The Informant

20

IT TOOK HIM two days to drive the eleven hundred miles from Houston to Denver and a night to recover, but now it was morning and he was a guest in the Brown Palace Hotel in the center of Denver. The hotel was old, with lots of dark, polished wood. He had always thought of it as what some of the old hotels Eddie Mastrewski had stayed in must have looked like before they fell into ruin. Eddie had liked those old hotels, and he would have loved the Brown Palace, with its old-fashioned wallpaper and the antique architecture of the place. It had a central stairwell, so a person on the upper floors could look down into the square enclosure of railings all the way to the lobby.

A few of Eddie's hotels were built that way, but they were all creaky, with stains on the worn carpets that the boy could only make guesses about. Eddie had liked them because they were so devoid of paying guests that he could go to the upper levels and occupy a floor of his own. That way he could use the hallway as his front porch, sit in a chair, read the papers, and look down to see if any of his horde of enemies showed up. He was especially partial to the places where the management wouldn't be too shocked if he left suddenly. He always paid in cash at the start of a stay so any consternation he caused was emotional and had no legal implications.

This morning he missed Eddie more than usual. He would have loved to have Eddie out there in the hallway, tilting back in a desk chair with a cigarette burning in the big sand-filled ashtray and the two .45 automatic pistols in his coat.

Schaeffer took the elevator to the lobby, went into the hotel shop, and bought the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. He walked into the hotel restaurant and went to a booth near the back where he could see the doorway. He was aware of the two other ways out of the dining room—through the bar and past the men's room, and through the kitchen to the alley. He had scanned the room from the doorway and seen no reason to worry, but he looked at all the faces once more before he opened the New York Times.

He ran his eyes down each page, looking for some reference to what had happened in Arizona. He saw nothing. By now the federal cops must have identified the men they had cornered in their raid. It seemed odd that more wasn't being made of it. Maybe the right person at the Times had not yet seen the list and noticed that many of the names were recognizable names of New York gangsters. He opened the Tribune. There was a brief story that said FBI officials had raided a compound in Arizona and arrested "dozens of men" on weapons and drug charges. The story was out. In a day or two, when reporters saw the names, it would probably blow up a bit.

It was possible the L.A. Times would be ahead on this one because Arizona was a bit closer to their orbit, but he found nothing. When the waitress came, he ordered his breakfast, then looked idly at the papers he'd already seen. He wondered if any of the old men still used the personal ads. That had once been the way that people like Eddie knew they were wanted for a job. Eddie would not have liked it if a couple of Mafia soldiers had come to his butcher shop to offer him a contract.

Something caught his eye. An ad said, "BB: Sorry I missed you at the ranch. I'll see what I can do, if you want. VP"

VP had to be Vincent Pugliese. They always used the guy you liked best, the one you'd trust if you had to trust anyone. Pugliese worked for the Castigliones, so the one who had ordered Pugliese to do this was a Castiglione, probably Joe, the oldest brother. He would have asked if anybody thought he could be the one, and Vince had done that silent nod of his—a serious man's gesture, not bobbing his head up and down like a windup toy, but a single dip of the head.

Schaeffer remembered that nod from the old days, when the Castiglione family had summoned him to Chicago. Old Salvatore Castiglione hired him to go to Milwaukee and demonstrate to the small Mafia contingent there that their way of declaring independence from the Castiglione family in Chicago had been a bad idea. Instead of paying their regular percentage, they had killed the bagman. Salvatore had decided that the one who should pay was Tony Fantano, the boss of the Milwaukee crew.

The boy was twenty years old and he didn't know Tony Fantano by sight or where to find him. He was already resigned to having to find the right bar and start asking questions. But Castiglione said, "We'll give you a guide." The old man looked around the room at the men who were sitting there. That was the first time Schaeffer had seen the nod. Vince Pugliese was the same age as he was, but he had an intelligent, quiet gravity even then. Vince simply nodded once. "Done," said the old man. "Vince will go with you."

