The Informant

25

ELIZABETH'S FLIGHT LANDED at Midway at four P.M. She was traveling with the two Justice Department investigators Morris had temporarily assigned to her. Morris had chosen Manoletti and Irwin, both of them men about forty years old, with at least a dozen years of field experience. They inspired confidence, but they weren't very good companions for her. They were businesslike and distant. They considered themselves "sworn" peace officers, like cops and FBI agents. The fact that everyone in the Justice Department took the same oath to preserve and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign or domestic, meant nothing. The gun she was carrying at this moment didn't make her one of them either. It only made them more nervous about her. She wasn't entirely satisfied with them. In spite of the fact that Morris knew she wanted to do some undercover surveillance, he'd picked men who looked like cops. They both had that triangular torso that men who lifted weights often achieved, so the seams of their sport coats looked strained. They looked as though they'd gotten their hair cut on a military base.

There was never a way for them to forget she was on the other side of the department, the side with lawyers and administrators and analysts—she had become all three—and she was several levels above them on a parallel branch of the hierarchy. Worse, she was a woman. In the twenty years she'd been in Justice, women had become common, but there were still men who seemed determined to maintain a distance. Sometimes she had suspected that their aloofness was a strain of puritanical discipline left over from an earlier time. A woman, if she looked like a woman, was a temptation and a threat to their integrity. They probably knew that Elizabeth posed no threat to their chastity, but her presence still made them vulnerable to rumors and suspicions.

They seemed not to dislike her, but they weren't volunteering any personal thoughts or observations about anything. It was as though they were pretending that they had no thoughts or opinions that hadn't come from a manual.

The three waited their turn to get off the plane, inching forward in single file like the rest of the passengers. Then they rode the escalators down to get their luggage. Manoletti was the first to get his suitcase, so he went out of the baggage area, by prearrangement, to get an early place in the cab line. When Elizabeth stepped out with Irwin, Manoletti already had the cab waiting with its trunk and back door open.

At the hotel they went to their respective rooms without much consultation. Elizabeth had learned many years ago to open a suitcase immediately and hang up anything that could hang. As soon as she had her suitcase up on the folding rack, she called home and left the kids a message. "I wanted to let you guys know I'm on the ground in Chicago and I'm in my hotel, the Hyatt. When you two get home, if you feel like calling me, please do. I have my phone on. And here's the hotel number." She read it off the sticker on the telephone, then hung up. She turned on the television set and found a news program. She half listened for a weather report.

"...savage attack at the home of Joseph Castiglione, in which two men and a woman were killed by shotgun blasts. This was followed by—"

She dialed the number of Irwin's BlackBerry with her left hand. "Turn on your TV," she said.

"We've got it on," he said. She could hear the voice of a different newscaster in the background.

"We've got to meet about this. Call me in a few minutes."

Elizabeth dialed the number of her office and Geoffrey answered, "Justice Department, Organized Crime."

"Geoff, it's me. There's something about Joseph Castiglione on the news. Did something happen while we were in the air?"

"We're trying to sort it out. Two of the Castiglione brothers are dead—Joe and Paul. There are also four men described as Castiglione associates dead at a motel south of Chicago."

"I can't believe it," she said. "What does he think he's doing?"

Geoffrey ignored the question. "Special Agent Holman from the FBI called on your personal line when you were still on the plane. I gave him your cell number. I hope that's okay."

"Of course. I thought he already had it. He hasn't called me yet. Do you have IDs for the bodies?"

"They haven't been released, but the FBI had them, and they e-mailed the list to you."

"Is there a Vincent Pugliese?"

"No. The names all sound like stops on an Italian train schedule, but he wasn't one of them."

"Good work, Geoff. I've got Holman's number on my phone, so I'll try to get back to him."

"I'll be here for a while, and I'll relay whatever comes in to you."

"Thanks. If nothing hits by seven, go home. The next shift can take over. Just tell them I'm here and I'm interested."

"I'll do that."

"Got to go." She hung up and took the call that was coming in.

"Waring."

"Hi, Elizabeth. This is John Holman. I hope I didn't interrupt your dinner or anything. If so, I can—" His voice sounded different. It was openly friendly, as though she had passed some very big test.

"No, you're not interrupting. I'm in Chicago right now, and I expect dinner isn't any time soon."

"How did you get word so fast?"

"The short, honest answer is that it was a coincidence. I was flying here looking into something else, and this seems to have happened while we were in the air. I just got to the airport Hyatt and turned on the TV."

"Our people there are on it, of course, and I'll let them know you're in town. If you want anything, just call the Chicago office. Or stop by. It's on West Roosevelt. They'll know who you are. I'm flying in this evening. When you get this figured out, give me a call."

