The Last Undercover (6 page)
Prior to attending the conference, I spoke to a member who had previously attended the annual NAMBLA function. He told me that any criminal conversations would take place during the breaks and after the daylong meetings he described as “very boring.” He told me I would be suspect at my first conference and should be careful. He cautioned me about asking too many questions and advised me to be more of an observer than a participant. He also said that if I attended a second conference I would be more accepted by the membership and would then have the credibility to ask more probing questions. With that caveat in mind, I did a lot of listening and very little probing. It was an easy plan. I really wasn’t sure I could successfully convince “card-carrying” boy lovers that I was one of them, so the less I spoke, the less opportunity I had to reveal my true identity.
As we entered Times Square, elbowing our way through the thick Friday night crowds, I sensed a heightened anticipation on the part of my fellow travelers. Their interest and enthusiasm wasn’t directed at the glittering, $37 million NASDAQ sign, the lights of Broadway, or Madame Tussauds wax museum. No, the destination on which they were fixed, homing in like starving men headed for a feast, was . . . Toys “R” Us.
Some of the men started to giggle as we neared the brightly lit store entrance. I couldn’t figure out what was so exciting about a toy store until we entered and saw the sixty-foot-high indoor Ferris wheel—and all the children clustered around it. Several men rushed to the second-floor railing and began an evening of gawking as young boys made their way onto the ride.
The Toys “R” Us visit truly opened my eyes to the BL mindset. Grown men, most in their forties and fifties, hung on the rail and described in rich, graphic, sexual detail what they would like to do to each boy. These men were predators, and they were prowling the streets. This assignment was dangerous, all right—but the danger wasn’t to me. The danger was directed at innocent children, like the ones riding the Ferris wheel.
I’m often inwardly amused as I sit in a public place with a target and wonder if those around us have any idea that I’m negotiating a drug deal or a contract killing or an international weapons transaction. The passersby are oblivious to what is going on within a few feet of where they are shopping or enjoying a casual lunch. Now, though, I wondered what the parents watching their children enjoy the Ferris wheel would think if they knew they were unwittingly providing sexual predators with a public feast. The nervous dread I felt in my stomach earlier in the evening turned into waves of revulsion. What I was hearing from the men around me was so disgusting that had I overheard their conversations when I wasn’t in an undercover role, I might have thrown them over the second-floor railing. I had to do this case right—whatever and however long it took.
GLOBE-HOPPING SMUGGLER
Los Angeles, 1983
P
rior to making my way to Darrel’s that day in November 1983, I carefully placed bundles of hundred-dollar bills around my waist inside my underwear and tucked in my shirttail. When I walked into Darrel’s residence, we exchanged pleasantries for a few seconds, then I took off my shirt, dropped my pants to the floor, and watched the money cascade around me. Darrel stared at me in disbelief as I stood there in my underwear with my pants around my ankles.
“What are you doing?” he said.
I told him I wanted him to be comfortable dealing with me and to know I wasn’t wired. Almost embarrassed, he ordered me to put my clothes back on and pick up the cash.
Darrel never saw the recording device I had strapped to my ankle. We completed the arrangements for the deal, and I got it all on tape.
Darrel’s method of doing business was unlike any I had ever encountered. In fact, it’s possible my unorthodoxy played into our eventual success.
Darrel saw the money, but the heroin wasn’t there. Instead, it was in a hotel room in Canada, just outside Toronto in Scarborough, Ontario. I didn’t balk at Darrel’s plan, and my willingness to play by his rules enhanced my credibility. When the time came to make the pickup, an RCMP undercover officer, whom I had never met, posed as my Canadian associate and took the actual delivery of the drugs.
Once the deal was consummated, Darrel made final plans for his overseas trip. Surveillance confirmed he traveled with an associate to Sydney, Singapore, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Seoul. Overseas surveillance teams spotted the two of them meeting with known drug traffickers.
Darrel returned to the United States, prepared to deliver the two kilograms of China White I ordered at a cost of a $250,000 per kilo. As with most drug deals, the details had to remain fluid. Last-minute changes were standard, though my administrators seldom understood the need for any deviation from an approved operations order. This deal was no exception.
