Part 12

In the summer of 1952, O’Carroll was checking the files when he noted the two memos mentioning the small shop on Christie. Further investigation revealed it had been owned by Alphonse Attardi before he was sentenced to serve an eight-year prison term for a narcotics violation in Galveston, Texas, in the early 1940s. Attardi had completed the sentence, but Immigration authorities were studying the possibility of extradition proceedings, inasmuch as Attardi was Italian by birth.

Attardi at this time was sixty years old, 5 feet 3, and weighed about 140 pounds. He had the appearance of a meek and humble little shoemaker, and he scarcely fitted the part of an underworld character. He had an engaging, warm personality, and he was known in the Mafia as “The Peacemaker” because of his knack for compromising disputes--but that was before he had served time in prison.

O’Carroll decided to pay a call on Attardi, who he learned was living in a cheap, transient rooming house on 16th Street just off Third Avenue. It was after midnight one warm night when he strolled down Third Avenue in the shadows of the old El to 16th Street. Even the softness of the night could not hide the shabbiness and the squalor of the area.

O’Carroll entered the rooming house and climbed two flights of stairs. He knocked on the door and then tried the doorknob. The door swung open, and at that moment the agent knew that Attardi was in a bad way financially. If he had had a bankroll, he wouldn’t have left the door unbolted--not in this dive.

He saw Attardi sitting up in bed, a skinny gnome of a man wearing only undershirt and shorts.

“Who is it?” Attardi said. “What do you want?”

“Take it easy,” O’Carroll said. “I’m a U.S. Treasury agent. I just want to talk to you.”

Attardi switched on a light over the bed. “What do you want to see me about?” he said. “I’m clean.”

“Have you got any narcotics in this room?” O’Carroll asked him.

Attardi shook his head. “No. You can search the room if you like. I’m out of the business.”

O’Carroll pulled up a chair beside the bed and sat down. He began to talk about Attardi’s connections with well-known underworld figures, asking him why it was that he had been convicted in Houston while others in the mob had gone free.

As they talked, bitterness began to creep into Attardi’s voice. He had taken the rap in Houston--and then his pals had deserted him. They didn’t even try to communicate with him while he was in prison. His wife had become ill and no one had come forward to help her. She had died. He had even lost the little olive oil and cheese shop on Christie Street.

“Now I have nothing,” he said.

“Maybe we can help you,” O’Carroll said. “I can’t make any promises, but if you help us we may be able to help you when your deportation case comes up.”

Attardi shook his head. “I can’t do it. I’d be dead if I worked for you.”

O’Carroll continued talking of the injustices done to Attardi by his old pals, insisting that he owed them nothing since they had deserted him. But Attardi continued to say no.

At last O’Carroll said, “Well, I’ll leave my name and telephone number. If you ever need help--I’ll be glad to talk to you.” He wrote his name and telephone number on a slip of paper and handed it to Attardi.

For six months O’Carroll heard nothing from Attardi. He made no move to see the man again. He had planted the seed, and whether it took root depended on what went on in the mind of the skinny little ex-convict.

But in early December Attardi called the Narcotics Bureau office and Agent George O’Connor took the call. He explained that he wanted to talk to O’Carroll and he would be waiting for him on Delancey Street near Christie.

That afternoon O’Carroll and O’Connor drove to Delancey and parked near the street number mentioned by Attardi. A few minutes later the hoodlum walked from a doorway and ducked into the car with them.

The agents had assumed that Attardi had made the call because he was frightened over the prospect of being deported to Italy. But it wasn’t deportation that was on Attardi’s mind. He had fallen in love. He had met a twenty-two-year-old waitress in one of the mean little restaurants on the Lower East Side--and this girl had become the most important thing in his life. They wanted to get married, but he had no money.

Attardi said he was willing to put the agents onto some Puerto Ricans living in Brooklyn who were dealing in narcotics. If the price were right, Attardi would help knock off the gang.

The agents listened to Attardi’s story and then O’Carroll shook his head. “It’s no deal,” he said. “We want better cases than that. We want to go to the top.”

Attardi was frightened but he also was in love. And so he began asking how the agents could protect him if he did agree to work with them. He flatly refused to do any buying of narcotics himself.

At last it was agreed that Attardi would introduce an undercover agent to some of his friends who were in the peddling business. Then it would be up to the agent to handle the deals, Attardi’s role being to vouch for the agent as “one of the boys.”

Undercover Agent Joe Tremoglie, a big, curly-haired man, was chosen to work with Attardi. Tremoglie’s parents had come to the United States from Sicily and Joe spoke fluent Italian. He knew the underworld, its mannerisms, superstitions, and nuances. He had about him a conspiratorial air that seemed to appeal to criminals and to disarm them.

