Cop Without A Badge (Chapter 9)

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 151^st 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?

Cop Without A Badge (Chapter 8)

Chapter 8

Alice Molese had not merely been murdered, she had also been sexually mutilated. In addition to a slashed throat, both her breasts had been cut off. And in a particularly grisly display of misogyny, a knife had been inserted deep into her vagina and pulled upward all the way to her neck.

Maher tossed the police report on the desk of Fair Lawn lieutenant, Joseph Messere. Also in the room were Bergen County investigators Francis P. DelPrete and Robert Rohberg, tow of the forty-eight cops who had been assigned to the case, described by the media as the most heinous homicide in Bergen County history.

Reports of the bloodbath – which had led the newscasts on all the local stations in the area and was on the front page of newspapers across three states – included the gory details of how Alice was killed as well as the particulars of how Marcia Ferrell and her son, Harold, were put to death. Harold’s head had been almost completely severed from his five-year-old body, with only a piece of skin connecting it to the torso. Marcia Ferrell – who apparently put up quite a struggle – had suffered multiple stab wounds.

The eyes of millions of people were looking apprehensively toward Fair Lawn, New Jersey. What if some homicidal maniac was on the loose? After all, who else would have been so cruel and sadistic?

“Brian Molese,” Maher said, then added: “Brian butchered her because he hated her so much.”

Maher glanced at the crime scene photos for an instant, which was as long as he could bear to look. Poor fat Alice sat slumped in a corner of the dining room, a look of dull surprise on her frozen features. Maher swallowed hard to keep from throwing up.

“Molese asked me to kill Alice twice,” Maher told the three cops.

“Why didn’t you report it to the police?” DelPrete asked.

“Why did it take you three years to come forward?”Rehberg followed up before Maher could answer.

“I did go to the cops,” Maher fired back. “Sergeant Jim Doherty in the Manhattan DA’s office.”

Messere called Doherty, and Doherty confirmed Maher’s statement about reporting Molese’s solicitations. Satisfied, Messere hung up the receiver and looked at Maher.

“Molese discovered his wife’s body,” Messere said.

Molese has been particularly upset about the loss of a large ring that he claimed once belonged to Kink Farouk. According to Molese, he bought the ring from Frank Sinatra.

Maher laughed derisively. “King Farouk! He’s been telling that bullshit story for years.”

“You’ve seen the ring?” Messere asked.

“I sold the ring,” Maher answered.

Maher related how, in an effort to save the house from being seized for back taxes, he took all of Alice’s jewelry into Manhattan and cashed it in at the 47^th Street Jewelry Exchange.

“I sold everything except an antique necklace,” Maher recalled. “Alice really loved that necklace – so I didn’t sell it, I pawned it. At a place called Providence Loan Association in the Bronx. I got thirteen hundred for it.”

“You still have the pawn ticket?” DePrete wanted to know.

“Yeah,” Maher replied. “I still have it.”

“You have receipts?” DelPrete pressed. “For the items in Manhattan?”

“Yes,” Maher answered. “I saved the receipts.”

DelPrete and Rehberg took Maher to his apartment to pick up the pawn ticket and the sales receipts, then headed to Fordham Road in the Bronx, where they stopped into Providence Loan Association. The necklace – which had been collecting dust for three years – had been sold less than a week before. Nonetheless, DelPrete and Rehberg were able to confirm that the necklace – listed among the items Molese claimed were taken in the “burglary” – had indeed not been sold.

Next stop for the investigative trio was the 47^th Street Jewelry Exchange. The man who purchased Alice’s jewelry was still right where he was three years ago. Since the jeweler had been suspicious of Maher at the time, he had photocopied Maher’s driver’s license and saved all the paperwork pertaining to his transaction.

“What’s the problem?” the jeweler asked, now even more suspicious.

“The woman who owned the jewelry is dead,” Maher said.

The jeweler gave Maher a look of understanding sweetened with sympathy. “So you need this information for the settlement of her estate?”

“No,” Maher shot back. “I need the information for the police. She was murdered.”

