The Informant (12 page)

This deal would be his last.
La última.
After it was completed, they would move to Spain and be with other Cuban exiles. Spain, where Mas owned property, where Pilar would not have to worry about her husband dying at the hands of someone in narcotics. She wouldn’t miss New York. It wasn’t a city, it was a concrete cage filled with millions of animals.

She was not involved in her husband’s business; Mas kept her completely away from all aspects of dope dealing. And because she had no direct contact with narcotics or its victims, she found it easy to put the matter entirely out of her mind until Mas discussed something with her.

He turned to her. “I have to go out. Call DaPaola for me. Tell him I want Ray to drive. Have both of them meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

Luis DaPaola was one of Mas Betancourt’s three trusted lieutenants. Ray was new, a young Cuban who served as driver and bodyguard.

As Pilar dialed slowly, carefully, Mas looked at her tired, beautiful face. She slept nine or ten hours nightly, still waking up exhausted. During the day she napped at least once, sometimes twice. At Mas’s insistence, three doctors had examined her since her mastectomy, finding nothing wrong with her, although it would be at least five years before it was certain that all cancer was completely gone from her body.

Pilar followed her doctors’ advice. She did the special exercises necessary to strengthen the left side of her body, took vitamins, and though she ate little, she ate the foods the doctors prescribed. But she was still thin, still tired, and Mas worried about her.

She did not want him to see her mutilated body, so she undressed with the lights out, always wearing a blouse to bed, hiding her scars from him even in darkness. Often he would kiss Pilar’s scars, his lips touching cloth, sometimes weeping silently as Pilar had done when she had first kissed his crippled, withered legs.

She still didn’t know that the
babalawo
had predicted her death unless she left New York. That prediction was buried deep within Mas Betancourt, surrounded by the cold fear that the prediction just might come true.

But it wouldn’t. He would see that it did not come true. One more deal, and he would quit. And keep Pilar alive. But time was running out.

At the front door, in overcoat and hat, leaning on his crutches, he looked into her eyes. Sad, gentle brown eyes that he had so often kissed.

“I’ll be at Cervantes’ restaurant. We have to talk about the rest of the money, the final third. It’s due next month.”

“What did the
babalawo
say?”

“Nothing. But I must do it. I have only days to make the payment, and that is barely enough time. Some people are having trouble getting their share together, and we have to pressure them.”

She fastened the top button on his overcoat “Barbara. Can’t she help you with the money?”

“She is. She is in Chicago. Then she goes to Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington, and Newark. I must have commitments now, before the load comes in. She’s making sure, that’s all.”

“I see. And DaPaola and Lazzaro?”

“They have a lot to do here. They are dealing with top distributors and with the blacks. That is a lot of work, they are busy.”

She nodded. “Everything will be successful, I know it.”

He leaned forward, pressing down hard on his short aluminum crutches, and they kissed gently. Her perfume was flowers and lemons, a scent she had used for years. Pilar was constant in all things.

It must be successful, he thought. What is there left for me, for us, if I fail?

“Everything will be good for us,” he said.

But inside, he felt the same fear that had gripped him when Pilar had gone into the hospital to have her breast removed. That fear was a hideous, screaming beast, riding his back with sharpened claws, digging in deeper every minute and holding on, holding on.

B
ANDAGES WERE WRAPPED ACROSS
both eyes, around his forehead, and down the right side of the stocky man’s face. His thin, wide mouth and a few inches of unshaved skin were visible, but most of Russell Gormes’s face was hidden under soft white gauze. He lay on his back in a hospital bed talking slowly and wheezing between sentences. Katey, the only other person in the tiny room, thought Russell sounded like an old man who’d just been kicked in the throat.

Russell Gormes said, “Two of them. Didn’t see the second dude until it was too late. Some old biddy screams, so I turn, and that’s when he cuts loose with the sawed-off. He hit a lot of the wall, but got enough of me to put me here.”

He stopped talking in order to wheeze and cough, feeling the plastic hospital identification bracelet on his left wrist with stubby fingers whose nails had been chewed down to nothing.

