The Informant (34 page)

The man had been waiting in an area that was ambiguous. It was near the house of Tony Lazaretti, the one who ran the Lazaretti interests, but it was also about a block down the street from the Castiglione caretaker, Mike Bruno. The Balacontano faction's ambassador to the film industry was Jimmy Montagno, and his house was only a block to the east. The man had not been waiting at one of the houses; he had simply set himself up in the neighborhood to see if anybody came to look around. That was smart.

He couldn't let down his guard now. There were still police, and there was no guarantee that the shooter he'd killed had been alone. That was disconcerting and made him look again in all of the mirrors to be sure a second shooter wasn't in a car following him. His eye caught the little white card that had been stuck under the windshield wiper of the car. He picked it up from the seat.

He was expecting an ad of some kind, but one side was blank, and the other had small, neat handwriting in black ink.
CALL ME. URGENT.
The phone number was the one Elizabeth Waring had given him in the Chicago church: 202 555-8990.

She had found his car in this city thousands of miles from the place she'd last seen him. How? Was there a global positioning system the Justice Department had activated? LoJack? The car had an antitheft system. Maybe she had triggered it. Maybe in Chicago the FBI had taken pictures of the license numbers of all the cars parked around Vince Pugliese's building that night, and she had somehow narrowed down the list. He had driven to Los Angeles quickly, trying to get to the next target before everybody reacted to the deaths of the Castiglione brothers. He'd stolen some California plates this morning off a pickup truck that was up on blocks and covered by a tarp, but hadn't put them on his car yet. The Illinois plates were still on the car, and that would have made it easier to spot. But if she'd known this was his car, why hadn't there been a contingent of FBI agents waiting with body armor and automatic weapons?

He left the freeway in Silverlake, drove to a quiet hillside street where his car was shielded from the windows of the nearby houses, and removed his Illinois plates. He drove a few more blocks, stopped, and put the California plates on his car.

He coasted downhill and found a convenience store on the first major street and went to the pay phone on the outer wall. He dialed the number of Elizabeth Waring. He waited a long time while the number rang, and he knew she must have gone to sleep after she'd found his car. When her voice came on, she sounded groggy and disoriented. "Hello?"

"What did you want?"

"I found out that the Lazaretti family hired a team of hit men to go after you."

"Why didn't you try to trap me when you found my car?"

"It cost me years to intuit your existence, then to meet you and realize how much you know. I want you to live to tell me about your former friends. Meanwhile, I thought I'd better warn you about the hit men, or you might get killed."

"I had already noticed a change in strategy. Thanks for the tip, though. It tells me a lot. Take care."

"Wait. I'm in Los Angeles right now. I need to talk to you in person. Is there anywhere you're willing to meet me?"

"Where are you staying?"

"The Sheraton Universal."

"I'll be in touch." He hung up, already wondering why he had called her and regretting that he had implied that he would meet her. She was dangerous and distracting at a time when he needed to keep up the pressure on the bosses. He hoped one of them would panic and do something stupid, but no matter what, he had to keep them nervous and off balance.

He knew the flaw in his reasoning was that it committed him to a course that probably wouldn't end well. He might be able to get a couple of families to begin picking each other off, but making them that agitated would first require him to accomplish a slow-motion massacre. He would have to show up in an increasing number of places where people would be waiting for him. And if he managed to get through it, all of the families would be more interested than before in killing him. What he was doing was arranging his own last stand, not his escape.

He knew that Elizabeth Waring was not his ally and that pretending she cared about him was a police interrogation tactic she'd probably been taught in some training class. She wanted an informant, and to recruit him she needed him in trouble and desperate. She had delivered the warning about the hit team to add to the growing pile of evidence that he was not likely to make it through this without help. But that did not negate the fact that she was the only person in this hemisphere who actually preferred that he live rather than die. If he listened to her next pitch, maybe he would hear something he could use. And no matter what, she worked for the most powerful entity in this game.

