The Informant

by Marc Olden

  The bureau never learned who’d killed Bill Krone.

  As for Neil Shire, his troubles weren’t over. After Bill’s death, Neil had been taken off the street and transferred to compliance. This was a nine-to-five job. Neil was to keep an eye on pharmaceutical houses, the distributors of drugs like Valium and other tranquilizers. He was to check for pilferage, security lapses, bookkeeping mistakes. The job bored the shit out of him.

  Elaine complained less now. Neil was home more, not on the street, not getting three-A.M. telephone calls anymore. Not bringing informants into the house.

  Then Dean Hallis entered Neil’s life again.

  There had been a scandal in the New Orleans office of the bureau. Three agents had been accused of killing an informant to cover up their own theft and sale of confiscated narcotics. Dean Hallis’ name was being mentioned. No one knew for sure if the charges were true, but the bureau believed in being careful.

  Again, Neil Shire was called in for questioning. He lost sleep, couldn’t eat, was rotten to Elaine, and wondered if this time he was out for sure, forced to go looking for a ninety-dollar a week job as a security guard in a supermarket.

  When the questioning stopped, Neil was transferred out of Washington to New York. Some agents said they’d rather get shot in the face than be shipped there, the land of dogshit, muggers, and high rents. But Neil took the transfer and kept quiet. He was still an agent, and that’s all that mattered.

  Were the charges against Dean and the other two agents in New Orleans true? No one knew, or if they did, they weren’t talking. Neil was ordered to keep quiet about the matter, to discuss it with no one. The bureau believed in being careful, and shifting bodies around at least made it look as if something was being done about these particular charges.

  Sooner or later, someone in Congress, hot to make a name for himself, would turn the bureau’s troubles into publicity and self-promotion. Whether or not the accusations and rumors were true wouldn’t matter; what mattered were the headlines to be made. Congressmen loved headlines written in somebody else’s blood. So Neil Shire and others now found themselves sitting behind new desks in new cities, and the men running the bureau waited for the telephone to ring with an invitation to appear at an inquiry.

  For his first five months in Manhattan, Neil Shire sat in a cubicle shifting papers. Four times he made it to the street as backup for somebody else on a buy. But that was nothing leading to nowhere. If it hadn’t been for a Manhattan cop he’d met in Washington a few years ago at federal narcotics intelligence school, Neil would still have a numb ass from sitting. The cop, Fred Praether, had telephoned and offered him Lydia Constanza.

  At the federal intelligence school attended by agents and policemen from around the country to update themselves on narcotics, Neil had given a week of lectures on the increasing thefts of amphetamines, barbiturates, and methaqualones from legitimate manufacturers and distributors.

  Four lectures a day, one hour each, six days a week, and when it was over, Neil felt as though he’d been hit in the throat with an ax. All that damn talking, answering questions. Fred Praether, a stubby cop with a jaw like a pelican’s and eyes that rarely blinked, took detailed notes and asked sensible questions. Neil had invited him home for a meal, so that Praether could continue telling him about the rise of Cubans in New York City dope dealing.

  During that week, Elaine had found Praether a date, and the four of them had gone to the Kennedy Arts Center to see a Beckett play, which only Elaine claimed to have enjoyed. Praether had remembered Neil’s hospitality.

  Ordered to turn Lydia Constanza over to federal narcotics agents, Praether had called the bureau’s Manhattan office two weeks ago and was shuffled around until he made contact with Walker Wallace’s group. Neil Shire, assigned to telephone and radio duty that day, had been the first to talk with Praether.

  Walker Wallace picked his nose with his pinkie, using his other hand to wave to an agent walking past the open door of his office. “Katey. He coming in today?”

  Neil, unable to get friendly with Detective Sergeant Edward Merle Kates in three weeks of knowing the cop, loosened his tie. “Said he’ll try. He’s in court this morning. Bust he made a month ago.”

  A young black agent with a bushy afro, .38 in the waistband at the small of his back, strolled slowly into Walker Wallace’s office while reading a report. Without saying a word he dropped the report on Wallace’s desk, nodded to Neil, and left. The area outside the office was coming alive. Agents sat in chest-high cubicles of yellow plywood and gray plexiglass, huddled over telephones while pecking at reports. Scotch-taped to plexiglass were color snapshots of wives, girlfriends, children, dogs, along with black-and-white snapshots of narcotics informants and suspects.

