The Informant (13 page)

Katey stood quickly. “I’ll get it. Oh, I bought something for you.”

“What?”

“Johnnie Walker Red. What you always drink, hook nose.”

Russell Gormes completed the smile this time. “Right on, K-man.”

“Here, I’ll shove it under your pillow, ’cause I just know this place has got its little rules.”

“Who gives a shit? Open it for me, then put the cork back in nice and tight.”

“Done.”

Finishing the glass of warm orange juice, Russell took a swallow from the bottle, shook his head with satisfaction at the warmth of it, and hid the bottle again. He stayed sitting up, a hand resting on each knee. He looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy grafted onto the body of a gorilla. All wrapped in white, hairy legs sticking out from under his gown.

“Tell you something, Katey. I went crazy yesterday and last night but right now I ain’t too bad. I’m gonna win, gonna beat this thing. I’m gonna walk out of this stinking place, and I won’t need no fuckin’ dog or cane.”

Katey swallowed hard. “Better believe it. Ain’t no way but
the
way. First day out we—”

“We just sit outside, you and me. We talk, we look at everything, everybody. You don’t know how bad you miss seeing until you can’t see anymore. Colors, women, dogs, kids. Next time around, I’m gonna be takin’ a hard look at all of them. Food sucks in here. Department got me this private room. They’re gonna see what else they can do for me.”

Katey snorted in disgust. “They done enough already. Anybody drop by to see you?”

“Yeah. Weissman, Peppe, Favor, Lloyd, a bunch of people. S’pose to be putting in a phone sometime today. That’s sure gonna help, believe me. What’s with you these days?”

Katey told him about working with Neil Shire, Lydia Constanza, and federal narcotics agents.

Russell puckered up his wide mouth, nodding his head, impressed. “K-man on the move. Keep on keepin’ on. And you’re scoring, right?”

“Looks like. Buying small. Ounces, eighths. But it’s good shit. We ain’t been burned yet. All of it tests out fine.”

“You got a good informant. Rolling anybody over besides her?”

“Ummmm, possibly a spade named Bad Red. He is supposed to be putting us in touch with two black middle-level distributors. Julius Shelton and Lonnie Conquest. Two keys’ worth. Coke. Seventy-five percent pure.”

Russell pulled out the bottle again, swallowed for a long time, corked and hid it. “Two keys is cool. Everything righteous?”

“That’s what we’d like to know. Shelton and Conquest are out of town, nobody knows where. That leaves Bad Red, and everybody wants more than his word before coming up with a flash roll. We’re talking about one hundred and ten big ones.”

“My, my. That is big, K-man. How’s the force taking it? I know it’s their idea that you climb in bed with feds, but you know how people are.”

“Ain’t it the truth, hook nose? Department wants to have some more of their men in on the buy with Bad Red, but the feds say no, just little old me as far as outside talent goes. It’s their money, so they get to call the tune.”

Russell Gormes farted, then grinned. “Hospital food. Tell me, you think there’s anything to your informant’s super deal? Cubans and spades. They do deals, but not on a level that’s anything like what your gal says might go down.”

Katey shrugged. “You know dope, my man. Anything’s possible. One thing, though. They found the Rucker brothers wasted over in New Jersey. Two of Harlem’s finest lying in each other’s arms in the back of a car. Next to no blood in the car, so that means they got burned someplace else, then dragged across the river. The talent who wasted them was good. Head shots, heart, throat. He knew what he was doing. Or
they
knew. Must have been close. Street says Kelly Lorenzo ordered the hit. Ruckers were giving him trouble, not turning over money due Kelly. Street says they even copped Kelly’s private stash and turned it over down in Baltimore. Now, it could be that Kelly’s got plans and needs all the bread he can get. In which case, he is going to hand out grief and pain to anybody who gets in his way.”

Russell Gormes scratched his crotch. “Could be, K-man. You could be right. The Ruckers were two mean spooks. I hear tell they always made the women work naked in their mills. Stone naked. That way, nobody hides any dope up their dress or in a bra. That’s mean, man. Pretty fucking mean. Bunch of naked women sitting ’round a table cutting a load, and you know there’s armed guards in the room watching and getting hard-ons.”

Katey grinned, hands behind his head. “I’d damn sure have stiff pants. That’s a natural fact.”

“Who’s the Cuban, again?”

