Chapter 9
A week after Maher had given DeBellis information on the stolen car operation, Maher picked up the newspaper and saw an article about a raid at the Kearny body shop. A jubilant Maher grabbed the phone and called DeBellis.
“I told you, Agent DeBellis,” Maher said, laughing, into the receiver, “I told you that place was chopping cars.”
“That’s right,” DeBellis answered, his voice flat.
After a moment of silence, Maher said: “You raided the place, didn’t you?”
DeBellis didn’t respond.
Maher suddenly had a sick feeling, like he was about to be screwed. He restated what he knew with a little more force. “I saw a thing in the paper this morning. You raided the place.”
“We didn’t raid the place,” DeBellis answered.
“What?” Maher was confused.
“I’ll call you right back,” DeBellis said.
Maher paced next to the phone for a few minutes until DeBellis called back.
“I found out what happened,” DeBellis reported. “The State Police raided the place.”
Now Maher knew he was going to get screwed. “Yeah. Right.”
DeBellis’ intercom buzzed – another incoming call – and he told Maher he’d get back him shortly. But the morning turned to afternoon, and afternoon dissolved into night. No Bob DeBellis. Maher was resigned to the fact that attempting to revive his undercover career had been a mistake. If you can’t trust the fucking FBI, who can you trust?
In the midst of inn tirade, the doorbell rang. Maher went to the door. It was Bob DeBellis.
DeBellis entered, walked to a table, and counted out ten $100 bills.
“A thousand dollars,” DeBellis remarked, “like we agreed.”
Maher picked up the money and looked at it for a moment. “But you said the FBI didn’t get the bust.”
“That’s correct,” DeBellis answered. “But what I told you was: If the body shop checks out, I’ll pay you a thousand dollars. The body shop checked out. It just so happens that the State Police got there first.”
Maher looked at DeBellis. This is a stand-up huy.
And so began Maher’s relationship with Agent Bob DeBellis.
A few days later the chop shop in Kearny had been shut down, DeBellis stopped off at a local bar to meet a long time friend, Robert Colaneri. Colaneri had a weight lifter’s build, broad should and bulky arms, and his entire body – from his ankles to his neck – was covered tattoos. Indeed, one could have assumed DeBellis had tracked down a dangerous suspect. But Colaneri, despite his appearance, was not a felon. He was a cop. Specialty: undercover.
Among other things, DeBellis and Colaneri talked about the increasing auto theft problem in the New York/New Jersey area. At least the chop shop in Kearny had been shut down, but there were bigger operations than that.
“Like Marconi,” Colaneri noted. (The name of the chop shop owner has been c hanged because he was never indicted.)
Anthony Marconi ran a legitimate business called, appropriately, Marconi Body Shop. Located in Bellevill, New Jersey, Marconi Body Shop was recognized by car owners in three states for its professional body work. It was also recognized by every law enforcement agency within a hundred miles as a high-volume stolen-car factory. The problem was, Marconi was so good at receiving, modifying, and then selling stolen vehicles that even the constant surveillance by several police forces failed to turn up concrete evidence. Colaneri himself had recently impounded a Corvette that he knew was a Marconi “rag job” but was forced to return the car when he was unable to prove it. Marconi was not amateur by any means. He had an “operation,” with a corporate structure as well put together as General Motors.
“I have an informant who might be able to get inside Marconi’s organization,” DeBellis said, referring to Maher.
“That’s the only way you’re going to get him,” Colaneri remarked.
Undercover cops had tried to snag Marconi before, but he was too crafty. No matter who went it, Marconi either knew they were a cop or sensed they were a cop. Indeed, Marconi Body Shop seemed impenetrable.
“He’s an interesting kid,” DeBellis said. “Real good with cars.”
“What’s his trade off?” Colaneri asked.
“Nothing.” DeBellis answered. “He’s a paid informant.”
Colaneri nodded. “But he’s got a record, right?”
“Not much of one,” DeBellis said with a shrug. “A couple of convictions resulting from a stolen car charge back in 1971. No previous record. Nothing since.”
“You said he was a kid,” Colaneri pointed out.
“Basically he is. He’s twenty-seven.”
Colaneri calculated the years for a moment then reacted: “Then he was, what, sixteen, seventeen when he stole the car?”
