The Informant

by Thomas Perry

  "I know Frank Tosca."

  "So what?"

  "I'll tell you something about him. About fifteen years ago he killed a man named Leo Kleiner on Warren Street in New York. He shot him in the left side of the head with a K-frame .38 revolver, like the cops used when we were kids. That one was originally owned by a cop. I'd be surprised if Tosca didn't still have it hidden in his house on the St. Lawrence River in Canada."

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "I didn't take some oath of omertà like they did. I worked for people who had the money to hire me. What I tell you next is important. There were three men on the street that night who saw it happen—Davey Walker the driver, Boots Cavalli, and Andy Varanese. Cavalli wouldn't tell you anything if you set him on fire. Davey Walker is dead. But if you put enough pressure on Varanese, and promise him protection for the rest of his life, he'll help you out. He hated Tosca."

  "Will anybody believe this after fifteen years?"

  "The house in Canada used to have a hidden room. If you head down into the basement, right in the middle of the stairway before you get down there is a door built into the wall. That's where he kept his collection of things he couldn't let cops find. He figured the Canadians wouldn't be interested in raiding the house because he never did anything there, and the Americans can't do a surprise search in a foreign country. So I think what I've given you is an eyewitness and the chance to find the murder weapon in the suspect's possession."

  She waited for him to say more, then sensed that he wasn't standing where he had been anymore. She stayed still, wondering what he was doing. She heard the door downstairs by the kitchen being locked. She threw off the covers, sprang from the bed, ran to the window, and looked out.

  She watched him from above, a dark shadow moving across the back lawn. He stopped at the brick barbecue, opened the stainless steel lid, placed her sidearm on the grill, and closed the lid over it. He turned, looked up at her, then moved to the back of the yard, pulled himself up onto the low stone wall, and rolled over it into the next yard.

  Waring snatched up the telephone and speed-dialed her office at the Justice Department. "This is Elizabeth Waring. I just had a home visit from a suspect of the very highest priority. I need a team to set up a perimeter five blocks from my house. He looks about forty-five years old, Caucasian, probably brown hair, wearing a black topcoat, dark clothing." She listened for a few seconds.

  "If he looks like every man for a mile, pick up every man for a mile, and I'll try to sort them out. This is not a brainstorming session, it's an order."

  ***

  On Tuesday morning Elizabeth Waring wore a navy blue pants suit and a pair of flat, highly shined shoes. It felt like a uniform, which was what she had designed it to be. It helped her to feel invulnerable. She was forty-six years old now, well past the age when she could be intimidated by one more meeting with a deputy assistant attorney general. But she was still watchful. When she had finished telling him the story, Dale Hunsecker made a serious face, but it was just that—arranging his features into an expression he had practiced, probably for future appearances before congressional committees.

  He said, "This man just walked into your house?"

  "My bedroom. The doors and windows were all locked, and the alarm system armed. But figuring out how to get around those things is part of what he does. He was also able to avoid or get through the ring of agents we set up afterward. Nobody saw him."

  "And he did it just to give you an eyewitness account of a fifteen-year-old killing in New York City?" Hunsecker was about fifty and acted as though he had spent much of his time with underlings who were much younger than he was, so he had gotten used to conducting conversations as though they were seminar dialogues in which he led his pupils to a series of incontestable conclusions.

  "No. He knows that my section tries to keep track of all the Mafiosi we know about. He asked me who Michael Delamina's boss was. I told him it was Frank Tosca, who has been beginning to solidify support in the Balacontano family. In return, he told me information about Frank Tosca that he knew I would want."

  "Why?"

  "You know who Tosca is, right?"

  "I've seen his name in briefing papers. It's hard to tell these people apart sometimes, but I understand he's a boss."

  She tried to keep her voice from betraying anything but information. "He's the latest incarnation of a bad old school of thought in La Cosa Nostra. He's a throwback. He's young—late thirties when he started making his move upward—physically strong and intimidating at forty-one, and just a little bit crazy. When he turns violent, it's always out of proportion to what made him mad. We think that two years ago he was the one who had Paul Millati shot. Afterward somebody flew to California and killed Millati's son, his daughter-in-law, and their two kids. Somebody in New York killed his wife, daughter, and the family dog. And six months later, when the gravestones were set up in the family plot at the cemetery, a mysterious crew in a white truck came and removed them."

  "I can see he would be somebody we'd want in jail."

  "We never managed to get this kind of evidence against him before. All we ever had is rumors. What the new information does is give us a chance to go back in time to the period before he and his friends all got used to living with wiretaps and tax audits, and stopped doing things in person. This is something he did himself, and if the tip is reliable, it isn't very well covered up."

  "I'm not sure what you're asking permission to do. You still don't have anything to charge him with."

  "I'd like to ask the New York FBI people to lay the groundwork to pick up Anthony 'Andy' Varanese. He's the one witness who supposedly saw it happen and might be induced to talk."

  "Pick him up for what?"

  "He's got a long record. His last conviction was for running a ring in California that stole cargo containers from the port of Long Beach. He's back in New York now, and I think we can be sure he's doing something. I'll ask them to keep him under investigation until they catch him at whatever he's up to. The operation shouldn't take more than two or three weeks."

