Thomas Perry - The Informant

She wrote it out on a page torn from her address book while she was in the cab to the Justice Department building. She got out in front of the building, paid the driver, and went inside, still thinking about what she was going to do. When she walked into the office, she almost handed the little torn page to Geoffrey. No, she thought. This has to be unofficial. No unwitting accomplices to get destroyed if it blows up. She said to him, "Hi, Geoff. Give me fifteen minutes before I see Hunsecker," and went into her office and closed her door.

She sent text messages to her children. "I'm back and will be in the office for the day. If you need me, don't hesitate to call. Love, Mom."

Then she turned on her laptop and went to the site of the Arizona Republic in Phoenix and placed her personal ad. Next she went to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.

It took him two days to drive the eleven hundred miles from Houston to Denver and a night to recover, but now it was morning and he was a guest in the Brown Palace Hotel in the center of Denver. The hotel was old, with lots of dark, polished wood. He had always thought of it as what some of the old hotels Eddie Mastrewski had stayed in must have looked like before they fell into ruin. Eddie had liked those old hotels, and he would have loved the Brown Palace, with its old-fashioned wallpaper and the antique architecture of the place. It had a central stairwell, so a person on the upper floors could look down into the square enclosure of railings all the way to the lobby.

A few of Eddie's hotels were built that way, but they were all creaky, with stains on the worn carpets that the boy could only make guesses about. Eddie had liked them because they were so devoid of paying guests that he could go to the upper levels and occupy a floor of his own. That way he could use the hallway as his front porch, sit in a chair, read the papers, and look down to see if any of his horde of enemies showed up. He was especially partial to the places where the management wouldn't be too shocked if he left suddenly. He always paid in cash at the start of a stay so any consternation he caused was emotional and had no legal implications.

This morning he missed Eddie more than usual. He would have loved to have Eddie out there in the hallway, tilting back in a desk chair with a cigarette burning in the big sand-filled ashtray and the two. 45 automatic pistols in his coat.

Schaeffer took the elevator to the lobby, went into the hotel shop, and bought the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune. He walked into the hotel restaurant and went to a booth near the back where he could see the doorway. He was aware of the two other ways out of the dining room-through the bar and past the men's room, and through the kitchen to the alley. He had scanned the room from the doorway and seen no reason to worry, but he looked at all the faces once more before he opened the New York Times.

He ran his eyes down each page, looking for some reference to what had happened in Arizona. He saw nothing. By now the federal cops must have identified the men they had cornered in their raid. It seemed odd that more wasn't being made of it. Maybe the right person at the Times had not yet seen the list and noticed that many of the names were recognizable names of New York gangsters. He opened the Tribune. There was a brief story that said FBI officials had raided a compound in Arizona and arrested "dozens of men" on weapons and drug charges. The story was out. In a day or two, when reporters saw the names, it would probably blow up a bit.

It was possible the L.A. Times would be ahead on this one because Arizona was a bit closer to their orbit, but he found nothing. When the waitress came, he ordered his breakfast, then looked idly at the papers he'd already seen. He wondered if any of the old men still used the personal ads. That had once been the way that people like Eddie knew they were wanted for a job. Eddie would not have liked it if a couple of Mafia soldiers had come to his butcher shop to offer him a contract.

Something caught his eye. An ad said, "BB: Sorry I missed you at the ranch. I'll see what I can do, if you want. VP"

VP had to be Vincent Pugliese. They always used the guy you liked best, the one you'd trust if you had to trust anyone. Pugliese worked for the Castigliones, so the one who had ordered Pugliese to do this was a Castiglione, probably Joe, the oldest brother. He would have asked if anybody thought he could be the one, and Vince had done that silent nod of his-a serious man's gesture, not bobbing his head up and down like a windup toy, but a single dip of the head.

Schaeffer remembered that nod from the old days, when the Castiglione family had summoned him to Chicago. Old Salvatore Castiglione hired him to go to Milwaukee and demonstrate to the small Mafia contingent there that their way of declaring independence from the Castiglione family in Chicago had been a bad idea. Instead of paying their regular percentage, they had killed the bagman. Salvatore had decided that the one who should pay was Tony Fantano, the boss of the Milwaukee crew.

The boy was twenty years old and he didn't know Tony Fantano by sight or where to find him. He was already resigned to having to find the right bar and start asking questions. But Castiglione said, "We'll give you a guide." The old man looked around the room at the men who were sitting there. That was the first time Schaeffer had seen the nod. Vince Pugliese was the same age as he was, but he had an intelligent, quiet gravity even then. Vince simply nodded once. "Done," said the old man. "Vince will go with you."

They drove to Milwaukee that night. They had a Chevy Impala stolen from Oklahoma City with Illinois plates that were also stolen. They had a pair of. 45 pistols, two among the millions of copies of the Colt 1911 model that were issued by the U.S. Army until the end of World War II and then passed from hand to hand for forty years until there was no way of guessing who the recorded owner had been.

He remembered riding into Milwaukee while Vince drove the car. They had talked about everything but the job. They had both been feeling at that time in their lives that they wished they could go to college. Pugliese had noticed that Castiglione's son had sons their age-the grandsons of old Salvatore-and two of the three were away at college. Old Salvatore was paying the insane tuition for both of them. For his own family, Salvatore thought education was a good idea. For the sons of other men-young guys like Vince-it was a stupid waste of time.

Schaeffer had admitted that he had been thinking about going to college for a couple of years, but he didn't see a way to accomplish it. If word got out where he was, there would be men coming to his dormitory to hire him for one more job, and others would come to kill him. Either way, staying would be impossible. Besides, his attendance record in high school had been spotty because he and Eddie had traveled so much.

Vince said, "You were taking wet jobs in high school?"

"Yeah. And how old were you the first time you had to step around a guy you shot to get home?"

"Yeah," Vince said. "I kind of forgot. I was seventeen." He drove in silence for a few minutes, looking occasionally at the lake to his right. "I suppose Mr. Castiglione is right-college is not for guys like me. I make more money than a doctor or a lawyer, and I'm not twenty-one yet. College would cost me too much in lost pay."

They had changed the subject and agreed on a plan. They would try to take Tony Fantano while he was out alone, away from his house. Vince would drive the car, and Schaeffer would do the work.

They parked a half block away from Fantano's house at four A.M. and waited. At just after seven, he backed his car out of his driveway and drove up the street. They waited until he turned and then followed him at a distance. He got onto a major street and drove across town while they kept a few vehicles between their car and his, thinking at each major intersection that soon he would reach his destination and stop. He didn't. He drove right out of the city with them following, trying to stay as far back as they could behind trucks that would keep them invisible to his rearview mirror. He went about ten miles out on a rural route, turned off into the long gravel driveway of a farm, and stopped at a white farmhouse.