The Coffey Files (18 page)

Coffey had maintained a sophisticated relationship with the press in New York. He knew that by calling the reporter he would confirm the story, but he also understood he would be giving the reporter enough to do his follow-up story with out causing any kind of pressure that might hinder the security setup.

Sunday morning, Vitrano was on the phone with Coffey before Frazier was even awake. There had been more threats. A local radio station received an anonymous call threatening that Frazier would be dead an hour before fight time. The Garden was getting bomb threats. Vitrano sent more detectives up to Coffey's suite.

A little after ten that morning, two limousines arrived at the Pierre to take the Frazier group downtown to Madison Square Garden for the weigh-in. Surrounded by detectives prepared to put themselves between him and an assassin, Frazier left the hotel for the first time in two days. The limos drove right into the arena, stopping about 100 feet from the weigh-in scales.

Now the champ and his opponent were surrounded by people: New York State Boxing Commission officials, the entourages from both fight camps, and of course the press. Coffey's men stood in a circle around their fighter except for the moments he was on the scale and getting his blood pressure and other cursory physical checks.

When they returned to the hotel, Frazier slept while the cops played cards and drank much of the scotch that seemed in endless supply.

Monday, fight day, tension grew among Coffey and his men. The assassins were running out of time to strike. The detectives spent the day pacing the room and drinking coffee, Frazier remained the calmest in the group. At 7:30
P.M.
, with three hours to go before round one, the Frazier group left the hotel and drove directly into Madison Square Garden. By this time the arena was crawling with uniformed cops and detectives, including more from Hogan's office and off-duty detectives from dozens of different NYPD units.

Detective Toby Fennell, Frank Hogan's personal bodyguard, was assigned to conduct a security sweep of Frazier's dressing room. Inch by inch he went over the room, which contained only two lockers and the training table. He was bothered by the fact that the two water bottles Frazier would use in the ring were already filled, three hours before the fight. Fennell dumped the contents into the sink, washed the bottles and personally refilled them. He kept them in his own hands until moments before the opening bell.

After Fennell pronounced the room safe, Coffey ordered all the cops to stand by the door while Frazier changed into his working clothes. “I could not believe it. We were as nervous as could be, but after he put on his boxing trunks and shoes, Frazier actually took a nap. He was the coolest man I ever met.”

Later a fight commission doctor came into the dressing room to give Frazier a short prefight physical. The doctor turned out to be a bigger threat to the fight than the assassins in the shadows. Frazier had always suffered from high blood pressure, but that evening it was going through the roof.

“We were in the dressing room and the doctor was telling Durham that his man's blood pressure was way too high to allow him to fight. Frazier was sitting on the training table staring straight ahead, as intense as he had been the past four days. Durham bit on his cigar, then motioned the doctor into the shower area,” Coffey remembers. “In less than a minute they came out with big smiles on their faces and the doctor told Frazier he would approve the medical forms. Behind closed doors Durham convinced him to do the right thing.”

At 9:30
P.M.
Durham told the fighter to finish dressing. In minutes Coffey and the others would have to lead him through the screaming crowd, down to the ring. Coffey remembers discussing the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald with the security team. “I wanted to remind them of how easily a gunman could slip through a crowd. If anything went wrong, even if something was thrown at us, I was prepared to cancel the fight—to tell the Garden to have them fight in the dressing room and I, Detective Third Grade Joe Coffey, would tell the world who won.”

Then it was time. Coffey, Mullins, Trapani, Fennell, and Detective Eddie Wright, a veteran investigator of sports fixing and gambling, surrounded Frazier and Durham. Sparring partners, trainers, and Aquafreda and his Garden security formed an outer perimeter and in a wedge formation pressed through the packed arena and into the ring. High above them cops patrolled for snipers and all around detectives stared into the crowd, alert to any threatening gesture.

“When we got to the ring, I wished him luck and Frazier simply whispered, ‘Thanks, man.' I thought that if he lost I would cry. Now I could only hope that if there was a sniper, he would miss,” Coffey reflects.