  In front of the cubicles, teams of secretaries typed from tapes of court-ordered wiretaps. Neil, back on the street, back hunting again, listened to the sounds of telephones and typewriters coming through Walker Wallace’s open door and felt good.

  Walker Wallace wiped his pinkie with a napkin. “Katey says your girl’s a useless spic trying to walk. Says she’s giving us a first-class stroke job.”

  Neil cupped his hands and blew into them. “Katey’s pissed because his people had to give us Lydia. He’s not happy about us being able to afford informants when New York cops can’t. Let’s face it: if Lydia bombs out, it means the police gave us nothing, they lost nothing.”

  Walker Wallace went on as if Neil hadn’t answered. “Zilch is what we’re gonna get, according to Katey. He says Lydia’s not heavy enough to know if Cubans and blacks are bringing in a super shipment. You know he did some work on Kelly Lorenzo, that he was working on some of Kelly’s lower-level distributors.”

  “He keeps telling me that. According to him, we’re wasting time, money, and manpower on Lydia. Feels she’s doing a number on us on account of her little daughter. Katey says a snitch doesn’t know the difference between tears and piss.”

  Walker. Wallace gently patted his thinning red hair as though to keep the remainder firmly on top of his skull. “Got to figure Katey for two games. One: if anything good comes out of Lydia, his people will grab as much credit as they can get. They’ll look bad if it appears they turned over a righteous snitch to us and we made cases while the cops just stood around with their thumbs up their kazoos. They are gonna want as much out of Lydia for themselves as possible. Remember, the bottom line is politics. Law enforcement is politics, Neil. I’m telling you, just in case you don’t know. Guys wanna go higher and higher, and that only happens when some big cases go down.”

  Walker Wallace rubbed sleep from his eyes with two thick thumbs. “Second thing you gotta figure Katey for: if anything goes wrong, his people will back away fast. Like I said, it’s all politics, and nobody wants to be tied up to some case that is gonna make them look bad. If it looks like the NYPD is going down the toilet, Katey’s gonna tell them, and they are gonna tear ass away from this case. You with me so far?”

  Neil nodded.

  Wallace said, “Now, that doesn’t mean Katey can’t help us. But bear in mind, he’s a cop, on the Big Apple’s payroll, and he’s got people leaning on him all the time, His people wanna look good, especially when it comes to cleaning up crime. So they are gonna squeeze Katey to see what he can get outta us and Lydia. They ain’t doin’ us no favors by giving us a snitch they ain’t got the money and manpower to work. What’s going down is, we do all the work while they finagle to get as much credit as possible.”

  Neil said, “And if anything goes wrong, it’s all our fault.”

  Walker Wallace smiled. There wasn’t an ounce of warmth in it. “You read it loud and clear, crimefighter. You can do yourself good and the bureau a lot of good, or you can fuck yourself up like it ain’t never been done before, and these here fine people you work with will drop you in a deep hole somewhere.”

  “So I watch Katey.”

  “Like he’s a rabbit after your lettuce, ’cause that’s what he is. Bear in
mind, agent Shire, that we’re supposed to get along with the New York City police force, that if we don’t and they complain to the mayor and the mayor complains to a senator and that senator tells somebody in Washington and that somebody in Washington tells whoever at the bureau, well, let me ask you—how many balls can you afford to lose?”

  Neil grinned. “I love this job. It’s heartwarming work, and the sense of trust you find wherever you go … well, what can I tell you?”

  “Don’t tell me, just—”

  The intercom buzzed.

  Wallace jerked the receiver off the hook. “Yeah? Okay, tell ’em to come on in.” He hung up.

  “Lydia and Katey. They’re here.” He stood up, eyes on Neil as though inspecting his face for pimples. “Remember what I told you about Katey.”

  Neil nodded, licking his lips. He was going to watch Katey the way the watchers at the bureau were watching Neil.

  5

  SOMETHING WAS WRONG.