Maher nodded over his shoulder. “These two gentlemen are detectives from Bergen County.”

The stunned jeweler quickly rifled through his files and made photocopies of the transactions involving Alice’s jewelry.

Mission accomplished, Maher, DelPrete, and Rehberg returned to Fair Lawn police headquarters.

“These may be quite helpful,” Rehberg said, referring to the receipts. “It raises the possibility that Molese lied about the jewelry.”

Maher was indignant. “Possibility?!”

Rehberg noted that there could be other explanations for why Molese reported the jewelry stolen. For example, what if Molese knew about his wife’s jewelry collection but didn’t know if she still owned any of it? Discovering that the jewelry was missing after Alice Molese’s murder, Brian Molese may have assumed it was stolen.

Maher was only half listening. “He did it. He killed Alice. Why don’t you just go and arrest him?”

“We don’t have enough to charge him,” Rehberg countered.

Maher grew agitated. “Don’t you understand? The faggot son of bitch killed Alice. Lock the bastard up!”

“He is the prime suspect,” DePrete acknowledged, “but we have no physical evidence to link him to the crime.”

DelPrete asked Maher if he would be willing to work undercover to help nail Molese.

“You could wear a wire,” DePrete suggested, “and you could arrange a meeting with –“

“No,” Maher broke in, “I can’t.”

“Why not?” both DelPrete and Rehberg asked in unison.

“I locked up Scofield,” Maher answered.

DelPrete and Rehberg sat in astonishment as Maher launched into the story of how Ronald Scofield, Molese’s homosexual lover, had murdered a prostitute.

Before he left police headquarters, Maher have a sworn statement detailing everything he could recall about his association with Molese, from the days at Green Haven to the night Molese battered Alice as Scofield looked on. The following day, Beth also gave a sworn statement.

A week passed. Then a month. Brian Molese still had not been charged with the murder of Alice Molese. Indeed, the case was growing cold, which is why Maher was engulfed in a cloud of frustration when he entered 1 Hogan Place and stormed up to Doherty’s desk.

“You have to do something, Sergeant Doherty,” Maher exclaimed.

Doherty sighed, “What can I do, Kevin? It’s not my case. It’s my jurisdiction. Hell, it’s not even my state.”

Maher paced for a moment, then stopped and faced Doherty.

“If I hadn’t moved Beth and Bobby out of the house that would have been them being carried out in body bags instead of Marcia and Harold. Beth would be in Marcia’s grave and Bobby would be in Harold’s grave.”

That thought had to Doherty. He placed his hand on Maher’s shoulder.

“There’s nothing we can do right now, Kevin”

Maher knew Doherty was right. And so, at lest for the moment, it looked as if Brian Molese had gotten away with murder.

As the shock of hearing about Alice abated, Maher and Beth again withdrew into their private world, doing what any other suburban couple might do. They were parents to Bobby, who was now eight years old, bought a German Shepherd named Samantha, took a vacation to Disney World in Florida, and socialized with a circle of friends who included their coworkers and neighbors. By fall of 1979, they were no longer struggling with life, they were embracing it. And due to Beth’s promotion to circulation manager at New York magazine and Maher’s frequent overtime stints at ConRail, they were earning a combined income of $60,000. They could afford more than the necessities now, they could afford dreams. And Maher had one overriding dream: a fast car.

Of course, it was a fast car that got Maher into trouble in the first place.

“I’d like to buy a Corvette,” Maher had said to Beth in early September.

“If it will make you happy,” Beth answered, “do it.”

Thus Maher’s love affair with speed was renewed when he purchased a 1979 blue Chevrolet Corvette, model L82. The price was $12,500, half of which Maher had to fork over as a down payment because of his credit history.

As fast as the car was right out of the showroom, Maher wasn’t satisfied. So he went to Larry Birnholz, a mechanic who was familiar with making high-performance modifications on Corvettes.

“I want to make a few changes on my car,” Maher told Birnholz.

