Chapter 10
Maher grabbed the stick shift and jammed the car into first gear, the slammed his foot on the accelerator. The Camaro catapulted from the curb. Summoning all the bravado he could muster, Maher looked over his should into the backseat and stared directly into Blasso’s eyes.
“Marconi’s going to pay us five grand a week and you want to stick up some fucking jeweler? Fuck you, man! Fuck you.”
Blasso was not amused. “Hey, you don’t want to do it? Then fuck you!”
Maher drove like a maniac until he reached the spot where the stolen Pontiac Trans Am was parked. Blassom Anderwkavich, Birnholz, and Torre climbed out of Maher’s Camaro and piled into the Trans Am. A moment later, the Trans Am pulled away, disappearing into the night.
Maher’s heart was pounding as loudly as the pistons in the Camaro. He drove home and fell into bed. Beth looked at him and sensed something was wrong.
“Kevin.? What is it?”
“I took another assignment with the FBI,” Maher said.
“Beth winced silently. A betrayal. A broken promise.
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t do that anymore,” Beth said with a sigh,
“Beth…” Maher didn’t know what to say.
“Fine,” Beth said with emphasis.
Maher tried to explain. “It was going to be a big payday.”
“Fine,” Beth said again. This time her voice was barely a whisper.
Maher continued. “But then these guys set me up. They wanted to do a jewel heist. Before I knew it, I was in front of this jeweler’s house. I backed out, and here I am.”
Maher shrugged. Beth gave Maher a little half smile.
“Fine,” Beth said once again, then rolled over, turning away both physically and emotionally.
Maher stared at the ceiling. Fine. That’s what she always says when she’s upset. Fine. Maher hated that word. It twisted him up inside. Maybe he didn’t want to admit to himself, or perhaps he didn’t fully realize it, but there was a good reason why the word “fine” ravaged his emotions so completely. Somewhere, deep within his subconscious, he could hear Beth slipping away with each utterance of that word. He was losing her.
Maybe he had already.
The following morning, Maher was about to slap his hand down on the clock radio’s snooze alarm when the all-news station WINS broadcast the following report:
“In Flushing, Queens, four armed men wearing ski masks ambushed an off-duty policeman in his driveway in a botched holdup attempt. The office shot and killed one man. Three other suspects fled the scene.”
Maher shot straight up. Flushing? Four suspects?
Maher turned up the volume. Details of the attempted robbery were sketchy, according to the report, since the police had just begun their investigation.
Maher looked toward the door to the bathroom, where Beth was taking a shower. He realized, after hearing the newscast, that the case he thought was over might just be beginning. Do I tell Beth? Maher decided he wouldn’t say anything to Beth. He couldn’t bear to hear her say “fine” again.
Twenty minutes after the first bulletin, an update identified the off-duty police officer as Frank Ciasullo from the 13th Precidnct. Another twenty minutes later, as the headlines rolled around again, Maher heard the name of the suspect who was killed: Randolph Anderwkavich.
Maher jolted. The dumb bastards went to the wrong house and tried to jump a cop!
The newscast also identified Richard Blasso, who had been wounded during the attempted robbery. Blasso had been arrested at the nearby hospital where he went to seek treatment. In addition, the newscast gave Officer Ciasullo’s account of the incident. According to police sources, Ciasullo’s report stated that when he returned home from his four-to-midnight shift, tow armed men approached him from the direction of the rear yard. At the same moment, Ciasullo said he was grabbed from behind by two additional males and that a shopping bag he was carrying in his left hand had been ripped free. Although one of the armed men hit him in the face with a gun, Ciasullo said he was able to draw his off-duty revolver and fired three shots. One shot struck and killed one man, and another shot wounded a second man. The report added that “no guns were recovered at the scene.”
Maher knew how that might work against Ciasullo. Blasso would swear he was unarmed. And it would be Blasso’s word against Ciasullo’s.
