The Informant

by James Grippando

  “Mind if I join you?” she said from behind.

  He looked up, wiping his hands clean of the lemon he was squeezing into his Evian. He seemed startled by the attractive brunette wearing a sleeveless white shell and plaid shorts. Victoria took it in stride, by now well aware of the effect her slender figure and long bronze legs had on men.

  “Actually, I’m waiting on someone,” he said.

  “I know. Me.” She extended her hand. “My name’s Victoria Santos. Probably wouldn’t be very discreet of me to flash my credentials.” She dropped into the seat across from him.

  “I guess you weren’t what I was expecting.”

  She smiled. “Not even the FBI wears trench coats when it’s sunny and eighty degrees out.”

  The waitress brought menus, and Victoria ordered a Diet Coke. Mike emptied the rest of his bottled mineral water into a glass, then squeezed in another wedge of lemon.

  “That’s a scam, you know,” said Victoria.

  “What?”

  “The whole bottled-water thing. You might as well be drinking tap water.”

  “Do you work for the FBI, or for the Surgeon General?”

  “I just know these things. Has it ever occurred to you that Evian spelled backwards is naive?”

  Mike chuckled. “Pretty funny for somebody who’s made a career out of chasing homicidal maniacs.” He sipped his water, then dug a little. “How did you get into this line of work, anyway?”

  “You dive right in, don’t you?”

  “Why not?” He pressed gently: “Your motivation was…?”

  She hesitated, then chose the glib response. “When I was a kid I had a thing for Efram Zimbalist Junior.”

  Mike nodded. “But Efram never chased serial killers. Why did you get involved with that?”

  She sighed. That same old question again. “Well, looked at one way, it’s the ultimate women’s issue. Most serial killers are sexual sadists, and most of their victims are women.”

  He waited for more, but there was only silence. “That all you’re going to say?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your answer. It’s so…abstract, depersonalized. Almost sounds evasive.”

  She gave him a curious look. She’d used that answer hundreds of times before, and no one had ever called her on it.

  He selected a tortilla chip and dipped it in salsa. “The ‘victim’ angle intrigues me, though. Makes me wonder whether there’s something in your background that makes you feel like one.”

  “That’s a very personal question.”

  “I’m a reporter,” he said with a shrug. “There’s no such thing as ‘too personal.’”

  She arched an eyebrow. “And I’m an FBI agent. There’s no such thing as being too abstract or evasive.”

  “Another Evian, sir?” asked the waitress.

  “No,” he said, smirking at Victoria. “Just tap water.”

  “You learn fast.” She smiled thinly, and then they ordered. A burger for him, something healthy called the “New Wave Salad” for her. When the waitress was gone, Victoria turned serious.

  “We checked out the FedEx package you received. No fingerprints, except your roommate’s and the delivery man’s. Everything else, however, is as you suspected. It was definitely shipped on Thursday, and we’re now as medically certain as we can be that Kincaid wasn’t killed until Friday. I can’t divulge certain details about our investigation, but I can tell you that the Candler County Sheriff got a rather obvious tip on Sunday morning that led him right to Kincaid’s body. That didn’t make much sense to us until we heard about your package. We think they’re connected.”

  “How so?”

  “Whoever sent you the package knew it was going to arrive on Monday. We think he tipped off the sheriff’s office on Sunday out of frustration that nobody had found the body yet. Unless Kincaid was identified as victim number six before your FedEx arrived on Monday, her name wouldn’t have meant anything to you. Also, the informant’s whole claimed ability to predict the murders hinged on the medical examiner being able to confirm that Kincaid was murdered on Friday, the day after he sent the package. The longer the body went undiscovered, the more it would decompose, and the less precise the examiner could be about fixing a time of death.”

  “What kind of tip was it?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Five minutes, and already we’re in the ‘no comment’ zone?”

