Operation Greylord Read online

  Oh my God! He had just named the main lawyer I had been recruited for, Bob Silverman, the man suspected of single-handedly corrupting dozens of police officers, lawyers, and judges. Now at last I had something to report, and for the first time I wished I had been wearing a wire.

  “That man is a gentleman, I tell you,” Costello said in admiration. “Ever see Bob in action? Terry, that guy’s got class.”

  Was Costello dropping hints that he would help me share the action? My hopes slowly deflated as I learned that he had mentioned Silverman only in passing. But it was clear now that all I had to do was make him comfortable and let his avuncular impulse take over.

  “Everyone is dirty in Traffic Court, and I mean everyone,” he said over cocktails on another afternoon. “I can fix drunk driving cases there, but I got to go through somebody.” Since we both worked in criminal courts, there was no reason for Costello to tell me about Traffic Court in another part of the city—unless he was testing my reaction. I didn’t ask for names, and hoped I seemed like an apt pupil.

  As Jim explained the system, the cost of a DUI fix in the other building was usually three hundred dollars. Of that, the judge received two hundred. The rest went to the bagman for conveying the money and possibly to the arresting officer. With the seduction of corruption, a grateful client was bound to pass the attorney’s name on to friends. No one was bothered about letting motorists go free to drive drunk again. When a court system is too big, defendants aren’t real. Only money is real.

  Summer 1980

  Over that summer Costello kept lacing his funny anecdotes with hints of dishonesty. He studied my expression as I laughed with him despite my disgust. Slowly the process of behaving as if I had sticky fingers was washing away my natural emotions. But I still set myself back with sharp fixer Bruce Roth. He was one of those people who had left the prosecutor’s office because of all the money beckoning on the other side, and the FBI had told me to keep my eye on him. He lived in the Gold Coast neighborhood near the lake and hung out with flashy cocaine dealers.

  After Olson granted a motion to suppress evidence against one of his clients, Roth opened a briefcase smelling of new leather and I could see copies of arrest reports among his papers. The only way he could have obtained those reports, with the names and addresses of witnesses, was by subpoenaing them from me or bribing a police officer.

  “Where did you get those reports?” I blurted out.

  “I subpoenaed them,” he said, with a look that told me: You know damn well how I got them.

  “That’s—” Even though I stopped short of adding “a lie,” it was too late. He knew what was on my mind. What are you doing, I asked myself, you’re supposed to get friendly with this guy. So I changed my tone and said through a smile, “Hey, forget about it, Bruce, all right?”

  He snapped his briefcase shut and left. Maybe Costello thought I might be ready to join the 26th and California bribery club, but I was sure Roth regarded me as just another head-in-the-clouds ASA.

  Indeed, the fixers never trusted any of us. We assistant state’s attorneys were mere obstacles to work around, and in Olson’s court there was hardly any point in having us there. The process of law had become just a show for the witnesses. Time and again cases were thrown out because the arresting officer had been given twenty to fifty dollars to change his story. That’s cheap for perjury, but some of those officers were appearing a couple of times a week, week after week. Since “nickel bag” cases never made the news, no one kept track of how often police testimony contradicted their reports. Sometimes they wouldn’t tell a blatant lie—they would fudge halfway and Olson would fudge on the other half.

  There were some excellent defense attorneys working in the courts, and newcomers couldn’t tell the skillful ones from those who bought judges. Bob Silverman, for example, was able to strut with assurance because he supposedly would not touch a case unless he knew he could put the fix in.

  On a Friday that July, a veteran ASA called to say a friend of his was going to serve as the bar association attorney in the building. “Terry,” the veteran said, “make sure his clients don’t sit waiting all morning for their cases to be called, and give him a break or two.” In other words, I was to bend over backwards to dismiss the charges or offer probation. Well, why not? I had to start doing small favors before fixers would trust me.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said casually.

  The brand new defense attorney, let’s call him Sammy, was tall, tanned, and wore a tailored suit, but he knew no more about court procedures than a high school student. After Olson handled his final case, I returned to the small office for the three assistant prosecutors assigned to his courtroom. While one of us appeared on a matter, the others would get some of their own cases ready. Our desks were just places to throw reference books on, and we seldom sat at them. Since our window was virtually opaque with dirt, we used it only for ventilation and as a platform for the telephone.

  Defense attorneys would drop by looking for an ASA or to sit on the sill and use our phone for free. Only authorized court personnel were allowed inside, but letting them in was our way of staying friendly with the enemy, since many ASAs later crossed over. Police officers would come in before testifying to explain the arrest to us, and court officers hung around to discuss everything but work. So many people popped in that if you kept anything in a drawer it might not be there the next day. Yet we managed to handle up to a hundred and fifty cases a day.

  I was stacking files when Costello stepped into the long, narrow room and mooched a call so he could check on his phone messages, and before long Sammy poked his head through the doorway to ask one of his dumb questions.

  “Say, Terry,” he said, “do I need to file a demand-for-trial on the cases you dismissed for me?”

  “Yes,” I answered, a little tired, “it’s a matter of routine to keep my side from reinstating the case later.”