He got off the freeway at Laurel Canyon Boulevard and drove along Ventura Boulevard to Lankershim, turned left and then right to go up the steep hill to the Universal Studios complex. He stopped his car on the circle at the front entrance to the Sheraton Universal Hotel, hurried inside, picked up a courtesy phone, and asked for her room.

"Hello?" she said.

"Come and meet me in the lobby. I'll be here for five minutes. If I see anything that makes me uncomfortable, I'm gone."

"Can you give me ten minutes to brush my hair?"

"Do it in the elevator." He hung up and went to sit in a velvet chair in an arrangement near the front entrance. The hotel lobby was all white and the floor yellow with black lines in geometric shapes. He scanned, looking at the people.

In the old days he could have picked out any FBI agents in something under two seconds. On jobs like this they would have been all male, and the ones who weren't white would have looked like black members of an all-star football team. Now FBI agents didn't look one particular way. He had to watch every human being within view, and if one of them let his eyes rest on Schaeffer for more than an instant, he became a possible enemy. The surveillance systems in public places like hotels should be good enough so they didn't even have to be here to see everything he did. He saw several sets of parents with kids, a couple dressed like they were on their way to the tennis courts, a group of young women who looked like the survivors of a bachelorette party.

He looked at his watch. Three minutes had passed. He turned his attention to the doors and the corridors extending out of the lobby in various directions. He had to be sure that if one of his ways out got suddenly blocked, the others were open. Then he heard a bell and an elevator door slid open.

Waring's head was up and her eyes were scanning as she stepped out. She walked toward him, and he put his arm around her waist and guided her across the lobby to the row of glass doors in front. She knew he was pressing close to her so federal officers couldn't shoot him without the risk of hitting her so she submitted to it.

They stayed together all the way to his car, and he drove off with her. As they coasted down the long hill to Lankershim Boulevard and then over the overpass to Ventura Boulevard, they were silent, each watching for signs that the other's friends or enemies were following. Finally he said, "We can talk. I don't care if you're wearing a wire."

"Thank you. I wasn't looking forward to being groped. I'm not wearing a wire." She paused. "I thought since you came for me so quickly, you might have had some kind of change of heart."

"Not exactly. I thought that you deserved a tidbit for trying to warn me. I was with Sam Lonzio the night that Chickie Salateri died."

"Sam Lonzio the Lazaretti underboss in New York?"

"Yeah. Salateri was sent out to Los Angeles to do some work for the Lazarettis."

"I remember the case. Somebody reported him missing and the Los Angeles police looked for him for over a year."

"When it's somebody like him, the cops have a way of looking where it's easy to look, not where the body's likely to be."

"So you know what happened."

"That night I was in L.A. because I had to do a job somewhere else, and I wanted to be far away from it. So I had checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, rented a car, taken a plane somewhere else, done the job, and come back. I wasn't tired, so I went out for the evening. I went to a restaurant right near where Laurel Canyon ends on Sunset Boulevard and ordered a late dinner. In walks Sam Lonzio. He sees me and comes to my table. He said, 'Can I sit with you?' I said, 'Sam. I'm here in case somebody ever asks me where I was tonight. Do you want me to say I was with you?'

"He said, 'You can't do that here anyway. Tony Lazaretti has a half interest in the place. If you eat here, you'll look like a criminal. But I've got a good alibi, and you can share it.'

"I said, 'What is it?'

"'Tonight I'm on a cruise ship that stops in Ensenada. It left San Pedro already, but there's a guy on it in my cabin using my name. If I need an alibi, I show up in Ensenada anytime before the boat leaves for Cabo, and he goes home. The crew says Mr. Lonzio's been with us for the whole cruise. I've also got a cabin in the name Don Rustin. You can be him.'

"'That's a lot of trouble.' I didn't bother to tell him that good alibis are simple. He had his own theory. But I said, 'What is it you're going to do that's such a big deal?'

"'I've got to take out Chickie Salateri.'

"'Why?'

