As Mueller contemplated making his Faustian deal, there is no institutional record that he spoke directly to Gravano. But I did on several occasions. The time that is embedded most vividly in my memory occurred during a meal we shared when he was living under an assumed name in Arizona.

“First time I killed,” Sammy told me between bites of salmon with dill sauce, “before I pulled the trigger, I wondered how I would feel. Taking a life and all that. But I felt nothing afterwards . . . No remorse. Just ice.” He rambled on introspectively for a bit and then abruptly pointed his fork toward an adjacent booth in the restaurant. “See that blonde over there?” he asked.

I nodded and stared at a tanned woman in a low-cut dress.

“See that guy with her?”

I looked at a man in a suit and tie, his mouth wide open as he laughed with apparent delight at something the woman had said.

“I could go over there, pop him in the back of the head, and come back here and finish my salmon. I know it’s supposed to bother me, but it don’t.”

But it was bothering me. Why was Sammy the Bull telling me this?

Then, without any prodding from me, he explained. “I still don’t like being double-crossed. You just should know I could kill you in a second flat. I’m not threatening you. I’m not saying I would if you double-crossed me. I’m just saying I could. You see the difference?”

I definitely did not, and I thought the time had come to make my position clear. “See that waitress?” I ask. Across from us was a diminutive teenager, as small and thin as a gymnast. “I’d be afraid to double-cross her. She could take me.”

With that bit of submission out of the way, our conversation soon found a more fruitful path. But did Robert Mueller ever get a first-hand hint of Sammy the stone-cold killer? The answer to that question remains part of the secret history of the Gotti case. All that is known with certainty is that Mueller agreed to the deal that would make Gravano the government’s star witness, the lynchpin of the federal case. In return, a murderer with 19 notches on his gun would wind up spending not much more time in jail than a deadbeat dad.

It was Mouw who, accompanied by a single other agent, came to escort Gravano from his cell in 10 South and lead him to his shiny new life as a witness for the prosecution, and he deliberately chose a time when he hoped none of the other inmates would notice. But the shuffle of feet, the opening of doors, and even the whispered voices carried through the tunnel-like corridor of the high-security wing. And all at once John Gotti was on his feet, and he let out a piercing wail as he recognized the act of betrayal that was unfolding just outside his cell door. The plaintive scream, Mouw would say, seemed to echo throughout the entire prison, bouncing off the walls and filling every bit of space. It was a sustained and powerful noise. And he imagined he could still hear the Don’s lamentations as he hustled Gravano into the back of the Chevrolet parked on the street 10 floors below.

Gotti’s lawyer labored hard to make something of the fatuous hypocrisy that secured the government’s case. At one point he gestured to where the 12 jurors were seated and proclaimed that there weren’t enough seats to prop up the corpses of all the men that Gravano had killed. It was a nice bit of theatre, but in the end, when the curtain fell, Gotti was—at last!—found guilty.