Perjury, Promoting Prostitution, Robbery, Usury...
Which was loan-sharking and which he described as one of the mainstays of their operation; the others, of course, were gambling, and narcotics, and labor racketeering, and receiving and distributing stolen goods. He described in detail the profitable loan-sharking operation run by Sal the Barber, who — he did not fail to mention — had himself broken many a head in his time, and who had ordered the murder of a punk named Richie Palermo...
“Do you remember the ring I gave you? The one that turned out to be stolen? I brought this to Sal’s attention, and the kid turned up dead in a basement room in Washington Heights. You have to maintain control over these lower-level people, or they’ll do something dangerous or stupid that can turn against you, and then the law will swarm all over you.”
Weapons...
Not only the criminal possession of what amounted to an arsenal but involvement in a vast arms trade that included the manufacture, transport, disposition, and defacement of weapons — as in converting a semiautomatic into an illegal fully automatic rifle.
Well, no Z.
And, to his credit, Faviola had not admitted to anyone in the family ever having committed rape.
But everything else was there. The crimes, in many cases the names of the people who’d committed those crimes, in other instances the places and dates of commission, more than enough to bring charges and seek indictments. In two hours and fifty-three minutes of almost continuous babble, apparently driven by a need to impress Sarah with his acumen, cunning, power, and stealth, Faviola had let out all the stops, and had been rewarded afterward with...
Michael had turned off the tape the moment they began making love.
He detested them both.
The problem he still had, however, was the same one he’d had all along, except that the moment Sarah had actually gone in wired, she’d technically become an “informant” instead of the unknown “subject” she’d been on the previous tapes. He could not now call Sarah to testify without revealing her identity. He could not get this tape admitted in evidence unless Sarah swore under oath that she’d been there at the Rockledge Inn in Norwalk, Connecticut, while the conversation was taking place...
That this was a complete and accurate tape of the conversation...
That the man she’d been conversing with was Andrew Faviola...
And that the conversation had taken place on such and such a date...
At such and such a time...
And so on and so forth, if it please Your Honor.
His unwillingness to call her had nothing to do with his promise to her. He had given her his word of honor that if she delivered the goods, he would never reveal to Mollie or anyone else what kind of woman she was. That was the deal he’d made. Upon more circumspect reflection, however, he felt he’d be justified in telling Mollie all about her mother’s infidelity; she was, after all, a mature child who deserved to know exactly why her parents were divorcing. In truth, then, he was ready to throw Sarah to the sharks provided the sharks didn’t then turn on him.
He felt he’d adequately protected himself against any due-process challenges that might have stemmed from deliberately sending Sarah in to exchange sex for information. “Outrageous government conduct,” as defined in U.S. v. Cuervelo — where federal courts warned government investigators against using sex as a means of gathering evidence — had been very much on his mind when he’d presented her with her marching orders. He further knew that no sane defense attorney would ever claim he had been the one who’d initiated or encouraged a love affair between his wife and Faviola. Sarah had started that all on her own, thanks, before the eavesdropping surveillance had begun.
Besides, it was unthinkable that the DA would even allow him to prosecute this case. Were that to happen — and it couldn’t, it was simply an impossibility — the defense would enjoy an unprecedented feeding frenzy, portraying him as a man with an overly vindictive motive, a man with too much personal interest in the case, a man who was not in that courtroom to see simple justice done...
“I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to consider just what kind of man this district attorney is. I ask you to ask yourselves what kind of man would use his own wife as an informant, would send his own wife into another man’s embrace, would listen to his own wife making love to another man, just so long as she betrayed her lover, just so long as she played the role of Delilah to my client’s unsuspecting Samson. I ask you to consider the moral values of this district attorney who’s so very eager to put my client behind bars that he’d sacrifice his own wife to the cause. I ask you to consider whether the evidence he’s offered here in this courtroom is not evidence procured by a zealot and not a man even remotely interested in the even hand of justice. I ask you to consider...”
No.
Even if the case miraculously survived a due-process challenge under Cuervelo standards, he himself would never be allowed to try it. In fact, given the circumstances — the close personal relationship of a key informant to someone in the District Attorney’s office — whoever tried it was in severe danger of losing it. The trick was to nail Faviola without ever going to trial. Toward that end...
A car was turning the corner. A blue Acura. Michael waited until it pulled into the driveway, its headlights illuminating a beige-colored garage door that immediately began opening. He was already crossing the street as Faviola drove the Acura into the garage. The tape player was in his right hand. He was waiting in the driveway when Faviola got out of the Acura, walked to the door-closing button, hit it, and then stopped dead in his tracks when he realized he wasn’t alone. The closing door almost got him. He ducked to avoid it, and then clenched his fists as if expecting immediate trouble.
“Who is it?” he said.
“ADA Welles,” Michael said.
He had expected a boy. The pictures in People showed a handsome college kid, and the voice he’d heard on far too many tapes had sounded very young. But the person sitting opposite him now was a man. Handsome, yes, and bearing himself with the sort of casual ease only the very young can bring off, but there was maturity in those knowing blue eyes and the smirking set of his mouth. Seeing him in person at last, sitting here with him, a cold dark fury began seething inside Michael. The realization that his wife’s seducer had been knowledgeable and mature, a cunning son of a bitch who’d understood all along the consequences of his actions, was almost too much to contain. Michael wanted to kill him. It was all he could do to keep from leaping up and grabbing him by the throat. Strangle the bastard where he sat, listen to him choking and gasping for breath, eyes rolling back in his head, drop him still and gray and lifeless to the thick carpet underfoot.
The two men sat opposite each other on brocaded chairs in a lavishly furnished living room illuminated only by a tassel-shaded lamp on a marble-topped table. Michael was wearing what he called his prosecutor threads, blue suit, white shirt, dark tie, dark socks, black shoes. He was here on business. Andrew was wearing tan summer slacks and a blue double-breasted blazer, blue tasseled loafers, a pristine white shirt open at the throat. He kept watching Michael in what appeared to be enduring surprise. He did not offer Michael a drink. Michael would have refused one, anyway. He was here to play a tape. He was here to cut a deal with the man who’d stolen his wife.