Chapter 14
Maher’s battle with William French ended as swiftly as a sudden knockout in a boxing match. After receiving Spinelli’s report in mid-June, Maher had instructed Spinelli to send copies of the report to both the New Jersey Transit executive offices and the New Jersey Transit Police. New Jersey Transit had ruled that French should be “taken out of service” immediately pending further hearings. IN September, French was terminated.
“That’ll teach the bastard to fuck with me,” Maher told a group of coworkers when news of French’s dismissal spread through the ranks of railroad workers.
What Maher had done to French was the legal equivalent of what he had done to the inmate who had made a suggestive remark to him years ago at Rikers Island. At Rikers, Maher had delivered a vicious uppercut to the inmate’s chin and had administered several bites to the inmate’s face. One by one, the inmates who had witnessed Maher’s attack divereted their eyes and moved off. Now it was Maher’s coworkers who diverted their eyes. Nobody – at New Jersey Transit, at least – was ever going to fuck with Kevin Maher again.
His nemesis at New Jersey Transit disposed of, Maher settled into being a working man, husband, and father. It was such a comfortable feeling that he didn’t miss the action of undercover work and began to wonder if it was worth it to rejoin the DEA.
Another part of Maher’s life that held less appeal these days was drag racing. He sold his Corvette for $15,000 and bought a $48,000 Porsche. This left him without a vehicle capable of the quarter-mile dash at Connecting Highway. Yet the dichotomous nature of the two cars reflected the changing nature of Kevin Maher. The Porsche was engineered for the long run, the Vette for short burst of speed.
In mid-September, Beth’s job at The Economist required her to travel to London on business. Maher took the trip with her, partly because of his desire to rekindle romance in their marriage and partly because he was growing more suspicious. The nagging feeling that his wife was having an affair with coworker Richard O’Rourke would not go away. Maher was going to make sure that at least in London, Beth remained faithful.
The London trip did nothing to bring Maher and Beth closer together as Maher’s underlying suspicion sabotaged any renewed emotion either of them felt. While Maher did not make spoken accusations during their stay in England, his eyes were more accusing than words. And, swirling amid the suspicion was the guilt Maher felt about his escapades with the “dopey bitches.” Suspicion. Guilt. Like weeds on a lawn, they choked the roots of the relationship between Maher and Beth. And so they returned to New Jersey without rejuvenating their marriage.
While in London, Maher bought a pair of European-style halogen headlights for his Porsche. The headlights (illegal in the United States) were eight inches in circumference as opposed to the standard seven-inch U.S. seal beam, had twice the wattage, and illuminated a larger area. And since Maher often cranked the Porsche up to 150 an hour, he needed all the forward vision he could get.
Maher missed the social aspect of the weekends at Connecting Highway. So, one Friday night in late September, he decided to check out the drag races as a spectator, not a participant.
Maher parked his Porsche near a crowd of people who had gathered to watch the race. When he climbed out of the car he found himself face-to-face with John Uribe.
“Look John,” Maher said, “you were my friend. I wouldn’t have locked you up.”
After a tense moment, Uribe smiled. “I miss you, my friend. We had good times.”
Uribe grabbed Maher and hugged him. Then he stepped back and inspected Maher’s Porsche.
“What do you think of the Porsche compared to the Vette?” Uribe asked.
“As far as quality, ride, handling, there’s no comparison,” Maher said. “It may not take off like a Vette, but fuck that. When you pull up with a Vette, you just pulled up. When you pull up with a Porsche, you arrive.”
Uribe took a slow walk around the Porsche.
“Wanna go for a ride?” Maher asked.
Maher and Uribe climbed into the Porsche. It was like old times. No mention was made of Tia. And no word was said about their last meeting at Astoria Park. It was like it never happened.
“I’ve got some problems with my Vette,” Uribe said at one point. “Will you take a look at it?”
“Sure,” Maher said.
Uribe reached into his pocket and withdrew a plastic bag full of coke.
“A present for you,” Uribe said.
The bond between them had been renewed and the tacit agreement once again defined. Maher would barter automotive repair for Uribe’s cocaine.