At Maher’s request, Birnholz installed a high-performance intake manifold and Holley carburetor, which were designed to increase the speed of the Corvette. When Birnholz was done, Maher had a vehicle that would do a quarter mile in fourteen seconds. And a quarter mile just happened to be the distance of a drag race.

There was a place in Queens where an intersection of parallel roads and bridges crisscrosses in such a way that a perfect quarter-mile course lay between the bridges. The stretch of asphalt – an ideal layout for drag racing – was called Connecting Highway, and every Friday and Saturday night a collection of souped-up cars would roar to the starting line at one bridge and zoom to the finish lone at the other bridge. The spectacle would attract thousands of onlookers who gathered on the overpass and looked down on the urban raceway. Wagers as high as $4,000 or $5,000 were made by the drivers.

The weekly racing event had its origins in the 1950s and had become a long-standing tradition. The police did their best to prevent them by asking the fire department to hose down the highway, the wet pavement making it difficult for tires to establish traction. But on summer nights, the water would quickly evaporate, and the show would go on.

When Maher arrived on the scene, a star was born. Weekend after weekend, Maher’s Corvette crossed under the bridge in first place, earning the title “Fastest Street Car in Brooklyn and Queens.” But just as the fastest gun in the West had to keep looking over his shoulder, so did Maher. Each week, someone showed up at Connecting Highway with a newly modified machine and took aim at Maher’s title. Although Maher kept winning his margin of victory was getting smaller. So he dispensed with the ’79 Vette and stopped in at Malcom Conners Chevrolet in Paramus, New Jersey, where he ordered a 1980 Corvette.

When the new bright red Corvette – a car for which Maher had paid $14,000 – arrived, the first thing Maher did was call Chevrolet and order a 1970 LT1 short block engine (1970 was the last year that Chevrolet made a high-compression ratio). Then Maher had a series of special high-performance modifications made, not only to the short block but also to the heads. Triple-angled valve job. Ported and polished angle plug cylinder heads. Doug Nash five-speed transmission. LT1 intake manifold. The cost of the modifications was $5,000. Next, Maher contacted Henry’s Axles in Anaheim, California, and phoned in specifications for a custom-designed rear end. To manufacture the design Maher described, Henry’s Axles would have to take the drive shaft from a Diamond dump truck and mold two half shafts for the Vette, the modify the ten-bolt Corvette rear end housing to fit a large twelve-bolt, heavy duty ring and pinion post unit, and then grind the housing so it would accept a 2.73 rear-end ratio.

“Sure,” the man from Henry’s Axles said. “We can do that.”

A few weeks later a tractor-trailer truck pulled in front of Maher’s house. Inside the trailer was the Frankenstein rear end along with a bill from Henry’s Axles for $3,700.

Maher took the Vette to Frank’s Sunoco in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, where he fitted the car with the Henry’s Axles hybrid.

By the time Maher was finished, he had $30,000 invested in a one-of-a-kind vehicle. It was such an extraordinary specimen that word quickly spread about the car. And the legend of Maher’s Vette grew as he blasted the beast through a quarter mile at Connecting Highway in an amazing eleven seconds. In short order the car came to the attention of Vette magazine and was featured in the December 1980 Issue. The nature of the conversion, the legend of its performance at Connecting Highway, the magazine article, all of these things added to its value and mystique.

In 1980 Maher had seemingly escaped his past and had come up a winner, at lest the way such things are measured in the blue-collar corners of New York and New Jersey. And, except for the occasional calls from Doherty, there were a few reminders of the days before Beth and Bobby.

Doherty had phoned once to tell Maher that Detective Greg Demtriou – whom Maher had met at the Manhattan DA’s office – had been shot chasing a bank robber on 42^nd Street.

“Greg is so fast,” Doherty related, “that he outran the uniformed cops. That’s how he got shot.”

Doherty went on to say that Demetriou would recover and that he would awarded the NYPD Medal of Honor.

The second call from Doherty included humorous bits of news from one of Maher’s first cases.

“Remember Henry Bohle?” Doherty asked. “He hired you as a hit man to kill his partner Louis Izzo.”

