The Informant

by Thomas Perry

  Schaeffer had admitted that he had been thinking about going to college for a couple of years, but he didn't see a way to accomplish it. If word got out where he was, there would be men coming to his dormitory to hire him for one more job, and others would come to kill him. Either way, staying would be impossible. Besides, his attendance record in high school had been spotty because he and Eddie had traveled so much.

  Vince said, "You were taking wet jobs in high school?"

  "Yeah. And how old were you the first time you had to step around a guy you shot to get home?"

  "Yeah," Vince said. "I kind of forgot. I was seventeen." He drove in silence for a few minutes, looking occasionally at the lake to his right. "I suppose Mr. Castiglione is right—college is not for guys like me. I make more money than a doctor or a lawyer, and I'm not twenty-one yet. College would cost me too much in lost pay."

  They had changed the subject and agreed on a plan. They would try to take Tony Fantano while he was out alone, away from his house. Vince would drive the car, and Schaeffer would do the work.

  They parked a half block away from Fantano's house at four A.M. and waited. At just after seven, he backed his car out of his driveway and drove up the street. They waited until he turned and then followed him at a distance. He got onto a major street and drove across town while they kept a few vehicles between their car and his, thinking at each major intersection that soon he would reach his destination and stop. He didn't. He drove right out of the city with them following, trying to stay as far back as they could behind trucks that would keep them invisible to his rearview mirror. He went about ten miles out on a rural route, turned off into the long gravel driveway of a farm, and stopped at a white farmhouse.

  Vince drove past, then turned into the next farm road. Schaeffer said, "All right. Wait for me here. If it's a trap you can take off."

  "If you get in trouble, try to make it back. I won't take off," Vince said. He leaned back in his seat and watched Schaeffer walk to the fence, climb over it, and make his way into the tall rows of corn beyond it. To his left, at the back of the farm, behind the cornfield, was a large, old apple orchard full of short, gnarled trees with thick, twisted trunks, but the corn rows were closer to the house.

  Schaeffer took one look back at Vince and saw him in the driver's seat, his face impassive—watchful, merely waiting. Schaeffer went deeper into the cornfield, at first making his way quickly between the rows. But as he approached the gravel driveway through the cornfield, he moved more slowly and carefully, adjusting his position from row to row, not letting himself brush against the cornstalks so the leaves wouldn't make whispering sounds. He backtracked three rows so he could see Fantano's car and the house, but anyone inside could not see him. He took out his gun and aimed it down the open space between rows. As soon as someone stepped into that empty frame, the person would die.

  As he thought about that bright, warm morning after all these years, he remembered the physical sensation he had felt when he realized it was a trap. Fantano had been expecting them, and he had led them to the farm. As Schaeffer was taking his position in the cornfield, eight of Fantano's men were emerging from the back door of the farmhouse and forming a line at the upper end of the cornfield.

  When they were all lined up at the first row of corn, on some silent signal they began to move into the corn. They advanced one row at a time, then stopped to sight along the furrow to be sure all of them were still aligned and nobody got ahead of the others and got mistaken for a target. They were just five or six rows from Schaeffer before he saw the light catch the white shirt one of them wore. It shone through the tiny gaps in the green cornstalks and leaves. He sidestepped to get out of the man's path and saw another, then another coming his way.

  He dashed down the long corn row toward the end where he could see the porch of the house. In thirty seconds he was crouching beside the house. He knew he had one chance. He crept along the siding until he was beside a tall window.

  He pivoted and stepped in front of the window. Tony Fantano was standing in the middle of an old-fashioned parlor, staring out the opposite window at the men in the cornfield. He seemed to have a sudden premonition, a discomfort that was mental, not sensory, because there had been no noise. He turned and saw Schaeffer looking in at him.

  Schaeffer fired four rapid shots through the glass and caught Fantano twice in the chest as a splash of shattered glass sprayed the room. A bullet went through Fantano's neck, and the last one hit the wall as Fantano fell backward onto the floor. Schaeffer took aim at his head and fired, then ran around to the front porch and looked in the front window, across the room, and through the window where Fantano had been watching his men. As he looked, he ejected the magazine from his gun and inserted a fresh one.

  He saw three men with guns in their hands run out of the cornfield and head for the back of the house. Schaeffer knelt on the porch in front of the window and aimed his pistol through it, across the living room, down the short, straight hallway to the back door.

  The back door swung open and the three men ran in and stopped at the sight of Fantano on the floor. Schaeffer opened fire and dropped all three. He flung the front door open and ran to the three bodies. He snatched the guns out of the hands of two of the dead men, put them in his jacket pockets, and kept going down the hall and out the back door.

  He ran to the back corner of the cornfield to get behind the remaining men. But just as he entered the field, he heard gunshots. They seemed to be coming from the road ahead of him where he had left Vincent Pugliese and the car.

  He veered away from the cornfield and into the orchard beside it. He caught sight of two men ahead of him running along the first two rows of cornstalks toward the road. He stopped, steadied his arm on a tree limb, and hit the back one, then the other, and ran on.

