Rod and Peter Meet with J. Edgar Hoover in His Office
By 1971, we learned that our cover was about to be compromised. Hoover pulled us off that assignment. We found ourselves back in Washington, once again being ushered into the FBI director’s office. Same as before, Hoover offered us coffee and invited us to sit down at the table with him.
“I’ve reviewed the evidence gathered from photographs, documents and copies, wiretaps, and bugs you planted. This, plus the information from your informants, will help us prosecute the heads of these families.
“Your association with Tony Scarfino, and the evidence you gathered on Salvatore ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano is enough to bring charges against him. As you are probably aware, he’s a hitman and underboss for the Gabinos.
“You made an excellent team, but I’m splitting you up now.”
Thorne and I exchanged glances. He asked Hoover, “What do you have in mind for us?”
Hoover looked directly at us. “As of now, you are both promoted to Special Agent status.” Then he turned to Thorne. “Word is Hoffa’s going to try to regain control of the Teamsters using the Mafia to do it. Nixon just pardoned the bastard. Agent Novak, I’m putting you on the case in Detroit with the team I have there. They’ll fill you in when you get there tomorrow.”
“Agent Forrester, I’m sending you to Morgantown, West Virginia, to look into the case of Joseph Laurita, a crusading county prosecutor who was seriously injured from a car bomb last year. There’s a $5000 reward for information, but so far no one’s come forward with anything useful. Tomorrow, you’ll meet your partner, Special Agent Judith Swanson. She’s trained in data retrieval, and after you’re up to speed, you’ll leave for Morgantown. There you’ll coordinate your investigation with state and local authorities.”
Hoover rose from his chair, and we did the same.
“Questions?”
“No, sir.”
“None, sir.”
“We’re done here,” he said.
We figured we’d come up in the world a notch or two when Hoover personally gave us our assignments. The promotion wasn’t bad, either.
“Good luck,” he said, and walked us to the door.
Both anticipation and regret ran through my mind. I looked forward to a new assignment but regretted that Thorne and I wouldn’t be working together anymore. We had bonded during our time together in Manhattan. I knew I’d miss him, but we had to go where our assignments took us.
I regretted that J. Edgar Hoover was being forced to resign. Regardless of the rumors, I would remember him as an honorable man. As an innovator in the fight against crime. And what he’d done for us was courageous. It was something that went unnoticed by the public, but it meant a lot to us. We were glad we had new identities and were leaving our pasts behind.
# # #
That night, Thorne and I got together for a farewell dinner at the familiar restaurant in the hotel where we stayed. It would be our last time together on assignment, so it was special for both of us. We had just received our appetizers when we saw a young man who looked gay to me being escorted by the maître d’ to a table near the entrance, where he sat alone.
I thought, I want to be alone tonight with Thorne, but we shouldn’t let that guy eat by himself.
Thorne interrupted my thoughts by tipping his glass in the guy’s direction and saying, “I think we should invite him to join us. What do you think?”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
We raised our wine glasses in a salute to the stranger. He saw our salute and raised his water glass, just as a man came in and walked up to him, his back blocking our view and interrupting our introductions.
The man was rather short and stocky. with a head of heavy black hair. He looked Greek perhaps, or at least Mediterranean. He wore a gray tweed jacket with brown leather elbow patches and a turtleneck, the type of outfit often worn by academics at that time.
The young man got up and followed him out the entrance. We never got a good look at the older guy’s face, something I came to regret.
After a lengthy dinner and two bottles of wine, we decided to get some air before retiring to my room for the night. We wanted to spend as much time together as we could, knowing that as long as we served in the FBI, we might never get back together again.
As we walked down the hotel steps to the sidewalk, we saw red and blue flashing lights and police activity in the next block. Curious, we decided to investigate. We were stopped at the end of an alley by the police, but after we showed them our credentials, they let us in.
Deep in the alley, we came upon a victim surrounded by police. The man was lying on his side, dead. The coroner had not yet arrived. From the deep red marks on his neck, it was obvious he had been garroted while submitting to sex with his pants and underwear down to his knees.
What was horrid was that a razor had deeply slashed his face, repeatedly. It was nothing but ragged, bloody flesh. Even his eyeballs were cut in half.
On closer examination, I saw that all his teeth had been jerked out and his fingertips cut off and missing. This was not a crime of passion. It had all the signs of a professional hit. The killer had made a clear attempt to hide the victim’s identity.
To our further horror, from his clothing we could tell it was the young man we had seen in the hotel. And his shoes—the style we were wearing instead of one that was common that year for gays—made us think he might have been FBI. We told the authorities what we knew and left before the coroner or any FBI investigators arrived.
