sing. It was the most beautiful music Di Silva had ever heard, a song that was going to bring the most powerful Mafia Family in the east to its knees, send Michael Moretti to the electric chair, and elevate Robert Di Silva to the governor’s office in Albany. Other New York governors had made it to the White House: Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. Di Silva intended to be the next.
The timing was perfect. The gubernatorial elections were coming up next year.
Di Silva had been approached by the state’s most powerful political boss. “With all the publicity you’re getting on this case, you’ll be a shoo-in to be nominated and then elected governor, Bobby. Nail Moretti and you’re our candidate.”
Robert Di Silva had taken no chances. He prepared the case against Michael Moretti with meticulous care. He put his assistants to work assembling evidence, cleaning up every loose end, cutting off each legal avenue of escape that Moretti’s attorney might attempt to explore. One by one, every loophole had been closed.
It had taken almost two weeks to select the jury, and the District Attorney had insisted upon selecting six “spare tires”—alternate jurors—as a precaution against a possible mistrial. In cases where important Mafia figures were involved, jurors had been known to disappear or to have unexplained fatal accidents. Di Silva had seen to it that this jury was sequestered from the beginning, locked away every night where no one could get to it.
The key to the case against Michael Moretti was Camillo Stela, and Di Silva’s star witness was heavily protected. The District Attorney remembered only too vividly the example of Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, the government witness who had “fallen” out of a sixth-floor window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island while being guarded by half a dozen policemen. Robert Di Silva had selected Camillo Stela’s guards personally, and before the trial Stela had been secretly moved to a different location every night. Now, with the trial under way, Stela was kept in an isolated holding cell, guarded by four armed deputies. No one was allowed to get near him, for Stela’s willingness to testify rested on his belief that District Attorney Di Silva was capable of protecting him from the vengeance of Michael Moretti.
It was the morning of the fifth day of the trial.
It was Jennifer Parker’s first day at the trial. She was seated at the prosecutor’s table with five other young assistant district attorneys who had been sworn in with her that morning.
Jennifer Parker was a slender, dark-haired girl of twenty-four with a pale skin, an intelligent, mobile face, and green, thoughtful eyes. It was a face that was attractive rather than beautiful, a face that reflected pride and courage and sensitivity, a face that would be hard to forget. She sat ramrod straight, as though bracing herself against unseen ghosts of the past.
Jennifer Parker’s day had started disastrously. The swearing-in ceremony at the District Attorney’s office had been scheduled for eight A.M. Jennifer had carefully laid out her clothes the night before and had set the alarm for six so that she would have time to wash her hair.
The alarm had failed to go off. Jennifer had awakened at seven-thirty and panicked. She had gotten a run in her stocking when she broke the heel of her shoe, and had had to change clothes. She had slammed the door of her tiny apartment at the same instant she remembered she had left her keys inside. She had planned to take a bus to the Criminal Courts Building, but now that was out of the question, and she had raced to get a taxi she could not afford and had been trapped with a cab driver who explained during the entire trip why the world was about to come to an end.
When Jennifer had finally arrived, breathless, at the Criminal Courts Building at 155 Leonard Street, she was fifteen minutes late.
There were twenty-five lawyers gathered in the District Attorney’s office, most of them newly out of law school, young and eager and excited about going to work for the District Attorney of the County of New York.
The office was impressive, paneled and decorated in quiet good taste. There was a large desk with three chairs in front of it and a comfortable leather chair behind it, a conference table with a dozen chairs around it, and wall cabinets filled with law books.