DeBellis nodded. “Got four years.”
Colaneri shook his head. “Four years? No priors? A minor? What the hell happened?”
DeBellis shook his head. “Who knows?”
Colaneri - who was also twenty-seven years old – recalled what he was doing when he was sixteen. He wasn’t stealing cars, but he knew kids who were. Had the impulse struck him, he might have stolen a car back then as well. After all, it wasn’t a big deal. Usually the charges were dropped. Worse case might have been juvenile detention. But four years? In a prison? Colaneri took a deep breath. There but for the grace of God…
The similarities between Colaneri and Maher were striking despite the obvious differences – Colaneri was Italian/Irish and Maher was all Irish; one had grown up in New Jersey and the other in the Bronx. But beyond the genealogy and the geography, there was a little separating them. Both were born in 1954 – Maher on April 18, Colaneri four months later, on August 16. Both spent their youth in working-class communities where there were few choices and little opportunity. Both resisted donning a spirit-choking blue collar and were driven to seek adventure, a yearning that manifested itself in a fascination with fast cars. And both planned to prolong the adventure by becoming a cop. Now Colaneri was a cop and Maher was an ex-con. However, had it not been for one cold November night in 1971, a night on which Maher stole a car and Colaneri though about stealing a car but did not, then Maher could have emerged the cop and Colaneri could have been cast as the ex-con.
Colaneri’s grandparents had emigrated from Italy at the turn of the century, and his father, John, was born on Baxter Street in the heart of Little Italy. His father moved to Jersey City, where he met and married the red-haired, blue-eyed Grace Gilligan. Shortly after the marriage, John and Grace bought a small house in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey, and in the late 1940s they moved to Hadbrouck Heights, where they started an American family of Italian and Irish decent. First born was daughter Marilyn. Then three daughters – Barbara, Joan and Margie. But John was undaunted. He wanted a son and was determined to have one. In fact, he had three sons: John Jr., Robert and Michael.
By this time, John Colaneri and his brother Joe had a thriving cutlery business in East Rutherford called Colaneri Brothers and had just expanded the business to include lawmowers and snowblowers. (The business still exists today and remains family owned.) Then, on January 18, 1964, a crispy Saturday morning, John suffered a heart attack at the store. Despite the efforts of another of John’s brothers, Dr. Anthony Colaneri, John did not recovery.
Following his father’s death, nine-year-old Bobby changed. He became difficult for his mother to handle, often then getting into trouble. As the years passed, he grew more restless. During his sophomore year he bought a motorcycle ( a 64 BSA Thunderbolt), and during his senior year he bought a 1968 Corvette – dark blue with powder blue interior, a white convertible softtop and a 350-cubic-inch engine with 350 horsepower. He raced the Corvette every Friday and Saturday night on Route 80 in Lodi New Jersey, where a quarter-mile stretch of the highway that led from Lodi to Hasbrouck Heights had been marked with paint. Cars from a hundred-mile radius would be trailered in like they were a legitimate racetrack. And Colaneri’s Corvette would beat them.
Even serving as captain of the undefeated 1972 state champion Hasbrouck Heights High School football team didn’t seem to lessen his wild streak. When Colaneri wasn’t drag racing, he was running with motorcycle gangs. Neither of these things would have been allowed if his father was still alive. And his decision not to go to college would not have set well with John Colaneri either.
Despite his star athlete status in high school, Colaneri knew that he wasn’t pro football material. He enlisted in the Army immediately upon graduation in 1973, and after reporting for duty he was among 6 other enlisted men to be singled out as candidates for West Point. But Colaneri couldn’t see himself at a military academy either and declined the offer. Instead, he went through boot camp and then was assigned to a base in Vencenzia, Italy, where he became an MP. At nineteen, Colaneri had accomplished at least one of his goals. He was a cop of sorts. A military cop.
In 1974, Grace Colaneri was hospitalized with a liver infection, and Colaneri obtained an emergency leave to visit his mother. Temporarily stationed at Forth Monmouth, New Jersey, Colaneri befriended the personal secretary of the base commander, often taking him home for dinner, sometimes fixing him up on a date. Their friendship resulted in a discussion about Colaneri might extend his leave. Permanently.
