The Informant

by Thomas Perry

  As he worked, he thought about the men outside. What took the longest on jobs like this was getting the men into proper positions, two on either side of the door. Two would hit the door near the knob with all their weight so it would fly open. The first two would run in low and fast, trying to get a shot in. The other two would come in a bit higher, aiming their guns over the shoulders of the first pair.

  His hole was finished. He slithered through it into the next room, and then reached back through and strained to pull the empty dresser back up to the wall after him. He tugged on one side, then the other, to walk it to the hole in the wall, then lay still and listened.

  There was no bang, no sound of a foot kicking the door in. Instead, there was a jingle of keys and a scrape as the deadbolt slid out. The door to his old room opened a crack, then hit the desk he'd pushed in front of it. There was a labored scrape as they pushed the desk aside, and then quick footsteps that he could feel vibrating up from the floor to his belly.

  "What the fuck?"

  "Where is he?"

  Footsteps shook the floor again as two of them burst into the bathroom. "He's not in here."

  Schaeffer aimed one of his pistols under the dresser through the hole he had cut. A man lay on the floor in his room to look under the bed. Schaeffer waited. If the man rolled and looked in his direction, he would have to kill him. The man stood up. "What if we got the wrong room?"

  "Does that bathroom window open?"

  More footsteps. "I don't think so. And how would he get up there?"

  "The son of a bitch is famous for doing stuff like that. Jerry said he killed a guy once who locked himself in a bank vault. They opened it up the next morning and there he was."

  Whoever Jerry was, he had gotten the story wrong. The bank vault was just a safe room in Angelo Turcio's house in New Jersey. Schaeffer had boiled some bleach beside the air intake, and the chlorine had made Turcio sick. He had opened the door himself and tried to shoot his way out.

  "Bobby, go to the desk to be sure we got the right room number and ask if he checked out already."

  Somebody said, "We don't even know if he was the right guy."

  "Some traveling salesman didn't figure this out and get away before we could slip a key in the door."

  He took a couple of seconds to prepare himself for what was going to happen. In a minute they would suspect he'd made a hole and look for it. He saw the two sets of shoes approaching. The dresser was lifted suddenly, one man on each side.

  He fired upward into the one on his right, the bullet going toward the groin. The other dropped the dresser as though it were hot, leaving himself open for a moment while Schaeffer fired into his side.

  Schaeffer rolled away from the hole and dashed in the direction of the door. As he ran, the other two men fired at the hole, then moved their aim along the wall, punching small blooming holes in the wallboard behind him. He beat them to the door and stopped with both his pistols aimed at the door beside him, the only exit from his room.

  The two men spilled out the door of his room, fully expecting to head him off before he got out, but they were terribly late. For a moment their faces showed identical expressions of unwelcome surprise, but he opened fire with both pistols, and left them lying in front of the door.

  He sprinted to his car, got in, and drove. He was feeling alert and ready now. He swerved out of the lot onto the highway and quickly found the sign that said 57 NORTH—CHICAGO. It was time to go and see his old friend Vince Pugliese.

  22

  ELIZABETH WARING WAS in her office early in the morning once again. Yesterday's meeting with the deputy assistant AG had been worse than she had anticipated. A few days ago, she had been worried that she had forfeited the chance for a good working relationship with her new boss. Today, she was worried that she was about to lose her job. She was uneasy, not only because he was now openly contemptuous of her performance, but also because, from a certain point of view, she was guilty. If he chose to call a personnel hearing right now, it would be difficult to defend herself. She tried to imagine what that would be like. At the end of it, did they say, "We'll get in touch to announce our decision," or did they ask for the Justice Department identification and the gun and the office key right away?

  What would she do? She was nearly fifty. She had a law degree, but could she even find a job as a lawyer at her age? Even if she didn't admit to being fired, she couldn't hide that she'd left because of trouble. All this time she had been encouraging Jim—and in a year, Amanda—to apply to the famous private colleges that would give them advantages in life. If she lost her job, that was over.