  The firing up ahead was now heavier and more sustained. He ran through the orchard, swerving to miss tree trunks, jumping over exposed roots. He moved far enough into the orchard so the trunks of the trees provided some concealment and protection, but he could tell from the sounds that nobody was shooting at him.

  At last he reached the far end of the orchard and looked out to see Vince Pugliese crouching behind the stolen Impala. Three men crouched in the cornfield shooting at him. The car's windows were almost all gone, and glittering cubes of shattered safety glass had spattered all over the road. There were bullet holes in the door panels, and at least one tire was flat.

  Schaeffer slipped out of the orchard into the cornfield, stepped into the next row, then the next. He saw a man three rows ahead lying on his belly in a furrow aiming his pistol at Vince. Schaeffer shot him, then ran ahead from row to row, shot the second, then shot the third. None of the men ever heard him or looked in his direction. Even the last one he killed seemed to think to the end that the firing he heard was his companions firing at Vince Pugliese.

  When the last one was dead, he yelled, "Vince!"

  "Don't bother me. I've got these guys outnumbered."

  "They're dead."

  "All of them?"

  "Yes."

  Schaeffer stepped out of the cornfield and Pugliese stepped hesitantly around the trunk of the car. When there were no shots, he put his gun in his coat and pointed at the Impala. "The car's no good anymore."

  "We can take Fantano's. Let's wipe this one for prints and go."

  They wiped the surfaces clean, took off the Illinois plates, and trotted through the cornfield to the house. Inside the parlor Schaeffer stepped carefully around the blood, reached into Fantano's pants pocket, and took his keys.

  As Vince drove them down the gravel drive to the highway, manic elation overtook the two twenty-year-olds. They sped along the rural highway, neither of them having to admit that he'd been sure they were about to die, but both feeling shock and relief that they hadn't. Each of them felt grateful to the other for being brave enough to keep half of Fantano's soldiers occupied for so long. Each of them had become the only witness to the other
's victory.

  Now, thirty years later, when Schaeffer read the personal ad in the newspaper, he felt an instant of sincere pleasure at the memory of the young Vince Pugliese. But the pleasure was followed immediately and overwhelmed by the unwelcome memory of how the Mafia worked. The one you liked, respected, and trusted most was always the one they sent to invite you to your death.

  21

  THE INVITATION WAS a trap. He looked at the personal ad one more time, let out a breath in disapproval, then started to fold the paper, but his eyes passed over another personal ad and stopped.

  "I've known about you for twenty years, but only met you on August 30. You've got troubles, so talk to me."

  It was Elizabeth Waring. Another trap, this one from the opposite side of the universe. Both sides had realized how vulnerable he was, and each hurried to roll him in before the other side could. He wondered if, when each of them checked the newspapers today to be sure their ad had run, they would each notice the other ad. Probably Elizabeth Waring would.

  He decided that it was time to turn in his rental car and buy a vehicle that nobody was going to care about and want him to return. He drove to two used-car lots before he found the right make and model, the right color in the right condition. It was a Toyota Camry, which he had read was the most popular model in the United States. Even if it hadn't been, there were enough models that looked nearly like it to make it unmemorable. It was gray, and when it was on the road it seemed practically invisible. It was five years old, and so it was cheap but serviceable. He used the bank account he had opened in Scottsdale to write a check for it and signed Charles F. Ackerman.

  While the dealer was fitting permanent plates on his car and completing the paperwork, he drove his rental car to a Target store and bought some things he would need for his trip—a case of bottled water, two boxes of trail-mix bars. Then he drove down the street to a Big 5 sporting-goods store and bought a short-barreled Winchester Defender shotgun and five boxes of double-ought shells. He drove to a street near the used-car lot and parked his rental car, then walked to the used-car lot, picked up his gray Camry, and drove it to the rental car. He transferred his belongings from the rental to the trunk of the Camry and then drove the rental car to the airport car rental to return it. He took the rental agency shuttle bus to the airport terminal, then took a cab back to an address one street away from the block where he had left his new car.

  As he got onto the road, he felt optimistic. He would watch carefully for anyone following him or seeming interested in him during the next long drive. He had tools to steal license plates in each new state if he wanted. He had food and snacks to prolong his road time, and a couple of baseball hats that made him look like a million other men on the highways. There was no reason for anyone to notice him. He had made himself ordinary.

  He drove east on Interstate 80, heading for Illinois. From there he could take Interstate 57 the last few miles into Chicago. He slept the first night in a motel outside Omaha and let himself sleep as long as he could before he returned to the road. The invitation to his ambush had come from his old companion Vince from the Milwaukee job. The invitation from Vince had made him choose Chicago. But if all of the old men had agreed to hunt him, then there could be local Mafia soldiers in the lobbies of hotels in any city.

  He drove all day, and when he crossed the line into Illinois, he headed south on Interstate 74 and went to the long-term parking lot at the Willard Airport near Urbana and stole a set of Illinois plates. He stopped the second night in a motel just south of Chicago in Watseka, Illinois, that he judged would be too small to accommodate Mafia soldiers watching the lobby. It was a one-story building with a row of rooms along the outside and a green neon vacancy sign on the tall marquee. The people he saw when he pulled into the lot were middle-class families who had left the interstates outside the big cities to find somewhere cheap and easy to stay. There was no restaurant, so he drove to a hamburger place down the street and brought food with him to eat in the room.

