The Informant (20 page)

“Can you get inside?” he asked.

Katey shook his head. “No, sir. Shire’s been making the buys. I’ve met some of the people, but Shire’s the boy, the man with the money. And on the street, money talks and everybody listens. He might can get in, him and Lydia.”

Forster took his time lighting a cigarette. “No date on when the Palace opens?”

“No, sir. Just between now and New Year’s. Sir, uh, exactly what is upstairs looking for? I mean, why did—?”

“They want their fucking names in the fucking papers, what do you think they want? They want results, and they want to pose for pictures standing behind a table of confiscated narcotics, and they want to be known as the people who saved New York. They don’t want to go down with the ship, you might say. Thing is, I don’t want to miss the last lifeboat either.” He leaned back in his chair, his lined red face looking exhausted. “Your wife—how long you been married?”

“Eight years.”

“She hated your job, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“At the beginning, they think they can cope with it. They think there’s nothing to being a cop’s wife. After about a year or so, it’s welcome to the real world.” He looked at Katey. “You need more time off for personal business?”

Katey shook his head no, speechless and off balance at the sudden shift by Walter F. X. Forster. Walter F. X. Forster. There’s still some cop left in you, ain’t there?

The intercom buzzed, a snapping sound like a long piece of wood splitting down the middle.

“Forster.”

“Lieutenant, pick up four, please.”

Katey held his breath.
Not “would you please pick up four,” but “pick up four.”
Katey noticed that, and swallowed hard, because if it was a department heavy calling, then Forster might be getting chewed out again. Which meant more hard times and grief for Katey.

He watched Forester lick his lips, frown, exhale, then reach for the telephone. “Lieutenant Forster.”

Silence.

Then Forster nodded several times. “Yes … yes … I know. Tomorrow? Yes, I’ll be there.”

Katey began to perspire.

Forster hung up, leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, hands on his thighs. “Gormes. Your partner. Swallowed his gun an hour ago. Inquest tomorrow morning.”

Swallowed his gun.
Put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

When Forster opened his eyes, Katey was sitting down with both hands over his face, his body shaking as he silently wept. Closing his eyes again, Forster folded his arms across his chest and waited, thinking that everything a man did during his time on earth was either wrong or dumb.

“Y
OUR PRIVILEGE.”

That was Saul Raiser’s reply when Neil said that he was going over Raiser’s head immediately.

Saul Raiser, assistant regional director of the bureau’s New York office, was recommending that Lydia Constanza be sent to Miami to work indefinitely with agents down there on Cuban traffickers connected with Mas Betancourt in New York.

Raiser, fifty-one, tall and thin-shouldered, with a two-inch faded white bullet scar on his pointed chin and a brown-and-white crew cut he had trimmed every ten days, sat behind his tidy desk, hands folded in his lap, alertly watching Neil with green eyes that seemed pleased whenever anyone was in pain. Raiser could never forgive people who tried to prevent him from having his way.

“Chief Raiser, Lydia Constanza’s
my
informant. She’s rolling over beyond our wildest dreams. We’ve got names, we’ve scored good packages. There’s no way Miami can work her as well as we can up here.” Neil rubbed his hands along his thighs, impatient to get out of Raiser’s office and get started on keeping Lydia in New York, Damn! Raiser was a bastard, meaner than a snake with an inch of tail cut off. He hadn’t been on the street in years; he didn’t have to go outside anymore. He was a desk man, with a high civil-service grade and salary to match, two secretaries and an office with three,
three
windows, and he could make trips to Washington and lunch with the attorney general, as well as with the bureau heavies.

None of this made Raiser less of a prick.

“Shire, you sound like you gave birth to Miss Constanza or something. I suppose we should have asked your permission first before deciding, but it’s been my experience that we don’t have to consult agents whenever we make policy. But maybe something’s happened since today and yesterday I don’t know about. Still, like I said, it’s your privilege to go over my head, through channels, of course.”

“She belongs
here
.”

“She belongs where I send her. So your march to glory gets slowed down. So what? Believe it or not, other cities have dope problems too, and since we’re in enforcement, that means we get to fight traffickers all over the country, remember?” Raiser lifted a corner of his mouth in a smirk.

