French Connection Blues

By Peter Bono

The Special Investigating Unit of the NYPD Narcotics Division was the most corrupt law enforcement agency in American history. Some members of the unit used illegal wiretaps to obtain information on big-time drug dealers then, using that information, would set them up and rob them of their drugs and money. Killings were even a necessity, sometimes. A few dealers were allowed to continue to conduct business so long as they paid weekly bribes to the cops, cynically known as a "tax."

The unit did have a few good cops, two of whom became famous when they made the biggest drug bust in American history -- The French Connection. Unfortunately, the NYPD had inherent flaws in its procedure for storing and safeguarding drug evidence. Everything was kept in the Property Room on Broome Street, and over the space of a few years, almost all of the drugs confiscated and held there were stolen, including those from The French Connection.

This theft, with a street value of $70,000,000, has been referred to as the biggest heist in American history.

A young cop discovered how they were doing this and got involved in a secret investigation that put not only his life but the lives of his family and friends...and even his sanity...in jeopardy. This is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Bono
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991286652

Peter Bono

All you want to know is on my website...Thunderballfilms.comyou can contact me personally at e-mail [e-mail]

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French Connection Blues: Memoirs of a Narc

By Peter Bono

Copyright Peter Bono 2014

Published by Inherent Flaws Press Publishing at Smashwords

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This book may not be resold or given away to other people. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This book is based on true events. Some names, characters, places, incidents, and situations have been changed to protect the innocent. All rights are reserved by the author, including the right to reproduction in whole or in part in any form, manner, or concept.ß

Cover design by KMSCB

Copyright 2014 by Inherent Flaws Press

ISBN 978-0-9912866-5-2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

CODA

To my friend, KMS

for without his help this story

would not have been told.

Prologue

In 1962 two New York City Detectives assigned to The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) of the NYPD Narcotics Bureau, arrested a French Television personality. He had his car shipped to New York from Marseilles France. Hidden in secret compartments was 110 pounds of pure heroin, 50 packages weighing 2.2 pounds each. A kilo each. The FRENCH CONNECTION, as it was referred to, would be the largest single seizure of drugs for many years. A book and then a movie glorified the police work, but what happened afterward has been a dark secret of the New York City Police Department.

As with all evidence the drugs were taken to 400 Broome Street the NYC Police Department’s Property Clerk's Office. The following year it was taken to a Federal Laboratory in order to determine its origin.

From there Federal Marshals escorted the 50 kilos to Washington DC for a senate hearing on heroin trafficking. In 1964, with an estimated street value of 50 million dollars, it was returned to the NYPD and sent to 400 Broom Street to be locked away under the protective gaze of the Property Clerk’s Office. Our story begins about this time.

Less than 10 years later, it ended for me at 240 Centre Street. That grand building was Police Headquarters, once upon a time. It was just past midnight, my life going to hell just like this city. I was born here and now it is under siege by crime. Streets empty, silent and dark. Seems like perfect version of hell.

A line of cars were parked across from 240 Centre Street, under this row of ugly brick buildings going two, three, five, seven stories up. Rickety fire escapes dripped down the front of the tallest one, like a cancer, its arched windows looking like they wanted to hide from it. Stores on the ground floor all secured behind rolling metal panels. Even here, right next to Police Headquarters, this town is not safe.

She was parked below one of those fire escapes. The top down on her brand new 1973 Eldorado convertible, even though it’s close to snowing. You could smell it in the air. Smell her perfume. She wanted me to see her, wanted to make sure I knew I wasn’t alone.

I should’ve just got in that Caddy right then and let her drive me away, anywhere. And I thought about it for half a second. It’s just, I didn’t realize how bad off I was. Didn’t realize that if I did go into the old HQ, like I’d been doing for some time now, it would be the end of the life I had.

But I was not thinking straight, so almost zombie like, I walked across the street. Operations had almost finished shifting to One Police Plaza, several blocks south, and I was glad. This once grand dame was now past her prime, with her columns and half-hidden windows and sort-of balconies. She took up the whole narrow block. And the fat iron railings along the sidewalk, put there to keep you from dropping into the gullies that vanished into the basement’s emptiness, it’s like they were giving off this stay away vibe. The dome on top made it look like it was a capitol building instead of a place too old to work in the modern world, anymore.

Up close, it looked like what it was – nearly abandoned and disarrayed. Nothing but a couple low-key, bare-bones offices left inside, one of them way-too-happily involving me. After that was done...after I was done for...the city will try to figure out what to do with this relic. Who knew? Now a days it is a high-end condo or co-op.

