The Informant

by Thomas Perry

  She hadn't exactly anticipated that either, but after she had said it, she realized it had been implied in her decision. She sat quietly with her suitcase beside her in the back seat of the cab, and watched the familiar buildings of the city loom and disappear. It occurred to her that she never called it the Hoover building except when she was feeling particularly intimidated by it. The fact that the FBI building was named for J. Edgar Hoover and the Justice Department was named after Robert F. Kennedy always seemed appropriate. The Kennedy building was just on the south side of the Hoover building, but they were not the same place at all. At the Hoover building she was an outsider.

  The cab driver was just about to start telling her about some outrage perpetrated in Congress this week, when she said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but I've got to call my children." She dialed her home number and let it ring until the voice mail came on. "Hi, it's me," she said. "I'm just calling to let you know my flight has arrived and I'm on my way to the office for the last hour of the day, and then I'll be home. I thought you'd probably be home already. I hope everything is okay. If not, call me."

  When the cab arrived, she got out, stood in front of the building on Pennsylvania Avenue with her suitcase, took out her cell phone, and dialed the number of Special Agent Holman.

  He answered his cell phone, "Holman."

  "Hi, John," she said. "This is Elizabeth Waring. I'm standing outside the Hoover building right now. I just got off a plane from Los Angeles, and I believe I need a favor."

  "What are you doing out there? Come on up."

  "It's embarrassing, but I lost my Justice Department ID. I've only got an out-of-date one with me. I imagine the security people will think I'm trying to test their alertness, so they'll stop and detain me."

  "Probably. Using expired ID is the kind of thing the inspector general's people do as a test. I'll be right down."

  She stayed in front of the ugly concrete building. The center of the city was filled with beautiful old gray stone buildings with enormous pillars and imposing steps. But the FBI headquarters looked like a computer science building in a cash-strapped Midwestern college. While she waited she faced to the side so she wasn't staring at each person who came out and wasn't blocking the sidewalk. She felt odd standing there with a suitcase, but it was a carry-on, no bigger than the wheeled carts some attorneys brought to courthouses. She hoped people who saw her invented some sensible reason for her to be here with it.

  After what seemed like a long time, she saw the door open and John Holman came out smiling. "Elizabeth."

  "Thanks for coming out," she said. "I can't imagine what happened to my ID. I've ordered a new one, but it takes time to airbrush out the wrinkles on the photograph."

  He laughed. "I just hope there isn't some teenaged girl out arresting people with your ID."

  "I'll chance it."

  "Come on, and I'll vouch for your identity and get you past the skeptics."

  "Thanks."

  They went into the building, stopped at the security barrier to present their identification, and rode the elevator up to the third floor. She walked with him, feeling a bit out of place, like a suspect being brought in for an interrogation. But then he opened a door with his name on it and they were in an office much like hers. There was a big desk and a leather chair behind it, but he sat across from her in one of the chairs around a table.

  As she sat, he got up and brought a yellow legal pad and pen from his desk and dropped them on the table, then sat again. "You said you needed a favor?"

  "I did, and I do," she said. "I just got off a plane from Los Angeles. When I got there, I went to the neighborhood where some of the Mafia caretakers from the east have houses. I was pretty sure he would be there taking a look. I drove up and down the streets before dawn, checking license plates and car descriptions against the ones the FBI people had recorded around Vincent Pugliese's building in Chicago. I found his and left him a note with a number where he could reach me."

  "Did he call?"

  "Yes. He said he'd be in touch, and then showed up at my hotel five minutes later and demanded I go off in his car with him right away."

  "And you had no time to call for a remote surveillance or anything?"

  "I believed that this was the best shot I would ever get with him, to persuade him to act as a Justice Department informant. You have to realize that this man knows enough to put practically the whole older generation in jail, and I had information that might make him see the odds were against him and getting worse. I had to try."

  "Didn't you worry that he might change his mind and kill you?"

  "He'd had several chances to kill me and shown no inclination. So I went with him. While he drove me around, I made my best pitch to get him to come in. It was based on my experience of what the department has approved for other informants in the past. I was realistic. I said we would offer him the highest level of protection from his enemies during a two- or three-year period while he was talking to us about what he knew. I said he would testify in court against criminal defendants of a high level only if there was a case against them. He would be granted immunity only for crimes he told us about. At the end of the period he would be on his own. And I told him that we now have intelligence that at least one family has hired a team of high-end professional killers to hunt him down."

  "And he turned you down?"

  "Right. I realize now that unless he's sure he's about to die, it's a bad deal to him. If we had him in custody for a serious crime, a deal might seem more attractive."

  "And you need FBI help to get him in custody."

  "I've delayed asking for too long. As long as there seemed to be a chance of doing this simply, I kept pursuing the possibility. But today I realized that I had made a horrible mistake. I waited for him to get himself cornered so my offer would look good, but that wasn't happening. He was succeeding. He's declared a personal vendetta on the bosses who were at that meeting in Arizona, and he's killing them, one after another. He's killed Frank Tosca, all three of the Castiglione brothers, and their underboss, Vincent Pugliese. In order to do that, he's had to kill seven or eight soldiers and hired men. Today he was in Los Angeles, and I think he was after the Lazaretti family. The one to get would be Tony Lazaretti, who's not only a blood relative, the nephew of Don Carlos Lazaretti, but also the head of the western businesses."

