The Informant

by Marc Olden

  No sense leaving money behind. Wouldn’t do Shana any good now. René’s head still ached, but he wasn’t dizzy anymore; he didn’t feel as though he were going to black out, to faint. He was sorry for what he’d done to her, and he wished she hadn’t died, that the darkness hadn’t squeezed his brain so hard and made him kill her. He wanted to stay, to talk to Shana, to tell her … But the smoke was burning his throat, his eyes, making him cough and weep, sending tiny needles of panic into his mind.

  He ran back into the smoking bedroom, found the purse, and with shaking hands tore out the billfold and took the money, shoving the billfold back inside. A last quick look around. The jewelry. Yeah, might as well cop that. Earrings, two bracelets, a necklace, and two pins. He scooped them up, dropped them into his overcoat pockets, and fled. He left Shana’s expensive cigarette lighter, which he’d used to start the fire.

  On the corner of Fifty-second and Tenth, just a block from the apartment René shared with Shana, he went into a bodega, a Puerto Rican grocery store, and he stayed inside, sipping a small can of papaya juice and waiting. His heart jumped around inside of him, and the papaya, which he usually loved, now tasted too warm and too sweet. Customers came and left. The fat store owner argued with a woman and her small daughter over credit he had extended them, and he now demanded cash for food. Just over a front door of cracked glass covered by rusty thick wire stood a two-foot-high artificial Christmas tree blinking on and off. Only when René heard the fire engines and saw people hurrying past the grocery store toward the fire did he move. He left the store without finishing his papaya, shoving his hands down into his coat pockets, squeezing Shana’s jewelry in both fists.

  Outside in the cold and snow, René let everyone rush by him as he walked slowly toward the fire. Thick gray smoke floated from several top-floor windows, and from somewhere in the building a woman screamed and children called out, and on the sidewalk in the crowd gathering quickly behind the fire engines, a weeping René Vega looked up at the building and began to shake violently, biting his lip to keep from crying out. The salt taste of his own blood quickly erased the taste of papaya from his mouth.

  Neil lifted Olga up, his arms extended straight over his head. “Go on, touch it, touch it!”

  The child squealed, laughed, her tiny arm stretching toward the huge Christmas tree, toward the yellow star at the top, a hundred and fifty feet away. “I can’t reach it, I can’t!”

  Neil hugged her, the fur from the hood of her coat soft against his face. “Well, we tried, right?”

  “Yes, yes. Again. Lift me again, please?”

  Lydia bent down over her child, pulling the fur hood tighter around Olga’s face. “Twice is enough, all right? Now say thank you.”

  The child opened its arms wide to hug Neil, who squatted to hug it back. “Thank you, Neil.”

  Neil touched her tiny cold nose with a gloved finger. “Thank you, pretty one.”

  The three of them were in Rockefeller Plaza, in a crowd at the base of the giant blue-spruce Christmas tree that overlooked the skaters and the skating rink below. Lydia had wanted Olga to see the decorated store windows along Fifth Avenue, and with Christmas only four days away, Neil had tagged along to do some shopping. At the skating rink, they had sat indoors at the Promenade Café and sipped hot chocolate while staring through the glass doors and windows at the ice skaters in front of them.

  Tomorrow night was another buy, the second from Israel Manzana, a Cuban distributor Neil and Lydia had met through Enrique Ruiz. Neil was now so sought after as a customer that whenever he went into certain clubs, restaurants, or bars, Cubans and blacks would introduce themselves, offering to sell him dope. Hundred Dollar Man was accepted now; he had a reputation on the street, and more important, he had money. For a new boy in the city, Neil was doing all right, Lydia thought.

  In more than three months of buys, Lydia and Neil had scored several kilos of heroin and cocaine, while compiling a list of twenty-four distributors, subdistributors, and dealers. In all cases, these were hand-to-hand buys, money from Neil in exchange for dope from somebody else, the best evidence a federal prosecutor could hope for. Lydia was making money, too, pleased with the new respect given her, and only occasionally worried about what would become of her after this case went down. Before now, the future could always take care of itself. But now she had a good life, and she respected herself. Was there a way she could keep all of this—the money, the attention, the power, the satisfaction? Dios mío, she would like that.

