The Informant (15 page)

Protected. Safe.

They were dead now, covered by dirt and a coffin lid.

They had been found out, then burned. Some of the deaths had been horrible. Like Vera Sosa.

Neil knew of someone who had informed on a Mafia family. Twenty years later, the informant had walked into a Queens bar thinking bygones were bygones.

Within minutes, he was shot to death.

And Neil and Lydia were going to try to bring down the man who’d sat for hours a day, three days in a row, watching men do things to a woman that …

Shit.

He was putting off talking to Lydia. He had to tell her she was going to Miami.

She wasn’t being asked, any more than Neil had been asked whether or not he felt like breaking the news to her.

Shaking his head, he sighed with self-pity, reached for the phone, and asked the operator for an outside line.

“W
HEN YOU LAND, GO
directly to the hotel,” said Neil. “You’ll get a call from a Marty Rees. Marty Rees.”

Lydia repeated the name, eyes on her wristwatch. Eight-thirty-two at night. Her flight to Miami left at nine-fifteen. Three hours, and she’d be in Florida, and in trouble if things went bad. Better listen to Neil. She chewed gum and smoked, which did little to calm her nerves.

She sat with Neil in the front seat of his car, parked in darkness behind a row of yellow taxis lined up in front of the Delta terminal at Kennedy Airport. Neil spoke slowly, distinctly, never taking his eyes from Lydia’s face.

Neil had told her all of this before. One more time before takeoff. In minutes she’d walk on the plane and be on her own. Neil was just making sure. Lydia listened as though hearing it all for the first time. She lit another cigarette. Third one in five minutes.

“Marty’s from our Miami office. He’ll set up a meeting with you sometime tomorrow, probably early. He’ll give you the package. God forbid you walk on a plane carrying
that
and the security people toss you and find it. Cocaine. Half a key, fifty percent pure.”

Lydia stopped chewing gum and smiled quickly. “Nothing but the best for me, right?”

“Whatever you do, don’t lose it, don’t let it out of your sight. Keep it in your shoulder bag. You’ll hold it for a day and a night, no more. Ordinarily you’d have passed it on by that time, so we’ll take it back from you sometime day after tomorrow. It’s just that if you run into Lonnie Conquest tomorrow or tomorrow night, it might ease things if he can see that you’re in Miami on business and you’re holding. Just don’t lose it, or you won’t get out of Florida. Somebody down there might think you turned it over.”

“Me? Deal coke?” Lydia placed a black-gloved hand to her throat, brown eyes wide in mock horror.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, be serious. Now, we’ll have you under partial surveillance while you’re there. When—”

“Which part of me are you going to watch?”

“Cute. Real cute. When you go hunting for Lonnie, well have somebody following you. Don’t look for him, don’t start turning in your seat and waving. Just know he’s there, that’s all.”

“He gon’ pay the check?”

“No, he’s not gon’ pay the check. Jorge Dávila will pay the check.”

Lydia opened her mouth and both eyes as wide as she could, as though she was super dumb and just beginning to understand what was going on. “Oh,
yeah.
Jorge Dávila. One of your informants in Miami. Somebody else who got jammed up and has to work it off. Like me.”

“Like you.” Neil gripped the steering wheel with both hands. A hell of a time for her to get bitchy. She didn’t want to go to Miami. She didn’t want to leave her daughter. But what choice did she have?

“Two footballs,” she said, grinding a cigarette out in the car ashtray. Her head went to her right shoulder, her eyes became alert, bright slits. “Footballs get kicked around.”

“Footballs?”

“Me and Dávila.”

Neil’s annoyance with her, which had been building the past few minutes, was now in his voice. “Lydia, I’m trying to help you—”

“I’m helpin’ you, I think.” She looked straight ahead at the row of yellow cabs in front of the car. A plane, its lights a sparkling red and white against a clear blue-black sky, cleared a hangar and climbed higher to the left.

Silence.

Then Lydia softly said, “I’m sorry. I am a little bit nervous, you know? Little bit.” She turned to Neil, her right hand in front of her face, thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. Her smile now was different. Warm, vulnerable, attractive.

Neil filled both cheeks with air, counted to five before letting the air out slowly. He watched another plane descend, this one far in the distance, white lights blinking front and back. Lydia was uptight. Why not?
She
was the one going to Miami, not Neil.