  "Is this something you know, or you're guessing?"

  "You were the one who told me it was a Lazaretti soldier who said they'd hired a team of killers to find him. When I got to Los Angeles and told him there was a team of killers, he seemed to know already, and to know who had hired them."

  Holman looked tired. "A couple of hours ago, we received word that Tony Lazaretti was killed in his house by an unknown assailant. There was also an associate of his killed in the gunfight and another seriously wounded. The Los Angeles field office is also looking into two men who were found dead in Griffith Park. One had an Ingram MAC-10 with a silencer. I'm sure all of this will be in your own reports, but I forwarded it to you in case."

  "Oh, God." She winced and looked down.

  "What do you want to do?"

  "He needs to be apprehended. We can't let him go on killing people. I'd like him alive, if possible. He knows about the people who came up with him thirty years ago, the people who are running the mob right now. But he's very good at killing people, and he'll keep doing it. Even though his enemies are some of the worst people in the world, this has got to stop now."

  "You shouldn't blame yourself for Tony Lazaretti or the others. They all knew what he was, and they underestimated him. In their business, that's a fatal mistake."

  "Well, I've got to change the focus of what I'm doing now." She handed him a piece of paper she had torn from the notebook she carried in her purse. "Here. I wrote this down on the plane. He's in Los Angeles, or was yesterday, driving a gray three-to-five-year-old Toyota Camry with Illinois plates, number E905E 783. He was carrying two Beretta M92 pistols. And the
place he's going to strike—he already has, so it's too late for that. There are a couple of other possibilities, but I don't think he'll stay in Los Angeles long enough to do any others."

  "We can initiate a multistate search for the car, but if he's dumped it already, there's not much ... wait a minute. The Camry thing sounds familiar." He stood and went behind his desk, woke up his computer, and typed in an identifier. He read for a few seconds. "Yep. Here it is. When they found the two men in Griffith Park, they were beside a shot-up Toyota Camry that had plates issued for a Ford pickup."

  "Worse and worse. Now the only thing I have is my own ability to identify him. The first thing I'll do is arrange for a session with a police artist. Then I'll just have to start over. I'm ready to start planning a trap. I'll try to get a message to him using personal ads in major papers. That worked once. And I'll have to lie and say that my bosses have given me permission to improve my last offer."

  "That brings up the next question. If the FBI arranges to work with you and set up this trap to get him into custody, what happens next? Does the DOJ handle the prosecution of this man and take the case from there?"

  "If the Butcher's Boy left evidence at the crime scenes, or resists arrest, or an eyewitness appears once we have him safely locked away, we'll prosecute. If not, I'll still try to get him to talk. But things in the department haven't changed. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Hunsecker will not cooperate with this in any way at the moment. If he learns this is how I've been spending my time, he'll try to fire me. I'm hoping that I can persuade him not to. If I can make it clear that I intend to capture and try to convict this man, not coddle him and make generous deals with him, I think the sun will come out and Hunsecker will have a different feeling about it."

  "Look, Elizabeth. People in the Bureau think highly of you, and you've earned a lot of respect. I'd hate to see your career end in departmental infighting with a political hack. Maybe this is one of those times when we have to wait for the stars to align just right before we take irrevocable action."

  Elizabeth stood up. "John, you've been a terrific ally, and now you're behaving like a friend. Thanks for everything. But I don't want to wait. As soon as I'm able to think through a plan, I'll call you. I don't want to delay acting on this. I seem to be the one that opened the box, so it's my responsibility."

  "All right," he said. "I'll be waiting."

  She opened the office door and went out, rolling her small suitcase behind her. She headed for the Pennsylvania Avenue exit. She would be in her office in five minutes. Then she could start devising ways to betray the Butcher's Boy.

  32

  ELIZABETH SPENT THE last hour of the day in her office at the Robert F. Kennedy Building. She studied the reports of the carnage in Los Angeles, trying to piece together exactly what had happened. There seemed to be three shooting victims who fit the profile for high-end killers. They all had infantry experience and time overseas, but no record of promotions or decorations, then some time working as mercenary contractors—bodyguards for foreign businessmen, mostly. Two had short stints working in Los Angeles for agencies that provided temporary protection for celebrities. One had a record for assault, one had a weapons conviction. But for the past two years, none of them had any record of employment.

  It was hard for her to work out the choreography. One had been in Pasadena and two in Griffith Park. The car that looked like it had been in a war was the Butcher's Boy's Camry. From the description of the car and the presence of the MAC-10, she knew that the two at Griffith Park were the ones who had waited for him at her hotel. She also knew that the one body that hadn't turned up anywhere was his. The winner was the one who walked—or drove—away. One car was found at the scene, which meant he probably took the other. He was still out there somewhere.

  What was he doing? He was preparing to kill another boss of another Mafia family somewhere. There could be little question of that. Killing the bosses was his whole strategy. It would take some thought for her to put together a list of likely candidates, and then she would probably be wrong about a few of them. If she could figure it out, so could the chosen victim.

