The Informant

9

ELIZABETH LEFT WORK at seven in the evening and took the elevator to the level of her reserved parking space in the Robert F. Kennedy building's underground garage. There were always cars on this floor late into the night because they all belonged to people in supervisory jobs. Things didn't get easier as a person moved up in the hierarchy. This evening she had been trying to make her way through the past few daily reports from the data analysts who worked in the basement of the building.

Twenty years ago when she had first become aware of this killer, she had been a data analyst, and she still preferred double-checking the sources of her information, the raw, unedited statements of fact that came in with each morning's traffic. In Washington there were too many people who got by on briefings and executive summaries prepared by the newest and least experienced people, and never looked at what had prompted their conclusions. Proper interpretation wasn't always easy, not something every novice could do. Sometimes one bit of overlooked information could change everything. It took experience and intuition to sense when that one bit of information wasn't even present but should be.

Tonight she was dissatisfied. She was missing something important. She hadn't detected what the killer was doing or what he wanted. He had made an attempt on Frank Tosca at his house on Long Island and then dropped out of sight. It wasn't like him to give up, or even to let up—to slow down before he had accomplished what he wanted to do. So now he must be moving, doing something. But no reports had come in that might reveal to her what it could be.

Elizabeth had felt the frustration growing all day. She had been close to events of great importance to the world of organized crime before they'd happened—the return of the Butcher's Boy and the murder of Michael Delamina—but she had misinterpreted what she'd heard and seen, and finally, after she'd understood that he was after Tosca, she'd failed to persuade the deputy assistant in time to move in and take advantage of the opportunity.

She stepped out of the elevator carrying her briefcase in her left hand and her purse strap over her left shoulder so her right hand would be unencumbered if she needed to reach for the gun. She got into her car and kept the purse on the passenger seat where she could reach it.

It was dark out when she drove out onto the street. A light rain was falling, and the pavements were wet enough to show the reflections of headlights and traffic signals, and she had to listen to the constant thump-thump of her windshield wipers. She headed for McLean by the route that took her past her dry cleaners. She parked in one of the narrow five-minute spaces in the strip mall where the shop was and came out with the clothes she had left last Thursday—two suits, two blouses, two pairs of slacks, two of her daughter's dresses, and her son's sport coat. She thought about how good he looked in it, but also what the argument would be that got him to wear it for his college interviews later in the year.

He would say, "That's not how I dress."

She could say, "Whether you wear it every day is not the point. This is the right thing to wear for this occasion."

"They'll think I'm pretending to be somebody else."

"I'll write you a note to verify that you are who you say you are and that it's your coat."

She was holding the group of hangers with an upstretched arm so none of the clothes would drag on the wet pavement. She glanced to her left to see if any cars were coming and prepared to take the first step across the driveway when he appeared at her right side.

"I need to talk to you for five minutes. Get in your car." He took her free arm and guided her toward the car.

Elizabeth knew that this was one of the moments when life was shakily balanced on what she said or did next. As long as he was close enough to touch her, she was in mortal danger. He was also being hunted by his enemies, and that, for this moment at least, made them her enemies. If they came for him now, she would die too. She had no choice but to hurry through the light rain toward her car, but as she went, she said, "You and I don't have anything to talk about. You're putting me in danger, and I don't like it."

They were at the back door behind the driver's seat. The button clicked up. He took her cleaning out of her hand, hung the hangers on the hook in the back seat, and got into the car behind the wheel. He held his hand out.

She hesitated for a second, aware of all of the people who might be looking at her right now. She could scream. She could run. She placed the keys in the palm of his hand, then hurried to the passenger side and got in. She said, "If anybody sees me with you, my career is over."

He pulled the car out of the lot and drove up the street. "If anybody sees me with you, both our lives are over. They'll kill me for talking to the Justice Department, and you because you know whatever I told you." He looked in each of the mirrors, returned to the one on the left side for a few seconds, seemed to eliminate a possibility, and looked ahead again. "It doesn't look as though we've been spotted. As long as that cleaner isn't robbed so somebody has to watch the security tape, we're probably okay."

"What do you want?"

"I know we're not exactly best friends, but why are you pissed off?"

"You're a murderer. Are other people glad to see you?"

"Some are," he said. "You should be one of them."

"I would like you to pull my car over and get out. I'll give you a ten-minute head start before I call in federal officers to look for you."