“Snitch says Mas Betancourt. Figure he’s the honcho, calling the shots, since Kelly’s hiding out and might find it hard to touch base with his connect without getting popped. So old Mas the cripple calls the shots, my experience tells me. He calls the shots, puts up most of the money, reaches out for what he don’t have, and probably sets up the overseas connect. Kelly brings in more spades, probably top-level distributors who commit themselves to buy so much of the load. Kelly probably brings in money too, and whatever else is needed. Now, all this hangs on whether or not there’s anything to what Miss Constanza says. It’s a long way from scoring ounces to getting next to an importer like my man Mas.”

“Ain’t been done,” said Russell Gormes. “Guys like Mas never take a fall. You got a better chance to fuck the queen of England than you do getting next to Mas.”

“Well, that’s what we’re gonna try and do.”

“Fuck the queen of England? Can I watch?”

“No, you hook-nose scumbag. We’re gonna roll over whoever we can, and keep climbing.”

“Department’s gonna put on the pressure, K. Soon as they smell a good one, a bust that can get them in the papers and on the eleven-o’clock news, they are gonna want theirs. Watch your little ding-dong, K-man. You’re in the middle.”

“Don’t I know it. I—”

The door opened, and a broad-shouldered female nurse two inches taller than Katey exploded into the room as though ready to punch somebody. Ignoring Katey, she checked Russell’s chart hanging on the end of the bed, then took a thermometer from her pocket. With a minimum of time, effort, and words, she checked Russell’s temperature, bandages, told him the doctor would be in soon, gave him an injection, then left.

Russell lay down, sighing heavily. “How’s Margaret?”

Katey had that uncomfortable feeling again. Pity. “Okay. See her when I can. You know how it is.”

“Yeah. Cop’s life.” Russell Gormes’s words were slurred as the injection began to take effect. “Nobody likes a cop’s life ’cept a cop. Eyes still burn. Hurt; hurt li’l bit. Li’l bit. Katey?”

“Here, good buddy.”

“Don’t ever be poor. Poor ain’t nothin’ but nothin’. No money is bad. Makes you do things, do things that ain’t … Katey? … Tell ’em to get me a TV in here … TV.”

Katey blinked, and tears slid down his face. Reaching inside his jacket, he took out the white envelope with two hundred dollars in crisp tens and twenties drawn from his savings account this morning. Gently he slipped the envelope under Russell’s pillow, pushing it under the bottle of Johnnie Walker Red.

Unlucky hook-nose Lebanese. Built like a low brick wall. What did love ever do for you, good buddy, except shove your face into the toilet?

No sweat on the TV, partner. It’s done. You got it, and I hope you get more out of it than you got from your bimbo snitch.

Katey turned and faced the sun, his face in his hands, his body shaking with his weeping, and he wondered how he could feel sorry for Russell and at the same time
envy
him for having the guts to put every bit of himself into one all-consuming passion.

Dropping his hands, Katey stared into the sun, giving himself up to its hot brightness,
seeing, seeing.
He was seeing for himself and for Russell.

One thing for sure. Katey was never going to be poor. He was going to take that bit of advice from his partner and engrave it on the inside of his own skull.

Russell Gormes paid the price for being stone broke. You and me together on that one, hook nose. Forget about being out of bucks, forget it now and for always. Life was too short and too hard to come up empty.

W
ALKER WALLACE SPUN AROUND
in his leather chair and spoke to the wall. Four men sitting or standing in his small office knew every word was meant for them.

“We start to dig, as of now. Neil’s informant says Mas Betancourt. All right, let’s start with that. His folder’s on my desk, and if you’ve read it before, read it again. We know he’s one of the top four in town, and even the other Cuban importers respect him for his brains and his balls. He does weight, he’s protected, he’s got lieutenants and top distributors out in front of him, and he’s never spent a day in court, let alone a night in jail. So that makes him good at what he’s doing. And we do know what he’s doing, don’t we?”

Walker Wallace swung around to face them. Neil Shire, Katey, and the two agents working with them, Kirk Holmes and Walter Dankin. Wallace looked carefully at each man before he spoke again.

“Knocking down an importer don’t happen every hour on the hour. The distance between what Lydia’s given us so far and a Mas Betancourt is the difference between a Ouija board and a computer. Mas is so insulated, it’s pathetic. And Cubans don’t talk. They don’t flip. Yeah, you got exceptions, but getting a Cuban to rat on another Cuban is like trying to piss through steel. They are shrewd people, cunning like a fox, and they got a system that lasts, because they’re organized. Cuban refugees are all over the world, and that’s their organization. Smart bunch of people. But we
can
get lucky. That is, if you call working your ass off getting lucky.