Climbing the steps to the main entrance wasn’t easy, thanks to the cracks and chips missing in them. I was shaking and had to hold onto the banister, I was dizzy and it seemed the revolving door was in constant motion. What’s wrong with me? It didn’t help that it seemed like half the lights were either busted or missing, making being there feel like a Hitchcock movie.

It was even older and darker, inside. More lights burned out. The floors were messy and shadow everywhere. The only guy I could see was the cop with inside security sitting at the half-circle of a reception desk, like always. He didn’t bother to look up as I entered.

Buono. How ya doin’?" was all he said.

I...I been better, I said my voice soft and cracking. I could hear it, even if he couldn’t. But thanks. It has been a long, long day. All these lights missin’ – don’t maintenance care, no more?

He just grunted and never took his eyes off whatever he was reading. He had a lamp on his desk and a cushion under his butt, so he was set.

I sighed and staggered down a corridor, aiming for the lockers next to the office that was crushing my life...and finally paid real attention how quiet it was. How it seemed like nobody else was around. Had they already moved the last people over to the new building? I wouldn’t be surprised. That’d be one way to keep my secret safe, this secret that was finally shredding my world.

That corridor seemed to grow longer and darker as I went. And there were these shuffling sounds, fresh and new, echoing from everywhere. My breathing got sharp. My eyes darted about, wary. Why were so many fixtures missing light bulbs, completely? That didn’t make sense, unless they’d been removed, deliberately. Make it harder to see into the darkness, past the shadows, perfect for an ambush.

I hesitated by the first door on the left. Undid the safety harness and checked my pistol then peeked into the area. Nothing but a couple rows of freestanding lockers set up for the few people left in the place. So dark and dirty and empty and quiet, only shadows filled the room. Even my breathing seemed to echo.

Or was it mine I was hearing?

I didn’t want to go in there, but God, I wanted out of this uniform, even more. I‘d be back in street cloths and in my girl’s Caddy and safe, again, from this horror that was...that was lasting forever.

I started to shake more. I’d been doing that a lot, lately, once I’d realized what I’d got myself into. But it’s too late to second-guess, now. So I carefully slipped inside and crept past row after row of lockers, getting closer and closer to mine. I saw no one, nothing.

I was sweating now, even though the building was cold. I could actually see my breath whispering in and out, like it was trying to escape. They weren’t even bothering with the heat, Well...maybe they kept at 50 but it felt colder.

I finally reached my locker and leaned against it, damn near exhausted. Then I looked down at my shaking hand...and saw a thin trail of blood whisper over its skin.

Aw, no...no – I’d been shot? I’d been hit? No.

I almost fainted but caught myself by slamming my head against the locker. It hurt, but it got me back in control. I fumbled with the lock’s combination, running through it three times. Blood smearing all over the lock. Then it popped open. The noise bounced off the walls and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

And the shadows grew darker and deeper.

Then I heard that shuffling sound, again. I froze, listened, nothing but silence. Not even breathing.

I slowly pulled off my coat. It didn’t hurt, but something was pulling sharp against my left shoulder. I checked it and saw the shirt to my uniform was soaked with blood. I wiped my face. Blood smeared over it.

Crap, I was hit. Dammit.

What’s that shuffling sound, again? It was close. I started to quake, inside. But then I thought, maybe it’s my partner come looking for me. He’s a good cop; he’d be worried.

Bobby? I called. Bobby, Bobby is that you?

Nothing, not even the shuffling, just silence, stone silence.

Until a whisper of a sound came from my right and I turned to find –

A gunman standing at the end of the lockers, raising a pistol!

Everything clicked into slow motion as I yanked out my service revolver, dropped to one knee and fired at him.

My first shot hit his left knee. The second ripped through his thigh. Two more hit an arm and a shoulder.

He got a couple of shots off at me and I felt something punch my side, but then he crashed against an office wall and landed in a sitting position, his leg twisted under him.

I rose slowly, carefully, kind of dizzy and in complete disbelief. This couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t of.

I inched up to him, pistol ready but shaking in my bloody hands, barely under control and hoping to God he wasn’t gonna make another move. I heard voices, footsteps running, echoing. They were far away but getting and closer. It seemed to take forever. I wished they’d get here, already and --

The guy lifted his gun, unsteady.

I fired, again. The bullet exploded through his skull. Blood splattered over me. I was covered in blood. I dropped to my knees, about ready to pass out – and then I saw it.

I saw the gunman’s gold shield.

He was a cop.

A detective!

I just killed a cop in police headquarters!

Man, there’s gonna be hell to pay for that, I thought as I quietly drifted towards darkness.

Chapter 1

That was early 1973. Never heard about it? They kept it quiet because the department was still reeling from the whole Serpico fiasco. A cop killing a cop while they were both on duty in 240 Centre Street.