Following a flurry of paperwork, the commander’s secretary was able to get Colaneri a hardship discharge to care for his ailing mother. Colaneri was out of the Army after just a year and back in his hometown, once again buzzing around on his motorcycle or behind the wheel of his Corvette. In his travels, he met Frank Sassani, president of the Bronx Motorcycle Club. With Sassani’s help, Colaneri got into the laborers’ union and began working with construction crew that was building the Meadowlands Sports Complex.
Colaneri stilled courted trouble. Hard-drinking. Volatile. Angry. And the tattoo gallery that was his body made him look the part. Colaneri got his first tattoo – a motorcycle – at sixteen. A few months later he added two more. Before long, both his arms, from the wrist to the elbow and from the biceps to the shoulders, were covered with ink. The designs were so numerous and closely spaced that he acquired what is known as “sleeves.” When he ran out of room on his arms, chest, and back, he began to fill the skin on his legs.
Over the next two years Colaneri surfed just above the law. He was solicited to steal cars, observed various petty crimes, and heard about all manner of criminal activity. Miraculously, he never got involved in any of it. Miraculously because it wasn’t always his sense of right and wrong that stopped him. Sometimes it was the circumstances that kept him from tripping up. A sibling’s birthday party or a chance encounter with an alluring girl or any number of serendipitous events had often prevented him from meeting with his growing collection of corrupting friends. Then he would hear about the arrests. And he would know that if he had been there he would have been arrested, too. Any hope of ever becoming a cop would have evaporated. Colaneri felt lucky. Maybe my father’s looking out for me, he would think when he missed becoming a felon by minutes. Somehow Colaneri managed never to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
On his twenty-first birthday, in 1975, Colaneri, who was now a vice president of the Bronx Motorcycle Club, was celebrating with members at a local hangout in Paterson, New Jersey, when he spotted a blonde at the bar. He leaned over toward Peter and Robert “Mickey” Schultz, two gang members.
“Who’s the girl with the white pants on?” Colaneri wanted to know.
Mickey frowned. “That’s my sister. Believe me, you don’t want to get involved with her.”
As it happened, Peter and Mickey kept a tight rein on their “little sister” Patti.
“Yeah,” Peter added. “Tommy the Prospect wanted to go out with her too, but we wouldn’t let him.”
Colaneri laughed. Tommy the Prospect. A “prospect” – in a gang vernacular – was someone who wanted to join the club. Prospective inductees became probationary members and were given a motorcycle jacket that had only one patch – “MC” which stood, of course, for Motorcycle Club. Prospects were not allowed to wear patches that read “Bronx” or to display the center patch logo of the club: cross pistons. Those adornments would be added to the jacket when the club deemed a prospect worthy of full membership. However, after more than a year, poor Tommy still had not been granted the full colors of the Bronx Motorcycle Club, and it seemed he would forever remain a “prospect.” Hence the moniker Tommy the Prospect.
“I’m not Tommy the Prospect,” Colaneri pointed out.
There was a tense moment. Preventing Colaneri from talking with sister Patti was about to lead to a confrontation. Finally Mickey smiled.
“Hey, Bobby. It’s your fucking life.”
Colaneri walked over to Patti Schultz and said: “I’m going to wind up marrying you.”
Patti raised and eyebrow. “What is that, some kind of line?”
In the meantime, Tommy the Prospect was watching Colaneri and Patti closely. Tommy was not thrilled So Mickey walked over to his sister and took her aside.
“These two guys come to blows over you, Patti,” Mickey said, nodding toward Colaneri and Tommy the Prospect, “and you’re going to have a problem.”
But there was no fight. Tommy backed off.
For the next three weeks Colaneri and Patti were inseparable. She often went with him to the clubhouse on Lemoine Avenue in Fort Lee, home of the New Jersey chapter of the Bronx Motorcycle Club. On the night of September 11, 1975, a call came into the clubhouse at 6:00 P.M. Mickey Schultz had been in an accident in New York and had been taken to Lennox Hill Hospital in critical condition. Colaneri decided not to tell Patii that her brother had been injured, saying only that there was an emergency and he had to leave immediately. Colaneri jumped on his cycle and raced across the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan. Patti went to the home of Terry Snodgrass, the girlfriend of another club member.