“Now, Neil …”

Walker Wallace handed him Mas Betancourt’s folder. “Read it and pass it on. Everybody here knows, of course, that we have some news from Miami. If you don’t, here it is again. We spotted Lonnie Conquest down there. Now, on account of he’s been black since the day he was born, we don’t figure he’s down there for a tan. He was born in North Carolina, so figure he’s in Miami for business, maybe pleasure. But I go with business, and Mr. Conquest’s business is dope. Now, the second piece of news is that we popped Mr. Cruz Real last night. Mr. Real, for those of you who don’t know, is young, only twenty-two, and we caught him with half a key of white powder for the nose. He was in a young lady’s apartment, said young lady being married to somebody else. It goes without saying that whoever dropped the dime on Cruz and his half key of cocaine didn’t like him crawling between the lady’s legs.”

Katey snorted. “Her husband.”

“Give the man a cigar,” said Walker Wallace. “We think it’s hubbo, but since the tip came from Mr. A. Nonymous, we don’t know for sure. So Cruz gets busted with enough happy dust to send him down for a nice number of years. Anything up to a dime. Ten years. We got him by the short and curlies, no two ways about it. He’s young, married, loves the ladies, and he’s new at the game of dope. He don’t know what it’s like to be locked up ten years with no nooky. He’s a stud, a genuine Cuban macho type, so I don’t think he’s gonna like playing drop the soap in Atlanta or Lewisburg.”

Walker Wallace paused to sip cold coffee. “Now, the point of this here wonderful speech is that Cruz Real is related to John-John Paco, old Mr. Johnny P. Cruz is his nephew. And John-John is a cousin of Mas Betancourt’s. Cubans are glued together tighter than the fucking Waltons. John-John, we know, is a top-level distributor in the Miami area. Been getting his dope from cousin Mas for years. John-John putting superstud nephew Cruz on the payroll might be the break we need. We are going to lean on Cruz, roll him over if we can, see what we can come up with.”

Neil looked up from the folder he’d been reading. “How tough is Cruz?”

“Our guys down there say he’d rather play dip the wick than work up a sweat in the dope business. Cruz has more women than you got hairs in your nose. Plus a wife and two kids. Cuban men are snatch-happy. Our people think Cruz is Silly Putty, so they’re going to work on him. It would be nice if Cruz tells us something about old John-John, and maybe, just maybe, something about whether or hot cousin Mas is planning a super deal.”

Neil said, “Conquest. What do we do about him down in Miami?”

Walker Wallace sucked a piece of Danish from between two back teeth. “Upstairs thinks we got a chance to find out if Bad Red’s jiving or not. They think we should send Lydia down to Miami real quick, have her talk to Conquest, see if he’s supplying Bad Red with two keys of coke. If he is, no sweat. We make the buy, which will give us more than enough to come down on Bad Red. In the end, it also gives us Conquest and Shelton. But I gotta tell you, Neil, the feeling around here is that Bad Red ain’t righteous. The powers that be smell rip.”

And Neil had to admit the front office was right. As badly as he wanted to make the buy, he had to admit that it didn’t look right. Bad Red refusing to let Neil and Katey meet Lonnie Conquest and Julius Shelton.

The two black distributors were conveniently out of town, and Bad Red, that shifty prick, was pushing hard to complete the buy. Neil had been ordered to stall. But Bad Red still pushed, as though he wanted to do the deal before Conquest and Shelton returned and found out their names were being used for a ripoff.

Neil didn’t like missing this chance. However, the front office was right. He also didn’t like having his informant flown down to Miami. He was responsible for Lydia, she was his snitch. Let Miami get their own.

But that wasn’t the problem. It was a good idea for her to go down and talk to Lonnie Conquest. Better she do that than Neil lose a hundred and ten thousand dollars. Okay, so he was using Lydia to cover his own ass. Wasn’t that how the game was played? So why was he feeling uncomfortable about Lydia going to Miami?

Walker Wallace said, “Neil, you’ll tell Lydia.” It wasn’t a request.

“What’s her cover? I don’t want her going down there and getting burned.”

“Understand. Give it some thought, see what you can come up with.”

“She can tell Conquest she’s on a run, she’s a mule. He won’t check, but just in case, when she meets him, she ought to be holding. She can meet some of our people down there, and they can give her confiscated narcotics. If she has to, she can flash that on Conquest.”