They drove to Milwaukee that night. They had a Chevy Impala stolen from Oklahoma City with Illinois plates that were also stolen. They had a pair of .45 pistols, two among the millions of copies of the Colt 1911 model that were issued by the U.S. Army until the end of World War II and then passed from hand to hand for forty years until there was no way of guessing who the recorded owner had been.

He remembered riding into Milwaukee while Vince drove the car. They had talked about everything but the job. They had both been feeling at that time in their lives that they wished they could go to college. Pugliese had noticed that Castiglione's son had sons their age—the grandsons of old Salvatore—and two of the three were away at college. Old Salvatore was paying the insane tuition for both of them. For his own family, Salvatore thought education was a good idea. For the sons of other men—young guys like Vince—it was a stupid waste of time.

Schaeffer had admitted that he had been thinking about going to college for a couple of years, but he didn't see a way to accomplish it. If word got out where he was, there would be men coming to his dormitory to hire him for one more job, and others would come to kill him. Either way, staying would be impossible. Besides, his attendance record in high school had been spotty because he and Eddie had traveled so much.

Vince said, "You were taking wet jobs in high school?"

"Yeah. And how old were you the first time you had to step around a guy you shot to get home?"

"Yeah," Vince said. "I kind of forgot. I was seventeen." He drove in silence for a few minutes, looking occasionally at the lake to his right. "I suppose Mr. Castiglione is right—college is not for guys like me. I make more money than a doctor or a lawyer, and I'm not twenty-one yet. College would cost me too much in lost pay."

They had changed the subject and agreed on a plan. They would try to take Tony Fantano while he was out alone, away from his house. Vince would drive the car, and Schaeffer would do the work.

They parked a half block away from Fantano's house at four A.M. and waited. At just after seven, he backed his car out of his driveway and drove up the street. They waited until he turned and then followed him at a distance. He got onto a major street and drove across town while they kept a few vehicles between their car and his, thinking at each major intersection that soon he would reach his destination and stop. He didn't. He drove right out of the city with them following, trying to stay as far back as they could behind trucks that would keep them invisible to his rearview mirror. He went about ten miles out on a rural route, turned off into the long gravel driveway of a farm, and stopped at a white farmhouse.

Vince drove past, then turned into the next farm road. Schaeffer said, "All right. Wait for me here. If it's a trap you can take off."

"If you get in trouble, try to make it back. I won't take off," Vince said. He leaned back in his seat and watched Schaeffer walk to the fence, climb over it, and make his way into the tall rows of corn beyond it. To his left, at the back of the farm, behind the cornfield, was a large, old apple orchard full of short, gnarled trees with thick, twisted trunks, but the corn rows were closer to the house.

Schaeffer took one look back at Vince and saw him in the driver's seat, his face impassive—watchful, merely waiting. Schaeffer went deeper into the cornfield, at first making his way quickly between the rows. But as he approached the gravel driveway through the cornfield, he moved more slowly and carefully, adjusting his position from row to row, not letting himself brush against the cornstalks so the leaves wouldn't make whispering sounds. He backtracked three rows so he could see Fantano's car and the house, but anyone inside could not see him. He took out his gun and aimed it down the open space between rows. As soon as someone stepped into that empty frame, the person would die.

As he thought about that bright, warm morning after all these years, he remembered the physical sensation he had felt when he realized it was a trap. Fantano had been expecting them, and he had led them to the farm. As Schaeffer was taking his position in the cornfield, eight of Fantano's men were emerging from the back door of the farmhouse and forming a line at the upper end of the cornfield.

When they were all lined up at the first row of corn, on some silent signal they began to move into the corn. They advanced one row at a time, then stopped to sight along the furrow to be sure all of them were still aligned and nobody got ahead of the others and got mistaken for a target. They were just five or six rows from Schaeffer before he saw the light catch the white shirt one of them wore. It shone through the tiny gaps in the green cornstalks and leaves. He sidestepped to get out of the man's path and saw another, then another coming his way.

