The Nation: Bad, Bad Leroy Barnes

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The law finally touches "Mr. Untouchable"

His friends claimed he was just a wealthy real estate investor who was harassed by overzealous, even jealous white authorities. Police contended he was the biggest heroin dealer in New York City, maybe in the country. To blacks in his old Harlem neighborhood, Leroy ("Nicky") Barnes, 45, was a legend of defiance and success. What he had he flaunted, and he had a great deal: 300 custom-tailored suits, a string of glamourous women and powerful friends in show business and politics. He drove two Citroën-Maseratis and four Mercedes. Ghetto kids, said a black police detective, "think he's the greatest thing since Muhammad Ali," an idol to emulate. Prosecutors saw Barnes as a public menace to put in prison—and found it maddeningly difficult to get him headed there. Since 1973, Nicky Barnes had been arrested for homicide, bribery, drug dealing and possession of dangerous weapons. But none of the charges stuck. Impressed by his apparent ability to beat any rap, blacks called him "Mr. Untouchable."

An ex-junkie who neither smokes nor drinks and who cultivated the look of a conservative businessman, Barnes had shielded himself so carefully behind the layers of his organization that it was virtually impossible to trace drug sales back to him. None of his cars or his several homes and apartments are registered in his name. In 1973, after placing him under round-the-clock surveillance for eight months, local authorities managed to arrest him only on a weapons charge—but the charges were dismissed. On one occasion, Barnes playfully led his police tails on a wild-goose chase through Harlem, making 100 stops at grocery stores, bars and neighborhood social clubs.

Barnes ran a highly diversified operation. In addition to gas stations and travel agencies in the New York area, he held investments in two federally insured housing projects in Detroit and Cleveland. The use of respectable fronts and legitimate businesses is a time-honored Mafia ploy, and according to police, Barnes learned that trick and many others from the late Brooklyn mobster "Crazy Joey" Gallo when they were in prison together in 1965. (Barnes served five years on a narcotics conviction, which was overturned on appeal.)