By the time Colaneri arrived at the hospital, Robert “Mickey” Schultz was dead.
Colaneri was told that witnesses reported seeing a car take a sharp left turn and plow into Mickey’s motorcycle. More than a half an hour after the accident, an ambulance finally arrived. Paramedics carefully braced Mickey’s neck, placed him on a stretcher, and loaded him into the ambulance. But then the ambulance wouldn’t start. So there was a fifteen-minute wait for a second rescue vehicle.
Patti called her mother’s house and was told by her Aunt Pat to get home as fast as she could. Although Patti was still unaware that her brother had been killed, she knew something terrible had occurred. She was verging on panic when she climbed into Terry’s beat up 1967 Oldsmobile and headed for the Bronx. Unfortunately, the Cross Bronx Expressway had been closed due to construction, and the snarl of traffic Colaneri had skirted on this cycle was almost unnavigatable in an automobile. After a tortuous trip from Jersey to the Bronx, Patti rushed into her mother’s house. Several family members were gathered there. They were all crying. Patti, shaking and emotionally spent, sought the consoling arms of her sister Donna.
“Mickey’s gone,” Donna said softly.
As tragedy can sometimes do, Mickey’s death drew Colaneri and Patti closer. Two weeks later Colaneri proposed and Patti accepted. They were married on Valentine’s Day 1976. And they moved to Carlstadt, New Jersey, where their first child, Bobby, was born on September 4 that same year.
Now that they had a son, Patti began to express her displeasure over her husband’s lifestyle. Drag racing. Motorcycle gangs. And the full complement of hangers-on who skim along the periphery of those activities. Drug dealers. Pimps. Prostitutes. Car thieves. Worse, Patti could sense that Colanneri had begun to lose his direction, veering perilously close to the wrong side of the law on too many occasions.
Colaneri quit drag racing and resigned from the Bronx Motorcycle Club. He became a weekend warrior, riding his motorcycle solo along the back roads of New Jersey. Actually, there wasn’t a clubhouse to go to anymore. The night Colaneri and Patti were married, somebody blew up the pace.
For the balance of 1976 and 1977, Colaneri drove a construction truck. He was laid off in December 1977 and collected unemployment until the spring of 1978, when he was supposed to go back to work. However, the only job available was driving an emulsion truck – the vehicle that transported hot tar – between Newark and Bogota. Due to the toxicity of the tar, a special, protective suit was required. It was an undesirable, dangerous job. Colaneri declined. But then he got a bit of a shock from Patti.
“I’m pregnant,” Patti said one afternoon.
By summer, the unemployment checks stopped. Faced with providing for two children and couple with unreliability of construction work, Colaneri began to wonder if maybe he should follow up on some of the less legitimate opportunities that presented themselves. All he had to do was steal one Corvette and he could walk away with a grand. That would solve both Colaneri’s problems – his need for income and his reawakened hunger for excitement. Once he was a high school football star. Once he had the fastest Corvette on Route 80 in Lodi, New Jersey. Now he was married with one kid, another on the way. Out of work. He felt a failure.
In Maher’s case, fate had been unkind. In Colaneri’s case, fate saved him. Someone mentioned to Colaneri that there was a test about to be given by the Carlstadt Police Department. This was good news. So he took the test and waited to see it he had made the cut.
As the days passed, Colaneri’s thoughts were troubled. He knew himself well enough to know that if he didn’t get on the Carlstadt police force, he would probably go the other way. He would probably do something stupid to get cash. And he would likely try to convince himself it was for the kids.
Colaneri was notified that he had scored extremely high on the test. He was sworn in as a Carlstadt police officer on July 17, 1978. Then, on December 2, Gina Marie was born. Whereas once they seemed to threaten his sense of adventure, now Patti and his children offered stability.
For the first year on the job, Colaneri patrolled the streets of Carlstadt in a uniform. But he craved more action than just cruising around in a squad car, and he volunteered for undercover work. Considering his burly appearance and, of course, the full body of tattoos, Colaneri was a natural. In fact, no one ever guessed he was cop until it was too late, although there was one time in October 1979 when Colaneri’s cover was blown.