Cocaine permeated life in the eighties. What had started out as a recreational drug a decade earlier proved to be an addictive and destructive substance. Banks were corrupted by trying to finance it, corporations were brought down by its debilitating effect on employees, even governments weren’t immune to its poisonous reach. And while it was confined to big cities, it seeped into the suburbs. So it wasn’t unusual for Robert Colaneri to be battling the sale and distribution of the stuff even in the quiet little down of Carlstadt, New Jersey.
Colaneri had received his gold shield on January 1, 1985. As a detective, his objectives changed, and he set about cultivating informants. One informant – a two-time loser who was working off a burglary charge – had given Colaneri information about a dealer on Hackensack Street in Carlstadt. So Colaneri decided to set up a “controlled buy,” a transaction in which an informant purchases cocaine from a dealer with cash provided by police. However, a controlled buy using an informant is tricky, especially when the informant is facing jail time. To ensure that the informant didn’t plant drugs in the suspect’s apartment, the informant was stripped-searched and then kept under constant surveillance until the bust went down.
Colaneri stopped off at headquarters and picked up the informant. Then Colaneri, the informant, and several police units made their way to Hackensack Street.
“I saw him wrap coke up in tinfoil and put it in jelly jars in the refrigerator,” the informant reminded Colaneri before he climbed out of the car and entered the apartment.
Ten minutes later, Colaneri and several cops burst into the dealer’s apartment. As was planned, both suspect Charles Storniolo and the informant were arrested and charged with distribution of a CDS, a controlled, dangerous substance. The cops went began digging out tinfoil packets from jelly jars and mayonnaise jars. The bust was a success. But then Colaneri notice that the informant – who was handcuffed and sitting on the couch – was making noises and point toward the hallway. For the next few minutes, Colaneri and the informant played and impromptu game of “hot and cold.” The informant would frown when Colaneri was “cold” and smile when Colaneri was “hot.” Pretty soon, Colaneri was sizing coke from the medicine chest.
In addition to the cocaine, Colaneri stumbled on what he thought was an unexpected bonus: a cache of weapons. However, it turned out that Storniolo was an artisan, refinishing gun stocks. Storniolo produced the requisite paperwork that indicated that he didn’t own the guns. The guns were not confiscated.
(Storniolo later pled out to possession, receiving a fine and two years’ probation.)
And so it was that in 1985, Maher and Colaneri were both chasing after drug dealers, albeit from two different ends of the spectrum.
By March, Maher’s anxiety attacks had resumed with alarming frequency and were increasingly severe. So he again applied for disability. Travelers Insurance, the insurance company representing New Jersey Transit, placed a condition on the disability payments: Maher was to see a psychiatrist twice a week. Dr. Peter Crane.
“These might not be anxiety attacks,” declared Crane, who, as a psychiatrist, was also an M.D. “The chest pains you experience could have something to do with your heart.”
Yet all cardiovascular tests had indicated Maher’s heart was normal.
Crane studied Maher for a long beat. “Are you using cocaine?”
“I’ve stopped,” Maher lied.
“You can die from cocaine, Kevin,” Crane noted.
Maher had never before heard a doctor issue an admonition regarding the use of coke.
He’s probably right, Maher thought. I’m doing a lot of coke. I know it’s terrible. I’ve got to stop.
When Maher left the doctor’s office, he threw a packet of cocaine he was carrying in the trash and vowed to never touch the stuff again. Then he stopped at a pharmacy to fill a prescription to Xanax, which Crane had prescribed in an effort to combat the anxiety attacks. Thus Maher traded an illegal stimulant for a legal tranquilizer.
The Xanex worked its chemical magic almost immediately, and by May 1985 it had been two months since Maher had, had an anxiety attack, the same period of time since he had snorted cocaine. Which meant he saw little of John Uribe, thus avoiding the offer of a “present.”
During the last week of May it occurred to Maher that he had not spoken to Uribe for several days, which was odd. Even though they now saw each other infrequently, Uribe usually phoned at least once a day.
