The Informant (6 page)

"I know Carl Bala put one out on him before he went to prison. People have said it's in the millions."

"Balacontano? Is he even alive to pay off?"

"As of this moment he is. He's safe and sound in a maximum security special wing, where nobody gets to see him but the doctors and the visitors he listed when he went in. But he'd almost certainly pay off. He's in for life, so there's no use for Bala's money that would bring him more pleasure than the death of this hit man."

Agent Holman was silent for a few seconds. "I'd hate to shut this down now. I can keep up the surveillance on Tosca's house until the end of the day. At that time, if I don't have the official approval for the operation, we'll have to stand down. Do you think you can get it?"

"All I can guarantee is that I'm going to try very hard. Thanks so much for buying me some time."

One of the other phone lines had been blinking for at least thirty seconds. She knew it must be someone from Hunsecker's office calling to find out what she was doing. She couldn't think of a way to answer that without appearing to have disregarded everything Hunsecker had said. She picked up the telephone. "Elizabeth Waring."

"Waring." It wasn't a secretary. It was Hunsecker. Waring was aware that her door was opening and that her assistant, Geoffrey, was holding a hand-scrawled note, looking worried. She nodded to him and pointed at the door. He turned and went through it.

"Hello, Mr. Hunsecker. I'm sorry if I kept you waiting. I was on another call with the FBI in New York."

"So it's true."

"Late last night we received the news that Michael Delamina had been murdered. I realized that I had to try to head off the next murder."

"You did exactly as this killer asked—you started an FBI investigation of his enemy."

"I set up a surveillance to protect Tosca, not investigate him."

"You have a team watching him twenty-four hours a day. The difference is lost on me."

"It's a big one. The target is the killer, not the probable victim."

"And if the FBI just happened to overhear the victim planning a crime, or engaging in a conspiracy, they have orders not to arrest him?"

"No. I didn't think that was necessary."

"Your humanitarian surveillance just happens to put the FBI and the target of your last request in close proximity. I've already called off your request. The FBI goes off the case at six."

"Are you sure you need to call it off? They're already in place."

"The Justice Department of the United States can't be in the position of targeting a killer's enemies, even if he's a potential informant. It's a matter of personal and professional ethics."

"We have a practical disagreement about how best to prevent a murder. That doesn't mean my ethics are any worse than yours. I think it's wrong to let anyone be murdered. For me that supersedes my previous wish to investigate this victim. If you withdraw his protection, he'll be dead in a couple of days."

"If that happens, I'll be amazed."

"As soon as it does, I'll let you know."

"If it does happen in the next couple of days, you probably won't. That will fall during your two-day suspension. You're excused until Monday."

"I can't believe this."

"You'll probably get through this, if you don't say anything else. What will it be?"

She forced herself to say nothing. She hung up, and as she stared down at her big wooden desk, she felt her stomach sink. She was almost dizzy. She had never been suspended from any job before, or even come close. Passing through her mind were the humiliation of being overruled and embarrassed in front of an FBI agent, a pure anger at Hunsecker's rigid stupidity, and fear that she was about to lose her job. She felt like crying, but she knew that Hunsecker's confidants would be looking for that, and hers would be alarmed by it. She wanted to get out of here—had to, if she wanted to keep her job.

She packed the files she'd been reading into her briefcase, turned off the lights in her office, and walked out the door. "Geoff, I've been suspended for the rest of the week. Keep track of my calls, open my mail, and sort it in my in-box in priority order. We'll have a lot of catching up to do on Monday."

HE WAS FEELING
more relaxed now that he had found Frank Tosca's house surrounded by FBI agents. The destruction of the life Michael Schaeffer had built in England had stopped, and his trouble was contained for the moment. Delamina and the other two men who had been sent to England to find him were dead. Now Frank Tosca couldn't walk his dog without having his picture taken, and he couldn't talk to his family without having it recorded. Tosca didn't need to be dead. If the Justice Department was already preparing a murder case against him, then his brief run at being the head of the Balacontano family was over. He would be transformed from the young bull who was going to bring back the old days into a dangerous liability. Even if the FBI didn't arrest him, his closest friends would abandon him.