  Bad Red stopped smiling and began nodding his head as a stocky black man in a pale blue safari suit whispered in his left ear. Spooks got rhythm, thought Katey, getting slightly nervous, but all this head-nodding don’t have zilch to do with music.

  The music around them was a roar, disco thump-thump-thump from twelve speakers in an East Fifty-fifth Street discotheque where Katey, Neil Shire, and Lydia Constanza were making a buy from Bad Red, a cocaine dealer.

  Ain’t I ready, though, thought Katey. Seconds after he’d sat down, his .38 Police Special with bullets he’d loaded himself—extra powder, and the points hollowed out—had been in a white cloth napkin on his lap under the table. Neil was carrying a two-thousand-dollar flash roll. Katey gently patted the napkin as though it were a newborn kitten. You and me against the world, good buddy.

  Bad Red held up a hand, signaling he’d heard enough. “Later,” he mumbled to the stocky black, who backed off, making a clenched fist over his heart, turned, and stepped onto a dance floor packed and writhing with sweating, contorted bodies. Katey held his breath, wondering if somebody had just laid the news on Bad Red that his good friend Lydia had brought the heat into his life. In dope, anything could happen.

  Bad Red frowned, shaking his head. “Niggers. Man, you do business with niggers, and sometime or other, you get burned, Jim. Brothers don’t do their own right, you understand?”

  Katey understood and relaxed. Bad Red was having trouble with spades, and that’s what all the whispering had been about.

  Bad Red leaned across the table, confiding. “I front somethin’ to some cat, see, ’cause he suppose to be a friend of mine. He a gambler, always hurtin’ for bread, always with people axin’ him to pay up. He say he gon’ turn my package over, pay me, and keep a little taste for hisself. That’s cool, but …”

  Bad Red took off his shiny red leather hat. He was thirty, paunchy, dressed in tomato red: suit, open-neck silk shirt, shiny leather boots to match his hat. Katey thought the black dealer had the nostrils of a gorilla.

  Show and tell with black dealers, thought Katey, hand still resting on the white cloth napkin and the hard lump beneath it. They always brag about the amount of dope they deal, the money they make. Always broadcasting, yakking in public, blowing coke in bars and on street corners. Big mouths, these spades. Not like Cubans or Italians, who do it and keep quiet. Spooks have to let you know they’re in the game.

  Bad Red couldn’t be that smart if he was fronting stuff and not getting his money. Dealers would front—hand over the dope and wait for their money—in order to avoid holding onto the dope for any length of time. Fronting, or selling on consignment, was all right if you knew who you were dealing with. Bad Red seemed to have a problem.

  Bad Red said, “Now, my man there, he just come up and tell me that my friend turned it over, and the bread’s gone, Jack, I mean it is gone. Gamblin’. Cat just can’t stay ’way from them horses. Some of dem horses run like an elephant with two legs.”

  Katey finished lighting a cigarette, shaking the match out. “How good a friend is your friend?”

  Bad Red snorted, ignoring Katey and reaching across the small table for Lydia’s hand. His smile was wet, tiny yellow teeth ringing a thick pink-white tongue. “Cuban momma here, now she my friend, ain’t you, sweet thing? Man, one of these days I jes’ wanna put you between two pieces of bread and eat—”

  Lydia playfully smacked his wrist. “Now, Red, be nice.”

  “Woman, that would be nice.”

  Katey took a drag on his Winston. Old home week is what we got here, folks. She rips off credit cards from johns, sells them to Bad Red for a couple hundred, and he buys like hell before the card’s reported stolen. Oh, yes, Detective Edward Merle Kates had read Lydia Constanza’s yellow sheet.

  Katey knew all about the lady. And he didn’t believe she was going to lead him and Neil Shire to anybody except chumps like herself. But what the hell, go along with the program, and in a few days everybody would be hip to Lydia’s act and she’d go down for sure. For goddamn sure.

  Neil Shire ordered drinks for the table, tipping the waitress five dollars. That’s flash, that’s how you do it. But these days, only the feds had that kind of money.

  Katey, a lean, sharp-faced man with a long nose and small mouth, lit another Winston, blowing three perfect pale blue smoke rings one after another. They were here to score two ounces of cocaine from Bad Red, who seemed to know everybody in the discotheque.