"That's flattering, but I don't expect it will be me who figures this out."

"We'll see. I'll call when I'm there."

She sat for a second, staring at her phone. This was the way Justice and the FBI were supposed to work, but sometimes didn't. She suspected that the difference wasn't a change in the institutional mentalities. It was just a matter of proving to someone on the other team that you could be trusted.

There was a loud knock on the door of her room. She got up and went to the peephole to look out. She could see Irwin and Manoletti, so she opened the door. "Come on in."

The two came inside, and she pointed to the two chairs at the small table near the window. They sat, and she turned the desk chair to face them. "Lots of news, and it's got to make for lots of changes. You know what I wanted to accomplish here. As of right now, things look a lot more difficult."

"We seem to have arrived at the beginning of a war," Manoletti said. "If he's as wily as you think he is, he won't want to be anywhere near that."

"I don't think that's what it is," she said. "It's not what I would have predicted he'd do, but I think this is still him."

"You do?" said Irwin.

"I think the reason he came to Chicago was the personal ad from Vincent Pugliese, the Castiglione underboss. It was a trap, and that made him angry, so he decided to hurt the Castigliones, to make an example of them."

"With all due respect, ma'am..." Irwin looked uncomfortable.

"Go ahead," she said.

"Well, it's four men in a motel, a man in Joseph Castiglione's house, Castiglione himself. That's six. Paul Castiglione makes seven. These are not pushovers either. They're all made guys who have never done anything for a living in their lives that wasn't criminal."

"You got a list of the names?"

"Morris did, from the Chicago police," he said.

Manoletti said, "And if those guys were all bunched up like that, in groups, they were expecting something. At first glance, it doesn't look like one man."

"That they were expecting? Or who did it?"

"Either," said Irwin. "Too many armed wiseguys to turn into bodies."

"What do you think might have happened?"

Irwin said, "The thing about being in a real-world gunfight is that while you're shooting one man, his four friends have time to shoot you. So unless the guys on the other side are unarmed or unconscious, the score ends at one to one. For that reason alone, I would guess this was a squad of four or five shooters moving quickly and knowing exactly where they were going, how to get in, and where their targets would be."

"And to me, that says Vincent Pugliese," said Manoletti. "I think the personal ad was for real. I don't see this as the Butcher's Boy, after twenty years, deciding to live up to his name and scare the crap out of the whole Cosa Nostra. It sounds like he and Pugliese getting together and deciding to get rid of the three little Caesars and their palace guards in one night. If they succeed, Vincent Pugliese is the sole boss of the Castiglione organization."

"What's in it for the Butcher's Boy?"

"You've been thinking that there was a contract for him because he killed Frank Tosca, and the old men didn't like it. Maybe as head of the Castiglione family, Pugliese has enough power to protect his favorite killer if he wants."

"Maybe you're right," she said. "When I asked Morris to assign you to this trip, the situation wasn't as fluid and unpredictable as it is now. I had the impression that he was alone and friendless, and that he might be ready to cooperate with the Justice Department. You were going to stand by while I raised the possibility."

"There's another wrinkle," Manoletti said. "We just got a text message from Morris. The FBI has this from here on. Irwin and I are ordered home."

"When?"

"Tonight," Manoletti said. He handed his BlackBerry to Elizabeth. She looked at the message and handed it back.

Elizabeth said, "Well, I guess you'd better get your flight arranged. I hope we actually get to work on something in the future." She held out her hand and each of them shook it.

Manoletti cocked his head. "Aren't you coming back with us?"

"No. When this mess came to light and we were on the plane, the FBI called, so now that I'm here I'm going to see what I can do to understand what's happening. I'll be back in my office bright and early Monday."

"Good luck," Irwin said. "I hope you land your informant."

"Thanks," she said. "But he's probably far away by now. We'll see what we can learn from what he left behind."

The two men went to their room to repack, and Elizabeth locked the door behind them. She called the local FBI and introduced herself. She could tell immediately that Holman must have called them. A woman named Special Agent Cable got on the line and said, "A car is on its way to you now, Ms. Waring. The two agents will take you to the scene. Their ETA is about ten minutes."

"Perfect. I'll be waiting."

"Yes, ma'am."

Elizabeth was beginning to like these people. They had a stripped, unembellished way of speaking and a direct decisiveness when they were working, just as Jim had when she'd met him. They all seemed to have an almost military sense of discipline. As she was having that thought, she realized that what she had been doing today would not have been tolerated at the FBI. By now they would have fired her about three times. Holman was undoubtedly aware of that. She was useful and helpful in this set of circumstances, but he wouldn't want her to be part of his organization. She was in terrible trouble in her own job and could easily be out of work in a week.