  He ignored the parking space right in front of his motel room door and parked his car away from the building so an enemy wouldn't instantly connect it with the room and know which one he was in. He went inside and locked the door, the deadbolt, and the chain, and then pushed the desk in front of the door.

  He had spent the first half of his life traveling in the trade, and the long habit of precautions had come back to him. Staying alive was often a matter of premeditation, of anticipating dangers long in advance and doing small things to make them less likely. It was always better to be as close to invisible as possible, better to cut the odds of being noticed, reported, and remembered to a minimum. Everything that could be locked, disguised, or hidden should be. He showered, ate his dinner, watched the television news with the sound on low to see if there was any mention of the incident at the Arizona ranch. When there was none, he put the two loaded Beretta M92 pistols under the spare pillow beside him and lay down to sleep. In a minute or two he dozed off.

  He awoke, looked at the glowing clock on the nightstand beside him, and saw that it was only twelve-thirty. There were voices outside. He got out of bed and went to the window. He moved aside a half inch of the curtain at the corner and looked out.

  It was a man with brown wavy hair and a woman with long blond hair. They looked about thirty, and wore jeans and T-shirts. The man carried a suitcase about the size of a small carry-on bag. He bent over almost double to fit the key in the door. They'd been drinking. Whenever he said or did anything, the woman would giggle. As they went inside the room beside his, he let the curtain close. The ease he had in hearing them was not good news. Once they were inside, they sounded as though he and they were in the same room. They were no more than eight feet from him, and the wall between them seemed to be without insulation.

  He crawled back into the bed and closed his eyes. The two in the next room were fairly quiet. There was a little conversation, barely above a whisper, and then he heard the shower running. The sound was a soft hiss, and after a minute or two it put him back to sleep. A few minutes later he became aware of the voices again, and then the voices stopped. He heard the bed creak as somebody got in. It occurred to him that he should make a noise so they would be aware of how little privacy the wall afforded.

  He coughed, and then coughed again. There was whispering. Good. They knew he was here, and they would be aware that if they could hear him, he could hear them. The bed creaked a little more. Someone was getting up. Both of them were. They moved a few feet off. In the dim light he looked at his own room to see where they could be going. There was a small, narrow couch. After a minute he heard a soft moan. "Oh yes. Oh."

  "Oh shit," he whispered. He lay down on his side and put the spare pillow over his head so both ears were covered. He was surprised at how little that accomplished. The couple seemed to forget that they had a neighbor.

  He sat up, switched on the television set, and watched a late-night talk show, trying to pay attention to the conversation. Over the years he had forgotten about American television, and he saw only a few American films a year so he found he had no idea who the guests were, or the host. Still, it seemed better than allowing himself to listen to the sounds from the next room. The noise grew louder and more distracting until it trailed off. He turned off the television, lay down again, and fell asleep as though he were turning off a light switch.

  Then he woke again and thought about the pistols on the bed beside his head. He wished he could go next door and put those two out of his misery. Then he realized the sounds weren't coming from the other side of the wall. They were outside. He looked at the clock again. It was just after three A.M. He went to the window and moved the curtain aside a quarter inch.

  There were four men walking along the two rows of cars, looking at license plates and in the windshields and side windows. He watched two of them look at his gray Toyota Camry, then move on. He was glad he had stolen a set of Illinois plates.

  The men reached the end
of the rows of cars, but didn't seem to have found what they were looking for, and that increased his suspicion that what they were looking for was him. He couldn't see anything that might be their car, but he knew they would have parked it out of sight behind the building, very possibly with the motor idling. He had seen other jobs where the shooters had done that. If the keys were in somebody's pocket and he died, then nobody would get out. If the keys were in the car, then anybody who made it that far would get out.

  He knew what must have happened. They had gone to various hotels and motels on the major routes into the city and asked night-desk clerks to watch for a lone man about his age and description. To the ones that had connections, they would ask for the favor of a call. At the other hotels, they would pretend to be private detectives and offer a reward. He dressed quickly.

  He hoped it would take them a little time to get ready to shoot their way into his room because his idea would take a few minutes. He had learned something from the couple next door. The walls between rooms couldn't consist of anything more substantial than a frame of two-by-fours covered by two sheets of wallboard. He also knew that the room to the right of his was unoccupied. He'd heard nothing from that side.

  The lock-blade knife he'd bought was in his pocket. He opened it, then chose the spot on the wall carefully. It had to be the space behind the small dresser. He quietly moved the dresser aside, then stabbed the knife into the wallboard. It punched through. The consistency was like thick cardboard. He punched through again and again, until he had cut an eighteen-inch square, pulled it out, and confirmed his theory. There was a frame holding up two sheets of wallboard. He punched through the next one with less hesitation. When he had cut the second hole, he pushed the piece through into the next room, then the other.