Colaneri had been working a drug case with Detective Sergeant John Occhiuzzo for months and was about to make a major buy at the suspect’s house. Colaneri – dressed in a T-shirt emblazoned with a swastika – was sitting in the suspect’s kitchen when the suspect’s wife returned home. As it happened, the suspect’s wife was good friends with Colaneri’s sister-in-law. Recognizing Colaneri’s face from family photos, she pulled her husband aside and told him that Colaneri was a cop.
Still, Colaneri was considered to be the best undercover operative Carlstadt had ever seen, which is why he sitting in a bar talking with FI agent Bob DeBellis. Colaneri was the guy to talk to when the cases got tough.
Colaneri snapped back to the present and looked at DeBellis.
“Tough break,” Colaneri said, referring to Maher’s harsh sentence for car theft.
Yet, while Colaneri could grimace about what he knew to be similarities between him and Maher, he had no way of knowing the many commonalities he shared with DeBellis’s CI. The house where Colaneri’s parents once lived in Wood-Ridge was only two blocks from where Maher currently was living. And Patti’s mother’s home in the Throngs Neck section of the Bronx was just a few blocks from where Maher and Beth had previously lived. Besides their coincidental geographic proximity, Maher and Colaneri shared a passion for Corvettes and had often shopped in the same auto parts stores.
“I’d like to meet this kid,” Colaneri told DeBellis.
“I’m sure you will,” DeBellis answered.
During the second meeting between Maher and DeBellis, DeBellis explained who Anthony Marconi was – how difficult it had been so far to get anything on Marconi – and outlined what would be expected of Maher in an undercover operation aimed at Marconi Body Shop.
“We’ll work out the price later,” DeBellis advised Maher.
Maher nodded. He trusted DeBellis now. He knew DeBellis would come through.
After receiving his “assignment” from DeBellis, Maher didn’t waste any time. He went straight to Marconi.
“I got a couple of guys good with Corvettes,” Maher told Marconi.
Marconi studied Maher for a long time before answering, then told Maher he would get back to him in a couple of days. Marconi wanted time to have Maher checked out. But Maher wasn’t concerned .He was known in Corvette circles by the locals and had a conviction for grand theft auto. Wherever Marconi turned, Maher would look like someone who could deliver Corvettes.
A few days later, Marconi contacted Maher and told him: “I’ll pay eight hundred to a thousand a car.”
Marconi explained the difference in price. Most Vettes would command the eight hundred dollars. A Vette with glass roof panels – not fiberglass – would warrant the higher amount.
“I can take five a week,” Marconi told Maher. “If you’re good and don’t bring no heat, you can make five thousand a week.”
Maher left Marconi’s garage and went to see Larry Birnholz, the mechanic who worked on Maher’s Corvettes, and told him about the conversation with Marconi.
“I need some guys to help me steal a few Vettes,” Maher said.
Birnholz, who wasn’t averse to stealing Vettes for parts, told Maher he often teamed with three men who specialized in stealing Corvette: Randy Anderwkavich, Richard Blasso, and Franco Torre.
“I want to meet them,” Maher told Birnholz.
“Let’s go,” Birnholz.
The first thing Maher said when he met Anderwkavich, Blasso and Torre was: “I know Anthony Marconi.”
The band of thieves was impressed. “Yeah,” one of them aid. “We’ve heard of him.”
Maher was now in control. He took the four car thieves to Marconi Body Shop in Belleville and introduced them to Marconi. Again Marconi asked for a couple of days. And again the thieves – all of whom had prison records – checked out. Marconi was in business with a bunch of felons, and he knew felons could not be cops. The sting was set.
On September 23, Maher met with DeBellis and briefed him on the situation. Instead of being thrilled, DeBellis was concerned. The band of thieves Maher had enlisted were not a group of punks snatching cars of the street with a slaphammer. At least one of them – Richard Blasso – was a reputed Mafia soldier who had a penchant for armed robbery.
“I’m telling you two things right now,” DeBellis said with emphasis. “I cannot condone a sting in which a stolen car is used in the theft of another car.”
“I’ll use my car,” Maher responded.
DeBellis continued. “And you are not authorized to participate in an armed carjacking.”
