“To tell you the truth, I’m getting near the end of my rope. I’m ready to come back to New York.”
“Call me when you get in. We’ll have dinner, and I’ll straighten you out.” Dino hung up.
Stone put the phone away and looked up and down the hallway. No sign of Holly. He found a courtroom and peeked inside. It was half full of people, but there was no judge on the bench, yet. Holly was sitting in the back row of seats. He went in and joined her.
“What’s happening?”
“Trini and two FBI agents are sitting in the first row, behind the prosecutor’s table,” she said, nodding. “The guy at the table must be Byron Miller.”
Stone looked at the two men sitting at the table, their backs to him. “If the U.S. Attorney himself is trying a case, then it has to be an important one.”
A bailiff stood up and shouted the name of a judge, and the crowd stood until he was seated.
“Mr. Miller, call your next witness,” the judge said.
Miller stood up and called Trini, then waited while he was sworn and sat down. “Mr. Rodriguez,” he said, “were you, until recently, a member of organized crime?”
“Yes,” Trini replied. “Until late last year I worked for a family in Florida.”
“By ‘family’ do you mean a Mafia family?”
“Yes.”
“What were your duties?”
“I arranged loans for applicants and took care of collections.”
“Loans from the Mafia family?”
“Yes.”
“Were these loans made to people who could not obtain them from conventional banks?”
“Yes.”
“Were these loans made at very high interest rates?”
“Yes.”
“Was this, in fact, an illegal loan sharking company?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Did you attend a meeting of organized crime figures on June tenth of last year in Miami, Florida?”
“Yes, I did,” Trini said.
“What was the purpose of the meeting?”
“Some people from New Mexico wanted to get financing for a new racetrack.”
“Was anyone in this courtroom besides yourself present at this meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Could you point out these people?”
Trini pointed at the defense table. “Those two gentlemen right there.”