The Informant

31

AS ELIZABETH GOT off the plane from Los Angeles and walked along the concourse at Reagan International, it was nearly five P.M. She had gone a hundred yards past shops and food concessions before she realized that she had made a decision without knowing that she was deciding anything. She went out through the baggage claim and stood at the taxi stand. When it came to be her turn, she said to the dispatcher, "The J. Edgar Hoover Building."

She hadn't exactly anticipated that either, but after she had said it, she realized it had been implied in her decision. She sat quietly with her suitcase beside her in the back seat of the cab, and watched the familiar buildings of the city loom and disappear. It occurred to her that she never called it the Hoover building except when she was feeling particularly intimidated by it. The fact that the FBI building was named for J. Edgar Hoover and the Justice Department was named after Robert F. Kennedy always seemed appropriate. The Kennedy building was just on the south side of the Hoover building, but they were not the same place at all. At the Hoover building she was an outsider.

The cab driver was just about to start telling her about some outrage perpetrated in Congress this week, when she said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry, but I've got to call my children." She dialed her home number and let it ring until the voice mail came on. "Hi, it's me," she said. "I'm just calling to let you know my flight has arrived and I'm on my way to the office for the last hour of the day, and then I'll be home. I thought you'd probably be home already. I hope everything is okay. If not, call me."

When the cab arrived, she got out, stood in front of the building on Pennsylvania Avenue with her suitcase, took out her cell phone, and dialed the number of Special Agent Holman.

He answered his cell phone, "Holman."

"Hi, John," she said. "This is Elizabeth Waring. I'm standing outside the Hoover building right now. I just got off a plane from Los Angeles, and I believe I need a favor."

"What are you doing out there? Come on up."

"It's embarrassing, but I lost my Justice Department ID. I've only got an out-of-date one with me. I imagine the security people will think I'm trying to test their alertness, so they'll stop and detain me."

"Probably. Using expired ID is the kind of thing the inspector general's people do as a test. I'll be right down."

She stayed in front of the ugly concrete building. The center of the city was filled with beautiful old gray stone buildings with enormous pillars and imposing steps. But the FBI headquarters looked like a computer science building in a cash-strapped Midwestern college. While she waited she faced to the side so she wasn't staring at each person who came out and wasn't blocking the sidewalk. She felt odd standing there with a suitcase, but it was a carry-on, no bigger than the wheeled carts some attorneys brought to courthouses. She hoped people who saw her invented some sensible reason for her to be here with it.

After what seemed like a long time, she saw the door open and John Holman came out smiling. "Elizabeth."

"Thanks for coming out," she said. "I can't imagine what happened to my ID. I've ordered a new one, but it takes time to airbrush out the wrinkles on the photograph."

He laughed. "I just hope there isn't some teenaged girl out arresting people with your ID."

"I'll chance it."

"Come on, and I'll vouch for your identity and get you past the skeptics."

"Thanks."

They went into the building, stopped at the security barrier to present their identification, and rode the elevator up to the third floor. She walked with him, feeling a bit out of place, like a suspect being brought in for an interrogation. But then he opened a door with his name on it and they were in an office much like hers. There was a big desk and a leather chair behind it, but he sat across from her in one of the chairs around a table.

As she sat, he got up and brought a yellow legal pad and pen from his desk and dropped them on the table, then sat again. "You said you needed a favor?"

"I did, and I do," she said. "I just got off a plane from Los Angeles. When I got there, I went to the neighborhood where some of the Mafia caretakers from the east have houses. I was pretty sure he would be there taking a look. I drove up and down the streets before dawn, checking license plates and car descriptions against the ones the FBI people had recorded around Vincent Pugliese's building in Chicago. I found his and left him a note with a number where he could reach me."

"Did he call?"

"Yes. He said he'd be in touch, and then showed up at my hotel five minutes later and demanded I go off in his car with him right away."

"And you had no time to call for a remote surveillance or anything?"

"I believed that this was the best shot I would ever get with him, to persuade him to act as a Justice Department informant. You have to realize that this man knows enough to put practically the whole older generation in jail, and I had information that might make him see the odds were against him and getting worse. I had to try."

"Didn't you worry that he might change his mind and kill you?"

"He'd had several chances to kill me and shown no inclination. So I went with him. While he drove me around, I made my best pitch to get him to come in. It was based on my experience of what the department has approved for other informants in the past. I was realistic. I said we would offer him the highest level of protection from his enemies during a two- or three-year period while he was talking to us about what he knew. I said he would testify in court against criminal defendants of a high level only if there was a case against them. He would be granted immunity only for crimes he told us about. At the end of the period he would be on his own. And I told him that we now have intelligence that at least one family has hired a team of high-end professional killers to hunt him down."