Attardi’s first assignment was to introduce Tremoglie to a cafe cook on Newberry Street who was pushing narcotics on the side. The agent made a small purchase and then let himself be seen in the right places with Attardi--who began to introduce him as a distant cousin.

As the weeks passed, Tremoglie met narcotics pushers and wholesalers. He played poker with them. Slowly he moved up the ladder until one day he was introduced to Benny Bellanca, who took an immediate liking to him after Tremoglie had given the right answers to all the questions. He liked him so well, in fact, that they discussed the possibility of Tremoglie going to Europe as a courier to bring back a load of heroin.

He met Pietro Beddia, too, and an intensive surveillance by Narcotics agents disclosed a link between Bellanco and Beddia.

At the end of ten months of work by Tremoglie, the trap was set. Arrangements were made for Tremoglie to make a series of purchases during one afternoon and night on a timetable that was worked out to the minute. For twelve hours, Tremoglie raced from one meeting place to another, making the prearranged purchases of narcotics. And at 3 o’clock in the morning twenty of the leading narcotics dealers in the New York area--including Bellanca and Beddia--had been rounded up.

Alphonse Attardi wasn’t around for the trials. He took his $5,000 reward money plus expenses--plus his bride--and faded from the scene. All he would tell agents was that he planned to buy a little place in the country and settle down to make an honest living.

The underworld finally figured out that it was Attardi who had sprung the trap on them, and defense counsel for the accused men demanded that he be produced by the government for questioning. But Narcotics agents could honestly say they knew nothing of Attardi’s whereabouts. They didn’t want to know.

Informers have given valuable aid to the Customs Service in its drive against smuggling, and there are many Alphonse Attardis--each with his own motive--who work with the agents.

Under the law, the Customs Service is permitted to pay up to $50,000 for information leading to the seizure of smuggled goods. The system provides that the informer may receive 25 per cent of the net recovery in any case in which he provides the original information leading to arrest and conviction for smuggling or fraud. Net recovery means the amount which goes into the Treasury of the United States as a result of a disclosure. For example, suppose Customs agents seize from a smuggler a diamond necklace that is worth $10,000, the appraisal being based on the American selling price. The necklace is forfeited and sold at public auction for $8,000. Assuming expenses of $400 involved in the case, then the net recovery is $7,600, of which the informant is entitled to $1,900.

The theory behind such payments is that the government has made a good bargain when it can pay an informer $1 and then have $3 left over for the Treasury--money which would have been lost without the cooperation of the informant.

There was one Customs informer working in Europe who received the top reward of $50,000 three times by uncovering the smuggling of huge shipments of diamonds into the United States. He refused to accept payment in Europe--but waited until he had $150,000 in credits with the U.S. Treasury. Then he came to the United States, received the money, and settled down to live the life of a country gentleman in the West.

And the rewards were tax free--as are all payments made to informers.

10

THE VIOLENT BORDER

Customs agents in the Laredo Tenth Customs Agency District--which includes the 2,000 miles of border and Gulf coastline from New Mexico into part of Louisiana--spend much of their time battling the smuggling of narcotics and marihuana from Mexico.

Federal officers estimate that the business of peddling narcotics to addicts grosses at least a half billion dollars a year for the underworld, and the total may be much more. No one actually knows the amount of narcotics which is smuggled successfully into the United States. Some Customs agents estimate that law enforcement officers seize less than 10 per cent of the total. One agent said, “If I thought that I was getting ten per cent of the total being smuggled, then I could sleep well at night.”

Even though the size of the narcotics traffic is unknown, there is no doubt about the tremendous profits to be made from the illegal sale of drugs. Addicts will beg, borrow, steal and kill to obtain money with which to satisfy the terrible craving for narcotics once they are “hooked.”

Unofficial estimates place the number of narcotic addicts in the United States at about 50,000. The average heroin addict requires something like ten grains per day to satisfy his needs. This means that over a period of a year the average heroin addict will use about 7.6 ounces of the drug--or a total for all addicts of about 380,000 ounces of heroin or a substitute drug. In their best years, Federal and state law enforcement officers have been able to seize only a fraction of this estimated total.

Several years ago the Mexican marihuana dealers took no responsibility for delivery into the United States; all arrangements for smuggling across the border had to be made by the purchasers who came from the States. But in recent years there has been a change, and the Mexican operators have been willing to make deliveries to New York, Chicago, Detroit and other cities. Jack Givens, Supervising Agent for the Laredo district, believes this change in delivery method is an indication that the supply of marihuana in Mexico has outgrown the demand. This has put the pressure on the Mexican operators to give their customers better service, resulting in the delivery system.

In recent years some of the United States marihuana operators have begun to bypass border operators. They have been driving to the interior of Mexico, making their own deals with the growers and bringing the stuff back into the United States themselves. Customs inspectors are always on guard against marihuana being smuggled in automobiles--hidden in upholstery, in luggage compartments, in door panels, or in secret compartments built into the cars.