She went down to the lobby, sat in one of the easy chairs, and looked out the tall glass windows at the cars going by on the street, and more surreptitiously, at the cars that pulled to a stop in the circular drive.

She was in the waning part of a day when she wasn't quite sure what her job was. Her boss seemed to think it was staying at her desk in the office in Washington and collecting intelligence about the Mafia, mostly from amassing police reports and court cases and wiretap transcripts, many of them years old. Her section did perform those tasks. But every one of her people was looking for bits of information that brought them forward in time, information that could lead to arrests and convictions in the near future. They weren't simply constructing some historical archive. They were trying to keep people from being cheated and robbed and murdered.

Murder was often the avenue that was most fruitful to investigate. All kinds of suspicious things happened in the world, but not all of them involved organized crime. When witnesses disappeared and their bodies were found in fields, there was a strong likelihood that it wasn't done by a solitary perpetrator, but by one of the groups her section followed.

A car pulled up in front of the entrance and a man got out of the passenger seat and stepped into the lobby. He looked at her. "Ms. Waring?"

She stood and walked out the door with him. She shook his hand as they walked. "I'm Agent Saddler," he said. It took only thirty minutes to arrive at Joe Castiglione's big, medieval-looking stone house. The openings in the stone wall had been strung across with crime-scene tape. It looked to her as though the only ones coming in or out of the house were police technicians.

Her two companions got out of the car with her and walked toward a man in a gray suit who was standing in the driveway. Whoever went past him seemed to stop and give him some bit of information. He would nod and they would proceed. Agent Saddler said to Elizabeth, "Please wait here," ducked the tape, and approached the man in the driveway.

The man in gray came back with him. "Hello, Ms. Waring. I'm Special Agent Doug Fowles. I'll show you around."

"You're the special agent in charge?"

"Yes," he said.

"Have you had much time to look around yet?"

"We got here at seven A.M. The police called us in as soon as they had the address because they knew who lived here. But you can imagine what we've been trying to do—take fingerprints everywhere, photograph everything we can while we have access, try not to trample the scene in the process."

They went in the front door and Elizabeth stood still.

He said, "It's all right to go up the stairs. The shooter came and went on a back staircase."

"You say 'shooter.' Do you know for sure there wasn't more than one?"

"Not for sure. Never for sure at this stage. Everyone was shot with a shotgun loaded with double-ought shot. All I can say is that there was at least one."

"I think I know who he is."

He looked closely at her. "You do?"

"Not his name. He's been retired for about twenty years, but he used to be a high-end hit man. People knew of him as the Butcher's Boy. He was involved in the confusion in the Carlo Balacontano murder case. In the years since then, the old man has always wanted him dead."

"How can you tell it's him?"

"That Arizona retreat that Frank Tosca called last week was to get the families to help him find this man. He thought Carl Bala would reward him from prison by making him boss of the family. The killer found Tosca first."

"If he got Tosca, why would he come here and do this to the Castigliones?"

"I think that the other bosses didn't like it that he killed Tosca, so they're hunting him. He seems to be making his death as costly for them as possible. It's hard to know exactly what a man like him feels—what portions of his mental life haven't been permanently turned off, or what he wasn't born with. He seems to feel that once they'd agreed to come after him, they were all fair game."

Fowles took the rest of the staircase in silence. At the top of the stairs was a big room with a few metal bunk beds. Fowles said, "He came up those back stairs. He probably looked in those rooms—which are a bathroom and a closet—to be sure they were empty. Then he stepped into this area."

"Who was here?"

"One man, Jerry Grisanti, age thirty-four. He was shot once with a twelve-gauge shotgun loaded with double-ought shot. A neighbor reported hearing the shots, and it wasn't shots tumbling over one another. It was more like this: Boom. Boom. Boom. Each about a second or two apart. Which sounds like one man shooting, pumping the shotgun, and going straight to the next victim, then shooting again."

"Interesting choice, a shotgun," she said.

"He picked up the shells afterward, so there's nothing to fingerprint and no brand name to trace. The shot was the sort you'd find in a store today, nothing antique or exotic."

"I'm not surprised."

"After this man was dead, the shooter probably took a couple of quick steps to this room." He stepped to the end of the short hallway and opened the door. It was a modern, attractive master bedroom with a California king bed, a pair of matching dressers and nightstands in dark-colored wood. The mattress was covered with the darkened red stain that was left when someone bled heavily. The wall beyond it had blood spatter. "Castiglione was reaching for a gun in the nightstand, but didn't have time to fire it."

"And then he shot the girl?"

