Last Dance, Last Chance

uneasy. Either he was going to see to it himself that Arnie was silenced, or perhaps he was planning to run.
    There was a third possibility. He needed a reason to get $10,000. Tony might have been planning to tell his mother it was bail money, knowing that she wouldn’t even consider paying a hit man.
     
    The next day, Sedita received a message from Pat Finnerty and Special Agent Rick Martinez of the Career Criminal Task Force. They had information that Pignataro might be making a phone call between one and two that afternoon: a call about Letovich. This call was not, however, a secret to law enforcement. Pignataro thought he knew the true identity of the person he was about to call, but he was mistaken. They had inside information about almost everything Tony was doing.
    But the investigators didn’t know yet whether he had already forwarded money to someone, or was about to send the money, to carry out his plan to have Arnie Letovich killed.
    They moved quickly. Frank Sedita called the Erie County Holding Center and asked that the phone banks be visually monitored during the vital time period. If someone witnessed Tony at that time making a call, it would be additional backup for what was about to come down.
    While Anthony believed he had finally contacted a hit man who would carry out his wishes to eliminate the most potent witness against him in his upcoming trial, he was strolling right into a trap. There was no way either the D.A.’s office or the task force was going to let Letovich get a hot shot of heroin or a dose of rat poison.
    Luis Perez was with Tony when he made the call to the hit man that Luis had found for him. What Tony didn’t know was that the man at the other end of the phone line wasn’t a would-be killer hungry for $10,000. He was an Erie County deputy sheriff who spoke fluent Spanish.
    Deputy Pedro Pabone listened as Tony Pignataro described Letovich. “He’s skinny—looks like he has AIDS, lots of tattoos…one’s a Heroin King tattoo.”
    Tony spoke excellent school-taught Spanish, but he was at a loss for slang phrases in that language. Pabone, who was fluent in both textbook Spanish and street slang, could tell that Pignataro was not speaking in his native tongue. When he stumbled in getting his thought across, Tony turned to someone with him—Perez—and asked him in English to translate the words in Spanish. He was trying to say “goatee” to describe Arnie’s beard, but he didn’t know how. Pedro Pabone could hear another male voice telling Tony what phrase to say. There were several instances when Pignataro spoke in English as he asked for help.
    Perez had been transferred to the same pod—Echo Northeast—where Pignataro was.
    Sedita and Finnerty went to the Career Criminal Task Forces offices to talk with Deputy Pabone and Special Agent Martinez. They handed over a copy of the taped conversation in which Pignataro spelled out what he wanted Pabone to do to Letovich.
    “There may be a delivery to the 200 block of Massachusetts,” Pabone said. If Tony did have someone who would arrange for the first $5,000 to be paid for the hit, that was where it was supposed to be delivered. Pat Finnerty contacted postal authorities and asked them to put a hold on mail sent to that address.
    They halfway expected Lena Pignataro to drive up and leave an envelope behind a bush or in the mailbox, and they put a surveillance team on the address to watch, but no one appeared.
    Frank Sedita talked to Arnie Letovich and casually brought up the subject of tattoos, and Arnie mentioned that he had a Heroin King symbol, although Sedita hadn’t mentioned the name. Looking at him, the D.A. saw that Arnie did have a Christ-like appearance—more so now that he was free of drugs. He had come from drug court that day, he said, and his public defender had told him that an investigator from Tony Pignataro’s defense team had been fishing around in his court file. Arnie said his current address was in that file as well as the information about the location of the drug rehab facility he’d just left.
    Letovich’s public defender had moved quickly to have his file sealed.
    Armed with the audiotape of Tony Pignataro talking to what he believed was a murderer for hire, Frank Sedita called for a meeting with Joel Daniels. After he told Daniels that he might want to rethink going to court because of what the Career Criminal Task Force and the D.A.’s office had found out, Tony’s lawyer looked at