Behan said, “Fuck you. I got no gun.”
He came down the steps and marched straight at Hamm, who was closest to the door, and Hamm said, “You’re under arrest for . . .”
Behan lurched forward and with a truly excellent straight right hand, hit Hamm in the nose, knocking the FBI agent down. As Hamm rolled and tried to crawl, Behan turned toward Virgil, and Virgil said, “You take another step, Mike, I swear to God I’ll shoot you in the balls.”
Behan put his hands up and said, “Don’t do that.”
Hamm staggered to his feet, hands to his face, and when Virgil asked if he was okay, said, “I think he broke my nose. I’m bleeding like a fire hose. Shoot him. C’mon, shoot him.”
Behan said, “Hey! Hey!”
* * *
More lights were rolling toward them, fast, including a fire engine. Potts, the cop, got there first, and when he got out of the car, Virgil said, “Put some cuffs on this guy. And we’re gonna need some gauze or something for the agent here.”
When things were controlled, Virgil walked away from the crowd and called Lucas.
“You get him?”
“Yeah. I had to shoot down his plane to do it, but we got him.” He took a minute to tell Lucas about the chase and shooting.
“Well, good. Finally found a target big enough for you to hit,” Lucas said. “Maybe the gun company will pay you for an endorsement. Anybody hurt?”
“The agent with me got punched in the nose. That’s about it. Regio’s dead and Lange’s cooperating, so . . .”
“Clean sweep,” Lucas said.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
Loose ends, trials, more diving, a little sex, and the Islands . . .
* * *
Virgil gave his last GPS coordinates to the Coast Guard, along with the magic wand. The Coast Guard brought in a group of professional divers and they cleaned up the heroin cans in two days. Coast Guard officers were a little irked that they’d been cut out of the surveillance and the arrests, but they made the best of it, piling seven hundred kilos of heroin on an admiral’s desk in front of the Coast Guard flag, for the reporters and photographers to gawk at. There were unconfirmed rumors from the DEA that a cartel kingpin in Colombia saw the picture and wept.
* * *
Despite the follow-the-money tactic demanded by Lucas, which was a major feature in the trials, the Manhattan agent in charge was shown, the day after the final raids, with rolled-up shirtsleeves, piling the seized heroin on a table in an FBI basement somewhere. Orish, who ran the actual operation, was allowed to hang in the background, smiling wistfully.
* * *
Douglas Sansone’s organization was torn to pieces by the investigation. All the major figures—with two exceptions—drew life sentences in federal prisons. The trials, held in New York, New Jersey, and South Florida, got sporadic media coverage. A small Canadian forest was cut down to create paper for the FBI press releases.
* * *
During the trial of Sansone, Behan, and Cattaneo—they were tried together—Cattaneo’s wife, Belinda, was put on the stand by the prosecution, as a friendly witness, given immunity for information tying the three men together in a single conspiracy. When questioned about her authority to speak to the subject, she conceded that she’d had a long-standing sexual affair with Behan. The resultant shouting, Cattaneo on his feet, Behan with his head down on the table, Sansone laughing like a madman, was eventually contained by the federal marshals who worked for the court.
* * *
The two exceptions to the life sentences were Matt Lange and Sylvia Sansone. Lange got fifteen years with the possibility of parole, for his testimony about the other members of the organization. Sansone was sentenced to eight years on a charge of aggravated assault on a federal officer for shooting at Kerry during the final chase in Elizabeth, NJ. She accepted the plea and the sentence in return for the government dropping a list of additional charges that, if proven, would have added years to the sentence. Both Sansone and his wife were hit with huge fines, and the government seized, and auctioned off, their house, cars, and donut shops. A wealthy fan of Mama Ferrari’s Donuts won the auction and expanded the chain down the East Coast, and became even wealthier. Damn good donuts.
* * *
Patty Pittman, Alicia Snow, and Magnus Elliot were all killed by Jimmy Parisi and a couple of assistants. One of the assistants, given a modest deal, took Miami-Dade homicide cops to an area of the Everglades where the bodies had been dumped. A body was found, but it was in an advanced state of decay, and DNA analysis proved that it was not one of the three people known to have been killed by Parisi. The body was never identified. A jury took the assistant’s word for it, however, and Parisi went to prison for life without parole.
* * *
Don Romano and Larry Bianchi walked. There’d been a fundamental error in the arrest—there was nothing illegal about possessing a hundred and twenty handguns in Florida. If they’d transported the guns across a state line, they would have been up to their necks in felonies. As it was, the driver of the van took some heat about leaving New York without notifying his parole officer, but given the prisoner-population problems in New York, he eventually got away with it. The legbreaker riding with him had no warrants or parole problems. Final score: Mobsters 4, Feds 0.
* * *
Christopher Colles, the Florida senator, held a press conference in Miami, thanking “all the federal law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Marshals Service, and the Coast Guard” for breaking the Coast Guard murder case. He shook Weaver’s hand on camera, and the hand of the Coast Guard district commander, but that part of the video was cut by most TV stations. After the show, Colles phoned Lucas and said, “I owe you and I pay my debts. When you need something legal that I can get you, call me.”
* * *
Virgil told Lucas, “Rae saved my life. If she’d been a little slower, we’d both be dead. No doubt in my mind. She’s the most impressive cop I’ve ever met.”
“Present company excepted, I imagine,” Lucas said.
“I don’t know, Lucas. She’s something else. If you need me to do this again, working with Rae, all you have to do is call me. I’m in. I love that chick.”
“I’ll do that,” Lucas said. “I mean, you’re the only cop I know who shot down an airplane with a pistol.”