108. The Business

Izzy’s brother Alfred and his friends are essentially playing a game of chess with criminal opponents. Izzy says that in “the business” those who work for the government are organized into two teams … this being a simplistic version, of course. One team is tactical and they make arrests and bring the bad guys to trial. The other team is strategic. This is the group to which Alfred belongs. It reviews information from tactical cases and puts in play various strategies to reduce the effect the bad guys have on the rest of us.

One of the strategies is to simply remove the criminal from the streets for a few weeks and place him in an isolated location where he can’t communicate with his bosses or minions. The subject may be arrested on suspicion of a crime or …. more often … he's simply asked to cooperate and go away to a quiet place so he can be interviewed. Not interrogated, but interviewed. No high pressure or good cop/bad cop routine. Just a wide ranging discussion where the criminal is given a chance to tell how important he is and the cop smiles and takes notes. Often, the criminal will be happy to accept such an invitation, especially if he is in some kind of trouble in his organization. There is seldom a criminal who is smart enough to realize that during extensive interviews he will somehow manage to compromise himself. And when his interview is sifted in with the many others conducted by Alfred’s co-workers, the resulting picture comes together like a jig-saw puzzle revealing its subject. This more complete view of the criminal world is fed back to the tactical team for action.

Julio was carefully picked for his “vacation” in the Catskills. He was high enough in his band of bad guys to have access to valuable information. Also, he was not very smart and he appeared very boastful. He would probably be dead within the year, a victim of those who hired him.

Julio's interviews began a day or two after his arrival at OLWS, when Alfred returned and asked if there was a private office where he could talk to Julio “for a few hours.” I was glad to see Alfred back so soon. By that time new things to worry about had occurred to me and I wanted some answers.

“Should we worry about Julio trying to escape?” I asked Alfred.

“Escape? He’s on vacation,” said Alfred, “why would he want to leave this marvelous place?”

I could not detect even a hint of sarcasm on his face.

“He’s not going anywhere,” said Alfred. “He’s from Brooklyn and he’s more afraid of the bears in the woods than anything else."

“There’s what we call the Night Chapel," I said. "It's a room at the end of the attic. It’s heated and has a large stained glass window. There is a  pew and a small temporary altar and I put a desk and a couple of chairs in there last week. I'm going to use it as an office and you're welcome to use it when you're here. It should have everything you'll need except those things you use to hang your prisoners on the walls,” I said with a smirk.

“No problem, Brother Jesse,” he said, “I’ve got a portable set in the car.”