Part 32

As the weeks passed, Tremoglie met narcotics pushers and wholesalers. He played poker with them. Slowly he moved up the ladder until one day he was introduced to Benny Bellanca, who took an immediate liking to him after Tremoglie had given the right answers to all the questions. He liked him so well, in fact, that they discussed the possibility of Tremoglie going to Europe as a courier to bring back a load of heroin.

He met Pietro Beddia, too, and an intensive surveillance by Narcotics agents disclosed a link between Bellanco and Beddia.

At the end of ten months of work by Tremoglie, the trap was set. Arrangements were made for Tremoglie to make a series of purchases during one afternoon and night on a timetable that was worked out to the minute. For twelve hours, Tremoglie raced from one meeting place to another, making the prearranged purchases of narcotics. And at 3 o’clock in the morning twenty of the leading narcotics dealers in the New York area--including Bellanca and Beddia--had been rounded up.

Alphonse Attardi wasn’t around for the trials. He took his $5,000 reward money plus expenses--plus his bride--and faded from the scene. All he would tell agents was that he planned to buy a little place in the country and settle down to make an honest living.

The underworld finally figured out that it was Attardi who had sprung the trap on them, and defense counsel for the accused men demanded that he be produced by the government for questioning. But Narcotics agents could honestly say they knew nothing of Attardi’s whereabouts. They didn’t want to know.

Informers have given valuable aid to the Customs Service in its drive against smuggling, and there are many Alphonse Attardis--each with his own motive--who work with the agents.

Under the law, the Customs Service is permitted to pay up to $50,000 for information leading to the seizure of smuggled goods. The system provides that the informer may receive 25 per cent of the net recovery in any case in which he provides the original information leading to arrest and conviction for smuggling or fraud. Net recovery means the amount which goes into the Treasury of the United States as a result of a disclosure. For example, suppose Customs agents seize from a smuggler a diamond necklace that is worth $10,000, the appraisal being based on the American selling price. The necklace is forfeited and sold at public auction for $8,000. Assuming expenses of $400 involved in the case, then the net recovery is $7,600, of which the informant is entitled to $1,900.

The theory behind such payments is that the government has made a good bargain when it can pay an informer $1 and then have $3 left over for the Treasury--money which would have been lost without the cooperation of the informant.

There was one Customs informer working in Europe who received the top reward of $50,000 three times by uncovering the smuggling of huge shipments of diamonds into the United States. He refused to accept payment in Europe--but waited until he had $150,000 in credits with the U.S. Treasury. Then he came to the United States, received the money, and settled down to live the life of a country gentleman in the West.

And the rewards were tax free--as are all payments made to informers.

THE VIOLENT BORDER

Customs agents in the Laredo Tenth Customs Agency District--which includes the 2,000 miles of border and Gulf coastline from New Mexico into part of Louisiana--spend much of their time battling the smuggling of narcotics and marihuana from Mexico.

Federal officers estimate that the business of peddling narcotics to addicts grosses at least a half billion dollars a year for the underworld, and the total may be much more. No one actually knows the amount of narcotics which is smuggled successfully into the United States. Some Customs agents estimate that law enforcement officers seize less than 10 per cent of the total. One agent said, “If I thought that I was getting ten per cent of the total being smuggled, then I could sleep well at night.”

Even though the size of the narcotics traffic is unknown, there is no doubt about the tremendous profits to be made from the illegal sale of drugs. Addicts will beg, borrow, steal and kill to obtain money with which to satisfy the terrible craving for narcotics once they are “hooked.”

Unofficial estimates place the number of narcotic addicts in the United States at about 50,000. The average heroin addict requires something like ten grains per day to satisfy his needs. This means that over a period of a year the average heroin addict will use about 7.6 ounces of the drug--or a total for all addicts of about 380,000 ounces of heroin or a substitute drug. In their best years, Federal and state law enforcement officers have been able to seize only a fraction of this estimated total.

