Henry continued to scramble, hustle, and con for days after his arrest, but these were the last spastic jerks of a hood whose time had expired, the final reflex actions of a wiseguy who did not yet know that he was already dead.

*     *     *

    KAREN: On the night he got arrested, two detectives rang the bell. They had a search warrant. I didn't know that they had just arrested Henry and everybody. I didn't know what was going on. So even though I was surprised by the cops, I felt safe. I felt that I had nothing to hide.

    I asked them if they wanted coffee. I had just put on a new pot. Some of the wives, like Mickey Burke, used to curse at the cops and make nasty remarks and spit on the floor. That never made any sense to me. It was better to be polite and call the lawyer.

    First the detectives wanted to know where everyone in the house was, and they wanted us all to go into one room while they searched. They never said what they were looking for. The kids, who had been through it all before, just kept watching television.

    The detectives were very polite. They asked us to be calm and said they would try to get finished as quickly as possible. They went through everything. Closets. Bureau drawers. Kitchen cabinets. Suitcases. Even the pockets of our clothes hanging in the closets.

    I figured out what was going on after some other detectives came over from searching Robin's house. Our lawyer, Richie Oddo, called and said Henry had been arrested for drugs and would be arraigned in the morning.

    I didn't think it was such a big deal at first. They found some traces of drugs at Robin's house but nothing on Henry or at our place. I thought maybe we could beat the case. Especially after Henry gave me a signal in court the next morning. He just arched his hand a little bit, and I knew immediately where the drugs were hidden. That's what comes from seventeen years of being married. I knew that that motion meant that the drugs were on a small ledge behind some recessed lights we had installed inside a wall bench at the entrance to the bedroom. The cops had searched there, but you would have to know that you had to reach down and then up to find the ledge. Right after court I ran home, got the stuff—it must have been about a pound of heroin—and flushed it down the toilet. Now they had no proof.

    They were holding Henry in $150,000 bail, and he said that he wanted to stay inside for a couple of weeks or so to clean out his system. He had been taking so many pills and snorting so much stuff that he couldn't think straight. I thought that sounded like a good idea. And I also thought that with no evidence, we had a good chance of beating the case.

    That's why I couldn't figure out why Henry was so nervous when I went to visit him and why Jimmy and Mickey were acting so strange. Everyone was edgy. Then I went to see Richie Oddo, the lawyer. Lenny Vario was there. The Oddos and the Varios are related. Richie said he had not been able to see Henry for a couple of days. He was Henry's lawyer. What was wrong? Was Henry hiding from his own lawyer? Richie didn't understand. I could see it was making him suspicious.

    Lenny Vario said he had known Henry all his life. He said that Henry was a standup guy. It was as though he was reassuring the lawyer, but he was really sending a message through me. Lenny said that Henry would never talk against certain people, that he'd commit suicide first.

    Mickey Burke called me every day. She kept asking when Henry was coming home. I knew she was calling for Jimmy. I told her what Henry had told me to say—that he was drying out and trying to get the bail reduced.

    One day during the first week, Jimmy called and said he had some material for the T-shirt factory we had in the garage. He said I should pick it up at his shop on Liberty Avenue. I said I couldn't, I was in a hurry, I wanted to get to court, Henry was making one of his appearances. He said for me to come by anyway, it wasn't out of my way.

    When I got to the shop, Jimmy asked about things. He was smiling and asked if I needed anything. I said I was in a hurry, and he said the material was in one of the stores down the block.

    Jimmy walked outside with me and stood on the street as I started walking down the block toward the store. I noticed that all of the stores along the block had their windows painted out. It gave me a funny feeling. I kept walking, and when I looked back I could see Jimmy standing there pointing for me to go inside one of the stores.

    Inside I could see this guy who was always around Jimmy. Once I had seen him on a ladder painting Jimmy's house. He was very creepy. I always suspected that he did Jimmy's dirty work. He was just standing around inside. He wasn't completely facing the door, so I could get a look at him without him seeing me. He looked like he might have been doing some work inside. Who knows? I don't know why, but something struck me as being wrong.

    So instead of going inside, I waved back at Jimmy and said that I was late for court and that I'd pick the stuff up later. Jimmy kept pointing me to the store, but I kept going. I jumped in the car and took off. It was not a big thing. I was in a hurry, and I didn't like the look of the store and that guy. I didn't think of it again until much later.

    The next day I went to see Paulie. He was very upset with Henry. He was scowling. He was at Geffkens Bar, on Flatlands Avenue. There were the usual bunch of guys lined up to see him. The minute he saw me, he took me to the side. I told him about Henry's arrest. He said he wasn't going to help Henry get out of this. He said he had warned Henry about being in drugs a month earlier at his niece's wedding—he'd told Henry he would not help if Henry got jammed up. That meant Paulie wouldn't use any of his influence with the cops or the courts or the lawyers or the bondsmen to help. On any other case Henry would have been out on bail already just because Paulie nodded to the bondsman. This time, because of drugs, Henry was still inside.

    Then Paulie looked at me. He said that he was going to have to turn his back on Henry. He reached in his pocket and gave me three thousand dollars. He just put it in my hand and covered my hand with his for a second. He didn't even count it. When he turned away I could see that he was crying.

    MCDONALD: Henry Hill's arrest was the first real break we'd had in the Lufthansa case in over a year. Ever since Lou Werner's conviction the case had stagnated. Most of the witnesses and participants had either been murdered or disappeared. For instance, on the same night we convicted Lou Werner, Joe Manri and Frenchy McMahon were murdered. A month later Paolo LiCastri's body turned up on top of a smoldering garbage heap in a lot off Flatlands

    Avenue, Brooklyn. Then Louis Cafora and his new wife, Joanna, disappeared. They were last seen happily driving away from some relative's house in Queens in a new Cadillac Fat Louis had bought his bride.

    Henry was one of the crew's only survivors, and he was finally caught in a position where he might be persuaded to talk. He was facing twenty-five years to life on the Nassau County narcotics conspiracy. His girl friend and even his wife could also be tied into the drug conspiracy, and life could be made very unpleasant for them. He knew this. He also knew that we could send him back to prison to serve out the last four years on the extortion case for violating his parole and that there was a very good chance that he was going to be killed by his best friends.

    Henry was too vulnerable. He was facing too much time for a guy like Jimmy to take any chances with him. We suspected that Jimmy was just biding his time for the most opportune moment. We had very good information from informants that Henry was the next on the hit parade. Paul Vario had pretty much turned his back on him, which meant whatever happened happened.