Authors: David Ellis
Unidentified.
That confirmed Shelly’s assumption that the F.B.I. found Alex when they were looking at Miroballi. They knew about Miroballi before Alex. They caught her client because of the cop, in other words, not the other way around.
The report continued. The federal agents followed Miroballi afterward as he drove in his vehicle to his residence on the city’s south side. The last of the photographs in this sequence showed Miroballi’s car parked on the driveway, up against a garage that was occupied in part by a second car and in part by assorted construction materials, a vanity sink lying on its side, a garden hose wound up and hanging on the wall.
She braced herself as she considered Raymond Miroballi, family man. To his children he was probably a hero, a man who helped others, fought the bad guys. She imagined his wife, a woman she didn’t know, presumably satisfied with her husband’s stable income and their young children, who dreamed of more for them than she ever had, now wondering about the irreparable damage to their lives, lives without a father.
Alex was next followed by the federal agents after a rather suspicious meeting with a police officer under surveillance. Alex was shown walking, getting on a bus, leaving the bus and walking again, pulling up the collar on his black coat, finally going into his home.
A kid, really, with no idea that he was being watched by agents of the federal government. A kid who couldn’t see beyond the next week, the extra cash for his daughter. She looked at Alex in the pictures helplessly, begging him to turn back, quit the drug business, don’t let the government catch you and get yourself in a position that you have to defend yourself on the streets, in an alley—
“They skunked me pretty good,” Alex conceded with a humorless laugh. He had been incarcerated for six weeks and the effects were clear. His neck and face were thinner, the veins in his arms more prominent. His eyes were perpetually rimmed in
redness, a dark shade circled them. His hair was flat, looked greasier than before. His posture was less confident, an ever-present slope to his shoulders. They were slowly breaking him.
She imagined Alex—her son, yes, her son—she imagined her son in the penitentiary, maximum security, an unfortunately handsome youth. He’d join a gang inside probably, for protection, assuming a white kid had a gang to join; she wasn’t familiar with the intricacies of prison affiliations. He’d probably enter into the drug trade in prison, maybe even start taking them himself. He would get hurt and hurt others. He would boast about how he killed a cop, a badge of pride inside.
She looked away for a moment, as if Alex could read her thoughts. He wouldn’t stand a chance inside, not for the long haul.
“So you two met again a week later,” she said, going to the next set of photographs. Precisely a week after the first meeting, on Monday, December 1, 2003, federal agents captured Alex and Miroballi meeting again, at the same time and place—Abbott Park. Again, Miroballi arrived first and sat at the bench. Again, he patted Alex down when he walked up. Again, the exchange between the two seemed heated. The conversation took less than twenty minutes, ending with the passing of another envelope.
“November twenty-fourth and December first,” said Shelly. “Why two meetings within a week?”
“I told him I’d think about the five hundred. So we hooked up again. He wanted to know what I decided.”
“And?”
“I told him okay. Five hundred.”
“Pretty steep,” Shelly estimated.
“You are correct about that.”
“What else did Miroballi do or say?”
“He was all nervous. He was like, ‘You keeping your mouth shut about this? You’re not playing games with me, are you, boy?’ Stuff like that.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I wasn’t saying a word to anyone. I mean, I didn’t even know about the F.B.I. at that point.”
The perfect segue. The next set of photographs showed Mr.
Alex Baniewicz walking through an alley behind his home, to his car parked at a spot next to a stand-alone garage. The date, inscribed on the back, was Friday, November 28, 2003. Alex opening the door of his car, apparently reaching under the cushion in the backseat, surreptitiously stuffing something into his jacket, and then leaving the alley for the bus.
“That was after your first meeting with Miroballi,” she said. “Imagine their excitement.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t bust me then.”
“They wanted to see where you’d go. They weren’t done yet.”
The next set of photos showed the same thing, more or less. Alex removing packets of cocaine from the car, but this time not making it out of the alley. A special agent of the F.B.I. stopping Alex covertly. Escorting Alex to a car. This was the following Friday, December 5, 2003.
“That was after your second meet with Miroballi,” Shelly said.
