD that Joe Coffey's namesake was a gofer for the mob.

“The FBI insisted on pursuing the lead,” McCabe said. They wouldn't take no for an answer.”

Coffey looked across the parking lot toward Ruffles, obviously furious. Ruffles noticed Coffey's glare. He walked towards Joe and said, “Calm down, I've got your plaque in my car.”

“Stick the plaque up your ass,” Coffey snapped back, as McCabe worked his way between the two crime fighters.

The incident once again renewed Joe's anger, and he vowed never to trust an FBI agent again.

His bitterness began to grow, and he became more and more sarcastic whenever the subject of a joint investigation with the FBI came up. In November 1985, Joe's friends from the NYPD threw a party for him at Antuns, the popular catering hall in Queens. Two hundred people showed up to honor the man who was responsible for solving eighty-two Mafia homicides. It was an interesting collection of people. There were friends from Joe's old neighborhood, under the El on Third Avenue, some of whom had walked on the other side of the law and served time in prison. His father, having lived to see his son avenge him, was there with some of his friends, labor racketeers of the thirties and forties.

There were gifts for Pat and Kathleen and more speeches and plaques. Even Art Ruffles had the nerve to get up to make a speech. This time he called Joe to the podium. Finally he handed him the plaque that he had been carrying around for nine months.

“Joe, we're sorry about what happened. Sometimes we go after the good guys,” he said as the place exploded in an outpouring of loving applause and admiration.

IX

THE NEW GANG

In the middle of May 1985 Joe Coffey reported to work at the office of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. He felt a tangle of emotions as he drove up the Bronx River Parkway to White Plains, the suburban city twenty miles north of New York where the OCTF was headquartered.

This “city kid” felt a little uncomfortable on the tree-lined streets of White Plains. It was an affluent city where Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue operated stores. It had no Little Italy or Chinatown. Instead of the hustlers and scam artists Joe was used to walking past on the way to One Police Plaza, the streets were filled with suburban housewives and small-town businessmen.

He also struggled with the bitterness he continued to feel over the treatment he received in his final days with the police department. He did not want his anger to get in the way of new relationships. Of course the parties and the awards brought warm, happy memories, but he still relived the moment he opened that letter from the telephone company, and he continued to be uneasy about how two-faced he thought Giuliani was. In a sense he had much more respect for Dick Nicastro, who replaced Jim Sullivan as chief of detectives, and Benjamin Ward, who replaced Bob McGuire as police commissioner. He thought neither man liked him very much. They were understandably concerned that his loyalty would remain with their predecessors, and they did not disguise their feelings.

Coffey took some satisfaction in the fact that Nicastro, an excellent detective with a genius for coordinating large-scale investigations, continued the Organized Crime Task Force. But most of the original gang, like McDarby, McGlynn, O'Connell, and Maroney, were retired or transferred. Joe unabashedly felt that it was his desire to chase the Mafia that had been the driving force behind the success of the task force.

An official police department memorandum written by Coffey on January 11, 1983, regarding the accomplishments of the Organized Crime Task Force reported that the unit was responsible for the indictment and arrest of more than 100 members of organized crime enterprises, going on to state that the Coffey Gang directly solved fifty-two organized crime homicides.

The memorandum concludes that “prior to the formation of this Task Force … it was felt by some people in law enforcement that the successful investigation of gangland slayings was impossible because of certain myths perpetuated through the years. It has been shown by this group of police officers that nothing could be further from the truth.”

At the time of the report, the cases had been closed in the murders of Leo Ladenhauf, Pasquale Macchiarole, Mauro Agnello, Michael Spillane, Louis Milo, William Walker, Dennis Curley, John Earle, Joseph Gallo, Irving Miller, Janice Drake, Augie Carfano, Willie Alston, John Manfredonia, Alphonse Indelicate, Dominick Trinchera, Philip Giacone, Salvatore Briguglio, John Quinn, Sherry Golden, John Alagna, Joseph Vescovi, William Maselli, Joseph Scorney, and Patrick Dowd. These were all notorious cases covered by the media.

Coffey was welcomed warmly in his new office. He knew many of the investigators from joint operations dating back to the early 1970s when he was working in District Attorney Hogan's office in Manhattan. In those days the state Organized Crime Task Force was not taken too seriously by other law enforcement agencies. It was considered an office created in order to pay off political favors by providing jobs for cops from around the state who were on the last leg of their careers.

“The task force was a political toy until Governor Hugh Carey appointed Ron Goldstock to head it in 1981,” says Coffey.

Goldstock was a prosecutor with a reputation as being eager to chase down powerful organized crime figures and capable of doing so. When he worked as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, under Frank Hogan, he was considered the office organized crime expert. Later, while a law professor at Cornell, he helped draft the RICO (Racketeering Influence and Criminal Organization) laws that were used to indict Paul Castellano in the auto crime and murder case and then to nail the rest of the godfathers in the Ruling Commission case. Castellano had not been brought to trial yet on either of those indictments when Joe reported to White Plains. Not only had Joe Coffey been a principal investigator in those cases, but his relationship with Goldstock dated all the way back to the Vatican affair and the investigations of the Jiggs Forlano and Ruby Stein loan-sharking and gambling rings.