The report concluded on an ominous note, at least as far as Maher was concerned.
“Police believe the suspects escaped in a car driven by a fifth man.”
Maher frowned. A fifth man? What fifth man?
And then the realization slowly washed over him. DeBellis is going to think I was the fifth man.
Maher rushed to the phone and called DeBellis, explaining every detail of what happened the previous night.
“I left them in Queens,” Maher insisted. “I got the fuck out of there, I sear I did.”
“I believe you, Kevin,” DeBellis assured him, then explained that because the case was now a homicide it was out of the FBI’s jurisdiction. “I’ll call this detective at NYPD I know and –“
“No,” Maher interrupted. “I’ll call someone I know.”
Maher called Doherty at the Defense Department. After hearing Maher’s story, Doherty might have suggested that Maher call a detective from the 109th Precinct, which was the precinct covering the area in Queens where the shooting had occurred. However, Doherty felt that, under the circumstances, he should recommend someone he knew very well, someone who had met Maher before, someone who understood that Maher was not your usual one-step-ahead-of-the-law informant.
“Give Tom Harkins a call,” Doherty suggested.
Tom Harkins was one of the few remaining detectives from Doherty’s stint at the Manhattan DA’s office.
Born in Brooklyn in 1838, Harkins found his way out of the neighborhood by joining the Marines when he was twenty years old. He wound up stationed in Oahu, where he attended classes at the University of Hawaii. Harkins was discharged from the Marines in 1966. After his discharge, he received a master’s degree in clinical and counseling psychology from the New York Institute of Technology.
In April 1966 Harkins married Ann Collier. And in September he became a uniformed officer out of Manhattan’s 25th Precinct, whose headquarters was on 126th Street between Second and Third avenues; while in the precinct he id a tour of duty on foot patrol. He graduated to the radio and motor patrol, cruising the drug-ravaged uptown streets in a squad car.
In 1969 Harkins was assigned to the Manhattan South Narcotics Squad, and was stationed out of the 1st Precinct, which was referred to as Old Slip because of its location. The 1st Precinct was near the entrances to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel and the Brooklyn Bridge, looking out over New York Harbor.
In those days, the path to detective was simple: Put in the time and ultimately be rewarded with a gold shield. Harkins spent two years in plainclothes and was closing in on a shield when the findings of the Knapp Commission sent the NYPD into a state of near chaos.
The Knapp Commission – named after prosecutor Whitman Knapp – convened in early 1970 after cops Frank Serpico and David Dirk made allegations about widespread corruption within the New York City Police Department. (Both became famous when a series of books and movies was done about the commission, particularly the 1973 film titled Serpico, which starred Al Pacino.)
Due to what was termed “the Blue Wall of Silence,” two years of investigation and public hearings failed to net much more than a handful of low-level officers. But the long, drawn-out process – during which rumors that hundreds of cops were about to be charged with various crimes – rattled the department. To prevent the wholesale devastation of any particular precinct, top police brass began reassigning many of the roughly eight hundred officers in the Narcotics Squad. Narcotics cops were allowed to select a precinct, and Harkins chose the 7th Precinct, headquartered on Delancey Street at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.
Following two years in the Anticrime Unit, Harkins returned home one evening to find a message from a police lieutenant. The telephone number was 232-7300 – the courthouse. Harkins knew that the department was putting together a “Court Division,” and he wanted no part of it. Everyone knew that officers assigned to the Court Division would be nothing more than clerks monitoring the flow of paperwork. Consequently, Harkins ignored the call. But the lieutenant called back again the next day.
“You better call that guy,” Harkin’s wife, Ann, said when he returned home. “He was really upset.”
Harkins returned the call.
Instead of being given an assignment in the Court Division, Harkins was invited to interview with the prestigious Manhattan District Attorney Squad under the direction of DA Frank Hogan. With only seven years on the job, Harkins merely was biding his time and hoping for a promotion to detective. But to become a detective in the DA’s office was beyond anything he had hoped for.
