The Good Rat Read Online Free PDF Page B

of limitations.
    Weinstein disagreed, enough to shake the prosecutors. “This connection between the end of the action in New York and what’s happening now in Nevada is questionable,” the judge said. “I never heard of a Vegas mob. I’ve heard of Cincinnati and Cleveland—I’m always confused by both—it’s in Ohio. But I never heard of a Vegas mob. There is no national mob. There is no conspiracy between New York and Las Vegas. The evidence is not strong on the statute of limitations. The charges seem to me to be relatively stale, and the statute of limitations problem is going to be a serious one.”
    Now the continuing conspiracy required under RICO ishanging by a thread, one that could simply dissolve at any moment.
     
    Jack Weinstein turns to the prosecutors. “Give me a date when you will have your full discovery materials.”
    “Soon,” one of the lawyers says.
    “That’s not sufficiently precise,” Weinstein says. “Discovery by July eighteenth. How long will it take to try the case?”
    “Twelve weeks,” the lawyer says.
    “Why?”
    “We have a hundred witnesses,” the lawyer says.
    “I’ll tell you how many witnesses you are going to have,” Weinstein says. “I’m not going to keep jurors here all year. The trial dates are either August eighth, twenty-second, or September sixth.”
    “I’ll need three to four months to investigate,” the lawyer says.
    “The trial date is September nineteenth,” Weinstein says.
     
    Suddenly, to confuse matters further, the prosecutor has a new homicide to add to those already in the indictment. Into the long day of talk about murders and mayhem, bloodshed and beatings, snatching and strangling comes another name, that of Israel Greenwald. In trial testimony he would emerge as the late Jeweler Number Two. It turns out his was actually the first murder committed by these conspirators.
    In wonderment Judge Weinstein says, “If you amend the indictment at this time, I can’t keep the defendants incarcerated.” There is some reeling at the government’s table.
     
    Another courtroom appearance again puts the legal system under the lights. The issue this time is bail, which would usually be a perfunctory, rather pointless discussion. The law would sooner put Son of Sam on the street than these two ex-cops who have been described on television and in newspapers as horrible killers.
    But there is a small surprise, another ripple on a calm lake. Weinstein is allowing an unexpectedly generous amount of time for Eppolito’s lawyer, Bruce Cutler, and Caracappa’s lawyer, Edward Hayes, to argue for bail. Ordinarily the judge tolerates a few minutes and then sends defendants like Eppolito and Caracappa back to detention cells in time for lunch. Today the speeches go through the afternoon, with no pauses.
    The hearing begins with Bruce Cutler about to speak and then purring, “Excuse me, I’ll wait,” aware that the judge is talking to one of his clerks, a woman in a black suit.
    Weinstein doesn’t even look up at him. “Go ahead, I’m listening,” he says, just in case you forgot that he’s been paying attention to two and three conversations at once for the last forty years.
    After that, Cutler speaks softly and so much more effectively than in his loud years of fame while representing and virtually merging with client John Gotti.
    The lawyer says that Eppolito had written a nonfiction book that was first titled The Man in the Middle before it became Mafia Cop. The book, which Eppolito dictated to a writer named Bob Drury, is the smoking gun of crime publishing. It would become primary reading for all cops, lawyers, and news reporters in and around the trial. Also psychiatrists interested in suicide. Since you couldn’t talk to Louie, you read his book, which for Louie was worse. During the reading, the page numbers seemed to lengthen into prison numbers. Louie Eppolito opens this book by giving up his father, Ralph Eppolito, on a homicide. Louie