  Olga’s nose was running. Taking a tissue from her purse, Lydia wiped it. Time to go home, before Olga caught cold. Besides, it was cold and getting dark.

  Olga said, “Mommy? When are you going to give Neil his present?”

  Lydia smiled down at her. “You weren’t supposed to say anything, remember?” She looked at Neil. “I’m sorry. It was supposed to be a surprise. No use putting it off. Come on back to the apartment, I can give it to you now. Olga, you are naughty.”

  Lydia smiled at Neil, and immediately knew something was wrong. He started to frown, stopped, then forced himself to smile. He looked around as if someone might be listening to him, then kept the smile in place as he nodded. “Yeah. Hey, that’s nice, real nice. Nothing like presents at Christmas, right?”

  For some reason, Lydia didn’t believe him.

  In front of Lydia’s apartment house, she got out with Olga while Neil paid the cabdriver. Hurrying into the lobby, Lydia took her keys from her purse, remembering that during the cab ride Neil was uptight, stiff as ice, as though backing off from Lydia and Olga. Lydia was confused; she wasn’t hurt, not yet. People had moods from time to time; they pulled an attitude, and you were forced to live with it. In the taxi, neither had talked much; Neil hadn’t wanted to, and Lydia had been around men long enough to learn that it was better to leave them alone at a time like this. Something was bugging Neil, and it had come down on him suddenly. One minute he was having a good time; the next minute, he had looked at Lydia as though about to tell her bad news.

  When they entered her apartment, the telephone was ringing.

  Lydia grabbed it quickly, her fur coat still buttoned, a purple scarf dangling in her right hand. “Quién?” She listened, frowned, then turned to Neil, who said, “What’s wrong?”

  Lydia listened, saying nothing; then she spoke quickly in Spanish and hung up. Hurriedly tying the scarf back on her head, she said, “Enrique Ruiz. His son, the new baby, is sick, maybe dying. They’ve taken the boy to Roosevelt Hospital, where all the emergencies go, and they wanna know if I can come over there and stay with his wife. I gotta put Olga next door with Mrs. Sanchez. Olga, honey, you stay with Mrs. Sanchez, and you be good. I be back soon, okay?”

  “Yes, mommy.”

  Neil said, “I’ll go over there with you.”

  Lydia looked at him. “It’s the baby.” She was telling him that this had nothing to do with dope, that he didn’t have to come, that at the moment she wanted nothing to do with dope or being an informant under these circumstances.

  Neil’s voice was soft. “With you.” And she understood.

  At Roosevelt Hospital, on Fifty-eight Street and Ninth Avenue, Lydia sat beside Secora Ruiz, holding her hand in both of hers. Several male friends of Ruiz’s were there, along with two other women besides Lydia and Secora. The men stood talking softly to each other in Spanish, smoking and looking up each time a doctor or a nurse approached. Neil knew three of the men; he’d bought dope from two of them. Enrique Ruiz had seemed glad to see Neil; Lydia had watched the two men hug each other, but for some reason, she didn’t like Neil right now, didn’t like him being here. This had nothing to do with dope. They were in this hospital because a baby boy, just weeks old, was dying.

  Enrique’s son had been born weak and sickly, his tiny lungs barely able to function. An hour ago, the two-week-old baby had turned blue and twice had stopped breathing.

  Lydia heard Enrique say to Neil, “Thank you for coming, my friend.” Two o
ther Cubans came over to Neil, shook his hand, and introduced him around, pointing at Lydia. Something isn’t right about this, thought Lydia, feeling angry and sick to her stomach. Neil shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t. Not now, not when the baby is …

  The doctor told Enrique Ruiz first, which is the way the Cuban wanted it; Enrique wanted to spare his wife as much pain as possible. But he couldn’t spare her all of it. When he turned from the doctor to look at Secora, Enrique was fighting back the tears, his jaw trembling. Secora knew by looking at him. She screamed, “Mi hijo, mi hijo!” My son, my son. And she ran into Enrique’s arms. Their baby was dead.

