The Informant (25 page)

The fight was all huffing and puffing anyway, with both men rolling around in the snow like two kids in the park. All of the action had taken place in seconds.

Sonny Sally pressed the gun against Neil’s chest and pulled the trigger twice.

Nothing.

The gun clicked twice, and Sonny Sally, confused, angry, still in a kill-crazy frame of mind because he didn’t know who these paddy dudes were, or why this goddamn piece hadn’t fired when he pulled the trigger, pulled the trigger again, pressing his body down hard on top of Neil’s. When the gun didn’t fire the third time, Sonny Sally relaxed for two seconds, and Neil felt the pressure on top of him ease a bit, just a bit.

That’s when Neil, with no finesse whatsoever, but with all the strength left in him, kicked and shoved, and Sonny Sally rolled off him, still dazed by the failure of Neil’s piece to fire
three
times. Three. Well, all Sonny Sally could do after that was go to his own, Jack. Whip out that target pistol inside his army coat. Not much of a piece, but something, man. It was something, about the best a junkie could afford.

Neil scrambled to his feet, then kicked Sonny Sally in the face, sending him flying backward in the snow. Moving closer, a charged-up Neil, the adrenaline flowing too strong to stop, kicked Sonny Sally in the face again, then in the shoulder, and when Sonny Sally rolled over, his back to Neil, he kicked him twice more, this time in the kidneys. Staggering backward, Neil stood wobbly-legged and breathing heavily, painfully, feeling a fiery knife dig deeper into his chest with every breath. He was in rotten shape, but Jesus, how often did you have to kick ass out on the street these days? You used your piece more than your fists.

There was blood on the snow near Sonny Sally’s head, dark stains sprinkled on clean, soft white. Sonny Sally moaned, coughed, and tried to sit up, making no resistance when Neil patted him down and found the long-barreled target pistol in his belt.

Katey snorted, shaking his head, impressed at the way Neil had gotten the job done. He wondered if that’s what they taught the feds, all that field-goal kicking and decided no, doing a number with your feet is something that just comes naturally. He watched Neil bend over in the snow and pick up his .38.

Katey frowned. The piece was next to the spade, as though he’d been holding it. If so, why hadn’t he used it? Neil was wiping snow from it as though it was his. But it had been near the spade, who should have used it to blow up Neil.

Katey said, “How come that thing didn’t go off?”

Neil ignored him, taking two uncertain steps toward Lydia, who ran to him, her face wet with tears and melted snow, her waist-length black hair white with snowflakes. Still breathing loudly with exhaustion, Neil slowly took off his pea jacket and put it around a shivering Lydia, his arm lingering on her shoulder. When he looked over at Katey and saw him staring at him, he let his arm drop from her.

Neil said to Lydia, “You all right?” She was shaking, her lips pressed tightly together. Neil pulled the coat tighter around her.

She whimpered once, a sound reminding Neil of a puppy; then she said, “Y-yes. I’m f-f-fine. Okay. Okay.” Her eyes were wide, and they stayed on him even when he turned from her and walked toward Bad Red and Katey.

Neil, feeling the cold now, was calming down, his breathing coming under control. “Cool. It’s cool, it’s cool, it’s cool.”

Katey, who knew that Neil was still
up
, said nothing.

Bad Red, on his knees in the snow, said “Y’all the heat. I can tell.”

“Tell who?” said Katey quietly, the tone of his voice making Bad Red frown.

Red said, “Y’all gon’ bust me, is all. Right? But I ain’t done nothin’. Nobody dead, nobody robbed. We jes’ up here talkin’, that’s it. Ax her.”

Lydia said, “They … they threw a dog off the r-r-roof.”

“What?” Neil wasn’t sure he’d heard her right.

“Threw a d-dog off the roof.”

“What the hell for?” asked Katey, shifting his gun to his left hand and looking at the back of Bad Red’s head.

“For me. To scare me.”

Katey nodded. It made sense now.

Ol’ Bad Red. Kneeling there in the snow and figuring on a bust, and eventually walking, because he was right, there wasn’t any charge. More important—and Bad Red didn’t know this—there couldn’t be any bust. Not if Neil and Katey wanted to keep working on Mas Betencourt; not if Lydia wanted to keep from being made as a snitch. Ol’ Bad Red was going to walk off this roof, and that would be that. Except that Katey had his own thoughts on the matter.