What was crazy about this was I never aimed to be a cop. I was pushed into it by my dad. Well, getting a city job anyway. He insisted I take all the civil service exams. He would buy The Chief that was the city Official publication telling about city jobs, and sure enough he made sure I took every test. My only goal in life was to find a nice, simple desk job. Put in twenty-five or thirty easy, steady years. Retire with a nice steady pension and live in Florida, nice and warm like to escape the brutal New York Winters. Just enjoy my life as I age.

Don’t get me wrong – I never minded work. Hell, I was a good kid. Real good, swear on my grandmother’s eyes. Yeah, she’s long passed already, but you get the point. Everybody agreed I worked hard and dreamed right and had plans, and a lot of them still said I was good, even after everything went down.

But it is funny how, in most people’s eyes, you can go from being a good kid one minute to like something out of a freak show the next. People don’t want to understand that sometimes things happen that you got no control over. And if you don’t know the circumstances of it all – well, the way people talked you’d think I was out to kill everybody that looked at me wrong. But he was such a good kid, they would say.

Okay...that didn’t make any sense when it ought to be clear as a glass of water without ice. Maybe I’m making it hard to figure out, so let me start from another direction – my name is Pietro Giovanni Buono, Pete to my friends, and I lived on the edge of Little Italy in lower Manhattan. A nice area of buildings older than my grandparents, built on tight streets with parks that are really just open spaces covered in asphalt, with a couple trees slung up for shade. At least they got plenty of benches and some even got Bocce spaces, so that’s good. Of course, in that area, you wind up with an accent that’s so New York you could cut it with a knife, and with looks that seem so sleek-eyed under slick dark hair, you’d think everybody’s on the fast track to being a made guy wearing a diamond pinky ring.

And yes, those were my looks, too – on the sharp and slim side, but with nice eyes and a sweet smile. Hey, I’m just repeating what all the girls said. ‘Cause I know I’m not the best-looking Italian-American guy out there. But was Frank Sinatra ever really all that? I mean, I wasn’t as skinny as him when he was starting out, and I’m pretty sure I’m close to a foot taller – but even in junior high, when you saw me strut down the school corridors you’d think either I was way too full of myself or putting on a really big front, or both. That is probably what it really was, since that’s what got the girls interested. They like to think you got secrets that they, alone, can get you to reveal...and who am I to argue?

But then I wasn’t like the other kids in one way. Even at Fourteen years old, you’d have thought I was about to finish high school. I was a budding hot dog. Y’see, my looks made me look older than I really was, and that can be a ton of help when you want to get away with something.

Now remember, back then you only had to be eighteen to drink in New York State but twenty-one to vote. That‘s the way it should still be. Eighteen is too young to vote some of the kids today never had a job at that age; there should be no representation without taxation, you know reverse of what the people in the Boston Tea Party fought for. If you have no responsibility how can you be responsible enough to figure out who needs to be in office? It is who is going to give them something for nothing, that is what they vote for, Anyway, when I was fourteen, everybody treated me like I was in my early 20’s nobody looking at me twice. Even when I made time with a girl in a school hallway, they were thinking I’d been around for a lot longer than I had.

It always helped me make some time with girls who wouldn’t have given me the time of day if they knew my real age. Like Carla, a senior in high school with perky breasts and nice, round hips. I got to kiss her and cop a feel in between some stacks of lockers after school, which was a big deal back in the early Sixties. Of course, a couple days later she heard I’ve been bragging and found out about my age so she smacked me all over the place, but by then it was too late; the whole school knew she’d made time with a freshman. But I learned something --Don’t Kiss and Tell, a very important lesson of trust and survival.

Now at 14, I was working. Not your normal paper route or making deliveries in a grocery store, no, it was working at the

Fulton Fish Market. I’d got this job for myself – working for Mickey Flats. Flats was his nickname; seems everybody had one back then. The Fish Market was down in Lower Manhattan, not that far from where I lived, down almost under the Brooklyn Bridge and going from about nine pm to whenever, year round. It was this set of old buildings facing the FDR overhead that seemed like they’d been there more than two hundred years. Fish would get brought in from all up and down the coast and dumped off by huge trucks dripping from ice. The streets would be packed with hundreds of strong-backed guys and heavy dollies, hand trucks and screaming forklifts shifting crate after crate after crate of seafood from here to there and back – hell, enough to feed the whole city for a week all in one night, it seemed like. You had to be really careful where you walked in that place because the cobblestone streets had this slimy layer of water and fish oil and crap, and fishy water filled potholes so that you never knew you were stepping into it till it was too late. Then you spent the night stinking of dead mackerel.