“
That’s
when they were done,” he said without enthusiasm. He put a hand to his face. He’d probably replayed these events hundreds of times in his head, but it was another thing to see them. “They got me in a room. They did a real number on me, three or four of them. They said I was looking at ten years, minimum. They said since I took the drugs to school”—he worked part-time after school three days a week, including Friday—“that it would triple my sentence.”
Shelly winced. She wasn’t intimately familiar with federal drug laws. The state’s drug law had an enhancement for selling drugs within a certain promixity to a school. No doubt, the federal one did too, but ten years’ minimum? They were blowing smoke. And that was permissible. Cops and federal agents could deceive a witness repeatedly as long as they respected
Miranda
. And in this context, the feds hadn’t even arrested Alex, much less attempted to use his statements at trial, so they had virtually no restriction on what they could do.
“I was pissing in my pants, Shelly. I mean, they know how to scare. They had me eating out of their hand.”
“It wasn’t an ideal situation,” she acknowledged. The first words of consolation she’d ever given him when it came to drugs.
“I told them I’d help them catch Miro.”
“So that was the first week of December.” She flipped the final file of photographs toward Alex and got out of her seat. She was never good at sitting for too long. Her mind worked better when she was moving.
The final sequence showed Alex Baniewicz and Raymond Miroballi arriving separately—Miroballi first—at a diner on the corner of Forty-third and Green. The date was January 21, 2004. The photographer captured each of them entering the establishment and then sitting in a corner booth. The cameraman had zoomed in through the window and captured some good detail. Miroballi, at one point, jabbing his finger at Alex. At another point, slamming his hand on the table. “The last time I met with him,” said Alex, “they put us at the corner table.”
“They,” Shelly repeated. “The F.B.I.? What do you mean, they ‘put’ you there?”
“They told me that’s probably where Miroballi would be sitting.”
Shelly looked again at the photographs. The diner was crowded. The F.B.I. probably had people populating some of the tables, and probably spoke covertly with the restaurant owner to keep the corner booth open. Easier to photograph, and more likely to give Miroballi the feeling that he was in a secure spot.
“How’d that meeting go?” she asked.
“I told him that five hundred a month was no good. I said two hundred—the original deal—had to be the plan.”
“Why, Alex?” This took place after the F.B.I. had flipped Alex. Why would he play tough guy?
“I figured he was suspicious,” he answered. “If I walked in there with a big smile on my face and five hundred in my hand, he’d know. So I acted like we were still negotiating. Reverse psychology.” He waved a hand, as if the notion had been silly. Or at least unsuccessful.
“And Miroballi went along with that?”
“He was a little too eager to please. He couldn’t have cared less about money. He just wanted to know if I was keeping my mouth shut. I’m telling you, Shelly. This guy was on to me. Either he knew or he suspected.”
“Okay.” She looked at the photographs. “So between December
first and January twenty-first, no contact?” she asked. “Nothing for seven weeks?”
“Right.” Alex closed the file. “About seven weeks there, nothing. I see this guy probably twice a month every month, and then he disappears. You tell me, Shelly. Don’t you think this guy had figured out something was wrong?”
Alex was making sense. She had been relieved to learn that the evidence obtained from the U.S. Attorney’s office corroborated his story. It didn’t prove much of anything for the purposes of the trial, but it was a start.
“I imagine those must have been seven long weeks for you,” she said. “You’ve got federal agents waiting for you to lead them to Miroballi, and suddenly he takes a powder.”
Alex shook his head. “You’d think they would know this stuff better than anyone. It’s not like I just see Miro on the street and toss the money in the air to him. It was secretive. And he was the one setting things up, not me.”
“Miroballi dictated the time and place of meetings.”
“Yeah. Sure. But they were getting pretty agitated. They were asking, ‘Why hasn’t he called?’ ‘Where’s Miro?’ ‘How come he’s all of sudden disappearing?’” Alex’s face colored. “They thought I told him.”
Shelly stopped her pacing. “They thought you tipped off Miroballi about the feds?”
Alex’s head inclined.
