The scrapbooks went back some fifteen years.
It was then that Anthony Faviola emerged as a powerful figure in the hierarchy of organized crime, and it was then that Georgie Giardino passed his bar exams and entered the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as a rookie in one of the five trial bureaus.
Michael sat in bed now with a ham sandwich and a bottle of beer, Georgia’s scrapbooks spread on the covers around him, the wind howling outside, the television going in the background for company.
The first item in the scrapbooks was an article that had been printed in the Daily News when Faviola’s only son was born. There had been two daughters before then, and now a male child, which was apparent reason for rejoicing in Staten Island. The News headlined the piece A FAMILY MAN.
The pun was not lost on Michael. He remembered a front-page headline in the News, announcing the fact that NASA had lost radio contact with a space rocket containing experimental white mice. The headline had read:
So it was no surprise to him that an article purporting to be about the wife, daughters, and newborn son of a man who was a multimillionaire building contractor in New York City hinted in its headline and in the following heavily slanted story that Mr. Anthony Faviola was “a family man” of quite another sort, the family being a Mafia family in Manhattan, the head of which was none other than the proud papa himself. The article was liberally illustrated with photographs of Faviola and his wife, Faviola and his two daughters, aged respectively four and two, and Faviola and the newborn son, three months old at the time of publication. All of the pictures had been taken in front of a modest development house on Staten Island; apparently, Faviola had not yet moved his family to the mansion in Stonington.
There were later articles that showed the palatial estate Faviola built in Connecticut, articles in newspapers and magazines charting the rise, one might have thought, of a respectable businessman instead of a cutthroat racketeer who had bludgeoned his way to the number-one position in the mob. And because Americans were endlessly fascinated by stories about gangsters, the comings and goings of the Faviola family — but especially those of the don himself, in and out of court — were recorded with all the solemnity accorded to royalty of a sort.
Here was the older daughter at a lavish sixteenth birthday party her father threw for her, and here was the boychild on his first pair of skis at Stowe, and here was the younger daughter graduating from Choate-Rosemary Hall, and here was the elder daughter again, this time getting married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to a man named Samuel Caglieri, and here was the son at seventeen, wearing a Kent football uniform. Even though the infrequent pictures of Faviola’s wife, Tessie, showed a good-looking blond woman with pale eyes and an attractive smile, she was obviously somewhat camera shy — perhaps because her husband’s appearances in court were making bigger and bigger headlines each time he was charged with a crime and exonerated by yet another jury. The boy and the elder daughter obviously favored the wife, with the same light eyes and fair hair. The second daughter had Faviola’s dark hair and brown eyes.
The most recent mention of Faviola’s son was in an article in People magazine, no less, some nine or ten years back. The article was headlined in typical People style:
The subtitle beneath this read:
Andy Boy won’t eat his broccoli, but his Crime Boss Papa doesn’t seem to mind footing the bills in Las Vegas.
Beneath this was an almost-full-page black-and-white photograph of a rather good-looking young man in swimming trunks, standing at the edge of a Vegas swimming pool with his legs apart, his arms above his head like spread wings, and a huge grin on his tanned face. The article, like the magazine itself, was long on style and heavy on folksy content.
When the piece was published, the only son of Anthony Faviola was in attendance at UCLA, but it seemed his studies didn’t deter him from popping up to Vegas every other weekend or so, where he was a favorite of the town’s chorus girls and a high roller at all of the casinos. The article implied, in fact, that his frequent visits to Vegas had more to do with his father’s business interests than with sheer pleasure. Described as “quick-witted and quick-fisted,” young Andrew, though ostensibly a student, was — according to the magazine’s innuendo — actually supervising his father’s vast Las Vegas gambling operation.
A montage of photos on the second page of the piece showed the son in a variety of poses at various ages, each with an appropriate caption. The little blond boy playing with a pail and shovel on a beach someplace was captioned TWO-YEAR-OLD FUTURE CONTRACTOR. There was a picture of him at Disneyland, wearing Mickey Mouse ears and looking up gravely at his father. This was captioned ALL EARS FOR PAPA’S ADVICE. Another picture showed him as a darker-haired gangly twelve-year-old in a tuxedo, dancing with his blond sister in a ball gown. This one was captioned AT THE COPA WITH SWEET-SIXTEEN ANGELA. There was yet another picture, a recent one and obviously posed, of him sitting alone on a bench in Central Park, his nose buried in a book. This one was captioned STUDYING FOR FINALS.
The picture with the Mickey Mouse ears caught Michael’s attention. The kid did look a bit jug-eared in some of his earlier photos, and Michael wondered whether People was calling attention to his aural appurtenances while supposedly commenting on the Mickey Mouse getup. Nor had Michael forgotten the tape’s several references to Michelino, which was why he was here in the first place. The typist had transcribed the taped word as “Mick-a-lino,” which he’d assumed was a WASP error in a wop environment. But was it possible that the typist had been correct, after all? Had Faviola said Mick-a-lino? Little Mickey? Was he making reference to a photograph taken at Disneyland when his son was... what? Michael could only guess because neither the caption nor the article itself gave a date. The kid, ears and all, looked to be about three or four.
The paper trail seemed suddenly overwhelming.
He went out into the kitchen for a glass of milk and a Famous Amos cookie, and then went back to the bedroom to stack the scrapbooks and call it a night.
It was close to eleven when they got back to her mother’s house on the beach. Andrew parked the VW in the oval on the side of the house away from the ocean and then walked them to the front door. In the tall grass under the palms, there was the incessant sound of busy insects. It was a balmy night. Only the faintest breeze stirred in the palm fronds, rippling them with silver from the full moon above.
“Thank you for a wonderful night,” he said.
“Thank you,” Mollie said. “For saving my entire life.”
Sarah extended her hand to him. “Thank you again,” she said.
“For everything,” Mollie said.
“I enjoyed every minute,” he said.
“Good night,” Sarah said, and released his hand.
“Have a good flight home,” Mollie said, and reached up to kiss him on the cheek and then went hastily into the house. Sarah watched Andrew walk to his car. He started it, waved farewell, and backed out of the driveway.
Yolande was sitting in the kitchen, reading the newspaper and simultaneously listening to the news on the radio. Mollie had already gone upstairs.