Maher dialed Uribe’s home phone number. After several rings, someone answered. But instead of a greeting, he heard heavy breathing. And then the line went dead. Maher called. The same thing happened. Heavy breathing. And then a click. The third time, Maher interrupted the heavy breathing.
“John? Is that you? John? John?”
Click. And a dead line.
Maher tried calling Uribe several times each day for the next two days. Sometimes there would be no answer. At other times it was the heavy breathing. Maher decided to drive into Manhattan and stop by Uribe’s apartment. Something was definitely wrong.
Maher spoke to the doorman at the high-rise building on 22nd Street and Broadway. The building was more than thirty floors in height, and it’s base spanned the entire block between 22nd and 23rd streets.
“I’m here to see John Uribe,” Maher told the doorman.
The doorman rang Uribe’s apartment. But Uribe didn’t answer the intercom.
“I haven’t seen him for several days,” the doorman said with a shrug.
“I better go upstairs and check on him,” Maher said.
The doorman nodded. Maher took the elevator to the twenty-eighth floor and banged on Uribe’s door.
“John! It’s Kevin! Open the door!”
Nothing. Maher heat harder on the door.
“John! Goddamnit! It’s Kevin! Open the fucking door!”
Maher heard the lock turn from the inside. The door opened slowly. Uribe –bags under his eyes and a week’s worth of a beard – peered out at Maher. Maher pushed into the apartment and shut the door behind him.
“John. I’ve been trying to call you for –“
Maher stopped midsentence and looked at Uribe. He was standing there in his underwear, sweating profusely and trembling. Maher looked around the apartment. The floor, the coffee table, the couch, every piece of furniture was covered with a thin dusting of white cocaine residue. Then the stench hit Maher’s nostrils. It smells like the inside of a cocaine bag. Maher looked at the windows. No wonder it smells. The windows are all shut. And it’s hot in here.
Uribe walked to the center of the living room and say cross-legged next to a bucket of sudsy water. Maher watched in astonishment as Uribe took a photograph, dipped it in the bucket of water, removed it, then rubbed it against his bare chest to remove the soap. Having done that, he placed the photograph on a stack of other photographs.
“John,” Maher said softly, “what the fuck are you doing?”
“Washing pictures,” Uribe said, as if it were normal.
Maher saw that Uribe had a stack of “dirty” photographs on one side of the bucket and a large stack of “clean” photographs on the bottom of the stack had dried and curled, indicating that Uribe had been “washing pictures” for quite awhile.
Maher walked over and crouched next to Uribe.
“How long have you been doing this, John?”
Uribe didn’t respond. He dipped another picture into the bucket of sudsy water and ground his teeth, moving his jaws from right to left. Then he began mumbling incoherently.
All Maher could do was stare. What the fuck is happening to John? And then Maher realized. It’s the cocaine. It’s gotta be.
Indeed, had a doctor examined Uribe he would have concluded that Uribe was in the midst of a cocaine-induced psychosis.
Suddenly Uribe’s eyes flashed and his head snapped toward Maher.
“You’re a fucking cop!” Uribe screamed. “Why did you come here? To arrest me?”
“John, I’m no fucking cop.”
But Uribe seemed transported back in time to his confrontation with Maher in Astoria Park.
“Then why do you have these fucking people watching me?”
“What people, John?”
Uribe jumped up and ran to the window.
“You know I told my aunt about you!” Uribe shouted. “Did you tell them about me?”
Uribe pointed to the building across the street.
“Who, John? Tell me who?”
“The people in that building!” Uribe shouted. “They’re looking in here with telescopes!”
Maher sighed.
“Come on, John. You’re losing it, man. I’m getting you out of here.”
Maher walked toward the bedroom to find something fro Uribe to wear. As he passed the bathroom, he noticed a vinyl gym bag on the floor and opened it to see if there was something for Uribe to wear. In the gym bag he discovered an Ohoas triple beam scale, a sixty-four-ounce jar of baby laxative used to cut cocaine, one sealed kilo of cocaine, and one open kilo package, which was half empty.
When Maher returned to the living room, Uribe was holding the receiver to his ear and dialing a number.