A year after the interview, Harkins was notified of his promotion to detective and appeared at headquarters to receive his gold shield. Police Commissioner Michael Codd addressed the new detectives by telling them that, in the wake of the Knapp Commission, “they put us through the ringer.” Codd explained that each of those who were gathered to receive a shield had undergone such intense scrutiny that all their previous arrests had been carefully examined. Codd concluded: “Anyone here getting a shield, deserves it.”
Following Codd’s remarks, name after name was called and the orders were read, assigning the freshman detectives to various precincts. Harkins was assigned to the DA Squad.
A year after Harkins joined the DA’s office, Dick Condon – who had been a Knapp Commission investigator – took over the squad. The following year, Condon’s partner, Sergeant Jack Vobis, joined Condon as a squad supervisor. Since Vobis and Doherty had worked together on the French Connection heroin theft, Vobis brought Doherty in. And, of course, a few months later, Doherty introduced his new informant to Harkins – Kevin Maher.
Over the next five years, Harkins saw quite a bit of Maher. But when Doherty retired in 1980, Maher had stopped coming in. So, on a cool September morning in 1982, there was no reason for Harkins to expect a phone all from Maher.
Harkins had just settled in a this desk and was working on his first cup of coffee when his intercom buzzed.
“There’s a Kevin Maher on line two. He asked for you.”
Harkins stared at the blinking telephone light for a moment. I wonder what he wants? Harkins pressed line two. Instead of hearing “hello” or some other greeting, Harkins was hit with a sudden barrage.
“Okay. So you got two of the guys, right? One guy in the hospital and the other guy dead at the scene. Well, let me tell you, I know the whole story and – “
“Kevin?”
“Yeah?”
“Kevin, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Ciasullo.”
“Who?”
“The off duty cop from last night. He shot and killed Anderwkavich and wounded Blasso.”
“Anderwkavich? Blasso?”
Maher sighed. “Don’t you listen to the news?”
Harkins took a deep breath. “Kevin, I just got in. I haven’t seen a newspaper, and no, I haven’t listened to the news. So why don’t you start from the beginning.”
Maher explained the situation to Harkins. Since Maher was jumping all over the place without regard for chronology, it took Harkins half an hour to get the details.
“I could see big trouble here,” Maher said. “And I didn’t do anything.”
“Calm down,” Harkins said. “I’ll call you back.”
Harkins hung up the receiver and rubbed his forehead. This wasn’t his case. The shooting had occurred within the 109th Precinct. It was their case. And the attempted robbery was a matter for the Queens Central Robbery Squad. But now Harkins was involved whether he like it or not.
From a procedural standpoint, Harkins was required to pass along the information he had just received from Maher. But it wasn’t just the procedural hook that was into Harkins, it was also an emotional one. Kevin Maher wasn’t just a faceless informant, he was a person. A kid who used to hang out at 1 Hogan Place. Harkins felt he had to do something to help him. Harkins felt he had to do something to help him. Or at least make sure Maher had an opportunity to be heard.
Harkins spoke with Captain Eddie Baccaglini, who then spoke with Chief of Detectives Joseph Borelli. Borelli told Baccaglini to send Harkins to the 109th Precinct to provide assistance on the case.
After stopping by the 109th Precinct and meeting with Detective Robert Kiselewsky, Harkins spoke with a detective from the Queens Central Robbery Squad, Patrick Mockler. Since Maher was Harkins’s informant, it was decided that Harkins, Mockler, and Kiselewsky would work together in a kind of joint task force born out of necessity.
Harkins and Mockler headed across the George Washington Bridge to Maher’s home in Wood-Ridge. For more than two hours, Maher and the two detectives went over the incident minute by minute, word by word. Clearly the suspects were unaware that Ciasullo was not merely a jeweler, rather was a cop who moonlighted as a jeweler.
“So they said someone named Beamen told them to rob Ciasullo?” Harkins pressed.