  “I’ve told you all I can. Anyway, we welcome your cooperation, and we’re willing to accept the terms your publisher laid out to my supervisor last night. But there are a few ground rules.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “We agree with your publisher that this isn’t likely to be a one-shot deal. The informant’s financial incentive is to feed you clues over time, bit by bit. So, first rule, whenever you hear from him, you call me at the number we gave you. Remember it, and don’t write it down. By the way, do you have a pager?”

  “Yeah, local.”

  “We’ll get you a SkyPager so I can beep you from anywhere in the country. Anyway, whether you call me or I call you, we avoid discussing anything of substance on the phone. We’ll meet for lunch or a drink, always in a very public place. Dress casually. Greet each other like friends, not business associates—certainly not like a reporter talking to the FBI. We smile and kid around, just in case somebody’s watching.”

  Mike leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “The deal is that you only get what I print in the Tribune, when I print it. My publisher doesn’t want me holding private sessions.”

  “That’s fine. But we should meet before each payment, just to talk logistics. We can’t assume he’s going to keep saying deposit fifty grand at Citibank. He may change his amount, he may even stop using banks altogether. I need to know that. The money is going to have to come from you—or at least appear as though it’s coming from you. But I can’t just give you a suitcase full of cash and have you pay it out as you see fit. I need some measure of control.”

  “Does that mean you’ll keep paying even if he ups the amount?”

  “We’ll see. Fifty thousand won’t raise too many bureaucratic eyebrows. But it’ll definitely get sticky if things drag out too long and he starts doubling, maybe tripling his price.”

  Mike’s mind whirred. “Sounds okay, I guess.”

  “Good. Because you may not like my second rule. Nobody can know about the Tribune’s arrangement with the FBI. So far it’s you, your publisher, and your editor. That’s already too many.”

  “Well, obviously my best friend Zack knows, too.”

  She sighed. “How good is he at keeping a secret?”

  “Very good,” Mike said. “Don’t worry about Zack. Of course, I have to tell my wife, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s my wife.”

  Victoria smiled thinly. “Mike, I am with the FBI. I know the status of your marriage.”

  He shifted in his seat. “What difference does it make if we’re separated? I can’t keep something like this from Karen.”

  “You must. The only sensible way to play this game is to assume the informant is the killer, or that he’s someone who’s just as dangerous, if not more. The more people in the loop, the greater the risk to everyone.”

  Mike looked away. “All right,” he said, sighing. “But if we have to keep her in the dark, that means she can’t take steps to protect herself if something goes haywire. The informant’s already hinted that the predictions could start hitting close to home if I went to the cops. I want her protected—twenty-four hours a day.”

  “We could do that without her even knowing it. I’ll have to clear it through the Miami Field Office, but I’m sure they’ve got someone doing background checks on applicants for government jobs who’d think watching your wife is a major career opportunity.” She checked her watch. “In fact, I’m meeting the profile coordinator there in forty minutes to talk about the Miami investigation. Sorry to eat and
run, but I have to go.”

  “One more question,” he said, catching her as she rose.

  She paused. He had a look on his face that told her something was bothering him. “What is it?”

  “Ever since I got the call, I’ve been racking my brain, asking myself, ‘Why me?’ With all the reporters in the country on this story, why would he single out me as his sounding board? I can’t figure it—can you?”

  She laid a ten-dollar bill on the table to cover her share of the tab, then looked him in the eye. “I guess the answer to that question depends, doesn’t it?”

  “On what?”

  “On whether he’s an informant,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “Or whether he’s the killer.”

  Their eyes locked in a tense stare, as if each was wondering what the other’s guess was.

  “Keep in touch,” she said, rising. She turned and headed for the exit, leaving Mike alone to ponder his own question.

  Chapter 10

  on Friday evening Karen headed home on Miami’s Metrorail, an elevated commuter train that paralleled the six-lane parking lot that was U.S. 1 during rush hour. The tracks and open-air stations rested on concrete pillars, fifty feet or higher aboveground. From a window seat Karen looked down on the power lines, treetops and barrel-tile roofs of what used to be a quiet suburban neighborhood. These days, however, all the doors and windows were covered with iron security bars, and razor-wire fences protected places of business. The speeding silver train came to a stop at the Coconut Grove station. A few passengers got off, but it was still standing room only. Karen was three stops from home and deep in her thoughts, but as the train left the station she stirred at the sight of a guard on the platform with a pistol at his side.