  "I think I need to speak clearly about what you're proposing, Mrs. Waring," Hunsecker said. "There are several problems with this. We're on a war footing. The FBI is just about fully occupied with protecting this country from terror attacks. After that, there's the escalating drug war on our southern border, which has already begun to move north into major cities. We don't get unlimited use of whole squads of FBI agents every day. The Organized Crime and Racketeering Division is just one small part of Justice. And you're talking about wiretaps. In this political climate, if you request a domestic wiretap, it had better be on somebody who is going to be convicted of a crime in fairly short order."

  "There are dozens of surveillance operations on Mafia figures right now."

  "All the more reason to question why we need another, particularly if it's just a roundabout way of getting to someone else."

  "Let me talk to the New York agent in charge. If they're stretched too thin, maybe we can work something out using a small number of agents from other parts of the country on temporary loan." She could see he was not interested in the idea. His sour face had returned. "Something's bothering you."

  "Mrs. Waring."

  "Actually, it's not Mrs. Waring. I'm a widow, and his name was Hart. So I'm Mrs. Hart at my kids' school. Just call me Waring."

  "What's troubling me most is that this informant of yours is manipulating the Justice Department into launching an operation to put away someone he doesn't like. That's what all of this is about."

  "That's probably what it's about for him, but not for us. We just happen to be lucky that he dislikes someone who is a murderer and a public menace."

  "But isn't he a murderer and a public menace too? You said he was a professional hit man."

  Elizabeth took in a deep breath to calm herself and let it out. "I know it may seem as though they're about the same. They aren't. My informant is a very bad man. There's no q
uestion of it. Twenty years ago I was following a series of violent incidents all over the country—some solitary killings of mob leaders, fire fights in the centers of big cities. Most of law enforcement thought it was a war between two or more families. But when I began to look into it closely, I began to hear rumors. What the minor players were most afraid of was a man called the Butcher's Boy. Nice name, isn't it? What I believe now is that this man performed a hit for the Balacontano family, and Carl Bala didn't want to pay him, so he had him ambushed in Las Vegas. It didn't work because the Butcher's Boy read the situation correctly and killed the ambushers. Then he got angry. What looked like a gang war was actually this man reacting to that betrayal."

  "And now you're proposing to help what amounts to a serial killer by putting his enemies in prison."

  She straightened and stared at him. "We've been handed an opportunity to put away the heir apparent of one of the five New York families—a man who is young, very violent, and growing more powerful every day. I've been trying to help dismantle the Mafia for over twenty years, and I can tell you that I haven't seen any nice snitches. Good, honest people seldom know anything useful about the Mafia. The people who have the information we need are usually criminals."

  "I understand. And I caught the reminder that I'm a recent political appointee, and you're a careerist. Our differences are not imaginary. But contrary to your assumption, they're not all in your favor. What you're proposing is the old way of doing business. The government has been protecting one criminal so he'll tell on another for—what? Fifty or sixty years? And what has this gotten us?"

  "Half as many criminals."

  "That's hardly been demonstrated by the current pervasiveness of organized crime. And it's a deal with the devil that could make this man a bigger problem later. If he's this spectacular hired killer, he could kill anyone—a visiting dignitary, a Supreme Court justice, a president."

  "He hasn't been seen in about ten years. He hasn't been working."

  "You mean he's been in prison."

  "I don't think he has been, or someone would have recognized him and tried to collect the price on his head, or told the guards who he was in exchange for privileges. He's been away—maybe out of the country, or maybe just living a quiet life in some backwater. Something riled him up. Whatever got him upset had to do with Michael Delamina and, therefore, with Frank Tosca. It's what brought him to me."

  "You actually sound starstruck."

  "I'm not. I told you, he's a bad human being—maybe psychotic. While he was working, he was almost continuously hired by organized crime bosses to do the most important hits, the ones that had to be done by an outsider so that they could never be connected to the bosses. Some of his hits probably didn't even seem to be murders. There are undoubtedly some that seemed to be heart attacks or overdoses. He's potentially the most important informant the Justice Department has ever had. He's not somebody who can tell us about a thousand-dollar drug deal or a football pool that closed down ten years ago. His only business was murder."

  "And why would he tell us anything about that?"

  "He was always an outsider, not a made guy. He's not even Italian. At this point he has no loyalty to anybody, and now somebody has made him very angry. I didn't find him and ask him questions. He came to me and offered me information. This is an opportunity I don't expect to see again."

  Hunsecker stroked his chin and cheeks, shook his head impatiently, stood up, and paced his office. "This opportunity you're bringing me is the news that you've found an unlocked door to the madhouse. Once we're taking orders from this serial killer, arresting whomever he wants us to, we're in an entirely different universe, and it's not one we want to inhabit. If, just to get information, we're going to ignore the crimes of a man who has probably killed scores of people, then what won't we ignore?"

  "He—"

  "Don't," he said. "It was a rhetorical question. My answer isn't going to change. The U.S. government isn't going to be in business with a man with a name like 'the Butcher's Boy.' We won't act on his information. If you've got something more on him than third-hand stories, then arrest and charge him. If not, we'd both better get back to our responsibilities."

