And then, as now, the other six or seven people in the room were anonymous law enforcement agents, all armed with visible holstered pistols. Seven years ago the only law enforcement agent who was a woman was Gina Carbone, with the rank of inspector. Tony Garafalo had known her since he was ten. They were raised on the same working-class block on Staten Island. Each winter both their parents’ lawns were decorated with identical smiling Santa Clauses in red stocking caps urging on identical, bulb-illuminated plastic reindeer.
And both of their uncles were soldiers in the Gambino family.
For two years, when he was thirty and she was in her early twenties before she unexpectedly enlisted in the Army and Tony Garafalo had long ago earned the nickname “Tony the Horse” because of the heft and size of his penis, they were lovers. When Tony was manacled in this same room, he first learned that Gina was a member of the team of FBI, IRS, Postal Service Inspectors, and NYPD officers who formed the combined squad that had investigated and taken him down. He didn’t acknowledge knowing her; and he mentioned nothing about the fact that the last time he had fucked her was as she leaned against the trunk of his Corvette the night before she left for Fort Knox to start her Army basic training. He also kept to himself that years ago when she came she was a screamer, not a moaner.
In fact, seven years ago, despite volleys of questions from everyone in the interview room, he hadn’t said a word to anyone. Nothing, nada. There were hours of questions about what he knew, what he had said, what he had done, where he lived. He didn’t even concede what his name was. The only words Gina spoke were, “That’s Tony Garafalo.”
But today, in what may have been the same ugly and sterile room, he wanted to talk. The two assistant U.S. attorneys, both in their mid-thirties, weren’t the same as those from seven years earlier; those two had left to whatever rewards or fates they reached. Tony, handsome as a movie star, stared at the two new assistants with nothing but the contempt that was bred into his DNA and his life experience, just as he knew that Gina Carbone had the same breeding and background, only that she had skillfully learned to conceal them and only at times glaringly, laughingly, revealed to him when they had been alone many times during the last two years. One of the new assistants who faced him was a dapper young black man, caramel colored and with effete steel-framed glasses. Incredibly to Tony, the other assistant was an Asian woman: Tony thought for a minute that he would break the ice by asking her for an order of lemon chicken and noodles.
“Mr. Garafalo,” the African American assistant said, “I’m obligated to tell you that you have a right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present. And that anything you may say to us can and will be used against you.”
“Let me ask you a question, Mr. Clark? That’s your name, isn’t it?”
Horace Clark nodded. “Same name that I had when I introduced myself to you three minutes ago.”
“Haven’t you guys learned how to use tape recorders and video equipment and all that stuff? I don’t see anything like that.”
“We don’t record interviews,” Clark answered.
“Even the Podunk PD records interviews these days. Andy of Mayberry would be doing it. Fuck, even cops wear cameras when they’re out on the street.”
“It’s federal policy not to have recording devices during interviews. You must surely know that, Mr. Garafalo, you’ve had experience with this process before.”
“So you still rely on the miracle of 302s?” Tony asked.
Form 302 was the government form, in use since the era of J. Edgar Hoover, on which FBI and other government agents wrote in sometimes vivid narratives the results of conversations they had with witnesses, defendants, and others. Tony used the words the miracle of 302s because, even though he had once sat for hours with FBI and other agents without ever saying a word, there were at least five agents who testified against him at trial who used their 302 reports to recount his incriminating statements.
During his trial, Tony had whispered to his lawyer, the legendary Vincent Sorrentino, “This is all made-up shit. I never said a word to those fuckers.” In return, Sorrentino, cupping his right hand over Tony’s left ear, had quietly said, “That’s why we call them form 302F, with F as in fiction.” Sorrentino had added, “Don’t worry, I’ll rip up their asses and their 302s on cross.” And Sorrentino had.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Tony told Horace Clark. “It’ll give you guys all day tomorrow to pick up some overtime when you write your 302s.” Tony Garafalo through the years had built up a way of fostering camaraderie with law enforcement agents, many of whom were born and raised in the same kinds of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island in which he had been raised. Tony was a man of many roles-if he’d become an actor, he could play convincingly a suave gangster, a compassionate priest, a lawyer or the leader of one of those evil empires in the action movies with computer animation that had become so popular in the years since his prison term ended.
All of the agents, men with Italian, Irish, and Polish names, either smiled or laughed when they heard him say “the miracle of 302s.” The two assistants didn’t laugh or even smile.
Gently adjusting the thin frames of his glasses, Horace Clark asked, “Mr. Garafalo, do you know the name Gina Carbone?”
“The name?” Tony smiled at the serious Horace Clark. “I know the person, too.”
“Do you know the Gina Carbone who is the current commissioner of the New York City Police Department?”
“Sure I do.”
“How long have you known Commissioner Carbone?”
“My math isn’t great. I’m fifty-four. I was ten or so when she was born. Our families lived on the same street. I even remember going to her baptism.” Tony glanced at the Asian Assistant, whose only words so far had been to introduce herself as “Assistant U.S. Attorney Yvette Yang,” a name that had tempted Tony to think of her as Yo Yo. “You know what a baptism is, don’t you?”
She ignored him. In front of her at the table was a yellow legal pad at the top of which, as Tony could see, the only words were “Interview Notes with Anthony Garafalo” and the date.
“Did there come a point in time when you and Commissioner Carbone became friends?”
“That’s a really complicated word, Mr. Clark. She was my friend when she was baptized. Our families were, as I told you, close. I saw her almost every day for years. I do remember that when I was eighteen or so I played a lot of heavy-duty American Legion baseball. I told the coach to get a uniform for her and make her the first girl bat boy. She really, really wanted that. She kept on asking me to help get her that job. So the team made a little uniform for her that was just like ours and she became the first bat girl, not just for our team but in all of the other American Legion teams we played from all around the country.” Tony paused and smiled. “The coach, you know, would have made my eighty-five-year-old grandmother the first bat grandmother if I asked. I was so good I was being seriously scouted by the Pirates, the Red Sox, and the fucking San Diego Padres at the time. Gina, by the way, was a great bat girl from day one. She got to loose foul balls and picked up dropped bats faster than any bat boy I ever saw.”
“So you were friends then, too? She was about ten when you were twenty or so,” Clark said.
“Well,” Tony said, “there’s that problem with the word friend. She wanted to be on the team. If I hadn’t been at her baptism, if I didn’t know her and her family, if she had just been a little girl from the neighborhood begging the star of the team, which was yours truly, to be the first bat girl, I’d have ignored her.” Tony glanced around the room. “In my world friends help friends. Does that happen in your world, Ms. Yo?”