Customs agents believe that most of the heroin and other narcotics smuggled into the United States come by way of Europe from the Middle East and Far East. But Mexico still is one of the favorite routes for the narcotics syndicates seeking to reach the American addicts. In addition, Mexico remains the major exporter of marihuana. The Mexican government has been cooperating with the United States in seeking to suppress the traffic, and there is a close working relationship between the American agents and the Mexican police. But the long and rugged boundary between the two countries makes it impossible to cover every smuggling point on the border.

Supervisor Givens has only thirty-nine agents and seventeen Customs enforcement officers assigned to him for the entire territory. The enforcement officers are a police force used primarily for guard duty and surveillance work under the agents’ direction.

This small force, despite the geographic difficulties, has a high esprit de corps. Each man works many hours overtime each month with no expectation of compensation. The records show that the agents average approximately 120 hours of overtime each month in excess of the overtime required of them and for which they are paid. Often the men find themselves working overtime knowing that their extra effort will be rewarded with pay averaging 19 cents an hour.

Why do they do it? One agent explained it in this way: “There’s more than money in this work once you become involved in it. Once you start working on a case, you simply cannot walk away from it at the end of eight hours. You have a feeling of achievement when you do break up a marihuana ring or pick up someone who is dealing in heroin.”

Patrolling the Mexican border has been a major problem for Customs since the frontier days. In 1853 the Customs Mounted Patrol was organized, and horsemen rode across the deserts and through the mountains on lonely patrols to intercept cattle rustlers, smugglers and aliens trying to slip across the border. The mounted guard inevitably gave way to the automobile. But the horsemen rarely had more hair-raising experiences than those of the modern agents mounted on wheels. Such an incident occurred on August 7, 1960, in one of the wildest chases in the memory of Customs agents along the Texas-Mexico border.

It began when Agent Fred Rody, Jr., received a tip that an American was in the red-light district of Nuevo Laredo, trying to arrange for the purchase of 20 pounds of marihuana--obviously to be smuggled into the United States.

Further checking disclosed that the man was John Vaccaro, a known narcotics dealer working out of New Orleans. Vaccaro had been convicted of a marihuana violation in New Orleans and been placed under surveillance earlier in the year when he had visited Laredo. At that time agents had tried to intercept Vaccaro, suspected of smuggling marihuana, but in a wild chase on the highway Vaccaro pulled away from their car, even though their speedometer was registering 120 miles an hour. He also succeeded in eluding the police roadblocks which had been thrown up in front of him.

Agents kept a close watch on Vaccaro’s car after Rody received his report. Finally they saw someone approach his automobile and place a suitcase in the front seat of his car. Then they saw Vaccaro, his wife, and their fourteen-year-old daughter enter the car.

When Vaccaro drove down San Bernardo Avenue and then onto U.S. Highway 59, he was followed by agents in three automobiles. When the Vaccaro car slowed in heavy traffic, the agents bracketed his car with one car in front, one behind, and the other alongside. Agent T. S. Simpson leaned out of his car and shouted, “Stop! We are Customs agents.”

Vaccaro pulled his car to the side of the road and slowed down as though to stop. Suddenly he slammed his foot on the accelerator. His car leaped forward between two of the agents’ vehicles and roared off on the left side of the highway, forcing terrified drivers to swerve into the ditch to avoid a collision. The agents gunned their cars in pursuit.

Simpson and Rody watched the speed indicator on their automobile reach 110 miles an hour, but Vaccaro’s car still pulled away from them.

Agent Grady Grazner in a 1957 police interceptor-model Chevrolet moved past the Rody-Simpson car and slowly began gaining on the Vaccaro vehicle. His speedometer was reading 130 miles an hour when he moved up behind Vaccaro’s automobile with his siren screaming. Grazner nudged Vaccaro’s automobile with his bumper and signalled for Vaccaro to pull over and stop. The woman and girl in the car were looking out the rear window, screaming and motioning Grazner to pull away from their car.

For several miles the cars raced along at well over 100 miles an hour. Grazner fired four warning shots into the air trying to force Vaccaro to stop. He was afraid to fire directly into the vehicle because of the women inside.

Gradually Grazner’s car moved up on the fleeing automobile. As the front wheels of Grazner’s car reached the left rear wheels of Vaccaro’s car, the marihuana dealer suddenly swerved. The blow of his car knocked Grazner’s vehicle to the side of the road. The car rolled over six times and bounced a distance of 471 feet. The only thing that saved Grazner’s life was the fact that he was strapped into the seat by a safety belt.

Police had been alerted ahead by radio. In the little town of Ferret, Texas, Vaccaro saw the roadblock ahead. He tried to bypass it by darting down a dirt road, but he was overtaken and brought to a halt.