On February 7, 1984, Darrel promised to deliver the heroin to a hotel room at the Marriott Hotel near the Los Angeles International Airport. We set up surveillance equipment in the room and hoped to capture the transaction on videotape. When Darrel arrived at the hotel, though, he refused to meet in the room and insisted that all conversations take place in the lobby. I quickly strapped on a recording device and made my way to the lobby, carrying a briefcase containing $500,000.
Understandably, FBI administrators were apprehensive about letting me walk around the lobby of a hotel with that much money. I was specifically told the money was not to leave the lobby; agents, in and around the hotel, would be watching my every move.
When I arrived in the lobby, Darrel greeted me and began talking about his trip overseas and his future plans. He was growing more comfortable in our relationship and offered to put me in charge of his distribution network, provided I paid him a percentage of every completed transaction. He would introduce me to his Thai and Canadian connections and continue to educate me on the finer points of narcotics trafficking. It was a tremendous opportunity to fully identify his distribution network, but I knew there was no way I could allow the half-million dollars to walk out with him. I asked for more details and eventually agreed to his offer, but knew that once he delivered the heroin later that day, he and his associates would be arrested.
Again, however, the plan changed. Rather than flashing a half-million dollars in hundred-dollar bills in the lobby of the hotel, he wanted to walk with me into the restroom, where he could view the contents of my briefcase. The request made sense from a drug dealer’s perspective. I knew I was in violation of my strict orders, but took the walk anyway. My cover team had no idea what I was doing but they had enough confidence in me and were sufficiently street savvy to remain flexible as the deal unfolded. In the restroom, Darrel viewed the money and we quickly returned to the lobby, much to the relief of FBI management.
Darrel continued to lecture me on the finer points of heroin distribution and periodically pointed out those in the lobby he suspected of being law enforcement. Ironically, agents were in the lobby, but he never picked out the right person. He continually pointed to people not affiliated with the FBI, many of whom were hotel workers. My cover was intact. He did, however, bring it all back to reality when he said that one of his partners was in the lobby with a gun and that if anything happened I would be the first one killed. He had previously played the tough-guy card with me, once saying that if anyone got in his way, he had no qualms about “blowing them away.”
I was anxiously awaiting delivery of the heroin, which he promised would be within the hour. And then, while sitting in an overstuffed chair, listening to his bluster, I saw a situation arise from nowhere that could have caused Darrel’s armed backup to start popping caps.
During the second semester of my first year of law school, I lived with a family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pat and Don were a great couple from the church, and they gladly welcomed me into their home. I hadn’t seen them in years, and as I sat in the lobby with Darrel, who should walk into the hotel but . . . Pat and Don! They had traveled over two thousand miles and just happened to stroll in, minutes from the takedown of a major international heroin trafficker and his associates, at least one of whom was armed.
My heart began to pound. I was wearing a body recorder with the microphone taped to my chest. When reviewing the tape after the arrest, I could actually hear my heart pounding.
Thankfully, I had stayed in touch with Pat and Don through the years, often by means of a Christmas newsletter in which I would detail some outlandish undercover assignment I had been on. Pat, a devout Christian, also told me later that I was on her mind as they flew into L.A. She knew my work and suspected I was probably doing something dangerous, so she had been praying for me earlier that day.
I leaned back in my seat, away from Darrel’s view, caught Pat’s attention and slowly shook my head. The look on my face must have communicated this wasn’t the time for hugs and greetings. Thank God she understood and whisked her husband away in another direction.
Within minutes, Darrel said that the load car had arrived and I was to accompany him outside. I walked to the parking lot as his two partners, known to me because of our investigation, passed us. I said, “Now, those two look like cops.” He laughed and told me they were his partners. He gave me the keys to the car. I walked over, opened the trunk, saw the two kilos, and gave the prearranged signal. In a perfectly executed arrest plan, FBI agents swooped in from every direction, arresting Darrel and his two partners.
