The Informant

by Thomas Perry

  "The meeting."

  She hesitated. "I think there will be one, but that's all I can say."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because you're calling me. It means you weren't lying the first time. I also saw reports of big people on the move." She was staring at the screens right now, even though it was nearly midnight.

  "On the move to where?"

  "Airports. Beyond that I don't know yet."

  "If people are flying, then the Justice Department can find out where the planes are going."

  "All right," she said. "I'll be candid. I can see they all seem to be headed for one part of the country. As of now they've gotten within a thousand miles of each other, but they should be closer soon. I don't know the place yet. The span between them is still too big."

  "What part of the country?"

  "I know that you still want to kill Frank Tosca. I can't give you any information that will help you do that."

  "That was our deal."

  "I wasn't aware that we had a deal."

  "From before. I tell you something, you tell me something. I told you what's going to happen, and now you tell me where."

  "I can't."

  Elizabeth heard the click. It wasn't a man slamming down a pay phone in a rage. It was just there, not there. He was gone.

  There was no way to tell what the Justice Department was doing, and he had probably been foolish to think she would tell him. He should have held something back to trade her and made her give him the location first. Dealing with law enforcement was like dealing with the Mafia. They had no innate sense of fair dealing or honor. They felt themselves subject only to judgment by the members of their own little organizations, according to their own rules. To them, betraying an outsider was an accomplishment.

  Schaeffer walked away from the pay phone, got into his rental car, and drove it across the Peace Bridge from Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario. He hated to waste time backtracking, but he had to find out where the meeting was. The simplest way to do that was to find someone who planned to be there. Cavalli, the man he had killed in Tosca's beach house along the St. Lawrence River, had certainly expected to be there. He was an important ally of Frank Tosca's. Cavalli seemed to see himself as the ambassador of the Castiglione family to the future boss of the Balacontano family. His travel arrangements would already have been made.

  After he had killed Cavalli, he should have taken the time to search the house. There might be tickets, reservations, phone numbers, or something. It was even possible that the meeting would happen somewhere in the area—maybe one of the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence. Most of them were privately owned and many of them had houses on them.

  As he drove east along the north shore of Lake Ontario toward the St. Lawrence, he considered the possibilities. It was not out of the question that Tosca might have returned to his beach house by now. It was probably more likely that he would send a couple of men to clean the house and move the body so it would be found in a place that didn't connect his death with Tosca. The Castigliones wouldn't like it if Cavalli's body wasn't found very quickly, but Tosca's men could arrange that too. As soon as the Canadian authorities had established that the body had nine-millimeter holes in it, so there was nothing mysterious about the cause or manner of death, they would release it for burial.

  Schaeffer drove the same route he had covered before, along the Queen Elizabeth Way. He was aware that time was passing while he went over old ground to do something he should have done the first time he was here. He had bet too heavily on Elizabeth Waring. He'd been sure she would find the approximate location of the meeting—a particular city—and that she would ask him to narrow down the possible meeting spots in that city that might host a large group of Mafiosi.

  He was sure she didn't want Tosca to kill him and become the most powerful man in the country. A relatively young, violent leader like him in charge of one of the biggest families might re-form and revitalize the whole Mafia. The old years of gang-run companies and unions, and gang-controlled city governments, would be back to stay.

  He had been overconfident about her. The Justice Department must know where the meeting was by now, and they should be trying to get their people and their microphones and cameras in place before it started. She should have been excited, busy, careless about everything but the success of their raid. She should have been trying to find out anything he knew that might keep her agents safe. Instead she had been on her guard, thinking about what he would or wouldn't do if he knew where the meeting was.

  He made it back to Tosca's house along the St. Lawrence River early in the morning. He drove past to see whether there were any cars parked there, or any other signs of people, but there were none. He parked a half mile up the road at the apartment building again and then walked back on the narrow, stony beach. It was still dark, just as it had been when he had come before. He watched the road for cars and studied the fronts of the houses for signs that they were occupied. There were a few with windows open to the cool night air, but only a few. The closer he got to the string of bigger brick houses where Tosca's was, the fewer signs of life. These were summer places owned by rich families, and rich families could go anywhere in the world so they probably spent less time here.

