CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Early the next morning, Carmen was waiting in Nora’s office when she arrived, a Ziploc bag in her lap.

“Hey, what’s up?” Nora asked, setting her shoulder bag on the desk.

Carmen lifted the plastic bag, which held a white greeting card–sized envelope. “This was in our mailbox at home last night.”

“Got one too,” Nora replied, pulling her own Ziploc from her bag. “Nice to see we both preserved for prints.”

They had received identical greeting cards, addressed to them at home, with no stamp and no return address. Each was a get-well card with a yellow canary-like bird on the front. Inside each was a picture of their children—one of Sophie, one of Eli—taken from a distance. A large X—which might have been a target crosshair—was drawn across each child’s face.

Benny exploded when he saw the cards. “That’s it. Sick of this shit. It’s gonna stop, now.”

“What are you going to do?” Carmen asked.

Benny ignored the question and spoke to Jessica, who was at her desk. “Jessica, you submit these for forensics, see if we can get anything from them, but it ain’t no mystery. It’s that dickhead Faraci again.”

Now he looked at Carmen. “Look, youse just try your case. Don’t let them in your head. Lemme see if I can send my own message.”

That morning, the trial turned to the other eleven murders, with Carmen taking the lead for the prosecution. The jury mostly heard summaries of what witnesses would say if called to the stand. As expected, Butler stipulated to factual evidence because he didn’t want to prolong the live testimony, so the jury learned the circumstances of the other killings, the phone and travel records documenting Gina’s/Mildred’s movements to the crime scenes, and the overnight FedEx packages Mildred sent to herself on nine of the twelve killings. Nora and Carmen intended to argue those were the murder weapons. It was too big a security risk to try to get them in the cities where she would do the killings. She couldn’t bring them on a plane, so she shipped them to herself and must have discarded them after the hits rather than risk a shipment back to Florida. It was easy to get more guns in Florida.

There were no packages sent in connection with Tony Burke, who was killed by injection, or the hit on The Nose, but Gina had plenty of friends in New York with guns. And there was no package sent for an Atlanta murder, but they showed Mildred moved by car for that hit. The ballistics for Atlanta also matched that of one later killing. They intended to argue Gina must have driven back and forth from Florida to Atlanta with that gun, which allowed her to ship it to the site of a later killing, before dumping it.

After all the records and stipulations, Carmen put Benny on the stand to offer expert testimony about Cosa Nostra and give the jury context for The Nose’s death. The jury seemed fascinated as Benny explained the origins of Cosa Nostra, “this thing of ours,” and its roots in Sicily, its organization into Families run by an administration made up of a boss, underboss, and consiglieri, who presided over capos leading crews composed of made members and associates, with money from criminal activity flowing upward at all times. He explained the requirements for getting “made”—males only, with Italian fathers—and the promises made during the induction ceremony, with a particular focus on the commitment to keep Cosa Nostra’s secrets. He told them of New York’s five Families, whose bosses formed a commission to referee disputes, and of the history and dominance of the Gambino Family in particular.

With Mafia 101 completed, he testified that Dominic D’Amico had been on trial for racketeering, and near the end of the government’s case had passed a note to Benny seeking to cooperate, teasing information about Tony Burke’s murder. He told the story of meeting with The Nose and his new lawyer—without mentioning that his old lawyer was one Salvatore Butler—and added that the information he provided concerned the identity of the actual killer. But he didn’t give the details of what The Nose said that day—that it was a professional hit by somebody out of Joey Cufaro’s crew and rumored to be a woman—because all of that was hearsay. D’Amico wasn’t trying to help the mob by saying it, so it wasn’t an admissible coconspirator statement; it was pure hearsay, and Nora told the judge they would leave it out.

