The Informant (39 page)

Neil nodded slowly, a man fighting against a bad dream that was becoming more and more real every second. This case was his life, and to lose it …

“Sir, can they stop us? I mean, can the people down there close us down whenever they want to?”

Barth’s lean, handsome face suddenly looked lined, puffy. Reality had caught up with him. In the silence, he rubbed his palms together while looking down at his desk. “Kates, you understand that you’re not to mention this to either informant?”

Katey nodded, his mind still unsure about what was happening in the room. Fuck it, let Walter F. X. do the worrying. Let him read the reports and do the yelling. He was good at yelling, old F. X. was.

Barth forced a smile. “Shire, you look like somebody mugged your rubber duck. Go home, get some things, and get settled into your new place. Your new line’s got a tap on it As soon as we get the stash information, we’re pulling Lydia and Dávila off the streets, and if we’re lucky, we can keep ’em out of court, too. ’Course, that depends on who the prosecutor is and how slick the high-price defense talent is. Remember: Lydia’s not to know there’s a rush on this.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Tell your wife it won’t be long, your being away from home. Just until this thing goes down. She understands, of course.”

Neil’s turn to force a smile. “I don’t think she’ll mind, sir.”

In front of the door to his apartment, Neil turned and looked down the hall at the man who had walked past him and now waited for the elevator, hands deep in the pockets of a knee-length black leather coat. The man was around thirty-five, with frizzed blond hair and a drooping blond mustache, good-looking in a way common to minor and unsuccessful actors, and he watched the elevator indicator as though it were the most important thing in the world. Neil stared at him openly; the man never once looked back. When the elevator that had brought Neil up came down, the man rushed into it as though late for an urgent appointment.

Neil stood in the empty hall for several seconds, shook his head, and mumbled, “Jesus.”

Inside his apartment, he stood in front of the couch looking down at Elaine, who ignored him and continued to flip the pages of the holiday
Vogue
as though Neil wasn’t in the room. He looked at her, at all of her, and without either of them saying a word, both knew.

Neil, jerking his head at the front door, said, “You could have done better than him.”

She turned the pages faster, snapping her wrist savagely, blinking tears down her face. Neil, knowing things had changed forever between them, and unable to deal with that much pain all at once, turned and walked into the bedroom. Neither said anything more.

When he left the apartment she was in the bathroom weeping.

He thought of leaving a note for Courtenaye, who was in school, but decided against it.

Outside, in the hall, Neil leaned against the wall and wept too.

P
ILAR BETANCOURT’S FAVORITE OPERA
was
Tosca.
Tonight she listened to it quietly, her hands and eyes busy with needlepoint, while Mas sat beside her on the couch, hands folded in his lap, his mind busy with the final details of
la última
. Rolando, Barbara Pomal, and Luis DaPaola had returned from Europe; couriers and routes had been chosen; on Monday of next week, the third week in January, the first of the white would begin its journey from Spain to America.

Mas closed his eyes. On record, Tosca sang an impassioned answer to the deep-voiced villain who wanted her in his bed in exchange for preventing her lover’s execution.

Rolando, a hundred and fifty kilos. “One load, twenty-five keys, to Sergeant Isaac Syms. He’s Kelly’s man, black, finishing six years with the American army in Frankfurt. The load’s in false bottoms in his furniture, which is being shipped out of Bremerhaven, West Germany, to Syms’s next post, Fort Dix, New Jersey. One load to Specialist Second Class Randy Fayette, also Kelly’s man, also black. Fayette’s with a NATO detachment in San Remo, Italy. The load will be in his and his wife’s luggage. They’ll take a thirty-day leave to visit family in North Carolina.

“One load to Divino in Rome. He’s hiding it in the runners and cushions on bobsleds to be shipped to Toronto. From Toronto, Pérez and Simmons drive it down to New York. Potenza you know about. I meet him in Rome, and we go to Sicily. One load for him. That’s a hundred keys. Enter Simon Waxler’s friends. One load to the Madison Avenue antique dealer and his boyfriend. They pick it up in Florence, where it’ll be hidden in the false bottom on a marble Roman bathtub and under a pedestal beneath an excellent copy of Michelangelo’s David.

