Frenchman’s Arrest Cracks Narcotics Ring : Crime: Gilbert Pierre Jean-Marie Barbe is accused of being a major heroin smuggler. The case’s scope rivals the infamous ‘French Connection’ caper.

In one of his last moments of freedom, the man who called himself Gilbert Pierre Jean-Marie Barbe strolled along Manhattan’s Central Park West, a Foot Locker bag swinging at his side.

The scene--captured in murky police surveillance photos--made him look like an ordinary urban shopper. He wasn’t.

Instead, Barbe lived his life as if he had stepped out of a spy novel.

For at least three years, authorities say, the eccentric, 48-year-old Frenchman trotted around the globe with a collection of fake passports, building a lucrative heroin-smuggling operation.

They say he lived part time in two luxury Manhattan apartments stocked with crystals and literature on New Age mysticism, closed drug deals on hotel pay phones and pocketed millions of dollars in profits. At times, he would launder his earnings. In a dishwasher.

But one misstep late last year brought his world crashing down.

Detectives arrested Barbe in New York City on Nov. 17, setting the stage for a heroin seizure that made quantities from the last “French Connection” case in the late 1960s look modest. Dozens of other traffickers, large and small, including members of the mob, were implicated in a conspiracy to import and distribute 200 kilograms of heroin a year.

Prosecutors, while still uncertain about Barbe’s identity, are building a case so massive and complex it’s unlikely to reach trial until next year.

The crackdown on the far-flung narcotics ring not only suggested that authorities had vastly underestimated the resurgence of heroin in New York City, the world’s largest drug market.

It also closed a chapter in a twisting plot of international intrigue populated by eavesdropping investigators, tough-talking wise guys and professional junkies.

In the real-life saga of Gilbert Barbe, even Al Pacino made a cameo appearance.

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The tip of the iceberg surfaced in the summer of 1991 in Hell’s Kitchen.

It was there--only blocks from Barbe’s two Midtown apartments, on streets he probably never walked--that two brothers from Puerto Rico found their American Dream in a blizzard of illicit powder, according to police.

Maximo and Melquiades Torrez allegedly arrived at work each morning in one of two apartments used as distribution centers for their goods: Glassine envelopes neatly folded and stamped with letters spelling “Big Shot.”

The envelopes, peddled by a network of junkies and street people, went for about $15 each.

Business was good. The Torrez brothers allegedly sold about $11,000 of heroin a day. But their dealing angered local merchants and residents, who began complaining to police.

The complaints finally reached a lieutenant with the Manhattan South Narcotics major case unit, Ray Ferrari, who had the brothers’ phones tapped. At the time, police hoped to collect enough evidence for a simple conspiracy case that would put the brothers out of business.

But police were soon onto something bigger. One of the first voices they overheard was that of Juan (Don Juan) Castellanos, believed to be the Torrezes’ supplier.

According to police, Castellanos maintained a staff of workers in dingy East Harlem apartments who cut and packaged heroin under the “Big Shot” label. Also on staff were two quality-control junkies who would shoot up samples and rate the high on a scale of 1 to 10.

Once investigators identified Castellanos, they set up a series of wiretaps that slowly took them up the heroin food chain.

They soon learned Castellanos was allegedly a middle manager in an organization run by two men described as “the yuppies of the heroin trade.” Richard Texidor and Reginald Bryant drove a fleet of Mercedes and Range Rovers, and lived in sprawling suburban spreads next to bankers and lawyers.

The pair is alleged to have bought their product from a part-time supplier named John Nicolosi. Nicolosi is suspected of buying from Frank (Junior) Bassi, a career supplier.

The alleged connections of both Nicolosi and Bassi, a major player in drug smuggling since the 1950s, reached into three notorious Mafia families.

Bassi, 60, was a fugitive from a year-old heroin bust that landed his son in jail. But after moving to a safe house in the Bronx, he is believed to have continued to feed several distributors throughout New York City and Long Island, and parts of New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts and Virginia.

Bassi was brash. He was keen at spotting undercover police trying to tail his car, taking them on “rides”--circuitous routes that made them give up in frustration--and boasting about it later.

“Hey, I had eyes following me today,” he would tell associates over his wiretapped phone, according to police. “It must be you they’re after.”

One of his contacts stood out: Gilbert Barbe.

Not that police knew anything about him; to them, Barbe was a disembodied voice floating beyond the arm of the law. He called Bassi sporadically and spoke to him in curt riddles.

“Your watches are here,” he would say in his heavy French accent, referring to kilos of heroin. “They’re $135,000 each.”

Investigators traced the calls to several pay phones located throughout two large Midtown hotels. But dozens of stakeouts at both yielded nothing.

“We listened to this guy for months,” Ferrari said, “but we couldn’t touch him.”