  He approached Tosca's house, then stood at the edge of the water on the pebbly shore and studied it. The windows were open, just as they had been before, but there were no lights on. Could Tosca have failed to understand that he'd been here and killed Cavalli in his house? No. Maybe he had devised some way of keeping himself in the clear by having a caretaker find the body while he was somewhere far away.

  Schaeffer moved forward. He found the screen he'd cut the night before last, still pulled out from the window. He went to the back door, found it still unlocked, and stepped inside. He could smell the body. The house looked just as it had when he'd left. He listened to the silence for a few seconds, then turned on the light. The body was still lying in front of the chair. The big pool of blood had dried completely around the edges, and even in the middle it was dark and congealed.

  As he moved closer, the smell of the body was stronger. He was careful to stay away from the blood. That was the kind of evidence that cops all over the world dreamed about—the killer's handprint or footprint in the victim's blood. He stepped close on the side that was bloodless, reached into Cavalli's pocket, and extracted his wallet and keys. The tag said the keys were for a rental car from a lot in Toronto. He supposed it must be in the garage. There was a lot of cash in the wallet, but nothing that would help him find some particular place—no travel agent's card, no written notation of a confirmation number, a flight number, or even a phone number with an area code.

  He looked around him. It had been late night when he'd come in before, and Cavalli was alone watching TV, not visiting with anyone. He turned off the light, moved to the staircase, and climbed to the second floor. He found the room he wanted right away. There was a two-suiter suitcase open on a chest and an unmade bed. He closed the shutters and turned on a bedside lamp. He ran his hands in the outer pockets of the suitcase and felt paper.

  He pulled out a thin sheaf of letter-size inkjet-printer paper. His eye caught the word ITINERARY at the top of the first sheet, so he read it. Cavalli had booked a flight from Syracuse, New York, tomorrow morning to Phoenix, Arizona. He looked at the second sheet. It was a car rental reservation for the lot at the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. The third sheet was a hotel reservation for three days in a hotel in Scottsdale, but it began the day after Cavalli arrived in Phoenix. That meant the meeting must be in the next forty-eight hours.

  He folded the papers and put them in his pocket, switched off the light, and made his way to the stairs. He went down the stairs to the first floor and moved toward the garage to see if Cavalli's car was inside, then stopped. There was an engine sound, a car approaching on the road. Then a rectangle of light appeared on the back wall. It was a headlight shining through the front window. He quickly climbed t
he stairs to the second floor, went to the window in Cavalli's room, and looked down.

  There was a van idling in the driveway. As he watched, it pulled out and backed into the space in front of the garage. Its lights went out, and Schaeffer understood. He had called Tosca well after midnight with Cavalli's phone. Tosca had known enough to call some of his men in New York. But it took them time to find a van and drive up from New York to the bridge over the St. Lawrence to Canada. Now was the earliest the crew could come for the body and begin the difficult job of cleaning up.

  He was trapped. They were already putting a key into the lock on the front door. He could hear the door open and two men with New York accents in midsentence. "...smells like a fucking slaughterhouse."

  "Yeah, I know. You can always smell that. I think it's the blood smell, mostly. At least he's not that old yet. And some of them shit. That's the worst."

  "Jesus. Don't go on about it. I got to work in here."

  Schaeffer moved back up the hall, away from the guest room. They would have to scour that room of evidence that Cavalli had been here. He moved to the large bedroom at the end of the hall and sat on the bed. He heard grunts and complaints that sounded as though the men were lifting the body, then heels scraping on a rough wood surface that could be a box, then the bang of a hammer as they nailed it shut. He heard the door open again, and from the window he saw them carry a flat, three-foot-wide wooden box out through the garage to the back of the van. They put what seemed to be a false floor over it, then went back into the house. In a moment they came back carrying the big chair that Cavalli had been sitting in, put it in the van, and closed the doors. The next sounds he heard were the careless banging of a bucket or pan in a sink, then water running. He could tell they were washing the floor and the walls.

