The Informant

by Marc Olden

  “Me? Deal coke?” Lydia placed a black-gloved hand to her throat, brown eyes wide in mock horror.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, be serious. Now, we’ll have you under partial surveillance while you’re there. When—”

  “Which part of me are you going to watch?”

  “Cute. Real cute. When you go hunting for Lonnie, well have somebody following you. Don’t look for him, don’t start turning in your seat and waving. Just know he’s there, that’s all.”

  “He gon’ pay the check?”

  “No, he’s not gon’ pay the check. Jorge Dávila will pay the check.”

  Lydia opened her mouth and both eyes as wide as she could, as though she was super dumb and just beginning to understand what was going on. “Oh, yeah. Jorge Dávila. One of your informants in Miami. Somebody else who got jammed up and has to work it off. Like me.”

  “Like you.” Neil gripped the steering wheel with both hands. A hell of a time for her to get bitchy. She didn’t want to go to Miami. She didn’t want to leave her daughter. But what choice did she have?

  “Two footballs,” she said, grinding a cigarette out in the car ashtray. Her head went to her right shoulder, her eyes became alert, bright slits. “Footballs get kicked around.”

  “Footballs?”

  “Me and Dávila.”

  Neil’s annoyance with her, which had been building the past few minutes, was now in his voice. “Lydia, I’m trying to help you—”

  “I’m helpin’ you, I think.” She looked straight ahead at the row of yellow cabs in front of the car. A plane, its lights a sparkling red and white against a clear blue-black sky, cleared a hangar and climbed higher to the left.

  Silence.

  Then Lydia softly said, “I’m sorry. I am a little bit nervous, you know? Little bit.” She turned to Neil, her right hand in front of her face, thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. Her smile now was different. Warm, vulnerable, attractive.

  Neil filled both cheeks with air, counted to five before letting the air out slowly. He watched another plane descend, this one far in the distance, white lights blinking front and back. Lydia was uptight. Why not? She was the one going to Miami, not Neil.

  “Lydia, I wish I could tell you something to make it easier. Believe me, I do. But this is how the game is played. You get yours, I get mine. If it wasn’t that way, you’d be in jail, and I’d be … Hell, I don’t know where I’d be. But you tell me—how else you gonna keep on the outside? Come on, tell me!”

  Fourth cigarette. She rolled the window down farther, letting the cold night air hit her in the face. “A game. Yes, I guess that is what it all is. And we must play.” She turned to him. “I’m sorry. Tell me about Dávila again.”

  “He works for us. Doesn’t do dope anymore. At least, he better not let us catch him at it. Besides working for us, he does phony papers for Cuban illegals.”

  Lydia blew smoke through the open window, aiming for the moon. “You keep him around because he tells you who the illegals are.”

  “Smart. Anyway, if Conquest or anybody needs to know, Dávila’s the customer for the coke. I don’t think anybody’s going to ask, but you’re covered if they do. You’ve got a story that won’t bounce. Dávila’s also your escort. He’s taking you around. He’s a down dude, knows everything, everybody. That’s been one of his problems in the past. We’ve got Conquest down to a few clubs. You and Dávila will make the rounds and bump into Lonnie C. accidental like. You got the story to lay on him if you have to, but don’t bring it up till he asks, if he asks. Dávila’s using our money, so don’t let him hit on you for anything.”

  She had the cigarette in her mouth when she turned to Neil. “What if Dávila asks me to sleep with him?”

  Neil, on edge, blew up. “Goddamm it, I’m not asking you to whore!”

  “You’re not?” she said it with sickening sweetness.

  “Goddamn it no, and you know it!”

  “I see.” She held her smile and seemed calmer. It was as though Neil had just been tested and passed.

  He jerked a thumb at her face, breathing hard, glaring at her. “I’m the agent in charge, and I’m the one who works you! You don’t whore for me, understand!”

  “Yes, Neil, I understand.” Her voice was soft, submissive, and Neil noticed the change. What the hell was she doing, running some kind of game on him? Doing a number on his head?

  Suddenly she looked pretty. She’d stopped wearing that awful purple lipstick, and her clothes were neater, less flash, more taste. Tonight she wore a brown sweater, brown suede culottes, and black boots. She was wrapped in a black wool cape and wore a black scarf over her head. She carried a shoulder bag and one small suitcase with a few changes of clothes.