“Same time I see this flash of light, I hear this fuckin’ noise like being trapped in a telephone booth with thunder, and next thing, my face is on fire. Pain that won’t quit, like somebody hit me in both eyes with a pan of hot grease. My face is burning up, and I go down like a rock sinking in water. I’m screaming, and I can’t see shit. I’m bli …”

Almost said “blind.” Russell Gormes caught himself in time. No way was he going to say “blind.” Didn’t matter how many miles of bandages they had wrapped across his eyes and around his face. Russell Gormes wasn’t going to say “blind.”

Sun coming through an unwashed window was warm on Katey’s neck and shoulders. He sat in the only chair, an unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker Red wrapped in a brown paper bag between his legs. The bottle was for Russell, who used to be his partner. Russell wasn’t a cop anymore, and the story behind that was mind-blowing.

Russell Gormes, thirty-three, short and strong, built like two fire hydrants welded together. Thick black eyebrows that met over his hooked Lebanese nose, and feet turned out so that when he walked fast he waddled like a drunken duck. Good cop, good man.

And so fucking unlucky, it was pathetic.

Doctors had told Katey that it was almost certain Russell Gormes would be permanently blinded by the shotgun blast he’d taken in the face yesterday afternoon. Russell didn’t know this, and Katey wasn’t going to tell him.

Katey said, “Leslie. How is she?”

“Hangin’ in there. Still havin’ trouble with her breathing though. Been in to see me this morning, and she’s gonna try to come back this afternoon if she can. How’s your love life?”

Small talk about nothing, thought Katey. But he’s got to talk about anything except those bandages.

“Still seeing Margaret. Still separated from Grace. One of these days Grace’s lawyer and my lawyer are gonna sit down and hit us with their briefcases, and that’s when you’ll hear me holler.”

Russell Gormes snorted. “Don’t tell me about lawyers. Leslie and me could write a book about those bloodsuckers.” His stubby hands gently touched the bandages over his eyes as though they were a new scab.

Katey placed the brown bag under his chair. He could write a book, too. He could write a book about Leslie Lucas, who was the reason Russell Gormes wasn’t a cop anymore and had been forced to take a job guarding a Columbus Avenue bingo joint, where a little after four yesterday afternoon two spic junkies had tried to take off the manager and patrons. One had a sawed-off shotgun that he had used on Russell Gormes’s face.

Leslie Lucas was a delicately pretty blond informant who had once been on the fringes of a Brooklyn Mafia family that had been smuggling untaxed cigarettes from North Carolina to New York. Russell Gormes had fallen in love with her and left his wife. Because of Leslie Lucas, he’d eventually been forced to resign from the police department.

Katey loosened his tie and put his feet up on the edge of Russell Gormes’s bed. He liked Russell a lot. The man had been steady, dependable, never coming unglued, no matter what went down. If there was trouble and you needed a man to watch your back, put Russell Gormes at the top of the list.

These days, you could only feel sorry for the poor Lebanese bastard, and feeling sorry for anybody was something Katey couldn’t deal with.

Pity confused him, and cops should never be confused. You liked somebody or you didn’t. A thing was right or wrong. Katey understood that. But pity? Katey couldn’t handle that.

The shit had really hit the fan when a cop like Russell Gormes—detective’s gold shield and eight commendations before he was thirty—fell in love with a snitch. Incredible.

And leaving his wife to live with her. Everybody went around shaking his head over that one. The department had no choice but to fuck him over, to make an example of him. Laws, written and unwritten, had been broken. A good cop turning in his shield to shack up with a Judas. It made the department look foolish, and that’s why Russell Gormes had to get hurt.

From that point on, Katey’s partner sped downhill faster than if he were wrapped in wet silk sliding down a glass mountain. And all Katey could do was watch and feel sad about it, because Russell refused to listen to anybody when it came to Leslie Lucas. Katey wanted to punch walls, but what would that have proved?

Russell Gormes had an answer.
I got to do the dying, so I might as well do the living.

He added something.
I love her, Katey. I goddamn do love her.

Katey, angry, confused, hurt, believing that Russell was betraying him as well as the department, had a reply.

Love is something that will always cost you more than you can afford. Like a car, a television set, and tennis lessons. It’s just another four-letter word. Like alimony, it’s the fucking you get for the fucking you got.

