Seventy-four grams, to be precise. “They didn’t want to publicize their catch,” she added.
“I guess not.”
“So what did they say to you?”
His face played, almost into a smile. “They were very interested in what I did with that cocaine. Who I sold it to, who I got it from.” He looked at her. “They were very interested in a certain cop, too.”
“Raymond Miroballi,” she said. The cop he shot. She stirred at the mention of the name. There was so much to learn. “Tell me about him. How you met him.”
“Miro came to me.” Alex shrugged. “I figure he got my name from Todo.”
“Todo,” she repeated. “This is the guy who supplied you.”
He nodded. “Eddie Todavia. Used to go to high school with me. Anyway. So this cop-Miro-he comes to me one day and says he knows what I’m up to. Says he knows Todo is selling me drugs, and he knows what I’m doing with them. He says it’s cool with him, he’s not looking to bust me. He just wants a piece. A ‘taste,’ he says to me.”
“He wanted a kickback,” Shelly summarized. “He got tipped off about you, presumably from Todo, and he wanted a cut.”
Alex nodded. “So what am I supposed to say? No? He’ll bust me.”
“You said yes.”
“Of course I did. He said he wanted two hundred a month. Two hundred a month and he keeps his mouth shut. And he watches my back.”
Shelly closed her eyes. It wasn’t hard to believe, especially after her meeting with the F.B.I. It was right there, for any cop with a wandering eye. And scold Alex as she may wish, she could see his view of things. What leverage did he have against a cop who had caught him with his hand in the cookie jar? She brought a hand to her face. This was precisely what she’d warned him about. One day, he’d get caught.
“So the F.B.I. saw you with Miroballi,” she said.
“Right. They followed me after that and caught me. Then they put me in a room and ran me through the wringer.”
“And you told the F.B.I. what was going on,” she assumed.
“Yeah, but seemed like they already knew. They told me I could help myself. Stay out of jail. They told me they wanted everyone connected to this. My seller. My buyers. And Miroballi.”
“Most of all, Miroballi,” she said. A dirty cop. The only thing more inviting to a federal prosecutor than a dirty cop was a crooked politician. “Give me a time frame, Alex.”
He looked off again. “Last summer is when Miro came to me. I think, like, July or maybe it was August. No, it was July. He gave me some time to think about it, but not much time. By August, I was dropping off payments to him. And at some point, the feds must’ve been watching. They saw me make two payments, I think. End of November, beginning of December. I was dropping off money to him, as much as I could. He was-well, he was cutting into my profit margin, let’s say.” He sliced a hand on the table. “I mean, Shelly, I was selling at most, maybe five grams a week to these couple of guys at work. Some weeks, it was two grams. I’m not exactly rolling in cash here, is my point. Two hundred a month, this guy wants. That’s fifty a week. I’m not clearing a whole lot more than that, and now I have to pay that much to this guy for starters. And then he upped it.”
“Upped it? Increased his fee?”
“Yeah. That would have been about November. He said five hundred was a better deal. Five hundred! Shelly, I’m not making enough to cover that. I’m dipping into my own pocket to cover that.”
“Did you tell Miroballi-‘Miro’-did you tell him that?”
He shrugged. “Of course I did. He wanted to introduce me to new customers. He wanted me to sell crack. He said I was missing out on a huge market. I told him I didn’t want a huge market. Crack, Shelly? Me? Selling crack to hookers and junkies?”
Powder cocaine was no longer the preferred drug on the street. Crack cocaine was far more addictive, and cheaper. Powder remained popular among the white-collar set, where Alex worked. Officer Miroballi was trying to push Alex onto the streets.
“I said no, thanks. No thanks.”
“And I assume Officer Miroballi was none too pleased with that answer.”
Alex laughed bitterly. “You assume right. He was telling me the hard time I would do if I were ever caught. He said it was him or prison. He kept saying, a nice-looking white kid wouldn’t stand a chance in the penitentiary.” Their eyes met with that last comment. It was the precise fate he was facing now.
“You agreed to the five hundred.”
“I said I’d think about it,” said Alex. “I figured I had some leverage, too. I had already paid him some cash, right? If he took me down, I could take him down, too. Plus I was a cash cow for him. I figured we could negotiate this a little. That’s how we left it.”
“This was in November,” Shelly clarified.
“Yeah. Or early December. After that meeting-the feds got me within the week.”
Right. December fifth. “But what about Miroballi?” she asked. “He didn’t know you’d been picked up. Why didn’t he come back to you to keep ‘negotiating’?”
Alex gave her a long look.
“He did know,” she said.
“Had to have known, Shelly. Had to have figured it out.”
“So you never heard from Miroballi again?”
“One time after that. We met at a restaurant and talked terms.” He flicked a finger in the air. “I told him I wanted to stick to the original deal. Two hundred a month.”
“How did he respond to that?”
“Well, that’s the thing.” Alex licked his teeth. “He didn’t fight at all. He just said, ‘Oh, okay,’ like it was no big deal.” He looked at her. “You’d have to know the guy, Shel. He wasn’t a guy who took something like that easily. But he did. He just went along with whatever I said. He just wanted the conversation to be done. I think he was testing me.”
“Were you wearing a wire?” She couldn’t believe that she was asking Alex questions like this. But she imagined that Miroballi had had the same thought of Alex.
“No,” he answered. “I couldn’t wear a wire. Miro would check for it.”
“Was the F.B.I. listening?”
“Don’t know. They didn’t exactly share their every move with me, Shelly.”
Fair enough. “But Miroballi seemed overly compliant with you. And that made you think he was on to your situation.”
“He must have been. He must have, Shelly. I didn’t hear from the guy again. He’s getting regular payments from me, then he’s upping the fee, then all of a sudden he’s being all agreeable, and he disappears off the face of the earth? Of course he knew. He knew the feds had gotten to me.”
She sat back in her chair. Oh, the tangled webs. Alex had been caught and turned into a drug peddler by a dirty cop, then caught by legitimate law enforcement and flipped into a government informant. All of this, for a kid who just had an arrangement with a couple of guys at work for recreational drugs. She hadn’t approved of his side business, but God-surely he hadn’t deserved this.
“The feds are telling me that I won’t be able to prove that Miroballi was working with you,” she said.
Alex waved a hand in anger. “Bullshit. Shelly, they knew. If not, how would they ever know to find me? How would they even know who I was? They only found me because I was working with Miro.”
“I didn’t say they didn’t know, Alex. I’m talking about proof. Did they have proof?”
He pursed his lips, stared at the wall. “Can I prove that Miroballi knew I had been caught by the F.B.I.? Other than the fact that he tried to blow my head off? No, I can’t read the guy’s mind. I can’t prove it.” He looked at Shelly plaintively. “He disappeared the moment I was picked up by the feds, reappears one time and barely says a thing, and he tries to kill me. That’s all I can tell you.”
“I believe you,” she said. She couldn’t possibly say that with confidence.