  She looked pretty to him.

  He tore his eyes from hers, forcing himself to look forward, putting anything like that out of his head. Jesus. Thinking like that was a death wish.

  He spoke to his reflection in the windshield.

  “Rees is your contact, do what he says. Soon as you can, I mean, when you’ve got something to tell me, check in. Call the office or home. Reverse the charges. I want to know what’s shakin’ with Lonnie C., so I can plan my next move, with Bad Red. Use a public phone when you call me or Rees. Don’t, repeat, don’t call anybody from your hotel. ’Cept Olga. That’s cool. No reason for anybody to check your calls, but you never know, you just never know.”

  He combed his mustache with cold-stiffened fingers. In the darkness, his reflection looked like that of a man who wished he was somewhere else at the moment. Anywhere at all.

  “All you’re interested in is whether or not Conquest and Shelton are doing a deal with us through Red. Tell Conquest what I told you, that we wanted to do the deal last week but couldn’t find Bad Red.”

  He paused and looked over at Lydia. Jesus. She really was looking fine tonight. Foxy.

  Neil again dismissed the reverie. “Okay, you got your ticket, got your money. Two, three days, and you should be back. I’ll look in on Olga. Mrs. Rivera doesn’t know who I am, right?”

  “No. I just said a man, a friend of mine, would come around to see Olga. I described you. Oh, thank you for Olga’s toy.”

  Neil, still eye-to-eye with his own reflection in the dark night, dismissed her thanks with a wave of his hand. “My little one’s a Lee Majors freak, too. Can’t get enough of The Six Million Dollar Man.”

  Lydia began putting her gloves back on. “That was a nice thing for you to do. Toys are expensive. And so big! This one was almost as big as Olga. It must have cost—”

  “None of your business how much it cost.” One more thing he and Elaine had argued about. Neil’s buying toys for an informant’s child. The fact that he’d also bought a Lee Majors doll for his own daughter at the same time hadn’t stopped Elaine from bitching.

  Lydia said, “Mr. Hundred Dollar Man and Mr. Six Million Dollar Man. I think I like the cheaper version better.” She smiled, opened the car door, stepped out, and slammed it shut. Opening the back door, she pulled out her small brown suitcase.

  Before Neil could say anything, she waved and began walking toward the Delta terminal.

  Cheap. He grinned. First time anybody had ever called him cheap and meant it as a compliment. He watched her walk into the terminal and out of sight.

  Another plane climbed higher, lower left to upper right, red lights blinking against blue-black sky. Watch yourself, Lydia, he thought. Don’t let me have to live with anything happening to you.

  And it hit him.

  He was getting close to an informant.

  A mistake.

  He squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, frowning at himself in the windshield, shaking his head no.

  13

  MIAMI.

  From inside a public telephone booth on Biscayne Boulevard, Rolando, the priest, looked out at the long, dark green leaves on a palm tree to his left. When the leaves began swaying gently to the soft, invisible rhythm of a mil
d breeze, the priest opened the door, then stuck a finger in the warm dampness between his neck and Roman collar.

  Eighty-five degrees, and the cramped telephone booth was on fire with skull-searing sunlight. A touch of hell that filled Rolando’s mouth with the dry taste of cobwebs.

  He waited for Mas Betancount, on the other end, to order Cruz Real’s death.

  Rolando sweated, licking salt from his dried lips as he watched teenage boys and girls across the street in Bay Front Park shriek and paw each other in a game of touch football. All of the teenagers appeared to possess a vapid beauty, an obnoxious exuberance and long blond hair that flew wildly in several directions at once. The gold that paved the streets of modern America was on the heads of its young.

  To his left and much farther away in the distance was the General Douglas MacArthur Causeway, connecting Miami with the long, thin island of Miami Beach and the largest concentration of luxury hotels in America. From where Rolando stood, the causeway, which ran for miles across the waters of Biscayne Bay, seemed tiny. It was a dry, gray chicken bone shimmering and dancing in heat waves.