Love is grief, turkey.

Russell Gormes wanted Leslie Lucas, and he paid for it.

The department made sure he didn’t get a job in law enforcement anywhere in New York State. It didn’t have to work too hard at seeing that Russell Gormes stayed frozen out. All the New York City Police Department had to do was let it be known that Gormes had crossed the line and become personally involved with a female informant, disgracing himself and his fellow officers.

That’s all the department had to do. And it proved to be more than enough. Russell Gormes was now untrustworthy, and a traitor to his own. He was now a member of the walking dead.

He found it impossible to get a private investigator’s license in New York. He had no chance of ever becoming an instructor at the police academy, nor could he ever be considered for a top security job with the state, city, or private industry. Forget about getting bonded.

Private security firms, which ordinarily would have jumped at the chance to hire a Russell Gormes, didn’t bother to return his telephone calls or acknowledge his letters.

The freeze was working beautifully.

So fucking unlucky, it was pathetic.

Russell’s wife sued for divorce, and when two sets of lawyers finished, hers and his, the money was gone. His apartment was burglarized twice, and to pay mounting bills, Russell was forced to sell his car. God in his heaven didn’t let up.

Leslie’s illness, a respiratory disease, got worse. It was also expensive to treat.

And still Russell refused to leave her. As far as Katey was concerned Leslie Lucas was a three-legged dog, good for nothing and better off dead. Russell took care of her and never complained. Katey had pressed money on him, but couldn’t understand why in hell Russell stuck by this bimbo who had cut him off at the knees.

The only job Russell could get was as security guard in that dirty bug palace of a bingo joint, and that’s where he’d gotten shotgunned in the face by spics with their brains fried on smack and their trigger fingers itchy for confrontation.

Katey took his feet off Russell’s beige hospital blanket. Can’t deal with all this sadness, man. Cannot deal with this much hard times. That’s why he and Russell had drifted apart the past few months. Russell’s existence was a bummer, one big down, and you couldn’t rub up against it without feeling as though you were trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft.

Katey said, “Your piece. You forget how to blow people away?”

“Didn’t have a piece. Sold it. Needed the bread. Was carryin’ a dummy gun. Plastic and tin.”

Russell Gormes coughed, and spit trickled from a corner of his no-lipped, wide mouth. He wheezed, an ugly, old-man sound that made Katey cringe. Katey was embarrassed at cringing, until he realized that Russell couldn’t see him. The room smelled of medicine, raw alcohol plus an indefinable odor that Katey could only associate with hospitals.

On a small table near the bed were purple, white, and yellow flowers in a white vase, along with cigarettes, a portable radio, a Bible, and a half-eaten candy bar. A color photograph of Leslie Lucas smiled from a cheap gold-painted wooden frame.

Katey frowned and leaned forward in his chair. “What’s this shit about a dummy gun? You mean to tell me—?”

“Man, let me hip you about security work.” Russell Gormes’s wide hands went to the gauze covering his eyes. “Eighty-five a week—”

“Jesus!”

“That’s straight. Eighty-five. Most of the guards I’ve met are too dumb to be believed. Kids, psychos, drunks, losers. Hey. Look who’s talking. Anyway, most don’t have a piece. They can’t afford one, and the company ain’t about to spend the money buying you one. Most carry dummies in their holsters. For eighty-five, all they want is a warm body to stand around and look mean.”

Katey shook his head unbelievingly. “But the creeps you go up against don’t know that. Far as they’re concerned, you’re carrying.”

“You know it. All I had was plastic and tin. Ten-year-old spade kids got Saturday-night specials, and I got nothin’.”

“Jesus, why didn’t you let me know? I could have gotten you something. …”

“You done enough already. How many times can I beg people—”

“I ain’t people, I’m your partner.”

“Yeah.” Russell tried to smile, then gave it up.

Katey wanted to shove a gun in Leslie Lucas’ mouth and pull the trigger. She was responsible for everything that had happened to Russell Gormes. She ought to be in hell with a broken back.

Russell croaked, “Thirsty. Some orange juice around here somewheres.”