He dashed down the long corn row toward the end where he could see the porch of the house. In thirty seconds he was crouching beside the house. He knew he had one chance. He crept along the siding until he was beside a tall window.

He pivoted and stepped in front of the window. Tony Fantano was standing in the middle of an old-fashioned parlor, staring out the opposite window at the men in the cornfield. He seemed to have a sudden premonition, a discomfort that was mental, not sensory, because there had been no noise. He turned and saw Schaeffer looking in at him.

Schaeffer fired four rapid shots through the glass and caught Fantano twice in the chest as a splash of shattered glass sprayed the room. A bullet went through Fantano's neck, and the last one hit the wall as Fantano fell backward onto the floor. Schaeffer took aim at his head and fired, then ran around to the front porch and looked in the front window, across the room, and through the window where Fantano had been watching his men. As he looked, he ejected the magazine from his gun and inserted a fresh one.

He saw three men with guns in their hands run out of the cornfield and head for the back of the house. Schaeffer knelt on the porch in front of the window and aimed his pistol through it, across the living room, down the short, straight hallway to the back door.

The back door swung open and the three men ran in and stopped at the sight of Fantano on the floor. Schaeffer opened fire and dropped all three. He flung the front door open and ran to the three bodies. He snatched the guns out of the hands of two of the dead men, put them in his jacket pockets, and kept going down the hall and out the back door.

He ran to the back corner of the cornfield to get behind the remaining men. But just as he entered the field, he heard gunshots. They seemed to be coming from the road ahead of him where he had left Vincent Pugliese and the car.

He veered away from the cornfield and into the orchard beside it. He caught sight of two men ahead of him running along the first two rows of cornstalks toward the road. He stopped, steadied his arm on a tree limb, and hit the back one, then the other, and ran on.

The firing up ahead was now heavier and more sustained. He ran through the orchard, swerving to miss tree trunks, jumping over exposed roots. He moved far enough into the orchard so the trunks of the trees provided some concealment and protection, but he could tell from the sounds that nobody was shooting at him.

At last he reached the far end of the orchard and looked out to see Vince Pugliese crouching behind the stolen Impala. Three men crouched in the cornfield shooting at him. The car's windows were almost all gone, and glittering cubes of shattered safety glass had spattered all over the road. There were bullet holes in the door panels, and at least one tire was flat.

Schaeffer slipped out of the orchard into the cornfield, stepped into the next row, then the next. He saw a man three rows ahead lying on his belly in a furrow aiming his pistol at Vince. Schaeffer shot him, then ran ahead from row to row, shot the second, then shot the third. None of the men ever heard him or looked in his direction. Even the last one he killed seemed to think to the end that the firing he heard was his companions firing at Vince Pugliese.

When the last one was dead, he yelled, "Vince!"

"Don't bother me. I've got these guys outnumbered."

"They're dead."

"All of them?"

"Yes."

Schaeffer stepped out of the cornfield and Pugliese stepped hesitantly around the trunk of the car. When there were no shots, he put his gun in his coat and pointed at the Impala. "The car's no good anymore."

"We can take Fantano's. Let's wipe this one for prints and go."

They wiped the surfaces clean, took off the Illinois plates, and trotted through the cornfield to the house. Inside the parlor Schaeffer stepped carefully around the blood, reached into Fantano's pants pocket, and took his keys.

As Vince drove them down the gravel drive to the highway, manic elation overtook the two twenty-year-olds. They sped along the rural highway, neither of them having to admit that he'd been sure they were about to die, but both feeling shock and relief that they hadn't. Each of them felt grateful to the other for being brave enough to keep half of Fantano's soldiers occupied for so long. Each of them had become the only witness to the other's victory.

Now, thirty years later, when Schaeffer read the personal ad in the newspaper, he felt an instant of sincere pleasure at the memory of the young Vince Pugliese. But the pleasure was followed immediately and overwhelmed by the unwelcome memory of how the Mafia worked. The one you liked, respected, and trusted most was always the one they sent to invite you to your death.