labor racketeers, and extortionists of all kinds almost constantly under police surveillance, but never before had Danny Mann and the Nassau narcotics squad come up with a drug dealer who appeared to be involved with so much else. In addition, Henry did not appear to be limited by any rank or status within the mob. Most wiseguys the narks had followed always remained within their own ranks at all times. If they were street-level junk dealers or bookies or loan sharks, they remained such and never, under any circumstances, approached a mobster of higher rank. The protocol was strictly enforced, and it was considered necessary in order to protect the mob's executive hierarchy from being compromised by their own men. The insulation between the men who actually committed the crimes and the men who directed them and profited most from the crooked schemes was scrupulously maintained.
Henry Hill was different. Somehow he was able to move effortlessly through all levels of the mob's hierarchy. At first it thoroughly baffled Mann and his squad. Henry was not listed as an organized-crime member or associate on any of the department's intelligence books. Nor did his name pop up on any of the wiretap indexes maintained by the department. And yet he was obviously involved with large-scale bookmakers, jewelry fences, loan sharks, and union racketeers and, in fact, seemed to be arranging for top hoods to buy up nonunion garment factories in Brooklyn and Queens at the same time Danny Mann was looking into his junk deals.
When Dennis Dillon, the Nassau district attorney, realized whom his narcotics unit was listening in on, he was delighted. Detectives began collecting Hill's garbage during the early morning hours and came up with discarded bits of notepaper and the backs of envelopes covered with the incriminating arrival and departure times of airline flights they soon connected to the comings and goings of known couriers. There were also sheets of paper that contained doodles and mathematical calculations pertaining to kilos and half kilos of flea powder and dog food. Hill's Pittsburgh distributor, Paul Mazzei, turned out to run a dog-grooming salon as a front. Using everything from bakery trucks to helicopters, narcotics detectives tailed Henry Hill for over two months, following him from one hangout to another, noting his conversations and meetings and listing his apparent dealings and friendships with some of the best-known racketeers in the city. They followed his seemingly endless peregrinations through so many layers of the underworld that their original pocket-size notebooks soon gave way to wall-sized charts.
But most of the case against Henry Hill was based on the wiretap reports. Mann had accumulated two months' worth of authorized wiretaps, and all of it implicated Henry and his gang far beyond the pleadings and doubt-casting of even the most eloquent lawyer.
'I've sat on hundreds upon hundreds of wires,' Mann said. 'At the time of the Hill investigation I'd been a narcotics detective for five or six years, and I knew that eventually everybody gives themselves up over their phones. The real wiseguys, the Paul Varios and the Carlo Gambinos, don't even have phones. Vario wouldn't have one in his house. He used to get all his calls through an intermediary who lived nearby and would have to run through the rain to Paulie's house and give him the message.
'The danger with the phone, even for wiseguys, is that it's so easy. You talk on it all day long and all night long saying nothing. Your wife orders groceries. You find out the correct tune. You call Grandma about dinner Sunday. You begin to forget that it's live. That it can hang you.
'One of the most common errors made by those being tapped, especially in drug cases where the subjects might even suspect they are being overheard, is to employ a 'code' language. In court we get experienced narcotics agents and other experts who can always interpret the code in such a way that even the most sympathetic juries will vote to convict. In the Hill case, for instance, they used gems, such as opals, as a code for drugs. They talked about the amount of money opals should be bought and sold for. In these cases a prosecutor would simply call in a professional jeweler to testify that the amounts of money being attributed to the gems had no basis in reality.'
Detective Mann and the Nassau narcotics squad began recording Henry Hill's Rockville Centre telephone in March of 1980, and within days had prepared the following report for the court in order to extend the wiretap order.
____________________
Thus far monitoring has generally revealed that Henry Hill is in the upper echelon-perhaps the head-of a large- scale, organized, interstate drug trafficking and distribution operation which he runs from at least two known locations in Nassau County: (1) his residence at 19 St. Marks Avenue, Rockville Centre, and (2) the residence of Robin Cooperman, 250 Lakeview Avenue, Rockville Centre (referred to during intercepted telephone conversations as 'the bat cave').
Still unknown are the full scope of Hill's illegal operation, the identity of the conspirators, and the precise type of controlled substances involved. Monitoring has revealed that at the local level the ring appears to center around Henry Hill, Robin Cooperman, and Judy Wicks; however, many others still as yet unidentified are involved and the nature and scope of their involvement remains unknown at the present time.
Over the course of monitoring, Henry Hill, or others associated with Henry Hill, have conversed, in coded terms or in a manner clearly indicative of drug transactions, with Paul Mazzei, Judy Wicks, Robin Cooperman, Mel Telsey, Steven Fish, Tony Asta, Bob Albert, Bob Breener, Marvin Koch, and individuals referred to as 'Bob,' 'Linda,' 'Ann,' 'Mac,' and 'Kareem,' whose last names remain unknown, as well as others whose identity remains unknown.
Uncertainty surrounds the identity of the controlled substances in which Henry Hill and his co-conspirators are trafficking because Hill's conversations with his contacts are uniformly guarded, vague and replete with obviously coded language. Terms such as 'opals,' 'stones,' 'buds,' 'karats,' 'OZ,' 'whole,' 'quarter,' 'half,' and 'one-for- two,' have been employed in an obvious reference to things other than what they commonly connote. However, details surrounding the code terms, such as prices, and the inappropriate use of the terms themselves, make clear that drug transactions are being discussed. Some of the individuals listed in the heading of this affidavit have conferred with Henry Hill or his associates in the above-mentioned coded terms; others, particularly the local callers, have used abbreviated language and have exhibited a general hesitancy to discuss the subject matter of the telephone call thereby indicating their participation to one degree or another in the drug-related conspiracy.
____________________
In monitoring Hill's phone on March 29, Mann picked up a conversation between Hill and Paul Mazzei, who later turned out to be his Pittsburgh distributor, of such bizarre syntax that any jury would convict.
mazzei: You know the golf club and the dogs you gave me in return?
hill: Yeah.
mazzei: Can you still do that?
hill: Same kind of
mazzei No. No golf clubs. Can you still give me the dogs if I can pay for the golf clubs?
hill Yeah. Sure.
[portion of conversation omitted]
mazzei: You front me the shampoo and I'll front you the dog pills… What time tomorrow?
hill: Anytime after twelve.
mazzei: You won't hold my lady friend up?
hill: No.
mazzei: Somebody will just exchange dogs.
By the time Danny Mann and the Nassau prosecutors were ready to make their arrests they had amassed so much information that in addition to arresting Henry, they also brought in thirteen other members of the ring, including Robert Ginova, a porno film producer who drove a chocolate-colored Rolls; Paul Mazzei, who was picked up in Pittsburgh on a warrant and held for Nassau County; Frank Basile, the twenty-year-old son of Philly Basile, the disco king whom Vario had forced to give Henry his no-show job for parole; and Bobby Germaine, not only Henry's partner in the drug ring but a fugitive in connection with a botched multimillion-dollar wholesale jewelry robbery on East Fifty-seventh Street.
When Mann went to arrest Germaine, the unit had shotguns, bullet-proof vests, and search warrants for the