“John!” Maher shouted, “Who the fuck are you calling?”
“My mother,” Uribe said.
“In Comlombia?”
Uribe’s mother came on the line, and Uribe started chattering in Spanish. The mother began screaming so loudly Maher could hear her voice leaking out of the receiver. Although Maher didn’t know the words, whatever it was, she repeated the same phrase over and over. Uribe hung up the receiver and ran into the bathroom. Maher chased after him.
“John! Will you fucking calm down?” Maher pleaded.
Uribe dove onto the floor and, kneeled in front of the toilet, began pouring the half kilo into the bowl.
“John!” Maher howled.
Next came the flush, a $15,000 flush. The Uribe pulled a knife out of the gym bag, picked up the full kilo of coke, and started to rip it open.
Maher grabbed Uribe by the shoulders and pulled him away from the toilet.
“John! For God’s sake, stop it!”
Uribe struggled towards the toilet with the kilo. Maher ripped it out of his hands and dropped it back into the gym bag. They scuffled. Uribe, sweaty and slippery, not to mention big and strong, was difficult to hold on to. Managing to get between Uribe and the toilet, Maher tore out the float mechanism so Uribe couldn’t follow up with an up to $22,000 flush. Then Maher grappled with Uribe, both falling on the floor. For the first time, Maher was face-to-face with a cocaine casualty. He held Uribe like a fallen comrade on a bloody battlefield.
Uribe was heaving, gasping for air.
“Calm down, John,” Maher said again. “Everything’s going to be all right. Everything is going to be fine.”
Uribe’s breathing became more even, and Maher released hid hold on him. Maher stood up, then reached down and pulled Uribe to his feet. They walked into the kitchen, where Maher turned on a tap and filled a water glass.
“Drink this,” Maher said as he handed the glass to Uribe.
Uribe, clearly dehydrated, gulped down the water. His eyes were dazed, focused on some faraway image.
Maher filled the glass second time, and a third.
“Okay,” Maher said. “Let’s go find you some clothes.”
Maher turned toward the bedroom. Uribe took off like a shot and ran into the bathroom.
Before Maher could react, Uribe emerged with the gym bag and ran to a window.
“John!” Maher yelled. “No!”
Uribe pushed open the window, and leaning his upper body all the way outside, heaved the gym bag into the air. Maher watched the gym bag disappear above the window and then dirft past again on its way down.
Maher grabbed Uribe by the hair and pulled him inside the apartment. Then Maher returned to the window and peeked over the sill. The gym bag was at the end of its twenty-eight-story free fall. An instant later, it landed with a thud –right on top of a westbound city bus, stopped at a traffic light. As Maher stared down at the $22,000 gym bag, the light changed. And the bus rumbled down 23rd Street.
Maher stepped away from the window and started for the front door. Now I’ve got to chase down the fucking bus, Maher thought. But then Maher remembered something Slavanki had said: Don’t get caught with any coke by yourself. If you do, you’re on your own.
Maher looked at Uribe, who had crawled back to the window and was hanging halfway out again. The fuckhead is going to jump. I can’t leave him here.
Maher ran to Uribe and jerked him back into the apartment. Uribe began crawling around on his hands and knees, using his fingertips to scrape cocaine residue off the floor. Scrape. Sniff. Scrape. Sniff. It was pathetic.
Maher managed to steer Uribe into the shower. The hot water seemed to revive him. Uribe got dressed and then left the apartment with Maher. They retrieved their cars from the garage: Maher’s Porsche and Uribe’s new BMW 318.
“Follow me to New Jersey, John,” Maher said, adding: “We’re going to take it real slow, all right?”
Uribe nodded.
The Porsche pulled out onto Broadway and the BMW fell in behind it. Maher glanced in the rearview mirror often, making sure the BMW was still there. All was well for a few minutes. But then Maher raised his eyes to check the rearview mirror. The BMW was not behind him. Suddenly the BMW exploded past the Porsche. And the chase was on.
Down Broadway. Across 14th Street. Up Third Avenue. Finally, in the East Sixties, Uribe’s BMW became mired in traffic. Mahe stopped his Porsche behind the BMW and leaned out the car window.