Neil licked his lips. The word around the office was that down in D.C., Lydia’s information was considered super good, but had created a small problem, and that’s why Raiser, called the Razor and Cut-’Em-Up behind his back, had made his move. The deeper the investigation went into Cubans like Mas Betancourt and John-John Paco, the more certain it was that the CIA would begin cropping up in reports. Some of the Cuban dope dealers, particularly in Miami, were CIA-trained, had used CIA funds to get started in narcotics, and had even been approached
recently
by the CIA to make contact with Cuba regarding anti-Castro espionage. The word was that Raiser, who made a point of staying tight with anyone in Washington who could advance his career, was almost alone in ordering Lydia down to Miami.

In Miami, whatever information she turned up on Cubans would surely reach the CIA as fast as possible. Raiser would see to that. In Miami, he’d see that Lydia was kept on a tight rein. If she turned up anything that was embarrassing to the CIA, they’d have plenty of time to cover up, thanks to Saul Raiser.

Neil knew that Raiser wouldn’t give
that
as his reason for transferring an informant from one city to another. But it was the truth. You wouldn’t hear it said out loud, nor would you read it written down anywhere, but it was the truth. This was the kind of deal that Raiser, a master conniver, could put over
almost
before anyone at the bureau knew it was coming down. Neil was going to fight Raiser all the way on this one.

Neil said, “I understand you’ve shifted Walter Dankin from my team to someone else’s team.”

Raiser nodded with exaggerated slowness. “Yes, agent Shire, that is correct. A buy’s going down in a few days with some Latins. Dankin’s being worked in now by the informant,
if
that’s all right with you. He’s been placed with a new team because he looks young and looks like the type who’d cop cocaine, step on it, then deal it in various singles bars and such places. You might say, agent Shire, that I’m breaking up that old gang of yours.”

Leaving me naked in a blizzard, thought Neil, who remembered that someone once described Raiser as the kind of man who stands around in the john looking at his own turds for half an hour. Anyway, it’s down to the short strokes. Me and him. I’ve got to take him on.

Neil looked at the baseball bat Raiser kept at the base of the American flag standing in the far corner of his office. The bat had a tale to tell, too. The bat, called an Italian .45 because it had been taken from a mafioso drug dealer in East Harlem who’d used it on his girlfriend when she threatened to tell the dealer’s wife about their romance, had also been used on an informant, or so the story went. Used by Raiser.

A few years ago, Raiser’s partner had become friendly with an informant, and one night while having dinner at the informant’s house, the partner accidentally choked to death on a piece of meat. The story—true or false, no one knew for sure—was that Raiser had used the bat on the informant’s kneecaps, blaming the informant for his partner’s death.

Raiser hated informants, a blind, cold hatred he made no attempt to conceal. This meant that if he got away with sending Lydia to Miami, he could still pull strings from New York and give her a hard time. Neil rubbed the back of his own neck, trying to squeeze the tension out.

“Chief Raiser, we were trying to tie Simon Waxler, the bail bondsman, into Mas Betancourt. Lydia was—”

“She
isn’t
anymore. Besides, Waxler’s spending time in Miami these days. He’s just opened an office down there, remember?”

“He won’t spend all of his time there.”

“And you’re a soothsayer, in addition to your other talents. Look at it this way, Shire. With Miss Constanza out of your hair, you’re being spared the agony of defeat.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You haven’t, let’s say, fucked up since you’ve been in New York. Wouldn’t it be nice to feel all your bad days are behind you?”

Raiser picked up a red pencil and gently rubbed it between the palms of his long, thin hands, gazing at the pencil as if it were about to speak to him. He was throwing Neil’s past record up to him, digging up those times when things had gone wrong. And no matter what the reason, things
had
gone wrong, and Neil had had to take some of the weight on that. The watchers. Raiser was one of them. Watching Neil, waiting for him to stumble just one more time.

