Authors: Marc Olden
Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #General, #Thrillers, #Mystery & Detective
The Informant
Marc Olden
A MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media
Ebook
Prologue
“S
UBJECT IS CUBAN, FEMALE,
name Lydia Constanza, age twenty-eight, born Miami, Florida, United States citizen, unmarried with one child, daughter five. Father unknown to us. No record of marriage. Miss Constanza and daughter, currently residing here in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. No known source of income. With the large Cuban population in Washington Heights, it’s possible subject is correct about her narcotics connections.
“Her priors go back to age nineteen, when she and a boyfriend, one Hugo Gutierrez, then age twenty, used a straight razor on a Newark club owner, one Manny Boorstein, who they claimed owed them three days’ pay for a singing act the Cubans had at the time. Boorstein was carved pretty good, still carries the scars. Miss Constanza went down for that one. Did two years and her yellow sheet says it wasn’t her last time inside.
“At twenty-three, she took her second fall, her and a Cuban crazy named Francisco Barker, then aged thirty-two. Miss Constanza was hustling for a Murphy game Francisco was running here in Manhattan; she lured the johns to a quiet place, where Francisco took them off with a switchblade. One night, something goes wrong and a john fights back and Francisco slices him up and the john loses one eye, plus a lot of blood. Lydia does another deuce, this one upstate, and according to her sheet, she was hospitalized in there three times for emotional disorders. Seems she can’t take being in prison.
“Francisco Barker gets five to ten in Attica but he don’t ever come out. Gets himself stabbed to death in there over some homosexual argument about a pretty blond boy.
“Rest of Lydia’s jacket says fifteen busts, no further convictions, but the bust which counts is the one last week, and with her record, this makes her a certain three-time loser, which ought to be worth a dime minimum for sure.”
Walter F. X. Forster, a beefy police lieutenant with two and a half years until retirement, had been listening with his eyes closed as Fred Praether read from Lydia Constanza’s folder, but now he rubbed the heels of both hands deep in his tired bloodshot eyes and opened them wide as though he’d just sat down naked on broken glass.
Forster’s tired voice was barely a whisper. “Steamroller flattens grass. That’s a sure thing. Nothing else is, not with the courts we got today, my friend. The record says she does a dime, ten years. I say don’t bet your pension on it. Okay, she’s got her tit caught in the wringer, she’s got to work it off. She’s talking big about who she knows, about what she can deliver. She wants to inform, which is the good news. The bad news is that the New York Police Department hasn’t got the men and money to work anybody in narcotics these days. So we can let her go down on this one, we can let her take the weight, or we do ourselves some good and pass her on.”
At forty-six, Walter F. X. Forster’s hair was an all-white crew cut and his red face had lines so deep they appeared to have been put there with an ax. Eighteen years on the force had made him survival-conscious, particularly when it came to the dangers facing his career from within the department itself. That’s why he was interested in Lydia Constanza, a petty criminal arrested last week and now anxious to turn informant to keep herself out of jail.
Forster said, “Let’s hear it again, about her sinful ways. Last week’s collar.”
Detective Sergeant Fred Praether, thirty-five, a wide, muscular man of medium height and long jaw, cleared his throat and resumed clenching Lydia Constanza’s folder as though expecting it to be snatched from his grip any second. He read in the soft monotone used by people uncomfortable with long speeches.
“Shortly before noon last Wednesday, subject, along with Joe Caracas, a Cuban male, age twenty-six, attempted an armed robbery of a check-cashing establishment on Broadway and Sixty-fourth, unaware the place was wired for silent alarm. When the perpetrators emerged with almost three thousand dollars, they were met by two squad cars. I was in one of the cars. Caracas attempted to escape, firing at police officers, who returned his fire, wounding him three times. According to statements taken from employees and customers inside, Caracas, who happens to be an illegal alien, pistol-whipped the manager when he didn’t move fast enough. The manager, Ernest Goldfarb, required hospitalization.
“Both perpetrators face armed-robbery charges, plus felonious-assault and weapons charges. Even though Miss Constanza didn’t fire at police officers, she was armed, and if the D.A. decides to hang attempted cop killing on Caracas, she’s got to take the weight on that one, too. No question we’ve got her wrapped tight.”
Walter F. X. Forster rubbed his unshaven jaw with a thick hand that was knobby with broken knuckles and large, pale green veins. He’d gone twenty-one hours without sleep because two of his men had been killed by a Harlem drug dealer who had panicked when the cops stopped his car because of a broken taillight. According to informants, the dealer, who’d gotten away, had freaked out because he had two kilos of white heroin under the front seat, enough to get him life imprisonment if the dope was discovered in his possession. The dealer’s paranoia, typical in the dope world, had cost the lives of two cops belonging to Walter F. X. Forster. This was something Forster would not stand for.
Lydia Constanza had nothing to do with the cop killings, but she was part of Walter F. X. Forster’s plan to do something about the epidemic of dope now flooding New York City while helping himself at the same time. She was willing to roll over, to flip, to work, to inform, and to betray in order to stay out of jail and not be separated from her five-year-old daughter.
