The Informant (30 page)

“Thank you.”

“Agent Shire, you think that forty-thousand-dollar reward for Kelly Lorenzo will ever be collected? You’re talking to his people. Why won’t they give him up?”

“Well, sir, I’ve been told Kelly travels with eight hundred thousand dollars cash and can get more if he needs it. He spreads that money around, and it keeps him protected. I’ve heard he’s got anywhere from four men to fifteen men around him and that he’s paying them well, and if he gets busted because somebody informs, they say he’s willing to pay his people to kill the informant.”

“I see. Thank you.”

“Agent Shire, from your experience do you think the blacks will ever challenge the Cubans, I mean do you think they’ll ever go to war against each other, start banging each other out?”

“Not while this deal is happening. Mas is a good leader, a street-smart man who can organize. If something goes wrong with this deal and people lose their money, look out. Right now, Kelly Lorenzo is the only black dealer who can take on Mas, and he’s his partner. No, I don’t think there’s going to be a war between blacks and Cubans, because from what I can see, the blacks won’t work together with blacks. They’d just as soon shoot each other as shoot Cubans or Italians. Get the blacks together first, then you might have something.”

When Berger Picard had heard enough, he stood up to indicate the meeting was over. He was the first one to shake Neil’s hand, and others followed, but Saul Raiser was not among them.

Neil ordered his lunch in, because there was work to do on a buy scheduled for tomorrow, Christmas Eve, the third one from Israel Manzana, who was dealing with Neil while Enrique Ruiz was out of town with his wife. Enrique had taken her to the Bahamas for a rest, to help her get over the death of their son. Israel Manzana was selling Neil a quarter of a kilo of cocaine, fifty percent pure, for ten thousand dollars, but Neil wouldn’t be paying cash. Instead, Israel Manzana had asked Neil for some television sets, and they had argued on how many and finally agreed on fifty color sets at two hundred dollars each.

With his feet on his desk and a mouth full of tuna fish on whole-wheat toast, Neil said to Manny Hammonds, “How we doing?”

Manny, blond, muscular from weight lifting, held a quart of milk in front of his mouth. “Downstairs in the garage and ready. We bought the sets at Korvette’s, Macy’s, Gimbels. Had ’em delivered to a warehouse down on Houston, then loaded ’em into some rented trucks, and now they’re downstairs in our garage. Got a twenty-four-hour guard on ’em, two guys with shotguns pulling guard duty, four hours on, two off. They ain’t happy ’bout marching up and down on a cold concrete floor in ten-degree December weather, but I told ’em nobody promised ’em a rose garden.”

Katey said, “Maybe I’ll buy one offa Manzana. He get to keep the trucks, too?”

Neil bit into a hard-boiled egg. “No way. But I’m letting his men drive off with them and unload the sets, then Israel’s supposed to call me and tell me the trucks are somewhere in midtown.”

Kirk Holmes, sitting on the edge of Neil’s desk and eating seedless grapes, said, “Your name’s on the request slip, my man. Them trucks don’t come back, it’s your honky ass.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Tell you one thing,” said Kirk. “Tell you somebody probably forgot to take down the numbers of them color TV’s, bet you that.”

“Holy shit.” Neil swallowed too fast, choked, and coughed. Katey patted him on the back. “Got to get that done.” He looked around at the three men in his cubicle, all of whom smiled or shook their heads
no
, they weren’t interested in going down twenty-five floors and freezing their nuts off climbing into trucks and taking down registration numbers on fifty brand-new color-television sets.

Katey sipped coffee. “You’re it, the honcho, the man of the hour. Tell somebody ’round here you want it done, that you’re busy, goin’ over the buy tomorrow night and can’t spare your team. Let’s see what kinda juice you got, dude.”

It was a challenge, and Neil read it in the faces of Manny Hammonds and Kirk Holmes as well. Why not? Why the fuck not? Neil grinned at them and reached for the telephone. When he got a secretary, he said, “Walker Wallace, please.”

He waited.

“Walker? Neil. Forgot something. Don’t have a record of the numbers on those TV’s. Yeah, the ones we’re using tomorrow.” Neil looked at the three men in his cubicle. “Could you send somebody down there to make a record of the numbers? … No, I don’t remember anybody doing it … Yes, somebody
might
have done it, but nobody’s told
me
about it. … Yeah … yeah.”

