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"By eight-thirty we had all finished eating. Judy had an eleven o'clock flight. At nine-thirty she said she had to go home. What for? I said. She said she wanted to go home to get her hat. I'd been carrying a pound of heroin around in my jacket all day and I wanted Judy to start taping it to her leg. No, she said, she had to go home to get her hat. I couldn't believe it. I told her to forget it. I was exhausted. I didn't need a trip to Rockaway just because she wanted her hat. She got mad. I mean, she's insisting. It's her lucky hat. She needs it. She's afraid to fly without it. She always wears it. It was a blue-and-pink thing that sat on top of her head. It was the most middle-western, rube thing you ever saw. The point is, if she insisted, I had to drive her home for her damn hat.
"When I got into the car I suddenly realized that I was still carrying half a kilo of heroin in my pocket. I remember saying to myself, 'What do I have to drive around with this stuff for?' So while the engine was still idling I got out of the car and went back inside the house and stuck the packages in a recessed light near the entry steps. I then got back in the car and started to drive Judy home. I wasn't fifty feet out of the driveway when my car was blocked. There were cars all over the place. I thought maybe there'd been an accident in front of my house. Then I thought, It's my turn to get whacked for Lufthansa. I saw this guy in a windbreaker who popped up alongside the car and jammed a gun against the side of my head. For a second I thought it was over. Then he screamed, 'Make one move, motherfucker, and I'll blow you away!' That's when I began to relax. That's when I knew they were cops. Only cops talk that way. If it had been wiseguys, I wouldn't have heard a thing. I would have been dead."
=TWENTY=
WHEN NASSAU COUNTY NARCOTICS DETECTIVE DANIEL MANN first heard about Henry Hill, he had no idea Hill was going to be any different from the thirty or forty other suburban drug dealers he arrested every year. Even when some of the first intelligence reports, surveillances, and wiretap information began coming in, he was still doubtful. Da
The Hill case had started just like all the others. There was an informant. In the Hill case it was a nineteen-year-old Commack, Long Island, youngster, who had been arrested for selling twelve hundred dollars' worth of Quaaludes to Nassau County undercover cops on three different occasions. Undercovers always like to string together more than one or two sales before making their arrests. Multiple sales tend to solidify a case and give the prosecutor more clout at the inevitable plea-bargaining table. An airtight case also means those arrested are more likely to cooperate and be coaxed into giving up their friends and partners in return for leniency. In this case the youngster needed no coaxing. Within minutes of being brought to the Mineola precinct for booking he was looking for a deal. The kid—a beefy, long-haired, ex-high school lineman—had been arrested before. In fact, it turned out that he was already an informant, giving up the people from whom he was buying his drugs. He even had his C.I., or "confidential informant" number, and he suggested that Da
Ma
Da
The youngster was a small-time punk. He had quit high school before graduation and got most of his money as a chemistry salesman, selling pharmaceutical concoctions such as Quaaludes, amphetamines, LSD, and angel dust rather than heroin and cocaine. His father, an ex-con, was a fugitive in co
A deal was struck. If the youngster could really "give up" an organized-crime drug ring, the charges against him would be reduced, if not dropped, and his cooperation would be conveyed by both police and prosecutor to the sentencing judge. If he was helpful, in other words, he might be able to get a walk. The drug business, of course, is just filled with people like this youngster. There are literally thousands of them, all leaking bits of information about each other, the smart ones holding something back for a rainy day, all of them with confidential-informant numbers and case agents and prosecutors whom they keep apprised of everything going on in the street. In addition to youngsters and petty dealers, however, many of the biggest and most successful narcotics importers and distributors, some of them top organized-crime figures, are also confidential informants to one set of cops or another. The drug business is simply a business of informants. Partners, friends, brothers—there are no standup guys in the drug trade. It is a multibillion-dollar business in which it is understood that everyone is ratting out everyone else.
While Detective Ma
The youngster said he had known Hill for many years. He had visited Hill's house numerous times and knew Hill's wife and children. The youngster said he gained access to the house because he had relatives and friends who were very friendly with the Hills and so he had never really been considered a stranger. He insisted to Ma
The youngster told Ma