Taking Exemplary Service To A Higher Level And Blowing Away The Competition

The best concierges can come through on any request, no matter how outrageous:

A six-month undercover operation, during which cops posed as out-of-town guests, resulted in the arrests of a night manager at the Park Lane Hotel, a delivery-staff member and the man who allegedly supplied them with more than half a dozen guns and half a pound of narcotics.

The sting was launched after police received a tip from hotel employees that several brazen colleagues were turning the deluxe property into a drug and firearms bazaar.

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Howard Rubenstein, the spokesman for Leona Helmsley and the Helmsley hotel chain, said management “acted promptly to turn in these people. They are appalled at the thought that their employees would stoop to this terrible level.”

Acting on the tip, detectives from Manhattan South Narcotics in April went to the hotel — where rooms range from $310 to $480 a night — and started chatting up night manager Diogenes Peña, 31, who worked at the hotel for 10 years, sources said.

The “tourist” cops returned two months later. This time they arranged to buy five bags of cocaine from Peña, who sent room-service worker Luis Quinones — another 10-year hotel veteran — to room 804 with the drugs, according to a court complaint.

Over the next two months, detectives bought more cocaine in Park Lane rooms and a second-floor bathroom, and even heard Peña telephoning his supplier and ordering him to “bring the doughnuts now.”

On Aug. 7, an undercover officer upped the ante and asked for guns, a request Peña allegedly fulfilled. During that transaction, Peña said his partner was waiting downstairs, which allowed cops to get a glimpse of Cesar Victorino, 34, his alleged cocaine distributor.

After two more buys, one of which yielded four guns and more drugs, police swooped in on Peña and Quinones and arrested them at work. Victorino was later arrested outside his Inwood home, police sources said.