“Waxler vouches for the dealer. They do business in stolen antiques from time to time. Last load to those stewardesses Waxler knows through a vice cop. The cop doesn’t know about this deal. The ladies will hand-carry suitcases on board in Geneva. Plane lands in Miami, our people take over. That’s my hundred and fifty keys.”

Barbara Pomal, a hundred and fifty kilos. “Two loads
—
fifty keys
—
through Cherbourg customs. Duclos on duty, no problem. Raphael drives one load up from Barcelona, the Arnstein couple drive the other, arriving two days after Raphael. The Arnsteins’ load goes on the Brazilian freighter, which stops in Rio de Janeiro before arriving at New Orleans. Raphael’s load is on the Ecuadorian ship, directly from France to Baltimore. Coria in Paris accounts for two loads. His son drives one to Germany, to Bremerhaven, where it goes on the Liberian tanker. The captain is our old friend Frederickson, and the load will be wrapped in plastic bags hidden inside drums of oil.

“Coria’s other load will be driven to Brussels by his daughter and her husband. They’ll be in a camper, taking their time. The load goes on the plane piloted by our friend from Colombia, the one with hairy nostrils and a tendency for raping his stewardesses. In Colombia, our friend Guajira takes over. His private plane will land in Georgia. That’s one hundred keys.

“One load to Richards. It’s with the ski equipment he’s shipping back from Austria
—
ski poles, boots, skis, jackets. Everything will be in packing cases.

“Richards wanted an advance. The people holding his gambling IOU’s won’t wait. I said fine, we’d give him half up front. I knew you wouldn’t mind.

“Last load goes to Milagro. We knew about him even before Waxler told us. Milagro will use his mother again. She’s religious, and he takes her to Lourdes every now and then. Some of it will be hidden under her wheelchair. She’ll be in it, covered with blankets from the waist down, so that helps. She’s genuinely crippled, no hope of walking again, which is good for us. She always has the proper medical papers when they travel. Milagro picks up his load in Lourdes. Germán Burgos has somebody driving it from Spain into France. That’s my hundred and fifty.”

Luis DaPaola, a hundred and fifty kilos. “Two loads for Rupert Logroño, like we agreed. The diplomat gets the most, fifty keys. One load for Germán Burgos’ nephew and his Algerian girlfriend. They drive south from Madrid to Cartagena. It goes on a ship there, one of Burgos’ men is captain, somebody who can be trusted. The ship lands in Colombia, where our man takes over. We fly out of Barranquilla to Florida. One load to the French singer. He picks it up in Toledo, puts it in musical equipment, speakers, amplifiers, then goes south to Málaga and takes, the cruise ship that tours the Mediterranean before going to Cuba. Our friends on the ship have been well paid. In Cuba, they throw the load overboard
—
it is in plastic garbage bags
—
and a boat will pick them up and come to Florida. That’s a hundred keys.

“One load to the American air-force captain, who will go from Madrid to Maryland. He says it will be easy to get our people on base there to pick up. The last load to Simon Waxler’s friend, the young man who almost went to jail for receiving stolen goods. The young man buys boots and leather goods in Spain because they are cheap. He owns three stores in New Jersey, but he has a friend at a well-known Newark department store who will receive for him. The well-known department store is never questioned, because they make a point of declaring everything and paying exact duty. That’s the other fifty.”

Mas’s turn. “That’s four hundred and fifty keys. Cristina Reina has taken care of the remaining fifty. Through her CIA contacts, she’s met Cubans at military bases in Georgia and Florida. She can arrange for the proper paperwork needed to have ‘corpses’ shipped from army bases in Europe to bases here in the States. The coffins can be flown over, properly weighted down, and Cristina’s friends will get us on the base to accept delivery. All of her contacts, here and in Europe, are Cuban, which is good. That takes care of all of it. Five hundred keys of white.
La última.

“Now, for the five stash points. One hundred keys in each place. New York: one in Manhattan, one in Queens. Our heaviest markets are here. One in New Jersey, Union City. One in Washington, and naturally, one in Miami. The customers won’t be told where to go until the last minute, the day before, or that very morning. They are to move fast. We turn it over quickly; we sell it as fast as it comes in. Rolando, you’ll be here in Manhattan, Barbara in Queens, Luis in Union City: Have people with you. John-John will have Miami. And, Luis, your man Alfredo goes down to Washington.