He checked out of his hotel Thursday morning at ten
A.M.
and got into his rented Toyota Avalon. Since he had moved to England he hadn't driven much. His main house was in Bath, and so he walked nearly everywhere. He kept a Jaguar in the garage because Meg liked to drive in the country sometimes and liked to have him drive her on social occasions when she had to be the Honourable Lady Margaret Susanna Moncrief Holroyd of Axeborough. He missed her this morning.

He drove in the direction of Tosca's house. Before he left for JFK he wanted to take one look at the surveillance team in daylight. There had to be more certainty about Tosca's fate. If the feds were committed to a full-scale operation to keep Tosca in their field of vision twenty-four hours a day, then they had nearly enough evidence, and Tosca was doomed. But he had to be sure. He didn't want to be home in Bath two months from now thinking Meg was safe, and then discover more of Tosca's underlings making their way through his back garden.

He made sure he was below the speed limit, which was only twenty-five in these narrow residential streets, but he didn't spot the FBI field team. The vans with the remote listening devices and telescopic lenses were not in evidence on the streets where they had been last night. He knew the FBI preferred the use of buildings for long-term surveillance. They were less obtrusive, held more people, had a higher vantage point, provided a clearer view of the target, and supplied an inexhaustible source of electric power.

He began to look closely at the houses. He drove by the three where the vans had been parked two nights ago and studied the immediate area. There seemed to be none of the signs that would reveal the presence of FBI agents. There was no lowering of blinds or shades so there could be cameras above the rods or mountings. There were no dishes or disks that might be parabolic microphones, no cars parked in the wrong places, no crews working on the roads or on the wires, the pipes, or the landscaping of any of the houses. Most of the garage doors were open, and he could see high-end station wagons and SUVs—nothing that was either powerful or nimble. He drove to the house around the corner where two nights ago the high hedges had hidden the chase cars lined up in the driveway. He passed the entrance, and he could see the long driveway was empty. The windows had no curtains on them, and he could see into empty rooms.

He was certain now that the FBI had left. The surveillance was over. Had Tosca been so stupid or unlucky that he'd already said or done something in the few hours since Tuesday that had allowed the agents to arrest him? He drove back to the block where Tosca's house was and drove past it. There were no cops searching the house and grounds, no signs of any police vehicles anywhere. The surveillance had ended, and that meant he was going to have to take care of Tosca himself. He drove out of the residential streets to the commercial part of town. It was still before noon, so he had a lot of time to fill.

He went to a big movie theater in a shopping mall and watched a movie about bank robbers. It was so far from reality that he could watch it uncritically. The real bank robbers he had met were stupid. They all knew that bank robberies were investigated by local, state, and federal agencies. They knew that while they were committing their crime, they were being videotaped from several angles. They knew that tellers' stations had silent-alarm buttons, and that the money they got was marked and sometimes contained an ink bomb. They did it anyway and kept doing it until they were in handcuffs. But these were movie bank robbers, so they were attractive, smart, and lucky, none more so than the beautiful girl safecracker who wore the spandex catsuit and handled the explosives.

When that movie ended, he went outside again and went for a walk, then had a light lunch. After that, he went to another theater and watched another movie, this one about a high-powered woman executive who was forced to pretend she was married to her male rival. When the two finally did what everyone had been expecting for two hours and the lights went on, he walked some more, had dinner, and went to a third movie. It was about a professional killer, and he slept through most of it. When it was late enough and most of the people on the streets had already driven home, he left his car parked in the lot of the big hotel on Glen Cove that looked like a British manor and walked toward Tosca's house.