  "Yes, sir."

  3

  ELIZABETH WARING LOOKED up from behind the desk in her office and saw that the wall clock said it was after seven. She was still frustrated by this morning's conversation with the deputy assistant, but she had managed to distract herself with work until after the official hour for closing her section. It had been her intention to kill the extra hour or so by accomplishing a few things that would make tomorrow morning more productive. That way she wouldn't have to go to the underground parking garage and run into Hunsecker there, and she wouldn't have to look at whoever came down about the same time he did and know that Hunsecker had complained about her.

  She knew that whenever he did tell someone, he would present his account as an example of the lack of ethics of some of the Justice Department's career employees. Or maybe he would just say that people like Elizabeth Waring, who had dealt too long with organized crime, began to be more and more like the enemy. Twenty years ago, when she had started out in the Justice Department, there probably would also have been an oblique hint that there was a moral uncertainty to women. A few of the old guard felt women didn't really belong in the Justice Department, but had been allowed in for purely political reasons. At least that was over.

  Now she had to report to a man who really had been allowed in for purely political reasons. He had, through complicated family relationships, been made a partner in an old, respected law firm. The combination of family and law firm had made him a good fund-raiser for political candidates, and so he was a perfect choice for a post two levels down from a cabinet member. Fortunately, he could be counted on to leave eventually. He was a bit too arrogant to survive many meetings with his superiors, too unintelligent to inspire his staff to do great things he could take credit for, and too ambitious to stand still for long. Most of the value he could get from serving as a deputy assistant attorney general he'd had on the day he'd been sworn in. He would be able to play a bigger role in his law firm or sell out to a rival firm, and spend the next few years making up for a dull career by getting very rich.

  She steered her mind around the inevitable comparison. She had begun as a data analyst in this same building more than twenty years ago. She had repeatedly, reliably done something that none of the political appointees had ever done: she had solved crimes and put the people who had committed them in prison. She had caused three crime families to fall into decline because of lack of leadership, then stood by to convict the followers as they made foolish mistakes and then turned informant to save themselves.

  She couldn't claim she had not been rewarded. She was the highest ranking civil servant in the Organized Crime and Racketeering section. She had also had a personal life. She had met FBI agent James Hart during her first year, fallen in love with him, married, and had two beautiful children. He had died a slow, agonizing death from lung cancer just before their eighth anniversary, and if it hadn't been for the children, she might have chosen to die with him. It sometimes occurred to her that she was still in mourning. She still thought about him each morning, each night before she slept, and several times during the day. But over the past couple of years she had stopped picturing him only at the end, when he'd looked like a tormented skeleton. When he would come into her mind now, he was a tall, handsome FBI agent in his dark suit. She would think of him early in the morning while it was still dark and nobody else was awake, and she would think, At least I had that. I had love. Her time at Justice had brought her other things too—a modest, steady income to raise and educate her two children, a sense of purpose.

  She didn't hate Hunsecker. She was just disappointed in him. She knew that if by some fluke he lasted long enough to understand his job, he would wish he had another chance at this day. Yes, arresting a young, frighteningly effective crime boss at the instig
ation of a killer was sure to gratify the killer. That was regrettable. But what the killer was trying to get them to do happened to be their job. It was why they came into this office each day.

  She stared out the office window. She had slowly, over twenty years, moved from a shared desk in a windowless basement computer room that was freezing all the time, all the way to a pleasant office on the fifth floor, where at least her window gave a view of Pennsylvania Avenue and a corner of the neighboring J. Edgar Hoover Building. Her rise had been a long, unceasing effort. It had required enduring the periods when the administration in charge was ineffectual, fanatical, and paranoid, or unable to focus on anything but the next election. Her special part of the Justice Department remained pretty much the way it had been when Attorney General Robert Kennedy had founded it in the early 1960s. Politics could sometimes have a terrible effect on the efforts of the Justice Department, but there had been no political faction in those years that didn't at least profess to be opposed to organized crime and racketeering, so the nonsense from above was barely audible in her section.

  What had bothered her was the regular infusion every four years of political appointees at the top of the system. During her time, there had been at least three attorneys general who had, at best, rudimentary knowledge of the law, and two who had never practiced law at all. Only one had ever had any experience in the sort of crime fighting that included conducting investigations of actual criminals and convicting them of crimes, but it wasn't recent and he wasn't very good at it. The AG's hired underlings were no better qualified. The lawyers who were really good at criminal law were too rich and too busy to consider taking a government job.

  Elizabeth finished reading and initialing the memos and reports that her people had submitted during the afternoon, wrote a query in the margin of the last one, put them all in the outgoing office mail, and closed her office door. The more challenging pieces of paperwork she put into her briefcase with her laptop. She went to the elevator, rode it to the cavernous parking garage beneath the building, got into her car, and drove to the exit. The armed guard waved her past and she was out on the street. She was pleased to see that in waiting she had missed the worst of the evening traffic, the segment of the commuter population who were willing to take risks to get home fast.