The Informant (20 page)

"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?"

"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 omertà 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."