"'He's been dating one of the Lazaretti daughters. You know, Carmine's granddaughter, Catherine. She lives out here in L.A. She was married at one time to Bobby Molto, but he couldn't ever keep it in his pants, and he didn't understand why you can't cheat on a boss's child, so she got an annulment. That was, like, five, six years ago. So lately she's dating Chickie Salateri. Only she comes home from a shopping trip one afternoon, and there's Salateri with one of those little digital cameras, taking pictures. He's taking shots of the clothes in her closet, has her bank statements out on her desk and takes shots of those. She sees him, but tiptoes back outside and comes back in making a lot of noise. He doesn't know she knows, just hides the camera in his coat. When he goes to the head, she checks the camera. There are shots of her jewelry all laid out in the little velvet drawers from her jewelry case.'

"'Why was he bothering with all that?'

"'At first we all thought he must be working for the IRS. You know—helping them say that if she had five or six million in jewelry and didn't work, where did it come from? They do that, the feds. They put your children in a bind so you can stew about it until you want to kill yourself. But Carmine Lazaretti didn't get to be old by ignoring that light coming along the train tracks toward him. He sent people from New York that Chickie didn't know, and they watched him and asked around. They found out he's been casing the house for a robbery. He's got a crew, and he's got an out-of-state fence for everything in the house. He's even hired a woman who looks a little bit like Catherine to use cloned credit cards and IDs to clean Catherine out.'

"'So you think he's planning to kill Catherine too.'

"'All of this stuff takes a lot of time to pull off. If she's dead, he's got a lot.'

"'So you're killing him tonight?'

"'They said to do it, but if I do it after he gets her, I'm dead too. Now that I see you're in town, it's like a sign from God.'

"'You want a minute to think that through again?'

"'You know what I mean. You can do it for me.'

"'Not interested.'

"'Look,' he said. 'I've killed two people in my whole life. One was a son of a bitch in Brooklyn who owned a pawnshop. Somebody's niece noticed it was suddenly full of stuff that had been stolen in our neighborhood. One of the Lazaretti soldiers took people past the front window for a week or so, and they identified what was theirs. So I got sent to handle it. The guy wasn't even armed. He just sat behind his desk and I shot him in the chest. The other one I don't want to talk about. I've got no experience. I'll give you fifteen grand to go with me and act as a consultant. I'll do all the shooting. Then we'll drive down and catch the cruise. Those ships are full of pairs of women who pay good money just to meet somebody like us, dance and drink a little, and get laid. They say a weekend like that is just the thing. It sets them right up and they're good for a month.'

"I said, 'We can skip the cruise, but I'll help you out.' So we left. He drove, and we picked up a big van. Inside it was a plastic container, maybe four feet by two and a half, with a vacuum top that latched. We went by Chickie Salateri's house, then a couple of clubs. At the third we found him. The club was a problem because a lot of people stay very late. So I told Lonzio, go in and buy him a drink, act like his friend, and persuade him to go to another club with us. He went in, and about twenty minutes later they both came out. So there were now three of us in the van, and the big plastic tub. I sat on that, and Chickie seemed to pay no attention to the thing, as though it were a piece of furniture. Sam drove up into Griffith Park. The place is huge. Sam said the route we were taking was a shortcut to get from Los Feliz into the Valley,
where a great new club had opened, but it didn't feel like a shortcut. The road was weird and winding, and went up into the hills by the observatory. Then Sam says he's got a tire that seems funny, so he pulls over to check it. This struck Chickie Salateri as more than suspicious. But he thought the one assigned to kill him must be me. He started to pull out a gun to shoot me so I gave him a quick jab to the nose. Sam opened the passenger door beside him and stabbed him. Sam was not good with a knife so he just kept trying to kill him while Chickie fought back. It took four or five minutes before the bleeding got to him and he died. The van was a mess, and so was Sam. His shirt was soaked. He ended up tossing it in the plastic bin with Chickie."

"Where did you bury the box?"

"We didn't. Sam knew about this old cemetery in the middle of the city. It wasn't little bronze plaques set in a lawn. It was full of big gravestones and crypts. Sam drove right to a crypt. It was the kind that looked like a little marble building. He'd had somebody come through and saw the lock off in advance. The box fit right on this shelf in there. We put it in, went out, and Sam put on a brand-new lock."