Police found only fragments of marihuana in the Vaccaro car. When a search of the highway was later made by a helicopter, the pilot spotted a suitcase lying beside the road. Vaccaro had left his fingerprints on the suitcase when he tossed it out of his speeding automobile. It was stuffed with marihuana.

When Customs agents took Vaccaro into custody, Grazner said, “Why did you try to kill me? You might have killed your wife and little girl too.”

Vaccaro spat on the agent and said insolently, “What in the hell are you talking about?”

Vaccaro was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for this venture into violence.

* * * * *

The city of Laredo, Texas, dozed in the blazing noonday sun on an August day in 1957. Not many people were on the sun-baked streets at this hour, and even the Rio Grande had slowed to a lazy trickle. The only visible activity was at the Customs stations at the International Bridge spanning the river between Laredo and its twin city, Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican bank of the river. The bridge was one of the major communications links between the United States and Mexico, but with the sun high in the heavens even the traffic across the bridge was moving at a listless pace.

At this hour, Dave Ellis, agent in charge, walked from his office in the old courthouse and sauntered to a battered automobile parked on a side street. He slipped behind the wheel and drove at a leisurely pace to the eastern edge of the city, where he turned off the street and parked beside the loading platform of a vacant warehouse. He switched off the engine, lit a cigarette and sat waiting.

When Ellis arrived at the office that morning he had found a cryptic note on his desk which said: “Meet me at the usual place.” It was signed with the code name of one of the most reliable informers in all of northern Mexico.

Ellis hardly looked the part of an experienced Customs agent. He was nearing forty, but he looked ten years younger. The horn-rimmed spectacles he wore gave him an appearance of grave studiousness.

What few people knew was that Ellis’ boyish face was deceiving. He had been toughened in a hard school of experience. He had survived a bullet through his chest leading a platoon into battle on Okinawa in World War II, and he had been with the first contingent going into Korea at the end of the war when no one was quite certain whether the Japanese were going to surrender or make a fight for it. He had returned home in 1946 to pick up his interrupted career as a Customs agent and had earned a reputation as one of the hardest-driving men in the field.

One lesson he had learned well was that no agent could operate successfully without reliable sources of information. That was why he waited patiently on this hot day to hear what it was that his tipster had on his mind. He had been at the rendezvous point only a few minutes when a car drove up beside his own and a Mexican got out, entered his car and began talking rapidly.

The Mexican was one of the key figures in a network of informers which the Customs agents had organized south of the border to help combat the smuggling of heroin and marihuana. The informers were a part, or on the fringe, of the Mexican underworld. They cooperated with the American agents for one reason only--U.S. dollars. If the information they provided resulted in the arrest and conviction of a smuggler, along with the seizure of the contraband, they were paid for the information from a special Customs contingency fund. In the case of marihuana, the payment was $5 for each pound of the weed, _cannabis sativa_, which was seized.

Ellis talked with his informant for perhaps thirty minutes. After the man returned to his car and drove away, Ellis headed back to the courthouse.

As he entered his office, an agent asked, “What was it all about?”

Ellis said, “My man tells me Muno Pena has a big marihuana deal going--one of the biggest. He’s getting ready to send a million dollars’ worth of the weed across the border--and we’ve got to stop it.”

The agent gave a low whistle. “So Muno Pena’s at it again. I thought he had had enough.”

“His kind never give up,” Ellis said.

At the end of World War II, Pancho Trevino had been the kingpin in the Mexican marihuana and narcotics traffic, operating out of Nuevo Laredo. Muno Pena was a competitor but on a fairly small scale until, in 1952, the Mexican government got on Trevino’s trail and threw him in jail. With Trevino behind bars, Muno Pena moved to the top. Pena remained on his home grounds in Mexico and never ventured north of the border. He had a highly organized syndicate and lieutenants who carried out his orders in the United States.

Ellis first ran into the Pena syndicate’s operations in 1955 when he was transferred to Houston, Texas, and went to work to break up a marihuana smuggling ring which included a former Houston police officer. After weeks of collecting evidence during days and nights of tailing suspects and checking records of tourist courts, hotels and telephone calls, Ellis and his colleagues had pieced together a case against the smuggling ring. In a Christmas-night raid they seized 75 grams of heroin, and in two other raids seized 250 pounds of marihuana. Eleven men and women were arrested and convicted in this operation, which was one of the biggest roundups ever made by Customs officers in the Southwest.

The Houston raids had hurt Pena badly, but now he was back on the scene with a scheme to make a quick fortune--if the tipster who had called Ellis knew what he was talking about. Ellis was reasonably certain the information was correct.

According to the Mexican informant, Pena had gone to the farmers in the Monterey district south of Nuevo Laredo and purchased their entire crop of marihuana, a ton of the stuff. He had brought it to his ranch near Nuevo Laredo and processed it in one of the adobe sheds on the place.