“Yeah,” Maher said. “ What about him?’

“Well,” Doherty began, “I get a call the other day from Izzo. He’s panicked. Whispering into the phone. Izzo says ‘Sergeant. Guess who just showed up for work?’ And I say: ‘Who?’ And Izzo says: ‘Henry. He’s back sitting at his desk like he just got back from a long weekend.’”

Maher and Doherty started laughing.

“What?” Maher said between chuckles. “Bohle gets out of prison and five years later goes right back to work?”

“That’s right,” Doherty continued.

“So Izzo asks me: ‘Sergeant, what am I supposed to do?’ I tell him: ‘The guy served his time, paid his debt to society, there’s nothing you can do about it. Maybe you should sell your share of the business or buy him out.’”

“That’s really funny,” Maher observed.

“Not so funny for Izzo,” Doherty countered.

And then they both broke out into hysterics. Which is exactly how Maher wanted to remember the past, if at all. With a laugh.

“I’m retiring, Kevin,” Doherty said suddenly. “I’ve had enough.”

“You can’t do that!” Maher exclaimed. “Who will I call when I need to talk to somebody?”

“You can still call me,” Doherty said with a laugh.

But that’s not what Maher meant, and Doherty sensed it. Maher was hooked on the undercover action.

“Hey, Kevin,” Doherty assured him, “I still know a lot of people on the job.”

During the first six months of 1981, Maher carried on with his relatively sedative life. But then on the morning of June 9, Maher was shaken by a news report on WINS radio that Brain Molese had been shot. Details of the shooting were sketchy for a couple days, but on June 12 a newspaper article appeared under the headline SURRENDER OF SUSPECT SOUGHT.

Detectives at the Sixth Precinct are trying to negotiate the surrender of Brian Molese, the former husband of a Fair Lawn woman murdered in her home.

Molese, 39, and his roommate, Christopher Crosthwaite, 20, were both shot Monday night with a .22 caliber handgun, allegedly by a couple they invited for a drink at their East 10^th Street apartment.

Molese and Crosthwaite, who had both been shot in the mouth, had been treated and released from St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. The article stated that police knew the identity of the suspect – which was being withheld pending further investigation – and that the suspect’s lawyer was former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark.

Maher put the paper down. Ramsey Clark? Who the hell could have shot Molese? And then it occurred to Maher exactly who must have done it. Molese had mentioned meeting him at Manhattan House of Detention, a place known by inmates as “The Tombs.” And then man Maher had in mind, a notorious contract killer, always used a .22.

Maher checked in with his police sources, and although he was not given the suspect’s name, he was told that the suspect’s initials were J.S., which confirmed what Maher knew already. A few days later, the suspect was identified: Joseph “Mad Dog” Sullivan, perhaps the most feared hit man working the murder-for-hire territory.

The legend of Joseph “Mad Dog” Sullivan began in 1971 when, on Good Friday, he became the only man ever to escape from the maximum-security confines of Attica Prison. He was captured six weeks later and, after completing nineteen years of the original twenty – to thirty-year sentence for manslaughter, was paroled in 1975 at the age of thirty-six.

By summer 1981, Mad Dog had become the suspect of several homicides. And now he was being sought in connection with the shooting of Brian Molese. (Molese and his roommate, Crosthwaite, were extremely lucky, having survived only because of a faulty silencer, which fragmented the small-caliber .22 slugs and slowed their velocity as the exited.)

But why did Mad Dog shoot Molese? Did it have anything to do with Alice’s murder? More to the point, did Molese hire Mad Dog to kill Alice?

Police were speculating that the shooting occurred because of a narcotics deal gone bad. But Maher thought otherwise. Whatever it was that caused Sullivan to shoot Molese, Maher was certain it had something to do with the grisly murders at 24 Sanford Road.

When Sullivan was apprehended in early 1982, he remained silent about his role in any of the homicides with which police had charged him. (His wife, Gale, who had been in Molese’s apartment when the shooting occurred, was also arrested.) If fact, the only statement Mad Dog gave to anyone about anything was to Bergen County detective Frank DelPrete when DelPrete visited him in an upstate prison.