For the next hour, the only threat Joe Frazier had to worry about was Muhammad Ali, and he handled that like the true champion he was. In one of the greatest heavyweight fights of all time, Frazier and Ali traded blow after blow, both proving they were worthy of a championship belt. Eventually, Frazier wore Ali down. In the eleventh round he decked him, breaking his jaw. And by the end of the fight Coffey and the others were sure their man had won.

The judges agreed. As soon as the decision was announced, the security team led Frazier away from the ring. The actor Burt Lancaster, working as a fight commentator that night, pushed his microphone in Frazier's face only to be knocked aside by a detective.

Frazier at this time was barely able to walk. He had taken a tremendous beating from Ali and he had fought the fifteen rounds with blood pressure at the bursting point. Coffey noticed a glaze in his eyes and, despite the roaring crowd, heard him say he didn't think he could make it back to the dressing room.

Without hesitation Coffey wrapped his arms around the sweat-soaked fighter and supported him as they pushed their way back to the dressing room. Halfway up the aisle, from the middle of the crowd, New York Mayor John Lindsay was pushing his way towards the champ to get his picture taken with the biggest name in sports. But in the crush Lindsay slipped and fell to the ground. That's when Eddie Wright's wallet, containing his badge and police identification card, was stolen. As Wright bent over to help the mayor, he felt a hand on his hip. But there was nothing he could do about it. By the time he got up, the pickpocket was gone. Eventually Wright was fined thirty days' pay for losing his badge.

Finally in the dressing room, Coffey deposited the exhausted fighter on the dressing table. Durham and his corner team worked over him, getting him out of the trunks, sponging him down, and putting on a sweat suit.

Coffey, the roar of the crowd still ringing in his ears, was flushed and breathing hard. “Frazier was in agony. I've been around presidents and actors and ballplayers, but I never saw anyone as tough or professional as Joe Frazier—he was remarkable that evening.”

Technically the job was completed. Joe Frazier had made it through the fight alive, the only damage being done by Ali. But by this time the security force had grown so fond of Frazier that they all agreed to stay on until he was safely tucked away in bed.

Coffey had to practically carry the fighter back to the Pierre, and he personally laid him down on his bed in the suite. Frazier's family was gathered around him now, and the detectives began to slip quietly out of the bedroom.

As Coffey was about to close the door behind him, Frazier lifted his head from his pillow and called the big Irish cop to his side. “Joe, don't let your guys go yet. I've got some gifts for them,” he said, his voice barely audible.

Coffey tried to tell him those things could wait until he felt better, but the heavyweight champion of the world insisted. Joe stayed as Durham brought over a box of souvenirs and Frazier, in agony, autographed pictures, scorecards, caps, and T-shirts for the DA's men. For Coffey he autographed a special plate, which was made to commemorate the fight, and a fight brochure. He wrote: “To Pat Coffey, you have a good man … don't forget it.”

When he finished he practically passed out.

The next day, the plate and the brochure turned up at the Northside School, where little Joe Coffey was able to prove what his father had done.

The next time Frazier fought Ali at Madison Square Garden was January 28, 1974. Neither man was champion and there were no death threats. Joe Coffey and his partners handled the security as a moonlighting job for $500 a day.

As for Ruby Stein and Jiggs Forlano, the wiretap indicated they had lost heavy money on Ali. Eventually both were convicted of loan-sharking.

V

TERROR

Although no terrorist attack was ever carried out against Joe Frazier, it was clear that elements existed in the United States at that time that would find some motive for murder. Later in his career Joe Coffey came face to face with such factions.

Joe reported to uniform patrol in East Harlem's 25th Precinct in March 1973. He was quickly placed in the mix with the other precinct sergeants and charged with supervising the precinct's patrol officers, both on foot and in the worn-out green and white RMPs—radio motor patrol units.

Uniform patrol was the front line of police work. When the public thought of a police officer, the picture that most often came to their mind was of a tall Irish-looking young man in a deep blue, heavy woolen uniform with an uncomfortable-looking high collar. On the man's chest would be a gleaming silver badge in the shape of a shield. Joe Coffey fit that picture to a T, except that his badge was gold because of his rank and he had three light blue stripes on his arm.