"I know that you have no legal responsibility to tell the truth when you're talking to a suspect. That's what matters to you, right? Legal responsibility. You wouldn't give me ten minutes. Or any minutes."

She glared at him, then looked away, scowling out the window at the traffic.

"As soon as we're finished talking, I'll leave."

"You had already killed Michael Delamina before you asked me who he worked for. As soon as I told you, three of Tosca's men were killed in his house. I suppose you didn't do that."

"Of course I did."

"So that's all the information you will ever get from me."

"I'm not here to get information. I'm here to tell you something you don't know that might get you somewhere if you move fast. There is going to be a meeting. Among the people there will be at least some of the old men. Frank Tosca called it, and it will take place tomorrow."

"Where?"

"I don't know. I don't know how it's being done. For all I know, it may be a bunch of them chatting on video. But most of the old men are used to talking to people face-to-face."

"Does Tosca have the power to call a meeting like that?"

"He wants to be the most powerful man in the country, and he thinks he sees a way. Carlo Balacontano has been in jail for a long time. All those years he's had a succession of caretakers on the outside taking his orders to run the Balacontano family."

"I know. Tosca wants to be boss."

"To do it, he needs Carl Bala's blessing. The thing the old man wants most in the world is me."

"Oh. Of course he would." Her mind was leaping over obstacles now and ranging ahead like a hunting dog on a scent. "And killing you would prove to Bala that Tosca was loyal to him and that he was strong enough to run the family."

"Tosca has been trying to find me for the old man for a couple of years. Now I'm here and it's starting to occur to him that the one of us who dies might not be me. But he also sees that this moment could be his big chance. If he says all he wants is to kill me, he can get the rest of the Balacontano soldiers, the holdouts, to come in and take his orders. They want me dead. But if he can get the heads of the other twenty-five families to agree to hunt for me too, then he's the guy to take over for Carl Bala."

"It sounds like a great deal for him," she said. "Even if somebody Tosca doesn't know kills you, he'll still be the hero because he called the hunt. He can hardly lose."

Schaeffer turned and looked at her, his eyes alert but cold. "He can lose."

"If you're going to steal my car, let me off now. I need to start finding out what I can."

He pulled over suddenly, and she was disconcerted. She was almost thrown, first into him, and then into the dashboard. The car rocked. He flung the door open, stepped beneath the Metro sign, and then disappeared down the stairway to the station.

She snatched her BlackBerry out of her purse and pressed the number to dial the night supervisor of Organized Crime and Racketeering. "Fulton," the voice said.

"Fulton, it's Waring. The killer turned up again. He just ducked into the Metro station at L'Enfant Plaza. There's got to be a way to shut it down before he gets away."

"Hold on and let me find out." There was a click, and then a moment later he was back. "Elizabeth?"

"I'm still here."

"L'Enfant Plaza is the perfect station for him and the worst for us. He can get on the blue, orange, green, or yellow lines in either direction—every line but one—and in two stops he could get on the red line too. Keeping all the trains from leaving would shut down the whole system at rush hour. We'd have a panic. Even if capturing him wouldn't involve shooting, it's still too risky."

"But we'd have him."

"All we'd be doing is handing this guy five hundred hostages."

"I guess it was too much to hope he'd made that kind of mistake."

There was a pause. "Elizabeth?"

"What?"

"This brings up something that I think you need to know."

"What is it?"

"I'm taking a risk to say this."

"Then don't. At least don't say it on the phone. I ... uh, forgot something at the office, so I've got to go back in anyway. I'll be there in ten minutes."

It was fifteen minutes before she walked back into the office. She went directly to Fulton's office and knocked.

"Come in."

She entered, closed the door, and sat down in front of Fulton's desk. "Tell me."

He looked at her, then at the desk, where his fingers were fiddling with his pencil. "You've given me some breaks and helped me out a number of times. Still, I almost called you back to ask you not to come in."

"It's that bad?"

"Bad enough. While you were suspended, he had a couple of his assistants search your office."

"Which he had a perfect right and excuse to do, of course. I'll admit I was surprised when I came back and saw everything in my in-box was missing."

"Did you get it back?"

"I'm pretty sure I got it all."

"Then they haven't found anything that will make you look bad."

"Is he really trying to do that? He's been friendly today. He came this close to admitting he was wrong about trying to keep Tosca under surveillance. If he had simply let my arrangement with the FBI stand, we would have kept three men alive and possibly caught the Butcher's Boy, and he knows it."