When we got back to my room, we talked and drank another bottle of wine, but neither of us slept. What we witnessed in that alley was like what we’d witnessed in Manhattan. Was it gang-related? Or was this murder committed by a single perpetrator?
What kept going through my mind was, Will they find his name on the hotel roster? I hope so. I wanted to find out, but it wasn’t my case.
Morning came, and after breakfast together, we parted. Thorne took a cab to the airport, and I walked over to FBI headquarters to meet my new partner.
# # #
Special Agent Judith Swanson looked a bit older than I, but she was smartly dressed in a light blue blouse, a dark blue blazer, and a gray pleated skirt. She wore stockings and low-heeled business shoes. She looked up from the papers she’d been studying, spread out on the table in the workroom she was using. As I entered, she walked over to greet me.
“Hi, I’m Judy. Glad to have you on my team, Rod.”
Her granny glasses, restrained by a chain, dangled beneath her chin. They were the only thing that detracted from her obvious beauty and her liquid blue eyes. She noticed me looking at them.
Almost nervously, she blurted, “Oh, these reading glasses? I’m farsighted. I was a crack shot during training, so you don’t have to worry that I can’t hit a target.” We both laughed, and the ice was broken.
I stood beside her as she explained the documents she’d been studying. She showed me what we had on the Joseph Laurita case. The morning went quickly, and we decided to break for lunch at a nearby restaurant. By then, I felt comfortable enough to say to her, “Judy, I need to confide in you. There’s something on my mind.”
“I’m not good at personal situations. Especially my own.” A slight smile appeared on her
“It’s not personal. It could be grounds for an FBI investigation. Just not the one we’ve been assigned.”
“If it could involve an FBI investigation, I’m all ears. What do you have?”
I told her what happened the night before and that I had told the police I suspected the victim might be FBI by his clothing. And that the way he was killed looked professional, like a Mafia hit.
“That’s unsettling. Do you think the perpetrator saw you?”
“I don’t know that we saw him. We have our suspicions, though.”
“What do you want me to do?” Judy asked.
“Can you get whatever information came in last night or today on the case? If there is a case …”
“I can.” Judy looked thoughtful. “I’ve been trained and cleared to search our FBI information network. It was only recently installed.”
“Great. Will you give it a try?”
“Of course. There’s a resource room where we can get on a terminal. You can come with me. I’ll tell them I’m training you.”
“Isn’t that a breach of conduct?”
“Probably, but it’s a gray area. Besides, I can’t have you distracted while we work the case in Morgantown.” She smiled and winked at me.
We finished lunch and went directly to the resource room where the only brand-new Haseltine CRT terminal sat ready to use, in a room full of IBM Select typewriter modem terminals. She sat down and showed me how it worked. It was my first exposure to central files on a remote computer. It seemed like magic to have access to all this information without having to deal with people or paper.
We found the hotel roster had already been checked. The young man’s name was Chris Evans. As I’d suspected, he was an FBI Agent, just out of Quantico. He was in Washington to meet with Hoover, same as Thorne and me. The agency had tracked down the hospital where he’d been born and requested his footprints, which verified who he was.
I shuddered to think that someone would be targeting young gays like me. And worse, an FBI agent. I had to tell her.
“Judy, I believe he was gay. The way he was killed by garrote and the fact that his pants were down is evidence enough for me.” I paused, then decided to plunge ahead. “I’m gay, and I’m also FBI, so I believe you can see my concern.”
She paused a minute, thinking. She looked around the empty room, then spoke slowly. “I suspected immediately you were gay. That doesn’t bother me. You and I are in the minority here, so I’m glad you’re my partner. And what you just told me would scare the pants off me …” She hesitated a moment and gave a nervous laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that in a literal sense … but I’m beginning to understand why you’re so concerned.”
“I gave a fairly detailed description of the guy we saw, the one we think was the perpetrator. Maybe that’ll help them identify him. The first place to look would be through the Mafia files, based on how similar the killer’s M.O. is to other murders we know they did.”
“I hope they’re following up on that possibility, but it’s not our case.”
Judy turned off the terminal, and we returned our attention to the case we’d been assigned.
The next morning, we flew to Pittsburgh. We were based there because in Morgantown, there was no way to link to the FBI database. Plus, we had to go to Morgantown only occasionally, making a short commuter flight the best option. We were able to do most of our investigation by telephone; sometimes we flew to other cities like Fairmont and Parkersburg if we had to look at evidence there in person. It was too dangerous for us to stay in Morgantown.
To be continued…
Copyright 2024 © Ronald W. Hull
4/7/24
