40

Mallon did the straightforward, law-abiding, thing. He retained the most influential law firm in Louisiana for his son’s defense, Groot & Talliesen, a member firm of the Barker’s Hill Enterprises Group, which was run by Edward S. Price. Although they put their best people on it, they had to tell him that the case against Marvin was watertight; there wasn’t a chance of even getting him off with a suspended sentence; Marvin faced forty years for the possession of narcotics with criminal intent alone, which under federal law had to be served without the possibility of parole, but his attorneys thought they had a chance, at least, to bring the charges down to mere possession, with a sentence of only seven to fifteen years. With the right judge—and money could do a lot in the state political machine—Marvin might get a suspended sentence at least on that charge.

The murder charge was tricky and dangerous, the lawyers said, but it was circumstantial. If they could find an explanation for why Marvin was carrying the weapon that had caused the death of the narcotics wholesaler in Baton Rouge, they could, thanks to Marvin’s lack of prior criminal records, feel confident that they’d win a jury over to Marvin’s point of view. If not, Marvin would surely be sentenced to a fifteen- to thirty-year prison term.

“Explanation?” George F. Mallon exploded. “It was a plant! The whole goddam thing is a plant deliberately calculated to cost me the election.”

“Then there is the aggravated assault and the attempted rape of a minor, the indecent exposure, and the illegal breaking and entering,” the lawyers told him on the roundtable conference call between New York and New Orleans. “Those could bring an aggregate of twenty to thirty years.” But the real difficulty, the lawyers felt, beyond the rape and the aggravated assault, were the charges that Marvin had tried to force a fifteen-year-old girl into committing unnatural sexual acts, because Marvin had been caught in flagrante delicto on those counts: he had broken into the girl’s hotel room and ripped her clothes off, battered her and assaulted her. There were badly damaging pictures of Marvin after he had exposed himself to the teenage girl. The girl and her mother were pressing the police and the media to urge the courts to bring the case to earliest trial. The two arresting officers and the house officer at the hotel would testify as to how Marvin had battered the girl. There was absolutely nothing anyone could do for Marvin about those charges, which could carry a thirty- to fifty-year sentence in Louisiana.

“My God, poor Marvin—”

“He faces a total combined sentence of a possible 150 years in the state’s prison—although of course he could be out in sixty-five with good behavior—unless—”

“Unless—what?” Mallon asked.

“There is a—ah—man—here—in New Orleans, that is, who has considerable—ah—community influence and the consensus is that if you could talk to him—”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Gennaro Fustino. He is a—ah—philanthropist.”

“You are speaking euphemistically?”

“Yes.”

“What can he do?”

“I would say there is no limit to what he could do, in this case.”

“Like what? How?”

“He might be able to persuade the—ah—girl, Laverne Toby, to withdraw her testimony and—ah—in the case of the narcotics and the—ah—alleged murder weapon which your son was allegedly carrying—well, we would say it would most certainly be worth your talking to him.”

“What church group is he with?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to have some pretty formidable introductions arranged. If he can do anything, I want to talk to him under the best possible auspices.”

“From his name, I would guess he’s a Catholic.”

“I can get to the Pope. Check the man out on his religious affiliation, please.”

“Well—perhaps this office can—ah—arrange such a meeting.”

“Set it up for late Wednesday morning. I’ll fly out as soon as this election is definitely settled. Not that it isn’t definitely settled right at this moment. I had this city government on the run and now they have broken my back.” Mallon slammed the phone down.