"We think Castiglione was first, or he might have had time to shoot back."

Elizabeth nodded. "I appreciate your giving me the chance to see it."

"Still think it's him?" Fowles asked.

"If this and the other two scenes were the work of just one person, he'd be my leading candidate." She turned and walked toward the stairs. "Thanks again."

She descended the stairs past technicians kneeling to dust surfaces for prints and photographers taking pictures, seemingly in every room. Then she was out the front door.

The two FBI agents were waiting back at their car. Saddler said, "Would you like us to take you to the other house?"

"At the other two scenes it was a shotgun, right?"

"No, he used a pistol on Paul. One round to the forehead."

She felt a chill. He seemed to be relentless, someone who could and would do anything. "What about at the motel?"

"I understand it was a nine-millimeter pistol."

"What time of night did that happen?"

"I believe it was around two A.M., before Joe was killed. Then he went to Paul's. By then it was about four, or later."

"So the motel was the first. Can you take me there?"

"Certainly."

They drove out of town along Interstate 57 to a cheap motel. It was a relic of a generation ago, or maybe two—one long, low building with a set of doors along the side, an office near the street, and a tall sign that had NO VACANCY in neon, but the NO was probably never lit. It was easy to pick out the room because there was yellow crime-scene tape around it and the door beside it. There was a forensic team wrapping up its work when they arrived. She and her two companions got out of the car and looked in the motel-room door.

There was a woman technician just coming out holding an oversize equipment box. Saddler showed her his FBI identification. "You can take a look now," she said. "We're about done here."

Elizabeth looked inside. She saw the overturned dresser, the hole cut in the wall at the baseboard, another big blood stain. She noticed the forensic technician hadn't left. She was still there, watching Elizabeth from the doorway.

Elizabeth said, "Help me."

The woman said, "A lone man checked in at the office and came to this room in the early evening. He seems to have used the bed to sleep in. There was a couple in the next room. They say that around two A.M., some men—four of them—arrived. They walked around in the parking lot, looking in the cars, then came into his room quietly, either picking the lock or using a master key. We haven't found either yet. There was some stomping around and talking. It looks as though the man in the room had already cut a hole in the wall as an escape route and then pulled the dresser over to cover the hole. He was hiding in the unoccupied room on that side." She pointed. "They moved the dresser out of the way, and he shot two of them from the hole. The shots go upward into the stomach and chest of one, and the side of the other. At that point, the hiding man ran for the door of the unoccupied room to get outside. We can see bullet holes running along that wall as they tried to shoot him through it, but he must have made it and waited for them. We found the other two assailants lying outside the door of this first room. The couple in the third room waited for a while and listened until they were sure nobody was still alive, then called the police."

"And this couple—they're sure it was just one man who did this?"

"Oh, yes. As you can see, the walls aren't much. They heard him cough, but there was no talking until the assailants came."

"Thank you very much," she said. "You've helped me a lot."

She and the FBI agents walked to the car. Saddler opened the door for her and said, "I suppose he's long gone by now."

Elizabeth got into the back seat. As she spoke, she realized she was lying to an investigator who was trying to help. "I'm sure he is."

"As I recall, the last actual count we did was four hundred and forty-three soldiers in the Castiglione organization. There are probably a few we don't know about who have made their bones since. Plus assorted hangers-on, wannabes, and allies. They'll all be looking for him day and night."

"No doubt," she said. "He's probably been driving hard since about five A.M. He could be in Canada by now."

For most of her career she had never intentionally lied to another Justice Department official about anything, but now it was beginning to be a habit. In twenty years she had never pretended her opinion was different from what it really was. She had argued for her theories even when the whole Justice Department was arguing on the other side and her opinion seemed to them to be simple obstructionism. But not today. She was almost positive she knew where the Butcher's Boy was going to be tonight. If she told the FBI, they would ruin any chance she had of getting to him in time. He would be dead.

Elizabeth asked the two agents to drive her back to her hotel. It was nearly seven now. As soon as she was in her room, she locked the door, kicked off her high heels, opened her suitcase, and looked at the one outfit she had not hung up. As she usually did when she traveled, she had brought business suits—one with pants and one with a skirt that she could use interchangeably.

Now she took out the third outfit, a pair of black pants, a gray blouse, and a black cashmere jacket. The shoes were ones she had bought when she had been thinking of taking the kids to Europe. They felt as good as sneakers but didn't tell everyone instantly that she was an American tourist. They weren't stylish, but they were unobtrusive, and she could run in them.

She had almost let herself think, Run or fight in them, but tonight fighting would not be an option. If she was almost supernaturally perceptive and could sense when things were about to go wrong, she might be able to run.