“John!” Maher shouted. “Pull the fuck over!”
Uribe turned the wheel of the BMW sharply and headed for the curb. But instead of pulling over, he gunned the engine and sent the BMW catapulting onto the sidewalk. The BMW traveled a few feet, then smashed into a canopy pole and stopped. Maher pulled to the curb and jumped out of the Porsche. The pole was bent around the front of the BMW, and the canvas was flapping in the wind. It might have been funny had it not been for a squad car that was inching along in traffic just opposite the destroyed canopy. Maher held his breath. The traffic light changed, and the squad car drove away.
Maher pulled Uribe out of the BMW and threw him into the Porsche.
“My car,” Uribe whined. “What about my car?”
“Leave it,” Maher said. “When we get to my house we’ll report it stolen.”
Maher locked the Porsche’s doors. The search and rescue mission had been a success. Maher had his man. And he was bringing him in.
Uribe slept for hours on Maher’s couch, waking late in the evening. Maher was sitting across from him.
“You crazy fuck,” Maher said. “How much fucking blow were you doing?”
Uribe stared off for a long moment.
“She’s a fucking whore,” Uribe said quietly.
“Who’s a fucking whore?” Maher asked.
“Laura.”
Maher frowned. “Who is Laura?”
“Tall. Long blond hair. Beautiful.”
Uribe’s mood darkened. “Then I found out she’s a whore.”
Uribe explained how, on one of his runs to Miami to pick up cocaine, he met Laura at a party.
“You know how many dopey bitches I fuck,” Uribe said. “But she was different.
Uribe went on with the story, insisting that Laura was not like the rest of the women he knew. According to Uribe, she had class, sophistication, poise, humor.
“One night,” Uribe said, “I see her in a bar with some rich guy. And she tells me he’s a client.”
Maher grimaced. Uribe continued.
“Then she tells me she’s a ‘call girl.’ A fucking whore. And when I get pissed off, she tells me she gets five thousand a night. Like that makes it right.”
For the next five days, Maher and Beth nurse Uribe back to health. Each day, Maher would search Uribe for coke.
“I’m clean man,” Uribe would protest.
For the first time in years, Uribe stayed straight for five full days. Perhaps as compensation for the lost cocaine rush, he ate. And ate. His favorite food was Rocky Road ice cream, which he consumed by the gallon.
Finally Maher drove Uribe back into the city and dropped him at his apartment. Maher was drained from the experience. So was Beth.
“I’ve never seen anybody eat like that,” Beth said with a sigh.
“That’s the way John is,” Maher observed.
Uribe did not practice anything in moderation. Sex. Drugs. Or Food.
At 7:30 A.M. on December 2, Robert Colaneri had left Carlstadt police headquarters in an unmarked car and had gone to go pick up Deputy Chief John Occhiuzzo . A call came over the radio that a vault alarm had gone off at United Jersey Bank on Gotham Parkway and Route 120. Two units- Sergeant Herb Scheidewig and Patrolman Pat Cunningham – had been dispatched. When Scheidewig and Cunningham arrived, they started into the bank but stopped when they saw a man holding a gun to the head of the assistant bank manager, Dolores Nielsen. Nielsen had two sons – Tom and Chris – on the Carlstadt police force. Seeing the cops, the suspect released Nielsen, and she ran out of the bank. She told the cops that there were two suspects, both black males, and that there were several other employees still inside.
Before additional units could get to the bank, the suspects broke a window near the drive-in booth and fled. Just as Colaneri and Occhiuzzo arrived, one of the suspects was caught. The whereabouts of the second suspect was unknown. Colaneri assumed he was still in the bank, so the building was secured and snipers were placed on rooftops. A command post was set up and telephone contact was attempted, but no one inside the bank answered the phone.
A short time later, a State Police helicopter arrived at the helipad in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Colaneri was assigned the aerial surveillance.
Colaneri and a State Police pilot circled the marshes that make up much of the Meadowlands area of New Jersey. Then a call came over the helicopter radio that there was a report of a stolen car on Route 17 heading in the direction of Route 80. Colaneri and the pilot flew toward the reported stolen car. But they were unable to lacte the vehicle and returned to the bank.