  The priest palmed sweat from the back of his neck. He wrinkled his nose with displeasure at the smell of fish and low tide brought to him from Biscayne Bay by the November heat wave. Biscayne Bay was within walking distance of where Rolando now stood perspiring. Six hundred different kinds of fish in Florida, and if only half of them reeked on a hot day, a man’s nose was sentenced to purgatory.

  “He’s dead,” said Mas Betancourt He spoke of Cruz Real as though the boy were already in his grave instead of out on bail and in a house on Zanora Street in West Miami with his uncle John-John Paco.

  “Who?” asked the priest. Meaning who would handle the killing.

  “You. I’ve been in touch with my cousin, who doesn’t like the idea of Cruz being removed. But he’ll do as I say, he always has. Still, I would feel better with you in charge. Cousin John will give you men and whatever else you need. I cannot afford even a small mistake now. You understand?”

  The priest’s long, houndlike face didn’t lose its customary sad look. “What did you tell your cousin John?”

  “Cruz is weak, which John has always known. The boy cannot go back to Havana. If he does, there is jail. A matter of narcotics and two dead men. If he jumps bail, goes to Mexico, South America, California, my problem is still not solved. Will Cruz stay hidden for a year until my deal goes down? Will he avoid trouble, avoid arrest? Half a key of cocaine is no reason to extradite a man. But let us suppose that there is more interest in our enterprise than we are aware of. Suppose that. Then would not the federal agents make an intense effort to retrieve Cruz? Because of this possibility and the fact that I know the boy is weak, that he cannot stand up to pressure, I must not take a chance. He is dead. Do you understand, Rolando?”

  The priest sighed in the stifling heat, deciding to play devil’s advocate. He made a weary attempt to save Cruz Real’s life, just to see if it could be done.

  Another game. It was the same as trying to charm his uncle out of a few coins. “Uncle, how much can Cruz know?”

  Mas’s voice came through the telephone sounding as cold as ice in winter. “I won’t take that chance. You know what I have at stake. Listen. Cousin John knows. You’re there to collect money from him as well as from others. We must figure he has told his nephew something. Instinctively, I find myself not trusting Cruz’s ability to keep a secret under the pressure put on him by federal agents. He stands to go to jail for years. What concerns me, Rolando, is the certainty that Cruz will always find another man’s wife. If he did that a year ago, if he does it two years from now, it will not matter to me. Today it does matter.”

  Rolando, the telephone receiver squeezed tightly between his shoulder and long jaw, removed his black jacket. Consider the heat as penance, he thought.

  “Uncle—”

  “Rolando.” A hard weariness eased into Mas Betancourt’s voice. “Someone informed on Cruz. They wanted the boy to have trouble, serious trouble. Now, who can tell me for sure that these enemies will not make another attempt to bring Cruz down? Can you or anyone tell me that Cruz will not make new enemies? I say to you, what effect could this have on me, on all of us?”

  Rolando reached for the widening damp circle under his left armpit. Uncle Mas had not forgotten his years in Batista’s secret police. Self-preservation, along with expecting the worst of humanity. As Santayana has written, life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

  Mas Betancourt said, “There is something else, too, Rolando. Fear. I have used fear as a weapon most of my life. I know it, understand it thoroughly. Better than most men, I understand what Cruz will do when he becomes frightened, when the agents begin to pressure him. They know he is related to Paco; they know Paco is related to me. Do you understand?”

  I’ve lost the game, thought the priest. Not that it mattered. As it says in the Bible, man’s days are short and full of woe. It has certainly been a short day for Cruz Real, who died at twenty-two, a victim of his loins.

  Rolando wiped sweat from his long nose with a damp, wilted handkerchief. For a few seconds he watched the blond teenagers play touch football in the park across the street, all of them momentarily ignorant of life’s pain. The priest took a deep breath of hot, humid air and aimed one last parting shot.

  “There is no chance of us allowing him to spread his juices among the unwashed women of some ancient Peruvian village, my uncle?”

  Mas Betancourt always spoke to his nephew Rolando politely, as though the priest were a mischievous, yet good-hearted child whose peccadilloes must be tolerated because there was still some slight chance of redemption.

