Thomas Perry - The Informant

"Jesus," Agnoli said. "Jesus."

"Don't be afraid. It's my last question. Tell me the truth and I'm gone."

Agnoli took some more deep breaths, and a drop of sweat curled down from his temple to his chin. "I'm sorry."

"What does that mean?"

"I called home to check on my guys. My underboss said they'd already gotten a call. The cops let Victor Strongiolo see his lawyer. He told him to pass the word down to us that the old men want you dead."

"Even with no Frank Tosca to thank them?"

Agnoli shrugged. "You were right about why they agreed. They didn't want Tosca to take over the Balacontano family and then hold a grudge because they didn't help when he needed it. But the rest of this pissed them off. It pissed them off that you knew about the meeting, that you got in, and that you killed Tosca. And I think it scared them. If you could do that to Tosca, what's to stop you from killing them?"

Schaeffer said, "If they changed their minds and left me alone, that's what would stop me. Nothing else. Do you understand?"

"I understand perfectly. I've seen your work."

Schaeffer said, "You've treated me honorably. I'll do the same to you. When does your flight board?"

"About a half hour."

"Stay here for fifteen minutes. Don't call anybody or try to find me. I won't tell anyone we talked."

"Thank you," Agnoli said.

Schaeffer went out the door. Agnoli steadied himself on the sink. After a few minutes of trying to regain his composure, he realized he hadn't looked at his watch to be sure when the fifteen minutes had started. He looked, and started the fifteen minutes then.

Elizabeth Waring called Jim and Amanda at one o'clock in the afternoon so she could catch them right at four eastern time when they arrived home from school. "How was school?" brought vague reassurances but no actual information. "Do you have everything you need for dinner? If you don't, you're welcome to go out to pick up something at Koo Koo Roo or California Pizza Kitchen" brought reminders that they had too much homework to waste time on that. She gave up, issued motherly benedictions, and went back to work. She stayed in the Phoenix field office until after midnight and then accepted a ride to a hotel near the airport. As she lay down on the bed, it occurred to her that midnight in Phoenix was three A.M. in Washington. It was a feeble, passing observation, the last before sleep took over her brain.

When she awoke, it was nearly ten. She called the FBI field office, identified herself, and asked for Special Agent Holman. The woman at the other end said, "I'm sorry, Ms. Waring. This is Agent O'Brien. He had a flight out at eight. He and his team were ordered back to Washington."

"Then the operation here is over?"

"Hardly. We have two murders, two hundred persons of interest in custody all over the place, and a wide variety of charges are being filed this morning."

"I know. I did some of the paperwork last night."

"That's right. I'm sorry. But I think what's happened is that the rest of this is going to be left to us-permanent party Arizona."

"Are you feeling overwhelmed?"

"Everybody is eager. This is a big chance. But this office doesn't see many La Cosa Nostra types except a few retirees and the guys who buy the drugs that are brought in through the desert."

"I'll be there in about an hour," Elizabeth said. "I can spare another day or two."

Elizabeth took a cab to the field office, entered the conference room, and began resorting the files on the long table. After a half hour, Krause came in. "Ms. Waring. What are you doing?"

"I'm going to make some charts so the U.S. attorneys here will know who's who. Do you think you could get me a few more office supplies?"

"Sure. What do you need?"

"Twenty-six sheets of poster-size paper. A ruler, a few pens. Black is best, but anything will do."

He returned just as she finished sorting the files into twenty-six piles. She took the first one, wrote CHICAGO and a horizontal line that said CASTIGLIONE FAMILY. She put horizontal lines in a row below it and wrote JOSEPH, PAUL, AND SALVATORE CASTIGLIONE. Directly under them were eight underbosses, and to their right were three consiglieres. She wrote in the names of four underbosses who had been arrested in Arizona. She went below to the caporegima and then to the soldiers. Below them were the names of the young bodyguards each of the bosses had brought with him.

By one she had filled in the names of all of the men who had been detained. Each appeared on his line in the hierarchy of his home city. Krause came into the conference room and looked at the charts. He brought with him a woman in her early thirties with red hair. "This is Agent O'Brien," he said. "Elizabeth Waring of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Division of Justice."

"Oh, yes," Elizabeth said. "We introduced ourselves on the phone this morning."

"Yes, we did," said O'Brien. "Everyone knows who you are, of course. It's a pleasure to meet you in person."

Elizabeth was taken aback for a second, but then she realized it was probably true that young agents knew the names of the people who had been on this detail for so many years. "Thank you."

Krause looked at a few of the organizational charts. "You knew who every one of these guys was?"

"We knew the big players, of course-the 'old men' is what people call them-because even the ones who aren't exactly old have been around a long time. They're either heads of families, or in a few cases they're underbosses who run some semi-independent group or the Mafia contingent in a small city, and they all have long records. The place where we're going to gain some ground is the two-thirds who aren't famous. Some haven't even been arrested before. We not only have their names, photographs, and addresses, but now we can tell who they work for and where they must fit in. It's a huge update."

O'Brien said, "So we should assume they're important if they were invited to the conference?"

"Not important right now. A twenty-two-year-old doesn't run anything in the Mafia, any more than he would at any other major American business. But if he was there, he's trusted. The old men, as a rule, are very suspicious and wary. If they're invited to travel anywhere, they don't necessarily assume it's safe. The young men they bring with them are the ones they would want with them in a fight. Our experience is that these are the men we'll keep seeing for the next twenty or thirty years."

"Are they the ones we try to pressure to tell us more?"

"None of these people will talk. Not the bosses, and not the young bodyguards. They take omerta seriously. The only ones we've ever had any luck with were middle-aged soldiers who have done their jobs and kept the secrets for thirty years and have nothing to show for it. That's the only group that isn't invited to this kind of meeting. They're all at home making money for the bosses."

"Are we wasting our time talking to these men?"

"No. They sometimes reveal useful information without knowing it. I think what we've got to try for is what they were talking about at the conference. They don't meet like this very often, and anything that might give us the agenda is worthwhile. And relationships are important, particularly blood relations. If you find out Mike Morella in Los Angeles is a cousin of Gaetano Bruni in Chicago, some day that might be important information, so make sure it gets into their intelligence files."

"Ms. Waring?"

She turned her head. Agent Collazo was in the doorway. "There's a call from the deputy assistant AG for you. Would you like to take it in my office? It's quieter."

He meant more private. "That would be great." She got up. "Excuse me." She went into his office and he closed the door after her.