  As she sat at her desk, paralyzed, trying to get herself to start on her work, she thought about Dale Hunsecker. Without ever wanting to, she had become his enemy, and he was going to try to crush her. What frightened her was that he was the champion idiot in a succession of amateurs appointed to hold that position. There was no way for her to work her way into his good graces. He combined strong, inflexible opinions with a complete innocence of facts. He had no instinct for law enforcement and a temperamental distaste for what it actually involved. He didn't want to learn anything about organized crime, but he wanted to know everything that anyone in the organized crime division was doing before they did it so he could arbitrarily veto about half of it. Each time she saw him, she was more deeply convinced that she must keep him from knowing about anything important and try to survive until he moved on. And right now, there was one thing that was more important than anything else.

  Three days had passed, and the Butcher's Boy had made no new attempt to get in touch with her. She was almost certain that he had seen her ad by now. He would have wanted to see every single bit of information about the Arizona meeting and the resulting charges. The simplest places to look were the Arizona papers and the big metropolitan papers that covered organized crime. He must also be watching for any attempt by individual bosses to talk to him. No matter what the old men had promised Frank Tosca, he was dead now, and there was no benefit to be had by keeping their word to him. The Butcher's Boy, on the other hand, was alive, and there wasn't much sense in hunting him if it might get them killed.

  She had made her own bid, but had she used the wrong way to get his attention? No. The personal ad from VP that she had seen in the same papers was a confirmation that this was a likely way to reach him. It had also diminished her hope. She could only succeed if he was alone and in trouble. If he had other invitations to talk, then he might think he had other options.

  She had very complicated feelings this morning. She was frustrated that VP had reached out to him the same day she had, and she was sure that VP's ad would interest him more than hers. It seemed to be a chance for rapprochement and reconciliation with at least some small faction of the Mafia. Her offer could only amount to protection in some kind of confinement. If he could trust both offers, he would pick the offer from VP.

  But VP's invitation was a trap. Did he know it was a trap? He must at least be suspicious and wary at this point. Who was VP, anyway? It was probably somebody he might trust, somebody he had known in the old days, when he was every family's favorite hit man. Who did he know from those days who could pose as a friend? It had to be somebody who was at least forty-five years old. The ad had said, "I missed you at the ranch." Did that mean VP had been there?

  She had typed the list of names into her laptop the first day, then added notes to each entry as she learned details and what charges were filed. She opened the file and scrolled down the list to the Ps. There seemed to be three VPs—Victor Perrone, Vito Pastore, and Vincent Pugliese. She hesitated. VP might not even be a name. It could be VP for vice president, some reference to an old fake business he would understand. Or it could be one of those childish nicknames they gave each other—Pete "the Postman" Calvatti or Sammy "Antennas" Antonino.

  It didn't even have to be a man. It could be a woman. In that world, it might make the invitation seem less dangerous. In his days as an active ki
ller for hire, he couldn't have had a girlfriend that other people knew about, and he couldn't have had a relationship with any female relative of the men he met on business. They saved their sisters and daughters to marry other members of LCN, or at the very least, other Italians. Any women he had would have been prostitutes, or women he met on a temporary, semi-anonymous basis. He couldn't have had emotional ties with a woman of the sort that made his visits to her habitual or predictable, or he would be dead.

  No, it felt like VP had to be one of the two hundred men at the ranch, and she had the feeling that nicknames weren't likely to be conveyed as initials. She returned to her list. Victor Perrone. He was old enough and was prominent enough to be the one they'd use as an ambassador. But he was a capo in the Balacontano family, and a brother-in-law of Antonio Talarese, a man she believed the Butcher's Boy had killed ten years ago, the last time he was active. Even if he wasn't a supporter of Frank Tosca, he would certainly not be a friend of Tosca's killer. A challenge from him might work; an invitation wouldn't.