Neil, in a black turtleneck and black pants, needed to get warm in a hurry, and he looked at Katey, his face saying: What the hell do we do about this situation?

Katey knew what to do.

He shoved Bad Red forward, facedown into the snow, a knee pressing hard between the black’s shoulderblades, a hand keeping the face from moving. Time to even up for making Katey look like an asshole in that discotheque. Charisse, my ass.

“No bust, Red. Got us all wrong, soul man. Whatever makes you think we’re the man? We’re just hard-ass ginzos out to cop good powder. Nothin’ but.”

And placing his .38 Police Special next to Bad Red’s right ear, barrel pointing at the snow-covered roof, Katey fired once, the bullet spraying snow, the
crack
of the gunshot an explosion in Bad Red’s ear, a huge and painful roar. Facedown in the snow, Bad Red was trapped with thunder roaring inside his skull and back and forth across his brain, and he screamed.

Katey stood up, slipping his piece back into his belt holster, his hard blue eyes on Bad Red writhing in the snow, face contorted in agony, teeth clenched, eyes closed, knees drawn up to his chest. “Say hello to Charisse for me, jungle bunny, and if you ever come near our friend Miss Constanza again, give your soul to Jesus, ’cause your ass belongs to me.”

Katey, brushing snow from his overcoat, walked toward the door. Neil, an arm around Lydia, followed.

At the door, Katey turned and grinned. “Be’s that way sometimes.”

Neil was too cold to argue.

Lydia would have stopped it if she could, this tension between Neil Shire and Jorge Dávila, the immediate distrust between the two men, the bad vibes as the agent and the dapper little Cuban informant from Miami encountered each other for the first time. Her fingers were bright with large square-shaped red, blue, and green stones, but her hands shook as she brought a coffeecup half-filled with dark brown Cuban rum up to her mouth. What had happened to her on the roof twenty minutes ago still had her frightened. Her nerves were stretched tight and about to snap, so she didn’t need
this,
this heavy, silent scene going down between Neil and Jorge. Her side ached from Bad Red’s kick.

The three of them were in Lydia’s bedroom, each one deep in silent concentration, as though listening to a ticking bomb. Lydia sat in front of her dresser mirror staring at Neil’s reflection, while Neil stood with his back to the bedroom door, eyes almost shut, but not quite; he was watching Jorge Dávila, whom he had just met for the first time.

Neil said, “Nobody told me you were working here.”

Jorge sighed, a man about to use his talent for survival. “I got in from Miami last night.”

“Nobody told me you were working here,” repeated Neil.

Dávila, sitting on the edge of Lydia’s bed, used his thumb to trace small circles on the green-and-white bedspread beneath him. He looked up at Lydia’s back, seeing her slowly combing her waist-length dark hair while looking into the mirror at the two men. Kirk Holmes had been sent downstairs again, this time to telephone the bureau that Lydia was safe and that Bad Red was no longer a problem. Katey, in the living room with the Cuban kids and their parents watching Enrique Ruiz do his magic tricks, whistled and applauded loudly, unaware that Jorge Dávila was a bureau informant.

Dávila, said, “I do what they tell me to do, I have no choice. I’m sure you read the reports on Lydia’s work with me in Miami, so you know a little about me, what I do, how I work—”

“Why you work,” interrupted Neil, his tone saying: You’re a snitch because you don’t have any choice. It was meant to be insulting to Jorge, but unfortunately, it was also insulting to Lydia, who turned around quickly, her face rigid with an anger she found hard to control. “Neil! You are in
my
house! Tonight is my daughter’s birthday party, do you understand?”

He did, and was ashamed. Inhaling deeply, he relaxed against the door. Pride wouldn’t let him be corrected and silenced by a woman, so he said to Dávila, “I’m working New York just fine, just fine, understand? This is
my
case, and I don’t need any help, is that clear?”

Dávila stroked his thick mustache with his thumb, then smoothed the lapels on his double-breasted pinstripe brown suit, remembering to keep his voice cautious and respectful, in no way offensive, because the man he was talking to was an agent, and agents could give an informant trouble. Informants had enough trouble without seeking more.

“Mr. Shire, Saul Raiser had a lot to do with my coming here. I just assumed he told you about it”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I wish I could say something, but I can’t. I’ve only been in town twenty-four hours.”

Lydia’s eyes met Neil’s in her mirror as he said to her, “And you didn’t tell me he was in
New York?
” The hurt in his voice was also an accusation of betrayal.