  The cleanup was taking a long time. Schaeffer moved cautiously, walking across the floor of the master bedroom only when the men made trips outside carrying things. He explored the master suite, searching in the dark for anything that might help him narrow the list of places where the meeting could be. But he found nothing in the bedroom that had anything to do with travel. It was possible that Tosca hadn't even slept here since the arrangements had been made.

  He checked the two pistols he was carrying. He had assembled them in the car in the dark, but they were fine and their magazines were fully loaded. He pulled back their slides to put a round in the chamber of each one.

  He was beginning to get impatient. He would have to get on a flight to Arizona as quickly as he could after those two left. That meant getting to an airport and waiting for a flight. And Tosca knew he had come here and killed Cavalli. Tosca might have people watching for him in the Toronto and Montreal airports. He resisted the idea of driving all the way back to the United States and still having to wait for a flight. It wouldn't do him any good to arrive in Arizona after Tosca and the others had left.

  He heard the two men clomping up the stairs, and he felt relief. That meant they had completed the major chores. They had been working hard for nearly two hours, and he could tell by their heavy footsteps that they were tired. They went into the guest room and after a second, he heard the click of the light switch and saw the dim glow under the master bedroom door.

  He stood slightly to the side of the master bedroom door listening with a gun in each hand. He heard grumbling. They had driven all the way up to Canada, and now they were risking arrest trying to clean up a crime scene and smuggle the victim across an international border. They seemed to be feeling a bit unappreciated. He heard latches being clicked, and then heard one of them drop the suitcase on the hardwood floor.

  "Let's take a look in Tosca's room."

  "What for?"

  "Look, dumb ass. If something is missing, will he think we took it? Hell no. He'll think that psycho took it after he killed Cavalli."

  "You're so right. I'm a dumb ass. It's funny, though. All the guys who came up with me who weren't dumb asses are dead. Can you possibly think that anybody who comes back from Frank's house on a job like this isn't going to be searched?"

  "Tosca isn't going to be around to worry about it. He's all the way out in Arizona, probably already asleep on a feather bed at that fucking dude ranch."

  "The Silver Saguaro isn't a dude ranch, genius. It's a resort. And he left Mike Pascarelli in charge. He'll have guys watching us for just this kind of thing. This week it's Cavalli. Next week, they'll find you naked in the trunk of your car with two extra holes in your head. Tosca's bedroom is right there, the door on the end. I'm not going in, but be my guest."

  Schaeffer heard a set of footsteps receding down the hall. The second set of feet shifted on the hardwood floor, making it creak. Finally, a voice just outside the bedroom door called, "I'm not going in, even to look around, if you aren't. I know you'll rat me out." The second set of feet heel-stomped away down the hall and then hurried down the staircase, the man moving fast to prove to the other that he hadn't had time to go into the bedroom and steal anything.

  Schaeffer stepped to the side of the window, moved the curtain slightly, and looked down. The van pulled away from the garage, and after a moment, a car pulled out after it. He decided they must have hot-wired Cavalli's rental car because he had the keys in his pocket. It was possible they would have done that anyway. They would abandon it somewhere in Canada before they crossed the border to bolster the idea that Cavalli had been killed by a stranger.

  He put the two guns in his coat pockets and looked at his watch. It was after six A.M. He went downstairs and looked at the place where he had left Cavalli's body. It was about as clean as it could be and smelled like chlorine and lemons. If the cops sprayed luminol around, they would see all the blood spots appear bright purple under UV light, but there was nothing visible. They had taken the chair out so there was no place to sit and watch the television mounted on the wall. He went upstairs and left the rental-car keys and Cavalli's wallet at the back of a dresser drawer in Tosca's room where Tosca probably wouldn't find them, but a police search would.

  He slipped out the door on the river side, walked down the beach to the edge of the water, and threw the two pistols as far out into the river as he could. He jogged along the shore, then crossed the road to the place where he'd left the car. He hoped he had given the two cleanup men enough of a head start. He drove off to the east, the direction they had gone, heading for the bridge over the St. Lawrence.