  That left Vincent Pugliese and Vito Pastore. She didn't know much about Vito Pastore. She went to the NCIC site. There were two Vito Pastores and neither was the right man. One of them had been born in 1901. He had a criminal record that began in 1919 and stretched for sixty years. He had been picked up in a bootlegging raid. He had once been convicted of robbing a train. He had been dead since 1979.

  The second Vito Pastore's record consisted of convictions for importing and selling counterfeit designer clothes, watches, and handbags, extortion in connection with a music distribution deal. He was questioned and released in the killing of Ronald Sturtevant, a bass guitar player for a band called Scuffle. He was twenty-six years old. He would have been about five or six years old when the Butcher's Boy was still meeting people. It occurred to her that he might be a surrogate for somebody who was the right age, but how would the Butcher's Boy know that?

  She turned her attention to Vincent Pugliese. He was just about the right age—fifty—and he was an underboss with the Castiglione family, the highest he could go without being named Castiglione. She had no knowledge of how he had met the Butcher's Boy, but she supposed all the ways were unlikely but one.

  She scrolled to the thumbnail pictures and clicked on a few to enlarge them. There was a set of mug shots from 1980, when he was convicted of violating the Illinois concealed-firearm laws. On the day of his arrest he had been very well dressed, with an expensive haircut and a calm, relaxed expression. He had been handsome in those days.

  The Justice Department file on him had more recent photographs, all surveillance photographs taken with a telephoto lens. There was nothing very revealing. Here he was coming out of a Chicago restaurant called Rangione's Villa Venetia. A parking attendant had just brought up a black Mercedes sedan that was probably his.

  There was another of him on a golf course waiting to tee off—again looking prosperous, relaxed, and calm. He was leaning on his driver and holding his ball and a tee in his right hand. She recognized two of the men with him as Castiglione brothers. The third, who was teeing off, was unfamiliar to her. She looked at the note below. It said the man was Wilson McGee, the professional golfer. Of course, it would be somebody like that. Mafiosi loved celebrities.

  She was almost positive now that VP was Vincent Pugliese. There were no other candidates who had all the qualities and who felt right. She had heard twenty years ago that the Butcher's Boy had grown up in the Midwest. To her that meant at least some relationship with LCN, most likely including some members of the Castiglione organization. Even if they weren't the employer, they would demand that anybody who made his living murdering people in their territory check in with them. They wouldn't want somebody collecting on a relative or a vital business associate. There would have been plenty of opportunities for the Butcher's Boy to meet Vincent Pugliese when they were both young.

  There was also the complicated relationship between the two Chicago Mafia families and the five families in New York. From time to time for nearly a century the New York families had claimed some kind of primacy over the Chicago families. All of those claims had been denied and all incursions repelled. There had been nothing she knew of in the past twenty years, but maybe there was one Chicago capo who was not unhappy to see Frank Tosca die and the Balacontano family in confusion.

  Anything could be happening, but what she believed was that there would be a moment when Vincent Pugliese would meet with the Butcher's Boy to talk about his future. It would take place within a few days, and it would be in or near Chicago, where there was some assurance that Pugliese could offer protection.

  She walked down the long hallway. It occurred to her that this was the third time in about a week when she had, in advance, seen the path of the Butcher's Boy converging with the path of someone else in a certain place at a certain time and not been able to do anything about it herself.

  She stopped at Ed Morris's office and knocked. Morris's assistant, Mike Tucker, looked up, then looked surprised, and stood. "Ms. Waring. What can I do for you?"

  "I'd like about five minutes of Ed's time, if it's possible."

  "Let me ask if he's able to see you right now." He knocked on the inner door and then stepped inside, and then came back out with Ed Morris.

  Morris said, "Elizabeth, please come in." Elizabeth wasn't surprised by the way he treated her. Morris was, in his heart, a cop, and he had that almost courtly manner that a lot of them had. As he held the door for her, he appeared to almost bow.