“Lydia, I wish I could tell you something to make it easier. Believe me, I do. But this is how the game is played. You get yours, I get mine. If it wasn’t that way, you’d be in jail, and I’d be … Hell, I don’t know where I’d be. But you tell me—how else you gonna keep on the outside? Come on, tell me!”

Fourth cigarette. She rolled the window down farther, letting the cold night air hit her in the face. “A game. Yes, I guess that is what it all is. And we must play.” She turned to him. “I’m sorry. Tell me about Dávila again.”

“He works for us. Doesn’t do dope anymore. At least, he better not let us catch him at it. Besides working for us, he does phony papers for Cuban illegals.”

Lydia blew smoke through the open window, aiming for the moon. “You keep him around because he tells you who the illegals are.”

“Smart. Anyway, if Conquest or anybody needs to know, Dávila’s the customer for the coke. I don’t think anybody’s going to ask, but you’re covered if they do. You’ve got a story that won’t bounce. Dávila’s also your escort. He’s taking you around. He’s a down dude, knows everything, everybody. That’s been one of his problems in the past. We’ve got Conquest down to a few clubs. You and Dávila will make the rounds and bump into Lonnie C. accidental like. You got the story to lay on him if you have to, but don’t bring it up till he asks,
if
he asks. Dávila’s using our money, so don’t let him hit on you for anything.”

She had the cigarette in her mouth when she turned to Neil. “What if Dávila asks me to sleep with him?”

Neil, on edge, blew up. “Goddamm it, I’m not asking you to whore!”

“You’re not?” she said it with sickening sweetness.

“Goddamn it
no
, and you know it!”

“I see.” She held her smile and seemed calmer. It was as though Neil had just been tested and passed.

He jerked a thumb at her face, breathing hard, glaring at her. “I’m the agent in charge, and I’m the one who works you! You don’t whore for me, understand!”

“Yes, Neil, I understand.” Her voice was soft, submissive, and Neil noticed the change. What the hell was she doing, running some kind of game on him? Doing a number on his head?

Suddenly she looked pretty. She’d stopped wearing that awful purple lipstick, and her clothes were neater, less flash, more taste. Tonight she wore a brown sweater, brown suede culottes, and black boots. She was wrapped in a black wool cape and wore a black scarf over her head. She carried a shoulder bag and one small suitcase with a few changes of clothes.

She looked pretty to him.

He tore his eyes from hers, forcing himself to look forward, putting
anything like that
out of his head. Jesus. Thinking like
that
was a death wish.

He spoke to his reflection in the windshield.

“Rees is your contact, do what he says. Soon as you can, I mean, when you’ve got something to tell me, check in. Call the office or home. Reverse the charges. I want to know what’s shakin’ with Lonnie C., so I can plan my next move, with Bad Red. Use a public phone when you call me or Rees. Don’t, repeat,
don’t
call anybody from your hotel. ’Cept Olga. That’s cool. No reason for anybody to check your calls, but you never know, you just never know.”

He combed his mustache with cold-stiffened fingers. In the darkness, his reflection looked like that of a man who wished he was somewhere else at the moment. Anywhere at all.

“All you’re interested in is whether or not Conquest and Shelton are doing a deal with us through Red. Tell Conquest what I told you, that we wanted to do the deal last week but couldn’t find Bad Red.”

He paused and looked over at Lydia. Jesus. She really was looking fine tonight. Foxy.

Neil again dismissed the reverie. “Okay, you got your ticket, got your money. Two, three days, and you should be back. I’ll look in on Olga. Mrs. Rivera doesn’t know who I am, right?”

“No. I just said a man, a friend of mine, would come around to see Olga. I described you. Oh, thank you for Olga’s toy.”

Neil, still eye-to-eye with his own reflection in the dark night, dismissed her thanks with a wave of his hand. “My little one’s a Lee Majors freak, too. Can’t get enough of
The Six Million Dollar Man
.”

Lydia began putting her gloves back on. “That was a nice thing for you to do. Toys are expensive. And so big! This one was almost as big as Olga. It must have cost—”

“None of your business how much it cost.” One more thing he and Elaine had argued about. Neil’s buying toys for an informant’s child. The fact that he’d also bought a Lee Majors doll for his own daughter at the same time hadn’t stopped Elaine from bitching.

