The Informant (2 page)

“Sir?” began Praether in his soft monotone. “The brass, do they really think this thing can work?”

Forster blew smoke at the intercom on his messy desk. “What do we have to lose?”

Both men understood that all they had to lose was Lydia Constanza, and without saying so, both men knew that that was no loss at all. She owed, and she had to pay. If things went right, Forster would be that much more secure in his chair, that much closer to making his twenty without making waves. Praether didn’t object to it; that’s how the game was played, and when time came for him to play it, he’d do the same.

Forster dropped an unfinished cigarette into his cold coffee, listening to its brief, soft hiss. He wanted to sleep, to lie down for a long time and remember nothing, be bothered by nobody, but he also wanted to survive in the police department, so he forced himself to stay awake. There was always somebody waiting to take your place, but if you were awake, they couldn’t do it that easily.

“Get Kates. You sit in on this. He might want to ask you questions about Constanza.” Forster rubbed his burning, aching eyes with the fingers of his right hand. Sleep. Right now, he’d kill for it.

Praether nodded, stood up, and began his slow walk across the worn gray carpet. In front of him on the wall to his left was a cellophane-covered map of the five boroughs, the map dotted with green and red thumbtacks indicating some kind of official statistics; and in Praether’s slow mind, he saw Lydia Constanza, Kates and himself as just more thumbtacks being used to create a pattern that someone else wanted to see completed. But he didn’t think that way for very long, because he had never trained himself to, never allowed himself to.

He’d always done what the movers and shakers had wanted done, and today and tomorrow and the next day would be no exception. Today, people would die who had never died before, die in all sorts of ways, but Fred Praether wouldn’t be one of them, because he was a man who always did what he was told to do.

The way Detective Sergeant Edward Merle Kates would.

The way Lydia Constanza would. None of them—Lydia, Kates, Praether—had any choice, but Praether never thought about that, and if he had, he wouldn’t consider it such a bad thing at all.

He opened the door and let his thin mouth widen briefly, because that’s what he believed a smile was. “Kates? Praether. Lieutenant will see you now.”

B
UYING DOPE ON THE
street.

Nothing in the world like it.

Neil Shire loved it.

Just an ounce of white, he thought. One ounce of white heroin. A piece. That’s all I want to score. But this sucker sitting across from me is jerking me around, upping the price from what we’d agreed on last night. Last night he wanted a thousand dollars. Tonight he wants fifteen hundred.

Can’t have that now, can we? No, we can’t.

Time to take care of business.

Neil Shire stood up slowly, stepping out of the booth, making sure he looked like a man with somewhere else to go.

The Cuban, whose smile contained all the gums he owned, stopped smiling.

“Hey, brother, hey, where you going’?”

“Away from you, dude. You’re stroking me, and I don’t like it. Last night’s money ain’t good enough for you. So it looks like you and I won’t be doing a deal, looks like.”

“Hey, hey, take it easy. Fifteen is cool for what I got. Good powder. I guarantee you it’s nothin’ but good powder. You like it I can get you more.”

“You can get me nothing, friend.” Neil looked down at the Cuban. Small dude pulling a small hustle. The Cuban was a tiny little man, thin, pale, a piece of chalk in a dark blue pea coat. And Neil Shire, who had money to spend, was a lot tougher.

Neil leaned over until he was almost nose-to-nose with the little Cuban.

“Friend, I wish you well. Get rich, but get rich off somebody else. With me, a deal’s a deal, a price is a price. You told Lydia a thousand and that’s why I’m here. Now, if you can’t be righteous with me, that’s just fine. I’ll live. And you go connect with some other turkey. Me, I’m waiting for Lydia to come out of the john, then we quit this set.”

Sure of himself, Neil turned his back on the tiny Cuban and took two steps toward the Mets-Pirates game on a color Zenith high in a corner behind the bar. No sound on the television. But a small radio on a shelf of liquor bottles crackled with a loud Spanish-language version of the ball game.

Rosario’s bar. Not much, and all Cuban, smelling of stale beer and cheap overcooked meat. Located in an all-Cuban neighborhood in Manhattan’s Washington Heights, and no place for an outsider to enter without first being asked. Rosario’s bar. Small, with an all-Spanish jukebox, a drinking bar parallel to six red leather booths, and in the back two small johns behind blue wooden doors. To the left of the johns, a bearded cook made a lot of noise in a tiny kitchen. Except for Neil Shire, a federal narcotics agent, everyone in the bar was Cuban.