  When she was inside, he said, "Can I have Mike get you anything to drink—a coffee? Bottled water?"

  "No thanks," she said. "The walk to this end of the hall is all of a hundred and twenty feet. I came to ask for some closely held information. I want to know if there's anybody—us, the FBI, the Chicago police—doing any surveillance on a man named Vincent Pugliese right now. He's an underboss in the Castiglione family."

  "We're not," he said. "I mean not on him personally. We might get him because he's half of somebody else's phone call, or he might be noticed by the airport surveillance teams. But let me get Mike on this. It takes about ten minutes and a couple of phone calls, but when he gets the answer, you can rely on it."

  "Thanks, Ed," she said.

  He went out for a few seconds, then returned. "He's on it. If there isn't a surveillance operation on Vincent Pugliese, do you want us to start work on authorizing one?"

  "I don't know yet," she said. "I'll get back to you if we need one. Thanks, Ed." She had no probable cause for any kind of search or eavesdropping on Pugliese. "I'll be interested to know if somebody's already doing it."

  As she walked back along the hall toward her office, she considered the issue of retirement. She had put in more than twenty years at this job, but she wasn't old enough yet to take retirement payments without a tax penalty. Both kids were going to be ready for college soon. She had saved for their tuition, but certainly not enough. She was going to be trapped in the Justice Department for at least the next six years. Or maybe it was seven years.

  She was going to do it. She could hardly ignore a chance like this, but there was no way Hunsecker would approve an operation to turn the Butcher's Boy. The idea that she intended to lead it—go to Chicago and direct an armed arrest—would make him crazy. But she would have to find a way to do it.

  She went to the computer and looked at maps of the area around the address of Vincent Pugliese, then looked at it from the air, and finally at ground level. She printed everything and put the copies into her briefcase. She would have to show Ed Morris the VP personal ad she had seen in the newspaper so she went onto the Los Angeles Times website and printed the ad.

  Years ago, under a very different deputy assistant AG, she had been issued a carry permit. But the compact .32 she carried in her purse wouldn't do. She would have to go to the gun safe that her husband had installed in their basement and get the nine-millimeter pistol that had been locked in there for years. After that, she would ha
ve to talk Ed Morris into putting the operation under his aegis and lending her a couple of his investigators who were up to this kind of work.

  23

  MAYBE THE EASE of the old men's lives had made them forget how it felt to be vulnerable like other people. A human being was a small, pink, weak creature that trained itself from its first discovery of death to keep changing the subject, and they seemed to have forgotten this.

  Or maybe it was the theatrical quality of their daily existence. From the time they came into power they were placed one level away from real dirt and blood and tears, and became actors in a pageant. They strutted down city streets with big stone-faced bodyguards who looked like bulls to exemplify their power. As long as they were awake, there were people opening their doors and driving their cars and pulling out their chairs as though they were eastern princes. They sat at tables in the backs of restaurants that were kept empty just in case they came in, their faces set in an imperial scowl. They were surrounded by oily advisors and lieutenants who whispered schemes in their ears while messengers stood by waiting for the chance to deliver some bad news to somebody. Now and then one of them would go into a tantrum, a barrage of threats and curses intended to make an audience feel fear strong enough so the jolt would be conducted down the branching circuits of the organization to the people who did the work.

  It seemed to Schaeffer that they must have forgotten a great many things they needed to remember. The biggest of them this week was whom they had casually agreed to kill. It had been completely unnecessary, and it apparently had been decreed without much thought. Did it even occur to any of them that there might be a price to pay? They seemed to have forgotten that down at street level killing looked different.

  There was a simple clarity to killing, and it was his only way forward. He had to remind a group of multimillionaires who had gotten used to thinking of themselves as immortal that death could overtake them at any time. He also had to teach them that even a solitary enemy could do them terrible harm.