The Informant (29 page)

"And this couple—they're sure it was just one man who did this?"

"Oh, yes. As you can see, the walls aren't much. They heard him cough, but there was no talking until the assailants came."

"Thank you very much," she said. "You've helped me a lot."

She and the FBI agents walked to the car. Saddler opened the door for her and said, "I suppose he's long gone by now."

Elizabeth got into the back seat. As she spoke, she realized she was lying to an investigator who was trying to help. "I'm sure he is."

"As I recall, the last actual count we did was four hundred and forty-three soldiers in the Castiglione organization. There are probably a few we don't know about who have made their bones since. Plus assorted hangers-on, wannabes, and allies. They'll all be looking for him day and night."

"No doubt," she said. "He's probably been driving hard since about five
A.M.
He could be in Canada by now."

For most of her career she had never intentionally lied to another Justice Department official about anything, but now it was beginning to be a habit. In twenty years she had never pretended her opinion was different from what it really was. She had argued for her theories even when the whole Justice Department was arguing on the other side and her opinion seemed to them to be simple obstructionism. But not today. She was almost positive she knew where the Butcher's Boy was going to be tonight. If she told the FBI, they would ruin any chance she had of getting to him in time. He would be dead.

Elizabeth asked the two agents to drive her back to her hotel. It was nearly seven now. As soon as she was in her room, she locked the door, kicked off her high heels, opened her suitcase, and looked at the one outfit she had not hung up. As she usually did when she traveled, she had brought business suits—one with pants and one with a skirt that she could use interchangeably.

Now she took out the third outfit, a pair of black pants, a gray blouse, and a black cashmere jacket. The shoes were ones she had bought when she had been thinking of taking the kids to Europe. They felt as good as sneakers but didn't tell everyone instantly that she was an American tourist. They weren't stylish, but they were unobtrusive, and she could run in them.

She had almost let herself think,
Run or fight in them,
but tonight fighting would not be an option. If she was almost supernaturally perceptive and could sense when things were about to go wrong, she might be able to run.

She wondered how many other people had expected to meet him and thought about their fussy little advance preparations. Will wearing this outfit, or this one, give me an advantage? What if I bring a can of pepper spray? If I plan a route in advance that I can run efficiently from memory, will that save me? All of these decisions were nothing at all to him, the kinds of precautions he must have brushed aside a hundred times on his way to stopping somebody's heart. And the silliest of all was probably the notion that she would sense in advance that he was about to kill her, that he had weighed the options and decided that it was better for him if she died now.

Her professional self, the part of her brain that had spent twenty years studying criminals, knew that there was no way to tell if someone like him was lying. He wasn't going to telegraph anything he was thinking.

She dressed in the dark, comfortable clothes she had brought, took her pistol out of her purse and checked to be sure the magazine was full, then clicked it back in but didn't put the first round in the chamber. She had never liked guns very much, although circumstances like tonight's made them indispensable. She had an almost superstitious distrust, a feeling that they were inclined to go off unexpectedly. Their entire design was an embodiment of their purpose, and so it added a tiny physical force to an otherwise neutral object. It was hard to even pick up a gun without having your index finger slip inside the trigger guard. Keeping that finger straight along the slide took an act of will. She put the gun into her jacket, took her federal ID, her driver's license, a credit card, and a hundred dollars in cash, put them in her pockets, and locked her purse in the room's safe.

She plucked her phone out of her pocket and looked to see if she'd missed the kids' call. She hadn't. She dialed her home number, heard the ring, and then Amanda's voice. "Hello?"

"It's just your absent mother," she said. "How many people are at the party?"

"What party?"

"You mean you and your brother aren't having a huge party full of people I wouldn't approve of, doing things that would make me faint?"

"I wish. I've got a chemistry test tomorrow, and the Bad Sibling has been working on an AP polysci paper since, like, four this afternoon."

"I thought it was awfully quiet for a Festival of the Vices. How come you didn't call me?"