  “My nephew, a man can feel very strongly about a woman, believe me. You know how I feel about Pilar. Well, the man who informed on Cruz, he feels that way about his wife. Pride, love, so many things. Now, this is what we will always face with Cruz. He is sure to continue making enemies of jealous husbands.”

  Rolando’s intelligence forced him to agree. “Granted. There is an old Italian saying: a stiff dick knows no conscience.”

  Mas chuckled. “It is also an old Cuban saying, my nephew. How is everything else going?”

  “On schedule, no problem.” Rolando was in Florida to collect money from Kelly Lorenzo, at the moment being hidden by relatives in nearby Georgia. Rolando was also collecting money from two other blacks, Julius Shelton and Lonnie Conquest, both of whom had met Kelly in Georgia to discuss the Mas Betancourt deal as well as other narcotics business.

  Rolando had found Kelly charming, amoral, shrewd, though lacking formal education. Kelly was a born leader, like Mas Betancourt.

  Rolando said, “What if John-John, our rather overfed relative, takes it upon himself to save Cruz’s life? He could help him jump bail and put him on a boat anywhere. Even though we are all related, it occurs to me that there might be objections to your pruning the family tree, shall we say.”

  Mas snorted. “I am in charge, I am the leader. Everyone supports me. No one wants to lose money or their freedom because Cruz Real enjoys women. Anyone opposing me now is opposing other Cubans, even blacks. John is neither that strong nor that foolish.”

  Rolando, patting sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief that was almost wet enough to wring out, nodded in agreement. Among Cubans, a leader was expected to take charge, make decisions. Failure to do so was more than a disappointment to the men under you. It was an insult, and the men you were supposed to be leading would kill you for it.

  Rolando knew of some who had failed to lead when they were supposed to and had paid for it with their lives. Uncle Mas, apparently, had no intention of failing to lead.

  Uncle Mas had men to account to, and an incredible narcotics deal to protect. No matter what he did to ensure success and protect money, he would be supported. Under those circumstances, Cruz Real’s life wasn’t worth the piece of dried orange peel under Rolando’s shoe.

  Mas said, “Call me when
Cruz has been removed.”

  “Yes. Say hello to Barbara for me. I sent her some Florida oranges, and I sent Pilar grapefruit and limes.”

  “Good. That was considerate of you. Pilar should eat more fresh fruit. Oh, one more thing, Rolando.”

  “Yes, uncle?” The priest felt perspiration slide down his left side. For some odd reason, the perspiration felt cold.

  “Cruz’s wife. She goes too.”

  “May I ask why?” She’s nothing, thought a surprised Rolando. An unnecessary killing.

  For the first time in their conversation, Mas seemed uncertain. And the reason he finally gave Rolando, after hesitating for long seconds, seemed unsubstantial, no firmer than smoke.

  “She … she could pressure cousin John into something … well, impulsive. Women can be vengeful. Just do as I say. Take care of her.”

  Rolando rubbed his long, unshaven jaw. “First I watch Barbara in Paris, now I must make sure that Cruz has companionship in the next world. What is this sudden resentment toward women?”

  Mas was silent. The prophecy from the dead babalawo was his secret, his alone. La última, his final narcotics deal, was a carefully woven tapestry threatened with unraveling by an unknown woman. Killing Cruz Real’s wife was to literally tie up a loose end. If she was the unseen woman standing in darkness behind Mas, then let her die. And let Barbara live.

  Irritation added a cutting edge to Mas’s voice. “Rolando, please do as I say!”

  Miles away, the priest stood up and leaned back, as though in his uncle’s presence. Instinct alerted him. The time for games was over.

  “Uncle, I’ll telephone you when the matter is settled.”

  Outside, in the sun, Rolando put on sunglasses and stood still until the trickle of fear receded in his stomach. Sometimes his uncle Mas did that to him. Sometimes Mas almost made Rolando afraid of him.

  Lonnie Conquest was twenty-five, wire-thin, with caramel-colored skin, dark brown hair braided in corn rows, and a withered right hand that he attempted to hide by wearing dashikis or shirts with long flowing sleeves. He wore a mustache and goatee. He had three gold teeth in the front of his thick-lipped mouth, and a habit of turning his head and looking at you from the corner of one brown bloodshot eye.