"And he turned you down?"

"Right. I realize now that unless he's sure he's about to die, it's a bad deal to him. If we had him in custody for a serious crime, a deal might seem more attractive."

"And you need FBI help to get him in custody."

"I've delayed asking for too long. As long as there seemed to be a chance of doing this simply, I kept pursuing the possibility. But today I realized that I had made a horrible mistake. I waited for him to get himself cornered so my offer would look good, but that wasn't happening. He was succeeding. He's declared a personal vendetta on the bosses who were at that meeting in Arizona, and he's killing them, one after another. He's killed Frank Tosca, all three of the Castiglione brothers, and their underboss, Vincent Pugliese. In order to do that, he's had to kill seven or eight soldiers and hired men. Today he was in Los Angeles, and I think he was after the Lazaretti family. The one to get would be Tony Lazaretti, who's not only a blood relative, the nephew of Don Carlos Lazaretti, but also the head of the western businesses."

"Is this something you know, or you're guessing?"

"You were the one who told me it was a Lazaretti soldier who said they'd hired a team of killers to find him. When I got to Los Angeles and told him there was a team of killers, he seemed to know already, and to know who had hired them."

Holman looked tired. "A couple of hours ago, we received word that Tony Lazaretti was killed in his house by an unknown assailant. There was also an associate of his killed in the gunfight and another seriously wounded. The Los Angeles field office is also looking into two men who were found dead in Griffith Park. One had an Ingram MAC-10 with a silencer. I'm sure all of this will be in your own reports, but I forwarded it to you in case."

"Oh, God." She winced and looked down.

"What do you want to do?"

"He needs to be apprehended. We can't let him go on killing people. I'd like him alive, if possible. He knows about the people who came up with him thirty years ago, the people who are running the mob right now. But he's very good at killing people, and he'll keep doing it. Even though his enemies are some of the worst people in the world, this has got to stop now."

"You shouldn't blame yourself for Tony Lazaretti or the others. They all knew what he was, and they underestimated him. In their business, that's a fatal mistake."

"Well, I've got to change the focus of what I'm doing now." She handed him a piece of paper she had torn from the notebook she carried in her purse. "Here. I wrote this down on the plane. He's in Los Angeles, or was yesterday, driving a gray three-to-five-year-old Toyota Camry with Illinois plates, number E905E 783. He was carrying two Beretta M92 pistols. And the place he's going to strike—he already has, so it's too late for that. There are a couple of other possibilities, but I don't think he'll stay in Los Angeles long enough to do any others."

"We can initiate a multistate search for the car, but if he's dumped it already, there's not much ... wait a minute. The Camry thing sounds familiar." He stood and went behind his desk, woke up his computer, and typed in an identifier. He read for a few seconds. "Yep. Here it is. When they found the two men in Griffith Park, they were beside a shot-up Toyota Camry that had plates issued for a Ford pickup."

"Worse and worse. Now the only thing I have is my own ability to identify him. The first thing I'll do is arrange for a session with a police artist. Then I'll just have to start over. I'm ready to start planning a trap. I'll try to get a message to him using personal ads in major papers. That worked once. And I'll have to lie and say that my bosses have given me permission to improve my last offer."

"That brings up the next question. If the FBI arranges to work with you and set up this trap to get him into custody, what happens next? Does the DOJ handle the prosecution of this man and take the case from there?"

"If the Butcher's Boy left evidence at the crime scenes, or resists arrest, or an eyewitness appears once we have him safely locked away, we'll prosecute. If not, I'll still try to get him to talk. But things in the department haven't changed. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Hunsecker will not cooperate with this in any way at the moment. If he learns this is how I've been spending my time, he'll try to fire me. I'm hoping that I can persuade him not to. If I can make it clear that I intend to capture and try to convict this man, not coddle him and make generous deals with him, I think the sun will come out and Hunsecker will have a different feeling about it."

"Look, Elizabeth. People in the Bureau think highly of you, and you've earned a lot of respect. I'd hate to see your career end in departmental infighting with a political hack. Maybe this is one of those times when we have to wait for the stars to align just right before we take irrevocable action."

Elizabeth stood up. "John, you've been a terrific ally, and now you're behaving like a friend. Thanks for everything. But I don't want to wait. As soon as I'm able to think through a plan, I'll call you. I don't want to delay acting on this. I seem to be the one that opened the box, so it's my responsibility."

"All right," he said. "I'll be waiting."

She opened the office door and went out, rolling her small suitcase behind her. She headed for the Pennsylvania Avenue exit. She would be in her office in five minutes. Then she could start devising ways to betray the Butcher's Boy.