“How do you know?”
“Because you’re guilty. Because there’s plenty of evidence to convict you. You were good, but not exactly careful.”
“Are you going to offer to kill the girls for me for some ridiculously high price? Is that it?”
“You’re correct, but only in part. I’m here to offer you a way out that doesn’t involve killing any of the girls, but it does come at a ridiculously high price.” Raynor’s face broke into a smile as he hoisted his glass and downed the vodka in one long, delicious gulp.
CHAPTER 44
At the office of DeRose & Associates, Angie was deep into her research on the life on Antonio Conti. The Web had a decent amount of information about Conti, just enough so she didn’t have to visit the library to further her investigation.
In the world of organized crime, Antonio Conti was a soldier, a low level operator who worked for Philip Pissano, a caporegime, or capo, in Dominick Giordano’s notoriously ruthless crime family. The capo was a leader, head of a group of soldiers, and wielded tremendous clout and power within the organization. Conti would have been nothing but a footnote in mob history had he not been pinched on a racketeering charge related to the extortion of local businesses. His was an ill-conceived money laundering scheme.
Because Conti already had a few priors to his name, he was looking at serious time, which certainly influenced his decision to cut a deal with the Feds. In exchange for his testimony, the DA dropped all charges against him. Branded a rat in mob circles, Conti and his family required constant police protection.
As a soldier, Antonio Conti had peddled influence with tactics of fear and intimidation. As a turncoat underworld informer, he wrought havoc and crippled the leadership of the Giordano crime syndicate. The information he revealed during his sensational trial pulled away the shroud that had blanketed the mob in secrecy. Giordano ran his organization with the sophistication of a Fortune 500 company and leveraged a network of Swiss accounts along with elaborate legal and financial maneuverings to hide their illicit activities.
While working as an informant, Conti wore a wire. He secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversation, producing damning evidence at the trial of several high-ranking mob members including the head honcho, Dominic Giordano, and Conti’s immediate supervisor, the capo Phillip Pissano. These men were not so different from the portrayals depicted in The Godfather. They valued loyalty and integrity above all else, cherished family, and spoke of honor, while simultaneously dealing quantities of heroin measured in tons.
They were killers who never worked on Mother’s Day and abhorred the use of foul language in front of women. Their family values were in stark contrast to the brutal realities of their profession. The damage Conti’s testimony had done to the crime syndicate was immeasurable. Giordano and Pissano each received life sentences and both died in prison. Other members of the mob received lengthy prison sentences including bosses, underbosses, a consigliere, and various captains and lieutenants—all taken down by the low-level Antonio Conti.
It made sense to Angie why Dot and everyone in the country, as Dot had put it, were aware of the trial. Conti’s home in Williamsburg, where he lived before turning informant, was a media circus, and Conti’s wife, Marie, and their only daughter, Isabella, were frequently filmed and photographed. Archived video footage showed Conti pushing his way through a phalanx of reporters on his way into the courthouse, often with his wife and daughter in tow—a daughter with a deformed right ear. Only a few photos of Isabella Conti were online, but none of them were the same as the one Angie had in her purse.
Where did that photo come from, she wondered.
The picture in the attic had been developed from a negative—had to be, because of the Kodak stamp on the back. Everything Angie had learned since making this discovery fit the narrative she had constructed. The year the photograph was taken and its location matched what she read online. Angie used Google Maps to get a street view of the Williamsburg neighborhood where Conti once lived. Many of buildings were the same ones depicted in the photograph, though the Mayor Koch poster was long gone.
Mike Webb read the Wikipedia page over Angie’s shoulder. “So he’s our man. You think he and your mom had an affair?”
“She would have been in her late twenties, almost thirty back then,” Angie said. “Certainly possible.”
“Married to your dad for how long?”
Angie did some math in her head. “Six or seven years.”
“The old seven year itch,” Mike said, in a sing-song voice.