Behind Neil, the tiny Cuban, who called himself Zarzuela, said, “Hey, man, hey, come on, sit down.”

Neil, an expert at going for anybody’s jugular, heard the whine in Zarzuela’s voice and knew he had the little pusher. Fish is chewing on the hook, now let’s reel him in and hang his miniature ass over the fireplace.

“I’m sitting,” said Neil.

Zarzuela said, “I got to get by, you know? Got to make a living.”

Neil, palms down on the black formica tabletop, looked at the backs of his hands and said nothing.

Zarzuela said, “You known Lydia long?”

“I’m interested in dope,” said Neil. I’m being watched, too. Covering your ass, aren’t you, Mr. Z.? Three men: a fat one in a pink shirt and gold cross, sitting at the bar digging wax out of his ears. And in the front booth, two more, one of them drooling over a hooker in a green jumpsuit and yellow platforms.

That’s how Cubans did dope. Always where they felt safe. Always, always in a bar or restaurant that was totally Cuban, in a Cuban neighborhood, so that strangers stood out immediately. Blacks, Italians, and everybody else did dope anywhere, your place or theirs, in a park or in a church, but not Cubans. If you bought or sold dope to Cubans, the deal always went down in a Cuban neighborhood, in a Cuban bar or restaurant. Cubans were smart, tough, careful, and dealing more dope in New York than blacks and Italians put together.

Neil Shire was in Rosario’s by invitation. Like most agents or cops undercover, he carried no gun. A stranger with a gun meant cop, and Neil was a stranger until he’d made enough buys to be accepted. Only then could he carry a gun around dope dealers without arousing suspicion.

Tonight’s buy had been set up by Lydia Constanza, an informant Neil was working for the first time. Tonight was Lydia’s first test, and if she passed it, if Neil copped good dope from Zarzuela, then Lydia would be used for more buys, and, more important to Lydia, she’d be able to keep out of jail. Like all informants, she’d flipped because she had to, because she’d committed a crime. In order to stay out of prison, she was betraying friends and associates.

“Lydia says you buy for people on the island.” Zarzuela couldn’t stop smiling. All teeth, gums, tonsils, and moist brown eyes pleading to be liked, to be agreed with.

Lydia says what I tell her to say, thought Neil. He said to Zarzuela, “Let’s skip all the social shit, okay? Why am I sitting here? You tell me.”

Zarzuela coughed, sniffed, wiped his nose on his pea-coat sleeve. Pusher-addict, thought Neil. Half of his supply goes into his arm, the other half gets hit with milk sugar, baking soda, or powdered laxative, and he deals it for money for some more to put in his arm. He’ll try to waltz me around so he can look good in front of his three friends. But in the end, he’ll take the thousand and make the sign of the cross, because he knows for sure he can wake up tomorrow and get well.

Don’t blame the September chill for your sniffles, Chico. Blame your nasty little habit and that needle. Once you slip it in, it never comes out.

Lydia. Neil had signaled her to go to the john and stay there while the buy went down. If she didn’t see the deal, she wouldn’t have to testify. Being a snitch was a high-risk business.

You had to protect your informants, because without them, you had no case. They introduced you to people, got you inside, vouched for you, tipped you in advance, tipped you after the fact, helped you to make arrests, and by doing so, made your career. Neil was in Rosario’s because Lydia Constanza had said she could set him up with Cubans dealing heroin and cocaine.

She’d said more, something that had made Neil Shire, an ambitious man, tremble with excitement and think that Lydia Constanza just might be his ticket to ride.

Lydia claimed to have seen Kelly Lorenzo in a Manhattan after-hours club. Kelly was the most-wanted federal fugitive in dope, a twenty-nine-year-old black who’d been dealing one hundred million dollars’ worth of narcotics yearly before he’d jumped four hundred thousand dollars’ bail six months ago. Good-looking Kelly, who’d killed at least a hundred people. Smart, ruthless Kelly, who was probably still dealing dope from wherever he was hiding.