It wasn't his first assignment in uniform. Directly out of the Police Academy, Joe was selected for duty in the elite Tactical Patrol Force (TPF). That was a unit of cops six feet tall or taller who were used as a reserve force for duty in especially troubled areas. During the campus disruptions of the sixties the TPF developed a reputation among students as storm troopers whose only mission was to bust the skulls of young people exercising their constitutional rights. It was while serving in the TPF that Coffey first met the future chief of detectives who would have a profound effect on his career, James Sullivan.

But uniform work was not the kind of police work he wanted to do. He looked at it as a necessary evil, a short, detour from his upward path in the detective division. Each day as he buttoned the heavy winter blouse, before beginning his tour through one of the toughest neighborhoods in the city, he reminded himself of Frank Hogan's promise. He expected to spend only the minimum amount of time—six months—in the two-five before being transferred back to the Detective Division as a detective sergeant in the office of Queens District Attorney Thomas Mackell. The threats of William Aronwald, the federal prosecutor whom Joe had accused of foot-dragging in the Vatican case, to block his path to promotion did not enter his mind.

Shortly after he arrived in East Harlem similar threats came from another direction. One afternoon the radio in Coffey's patrol car barked an order for him to return to the station house. When he got there he found a lieutenant and a sergeant from the Internal Affairs Division—the unit that investigates corrupt cops—waiting to speak to him.

Sitting in the precinct commander's office, the two men from “downtown” offered Coffey the opportunity to join their elite unit. They explained that very few cops are given the chance to perform such important work. They said service in IAD was a quick route to promotion. If he accepted the offer he would be back in plainclothes fast. A a detective of his proven ability and honesty could make an outstanding reputation for himself.

Joe knew what kind of work Internal Affairs did. He knew it was essential to the running of a clean department. But it was not what he wanted to do.

“Look, Lieutenant,” Coffey replied after the two men finished their recruiting pitch, “I already have a good reputation in the department. And I have a lot of friends. I couldn't do the job. I have to look at myself in the mirror when I shave every morning. Besides, I'm going back to the Detective Division shortly anyway.”

The two IAD men were not accustomed to uniform cops working in dangerous precincts refusing their offer of a headquarters job with a high-profile career path.

“If you don't accept our offer you'll spend at least two years in that blue suit you're wearing,” the lieutenant said.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Coffey responded, bringing the interview to a halt. He stood and carefully placed his cap with the gold braid on his head as he left the two gumshoes sitting in the precinct commander's office.

Coffey was proud of turning down the opportunity to get back to detective work by spying on his fellow cops. But when six months came and passed without a change in assignment, he began to wonder if he wasn't making too many enemies. Undoubtably the IAD guys had the clout to hold him back. There was also Aronwald, and when Queens DA Tom Mackell, who had indicated he would welcome Coffey, was indicted for corruption, the chance for transfer began to grow slimmer. A short time later Frank Hogan died of cancer, and Coffey saw his return to the Detective Division passing away.

While he waited, he had no choice but to keep pestering influential friends in the department and doing his duty as a patrol supervisor. That duty almost got him killed one cold night in January 1974.

It was a subfreezing morning. Joe was working the midnight to 8:00
A.M.
shift. He and police officer Ralph Fico, who was driving, had been enjoying their brand-new patrol car. It was a 1974 Plymouth painted in the department's new colors, blue and white. Not only was it a pleasure to get genuine acceleration when the gas pedal was stepped on, but the car did not yet have the musty odor caused by constant use, shuttling of prisoners, and occasional duty as an ambulance when a victim did not have the time to wait for the paramedics. Best of all, the heater worked.

At a little after 3:00
A.M.
Coffey ordered Fico to begin “coop” patrol. One of the duties of a patrol supervisor is to check out the nooks and crannies of the precinct where tired cops might go to catch a nap when they were supposed to be cruising their sectors.