The Coffey Files by Jerry; Joseph; Schmetterer Coffey

a dogged, tough, incorruptible lawman. Though on the force for only eight years, he already had a reputation as a cop who would sink his teeth into a case and not loosen his grip until the bad guy was behind bars. It was a reputation not unlike Hogan’s, and Coffey was proud to be thought of in the same vein.
    Hogan was the undisputed czar of the New York State Criminal Justice System. While his authority covered only New York County, the borough of Manhattan, his reputation and record of success had earned him national stature. Throughout the world of law enforcement he was known affectionately as “Mr. DA.”
    It was Hogan who plucked Police Officer Coffey from the ranks of the elite Tactical Patrol Force for duty in his detective team and took a fatherly interest in the young cop, guiding his career into the detective ranks.
    Technically detectives assigned to work in the district attorney’s office in each of the five boroughs were New York Police Department cops and were under the command of the chief of detectives. But in practice the DA called the shots, and in Hogan’s case his clout outweighed the police commissioner’s.
    Cops call higher-ranking officials who help their careers “rabbis.” A New York City cop could have no greater “rabbi” than Frank Hogan.
    And that’s why Joe Coffey was so scared. He was about to lie to “Mr. DA,” about to gamble with his career because he had a hunch that had to be pursued.
    Vitrano, the textbook image of a detective supervisor, did most of the talking. He and Coffey had agreed to tell Hogan a totally fabricated story in order to convince the district attorney to use his influence to get the police commissioner to agree to let Coffey follow a Mafia hoodlum to Munich, West Germany.
    The New York Police Department had a hard-and-fast rule against such travel. The last time they had let a cop leave the country on an investigation was in 1909. That cop was Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino and he too was following a Mafia lead. They called it the Black Hand in those days. Petrosino’s investigation began in the Little Italy section of Manhattan, and it ended in Sicily, where he was murdered by Black Hand assassins. That was enough for New York City police brass. They tried something once and it ended in disaster. Why try again?
    The parallels between Coffey’s current investigation and the mission that led to Petrosino’s death were too similar for Vitrano to expect out-of-the-country approval for Coffey.
    Coffey had been trailing a Little Italy mobster named Vincent Rizzo for two weeks. Rizzo was a “made guy” in the Genovese crime family—he owed his allegiance to the family godfather, Vito Genovese, and he had at least one murder to his credit.
    He was known as a big earner in the family, bringing in huge amounts of money through such criminal activities as extortion, drug dealing, counterfeiting and running a phony travel agency, which used forged and stolen airline tickets, for the mob.
    Coffey’s interest in Rizzo grew out of a case involving the attempted takeover of the New York Playboy Club by a group of mobsters. Until the DA’s office broke up the racket, the mob had successfully extorted money from the management and, through blackmail, turned several of the “bunnies” who worked there into drug-using prostitutes whose earnings went directly to the Genovese family.
    One of the key figures in that case did business with Rizzo. It was while following him that Coffey and his partner, Detective Larry Mullins, realized that Rizzo was more powerful and influential in the Mafia than they had previously believed.
    They watched Rizzo’s constant street corner meetings with known mob figures and his occasional dinners with higher-ups in the Gambino organization. Along with his connection to the Playboy Club scheme, documentation of Rizzo’s daily activities enabled the cops to convince a