  Lydia, appearing to enjoy herself, clapped her hands once. “Red’s a good dancer, ’least when he’s not lazy, aren’t you, Red?”

  Red grinned, thick purple lips pulled back from his tiny yellow teeth. “Got me some moves. Yeah, done always had me some moves.”

  Lydia stood up, pulled Bad Red by the hand. “Come on, come on.”

  The black cocaine dealer allowed himself to be dragged toward the floor, turning to grin at Neil and Katey.

  Katey sipped a scotch and water. “We’re here for business, and she’s hot to work up a sweat.”

  Neil swallowed part of an ice cube. “She’s working him her way.”

  “You got a lot of faith in Miss Constanza. Me, I’m still wondering how a nickel-and-dime lady like her gets to know what top-level Cubans and spades are up to.”

  Neil was watching Lydia and Bad Red dance to George Benson’s hip-grinding guitar work on “Breezin’.” The two were excellent dancers, getting the sensuality of disco dancing across, but keeping it under control and subordinate to the actual technique of dancing. Without looking at Katey, Neil said, “You heard it already. She’s got a cousin, and somebody asked him if he wanted to make twenty-five big ones as a mule. He was going to try to get Lydia in on it, but after her check-cashing bust, no way. She already told you that. How many more times you got to hear it?”

  Katey made slow circles on the table with his scotch and water. “I know what’s heavy, and this lady ain’t. I worked some of Kelly’s people, remember? I was one of the people who busted Mr. Lorenzo, and I know what heavy is. You go by gut feelings, you ought to know that—”

  Neil turned to him. “She’s delivered so far. That’s the name of the game.”

  Katey nodded slowly, exaggerating the gesture. “Yeah, now that you mention it, she has delivered. Of course, we haven’t copped yet tonight, but I s’pose we will.” He stared at the ashtray, knowing Neil Shire was looking at him.

  Neil said, “Give her a chance.”

  “A chance? Yeah, sure. Why not? Why the fucking hell not? Since you’re buying, how about another hit on these?” Katey held up his empty glass.

  Neil was cool, not bossy, not playing big-money Mr. Fed. But Neil was the agent in charge. Lydia was his snitch, wrapped up and delivered to him, and he was the one working her, paying her. There was Katey, representing the interests of the New York Police Department, and there were two other agents in on this, one white, one spade. The feds were careful with informants.

  Three men worked a snitch at all times, and all three had to witness
any money paid informants. The informant was assigned a number, a code name, and every buy, every contact with an informant went into a written report. When the feds walked into court, they were protected and prepared.

  Neil was polite; nothing wrong with that. He listened to Katey, he listened to the other two agents assigned to work Lydia with him, but Neil was the controlling agent, the man making the decision. Maybe it was better that way. Let him be the one to go down when she does. Better him than Wile E. Coyote.

  That was Katey’s nickname in the department, taken from the coyote character in the Road Runner cartoon, the one who never stopped scheming to get what he wanted. Katey had gotten the name because he was good at finding a suspect’s weak point, then using it to bring him down.

  Bad Red and Lydia, holding hands, returned to the table.

  Bad Red, perspiring heavily, sighed. “Ain’t as young as I used to be.” He waited until the waitress set drinks down on the table and removed empty glasses. Leaning across the table, he leered at Neil. “Man, git on up and git on out there with this woman. She got the motion that gives you the notion.”

  A small white man in a dark business suit, gray hair combed forward, looking entirely out of place among the extreme and colorful fashions of the discotheque, carefully picked his way through people and passed near Bad Red. Bad Red stopped talking, nodding respectfully at the small white man, who nodded back, a gesture so small that it was almost missed. Not by Wile E. Coyote. Then the little man was gone, swallowed by the crowd.

  “Be an expensive night fo’ somebody.” Bad Red was still staring in the direction of the little man.

  Neil said, “Somebody we should know?”

  “Not ’less you awfully rich. I mean real white-folks rich.” Bad Red swallowed half of a gin and tonic. He belched. “That man be chargin’ people one hundred thousand dollars jes’ to introduce you to somebody.”

  Katey blew smoke at the ceiling. “Computer dating’s a lot cheaper.”