Sensing that their investigation had run its course, police planned a massive raid for Dec. 7. It appeared that Barbe would skate.

Then, just three weeks before the raid, the elusive Frenchman slipped.

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When not in Paris or Thailand or points between, investigators say, Barbe was in Manhattan cutting big drug deals with small change.

His pockets full of quarters, he would call his customers strictly from the hotel pay phones. He never mentioned names, times or places--much to the dismay of police who had wiretapped his customers’ phones.

Finally, they overhead one conversation on Nov. 16 that gave them a start.

“I’ll call back tomorrow at 2 p.m.,” the Frenchman told a voice believed to be Frank Bassi’s.

At exactly 2 p.m. on Nov. 17, detectives began circling the pay phones in the Parker Meridien hotel. The sound of a thick French accent triggered a Pavlovian response.

“We’d heard that voice thousands of times,” said Detective Jerry Rosenberg. “We knew it instantly.”

For the next several hours, detectives watched as the man with the French accent, goatee and long dark coat went to the Hilton, purchased a roll of quarters, made more phone calls, then hopped into a cab.

The detectives commandeered their own cab, following him to a restaurant on the Upper West Side. Outside, Bassi was waiting.

Barbe climbed into Bassi’s brown station wagon for a short ride. When he stepped out, he was carrying a shopping bag.

The detectives finally stopped Barbe when he entered a subway station at Columbus Circle, telling him they wanted to question him about robberies at Midtown hotels.

Visibly nervous but cooperative, the suspect told police he was a diamond trader named Gilbert Barbe. When they asked about the bag, he showed them a shoe box filled with $20,000 in cash.

“I’m a legitimate businessman,” he continued to insist, inviting them to inspect his apartment on West 56th Street.

Barbe produced a passport, a driver’s license and piles of shipping records showing an address for a warehouse in Queens.

As the suspect paced back and forth in the apartment under the watchful eyes of detectives, another set of investigators paid a visit to the warehouse.

At first, they found nothing more than two large shipping containers, apparently empty. But a closer inspection ended the game.

Inside a secret compartment, they discovered $1.7 million in neat piles.

Barbe was arrested that night. His suppliers and dealers, still unaware of his arrest, were next.

At dawn on Dec. 7, nearly 500 officers raided more than 30 locations throughout the five boroughs, Long Island and in parts of New Jersey. By afternoon, nearly 70 suspects--including Bassi, the Torrez brothers, Castellanos, Texidor, Bryant, Nicolosi, organized crime soldiers and a police officer accused of providing counterintelligence--were in custody. (All but Melquiades Torrez are awaiting trial; he pleaded guilty to a drug-conspiracy charge and was sentenced to 5 to 10 years.)

Six days later, police arrived at a West 57th Street building where Barbe had another apartment. The doorman wore a Santa outfit with a flashing belt; the detectives carried sledgehammers with which they smashed down Barbe’s door.

As they walked in, one of the heroin smuggler’s neighbors, Al Pacino, walked out. He paused to gawk at the investigators.

The search of the Frenchman’s hideaway didn’t last long.

Inside the front closet of the 26th-floor studio, detectives found five identical black suitcases. All told, they held 424 pounds of pure heroin with an estimated street value of $240 million.

The seizure--although not approaching the national record of 1,071 pounds recovered in an Oakland, Calif., raid in 1991--was the largest ever for the New York City Police Department.

It also eclipsed the 79 pounds recovered in another high-publicity probe linked to French nationals--the so-called “French Connection” case.

In that case, which became the basis for a book and two movies, heroin was smuggled through Marseilles in cans of imported fish, expensive European cars and secret compartments of private and commercial jets.

In effect, authorities said, Barbe wrote the sequel:

In Kiev, he purchased six shipping containers outfitted with false bottoms. In Thailand, he filled the false bottoms with heroin bought at $12,000 a kilo. In Singapore, he had the containers loaded with rattan furniture as a cover.

The containers were shipped to Port Newark, N.J., where they cleared customs, then trucked to Queens.

The secret compartments served a dual purpose: To import heroin and export cash, both in massive quantities.

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Barbe may be out of business, but his mystique endures.

His lawyer did not return numerous phone calls. And personal data provided by investigators is sketchy.

Records, books and literature collected at his apartments suggest he is a vegetarian, a Buddhist, a follower of New Age mysticism.

The $69,000 in cash was found in his 57th Street apartment hint at another trait: paranoia.

About $40,000 was neatly stacked in the dishwasher. Because he kept literature explaining that U.S. currency often is tainted with narcotics residue, investigators speculate he washed his money.

Police also recovered five passports, including one with the name Joel Guichard, his alias for the bogus furniture import-export business.

Prosecutors, investigators and court documents still refer to him as Gilbert Pierre Jean-Marie Barbe. But sources concede that probably is not his real name. Publicity could hinder the investigation, they say.