She wondered how many other people had expected to meet him and thought about their fussy little advance preparations. Will wearing this outfit, or this one, give me an advantage? What if I bring a can of pepper spray? If I plan a route in advance that I can run efficiently from memory, will that save me? All of these decisions were nothing at all to him, the kinds of precautions he must have brushed aside a hundred times on his way to stopping somebody's heart. And the silliest of all was probably the notion that she would sense in advance that he was about to kill her, that he had weighed the options and decided that it was better for him if she died now.

Her professional self, the part of her brain that had spent twenty years studying criminals, knew that there was no way to tell if someone like him was lying. He wasn't going to telegraph anything he was thinking.

She dressed in the dark, comfortable clothes she had brought, took her pistol out of her purse and checked to be sure the magazine was full, then clicked it back in but didn't put the first round in the chamber. She had never liked guns very much, although circumstances like tonight's made them indispensable. She had an almost superstitious distrust, a feeling that they were inclined to go off unexpectedly. Their entire design was an embodiment of their purpose, and so it added a tiny physical force to an otherwise neutral object. It was hard to even pick up a gun without having your index finger slip inside the trigger guard. Keeping that finger straight along the slide took an act of will. She put the gun into her jacket, took her federal ID, her driver's license, a credit card, and a hundred dollars in cash, put them in her pockets, and locked her purse in the room's safe.

She plucked her phone out of her pocket and looked to see if she'd missed the kids' call. She hadn't. She dialed her home number, heard the ring, and then Amanda's voice. "Hello?"

"It's just your absent mother," she said. "How many people are at the party?"

"What party?"

"You mean you and your brother aren't having a huge party full of people I wouldn't approve of, doing things that would make me faint?"

"I wish. I've got a chemistry test tomorrow, and the Bad Sibling has been working on an AP polysci paper since, like, four this afternoon."

"I thought it was awfully quiet for a Festival of the Vices. How come you didn't call me?"

"You just said to call if we needed something. We were glad to know you'd landed safely and all that," she offered. "Do you want to talk to Jim?"

"No, if he's trying to concentrate on his paper, I'll let him. I'm about to go out anyway." She instantly regretted mentioning it. If something went wrong and she died tonight, she didn't want Amanda to wonder if she should have said something more or put Jim on because it would have taken up time and saved her. "If he wants to call, he's welcome. I hope to see you both late tomorrow. Love you."

"Love you."

She pocketed her phone and hooked the bow of a pair of sunglasses over her collar because the sinking sun was still bright in the west. Finally she took one last look at the enlarged street map she had printed of Vincent Pugliese's neighborhood. As a final precaution, she took the pair of police handcuffs out of her suitcase and put them in the inner pocket of her jacket. She was sure they wouldn't be of use, but carrying the proper equipment seemed to her the responsible thing to do.

As she passed the mirror, she touched her hair to get it to look fuller, but couldn't avoid looking into her own eyes. She had never planned to search for the Butcher's Boy alone. It was a stupid, risky thing to do. But things had changed radically in the past few hours. He had killed a lot of people during the night, but he hadn't done what was necessary for his purposes, which was to make the sweep total. He had to get Salvatore, the last Castiglione brother. If he wanted to terrorize the old men, he had to end the dynasty and exterminate the family. And he had to get Vincent Pugliese, the man who offered him help and then sent men to kill him in his sleep. But with the city full of Castiglione soldiers and police, she could save him, offer him another way of staying alive. If he saw her with FBI agents, he would never come near her. If she was completely alone, there was a chance.

She stepped out of her room and closed the door, then walked down the hallway. She wasn't used to filling her pockets with things before she went out, particularly things as big and heavy as a pistol. Every item seemed to her to bulge or hang, but she reminded herself that there wasn't another choice this time. She was the only one who would recognize him and the only one he would recognize.

When her elevator stopped, she looked across the lobby and saw Irwin and Manoletti. They were wheeling their suitcases to the front desk. Neither of them had seen her, so she backed into the elevator and pressed the button to go to the top of the building. The doors opened and she saw the entrance to a restaurant with a small podium and a young hostess with hair that was so carefully gathered into a bun that no single loose strand showed, and it looked more like polished wood than hair. Elizabeth pressed the button for the lobby again and descended.

As she waited, she reflected that it was ridiculous to avoid the two men she had asked Morris to assign to her for this trip. She found she didn't care about being gracious. She felt a strong reluctance to talk to anyone right now. She didn't want to explain or make up a lie or answer questions or pretend. For the moment, there were only two people who mattered—her and the Butcher's Boy—and the rest of the people in Chicago were distractions or enemies.