"He's not your friend. There was an upper-level staff meeting Friday. 'Why does this professional killer know Waring? Why does he come to her after twenty years and ask for information? Why would she give it to him? How does he know where she lives?' And he's looked into the conviction of Carlo Balacontano twenty years ago. He says he's got a nose for things that don't smell right. Why would the head of one of the five New York families bury the head and hands of a Las Vegas businessman on his own horse farm in Saratoga? If he did that, then who knew about it and called in a tip to tell the FBI where to look? Why did the Justice Department buy into that?"

"It's ironic," she said. "That's exactly what I said twenty years ago. I said it over and over, but everybody said, 'That just shows how arrogant Carl Bala is.' And I kept insisting, until finally John Connor, the deputy assistant AG at the time, pressured me into taking a long vacation out of the country. If I hadn't agreed, it was pretty clear I was going to be out."

"I don't suppose anybody at the time wrote anything down about your objections."

"Of course not. At least not that I've ever seen. What Connor did was put a notation in my personnel file that said the long vacation in Europe was 'health-related.' For the next ten or twelve years I had to explain that to my new bosses during every annual evaluation and every promotion committee. I would say it was a great opportunity, and they took it to mean I was attached to some foreign police force."

"He knows about that too," said Fulton. "He thinks you had a mental breakdown and they saved your career by covering it up."

She shrugged. "What else could it be? And I must be having another one now."

Fulton shook his head. "I told him I thought it might have been a pregnancy that you weren't ready for. You were twenty-two. You could have given up the baby. That's the kind of thing that doesn't get spelled out in attendance records and doesn't matter much all these years later."

"Very creative," she said. "Thanks for trying." She stood up. "And thanks for the warning too. I'll be very careful not to let him see that I know." She looked at her watch. "While I'm here, I think I'll do a little catching up on work I missed during my suspension."

Fulton stood up too. "What I was really trying to head off was your saying something to him like what you said to me tonight."

"What do you mean?"

"This killer, the Butcher's Boy. He's the real problem right now. Hunsecker's gut tells him that cops who have exclusive relationships with criminal informants almost always end up being corrupt. Pretty soon they're protecting the source from things that would normally get him and only passing on information he feeds them. Ultimately they end up working for the informant."

Elizabeth said, "We've both been around long enough to see that happen a few times. He didn't make that up."

"If you can see his point even a little, just think what it would sound like to the assistant AG or the AG. Make sure you're not vulnerable. If I were you, I wouldn't tell anybody that I'd seen that creep again and talked to him."

She said, "Oh, I didn't talk to him. I just happened to spot him on the street as I was leaving my cleaner's where I was picking up some clothes. I watched him from a distance to see where he went." She realized that she had crossed a line. She was lying to Fulton now.

"Well, if he does try to talk to you again, I'd think carefully before I told Hunsecker."

"Not much chance of either," she said. "Well, thanks. I owe you another one." She turned and left his office.

As Elizabeth walked along the hallway, she pressed the wheel on her phone to automatically dial home. After a moment she heard Amanda's voice. "Hello?"

"Hi, honey. I'm still at work. I'm afraid something new has come in and I've got to deal with it tonight. Can you and Jim cook something up for dinner between you? There's plenty in the refrigerator."

"Sure. It was getting to be that time, so I already took a look in there and have my eye on a few things. We'll see what his majesty wants."

"Tell him I said he has to help. Or if you cook, he cleans up."

"We'll work it out," Amanda said. "I'll see you later."

"Yes," said Elizabeth. "But don't wait up for me. Tomorrow's a school day, and this could be a late one."

When they'd hung up, Elizabeth spent a minute or two walking along the nearly deserted hallway of the big building, feeling a kind of emptiness. Even the phrases were formulaic—something came up. Don't wait up for me. She sounded like a cheating husband, not a devoted mother. When things calmed down, she would do better.





She rode the elevator down to the computer rooms in the basement. She was going to see what the old men were up to. If the Butcher's Boy was right, tonight was the only chance to learn where they were going to meet. The day after tomorrow, they would all be back in their houses behind the high walls and at the ends of quarter-mile driveways. But tonight, if her source was correct, they would be on the move, like hermit crabs out for a walk without their shells. The trick was to pick them up before they could scuttle back in.