Sleepers

SEVEN

Michael's plan relied heavily on Hell's Kitchen to deliver information and to keep silent. Both were skills the neighborhood had in abundance.

The plan also depended on keeping Michael alive, which meant that word had to get to John and Tommy's killing crew that he was not an open target. Within days of Michael taking the case, the West Side Boys got a visit from King Be

While the neighborhood, led by King Be

We had set up a simple method of communication.

If Michael was sending, messages were left at work for me to call my nonexistent girlfriend, Gloria. Once I received the signal, I would send one of King Be

If I needed to get word to Michael, I would have someone from the neighborhood pick up an early edition of the New York Times, script the word Edmund on the upper-right-hand corner of the Metro section and drop it in front of his apartment door. Later that day, Michael would pick up his envelope at an upper East Side P.O. box.

We spent our early weeks going beyond Michael's files, digging up information that could be used either in a courtroom or on the street against the three remaining guards. We also were working the witnesses, gathering their backgrounds, finding their weak spots. A full folder was also being developed on the Wilkinson Home for Boys, finding former guards, employees and inmates willing to speak out, hunting down wardens and assistants, locating the names of juveniles who died during their stay there and checking on the given cause of death.

Michael supplied us with a list of questions for O'Co

All written messages, once delivered, were destroyed. Phone conversations were permitted only through the use of coded numbers on clear third party lines. There was never any personal contact between the main participants.

Our margin of error was zero.

Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood that came to the aid of its allies as quickly as it rushed to bury its enemies, thrived under Michael's plan. The verbal shots at Michael continued, cries of traitor and gutter rat heard up and down the avenue, but those were bellowed for the sole benefit of strangers. The underground word, the only one that mattered, had spread through the streets with the speed of a late-night bullet – King Be

'You want a Rolls Royce, you go to England or wherever the fuck they make it,' Fat Mancho said. 'You want champagne, you go see the French. You want money, find a Jew. But you want dirt, scum buried under a rock, a secret nobody wants anybody to know, you want that and you want that fast, there's only one place to go – Hell's Kitchen. It's the lost and found of shit. They lose it and we find, it.'

EIGHT

King Be

He wore the same black outfit he usually wore in his club, ignoring the frigid air much as he ignored everything else. He had a coffee cup resting next to his right leg along with a small bottle of Sambuca Romana.

'I didn't know you liked pigeons,' I said, sitting down next to him.

'I like anything that don't talk,' King Be

'I heard from Mikey today,' I said. 'The case goes to trial first Monday in the new year. It'll be a small story in the papers tomorrow.'

'You only got two witnesses who are go

'Which two?'

'The suits at the bar,' King Be

'That leaves the couple in the booth,' I said.

'For now,' King Be

'Everything else is falling into place?' I asked, blowing breath into my hands.

'Except for your witness,' King Be

'I've got somebody in mind,' I said. 'I'll talk to him when the time's right.'

'He good?'

'He will be,' I said. 'If he does it.'

'Make sure then,' King Be

'None of this would work without you,' I said.

'You'd find a way,' King Be

'Maybe,' I said. 'But I'm glad you're with us on this.'

'I don't know if I coulda been any help to you back in that place,' King Be

'Things happen when they're supposed to,' I said. 'It's what you always said to me.'

'Good things and bad,' King Be

'And most of the time,' I said, 'bet on the bad.'

'You better go now,' King Be

'What appointment?'

'With Da

'Is he ready to go along?' I asked.

'He'll go,' King Be

Winter 1980

The court officers led John Reilly and Thomas Marcano into the crowded court room, both defendants walking with their heads down and their hands at their sides. They were wearing blue blazers, blue polo shirts, gray slacks and brown loafers. They nodded at their attorney, Da

The court stenographer, a curly-haired blonde in a short black skirt, sat across from them, directly in front of the Judge's bench, her face vacant.

The chairs of the jury box were filled by the twelve chosen for the trial.

Michael Sullivan sat at the prosecutor's table, his open briefcase, two yellow legal folders and three sharp pencils laid out before him, his eyes on the stenographer's legs. He was in a dark wool suit, his dark tie crisply knotted over his white shirt.

I sat in the middle of the third row. Two young men, both of whom I knew to be part of the West Side Boys, sat to my left. Carol Martinez, eyes staring straight ahead, was to my right. She held my hand.

Judge Eliot Weisman took his place behind the bench. He was a tall, middle-aged man with a square face topped by a cleanly shaved head. He appeared trim and fit, muscular beneath his dark robes. He was known to run a stern courtroom and allowed scant time for theatrics and stall tactics. Criminal attorneys claimed his scale of justice almost always tipped toward the prosecutor. The assistant district attorneys themselves called him fair, but by no means an easy touch.