Without Lydia Constanza, Neil would have to wait for another chance to move up, and he was aware that he might wait for a long time. “Sir, I don’t think Lydia can work with anyone else right now. It’s taken me a long time to win her confidence, to turn her and get her to work right. There’s a question here of doing the best you can for an informant and then getting the informant to do the best he can …”

Raiser retained his maddening calm, never once taking his eyes from the red pencil pressed between the palms of his hands. “Shire, why don’t you let me worry about what’s best for Miss Constanza?” He tossed the pencil on a clean green blotter that was minus a single ink stain. The audience was over.

Raiser had followed the rules, which said that an agent had the right to be heard, provided he followed the chain of command. Neil had done that, and Raiser had done his part, and now it was over. If Neil wanted to take it further, he could.

Neil had a hand on the doorknob of Raiser’s office door when Raiser said, “Shire?”

Neil turned and waited.

“You like making waves, Shire?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s nice to know.”

“Yes, sir.”

Alone outside in the red-carpeted hallway, Neil stood still until his hands stopped shaking with rage.

L
YDIA WINCED AT THE
pain in her wrist.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Let’s go outside, you and me. In the hall. We can talk better out there.”

“You’re hurting—”

Neil didn’t let her finish. He squeezed harder, pulled, and made her lose her balance and fall forward until her body bumped into his. Lydia had never seen Neil this angry before. His voice was a low hiss, an ugly sound to be heard only by the two of them and not by anyone else at the party.

“You’re high. Pills. Who gave them to you?”

“P-pills? I don’t know—”

“Cut the shit. You’re stoned, bombed out of your skull. Jesus, how dumb can you be. You’re at a party with I don’t know how many dealers, mules, their women, and
you
get stoned. What the hell do you think’s gonna happen to you, to
us,
if you say just one wrong word? Just
one.
Come on, tell me. I just can’t wait to hear.”

Over his shoulder Lydia saw two couples hesitate outside in the hall, then walk through the open front door and into the apartment. The men and women, all Cubans, smiled at Lydia and Neil, who backed into a wall to give the couples room to walk by.

Lydia
was
high. So what? It was her life, right? At the moment, she felt good, mellow and relaxed, in the mood to party and cut loose and boogie till the dawn’s early light and to hell with Neil Shire and his federal friends who never smiled.

Inside the huge apartment on West End Avenue, fifty Cubans drank, ate, and danced at a party being given by Enrique Ruiz, a twenty-six-year-old heroin dealer celebrating the birth of his first son. A few weeks ago, Lydia had arranged two buys between him and Neil. Enrique was married to a lovely girl who had lost babies in two miscarriages, so tonight was something special for him and his wife, and Lydia knew the party would go on until the sun came up. To a Cuban, the birth of a son was one of the most important things in the world.

Outside in the empty hallway, Lydia listened as the elevator came up, then passed their floor. Fanning herself with a red handkerchief, she breathed deeply, blinking her eyes to clear them so that she could see Neil better. What was he so angry about? It was party time, time to have fun, to dance to the
salsa
and drink cool white wine and feel a man’s arms around her and hear people applaud when she and one of the men got out on the floor alone and danced their asses off.

Neil said, “You’re still working, you know that, don’t you?”

“What do you mean, I’m still workin’? Hell no, man, I ain’t workin’ tonight. Thish ish a party, don’t you know that?”

“Not for you, not for me. There ain’t no parties until I tell you.”

“Like hell.”

Neil frowned. “Keep your voice down.” The elevator stopped, its doors slid open, and several people got off, laughing as they walked toward the Ruiz apartment. Lydia wanted to get back inside, to dance, to have fun.

She tried to walk around Neil, but he grabbed her arm and roughly pulled her back.

“You were really throwing it around in there,” he said. “You and Morena were burning a hole in the rug with all that bumping and grinding.”

“That’s how Latin people dance. We’re not uptight like
you
!” Lydia was angry and hurt about what Neil had just said about her dancing—one thing she was proud of, one thing she did well. She turned to him, snorted, then said, “I’m a
good
dancer!”

“Sure. What I want to make sure of is when you’re high and flying, you can keep your mouth shut. You and Morena have been having some nice little quiet talks all night. Every time I look up, you two have your heads together.”