“Yes!” Maher answered, growing exasperated. He wondered: Why are they so obsessed with Beamen?
The conversation turned to each of the individual suspects and what Maher knew about them. Maher explained that he had only come in contact with the four men because of the FBI stolen car sting.
“Anderwkavich is dead,” Maher noted, “and you’ve got Blasso cold.”
Harkins smiled. “Not really. He denies knowing anything about Ciasullo or Beamen.”
“Of course he’s going to deny it.” Maher grew animated. “But he got shot with a bullet from Ciasullo’s gun, right?”
Harkins nodded.
“Okay,” Maher went on, “so maybe the bullet’s still in him.”
“It is,” Harkins confirmed, explaining that someone fitted suspect Birnholz’s description had dropped Blasso off at a Queens hospital. When doctors discovered Blasso had been shot, they immediately called police.
Maher held his arms open. “Okay. You got Blasso. And he’s got a bullet in him. You take the bullet and run a ballistics test, which placed him at the scene.” Maher shook his head. “I’ve got to tell you everything?” Maher laughed.
Then Harkins said: “Blasso refused to allow doctor’s to remove the bullet.”
Maher stopped laughing.
“My guess,” Harkins suggested, “is that Blasso doesn’t want the bullet used for evidence.”
For a moment, no one spoke. A man who would conceal evidence in his bleeding gut was scary.
Ultimately the question of a possible “fifth man” arose. Harkins made it clear that if there was indeed a “fifth man,” he didn’t believe it was Maher. Rather, Harkins told Maher he wanted his help.
“We may need you to wear a wire,” Harkins said.
Since it was Friday evening and nothing much could be accomplished over the weekend, the next meeting was scheduled for Monday morning.
The moment Harkins and Mockler left, Beth emerged from the kitchen. She and Maher stared at each other for a long time.
“Are you going to help them with the case?” Beth finally asked.
“Look, Beth, this cop is in trouble and – “
“Fine.”Beth spun on her heels and walked back into the kitchen.
The following morning, Maher flipped through the pages of The Daily News and came across a story with this headline:
Masked Man Is Slain at Policeman’s Home
The story recounted the attempted robbery by Blasso and company and then continued:
Details of the shooting were disclosed yesterday in Queens Supreme Court, where two brothers – Richard Beamen, 22, and Marc, 18, o Murray St. Queens – were on trial. They are charged as two of the four armed robbers – all wearing ski or Halloween masks – who invaded the Ciasullo home last August, terrorizing Ciasullo’s wife, her sister and her children and made off with $60,000 in jewelry.
Maher frowned. That’s right! Blasso said Beamen had robber Ciasullo before.
The article went on to sat that when the Beamens’ defense lawyers asked for mistrial, Justice Groh consented.
Maher’s mind began to reel. Is there some kind of connection between the mistrial and the robbery? What if Beamen told Blasso to whack Ciasullo and make it look like a robbery?
Maher felt nauseous as the realization hit him. Blasso wasn’t asking me to go on a robbery. He was inviting me to a contract killing.
The weekend passed slowly. Finally after a sleepless Sunday night, Maher jumped into his Camaro and raced into Manhattan. When he entered 1 Hogan Place, he found a somber-looking Tom Harkins.
“We have a problem,” Harkins said.
“You’re damn right we do,” Maher said. “This Beamen mistrial might be connected to –“
Harkins cut him off. “Kevin! Queens chief of detectives Michael Willis thinks you were involved in the robbery.”
Maher wasn’t shocked. He had a sick feeling all along that this could happen.
But why shouldn’t a chief of detectives question an informant’s veracity? After all, any seasoned cop had dealt with hundreds of informants an, in most cases, the informant would up being a sociopathic liar. Perhaps Willis was weary of the tenuous cop/informant alliance. Besides, Willis had never met Maher and did not know his history and did not know his history with Doherty and then Manhattan district attorney’s office.