  Overhearing us, Costello put the phone to his chest and asked with an edge, “What’s up, Terry?”

  Sammy had annoyed me so much that I muttered, “I’ll talk to you later. I’m busy.”

  But as soon as Sammy left, I had an idea: why not push my relationship with Costello a little? “I’ve helped this guy all day, and now he comes in here and asks me for more.” I sounded angry. “He must have made six hundred dollars in bond returns from cases I helped him with, and do you know what? He didn’t do one thing for me. How do you like that?”

  “What are you helping that Mork for?” That is, Costello was wondering why I helped a stranger and not him. He pulled out his wallet and tried to put two fifty-dollar bills into my hand. “Here, take this hundred. For all the favors you done.”

  “Keep it, Jim.” I drew my hand away and stepped back as if trying to deny the moment. I was afraid someone might open the door and see him holding the money out. At the same time I told myself: You’re being stupid, this is what you were sent to Branch 57 for!

  “Come on, Terry. Take it.”

  “It’s not necessary, Jim, you’re a friend.” My hesitance might even have been in my favor, since Costello probably would have been suspicious if I were eager for a bribe.

  “Just put it in your pocket and shut up, will you?”

  Don’t do this, Jim, I thought, can’t you see I’m poison to you? I had stopped regarding him as a fixer weeks ago, he was now a friend, and yet my fingers tightened on the money.

  “Well, okay,” I said and pushed the bills into my pocket. “Have a good weekend.”

  He waved and went out the door.

  The rest of my filing seemed to take forever because my thoughts ping-ponged over whether to report Costello or find a way to return the two fifties. When I went down a short hall and turned to the block-long concourse linking the old courthouse with the new administration tower, a couple of prosecutors from the other Narcotics Court asked if I wanted to go with them to Jeans, their ritual to end another week in the arena. I went along, but my heart wasn’
t in it.

  In the 1980s, Jeans was the hub of the criminal court subculture. No one taking a peek inside the pale-yellow brick building would believe all the deals made there, or imagine the anguishing moments as defendants and relatives of victims sat at the tables waiting out deliberations.

  The restaurant was larger than it seemed from the front window because the inside took a partial turn, like a lazy “L.” The tables in the front third were covered with checkered oilcloth and the rest were bare, since the clientele liked things simple. Along the back wall were three tiers of liquor bottles kept only for decoration because the patrons seldom ordered anything more exotic than a martini. The bottles followed the long bar this way and that from the front counter to a tiny back passage where a warped back door needed a shoulder-push to close.

  Jeans never encouraged off-the-street customers. On weekdays, the front door was locked at three p.m. and regulars came in through the back, near the kitchen. White-haired lawyers often played cards at the front table, where the natural light was best. Waitresses addressed the police officers, court clerks, and bailiffs by their first name.

  Jeans was still open for street customers when we arrived, but it was already looking like a seedy private club. Some patrons were drinking beer straight from the bottle because they thought only sissies used glasses. As conversations floated around me, I kept feeling that these insiders could tell from my face or voice that I had just accepted dirty money.

  After ordering a beer and grilled cheese sandwich, the least greasy thing on the menu, I wondered how I could even think of turning Costello in. He was real to me and would help me with problems, while the agents at the Chicago FBI office were only telephone voices I heard once or twice a week. They were so morally strict they could not comprehend that people in any courthouse moved about in a world of gray.

  I kept trying to convince myself that since the hundred dollars I had taken wasn’t payment for a specific favor, it wasn’t really a bribe and so I would have nothing to report. As I dithered I kept glancing at the old-fashioned wooden phone booth just inside Jeans’ front door. It was the sort of place you would expect a Capone mobster to be shot in. After a few minutes, I told myself that Costello had stepped over the line without any encouragement from me, and this made it my duty to set the law in motion against him. If I couldn’t turn in a cheap hallway hustler, how could I think of going after Olson, Roth, Silverman, and others?

  Stepping into the booth, I pulled the hinged door shut so no one could overhear. An FBI switchboard operator told me that my contact agents, Lamar Jordan and Bob Farmer, weren’t around. So I dialed the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but Sklarsky wasn’t in, either. Maybe they were all busy in the field, or maybe they had come down with the disappearing itch known to afflict government employees on summertime “federal Fridays.” For a moment I thought no one really cared what was happening in the courts. But with my next quarter I reached Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Reidy.

  “Costello just gave me a hundred dollars,” I told him. “He said it was for past favors, but I haven’t done any for him yet. It’s my first bribe, if you can call it that.”

  “That’s great,” Reidy said, and set up a meeting for that afternoon across from the old Chicago Stadium, home of the Blackhawks and Bulls. I slipped out of the phone booth feeling excited for the first time since agreeing to go undercover.

  Waiting for me in a white Chevrolet outside the parking lot where the United Center now stands were Reidy, federal prosecutor Scott Lassar, and an FBI agent originally from Texas, James Hershly. I climbed in and slammed the door. Costello’s money had been in my pocket for nearly two hours, and I was eager to get rid of it.