When Colaneri got back to the bank, cops stormed into the building. They found frightened hostages – including a woman who had been hiding in the toilet stall for the past two hours – but no suspects.
Later that afternoon, Colaneri dispatched Chris Nielsen to search the area to see if he could find potential evidence. As Nielsen trudged through the weeds and mud of the Meadowlands marsh, he almost stepped on someone. It turned out to be the suspect who held a gun to his mother, Dolores. The suspect had been lying in the weeds for ten hours, apparently waiting for nightfall.
Both suspects –two-time losers Milton Rider and James Williams – were convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life.
While Colaneri had taken notice of Maher and his Corvette over the previous months, Maher had registered Colaneri’s face without realizing it. Maher walked into his house on the evening of December 3, 1985, plinked down beside Beth on the couch, and picked up the New York Daily News, which was lying on the coffee table.
“Wait a minute,” Maher exclaimed when he saw the front page. “I’ve seen that guy somewhere.”
The entire front page was a photograph of Colaneri and other officers at the scene of the bank robbery.
“Is that one of the cops you work with?” Beth asked.
“No,” Maher answered, “but I’ve seen him riding around town in a Vette.”
Maher studied Colaneri’s picture.
“I know I’ve seen that guy somewhere,” Maher said. “Absolutely. I have definitely seen him somewhere.”
And so, on December 3, 1985, the convergent courses of CI Kevin Maher and Dectective Bobby Colaneri edged a little closer.
Maher spent the moth of December doing little more than getting ready for Christmas. Buying a tree. Shopping for presents. All the normal things a husband and father does as Santa Claus approaches.
Right after the first of the year, Maher sat down to watch television and happened upon a new show called Miami Vice. Maher was mesmerized. When he first saw the fast cars, he exclaimed: I drive fast cars! When he saw the leggy bimbos banging everyone in sight, he chuckled: I bang dopey bitches! When he saw the cocaine, he shook his head: I do coke! And finally, when he saw an informant character, he was hit with a sudden realization: I do that. Indeed to Maher, Miami Vice was not just a television show, it was his life. Or at least it used to be. Charged up by the action he saw on Miami Vice, Maher called Slavanki.
“Want to bang a dealer?” Maher asked.
In his travels, Maher had encountered a low-level dealer who lived on Parsons Boulevard in Queens. The dealer seemed wary of Maher, so Slavanki suggested that Maher take his time and “buy up.” Buying up involved starting with small amounts – a gram, perhaps, or an ounce – then making a series of incrementally larger purchases. But after a few weeks, Slavanki felt it was costing too much to “buy up” such an insignificant player. So they decided to take him off with half a kilo, which was where Maher was on the incremental ladder of volume.
Since the dealer didn’t entirely trust Maher, he never allowed Maher in his apartment, and the transactions always took place in Maher’s car. (By looking out the window, of course, the dealer was showing Maher and the DEA exactly which apartment was his.)
On that particular night, the dealer slipped into the passenger seat of Maher’s Mercedes with half a kilo of coke. The price had been set at $15,000. (Since a whole kilo cost $22,000, the disproportionate price of a half a kilo meant that even in the world of drug dealing, volume buying had it’s benefits.) The dealer handed Maher the half kilo, and – after administering the thumb-and-forefinger test to a sample – Maher handed the dealer $15,000 in cash. As was the routine, Maher would drive around the block while the dealer counted the money. (For some reason, the dealer felt more secure if the car was in motion.) While Maher drove the car, the dealer counted the money. Normally, he was amazingly fast.
“Two thousand, two thousand, two thousand – oh, fuck!”
Maher glanced at the dealer : “What’s wrong?”
“A fucking fifty!” the dealer squeled.
In fact, there was a fifty dollar bill mixed into the twenties.
“What do you want from me?” Maher countered. “It’s money, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” the dealer said with a sigh. “But it fucks up my math.”
