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prosecutors a week, ten days, to cross the t's and dot the i's; we can arrest him anytime. Probably get bail set around six million."
    "Arrest him for what?" asked another agent.
    "RICO conspiracy," said Manheim.
    He said it with an attempt at granite certitude, but the slightest hint of apology still came through, and the words were met with the sort of embarrassed silence that follows an all too public fart. A long moment passed; a draft went through the room like shaved ice blown across the windowsills.
    " 'Zat all?" asked Ben Hawkins. "RICO conspiracy? Aka guilt by association? Was I absent that day, or do I seem to remember that was kicked out of the Constitution?"
    Manheim said nothing.
    Frank Padrino said, "Jesus, Harvey, those cases are such bullshit. Lawyers' delight."
    Manheim crossed his ankles; his hinged mouth chewed out words. "Gentlemen, we're here to enforce laws, not have opinions. You don't have to like RICO—"
    "But juries have to," Hawkins interrupted. "And they don't."
    "Shit," said Padrino. "Without Mondello turning, even Carti might've walked on RICO, and Carti was guilty as sin. Now you've got Delgatto. He's a little old man, he looks like a guy who alters pants. You'd have a very tough time proving he's personally committed a crime in forty years. The jury won't go for it. We'll look ridiculous."
    Manheim ran a hand through his thinning hair and called up the pale and tentative candor allowed to the middle manager. "Guys," he said, "listen. Strictly between ourselves, I don't like this either. But I got the DA on my ass. He hasn't had a lot of headlines lately, he's suffering withdrawal. He wants us to come up with a way to grab the Godfather. It's that simple. And let me tell you something: For the guys who find a way to do it and to make it stick, it's going to be a career maker."
    A hush descended. Career-maker. The word had magic in it, it warmed the room like the red coils of a toaster. The younger agents squirmed in their chairs as though with thoughts of sex. One of them, a square-jawed fellow named Mark Sutton, with all of six months on the squad, didn't so much speak as ooze forth words from the simmering bubbling well of his ambition. 'There's gotta be a way," he said.
    "You bet there is," Manheim said approvingly.
    "It isn't RICO," said Ben Hawkins. "RICO won't stick."
    "So we'll find a better way," said Sutton. He said it with the shrill annoying confidence of the young, and Hawkins, his own face caught in an involuntary wince, took a moment to study him. The young agent's hair was too perfect; it looked sprayed, like the hair of a sportscaster. His face had the neat and regular features of a recruiting poster and exuded about as much humanity. He wasn't big—in fact, he looked like he'd barely made the height requirement—but he worked out hard; you could see the telltale bulges between his shoulders and his neck.
    "A better way," said Harvey Manheim. He leaned across the lectern and zeroed in on Sutton. He'd found his boy. "Yes. Let's get right on it."
    "Small detail you ought to know," Frank Padrino put in dryly. "Delgatto's down in Florida. Miami agents made him at the airport a couple weeks ago."
    A suspicious, worried look flashed across Harvey Manheim's face. Was he the last to know? Would it count against him that he was? "What the hell's he down there for?"
    Padrino shrugged. "His wife died a few weeks ago. Maybe he's just resting."
    Manheim frowned. You couldn't indict a man for resting or for mourning. He struggled to stay on the offensive. "Listen—Florida, Flushing, I don't care. Let's get the background going, be ready to jump on him when he comes north. Frank, you work with Sutton—"
    "Jeez, Harvey," said Padrino, "I'm finally getting some penetration into the Fabrettis—"
    "OK, OK," the supervisor said. "Then Ben, you and Mark, you're partners on this."
    It happened so fast that Hawkins could do nothing but blink. He was fifty-three years old, easing toward retirement