I was pleased with our success and looked forward to the next investigation. The evidence was solid and the case seemed like a slam dunk. As we were fond of saying, Darrel and his cronies “were bought and paid for.”
I only wish it had turned out that way.
New York NAMBLA Conference
It seemed as if we stayed forever at the railing in Toys “R” Us. Finally, Peter directed us toward a restaurant several blocks away. We continued the walk. Until this time, the location of the actual conference had not been disclosed. I was told earlier we would receive specific instructions later in the evening. NAMBLA feared that publishing the exact location of the meeting well in advance would allow law enforcement to set up appropriate surveillance and disrupt the yearly gathering. As we walked toward the restaurant, Peter stopped and pointed out New York Spaces, a building at 520 Eighth Avenue. “This is where we will be meeting tomorrow,” he announced. “No one knows who we are. If asked, tell them we are with Wallace Hamilton Press, who is hosting the conference. This is a publishing seminar. Be very discreet.”
We continued walking a short distance to a restaurant on Thirty-fourth Street where we broke up into smaller groups for dinner. After all I had already heard and observed, I didn’t have much of an appetite.
I sat with Jeff Devore and Joe from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Joe was small and thin, with a “Mr. Clean,” shaved-head, in his late forties or early fifties. Joe initially described himself as a composer. Later in the conversation, we learned he was actually a night lobby guard who had written two symphonies and an opera, none of which had ever been performed. Like many aspiring would-bes in Hollywood, Joe was a “slash” careerist: in his case, a composer/night watchman. He said he and his black lover were both BLs and, like Jeff and me, this was his first conference.
Joe’s interests brought up another issue that troubled me as I played out my role. I have little interest in music, other than country and western. I see very few movies, unless they involve murder, mayhem, and mystery. And my tastes in literature run along the same lines, with an occasional biography to complement the fiction. Although boy lovers can cover the entire social and economic spectrum, many of those I interacted with were gay, and their interests were not my interests. I did not read the same books they read, nor did I see the same movies.
One night during dinner, when the question “Who’s your favorite boy actor?” was asked, I had to fall back on an earlier answer—“Ricky Schroder,
Silver Spoons
” —even though I don’t believe I ever saw an episode. I was often asked about specific movies with a boy lover theme and each time had to punt with some nebulous answer, usually responding with a question of my own. On other assignments, when interacting with gamblers, or with drug or weapons dealers, it was so easy to converse about
Monday Night Football
or the World Series, and if they didn’t care it didn’t matter. But the BL philosophy permeated the entire lifestyle. It was a part of them 24/7, but it wasn’t a part of me. I was afraid that would show.
Remembering my earlier admonition from the disaffected NAMBLA member, I asked very few probing questions at dinner and was surprised when Jeff volunteered so much about his life. He was a fifty-two-year-old ordained minister from Orange County and taught at a chiropractic college in Whittier, California, one of the many smaller cities that make up the greater Los Angeles area. It was obvious he was relaxed among his like-minded, newly found friends, and he spoke openly of his quest to identify his sexual desires.
He admitted to being openly gay, spoke of his twenty-plus-year marriage that ended in divorce, and talked about his three grown children. He shocked me, however, when he admitted to having sex with a sixteen-year-old boy in San Diego’s Balboa Park three years earlier. He described in graphic detail their meeting online, the arranged appointment, his drive from Orange County to San Diego, and the sex acts they performed once they met. Joe giggled with excitement as Jeff described the scene—I stopped eating. I regretted I wasn’t wearing a wire and wondered if I would ever again have a chance to get such “smoking-gun” admissions on tape.
Across the narrow aisle at a larger table sat Peter and several longtime members of the organization. I glanced over at them occasionally, and we always seemed to be the object of their attention. My paranoia kicked in, and I questioned whether my infiltration had been discovered. I also wondered whether they could hear Jeff describing his sexual adventures. Did they want to participate in the conversation, or silence him for being so open in a public place? I cautiously avoided any efforts to elicit admissions from Jeff or Joe, especially any questions Peter could overhear.