“Don’t worry,” Maher countered. “They never said anything about an armed carjacking. All we talked about is delivering a Vette to Marconi.”
“As long as there are no guns involved,” DeBellis asserted.
DeBellis looked at Maher. He seemed too self-assured, too cocky.
“Look Kevin,” DeBellis said, “what I’m trying to tell you is, you do a stickup and you’ll go to jail. I won’t be able to help you, you understand?”
Maher was sobered by the thought. “I understand.”
At nine o’clock that night, Maher met the car thieves at a predetermined location in Queens. Maher was driving his Camaro with it’s Indy 500 markings. They were driving a Pontiac Trans Am, which was stolen.
“Let’s go,” Blasso said, motioning for Maher to get in the Trans Am.
“I’m not getting a fucking hot car,” Maher said. “Come in my car and we’ll go cruising for a Vette.”
The four men climbed into Maher’s Indy pace car replica. Anderwkavich was in a particularly good mood.
“What are you so happy about?” Maher asked.
“I just came from the hospital,” Anderwkavich said, his voice effervescent. “I just had a baby girl.”
“You didn’t have nothing,” Maher pointed out. “You wife had a baby girl.”
Everyone laughed. And then the five men set out to steal a Corvette.
For the next two hours Maher cruised around Queens looking for Corvettes, particularly Corvettes with glass roof panels. Street after street. Neighborhood after neighborhood. No luck. Maher’s passengers were restless.
“What about this jeweler,” Blasso asked.
“He’s got hundreds of thousands of dollars in gems,” Anderwkavich said. “The only time to get him is when he walks from the car to the house.”
The men began to direct Maher.
“Turn here,” Anderwkavich said. Then a few minutes later: “Try that street.”
The next thing Maher knew he was in the section of Flushing at the intersection of 151st Street and Bayside Avenue. Anderwkavich instructed Maher to stop the car across the street from a brownstone.
“That’s the house,” Anderwkavich told Blasso.
Maher checked out the driveway. It was empty.
“No Corvette,,” Maher noted. “Let’s go.”
“Fuck Corvettes,” Blasso barked. “That’s the jeweler’s house. We wait her till he comes home.”
Maher glanced nervously around the car. These guys are talking about a fucking stickup! DeBellis’ words echoed in Maher’s mind: You do a stickup and you’ll go to jail. I won’t be able to help you, you understand? Maher understood. But now he was in a car with four men seemingly about to engage in armed robbery. Worse yet, it was Maher’s own car, with identifiable markings, no less.
“We’re going to knock off the fucking jeweler,” Blasso said with a growl.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Maher told Blasso.
“Don’t worry,” Blasso said. “It’s gonna be easy.”
“I ain’t knocking off no fucking jeweler,” Maher insisted.
“He’s gonna be carrying fifty, a hundred grand in gems,” Blasso explained.
Maher pressed: “Who the fuck turned you on to this jeweler?”
“This guy Beamen,” Anderwkavich answered.
Maher had heard of Beamen. He was small-tim drug dealer.
“And how do you know that this guy’s going to be carrying fifty to a hundred thousand in jewels?” Maher asked, snickering. “Beamen tell you that?”
“Yeah,” Anderwkavich said. “Beamen took the jeweler off once before. He was a pushover.”
“A pushover, huh?” Maher was growing concerned. The momentum for a holdup was building all around him. “If it’s that easy and he’s carrying that large and walking into a dark alley like that” – Maher pointed to the darkened driveway – “why ain’t Beamen doing it? Huh? Why did he give it to you?”
“He’s in jail,” Anderwkavich said.
“We’re supposed to take care of Beamen later,” Blasso chimed in.
Maher looked at the tree-lined driveway. A guy carries a hundred grand in jewels home every night at midnight? And these jerks know about it? Something wasn’t right. And whatever was about to go down, Maher wanted no part of it.
“I ain’t knocking off no fucking jeweler,” Maher said again.
Maher reached for the gear shifter. At the same time, Anderwkavich slid a .32 caliber snub-nosed Smith & Wesson from his jacket, and Blasso pulled out a single-barreled sawed-off shotgun.
Maher withdrew his hand from the shifter and fell back against the seat. Now what the fuck do I do?