“If we lose a load en route, we should know quickly
e
nough when someone telephones or doesn’t telephone from a checkpoint. We’ll have to make it good or stand ready to refund the money. No one gets cheated; we keep our word, as always. We shouldn’t lose much, we definitely will not lose it all. If it looks as though we’ll be short of heroin at any stash point, we’ll tell certain customers not to show up. The smaller buyers will have to wait; take care of the big ones first. Barbara?”

“Yes. Mas, you said something about Cristina and some trouble with a customer.”

“Not with a customer, with Lonnie Conquest, one of Kelly’s men. He kidnapped somebody who Cristina said might buy twenty or thirty keys. He calls himself the Hundred Dollar Man. I see you’ve all heard of him. He’s an Italian, buys steady. Small but steady. Checking out suppliers, it seems. Now, he and his people on Long Island are getting ready for some sort of big move, and they need white.”

Rolando said, “Trouble for us?”

“No, not yet. First they must dispose of the old men, Cristina says. Then they will probably fight among themselves to see who leads, and after that, perhaps we should look to see what they will do next. First they must kill themselves, slaughter each other, so to speak.”

“What did Cristina do?”

“She lured Conquest out of his home for a so-called important meeting, leaving his wife alone. Then the woman of this Hundred Dollar Man kidnaps Conquest’s wife and forces a trade. You three are laughing. I admire such a woman. She is loyal, strong.”

“And lucky,” said Rolando. “Formidable. The courage of an Amazon and the luck of a blind man in big-city traffic. What is this incredible female’s name?”

“Lydia. Lydia Constanza. She is a Cuban. We should all be proud of her.”

In a few minutes, Lydia would take the shuttle to Washington, but first, one more telephone call to Neil, the second time she’d spoken to him today. His voice was flat, tired. Life was pressing him down. Sounded as though he were catching a cold. She worried about him living alone, working hard on the case, trying to live with politicians now making trouble for him. Impossible to keep them away, he’d told her. They always get you in the end, he’d said. They always win. They eat the goodies, the rest of us eat the wrapper and the paper bag.

“Neil, you sound awful. You sleepin’ at all?”

“Here and there. Goddamn reports. Stacked from floor to ceiling. Been having meetings with the federal attorney who’ll try this case. Jesus, what a self-loving, ambitious little prick this one is. He’s going over everything we’ve done—wiretaps, reports, buys, you name it. He’s one of
those,
the kind who doesn’t want a case he’s going to lose. One of those bastards with a last name for a first name.”

Lydia turned to look out of the telephone booth, eyes going quickly to the two agents who would guard her on the trip to Washington. They were bulky in winter coats and scarves, standing back-to-back, eyes on the people walking past them in the airline terminal. Lydia shivered with nerves.

“You better take somethin’ for that cold.”

“I am. It ain’t working. How’s Olga?”

“Fine. She’s with me. Neil, these people Raiser says I gotta meet, are they gonna give me a hard time?”

He cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t. They have to be polite to you, up to a point, but don’t quote me. There’ll be a few tough questions. Got to be that way, since it’s politics from here on. Nobody wants to get Venezuela pissed off. Rupert Logroño might even get to tippy-toe past customs with all that white dangling from his neck and nobody laying a damn hand on him. Enough to make you cry. Anyway, just answer their questions and don’t worry ’bout anything. This thing is big, and we’re gonna carry a lot of people with us. Up or down, I ain’t too sure.”

“I’m gonna miss you,” she said. “A week I’m back on the street, and they send me away.” She laughed quickly, too quickly, but she had to cover up just how badly she missed him. During the time she was in safe houses, she thought only of him. She had lost weight, smoked too much, and thought of Neil. When the bureau let her work again, she literally cried with joy.

She said, “Katey still complaining?”

Neil snorted. “What else? His people
blame
him for the case turning out as well as it has. They think they’re missing out on something, that when it goes down, the bureau will get all the credit and the police department will get
nada.
Katey’s taking a beating, but he’ll live.”

“He goin’ with you tomorrow?” Neil had an important buy scheduled for tomorrow. Two keys of cocaine from Alfredo Donat, a subdistributor under Luis DaPaola. DaPaola was one of Mas Betancourt’s top lieutenants. Neil was getting close, and Lydia was proud of him.