  Lydia wept, feeling Neil sit down beside her. The sorrow filled her quickly, and she stood up, wanting to be away from Neil, wanting to help Secora. She put her arms around Enrique’s wife, holding her tightly. All of the Cuban men and women wept, and Neil, sitting alone as nurses, doctors, and patients passed in front of him, felt incredibly out of place. Walking over to Lydia, he put a hand on her shoulder, but she eased away from his touch, a deliberate gesture that hurt him, exactly as Lydia intended.

  Outside, in the darkness, and standing on the top of the hospital steps, Lydia felt Neil grip her elbow, preventing her from walking, letting the silent, weeping Cubans move slowly down the stairs in front of them. Neil whispered, “Lydia …”

  She wouldn’t look at him; it was as if she blamed him for the baby’s death, which was ridiculous. An exhausted and drained Lydia turned up the collar of her fur coat. “Nothin’ to say, Neil. Not now, please.” She felt so sorry for Enrique, for Secora. She felt guilty at what she was doing to them by working with Neil, by being an informant. Lydia was ashamed and sick to her stomach.

  Neil kept his grip on her elbow, but before either of them could say anything, an ambulance sped around the corner, making a right on Fifty-seventh and Ninth Avenue, deliberately heading the wrong way, directly into one-way traffic coming downtown. Tires squealed, horns blared, cars skidded in slush, and drivers cursed, but the-orange-and-white ambulance, siren whining, had its way. Spraying snow and slush, it skidded to a halt in front of the hospital, two cars and two blue-and-white police cars braking to a swift stop behind and around it. Car and ambulance doors opened quickly, and men ran out into the snow, faces tight and concentrated, men racing against death.

  The men who weren’t in police uniform had badges pinned to their overcoat lapels. They shouted, cursed, and shoved people out of the way, clearing a path for the stretcher now being taken from the ambulance. One attendant raced alongside the stretcher, holding a bottle of blood plasma upside down, a tube running from the bottle down into the arm of …

  Lydia’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened, but before she could say anything, Neil put his arms around her, shielding her, his back now to the men and attendants rushing up the hospital stairs with the stretcher. Neil recognized three of the men; they were federal narcotics agents, none of whom recognized Neil or acknowledged him if they did. They were clearing a path for the stretcher. Lying on the stretcher, his face a chalky white and looking incredibly young, was Walter Dankin.

  Lydia was wide-eyed. “That was—”

  “Don’t say it!” Neil pressed his body against hers. “Don’t even think it! You say the wrong thing now, and we’re both dead.”

  “The young one, the—”

  “That’s right. Walter Dankin.” Neil looked down the stairs at the Cubans, some of whom were in the car, some of whom were still on the sidewalk. One or two looked up at him and Lydia as though waiting for them to join them.

  Lydia whispered, “He was hurt, bleeding …”

  “You forget what you saw, understand? All them people down there got to hear is that you know an agent. Dankin had a buy tonight, that’s all I know. Look, you go with Ruiz’s wife. I’m telling you, Lydia, keep a goddamn tight grip on yourself and don’t come apart now. Please.”

  She looked into Neil’s eyes. “He was getting married in—”

  “Yeah, he was.”

  Lydia wanted to cry, to scream, to shout at the top of her voice, to run away from all of this dying and blood, away from the babies and man-babies who died before they had a chance to live. Tears and mascara streaked her face. Some tears clung to the end of her chin, and others landed in her fur collar, where they gleamed like bits of glass.

  “Neil, call me later, okay?”

  He nodded. And they’ll think she’s weeping for Ruiz’s son. She is, but not for him alone.

  He called her after midnight from the office, accepting her assurance that she was alone.

  “He’s dead,” said Neil.

  He could hear Lydia weeping, so he waited, looking around the office, seeing the incredible activity, a rarity at this time of night. But an agent was dead and another wounded, two of his fingers shot off. The bureau was at work on why and how it had happened, who was responsible, and how this trouble was going to be handled. When an agent died, the bureau was a tense place. It did everything possible to see that the killing was solved and that particular file marked closed. It would work around the clock for the next few days until a lot of questions were answered.

  Neil said, “He was shot in the neck and in the back, four times altogether. Happened up on One Hundred and Third Street. Died on the operating table. Couldn’t save him. Tried like hell, but …”

  Neil felt his own tears coming back, and his throat constricting again, the way it had been when he’d returned to the office and heard the news.