As Maher fumed, Harkins added, “The bosses want you to take a polygraph test.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Maher retorted.
“You can have a lawyer present if you like, “ Harkins added.
Maher was stung by the question. “I don’t need no fucking lawyer.”
Harkins escorted Maher to police lab, where a polygraph test was administered. The results were conclusive: Maher was not involved in the robbery.
Following the polygraph, Harkins and Maher discussed the possible relationship between the Beamen trial and the attempted robbery. They both agreed that Blasso, Anderwkavich, Birnholz, and Torre had not made an error in going to Ciasullo’s house in Flushing. Officer Ciasullo was in the jewelry business. However, as they explored the facts, the case seemed to fold back on itself. Ciasullo was set to testify against the Beamen brothers the next day. Several threatening calls had been placed to Ciasullo’s phone warning him not to testify against the Beamen brothers. There certainly seemed to be a connection. Where Maher and Harkins disagreed was whether a tie did or did not exist between the two incidents.
“Beamen told Blasso and Anderwkavich to kill Ciasullo and make it look like a robbery,” Maher speculated.
Harkins, less willing to make leaps of logic without a thorough investigation, disagreed.
“All we know is that Beamen gave one or more of the suspects information about Ciasullo,” Harkins countered. “We do not know that Beamen encouraged the robbery in order to affect his trial. Nor do we know that Beamen asked anyone to kill Ciasullo.”
If the second robbery had been designed to prevent Ciasullo from testifying in court about the first robbery, the plan had not only accomplished the goal of preventing Ciasullo’s testimony, it also resulted in a mistrial. The point could have been argued forever. There was only on way of finding out for sure.
“Kevin,” Harkins said, “we’d kike to wire you up and send you to talk to Birnholz and Torre.”
Maher would be compensated. Harkins had already spoken with the Policeman’s Benevolent Association, which has agreed to $2,500 for the assignment. Two hundred dollars would be advanced in cash as expenses, and the remaining $2,300 would be paid by check on the date of the grand jury hearing pertaining to the case against Blass, Anderwkavich, Birnholz, and Torre.
“We need to know every detail about how they escaped,” Harkins emphasized, “and it is critical we know where they discarded their weapons.”
“without the guns,” Maher noted, “Ciasullo’s in trouble, isn’t he?”
“Not necessarily,” Harkins countered.
“Come on,” Maher protested. “He was getting threats at his house. He was robbed once before. Blasso, Anderwkavich, Birnholz, and Torre could all swear they had no guns. And some lawyer could say that Ciasullo was paranoid and trigger-happy, then put Ciasullo on the stand and hammer him. You say they a gun? Okay where’s the fucking gun, officer?”
Harkins didn’t agree or disagree with Maher’s appraisal. He simply restated the objective. “Ciasullo reported seeing a sawed-off single-barreled shotgun and a nickel-plated .32-caliber snub-nose Smith & Wesson handgun. We would like to recover those weapons.”
Maher nodded and stood to leave.
“One more thing,” Harkins said. “Emphasize in your conversations with Birnholz and Torre that you told them not to do it.”
That evening, Maher, wired up both electronically and emotionally, drove across the George Washington and Bronx-Whitestone bridges and into Queens. He found Birnholz pacing his living room.
“I told you not to do it,” Maher bellowed, “but you fucking idiots did it anyway.”
“They got Blasso in the hospital under arrest,” Birnholz whined. “We’re fucked.”
Maher was unsympathetic. “Didn’t I tell you not to fucking knock off this guy?”
“Yeah,” Binholz said with a sigh. “You told us.”
Although the conversation had lasted only a few seconds, Maher was well on his way to accomplishing one thing: clearing himself.
“All right, you dumb fuck,” Maher said, sighing, “tell me what happened.”
Birnholz rattled off the events of the previous Thursday night, often jumping back and forth in the chronology. But Maher didn’t stop him. It was all being recorded.
