Coming Down to the Liar

It was at that point that Reyes's eyes appeared to fill with tears for the first time.

Reyes can probably thank Councilman Michael Yarbrough for the guilty verdict. A lunch meeting at Carrabba's among Yarbrough, Reyes and Molineiro in January 1996, and a gathering of undercover agents and Yarbrough nearly two weeks later provide the most devastating counter to Reyes's defense.

On the way to the lunch, Reyes told Molineiro he would pass an envelope containing $1,500 to Yarbrough in the restaurant bathroom.

At the Carrabba's meeting, Yarbrough greets Reyes with, "I need a job, man." Reyes says, "We got it. You need a job. We need a leader. And, uh, in just a moment we go in the bathroom."

Taking it all in stride, Yarbrough answers, "Okay." Reyes tells him a story about how he learned the hard way on Council that one had to extort the maximum in payoffs from contractors seeking business with the city.

"First, he tried to hoodwink my ass," Reyes said in the story. "Giving me a little old bullshit, little old package." Reyes said he eventually got what he wanted. "And he got right. Them motherfuckers, if they can get away with a nickel, they'll give you a nickel." The two took the promised trip to the lavatory.

In his testimony last week, Reyes continued to insist that, when he and Yarbrough went in the bathroom, no cash was exchanged and that the obscene banter at the table had been a show to impress Molineiro.

"So Yarbrough understood grown men going in the bathroom together?" queried Attanasio. Reyes answered yes, although he had earlier testified he had never discussed passing cash in a restroom with the councilman.

"Was it just a coincidence he understood going in the men's room and your story about corruption?" continued the prosecutor.

"Coincidence?" mused Reyes. "Could have been."
For Reyes, the most damning of coincidences occurred 12 days later. Yarbrough accepted an envelope with $1,500 from agent Bob Dogium, alias Marcos Correa, at a Bering Drive apartment office. In that videotaped exchange, Yarbrough confirmed he earlier received $1,500 from Reyes -- exactly the amount Reyes had told the agents he gave Yarbrough in the Carrabba's bathroom.

Thus the bribery scheme, which Reyes claimed he crafted as a pretense to control his FBI investigators, had become all too real, at least in this instance. It was the lie that finally trapped the old gray fox of Houston politics.

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