Vans and restaurant delivery trucks would park face to face on Peck Slip, a wide cobblestone street right off South Street, the main hub of the market. They would get loaded up by union guys with their dollies and hand trucks. Then they’d take their cargo off to restaurants all up and down the coast, sometimes even back to where the fish got caught in the first place...which didn’t make sense to me. Why not just buy it in New Haven for New Haven restaurants, where it’s fresher? I figured there was some kind of special thing about buying the food on your dinner plate in New York. Now I know it was just how things worked so everybody got a piece of the pie – including the made guys and their boys. Boys like Mickey.

Now, Mickey was hardly a boy; no, he was close to social security age, and looking every year of it, from the lines around his sleepy eyes to his broken hooked nose. He sort of shuffled along, like he couldn’t pick his feet up all the way off the ground. He ran the parking scam in the market and had it for over 20 years, they tell me. You know the kind. Park here, pay me to watch your car. If you don’t, who knows what might happen to it? Most of the drivers at Fulton Fish Market knew how it worked and always had a twenty ready for when Mickey’d glide up and say something like, Hey, Frankie, how ya doin’?

Of course, the guy’d always smile at him and say, Good, Mickey, how’s things?

The same ol’ same ol’, Mickey’d say. You know how it goes. Then he’d put out his hand to shake and they’d shift the note into his palm like he was a maitre d’, and he’d add, See ya later.

And the guy’d know his load would get protected while he was buying his fish order. Because Mickey, he was on record with a made guy so couldn’t be touched. This was all just a cost of doing business; that was how things worked back then. My job, along with about 6 to 8 other guys, was to keep an eye out for non-precinct patrol cars and give him a nod when things were clear. Every now and then a local patrol car would glide by, giving the idea that the cops were keeping a watch on the place, but that was just show; they were on the pad. The real muscle of the area was Mickey, and I was one of the guys who floated in and out. Now I got the job because even at my age I had some street smarts. I was never a tough guy, I mean I could handle myself but wasn’t this bad guy that was feared like Tommy Red who was just an ox and tough as nails for a kid his age. I was able to get what was needed without violence most of the time, by talking, reasoning about the good and bad possibilities. For that -- a good talker, a lookout and a backup if anything went wrong -- I’d get twenty a shift, cash, and a weekly bonus, while Union guys got thirty-two, before taxes, to hump heavy boxes of fish around. It was easy to figure out which was better for me.

Of course, one of my plans was to take over for him when he got ready finally retire. Even then I was dreaming big...well, big for a kid who was Fourteen.

Now like I said, most of the drivers were regulars and knew the drill – but there was always somebody who didn’t understand how things work. First time I saw it, I’d been working with Mickey for a week. This truck parked in the center of the street and the driver got out and headed straight for the market. I whistled at Mickey; he saw the guy and shuffled over, calling out, Hey, bud, that’s twenty to park here.

The driver was one of those big burly bastards who think because they got fists like hams they got control of the world. So he snapped, This ain’t no parking garage; take a hike. Then he headed on.

Mickey watched him go then motioned for me to keep watch for unknown cops before he nodded to a guy called Tommy Hooks. He was this monster Sicilian kid made of total beef with only half a forehead, standing over by a shed at the base of Peck Slip and South Street, a hook hanging from his shoulder. Hooks. Tommy hooks -- like I said, almost everybody had a nickname. He lived in the projects up the road and was way more brawn than brain...but that kind’s good to have around.

He followed the driver around a corner and waved back with that big-assed hook, then started swinging it back and forth like he was just waiting for some reason to slip it into somebody’s neck. One of the other kids – this older guy named Louie Eyes – told me Hooks is the last person someone should ever mess with, you know I’m no genius but I had already figured that out.

Once Tommy’d taken up his post, two other guys approached the van and quickly jimmied its back door open. They loaded everything in the van onto two hand trucks and carted it away just before Mickey Flats slipped a knife into the van’s right front tire. The tire quickly deflated and that is when I notice a patrol car from Manhattan South approaching and gave a two-tone whistle.

Mickey walked away to approach another truck as it arrived, his hand out, ignoring the patrol car as it passed. And they ignored him, too. Guess everybody knew what he was up to...and truth is it made the cops’ jobs a lot easier.

A bit later, the Driver returned with a delivery guy wheeling some crates of fresh fish on ice, and he saw his truck standing wide open.

I heard him snarl, So that’s the way it is. But all he did was huff and have his shipment loaded in. He slammed the back closed and got behind the wheel, obviously irritated, but it wasn’t till he started to drive away that he realized he had a flat tire. He bolted