“Neil, I … I thought you knew. It just didn’t come up today. I mean, I didn’t see you all day. I worked on the party, and I didn’t do anything else but that. We didn’t have no more time to talk tonight.”

She felt the tears come suddenly and her face grow extraordinarily hot, and she turned her back to the two men, covering her face with both hands. On the other side of the door, the crowded living room of party guests clapped, whistled, cheered, and shouted, “
Olé! Olé!
” Enrique Ruiz was an excellent amateur magician, his skill unimpaired by the drugs he dealt and used.

Neil, confused by Lydia’s weeping, became angry and turned that anger on Jorge Dávila, an informant he’d now have to work with on the most important case of his career, but wouldn’t be able to officially control. “Dávila, I don’t know who you spoke to, but I’m the controlling agent on this case, and it would have gone down better for everybody if you’d made a point of speaking to me.”

“I agree.” Both men watched Lydia weep. “But blame Mr. Raiser, not me.”

“I ain’t about to get myself killed because you come onto my set and you don’t know—”

Lydia snapped her head around quickly, a finger aimed at Neil, surprising the hell out of him. “He knows!
You
don’t know! He knows El Indio, Cristina Reina, and René Ateyala. Do you know them?”

Neil shook his head.

Lydia wiped running mascara with a tissue. “Th-they are Cubans, all of them in dope, all of … of th-them from Miami, but now they are in New York to work with Mas Betancourt”

“Why?”

Lydia remained silent, continuing to dry her face. Jorge Dávila took his cue, keeping his voice soft and hoping he could finish the night without making an enemy of Neil. “Mr. Shire; these men, these Cubans, are what you call ‘on loan.’ Betancourt, he borrows them because he needs qualified people, people he can trust, who know what they’re doing. His top lieutenants are out of the country, so these other people are working for him until they get back. Cubans help each other out like that, you know.”

Neil, alert and listening to every word Dávila said, eyed the dapper little man from the tips of his two-hundred-dollar alligator shoes, past his paunch, and on up to his greased black hair parted in the middle and graying on the sides. Dávila sounded righteous, but that didn’t mean Neil should trust the little bastard. Meanwhile, Lydia was sniffling, and since Neil didn’t know what to say to her, he said nothing.

He said to Dávila, “How come you know so much?”

Dávila, still sitting on the edge of Lydia’s bed, turned to face Neil, his voice still polite, still controlled, still feeling Neil out. But there was an undercurrent of confidence in Dávila’s voice, because he was talking about what he knew, about what he did well and was proud of. He was a good informant, and knew it. “Barbara Pomal, Luis DaPaola, the priest Rolando. They’re all out of the country; they’re in Spain or Mexico, maybe France or Belgium. It’s tied up with this deal you’re working on, the one with Mas Betancourt, the reason you sent Lydia down to Miami. I know Barbara Pomal is going to Mexico City, and from there to Paris. I know because she stopped off in Miami first to talk to some people who work for John-John Paco. You know that name, right?”

“Yeah. I know that name.”

“Yes, well Barbara Pomal talked about moving money to Europe quickly, about looking for mules and picking routes for them. Twenty mules, twenty different routes.”

“Whoa. Slow down. Run that by me again.
Twenty mules?
Did I hear you right?”

“You heard me right, Mr. Shire. Twenty mules, twenty routes. Mas is being careful with this load. It’s only a guess, because Barbara didn’t discuss this, but it looks like Mas does not want to lose his dope, so he is spreading it thin, bringing it in at different spots. Cristina Reina told me this. She’s Barbara Pomal’s cousin, and she works for John-John Paco. She’s one of his top lieutenants.”

Lydia, who had stopped weeping, said, “Jorge sleeps with Cristina.”

Jorge Dávila’s smile was somewhere between sly and embarrassed.

Neil nodded in reluctant admiration. Cubans stuck together, slept together, probably licked the same ice-cream cone, and because they did, because this snitch with the expensive alligator shoes was jumping a broad who worked for a top Miami distributor, Mas Betancourt’s biggest dope deal was that much more in the open. Made sense. Don’t bring the white in all at once and in the same place. Spread it thin. Some of it’s bound to get through. Can’t miss. Smart. Leave it to the Cubans.

“Twenty mules,” he said. “That’s a lot of hired help.”

“I agree,” said Dávila. “But it makes sense. It means a large shipment, which is what you have to expect when Mas Betancourt mixes Cubans and blacks together for the first time.”