  Fortified houses. Trains with armed guards. Compartments full of lonely travelers who never speak or make eye contact with anyone around them. It got her thinking about a summer trip she and Mike made back in the late eighties, when they took the Eurail to Berlin. Their train had stopped in the middle of the night, and just one look out the window gave her the eerie sensation of the East German border. Police dogs sniffing around. Armed military police dollying convex mirrors beneath the train to check for stowaways. She and Mike were sharing a six-person compartment with a young Polish couple who, it appeared, were smuggling food back to Warsaw. Mike had given them his duffel bag to make it a little easier. It was 2:00 A.M. before the passport check was over. As the train left the station Mike was nearly asleep on her shoulder. She flipped on the reading light and woke him with a nudge.

  “Tell me something,” she said quietly, so as not to wake the other couple. “If I lived on one side of the wall and you lived on the other, what would you do?”

  His eyes blinked open, and he nuzzled against her breast. “Tunnel under it,” he said confidently, “to be with you.”

  “What if you couldn’t?”

  “Then I’d sneak out. Bribe my way out. Pole-vault over it. Somehow, I’d get out.”

  “But what if there was just no way? Say it was impossible. You and I had to live separate, forever and ever.”

  His brow furrowed, as if he didn’t like her rules. “I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Would you fall in love with someone else?”

  “Karen,” he winced.

  “Would you?”

  “No, never. Why would you even ask me that?”

  She paused, then said quietly, “To see if you love me enough.”

  He took her hand. “Isn’t totally ‘enough’?”

  She smiled sadly. It would be, she thought—but it would take nothing less than that to tell him something she’d been trying to tell him for a very long time. Still, she couldn’t find the courage.

  “Next stop, South Miami,” came the crackling announcement from the Metrorail conductor. Karen shook off her memories and prepared for her stop.

  The train slowed as it neared the station, and she moved toward the exit. Through the glass door that joined one car to the next she noticed a man in the next compartment who had seemed to move only when she moved. She glanced his way again for a better look. He looked away quickly, as if he’d been caught staring. He was mid-twenties, she’d say, and professional—pinstripes, power tie, briefcase. He looked like any other accountant or banker who rode the train every day. What bothered her, however, was that he looked even more like the guy at the mall she’d noticed last Tuesday night.

  The train stopped, and the automatic doors opened. A few people got on, many more got off. She had a funny feeling—an intuition. Just as a test, she stayed on. Sure enough, so did Mr. Tuesday. The doors closed and the train pulled away, carrying both of them toward the next stop.

  Her mind raced. He could be just some nice-looking guy trying to get the nerve up to say hello, she thought. Could be some weirdo who’s been following her for a week. Or it could all be in her head. Get off at the next stop, she resolved. If he gets off too, it isn’t paranoia.

  The train stopped at the Datran Office Center—the last station on the southbound line. Everybody had to get off, she realized, which meant that his getting off here really wouldn’t confirm he was after her. When the doors opened she moved with the flow across the open-air platform toward the escalators that took the stream of passengers down to ground level eighty feet below. Two or three people crowded onto each step. Gliding down, her eyes roamed the station in search of a guard, but she saw none. Halfway down, she checked over her shoulder, to the bottleneck of commuters at the top of the escalator. He, too, was going with the flow. Or he was following her.

  The crowd fanned out at the bottom in a weekend charge to the turnstiles. Karen, however, did an immediate U-turn and jumped on the up escalator, which ran adjacent to the one going down. She was alone going up, since no one was city-bound in the evening rush hour. She was face-to-face with the steady stream coming down, slowly drawing closer to the man she wanted to see. She wanted to memorize his mug, and she wanted him to know she could finger him in a lineup if ever she had to.