  Hershly told me to date the two bills and mark them with “TH” for Terry Hake, then he jotted his own initials and recorded the serial numbers. Those bills and all the other bribes I eventually would receive went into a vault at FBI headquarters as evidence in future trials.

  With that out of the way, Reidy turned to me with an adrenaline gleam and said, “Let’s hear it, Terry, I want everything that happened between you and Costello, word for word.”

  “When he gave me the money, I told him I didn’t want it.”

  “Please repeat that,” Hershly murmured, while taking notes for the team.

  “I told Costello, ‘Jim, it’s not necessary, you’re a friend.’”

  They had an “is that all?” stare when I didn’t add anything. So for nearly an hour I went over with them everything that had happened and didn’t happen.

  “Well,” Reidy said finally, “at least they can never say you tried to entrap the guy. But in the future, Terry, just take what they give you. You have to go back and get him to acknowledge on tape that he gave you the money and that it was for something you did in court. Those favors he mentioned when he gave you the money could mean anything, you could have mowed his lawn or something. Take him to lunch on Monday and firm it up.”

  That meant wearing a wire for the first time, something I had been dreading.

  Reidy must have sensed I was feeling a little guilty about firming up evidence against a friend, and assured me before I left the car, “By the time we’re done, Terry, you’ll be glad we’re kicking them all out.”

  3

  WEARING A WIRE

  June 1980

  By now I had an apartment in Evanston, a generally nice suburb adjacent to Chicago. Living by myself gave me a little more freedom for my undercover role. Three months earlier, Jordan had shown me in his light Southern drawl how to thread a tape through the Swiss-made Nagra, a commonly used body recorder for federal investigations at the time. Forget high-tech spymaster images. Anyone could rent a Nagra from an electronics shop, and who knows how often this one had been used and abused?

  The Nagra’s advantages were that the tape ran for two and a half hours of reasonably good sound, even when the recording was made under clothes. The device was four inches wide, five and three-quarters inches long, and one inch thick. The microphone was no larger than a pencil eraser, but the wire was long enough to tape it practically anywhere.

  Standing in my flat at seven in the morning, I used a few strips of surgical tape to secure the mike vertically on my chest so my tie would cover the bump. Then there was the problem of hiding the three-thousand-dollar Nagra, which went into the pocket of an elastic band. No matter where you placed the Nagra it was too tight. Many undercover operatives kept it in the small of their back, but to me it seemed too easy for someone to put a hand on it.

  After a little experimenting, I decided to wear the recorder under my left arm. But checking the contours of my shirt in the bathroom mirror, I thought I might as well be wearing a sign reading “Watch out, mole!” Off went the shirt and I tried again, this time with a T-shirt underneath. I felt a little silly as I moved this way and that in front of the mirror, but at last I became convinced the bulge would go unnoticed—as long as no one suspected me.

  My next worry was about the machine itself. I had installed two new AA batteries, drawn the recording tape along its path, and turned the reel until the tape was taut. But there was no way to test whether I had threaded it correctly because the device had no playback. As I started my car, I thought about the way the tape had kept sliding under my nervous fingers and wondered what would happen if I gave the FBI more than two hours of blank tape? Well, it was too late now.

  Thirty-five minutes later I was entering the courthouse with the peculiar feeling that everyone was staring at my armpit. Finding Jim Costello hustling clients in the stubby first-floor corridor as usual, and hoping I sounded like a prosecutor cooperating with fixers, I suggested, “How about we meet at the cafeteria for lunch?”

  Costello might have talked like a high school dropout, but he was sharp in the cynical way ex-policemen often are. Suppose his delay in answering meant he could recognize my pose for what it was? Even if nothing happened to me or my family, that might turn Operation Greylord into a fiasco.

  “Yeah, T
erry,” Costello said. “I’d like that. I’ll see you up there.”

  After a court recess, I went through the annex corridor and rode up an elevator to the second-floor cafeteria. The large room resembled a glass and stainless steel waiting area, with just a soft background of voices even at busy times and its wide windows overlooking the gloomy Cook County Jail complex.

  Costello and I moved from the stack of plastic trays over to the grill line. We both ordered cheeseburgers and fries. I switched on the Nagra as sweat crawled down my back. We took a seat and the always-talkative Costello hardly said a word. Since I had invited him, he must have been waiting for me to explain why.

  “Hey, Jim,” I said, “thanks for the hundred. Really, it came in handy over the weekend.”

  “Did you take your girlfriend out?”

  “We had a nice dinner and went to a movie,” I lied. “Thanks again.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Costello said.

  “And for the lunches you buy me.”

  He made an “it’s nothing” gesture, and the conversation died.

  Hoping he could not sense my apprehension, I hinted that I was curious about the mechanics of payoffs. Since this was Costello’s favorite subject, he soon recalled his first days in the building, when he learned he could buy clients by getting their names from court clerks and deputy sheriffs.

  “Know how I found out? I went back and gave the guy ten bucks, like a tip. ‘What’s this?’ he said, like I insulted him. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said, ‘it’s a third of the bond around here.’”