“Blasso was bleeding bad,” Birnholz said at one point. “We were running, and the more he ran the more he was bleeding.”
Maher shook his head, Of course he was bleeding worse the more he ran. That’s what happens when you run. Your heart pumps faster.
“I took Blasso to his father’s house,” Birnholz continued. “The father looked at Blasso and said ‘Get the fuck out of here’ and slammed the door. Can you believe that? His son is bleeding to death and he slams the fucking door?”
Birnholz then told Maher that he pounded on the door again. This time he asked Blasso’s father to call an ambulance. According to Birnholz, Blasso’s father responded by saying “I ain’t calling no fucking ambulance.”
“So, I said, look, your fucking son is bleeding to death and I asked him if I could borrow his truck to go to the hospital. See, there was this plumbing truck in the driveway – Blasso Plumbing and Heating. The old man gave me the keys to the truck and I took Blasso to the hospital.”
Maher almost laughed. Birnholz takes Blasso – who is obviously a fugitive – to the hospital in a truck emblazoned with the name Blasso?
“I’m in trouble man,” Birnholz said with a moan. “I took Blasso to the fucking hospital.”
“Don’t worry,” Maher said. “They don’t know it was you. It could’ve been anybody off the street who brought him.”
As Birnholz relaxed a little, Maher came back with a question.
“Why’d you do it Larry?” Maher asked, shaking his head. “First I tell you guys not to do it, then I drive away from the fucking house.”
“You’re right, Kevin. You’re right.”
Maher was going to make absolutely certain that there was no doubt as to his lack of involvement.
“Okay, Larry. So why’d you go back?”
“I didn’t want to, Kevin. But Blasso kept saying, ‘We gotta rob this guy tonight, it’s gotta be tonight.”
“Why that night, Larry? Why not another night?”
“I don’t know,” Birnholz replied, sighing.
But Maher did. In Maher’s mind, it all had to do with the Beamen trial. Indeed, Maher was more convinced than ever that Beamen ordered a hit on Ciasullo.
“Did you ever talk to Beamen yourself?” Maher asked.
“No,” Birnholz replied.
Maher studied Birnholz for a long moment. He was telling the truth. He had never spoken with Beamen.
“So you go back to the house,” Maher prodded. “Then what happened?”
Birnholz explained how he and Torre waited in the front while Blasso and Anderwkavich hid in the backyard.
“The guy comes home carrying a shopping bag and Blasso and Anderwkavich run out of the backyard.”
“Armed?”
“Yeah, Blasso had a shotgun and Anderwkavich had a thirty-two.”
So far, so good. Maher had cleared himself of any ivolvement and had established there were weapons.
Birnholz continued: “Anderwkavich gets him around the neck with his arm and twists his right arm up behind his bck. Blasso says, “Give me the bag or I’m going to fucking kill you.’ Then me and Torre run up.”
Maher envisioned the scene as Birnholz was describing it. Blasso holding Ciasullo at gunpoint. Anderwkavich, his arm around Ciasullo’s neck in what thugs call a “dope fiend yoke.”
“Sounds like you had him,” Maher observed. “What the fuck happened?”
Birnholz shook his head, disbelieving his own recollection.
“The fucking guy reaches in his jacket and comes out with a fucking gun! He shoots over his shoulder and hits Randy. Kills Randy, man. Fucking shoots Randy dead. The he fires at Blasso.”
Maher felt a twinge of awe for Ciasullo. The guy is facing two guns and locked in a dope fiend yoke and he has the balls to go for his gun.
(Actually, there had been more than courage at play, there had been a fatal error by Anderwkavich. Although Anderwkavich had done exactly what he surely had done in previous armed robberies – approached from the back, locked his left arm around the mark’s throat, then twisted the mark’s right hand behind his back – there was a simple reason why this otherwise effective “dope fiend yoke” didn’t hinder Ciasullo. Ciasullo was left-handed, not right-handed, and his left hand was free.)