  13

  IT WAS GETTING to be morning, and Elizabeth was still staring at the computer screens in the basement of the Robert F. Kennedy Building. It was impossible not to wonder whether she had made a mistake. Maybe she should have told the Butcher's Boy everything she knew. It would only have amounted to "They seem to be heading for the Southwest, probably near Phoenix." She hadn't said that because he knew things that she couldn't even guess. If she had said "Phoenix," he might know of some Mafioso she'd never paid much attention to, who owned a house, some piece of land, some remote ranch outside Phoenix.

  She knew that what she should have done was set a trap for him. She should have said, "We know the city is Durango, Colorado," and then told the FBI he was on his way and to detain any man who fit his description. If she got them to detain all the possibles, she might have to look at a hundred photographs tomorrow, but one of them would be his.

  Instead she had been stupid and slow, and made a self-righteous speech about not helping him kill people. That had accomplished nothing except to remind him that she was a law enforcement officer and he was a criminal, and that nothing could ever make her his ally. She had been unforgivably stupid. He had given her some valuable information, and in return she had shown him there was no reason for him to give her any more.

  He was potentially the best witness against organized crime in forty years, and she had thrown him away in an attack of bitchiness. A witness like that had to be cajoled into believing that the officer handling him felt at least some mild favoritism toward him, some conviction that she believed he was
better than the people he was telling her about. He had already told her that the agenda of the meeting included Frank Tosca asking the assembled leaders of the twenty-six families to kill the Butcher's Boy. He had very strong reasons to believe that a minor tip from her might enable him to prevent that and give him a chance to save his life. And what had she said? I'm not helping you.

  She felt a wave of resentment toward Hunsecker. If only he'd had a mind equal to the complexity of situations in the real world, she wouldn't be completely on her own, sneaking around like a spy in the building where she had worked for twenty years. His rigid absolutism had transformed a lucky turn of events into nothing. It was worse than nothing, really. Tosca would get the Butcher's Boy killed, exactly as he wanted. The more families involved in the hunt the better. They would be cooperating on a project that he had initiated and directed. He would not only get to be head of the Balacontano family, but a national figure, a symbol of new unity. And he was a vicious thug, a man who could make the Mafia into a terrifying force of a sort it had never been in the old days.

  She couldn't help feeling sorry for the Butcher's Boy. He was as alone as a human being could be, put in the position of attacking an international enemy a hundred and fifty years old, that had unlimited people and resources. He could never hope to accomplish anything but to get away and live the rest of his life in some form of hiding. And he had been retired. He hadn't worked—killed anyone for money—in about twenty years. It was hard not to make comparisons, hard not to hope that if any criminal got through this, he did.

  14

  SCHAEFFER WAS ON the plane to Phoenix, and it was before noon. He'd had the advantage of knowing that one of the passengers booked on the flight from Syracuse wasn't going to make it to the airport. So he had bought a standby ticket early in the morning, sat down with his computer, and waited until he had been called to the gate and assigned a seat. He spent the two hours in the waiting area across the concourse from his gate watching. If Cavalli had chosen this flight, it was possible there were others—friends of his, Castiglione soldiers, even Tosca—on the same flight. When he had determined that there weren't any passengers he had to worry about, he saw the air marshal arrive. She was about thirty-five years old, blond, wearing a business suit and carrying a leather shoulder bag. The flight attendants at the gate were not nearly ready for boarding, but they saw her enter the waiting area at a brisk pace, nodded to her as she walked into the boarding tunnel and disappeared. It all took about four seconds, and he had the feeling that if someone asked the flight attendants about the woman, they would have said, "What woman?" When he boarded the plane, he found her standing by an aisle seat about two thirds of the way back, staring at each passenger who came in the door. He had spotted marshals on his two flights into Washington, D.C., but he hadn't expected to have one on a flight to Phoenix. He just noted where she was, took his seat, and waited.