"You just said to call if we needed something. We were glad to know you'd landed safely and all that," she offered. "Do you want to talk to Jim?"

"No, if he's trying to concentrate on his paper, I'll let him. I'm about to go out anyway." She instantly regretted mentioning it. If something went wrong and she died tonight, she didn't want Amanda to wonder if she should have said something more or put Jim on because it would have taken up time and saved her. "If he wants to call, he's welcome. I hope to see you both late tomorrow. Love you."

"Love you."

She pocketed her phone and hooked the bow of a pair of sunglasses over her collar because the sinking sun was still bright in the west. Finally she took one last look at the enlarged street map she had printed of Vincent Pugliese's neighborhood. As a final precaution, she took the pair of police handcuffs out of her suitcase and put them in the inner pocket of her jacket. She was sure they wouldn't be of use, but carrying the proper equipment seemed to her the responsible thing to do.

As she passed the mirror, she touched her hair to get it to look fuller, but couldn't avoid looking into her own eyes. She had never planned to search for the Butcher's Boy alone. It was a stupid, risky thing to do. But things had changed radically in the past few hours. He had killed a lot of people during the night, but he hadn't done what was necessary for his purposes, which was to make the sweep total. He had to get Salvatore, the last Castiglione brother. If he wanted to terrorize the old men, he had to end the dynasty and exterminate the family. And he had to get Vincent Pugliese, the man who offered him help and then sent men to kill him in his sleep. But with the city full of Castiglione soldiers and police, she could save him, offer him another way of staying alive. If he saw her with FBI agents, he would never come near her. If she was completely alone, there was a chance.

She stepped out of her room and closed the door, then walked down the hallway. She wasn't used to filling her pockets with things before she went out, particularly things as big and heavy as a pistol. Every item seemed to her to bulge or hang, but she reminded herself that there wasn't another choice this time. She was the only one who would recognize him and the only one he would recognize.

When her elevator stopped, she looked across the lobby and saw Irwin and Manoletti. They were wheeling their suitcases to the front desk. Neither of them had seen her, so she backed into the elevator and pressed the button to go to the top of the building. The doors opened and she saw the entrance to a restaurant with a small podium and a young hostess with hair that was so carefully gathered into a bun that no single loose strand showed, and it looked more like polished wood than hair. Elizabeth pressed the button for the lobby again and descended.

As she waited, she reflected that it was ridiculous to avoid the two men she had asked Morris to assign to her for this trip. She found she didn't care about being gracious. She felt a strong reluctance to talk to anyone right now. She didn't want to explain or make up a lie or answer questions or pretend. For the moment, there were only two people who mattered—her and the Butcher's Boy—and the rest of the people in Chicago were distractions or enemies.

HE WOKE UP
in Milwaukee in the evening. He had driven out of Chicago after Salvatore Castiglione had escaped. The drive had been only a bit over an hour and took him out of Illinois and into Wisconsin. It had been a small irony to him to be taking the same drive he and Vincent Pugliese had made together the day they had broken the ambush in the cornfield.

In Milwaukee he had checked into the first large hotel he had seen, a Marriott Residence Inn, gone into his room, showered, and slept. It was now after six o'clock, and he had caught up on the portion of last night's sleep that he had lost. He felt alert and energetic and restless.

He had suffered a serious setback last night in not being able to finish the job. All three Castiglione brothers had to go. It wasn't that he had a strong feeling of dislike for Salvatore Castiglione. He had never really known young Sal in the old days. Sal had been no more than fourteen when Schaeffer had arrived to do some more work for the Castiglione family. He had seen him, but they had never spoken. He remembered young Sal in his grandfather's house when he had come in to negotiate a deal on a man named Harrow.