“I’ll tell you two things,” Mad Dog said. “I’m no snitch. And I don’t kill kids.”

Since Maher knew people on both sides of the fence, he went fishing for a clarification of Mad Dog’s statement. An explanation filtered back from the street, and it was corroborated by two police sources.

According to those sources, in autumn 1978 Mad Dog had indeed been hired by Molese to “kill everyone in the house.” But when he cased 24 Sanford Road, he found out that one of the occupants was a five-year-old boy. This infuriated Mad Dog, who had a son the same age.

“I don’t kill kids,” Mad Dog said with a snarl at Molese.

He offered to “whack the two women but let the kid live.” Molese countered that “the kid has to die, too.” Even Mad Dog was shocked at Molese’s heartlessness.

Although Mad Dog was not going to carry out the contract, he demanded that he be paid for “the time I put in so far.” Molese told him that he didn’t have any money right then but promised to pay immediately after Alice, Marcia and Harold were dispensed with.

A week after this conversation about killing Alice, Fair Lawn Police received an anonymous phone call.

“There’s going to be a murder this Thanksgiving,” the voice said. “At twenty-four Sanford Road. Everyone in the house is going to be killed. And it will be made to look like a robbery. The killer will be Brian Molese.”

Maher’s street source insisted Made Dog made the call, which would explain one element of his statement to DelPrete: “I’m no snitch.” Mad Dog was saying to DelPrete: I called you guys and told you about the murders, but I’m no snitch. I did it because of the kid. Now the statement, each half taken in context, made perfect sense. “I’m no snitch. And I don’t kill kids.”

Fair Lawn Police treated the anonymous call seriously. They went to 24 Sanford Road and spoke with Alice. But Alice assured the cops that it had to be some kind of mistake.

“Brian would never harm me,” Alice said, “he loves me.”

Maher found this part of the account comforting. It confirmed his belief that Alice could not be convinced Molese wanted to kill her. She had been warned. And she chose to ignore the warning.

Maher’s sourced picked up the story two years after the murder. Fugitive Mad Dog came out of hiding, went to Molese’s apartment, held a gun in Molese’s mouth, and said: “Where’s my money?” Obviously MOlese gave Mad Dog the wrong answer. Mad Dog shot Molese three times in the mouth and then went after Crosthwaite.

Mad Dog was not someone to fuck with. Maher’s street sources related how Mad Dog shot and killed a man in a bar one night for stepping on his shoe. How Mad Dog, at the age of twenty-four, instigated the Rahway Prison riots in 1963. How Mad Dog, shortly after being released from prison, accepted and carried out the contract killing of Jimmy Hoffa.

“Mad Dog whacked Jimmy Hoffa?” Maher asked his source incredulously.

“Is that true?”

But it didn’t really matter whether Mad Dog was the contractor who made Jimmy Hoffa disappear. Where legends are concerned, in the case of both heroes and villains, the likes of demarcation between the factual and apocryphal are always blurred. The point was, Mad Dog could have killed Jimmy Hoffa.

Ironically, Mad Dog’s father – who died when Mad Dog was twelve years old – had been an NYPD detective. A friend who knew Mad Dog as a child told a newspaper reporter that after his father died, his mother would make him kneel down in front of a photograph of his father and pray that he would grow up to be half the man his father had been.

By 1982, Maher’s winnings from the drag races at Connecting Highway had allowed him to buy two additional cars – a $21,00 1982 Cadillac El Dorado for Beth, and a $14,000 1982 Camaro, which was a replica of the Indianapolis 500 pace car. Although he never intended to race the Camaro, the blue and silver beauty was still too slow for Maher’s sensibilities; so he replaced the 305-cubic-inch engine with a 400-cubic-engine.