Birnholz then described how he and Blasso headed off in one direction and Torre went in the other direction. Ciasullo followed Birnholz and Blasso.
“But we managed to lose him,” Birnholz said.
Maher took aim at the burning question. “What happened to the guns, man? Where are the fucking guns?”
“I don’t know, Kevin. I swear.”
“Then who does know?”
Birnholz didn’t respond.
“Look,” Maher said. “You want me to help you or not?”
Birnholz looked away. “Maybe Torre knows.”
It took two days to track down Torre and set up a meeting in the interim, Maher turned over the Birnholz tape to Harkins. Harkins was pleased on two accounts. Maher, as Harkins had always believed, was not involved in the robbery; and the presence of guns had been established.
“Now we need to find the weapons,” Harkins said.
“Don’t worry,” Maher said. “I’ll find them.”
Maher once again wearing a wire, drove to Torre’s apartment in Queens. Torre, as Birnholz had been, was extremely nervous. After all, it had been a week since the robbery, and neither Birnholz or Torre had been arrested.
“I think I better get out of town,” Torre told Maher.
“If they haven’t nailed you yet,” Maher said matter-of-factly, “they probably never will.”
Maher began his conversation in the same manner as he began the conversation with Birnholz.
“I told you fucking guys not to do it,” Maher chastised Torre. “And you fucking jerk-offs did it anyway.”
As Birnholz had done, Torre agreed that Maher had warned them against the robbery.
“So I drop you guys off at the car,” Maher said slowly and with emphasis. “Then what fucking happened?”
Torre’s story essentially was the same as Birnholz’s story, including the fact that Blasso insisted the robbery be done that night. And, like Birnholz, Torre claimed never to have spoken with Beaman. The two were identical up to the point at which the shots were fired.
“The guy chased Blasso and Birnholz,” Torre recounted, “so I circle back to the driveway. Anderwkavich is lying there hurt bad. He says, ‘I’m dying. Help me.’ So I roll him under the car and tell him, I’ll get help.”
“He had a gun right?” Maher asked. “And Blasso had a gun. What happened with the guns?”
“I picked up the shotgun – it was there on the driveway – and I took the pistol from Anderwkavich.”
“And what did you do with them?” Maher wanted to know.
“I hid the shotgun in a driveway,” Torre finally said.
Again Torre hesitated. This time Maher pressed.
“It’s only a matter of time, man. They’re going to find the gun. Tell me where it is so I can take care of it.”
Torre explained exactly which driveway contained the shotgun. “I threw it under some bushes on the right side.”
“What about the other gun? Anderwkavich’s gun?”
Torre laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m running through the neighborhood and this fucking squad car comes out of nowhere and hits me with a light. I hear “Freeze!’ So I dropped the gun between to parked cars and walked out in the street. This fucking woman cop comes up to me and starts looking at the arm of my shirt. It was splattered with red. And for a minute I think oh, fuck! Blood! But the I realized it’s red paint.”
Both Maher and Torre started laughing. The fact was, Torre was a painter by occupation, and most of his clothes were dotted in some kind of paint.
Torre continued, “So this broad sees that it’s paint and I tell her I’m a painter and she says “Sorry but there was a robbery in the area and it looked like blood.’ And then she lets me go.”
After all these years, Maher had become familiar with police procedure. If an officer encounters someone suspicious in the area in which a shooting occurred, procedure dictates a “stop and frisk,” if for no other reason than the officer’s own safety. Additionally, procedure dictates that a person stopped be positively identified.
“Did she ID you?” Maher asked.
“Yeah,” Torre said with a laugh. “Then the broad let’s me go.”
Maher smiled. Torre could now be placed in the neighborhood at the time of the shooting.
“Okay,” Maher said, “she lets you go. Then what?”
“I go back and pick up the gun.”
“Where’s the gun now?”
“I hid it somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I can’t remember.”