Katey whispered, “Tell the bastard to bring a flashlight.”

“Flashlight, shit,” said Kirk Holmes. “Tell him to bring a broad with him, it’s cold down there.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Neil, smiling, “I thought it went well, too. … Yeah, he seemed impressed. … You’re right, you’re right … thanks, Walker.”

Neil hung up. “He’s sending somebody.”

Kirk Holmes held out his palm, and as a grinning Neil slapped it, a secretary buzzed him. Still grinning, Neil picked up the telephone. “Agent Shire.”

He listened, and suddenly his face changed. The men in front of him saw confusion, disbelief, pain, anger. They stopped talking, stopped smiling.

Neil said, “Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Mrs. Sánchez. We’ll be right over.”

Neil hung up but kept his hand on the receiver, his voice small and flat, his eyes glazed and seeing nothing. “Lydia. She’s in the hospital. She’s been beaten and raped.”

I
T HAD HAPPENED LESS
than an hour after Neil left her.

“Lydia?”

She turned, and at the sight of the man who had just called her name she almost dropped the bag of groceries she carried in her arm. She shivered. Her eyes saw him even as her mind fought to reject the sight of him.
Him.

It took all of her courage to say his name.

“Dominic.”

“
Lydia, mi linda mujer.
My beautiful, beautiful woman. Ah, I see you still spend money. Last-minute Christmas shopping, right? You still like pretty things, jewels, shoes?” He walked slowly down the stairs, where he had been waiting in darkness in her apartment building, and now he was in the light, in her life once more.

He said, “I saw you drop something off next door. Playing Santa for your neighbors?” His smile meant nothing, but he gave it to her anyway.

The power Dominic León always had over her reached out once more, touching her in corners of her mind she thought he would never reach again. She forced herself to speak.

“Uh, I do shopping for Mrs. Sánchez.” Lydia jerked her head toward the old woman’s apartment. “She’s over seventy, she don’ get around so well, specially in this kinda cold and with the ice on the ground, so I help her, and she baby-sits for Olga.”

Dominic León reached the bottom of the staircase and was now directly in front of Lydia. He continued using the smile as a lure. “Olga. Olga.” He said the name, several times more, rolling the sound of it around his mouth as though something new and unusual. “How is she?”

Lydia took her time answering. “Fine. She doin’ fine.”

“Heard she had a birthday recently.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I bought her a present, you see.” He took a step toward Lydia, who blinked, jerking her head away from him. His hands, which had been behind him, were now in sight, holding a small flat package wrapped in silver paper and tied with a black ribbon. “Christmas, Lydia. Children love Christmas, you know. This is for Olga.”

“Dominic, why you here?”

“I told you. It’s Christmas.”

“You never do nothin’ without a reason. I haven’t seen you in almost five years,
five years
, and now all of a sudden, I find you out here in the hall waitin’ for me …”

Dominic León lifted both eyebrows in mock and mild shock. His voice was soft, calculating. “Olga’s my daughter. I have a right to see her.”

“
Your
daughter? Bullshit! Dominic, you run off, you left us. You left me sick and lying in my own blood, and Olga wasn’t even one year old, and she wouldn’t stop coughin’, and goddamn it, you run off …”

His voice was soothing. “Lydia, Lydia. Out here?” He looked left, right. “Out here in the hall, where everybody can hear? Hey, you don’t want to put our business in the street, now, do you?”

“I don’ fuckin’ care! I say what I want! Don’ you goddamn come round here after five years and say ‘
Olga is my daughter
.’ She’s not your daughter, you understand? Not today, not tomorrow, not ever!”

“Please, may I see her? Will you let me give her this?” He held the Christmas present out to her.

“Dominic, I wanna know why you come around. Why?”

She feared him. After all these years, she still feared this man who had fathered her child. Dominic León was forty, a charming, attractive Cuban and an evil man, a
mayombero
, a black witch, a man of strange and dangerous powers, someone who could cast evil spells and use black magic to kill and cripple people. Latins paid
mayomberos
to cast spells that would kill faithless wives and husbands as well as unborn babies. Such spells could also cripple an enemy if the
mayombero
wished, and it was these black witches who had the power of the evil eye, the ability to cause sickness or death by merely looking at someone. Latins believed in such things. Lydia did; she had seen Dominic use his powers for evil.