As much as the Corvette was a symbol of Maher’s skill with automobiles, the Camaro was a symbol of his lost dreams. If only I had had a chance, Maher would think every time he looked at the Indy 500 trim on the Camaro, I could have won at Indianapolis. While most people have reason to contemplate what could been, few would be likely to purchase a constant reminder of some long past missed opportunity. Yet that was exactly what Maher had done by parking an Indy 500 replica in his garage.

In April 1982, Detective Frank DelPrete phoned with a bit of good news. The Bergen County district attorney was ready to go to the grand jury in the Molese case. Notwithstanding the evidence the Bergen County prosecutor’s office and the Fair Lawn Police Department had painstakingly gathered over the previous three years, DelPrete had a request.

“I’d like you to testify before the grand jury,” DelPrete said. “And don’t worry the testimony will be sealed.”

“I’d love to put that bastard away,” Maher answered.

On a beautifl April morning, Maher arrived at Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, New Jersey, and took the witness stand. He told the grand jury about the day Molese say in Green Haven Prison and said with a sneer, “I married the fat bitch for her money,” and then said: “I want her killed. And I want you to kill her for me.”

Maher held the panel entranced as he described how Molese came home on furlough with homosexual love, Ronald Scofield, brutally beat Alice, and then, at a diner in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, solicited him a second time to murder Alice. “ “Brian said, ‘We gotta put Alice out of her misery. She’s a fat slob. All she does is smoke and eat. Help me kill her, Kevin.’”

There was a hush in the room when Maher stepped down from the witness stand.

After a month of examining evidence and hearing testimony from twenty witnesses, the grand jury returned a four-count sealed indictment in which Molese was named as one of three coconspirators in the slayings of Alice Molese, Marcia Ferrell, and Harold Ferrell. One of the other coconspirators was unidentified, and the third was identified only as J.S.J.S. of course, stood for Joseph “Mad Dog” Sullivan.

At 3:00 P.M. on May 6, 1982, Brian Molese was arrested at his 10^th Street apartment in Greenwich Village. But it would be a while before he stand before a jury in New Jersey. Molese, it seemed, was facing criminal charges in New York. So instead of being extradited across the Hudson River, Molese was deposited in Manhattan Correctional Facility to await trial for embezzlement.

Following Molese’s arrest, there was a surge of media attention focused on him and the murders. As pieces of Molese’s story were revealed day by day on the front pages of newspapers in three states, the event leading up to the killings exhibited plot twists worthy of a Hitchcock thriller.

In March 1979, Molese found himself deeply in debt and was facing foreclosure on the house at 24 Sanford Road. Coincidentally, in February, a month before the murders, everyone at 24 Sanford Road – Alice Molese, Marcia Ferrell, and Harold Ferrell – took out a $90,000 insurance policy. Then, six days before the murders, Marcia’s mother died, leaving her a house and $21,000 in cash. With her estate now valued at more than $150,000, Marcia named Brian and Alice Molese as trustees.

The stage was set. If Marcia died, her estate went to Harold. If Marcia and Harold died , Alice would take control of the Ferrell estate. But if Marcia and Harold and Alice died, Molese would come into a small fortune in insurance money. Adding to the windfall was a triple indemnity clause in all three policies. Essentially the clause specified that should Alice, Marcia, and Harold died in an accident involving public transportation, or should they be murdered, the insurance company would pay three times the $90,000 face amount on each policy. Now that Alice, Marcia and Harold actually had been murdered, the death benefits totaled $810,000.

A short time after the triple homicide, Molese sought to collect on Alice’s insurance and also wrote a letter t o the insurance company evoking his power as trustee and executor of Marcia’s estate. However, since he was the prime suspect in the homicides, the Bergen County prosecutor’s office instructed the insurance company to withhold payment of death benefits pending further investigation.

Molese, no better off financially than he was before the murders, was now desperate. So when Marcia’s father asked Molese to step aside in order that Marcia’s estate could be settle in an expedient manner, Molese demanded money. Incredibly, in order to gain control of his deceased daughter’s affairs, Marcia’s father paid Molese – who he knew was almost certainly his daughter’s murderer - $7,500 to relinquish any and all claims to the estate.