Lydia said, “Mr. Hundred Dollar Man and Mr. Six Million Dollar Man. I think I like the cheaper version better.” She smiled, opened the car door, stepped out, and slammed it shut. Opening the back door, she pulled out her small brown suitcase.

Before Neil could say anything, she waved and began walking toward the Delta terminal.

Cheap. He grinned. First time anybody had ever called him cheap and meant it as a compliment. He watched her walk into the terminal and out of sight.

Another plane climbed higher, lower left to upper right, red lights blinking against blue-black sky. Watch yourself, Lydia, he thought. Don’t let me have to live with anything happening to you.

And it hit him.

He was getting close to an informant.

A mistake.

He squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles were white, frowning at himself in the windshield, shaking his head no.

M
IAMI.

From inside a public telephone booth on Biscayne Boulevard, Rolando, the priest, looked out at the long, dark green leaves on a palm tree to his left. When the leaves began swaying gently to the soft, invisible rhythm of a mild breeze, the priest opened the door, then stuck a finger in the warm dampness between his neck and Roman collar.

Eighty-five degrees, and the cramped telephone booth was on fire with skull-searing sunlight. A touch of hell that filled Rolando’s mouth with the dry taste of cobwebs.

He waited for Mas Betancount, on the other end, to order Cruz Real’s death.

Rolando sweated, licking salt from his dried lips as he watched teenage boys and girls across the street in Bay Front Park shriek and paw each other in a game of touch football. All of the teenagers appeared to possess a vapid beauty, an obnoxious exuberance and long blond hair that flew wildly in several directions at once. The gold that paved the streets of modern America was on the heads of its young.

To his left and much farther away in the distance was the General Douglas MacArthur Causeway, connecting Miami with the long, thin island of Miami Beach and the largest concentration of luxury hotels in America. From where Rolando stood, the causeway, which ran for miles across the waters of Biscayne Bay, seemed tiny. It was a dry, gray chicken bone shimmering and dancing in heat waves.

The priest palmed sweat from the back of his neck. He wrinkled his nose with displeasure at the smell of fish and low tide brought to him from Biscayne Bay by the November heat wave. Biscayne Bay was within walking distance of where Rolando now stood perspiring. Six hundred different kinds of fish in Florida, and if only half of them reeked on a hot day, a man’s nose was sentenced to purgatory.

“He’s dead,” said Mas Betancourt He spoke of Cruz Real as though the boy were already in his grave instead of out on bail and in a house on Zanora Street in West Miami with his uncle John-John Paco.

“Who?” asked the priest. Meaning who would handle the killing.

“You. I’ve been in touch with my cousin, who doesn’t like the idea of Cruz being removed. But he’ll do as I say, he always has. Still, I would feel better with you in charge. Cousin John will give you men and whatever else you need. I cannot afford even a small mistake now. You understand?”

The priest’s long, houndlike face didn’t lose its customary sad look. “What did you tell your cousin John?”

“Cruz is weak, which John has always known. The boy cannot go back to Havana. If he does, there is jail. A matter of narcotics and two dead men. If he jumps bail, goes to Mexico, South America, California, my problem is still not solved. Will Cruz stay hidden for a year until my deal goes down? Will he avoid trouble, avoid arrest? Half a key of cocaine is no reason to extradite a man. But let us suppose that there is more interest in our enterprise than we are aware of. Suppose that. Then would not the federal agents make an intense effort to retrieve Cruz? Because of this possibility and the fact that I
know
the boy is weak, that he
cannot
stand up to pressure, I must not take a chance. He is dead. Do you understand, Rolando?”

The priest sighed in the stifling heat, deciding to play devil’s advocate. He made a weary attempt to save Cruz Real’s life, just to see if it could be done.

Another game. It was the same as trying to charm his uncle out of a few coins. “Uncle, how much can Cruz know?”

Mas’s voice came through the telephone sounding as cold as ice in winter. “I won’t take that chance. You know what I have at stake. Listen. Cousin John knows. You’re there to collect money from him as well as from others. We must figure he has told his nephew
something.
Instinctively, I find myself not trusting Cruz’s ability to keep a secret under the pressure put on him by federal agents. He stands to go to jail for years. What concerns me, Rolando, is the certainty that Cruz will always find another man’s wife. If he did that a year ago, if he does it two years from
now
, it will not matter to me. Today it
does
matter.”