  It occurred to her that maybe the chosen victim had figured it out. Maybe one or another of the bosses was now taking extraordinary precautions. That would be as good an indication as any. She began to go through the activity reports of the teams that kept track of these men. Within ten minutes she could see the problem: "The head of the Castananza family in Cleveland, Pete Castananza, returned from Arizona only three days ago. He and his family took a flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico, yesterday. They are believed to be on a private boat somewhere in the Caribbean." "Four days ago John Mangano of the New York Mangano family was followed to a house in Telluride, Colorado, owned by New York attorney Andrew Spiegel." "Over a period of a week, beginning with the funeral of Frank Tosca, members of the Balacontano family have been gathering in Saratoga Springs on Carlo Balacontano's stud farm. At least thirty men are now in the property, and as each group arrives, they bring more supplies and groceries." It wasn't some single boss who knew he would be next. It was a general retreat to defensible places. As she looked down the long list of reports, the examples simply multiplied. Some of the old men were taking sudden vacations, and others were making preparations that seemed appropriate to some kind of siege. None seemed to be feeling less vulnerable than the others. At this point, all of them seemed to be expecting a visit from the Butcher's Boy. She checked other cities. Men in Buffalo, Rochester, Tampa, Youngstown, St. Louis, New Orleans, Denver, Biloxi, Boston, and Providence were agitated and active. If what he had been trying to do was to create a panic, he seemed to have succeeded.

  She added this new information to her memory and let her subconscious mind work on it while she turned her attention to the e-mails and memos that had come in for her. She answered quickly, using few words, but being careful to say enough to reassure her people that she had paid attention and that she cared. That was what they required—the sense that they weren't working for nothing, issuing reports that simply disappeared into a filing cabinet in the main office. Some of her replies asked for interpretations. Some directed the field people to investigate facts they'd turned up.

  At the end of the day, there had been no ominous rumbling from the direction of the deputy assistant's office. She stayed an extra hour to finish the backlog of communications, and then picked up her purse and briefcase, locked the office door, put a couple of notes for Geoffrey in his in-box, called a cab, and went outside to meet it.

  Elizabeth got out of the cab in front of her house and gave her credit card to the driver. While he filled out the slip, her eyes strayed to the house. She could see the light in Amanda's bedroom. It was good to know she was working on her homework. Jim's window was a bit more ambiguous. The steady white light from his computer screen bathed the ceiling and back wall of his room, but Jim was more complicated for her to understand. He seemed to think growing up meant keeping most thoughts and all activities private. Most likely he was working intensely to finish a paper, but it was also possible his computer was simply on while he texted nonsense back and forth with a new girl she had never met. She knew she was just thinking of that as a way of punishing herself for not paying much attention to her kids for two weeks.

  She took her credit card back, added a tip to the slip and signed it, watched the cab move off into the night, and then extended the handle on her small suitcase and walked to her front porch. She felt a sense of guilt and loss as she pulled her keys out of her purse to unlock the door. She had spent the past three weekends away, so the time when she could have been with the two kids had been wasted. Next year Jim would be away at college, and Amanda would be a senior.

  The thought brought another sick feeling. Jim had been working on his applications during those weekends, and she hadn't been around to read his essays or remind him of things he'd done that he should mention. She knew he was a good student and a straightforward sort of person. His SAT scor
es were high, but not remarkable. He had been elected to the student council, but was not an officer. He was on the track team, but he was by no means a star. His teachers had hinted at what their letters of recommendation would say, and the gist of their opinions wasn't too different from what she would have said. He was a good kid, the sort who became a genuine man when the time came, and thereafter did things that made his mother proud. He wasn't very different from his father. The thought made the guilt intensify. She should have been a better mother during this time. It was probably the last time he'd need, or be able to accept, heavy-duty mothering.

  She unlocked the door and stepped inside. She called, "Amanda! Jim! I'm home."

  Amanda came to the upstairs landing, looked down, and waved.

  Elizabeth said, "I see you're rushing to help me carry my suitcase."

  "No, I just wanted to be sure you weren't bringing home a pony or a stepfather for us."

  Her brother appeared from the other side of the upstairs landing. "Hey, Wandering Mom. Nice to see you."

  "I just stopped in to see if either of you has any broken bones or arrests." She stared at them for a few seconds. "No? Then have you both had dinner?"

  "Yes," they both said.

  "We didn't know you'd be home this early," Amanda said. "We would have waited for you."

  "No, I'm glad you ate," Elizabeth lied.

  The two came down the stairs, and Elizabeth rolled her suitcase to the laundry room and left it there for unpacking later. "Don't anybody touch that," she said. "I locked my weapon in it because I didn't want to haul it around in the office."

  Jim said, "You mean your laser pointer?"

  She laughed. "Yep. So what's been happening around here?"

  "Your mail is on the counter," said Amanda. "I think I clinched my A in history on the test Monday. Jim stayed out with Nora Phelps until the birds started singing."

  Elizabeth stuck her head in the refrigerator and said evenly, "Congratulations and shame on you, respectively. Is this asparagus still from when I left?"