It made sense now. The comments from the prosecutor Jerod Romero, from Special Agent Peters, about Alex’s reliability.
Your client says a lot of things. Some may be true, a lot of them probably aren’t.
And Shelly had always been a little surprised at their unwillingness to stand behind one of their witnesses.
“The feds thought you double-crossed them,” she said.
“I guess.”
“Did you, Alex?”
“Of course not. Shelly, the guy’s no dummy. You don’t think he’s on the look-out? I can’t tell you how, but he had figured it out.”
Shelly sat down again, choosing the chair at the opposite end of the table. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Alex.”
“But you need proof.”
“Did you have any sense of whom Miroballi was working with? Other cops on the take?”
He shook his head slowly. “If he had partners in this, I don’t know.”
“What about his official partner?” she asked. “Sanchez?”
“Don’t know anything about him. My guess was always that Miro was a lone ranger.”
“That just doesn’t work, though. The feds are looking at a ring, right? Not a solo practitioner.”
Alex framed his hands. “It’s not like the feds told me what was going on. But I always had the sense that they couldn’t figure out how Miro fit in with everyone else. Like he didn’t make sense or something.”
“Who were you talking to? Peters?” Special Agent Donovan Peters was the only agent she had spoken with.
“Peters and this other guy. A younger guy. Rafey.”
“Rafey.” She went to her notepad.
“Rafael. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his real name. Young guy. Midtwenties, probably. He was undercover. He was on the street as a junkie. Sounds like he was buying crack.”
Crack. A crack cocaine ring was more likely than a powder cocaine ring, in this day, especially if the feds were involved. Another reason why Miroballi didn’t make sense.
“Alex, I have to cut to the chase with you. We haven’t really covered it.” She settled her hands and took a moment. “It’s my policy to gather the evidence as best I can before asking you outright. I think we’re at that stage now. We’ve pleaded self-defense but I can withdraw that. It’s still an open field. But I have to tell you, there’s not a whole lot of suspects here. It was close to eight in the evening when this went down, and the streets were empty.”
“Nobody was around.”
“They haven’t found the gun and they don’t have hard evidence that you even fired a gun that night. All of that is good. I’d be happy to point the finger at someone else but—”
“There’s no one else to point at.” He shrugged. “It was just him and me in that alley.”
She ran her hands over the table and did not look at him. “Then we need to talk about it.”
“It’s like I’ve told you. It’s him and me. He reaches for his weapon and I beat him to it.”
“Did you have drugs on you?”
“No, ma’am.” He opened his hands. “The feds had my drugs.”
“You could have gotten more.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Where was your gun?”
“In my jacket pocket.” He made the motion of reaching into a jacket and removing a gun. “I pulled it out and shot him. If I didn’t, he would’ve shot me.”
“Tell me why you thought that.”
Alex’s eyes drifted off. “Why? Because there was no other reason for him to be all over me like that. Why was he coming after me? To talk? Why reach for his gun? To show it to me? Why did his partner stay behind? The guy was back in his car. Why?” Alex adjusted himself in the chair. “He was going to kill me and claim that I was going to kill him. He had the whole thing set up. He just didn’t expect me to
really
have a gun.”
“So he brought the coke,” she said. “And he brought that other gun that was found.”
“Part of the plan.”
“He needs the other gun to fire it, after the fact.” She nodded. “He’ll kill you, then go over to you, put the gun in your hand and fire it, put a bullet into the wall, and then claim that you fired first.”
“And put the cocaine in my pocket to give him the excuse for coming after me.”
Shelly held her breath a moment, then gave a decisive nod. “That’s our case,” she said. “We just need to find some corroboration.”
“Right.”
“And what about the gun?” she asked. “Where is it?”
“I dumped it.” Alex chewed on a lip. “They haven’t found it, huh?”
“No,” she said. “Will they?”
He shrugged. “I threw it in a garbage bin a ways away.”
“Which one?”
He shrugged. “I was running and I saw it. Somewhere in the
direction I was running. If they can’t find it, that’s their problem.”
Not for long,
she thought. They would have it any day now.