Thomas Perry - The Informant

But VP's invitation was a trap. Did he know it was a trap? He must at least be suspicious and wary at this point. Who was VP, anyway? It was probably somebody he might trust, somebody he had known in the old days, when he was every family's favorite hit man. Who did he know from those days who could pose as a friend? It had to be somebody who was at least forty-five years old. The ad had said, "I missed you at the ranch." Did that mean VP had been there?

She had typed the list of names into her laptop the first day, then added notes to each entry as she learned details and what charges were filed. She opened the file and scrolled down the list to the Ps. There seemed to be three VPs-Victor Perrone, Vito Pastore, and Vincent Pugliese. She hesitated. VP might not even be a name. It could be VP for vice president, some reference to an old fake business he would understand. Or it could be one of those childish nicknames they gave each other-Pete "the Postman" Calvatti or Sammy "Antennas" Antonino.

It didn't even have to be a man. It could be a woman. In that world, it might make the invitation seem less dangerous. In his days as an active killer for hire, he couldn't have had a girlfriend that other people knew about, and he couldn't have had a relationship with any female relative of the men he met on business. They saved their sisters and daughters to marry other members of LCN, or at the very least, other Italians. Any women he had would have been prostitutes, or women he met on a temporary, semi-anonymous basis. He couldn't have had emotional ties with a woman of the sort that made his visits to her habitual or predictable, or he would be dead.

No, it felt like VP had to be one of the two hundred men at the ranch, and she had the feeling that nicknames weren't likely to be conveyed as initials. She returned to her list. Victor Perrone. He was old enough and was prominent enough to be the one they'd use as an ambassador. But he was a capo in the Balacontano family, and a brother-in-law of Antonio Talarese, a man she believed the Butcher's Boy had killed ten years ago, the last time he was active. Even if he wasn't a supporter of Frank Tosca, he would certainly not be a friend of Tosca's killer. A challenge from him might work; an invitation wouldn't.

That left Vincent Pugliese and Vito Pastore. She didn't know much about Vito Pastore. She went to the NCIC site. There were two Vito Pastores and neither was the right man. One of them had been born in 1901. He had a criminal record that began in 1919 and stretched for sixty years. He had been picked up in a bootlegging raid. He had once been convicted of robbing a train. He had been dead since 1979.

The second Vito Pastore's record consisted of convictions for importing and selling counterfeit designer clothes, watches, and handbags, extortion in connection with a music distribution deal. He was questioned and released in the killing of Ronald Sturtevant, a bass guitar player for a band called Scuffle. He was twenty-six years old. He would have been about five or six years old when the Butcher's Boy was still meeting people. It occurred to her that he might be a surrogate for somebody who was the right age, but how would the Butcher's Boy know that?

She turned her attention to Vincent Pugliese. He was just about the right age-fifty-and he was an underboss with the Castiglione family, the highest he could go without being named Castiglione. She had no knowledge of how he had met the Butcher's Boy, but she supposed all the ways were unlikely but one.

She scrolled to the thumbnail pictures and clicked on a few to enlarge them. There was a set of mug shots from 1980, when he was convicted of violating the Illinois concealed-firearm laws. On the day of his arrest he had been very well dressed, with an expensive haircut and a calm, relaxed expression. He had been handsome in those days.

The Justice Department file on him had more recent photographs, all surveillance photographs taken with a telephoto lens. There was nothing very revealing. Here he was coming out of a Chicago restaurant called Rangione's Villa Venetia. A parking attendant had just brought up a black Mercedes sedan that was probably his.

There was another of him on a golf course waiting to tee off-again looking prosperous, relaxed, and calm. He was leaning on his driver and holding his ball and a tee in his right hand. She recognized two of the men with him as Castiglione brothers. The third, who was teeing off, was unfamiliar to her. She looked at the note below. It said the man was Wilson McGee, the professional golfer. Of course, it would be somebody like that. Mafiosi loved celebrities.

She was almost positive now that VP was Vincent Pugliese. There were no other candidates who had all the qualities and who felt right. She had heard twenty years ago that the Butcher's Boy had grown up in the Midwest. To her that meant at least some relationship with LCN, most likely including some members of the Castiglione organization. Even if they weren't the employer, they would demand that anybody who made his living murdering people in their territory check in with them. They wouldn't want somebody collecting on a relative or a vital business associate. There would have been plenty of opportunities for the Butcher's Boy to meet Vincent Pugliese when they were both young.

There was also the complicated relationship between the two Chicago Mafia families and the five families in New York. From time to time for nearly a century the New York families had claimed some kind of primacy over the Chicago families. All of those claims had been denied and all incursions repelled. There had been nothing she knew of in the past twenty years, but maybe there was one Chicago capo who was not unhappy to see Frank Tosca die and the Balacontano family in confusion.

Anything could be happening, but what she believed was that there would be a moment when Vincent Pugliese would meet with the Butcher's Boy to talk about his future. It would take place within a few days, and it would be in or near Chicago, where there was some assurance that Pugliese could offer protection.

She walked down the long hallway. It occurred to her that this was the third time in about a week when she had, in advance, seen the path of the Butcher's Boy converging with the path of someone else in a certain place at a certain time and not been able to do anything about it herself.

She stopped at Ed Morris's office and knocked. Morris's assistant, Mike Tucker, looked up, then looked surprised, and stood. "Ms. Waring. What can I do for you?"

"I'd like about five minutes of Ed's time, if it's possible."

"Let me ask if he's able to see you right now." He knocked on the inner door and then stepped inside, and then came back out with Ed Morris.

Morris said, "Elizabeth, please come in." Elizabeth wasn't surprised by the way he treated her. Morris was, in his heart, a cop, and he had that almost courtly manner that a lot of them had. As he held the door for her, he appeared to almost bow.

When she was inside, he said, "Can I have Mike get you anything to drink-a coffee? Bottled water?"

"No thanks," she said. "The walk to this end of the hall is all of a hundred and twenty feet. I came to ask for some closely held information. I want to know if there's anybody-us, the FBI, the Chicago police-doing any surveillance on a man named Vincent Pugliese right now. He's an underboss in the Castiglione family."

"We're not," he said. "I mean not on him personally. We might get him because he's half of somebody else's phone call, or he might be noticed by the airport surveillance teams. But let me get Mike on this. It takes about ten minutes and a couple of phone calls, but when he gets the answer, you can rely on it."

"Thanks, Ed," she said.

He went out for a few seconds, then returned. "He's on it. If there isn't a surveillance operation on Vincent Pugliese, do you want us to start work on authorizing one?"