  Her heart pounded as the gap narrowed. She forced herself to take a good look, imagining she was describing him to the police. Six feet. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Possibly Latin. She searched frantically for some distinguishing feature, but her nerves got in the way. The closer she got, the more indescribable he became. They had yet to make eye contact, and the moment they passed he completely looked away. Not the behavior of a man who simply wants to get to know me.

  She reached the top just as he reached the bottom. The crowd had completely funneled down the escalator, leaving her alone on the platform. Her heart sank as she watched the train she’d rode in on—her planned route of escape—pull away from the station. Half the bulbs overhead had been smashed by vandals, she noticed, and the platform was even darker without the lights from the train. An eerie quiet filled the night, punctuated by the electric hum of six hundred volts running through the tracks.

  She wondered if he’d follow her back up, but she was almost afraid to check. She reached into her purse and clutched her can of Mace. With half-steps, she tentatively made her way back to the top of the escalator. Peering down to ground level, she could see him only from the knees down, standing by a Pepsi billboard at the base of the escalator. He hadn’t made his move yet. But he hadn’t left the station.

  She hated to take her eye off him, but she stepped quickly to the edge of the platform to check on another train. No sign of one. She scurried back to the escalator, then froze. He’s coming up!

  On impulse, she yanked the red emergency lever, shutting down the escalator. He looked up, and for the first time they made direct eye contact. Her heart stopped. She prayed he’d turn and run. He ran toward her, gobbling up two steps at a time.

  She screamed, but he kept coming. Across the platform was an elevator. She ran for it. With a push of the call button the doors slowly opened. The rapid echo of footsteps warned he was still giving chase. As she jumped in the elevator she could see him closing in. She screamed
again, hitting the button over and over to make the doors shut faster. He was just ten feet away when she gave up on the button, put the weight of her whole body behind the door, and pushed it shut.

  She fell against the wall, gasping for breath. After a split second of relief, terror struck. The elevator was a dinosaur. He’d hit ground level before she would. She flung open the control panel and pulled the emergency stop, jerking the elevator to a halt and sounding the alarm. She grabbed the phone.

  “Help me!” she shouted.

  “Security,” a man answered.

  “A man—he’s chasing me! Pinstripe suit, on the platform. Stop him, please! Stop him before he gets away!”

  Chapter 11

  by 4:00 P.M. Pacific time a thick, bone-chilling fog had rolled in from San Francisco Bay, reducing visibility at Union Square to about two city blocks. The square was a restful and impeccably manicured park in the busy hub of the shopping district, planted with palms, yews, boxwood, and flowers, all centered on a towering memorial to Admiral Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay. Rush-hour traffic inched along the wide streets bordering all four sides. At one end, the palatial St. Francis Hotel sat with the permanence of the Pantheon. Macy’s Department Store flanked the south side. Streams of pedestrians hurried along the sidewalks, wrapped in warm winter trench coats to keep off the chill.

  Curt Rollins had never been to San Francisco before, so the heavy fog fascinated him. It made him think of London. Jack the Ripper.

  “Cheerio, ol’ chap,” he said to a teenage girl in the crosswalk. She made a gross-out face and scurried away.

  He headed east on Post Street, toward the teeming rectangle that was the banking center between Kearny and Sansome Streets, the West Coast version of New York’s Wall Street area. Along the way, he planted himself on the sidewalk to admire his reflection in the big plate-glass window outside F.A.O. Schwarz. He wore faded Levis, an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, and a thick navy-blue parka that made him look much bulkier than he was. Traces of dried brown feces besprinkled his leather gloves, but his secondhand clothes were otherwise clean, recent acquisitions from the Salvation Army. A pair of deep-tread hiking boots came in handy trudging up and down the steep city sidewalks. Walking made him winded, for at age thirty-two he had the body of a much older man. In the six years since prison he’d yet to find a job or a decent place to live. A thin face and jaundiced pallor bespoke vile habits and a lifetime of addictions. He was in perpetual need of a shave, a bath, a fix and a drink.