Joaquin Garcia could not be more obvious. At 1.93 metres and weighing in at 180kg, there's no missing the man. In motion, he's a slow-moving shambles: he fills the pavement, listing heavily from side to side. Hypnotised into confidence by the frankness of his body, the hundreds of dopers, gangsters, terrorists, money launderers, dirty cops and corrupt politicians that Garcia, during his 26-year career as an FBI agent, condemned to prison never really studied his face. That mouth, so beautifully formed, but prim; those eyes: hooded, at once opaque and unnaturally crystalline. It is the human face of a falcon.
And, like all apex predators, falcons prefer live prey.
Hailed as the finest undercover agent in history, Garcia, 56, has blown his cover. His memoir Making Jack Falcone: An Undercover FBI Agent Takes Down a Mafia Family has not only become a New York Times best-seller, but attracted Steven Soderbergh and Paramount, who will be making the movie. 'Probably of all the people I've cross-examined, [Garcia is] one of the toughest nuts to crack,' says Paul McKenna, a defence attorney.
Despite the US$250,000 price on his head and that outrageous conspicuousness, America's most famous infiltrator drives his eight-year-old daughter to school each morning and goes about his business without any discernible paranoia. In part, this could be because once the reward was announced, the FBI paid visits to the bosses, underbosses, and consiglieri of all five mafia families with the news that any attempt on Garcia's life would ensure their lives became 'a living nightmare'. And then there is Garcia's courage to consider: the man is incorruptible.
His childhood might not have been typical for a law enforcement officer but the themes of brutality and treachery were always present. Born in Havana to 'an important official in the Cuban Treasury' and an opera singer, Garcia grew up in an affluent home with nannies, housekeepers and a government chauffeur for his father.
When Fidel Castro overthrew the dictatorial Batista government on January 1, 1959, Garcia's father, fearing for his life, contacted US counterparts, woke his three children, kissed them goodbye and left with an FBI attache for New York. Castro's militia came for him the following morning. Working as a hotel bookkeeper and two menial jobs during the day, his father earned enough to fly his family out of Cuba in 1961.