Thomas Perry - The Informant

"I'm not a decent guy. A decent guy wouldn't be much use to you."

"No, I didn't ask you here to insult you. Even if I feel like committing suicide, this isn't the way I wanted to do it. I want to hire you."

"You already have. Mr. Strongiolo sent me a retainer, or I wouldn't be here. Tell me who I'm going to see."

"Three weeks ago a Cuban named Montoya came to my office and said he represented a syndicate of investors who wanted to buy a fifty-one percent share of the parking business. I said, 'How much?' and he said, 'Twenty grand ought to be enough,' and I said, 'I've got six lots, and each of them is worth ten times that. Maybe you have my company mixed up with another one.'"

"What did he say?"

"He said he knew all that. He said I was just resisting because I didn't know who he represented. He works for Hektor Cruz."

"Do you know who Hektor Cruz is?" Schaeffer asked.

"He's in the drug business. There are lots of people in Miami in the drug business." He took a deep breath and let it out. "I said, 'I've heard of Mr. Cruz. Please give him my regrets. My partners and I aren't interested in selling out.' And just so there wasn't any misunderstanding I said, 'One of those partners is Victor Strongiolo, and the others are close associates of ours.' It was true. Mr. S. gets a quarter cut of my action. You know how things work."

"I do."

"I made it clear who I was, and who my silent partners were. I mean, this guy might just not know who he was talking to. It could be an honest mistake. And I was polite. There was no reason to rub his face in it. I even stood up and held out my hand to shake. He stood too, but he didn't take it. He just gave a little wave and said, 'I'll be talking to you very soon.'"

Schaeffer could see Agnoli had come to the hard part because his eyes had started to water. "The next day we found my brother Jimmy dead. He was shot nine times and dropped in the Dumpster."

"How do you want this done?"

"I want to keep it simple. You get Hektor Cruz."

"Just Cruz?"

"Cruz is not easy. These guys are never alone. But once he's gone, the rest will be disorganized, scared, indecisive. We'll erase them over a period of a few days."

"What does this pay?"

"Two hundred thousand."

"Don't start your war until I tell you Cruz is dead."

"You have my word."

He stood up. "I'll talk to you after it's done."

"Wait," Agnoli said. "Don't you want half up front?"

He smiled for the first time. "No need. Nobody forgets to pay me."

He had located Cruz by finding a newspaper photograph of him and then waiting outside Montoya's office until he appeared. He followed him home, then watched him from a distance for two nights. He was a short man with wavy black hair and big brown eyes who wore light-colored tailored tropical suits and traveled with two bodyguards who looked a lot like him. They spent each night moving from one club to another in a black Lincoln limousine, dancing and drinking and picking up women. The women might stick with them for hours, or just ride with them to the next club, or come out with them to the parking lot, kiss them good-bye, and then go back inside. But Cruz was never alone.

On the third night he saw his chance. When the driver left the car for a few minutes while he waited outside a club, Schaeffer got into the back seat. He broke Cruz's driver's neck, then took his place in the driver's seat. When Cruz came out of the club with his two men, Schaeffer waited until they were a few feet away, then shot all three. It looked to the parking attendants and the confused line of customers as though an unseen sniper must have done the killing, and he was just returning fire. Because he was in the driver's seat of Cruz's car, he must be on Cruz's side. When he got out to drag Cruz's body into the back seat and drove off, people thought he was saving Cruz.

He drove the car only six blocks to the back of a closed restaurant, where he parked the car and hoisted the body into the Dumpster. Then he walked one more block to the residential street where he had left his rental car, got in, and drove off.

The Agnoli he followed now in the Tucson airport was twenty years older and a happier man. He was a little pudgy, but he looked good. Agnoli's step had some spring to it as he walked down the concourse. Near the end he turned into a men's room.

It was remote, at the far end where there were only a few gates, and the flights were mostly international ones that left late in the day. When Schaeffer stepped into the men's room, he saw that it was empty, except for Agnoli at the urinal. Agnoli finished and stepped to the sink and washed his hands. As he reached for a paper towel to dry them he looked up into the mirror, and their eyes locked. Agnoli's eyes went wide and he began to shake.

"I guess you remember me."

Agnoli stood still, with the towel in his hands.

"Give me your cell phone."

Agnoli reached into his pocket and handed it to him. "Are you here to kill me?"

"I hope not. You were at the ranch. How did you get away?"

Agnoli looked as though he were having trouble translating a phrase in a foreign language. After a pause, he said, "I hid. Two of the catering trucks were still there. I went and hid in the back of one of them, behind a bunch of big plastic food containers and cases of empty liquor bottles. I went behind them and then set a few others in front of me. I heard the cops come by and look in the back, and then somebody rolled the door down and locked it. I sat there for hours. Then I heard the engine start, and we began to move. Then the truck stopped, and somebody opened the door and unloaded some of the stuff on a dolly. When they pushed the dolly away, I got out. I was at a loading dock behind a restaurant in Phoenix. I knew they'd never hire a caterer for a meet like that if he wasn't a friend of ours, so I went to the back door. They set me up with a ride so I could get home."

"Congratulations. I doubt that many others got out."

"What do you want from me?"

"Information. If you tell me the truth, we'll both go away and forget we saw each other." He paused. "You know my word is good."

"It is to me. You did better than you promised. I remember when you put that son of a bitch Hektor Cruz in the Dumpster and killed two of his men. I owe you something for that extra touch. My family owes you. That was worth more than money to my poor mother."

"I need to know where I stand. When Frank Tosca asked everybody to join in and find me, what did they say?"

Agnoli sighed. "I want you to know I had no part in this. I run one little crew-all middle-aged fat guys like me. The rest of the world tolerates us because we've always been good earners. We're not greedy. We like a little wine, maybe have a woman we don't eat breakfast with now and then. I don't get a vote on anything at a sit-down, and if I did, I wouldn't use it to try to take over the world-about which I don't give a shit. You know I'd never vote to kill you. That stuff about you was courtesy of Frank Tosca."

"I know. What did the old men decide?"

Agnoli took two deep breaths and held on to the sink to steady himself. "They all said they'd do it."

Schaeffer had known that much. He nodded. He had tested Agnoli, and Agnoli had told him the truth. He patted Agnoli's shoulder. "It must have been hard to say that to me. Thank you."

"Hard? If I hadn't just gone, my pants would be wet."

"Have you heard what happened to Tosca?"

"I just heard it on the phone. A friend of mine said it was on television in Miami. The news people didn't know who that was."

"It doesn't matter now," Schaeffer said.

"No, it sure doesn't."

"Tell me where I stand now. The old men might have said yes to a request from Tosca when he was alive because they didn't want to be on his bad side if he took over the Balacontano family. Now that he's dead, what are they likely to do?"