  He cleared his throat, blinking tears from his eyes. “Um, it … what went down was, he had a buy tonight with two Chileans, um, some coke. But it was a rip from the beginning. Never was … never was any dope. Set up. Informant …”

  “Informant?”

  “Yeah, um, informant set up Dankin and two other agents. Informant and Chileans wanted to rip them off. Get the money to invest in heroin. Chileans are dead. Blown away by Walter’s backup.”

  “How could it happen? Didn’t he have protection?”

  Neil sighed, squeezing the corners of his eyes with his fingers.

  “Something can always go wrong. Always. Don’t matter how well you plan, something can always go wrong. You don’t want to think about it, but it’s true, you can get burned every time a buy goes down. You and me, we been lucky. Lucky …”

  Neil wiped his tears with a damp handkerchief. “Died on the operating table. Jesus.” He spun his chair around, back now to his desk, to the rush of agents and ringing telephones around him. File folders and dozens of photographs were spread across desks, and agents yelled into receivers, because the informant who had introduced both dead Chileans to the agents was still missing. The bureau wanted him. He was a Colombian named Sammy Papas Fritas—Sammy French Fries—and from this moment on, the bureau would concentrate on finding him. From this moment on, it would lean on everyone who knew him, who used to know him, who might know him.

  Lydia said, “Your wife, she …”

  “Told her.” Neil’s voice said the news of Walter Dankin’s death meant little or nothing to Elaine.

  Lydia broke the silence between them. “A night for the young to die. Enrique Ruiz—”

  Neil’s anger was sudden, vicious. “Goddamm it, I don’t want to hear a fucking thing about Enrique Ruiz! He’s the kind of slimy bastard that killed Dankin.”

  “Neil, Enrique’s son—”

  “My ass, Enrique’s son. Who’s forcing your friend Enrique to deal dope? You think I got any sympathy for him, you’re crazy. No way. No fucking way, you understand?”

  “His wife. You didn’t see her. She couldn’t stop crying.”

  “No shit. Neither will Rose Ann. She’s Walter Dankin’s fiancée, and she’s never gonna get the chance to be his wife. Crying. I’ll tell you about crying. Dankin’s mother and father. They’re crying. His two sisters. They’re crying. Some agents around here, they’re crying. Know what I think about your friend Enrique? I hope we come down on him soon, I hope we pop him and I’m there w
hen it goes down. Him and all his fucking dealer friends.”

  Lydia tried to reason with him. “You’re upset. Why you blame Enrique? He didn’t kill Walter.”

  “Oh yeah? Lemme tell you something, lady. If you Cubans didn’t bring in all that white, there wouldn’t be anything to buy, and a lot of people wouldn’t be gettin’ wasted. Know why Walter got snuffed? He got snuffed because there’s white heroin on the way, and every street hustler wants his piece of that pie. Walter got killed by white heroin. Enrique didn’t pull the trigger, but he killed him, all right. Make no mistake about that. Enrique, Mas Betancourt, Israel Manzana, Lonnie Too Tall, King Raymond, Kelly Lorenzo—all of them bastards. Your friends, your good buddies, your dancing partners—”

  “Stop shouting at me! I’m just as upset as you are!”

  “Whoopee. I’ll just tell Walter Dankin’s family that. I’ll just tell them that my snitch, my very own little Judas, is sorry about what happened to their son.”

  Lydia hung up.

  That’s when Neil noticed that he was breathing heavily, loudly, shouting at the top of his voice, and the worst thing was, he was taking everything out on Lydia. Everything. The job, Walter’s death, his troubles with Elaine, the confused feelings he had about Lydia and didn’t want to examine too closely. Every goddamn thing. Dropping the receiver into his lap, he leaned back in his chair, hands covering his face.

  In her bedroom, Lydia lay back, tears falling from the corners of her eyes down into her ears and onto the bedspread. To be true to Neil meant betraying Enrique and friends who trusted her. It meant turning her back on them forever. To be true to them was to betray Neil, to be sent to jail for a long time, to be separated from Olga.

  The telephone rang again and again, but Lydia ignored it.