Her hand shook as she tried to fit her key into the lock. What a miserable morning. But it hadn’t started out that way. Earlier, Jorge Dávila, who made furniture with his hands, had come to the apartment with a Christmas present for Olga, a tiny wooden desk he had carved for her, with wood he had varnished until it gleamed like polished glass,
A learning place
is what he’d called the desk, a place for Olga to do her homework, to read. Today, when Jorge finished lunch with Cristina, Lydia was to take him Christmas shopping.

Then Neil had dropped by and they had argued over the digital watch she’d bought him for Christmas. She’d been hurt that he couldn’t,
wouldn’t
take it, but she couldn’t cry over it forever, so she’d stopped crying and taken Olga next door to Mrs. Sánchez, then gone out into the cold to do grocery shopping. No more leaving Olga alone, not after what Lydia had gone through on the roof with Bad Red. It didn’t matter what somebody did to Lydia, just don’t let them touch her child. Truth is, she was now worried about being an informant; that’s what the scene with Bad Red had done to her head. Since she expected to hear from Jorge Dávila soon, she’d decided to leave Olga at Mrs. Sánchez’.

And now, Dominic León was in her life again.

Inside her apartment, he tossed Olga’s present on the couch, unbuttoning his Black Diamond mink coat. “Nice. Now, this is a nice place you got here, Lydia. Got heat, too.” He blew into his cupped hands, eyes on her. “I hear you doin’ well. You runnin’ around with some Italian everybody call the Hundred Dollar Man.”

That’s when Lydia knew Dominic León wanted money from her.

Still wearing her overcoat and holding the bag of groceries, she looked at him for a few seconds, then tore her gaze away, walking past him and into her tiny kitchen. Dominic always needed money, and he went after it anyway he could. He dealt dope, sold stolen goods, forged checks, and he pimped, living off women who were foolish or unfortunate enough to love and trust him. Lydia had been one of those women, but that had been a long time ago.

It was hard not to fear him, not to be uneasy around Dominic, a man proud of being a
mayombero.

Dominic had mentioned Neil. Lydia froze, an arm still in the shopping bag. Had she made a mistake somewhere, that one mistake all informants dread, the one that brings trouble? Dominic might know that she and Neil … No, he didn’t know that. He was only talking when he mentioned Neil’s name. Neil had a reputation on the street because he was white, copping dope from blacks and Cubans and paying for it in new hundred-dollar bills. Anybody doing that was going to stand out, be noticed. No, Dominic wasn’t here to harm Neil.

Finished with the groceries, she took off her overcoat and returned to the living room, where Dominic sat holding a framed color photograph of Olga.

“
Ah, bonita.
Pretty, like her mother.” He put the photograph down on a low, glass-topped coffee table and leaned back against the sofa, arms spread along the top. Lydia looked good, dressed well, so she must have money. Some of the green the Hundred Dollar Man was spreading around must be sticking to Lydia’s fingers. He smiled at her, and she saw him nod his head twice, as though reaching a decision.

She sat rigid in a chair to his left, remembering how evil he could be and becoming more and more angry at him for showing up after all these years.
Never, never
was he going to be allowed near Olga. Not this man, this black witch who used fresh blood, gunpowder, dirt from graves, and the bones of dead men for the spells and charms he sold to frightened, desperate people to use in harming others. Not this man who once forced Lydia to watch as he tortured a black cat for hours before boiling it alive and removing its bones for a ritual that belonged to the devil and would be used to kill horribly. This man would never touch Olga.
Never.

“You know, Lydia, you really look beautiful. And prosperous, too. Nice dress, shoes. That jewelry, it looks real.”

She touched the necklace she wore. “It’s fake. You want money, I know you. Always you want things from people.”

“I give them things, too.”

“You give them nothing. What you give them …” She closed her eyes, remembering.

He chuckled, reaching over to stroke his fur coat with long fingers that were a dead white, the color of dried bone. He looks the same, she thought. Too handsome, too much hair, and there’s gray in it now. He’s a little chubby, but still stocky, strong, and the mustache is the same. A few lines in his forehead, and he’s stopped wearing the earring. One thing definitely hasn’t changed: his eyes, those green eyes that never blink, that scrape away your skin and burn into your mind, your soul, leaving you naked and weak. That’s where his power comes from, his eyes. They never change, they’re still beautiful and horrible.