Harrow was a problem for the family, and old Salvatore hated to let problems go on for very long. Harrow had made some odd but unforgivable moves when he had arrived in Chicago. He had gone to a number of restaurants and demanded that they pay him a monthly fee in exchange for a guarantee that the Health Department would pass them on their inspections. He said he was an official for the public employees' union and that he was trying to work with the restaurant owners to improve conditions so the members of his union didn't have to fill out a lot of forms listing hazards and violations. He said it would help the restaurants, the city, and the customers.

Some restaurants paid him, and others didn't. The following month, the ones that hadn't paid were cited for vermin infestation, incorrect water temperature, or dirty kitchens, and closed temporarily by the Health Department. It had apparently not occurred to Harrow that he was not the first person to think of this way of making money. The ancient Romans had done it, and it was familiar to the Castiglione organization, which was already being paid to protect some of these same establishments. There were even some—the Palermo and the Bella Napoli—that were owned by people connected to the Castigliones.

Old Salvatore had not made any telephone calls or filed a complaint with City Hall, as some important men might have done. He simply told one of the young men who hung around his house all day waiting for orders to go call someone who knew how to reach the Butcher's Boy. When the Butcher's Boy arrived, they had a talk, and then Schaeffer went out to study Harrow's movements.

Two days later he reported back to old Salvatore. Harrow was not involved in any way with any union. He had simply put one of the health inspectors on his payroll. But he did have several friends, maybe relatives, who were cops. At the end of the day shift Harrow would sometimes go meet these cops at the Shamrock for a few beers.

"Cops?" said old Salvatore. "What the fuck? He hangs out with cops and they didn't tell him what he was doing to himself?"

"I don't know what they told him, or if they know about his way of getting money. But before I kill him and his inspector, I thought you should know about the cops."

"You're right. Thank you," said Castiglione. "I appreciate your manners and your good judgment. But go ahead and kill the bastards. I'd be happy if you got it done by dinnertime so those cops that drink with him will find out right away."

He went to the Health Department and waited for the inspector, followed him to his first stop, a Chinese restaurant on South LaSalle Street. He waited until the inspector left, walked up the street behind him, and shot him in the back of the head with a silenced pistol. Before the inspector collapsed onto the pavement, Schaeffer was in the middle of a crowd of people walking to the next corner. He turned at the intersection instead of waiting to cross, while some of the others turned around and went back to join the gaggle of people looking down at the fallen man.

He drove directly to Harrow's house. He knew Harrow would have some way of knowing if anyone stood on his front steps, so when he rang the doorbell, he held an envelope full of cash in his left hand, flapping it absentmindedly against his thigh. A man who was used to getting cash in envelopes would know the exact look, feel, sound, and flexibility of money. First-time blackmailers and drug thieves might be fooled by cut paper, but not Harrow.

After a few moments the door opened, and Harrow stood there looking watchful. He was a big man, about forty years old, with a fringe of strawberry blond hair above his pink face. He glowered. "What can I do for you?"

"Compliments of the Bella Napoli restaurant." He held out his left hand with the envelope.

Harrow reached for it as Schaeffer's right hand came up holding the silenced pistol. He fired one shot into Harrow's chest and pushed him backward into the house, where Harrow fell. He stood over him and fired another round through his skull, closed the front door, and walked to his car. As he reached the sidewalk, he had to stop to let three ten-year-old boys flash past on bicycles.
They were moving too fast to look at his face or to see him as anything more than a blur.

When he came back to the Castle at six, the old man was in his office. He opened his cash drawer, stood, and handed Schaeffer the money he had offered for the job. Then his black eyes, like beads, flicked to the side, and he smiled, his long, tobacco-stained teeth suddenly visible. "Come in here." He beckoned to someone in the doorway. "That's right. I saw you. Come in here now." The voice was not the hard, imperious one that he used with his men, but the softer, slightly higher, cracked voice was more horrifying because it was so forced, so false.

A boy about thirteen or fourteen appeared from around the corner and stood in the doorway. He wore jeans and high-top basketball sneakers, which was the style then, and a sweatshirt. "This is my grandson," Castiglione said. "He's the youngest, Salvatore. Named after me."