While she had Benny on the stand, Carmen showed him a picture from the D’Amico crime scene—showing The Nose dead with a small bird stuffed in his mouth—and had him confirm that it was the same man who had attempted to tell them who really killed Tony Burke, and that the canary was a longtime Cosa Nostra message about the costs of “singing” to law enforcement. Carmen seemed to finish, then paused and said, “Oh, Special Agent Dugan, I forgot to ask. What color is the bird in that picture?”

Benny paused and seemed to stare at Carmen, his face a mixture of amusement and anger. “I don’t know for sure,” he answered. “I’m color-blind.”

Carmen announced that she had no further questions.

When Butler was up beginning his cross, Nora leaned toward Carmen and whispered, “What was that about?”

Carmen smiled and whispered back. “Oh, I know he’s completely color-blind. We try to find a way to ask him something about color every time he testifies. It’s a thing in the unit, going back years. Matthew Parker used to do it. Surprised you didn’t know.”

Butler had battled Benny Dugan for decades and knew Benny would follow the court’s instruction not to reveal the identity of D’Amico’s lawyer.

“Benny,” he began, shaking his head. “Benny, Benny, Benny.”

“Sal,” Benny answered, “is there a question?”

“This Dominic D’Amico you testified about, his trial was not going well for him, was it?”

“Didn’t seem to be, to my eyes.”

“Despite his being represented by highly competent counsel.”

Benny mostly suppressed his smile. “Yes, despite his excellent lawyer. Sometimes the evidence is just overwhelming, as you know.”

“He wanted to become a rat?”

“He wanted to cooperate in an effort to reduce his own sentence.”

“In violation of the oath he claimed to have taken to join this alleged organization.”

“Yes, in violation of the rules of Cosa Nostra, an organization that exists.”

“So you say, so you say,” Butler replied, clearly enjoying this. “But not demonstrating la forza—the strength—you have seen other defendants display, people who stand by their principles, no matter what.”

“That’s increasingly rare, as you know, Sal.”

“But it happens, doesn’t it? There are still people—of the old school—who make promises and keep them, aren’t there?”

“There are,” Benny answered. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, when the organization you made promises to is utterly amoral, but it happens, even today.”

“Yes, it does,” Butler replied. “Yes, it does. I have no further questions for this witness, Your Honor.”

“Is there redirect?” Judge Whitney asked.

“No, Your Honor,” Carmen said.

“Mr. Dugan, you are excused,” the judge said.

Benny stepped down from the witness box, walked halfway along the jury box railing and turned right to slide his enormous frame behind the prosecutors’ chairs, headed for his own. “Hilarious,” he whispered. “Does this shit ever get old for you comedians?”

The daily lunch break was scheduled to end at two p.m. At 1:50, Benny wandered into the courtroom, knowing the marshals routinely delivered Gina to the courtroom early so they could remove her handcuffs and seat her at the defense table well before the jury returned to the box. As in every trial, they worked hard to conceal that a defendant was in custody, although the stone-faced women sitting just behind Gina were hard to disguise. Butler wasn’t back from his regular lunch at Giambone’s yet, so Benny scooted his rear-facing seat a little closer to the back table. Gina heard the chair scraping and looked up.

“Hey,” Benny said, “I always treated you like a professional, right?”

Gina nodded slowly.

“Your nutcase bastard brother, Rico. You need to get a leash on him.”

Gina squinted at Benny. She didn’t know what he was talking about.

“That motherfucker’s out there threatening these prosecutors, and their kids.”

Now Gina made a surprised face.

“It’s gotta stop,” Benny said. “It ain’t who you are and it’s gonna start a war with us, and nobody wants that.”

Gina exhaled through her nose, shaking her head slowly from side to side, and finally spoke in a low voice. “He’s a stupid fuck.” Looking down, she muttered, “Scemo”—shay-mo, “fool” in Italian. “Taken care of,” she added. Benny pulled his chair back.

After three days of travel records and phones and FedEx packages, Nora and Carmen knew the jury wasn’t connecting all the dots, but they would do that for them in summation. It was time for Frenchie to link Gina to the Gambino Family.