Maher leaned close to Torre. “Look, you fuckhead, tell me where you hid the pistol and let me get rid of it.”
“I told you I don’t remember.”
No matter how hard Maher hammered, Torre couldn’t seem to recall where he hid the Smith & Wesson .32. Maher gave up and headed into Manhattan to rendezvous with Harkins.
“Impossible,” Harkins said when he heard Torre’s taped account of where he hid the shotgun. “There were two hundred cops and Emergency Services Unit guys out there searching a ten-block radius.”
“Well, I guess they missed it, then,” Maher said with a shrug.
Maher and two detectives from the 109th Precinct left for Queens immediately. They pulled up to the driveway Torre had specified and walked to the shrubbery under which Torre had said he hid the shotgun. One of the detectives pulled back a branch. A single-barrel sawed-off shotgun was lying on the ground.
Despite repeated phone calls and visits to both Torre and Birnholz, Maher never recovered the .32. But Harkins had three things he didn’t have before Maher called him. The suspects implicating themselves on tape; the shotgun; and the logbook report of the officer who stopped Torre for having red paint on his shirt, this placing Torre in the vicinity at the time of the shooting. Birnholz and Torre were arrested and charged with armed robbery.
On a crisp morning in October 1982, Maher dressed for an appointment at Kew Gardens, where the Queens grand jury was set to convene in the matter of Blasso, BIrnholz, and Torre. The hearing was scheduled for 9:30 A.M.
At 8:00 A.M., Harkins called Maher and announced: “I have a check for you, and I’m on the way to the grand jury. See you at nine-thirty.”
Maher was proud of himself. He had acted as a cop, saved a cop, and felt very much back in the game. Even better, he was on his way to pick up a check for $2,300. But it wasn’t the money, it was the self-esteem the money evoked. I am cop, Maher told himself. I’m being paid as a cop.
Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Harkins.
“Queens chief of detectives Willis still believes you had something to do with the robbery,” Harkins stated flatly. “He refused to sign off on the payment.”
Maher went from shock to anger.
“And he still expects me to testify at the grand jury?”
Without Maher’s testimony, there was no way to tell how the jury would react to the tape of Birnholz and Torre talking about the crime. While reason might dictate that such definitive recorded evidence certainly would ensure an indictment, Harkins had seen how the absence of a flesh-and-blood witness could create doubt in the mind of a jury. Harkins desperately needed Maher to take the witness stand in Kew Gardens. Yet there was only one response from Harkins knew Maher would respect.
“Whatever you decided to do I’ll stand by you,” Harkins said quietly.
“Fuck him! I’m not testifying.”
Harkins understood Maher’s reaction and didn’t blame him. But, as a cop, Harkins had to make every effort to change his mind.
“Look, Kevin, I know how you feel. But we need your testimony.”
“What? This guy wants to make a complete fool of me. Hey, I risked my life several times, took three vicious criminals off the street, recovered a gun, saved a cop.”
Harkins had known Maher long enough to know there was no way he was going to turn him around.
Maher did not testify.
Even without Maher taking the witness stand, Blasso was indicted “by reason of belief,” a legal term that was perhaps one of the more logical statues contained in the code of law. Simply stated, if there was every reason to believe that a suspect was guilty, then the suspect can be indicted based on that “reason of belief.” In Blasso’s case, the bullet in his stomach seemed to indicate someone shot him and didn’t have any other plausible explanation as to why he was carrying around a slug in his body. (Blasso ultimately was convicted of armed robbery in the first degree and sentenced to three to six years in prison.”
However, in the absence of Maher’s testimony, the prosecutor elected not to introduce the tape. The grand jury refused to indict Birnholz and Torre. The case against them was dismissed.
Maher was happy about the grand jury decision. I proved a fucking point to Willis, Maher chuckled when he heard that Birnholz and Torre would walk. And besides, Birnholz is a helluva mechanic. If he’s in jail, who the fuck would I get to fix my car?