The dealer jammed the fifty on the seat under his leg and resumed counting twenty-dollar bills. Off they went again around the block. A moment later…
“Another fucking fifty!”
The dealer placed that fifty-dollar bill under his leg as well and struggled to figure out where he left off in his counting. Each fifty threw the dealer into such a confused state that it required a recount and another circle around the block. And each time, Maher would pass the DEA agents who were staked out at various locations. The agents frowned and shrugged as if to say: What is going on?
Finally the dealer placed a stack of twenties on the dashboard and picked up the pile of fifties on the seat. The counting was done, and Maher stopped in front of the apartment building on Parsons Boulevard. The dealer climbed out of the car. But instead of heading into his building the dealer crossed the street and walked up to another man, who appeared to be a neighbor. After a brief, friendly exchange, the dealer walked away from the building, and the neighbor walked toward the building. DEA agents nabbed the dealer and also grabbed the neighbor. They found nothing on the neighbor except a key, which just happened to fit in the dealer’s apartment. In addition to the dealer and the neighbor, two women inside the apartment were arrested.
The case against the neighbor almost evaporated. When the neighbor’s lawyer showed up at the DEA lockup, he asked what evidence existed to prove his client had anything to do with the dealer. The answer was: a key.
“Then there must be a lock on the dealer’s door that the key will open,” the lawyer noted smugly.
DEA agents rushed back to the apartment on Parsons Boulevard and found a hole where the lock used to be. Although the lawyer entered a motion that the charges be dismissed, the testimony of the DEA agents prevailed. The neighbor was convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
Maher was paid $12,000 for the four arrests, even though the two women were not charged. (They were, however, illegal aliens and they were turned over to Immigration.)
A week later, someone told Maher about a dealer in Jackson Heights who had “some good shit.” After telephone instruction, Maher went to meet him. The dealer’s apartment was dark, illuminated only by candles that were lined up on a bookshelf. Who is this guy, Maher wonder as he squinted towards the candles, Dracula? But on closure inspection Maher realized that each candle also had a picture of a child behind it.
“I have adopted these children,” the dealer, who was Colombian, said as he rubbed the crucifix that hung from his neck on a gold chain. “I send in nine dollars a month for each of them.”
The dealer waved his hand toward the candles.
“My sixty-two children,” the dealer said softly. “They will not go to bed hungry tonight.”
The dealer explained that he watched “a thing on television” about starving children. Maher had seen the television appeals.
“I know about starving children,” the dealer remarked. “In Colombia I have seen them for myself.”
Maher became overwhelmed with emotion. He owned a Porsche and a Mercedes and a Camaro, he did thousands of dollars in cocaine in a month, and he had yet to send his first nine dollars. After making a small buy, Maher fled the apartment.
Maybe it was the flickering candlelight or the sad little eyes of the children in the pictures or the crucifix around the dealer’s neck. Whatever it was, Maher decided not to bang this dealer. He realized that action and consequences did not always fall neatly to one side or another of the moral line.
For the next month, Maher had little success finding dealers worthy of DEA attention. As much as he hated to admit, he needed Uribe. Uribe was the pipeline to major drug dealers. But right after he had sobered up at Maher’s house, Uribe had gone to Miami. And as far as Maher knew, Uribe had not returned to New York.
It was as if thinking about Uribe conjured him up. Just as Maher had begun to wonder about him, Uribe reappeared at Connecting Highway on spring night.
“Hey, John,” Maher said, “where the hell you been all this time?”
“Cooling out,” Uribe answered.
Uribe told Maher he had made up with Laura, the $5,000-a-night call girl.
“I rented a big house in Miami with a pool and everything,” Uribe said.
Uribe dug into his pocket and produced a bag of cocaine. He offered it to Maher.
“A present for you my friend,” Uribe said.
Maher hesitated. It had been months since he had done any coke.
“John,” Maher said, “I stopped.”
“A present for you,” Uribe insisted.
Maher stared at the bag of cocaine. The white crystals glinted in the beam of the car’s headlights, and the visual stimulus triggered a powerful craving in Maher’s brain. Slowly, almost involuntarily, he reached out and took Uribe’s present.