Lydia said she saw him in the Palace, a legendary after-hours club operated by top pimps, a joint no law enforcement had ever set foot in, and a place most cops felt didn’t exist. People throughout America, in Europe and in the Caribbean claimed to have seen Kelly Lorenzo, who had a thirty-thousand-dollar reward on his head.

Was he in Manhattan? In narcotics, anything was possible.

And Lydia Constanza, facing jail for armed robbery as well as prostitution and mugging charges, offered Neil Shire something else to keep herself out of the joint. Cubans and blacks, she said, were teaming to bring in the largest amount of white heroin New York City had ever seen. The deal was so big that both groups, who had never worked together on this large a scale before, were investing millions of dollars
up front.

The deal was so big that it would take at least a year to plan and execute.
At least one year.

Ambitious Neil Shire trembled with excitement at the thought of it. If Lydia Constanza was telling the truth about Kelly Lorenzo and the Cuban-black super white-heroin deal, then Neil Shire had nothing but green lights in front of him from now on.

If Lydia was talking good noise and Neil could stay on top of this case without having it yanked from under him, then there were promotions in his future, commendations, that desk job he and his wife both wanted for him, one of the few things the two of them agreed on. If Lydia was right,
if,
then Neil had the case of his life.

If she was wrong, then she was heading to the joint and Neil was on his way to oblivion. But think positive. Think that Lydia was righteous. Think about making this case, then getting promoted to group supervisor with men working under
him.
Think about becoming assistant regional director with a corner office and windows. Think about making this case and getting transferred to Washington.

To hell with having his picture taken with the head of the department, with the heavies down at Justice, with the attorney-general, with the president of the United States. Just give Neil a desk job, a higher civil-service grade, and the money that came with all of that, and he’d be singing in the rain louder than Gene Kelly.

It all depended on Lydia. Work her right, test her, stroke her, watch her. Turn her over and get her to introduce him to people. Turn
them
over, and keep moving up, keep moving up. The name of the game. That’s what tonight was all about. A test for Lydia, with Neil’s reputation and career riding on that test, because he’d had too much trouble lately. Too much.

He’d made mistakes and been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and besides all that, he was going nowhere, no goddamn where at all, making no cases, impressing nobody. He needed help.

And a friend on the cops had handed him Lydia because New York City narcotics was too broke to pay informants and too short of manpower to spare the time to work them properly. Neil’s chance was now,
now
, and he was going to work Lydia Constanza for all she was worth. It was her or Neil, and it damn sure wasn’t going to be Neil.

First time out, and she’d given him Zarzuela, and Zarzu had dope. Or was it all a hustle to buy Lydia time to think of some other way to stay out of the slam? Ripoff? Zarzu and Lydia teaming to sell Neil milk sugar? Christ, no. Don’t even
think
that. That was last year. Old trouble. Christ, don’t even
think
that.

But you had to think betrayal when you were working a snitch. A snitch would betray anybody to stay out of jail. Give a snitch a better offer, and he’d betray a cop, an agent, his gray-haired mother. It had happened before. Christ, don’t even
think
that.

A lot to worry about these days. In law enforcement, you moved up or you were moved out. Times were hard, money was tight, and cutbacks had put cops and agents on unemployment insurance and back to mowing grass full time. Neil Shire, thirty-two, going nowhere, anxious for that desk job, had to move up soon.

The street was exciting, and buying dope was some kind of thrill, but you couldn’t be out there when you were fifty-five—that is, if you lasted that long. If you didn’t get blown away by a fucked-up dealer, if you didn’t get killed by department efficiency reports, if you didn’t get screwed by dumb partners, if you didn’t get pushed into working on a shit case by an ambitious supervisor hot to look good at your expense. No siree, friends, Neil Shire didn’t want to be on the street
that
long.

But to get off the street in a hurry, he needed a dynamite case.

Enter Lydia.

At the bar, the ball-game watchers cheered, shouted, clapped, whistled. Sounds like a fiesta, thought Neil. Who the hell would have thought I’d need an interpreter to watch a baseball game? You’ve got more Cubans in Manhattan than you got holes in Swiss cheese.

He watched the fat man in the pink shirt and tiny gold cross slide his thick ass and thighs off a barstool, eyes still on the game. When fatty walked past Neil’s booth, he had a folded newspaper under one large arm.