Several years ago the Mexican marihuana dealers took no responsibility for delivery into the United States; all arrangements for smuggling across the border had to be made by the purchasers who came from the States. But in recent years there has been a change, and the Mexican operators have been willing to make deliveries to New York, Chicago, Detroit and other cities. Jack Givens, Supervising Agent for the Laredo district, believes this change in delivery method is an indication that the supply of marihuana in Mexico has outgrown the demand. This has put the pressure on the Mexican operators to give their customers better service, resulting in the delivery system.

In recent years some of the United States marihuana operators have begun to bypass border operators. They have been driving to the interior of Mexico, making their own deals with the growers and bringing the stuff back into the United States themselves. Customs inspectors are always on guard against marihuana being smuggled in automobiles--hidden in upholstery, in luggage compartments, in door panels, or in secret compartments built into the cars.

Customs agents believe that most of the heroin and other narcotics smuggled into the United States come by way of Europe from the Middle East and Far East. But Mexico still is one of the favorite routes for the narcotics syndicates seeking to reach the American addicts. In addition, Mexico remains the major exporter of marihuana. The Mexican government has been cooperating with the United States in seeking to suppress the traffic, and there is a close working relationship between the American agents and the Mexican police. But the long and rugged boundary between the two countries makes it impossible to cover every smuggling point on the border.

Supervisor Givens has only thirty-nine agents and seventeen Customs enforcement officers assigned to him for the entire territory. The enforcement officers are a police force used primarily for guard duty and surveillance work under the agents’ direction.

This small force, despite the geographic difficulties, has a high esprit de corps. Each man works many hours overtime each month with no expectation of compensation. The records show that the agents average approximately 120 hours of overtime each month in excess of the overtime required of them and for which they are paid. Often the men find themselves working overtime knowing that their extra effort will be rewarded with pay averaging 19 cents an hour.

Why do they do it? One agent explained it in this way: “There’s more than money in this work once you become involved in it. Once you start working on a case, you simply cannot walk away from it at the end of eight hours. You have a feeling of achievement when you do break up a marihuana ring or pick up someone who is dealing in heroin.”

Patrolling the Mexican border has been a major problem for Customs since the frontier days. In 1853 the Customs Mounted Patrol was organized, and horsemen rode across the deserts and through the mountains on lonely patrols to intercept cattle rustlers, smugglers and aliens trying to slip across the border. The mounted guard inevitably gave way to the automobile. But the horsemen rarely had more hair-raising experiences than those of the modern agents mounted on wheels. Such an incident occurred on August 7, 1960, in one of the wildest chases in the memory of Customs agents along the Texas-Mexico border.

It began when Agent Fred Rody, Jr., received a tip that an American was in the red-light district of Nuevo Laredo, trying to arrange for the purchase of 20 pounds of marihuana--obviously to be smuggled into the United States.

Further checking disclosed that the man was John Vaccaro, a known narcotics dealer working out of New Orleans. Vaccaro had been convicted of a marihuana violation in New Orleans and been placed under surveillance earlier in the year when he had visited Laredo. At that time agents had tried to intercept Vaccaro, suspected of smuggling marihuana, but in a wild chase on the highway Vaccaro pulled away from their car, even though their speedometer was registering 120 miles an hour. He also succeeded in eluding the police roadblocks which had been thrown up in front of him.

Agents kept a close watch on Vaccaro’s car after Rody received his report. Finally they saw someone approach his automobile and place a suitcase in the front seat of his car. Then they saw Vaccaro, his wife, and their fourteen-year-old daughter enter the car.

When Vaccaro drove down San Bernardo Avenue and then onto U.S. Highway 59, he was followed by agents in three automobiles. When the Vaccaro car slowed in heavy traffic, the agents bracketed his car with one car in front, one behind, and the other alongside. Agent T. S. Simpson leaned out of his car and shouted, “Stop! We are Customs agents.”

Vaccaro pulled his car to the side of the road and slowed down as though to stop. Suddenly he slammed his foot on the accelerator. His car leaped forward between two of the agents’ vehicles and roared off on the left side of the highway, forcing terrified drivers to swerve into the ditch to avoid a collision. The agents gunned their cars in pursuit.

Simpson and Rody watched the speed indicator on their automobile reach 110 miles an hour, but Vaccaro’s car still pulled away from them.