It had already been six years since Maher had worked with cops on a case. Yet every day he thought about the action, the thrill, the danger. Indeed, the two professions he most coveted as kid – a race car driver and a cop – were among the most dangerous. He had transformed himself once into a modern-day bounty hunter and was now a hero at Connection Highway, but these were approximations of the real thing. So he had spent the six years between 1976 and 1982 in an endless post-mortem. Why did I steal the RoadRunner? Why did I run from the cops? Why did the DA come after me like that? Why didn’t I give up the Cross Bay bank robbers? Depression set in.

Exacerbating Maher’s depression was the fact that his mother was going through a rough time. Once again divorced and alone, she had moved in with Maher and Beth for a short time and then moved to Maher’s sister’s house. But Susan – now married and with a son to raise – didn’t seem as welcoming to her mother as Maher thought she should be. Maher and Susan argued often. Soon they weren’t speaking at all.

About the only thing that seemed to lift Maher’s spirits during this period was a visit to Doherty.

Doherty had tried retirement for a couple of months in 1980 and had hated it. So he took a job on Long Island working for the Defense Department that involve investigating applicants who were seeking security clearance.

The lowest-level clearance enabled someone to view documents labeled Official Use Only. The second level of clearance provided access to files designated Secret. The next level, Top Secret material. The highest level, which meant that there were no restrictions on a individual so designated, was called Q Clearance. The president has Q Clearance, of course. And only a handful of others.

Doherty also investigated breaches of security. While his job sounded exciting, Doherty was not happy. As a police detective, he had always followed a case through from the beginning to its conclusion. As a federal investigator, however, he often handled only a portion of an investigation. For Doherty, accustomed to being in charge of an investigation, it was a frustrating experience. So he looked forward to Maher’s visits, when he could reminisce about the good ole days.

On one particularly hot summer afternoon in 1982, Maher left his job at ConRail early and drove his Indy replica to Long Island to see Doherty.

“I never worked like this before,” Doherty said. “I find something but I don’t go any further. I just get the piece of the investigation pertaining to Long Island. I’m not allowed to go to Washington, where the case really is.”

After venting his frustration, Doherty asked Maher: “So Kevin. You been staying out of trouble?”

Maher shrugged. “Staying out of trouble and staying bored.”

“Well,” Doherty said with a smile, “better bored than dead.”

Maher looked away.

“What is it?” Doherty wanted to know.

Maher took a long breath and said: “I met a couple car thieves in Queens who specialize in Corvettes. They’re selling Vettes to a chop shop in Jersey.”

Doherty raised his eyebrows. He could see where this was leading. But what should he do? Should he make every effort to dissuade Maher from stepping back into the fray? Or should he act the cop and question Maher further?

“What do you know about these auto thefts?” Doherty finally asked, the cop in him winning the inner struggle.

“All I know is that some guys are grabbing Corvettes in Queens and dumping them in a body shop in Kearny.”

“If they’re stealing cars in New Jersey and selling them in New Jersey,” Doherty pointed out, “That’s interstate transportation of stolen property. A federal crime.”

Doherty wrestled with himself again. Then: Maybe you should talk to an FBI agent over in Jersey.”

Maher smiled. Fighting it, Doherty smiled, too, then stood and walked across the room, disappearing into an office. He returned an moment later and handed Maher a piece of paper that contained a name and phone number.

“The auto theft guys tell me you should talk to agent Bob DeBellis. FBI office in Newark.”

Prior to meeting with Maher, DeBellis had placed several calls to verify that Maher was who he said he was. So when Maher walked into the FBI’s headquarters on Raymond Boulevard in Newark, New Jersey, he got right to the point.

“There’s a body shop in Kearny that’s receiving stolen vehicles,” Maher said.

DeBellis jotted down the name of the body shop.

“If this checks out,” DeBellis told Maher, “I’ll pay you a thousand dollars.”

“It’ll check out,” Maher said with emphasis.

And then Maher smiled. After a six-year hiatus, he was back on the job.