He'd been aware of the possibility that he was wrong and that the FBI agents would be back after the rest of the world was asleep so they could work unnoticed until they were established in some comfortable place and had all their gadgets working. But there were no signs of them tonight either. It had also occurred to him that if they had conclusive evidence on a man who was unlikely to be alone and sure to be heavily armed, they might pull everybody back for a day and swoop in later. But the neighborhood presented too much clear evidence against that theory. There were cars in all the driveways. Television sets projected moving glows on many white ceilings. If the FBI had planned to raid the house of a Mafia capo like Tosca, they wouldn't want civilians in the line of fire. There were no feds: he had the night to himself.

Tosca's house had a lawn that looked like a city park, with tall old trees at irregular intervals. There was a long driveway with a circle around a flower bed near the door, in nearly the same sort of grand miniaturization as the empty house around the corner.

He turned his attention to the house. The place would be filled with dozens of machines that were supposed to make the night go away, make the cold and the heat stay within a degree of each other, bring in images from everywhere in the world, and keep Frank Tosca safe. Considerable effort would be required to hide from the machines and stay invisible. He set to work on the electronic gear.

He climbed a tree at the corner of the house to reach the eaves and pulled himself up onto the roof. If there was a power failure and the phone lines were cut, the battery-operated internal modem in the security system control box in the house would begin dialing the headquarters of the security company. But the signal would be sent by a battery-operated transmitter that amounted to a cell phone mounted on the roof. He found the power cord for recharging the battery, followed it to the transmitter mounted near the peak, and disconnected both power sources.

Just beyond the edge of the roof was the tree he had climbed to get up here. He grasped a limb and lowered himself to the ground, walked around the house to the telephone circuit box, and pulled the wires from their connections. Next he went to the electrical circuit box and flipped the main circuit breaker to cut the power to the house.

He had not completely neutralized the alarm system. The security circuit box inside the house would have a rechargeable battery that would cause the alarm to sound when a breach occurred. All he had done was ensure that the signal wouldn't go to the security company and the police.

He circled the house, looking in the windows to find the easiest way in. He knew the system installed on the windows and doors. Each contact consisted of a magnet on one side and a switch on the other. If the magnet on the window frame moved away from the switch in the sill, the switch would close, the alarm circuit would be completed, and the alarm would sound. There was an alarm system box somewhere in the house, and it was possible to open it and turn off the system. But it was always hidden in a closet or cupboard, and Tosca had a big house.

After a few minutes he found the window he wanted. It was divided into four small panes on the top half and four on the bottom, and looked out onto a small garden of low, thick flowering plants. He used duct tape to cover one pane so it wouldn't shatter and make a loud noise. Then he wrapped his crowbar in his jacket and pushed it against the windowpane until it gave inward with a quiet crack. Nothing fell to the floor. He pulled the glass out and set it on the ground. Then he put his arm inside. He placed the magnet he had brought right beside the window at the center of the sill where the switch would be. Next he reached up to disengage the latch and raised the window. No alarm sounded.

He climbed inside, lowered the window again, took his magnet, and moved to stand with his back against the inner wall of the room. He stood still, looked into the dark house, and listened. When he was still a boy, Eddie Mastrewski had said, "If you want to be good at night work, watch the cat."

The cat he meant was the big yellow tomcat that Eddie allowed to live in the office of the butcher shop. Most of the time he seemed to be asleep. He slept whenever there was no strong reason not to. "You mean now?"

"He's resting. Learn from him."

The boy could tell that Eddie was serious. Eddie's lessons were also tests, and the boy knew it. He watched the cat for a long time before he was sure that the cat wasn't exactly sleeping, but not exactly not sleeping either. The cat's eyes were not quite closed, and he was still aware of the things that were going on around him. He kept watching the cat while he was working—weighing, wrapping, and labeling cuts of meat that Eddie's expert knifework placed on the cutting board—and he kept noticing other things. At the end of that day, Eddie said, "What have you learned?"