Best American Crime Writing 2006 - Mark Bowden [112]
AS THE CASE MOVES TO TRIAL, the task force is still fighting. Only, now they’re battling among themselves—for the spoils.
“True crime,” as the genre is called by eager publishers and producers, is truly big business. Once the story broke—cops accused of murder! cold-blooded mafiosi! intrepid investigators!—phones started ringing.
In fact, news of the case leaked even before the indictment was announced. CBS’s 60 Minutes, according to people close to the investigation, planned to be in Las Vegas to witness the arrests. It didn’t take a furious Mark Feldman, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, long to react. First, he made it clear that any reporters and cameramen on the scene could be prosecuted for impeding a federal investigation. Then, convinced that someone in the Brooklyn D.A.’s office had begun whispering to a CBS producer in an attempt to grab the glory and the rich deal that would inevitably follow, he called up Joe Ponzi. Your men are off the case, Feldman announced.
But it was too late. The gold rush was on. Tommy Dades, having retired from the D.A.’s office, scored first. After a busy week of meetings, Dades wound up cutting a lucrative deal with Warner Bros. for a potential movie. He talked to various publishers and is presently firming up a book deal. At least one member of the Brooklyn D.A.’s office has been, through his agent, talking to publishers and movie people but will not sign anything until given permission to do so. “How can Joe Hynes, the Brooklyn D.A., allow this?” demanded Arnold Kriss, one of the candidates running against Hynes in this year’s primary. “The case hasn’t gone to trial and his man is out selling the story.” Through a spokesperson, Joe Hynes declined to comment.
William Oldham, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, signed a book deal with Scribner, and as a result is said to have been asked to retire. (“Call my editor, and if he says it’s okay, I’ll speak with you,” he told Vanity Fair when reached at his federal office shortly before being forced out. In the end, neither Oldham nor his editor would comment.)
The talented veteran Mob author and screenwriter Nick Pileggi is doing a script “inspired” by the case for Columbia Pictures. Jimmy Breslin, the grand old man of tough-guy prose, is writing a treatise on the modern Mafia which focuses on the alleged killer cops for HarperCollins’s literary imprint Ecco. Even Eppolito, although behind bars, was finally getting interest in the screen rights to his book. Universal played with the idea of optioning Mafia Cop, but then dropped it as other studio deals fell into place. And the deal-making is not done. Studios and publishers continue to “take meetings” with investigators who worked on the case. (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that the writers of this article have also been approached and done a bit of zealous approaching.)
Big cases also attract big lawyers. Both of the defendants are represented by attorneys who know how to put on a show and clearly enjoy doing it. Bruce Cutler, who came to fame with his bombastic, in-the-government’s-face defense work for John Gotti, is representing Eppolito. Caracappa’s case will be argued by Ed Hayes, a self-invented package of street smarts, mercurial temper, and flash tailoring. Cutler and Hayes are the sort of canny, insider lawyers who play not simply to the judge and jury but also to the press gallery.
Yet, as a result of the wads of movie and book money some of the investigators have stuffed into their pockets, Cutler and Hayes will have more to work with than they had previously anticipated. “All of a sudden these cops and prosecutors get Kaplan to talk and now they’re making money off of it,” Hayes gripes. “It sure seems to me like they had a real vested interest in getting him to say exactly what they want him to—so they can run off to Hollywood. Sure, cops and prosecutors sell their books. But never before the trial. These guys are potential witnesses. Now what’s a jury going to think of them and their so-called objectivity?”
And that is not the only