Forster lit his eighth cigarette of the morning. “Okay, we’ve got her. Question is, what the hell do we really have? She says she knows people in dope and she’ll give ’em up, which we hear from everybody we pop. She also says she saw the big man right here in Fun City, the champion bail jumper himself, Mr. Kelly Lorenzo. Now, ask yourself: you’re Kelly Lorenzo, biggest dope dealer in Harlem, doing maybe one hundred million dollars in business a year and you’ve just jumped four hundred thousand dollars’ bail. So why hang around New York City, where every cop and fed is looking to look good by grabbing your black ass? Why?”
Fred Praether said nothing; he wasn’t supposed to. Walter F. X. Forster was thinking out loud.
“You wouldn’t hang around New York,
unless
, unless you had a reason, a good reason. Miss Constanza claims to have seen this most-wanted fugitive in narcotics right here in our little town, and she’s either lying or she’s righteous. If she’s righteous, then we’ve got something, we have got ourselves a goodie. Now, for the bad news, which is that we ain’t got the money or the manpower to work her. The price of heroin in New York is as high as giraffe pussy, and business has never been better. Dealers are getting rich, junkies are getting well, and I lose two men.”
Forster looked down at his desk, his bloodshot eyes not blinking, not moving. He wanted revenge, pure and simple. Justice belonged to a glorious-sounding, forgotten theory. Pale blue smoke floated gently from his cigarette past his red, lined face toward the peeling, cracked ceiling of his office.
“I feel it, feel it. The governor yells, the mayor yells, the politicians, the public, they all yell, and by the time it comes down to me and you, the pressure’s hard enough to bust our skulls and send blood flowing out of our ears. Little more than two to go and I don’t want to go out with the ghosts of dead cops coming at me in the night, asking me why I didn’t give them the only justice they can understand, which is more blood. I don’t want to be a statistic in a cutback or layoff just because the mayor’s running for reelection two years ahead of time and he’s got to impress voters. The department ain’t got no narco no more. Men, money, it’s all long gone. Narcotics ain’t bleeding, it ain’t even hurting, it’s just lying cold with a tag around its toe. We got no money, no personnel, so narco’s dead. But we still got to produce, right?”
Fred Praether nodded, wondering if a man wasn’t better off staying on the street and away from desk jobs, where you had to play politics to make your twenty. Forster looked older than water sitting there. He looked wrecked.
Praether, who talked and thought slowly, was still shrewd enough to understand that whatever Forster planned to do with Lydia Constanza had a lot to do with self-preservation. Anybody could get laid off these days. Too young, too old, or too in-between. It was crunch time in Fun City, and survival was on your mind every morning you opened your eyes. Forster was known in the department as one of the very best survivors around.
Forster said, “Miss Constanza tells us she knows some Cuban and black dealers.”
Praether nodded.
Forster said, “According to her, they’re planning something real big together. First time they’ve ever teamed up on that large a scale, she says. Cubans and blacks together. Ain’t that something? As if we ain’t got enough to worry about.”
Another nod from Praether.
Forster said, “Miss Constanza claims to have seen Kelly Lorenzo in a Manhattan after-hours club we’re not even sure exists.”
Nod.
Forster said, “That all adds up to a lot, even if we heard it from ten people, let alone a lady with a yellow sheet as long as your arm. Thing is, right or wrong, we can’t do zilch with it. We’ve got the shorts in narco. Men, money, we got
nada.
Nothing. But it doesn’t seem right or even smart to ignore the lady, to pretend we heard nothing, does it? No, it don’t. Now, who do we know that’s got everything? The feds, that’s who. We are going to give Miss Constanza to our federal friends.”
Forster smiled, a shark who had just outmaneuvered a few other creatures who were equally as dangerous.
Praether frowned, unable to think as fast as Forster but somehow certain that the department was giving away too much too soon if it gave up an informant with Lydia Constanza’s potential without even attempting to roll her over.
Forster spoke as though reading Praether’s mind. “We tie a rope to her, and we just let the rope out, is all.” The beefy, red-faced man with short white hair leaned forward, squinting with concentration, sure of himself now, because the gut feeling growing deep down inside told him that he was doing the right thing. For the department, for himself.
“If the feds take her, they got to take one of our men.”
Praether understood, and let a smile make its way across his wide mouth. “I see, sir. That’s why you’ve got Sergeant Kates waiting outside.”
Forster sipped cold coffee, nodding. “That is exactly why. You helped make the collar, but Kates has the narcotics experience. He’s one of the few whites who knows anything about black traffickers. Fact is, he worked with the federal task force that busted Kelly Lorenzo. It’s gonna be Kates’s job to stay close to Lydia, and if she turns up anything, well, that’s how we’re gonna get ours. Kates. He’ll be reporting directly to me. I’ve gotten permission from upstairs, and the paperwork’s being processed right now. If it goes like I think it ought to go, Kates will be in the middle of everything. What the feds know, we’ll know. They make a case with Miss Constanza, we share the credit. If she ain’t righteous, if it’s all jive, then who’ll be wasting their time? Not us. Won’t be our time, our money, not even our manpower. We don’t get no black marks. But if she’s good, we do get to share in the gold star. You know and I know that if somebody don’t come up with some results when it comes to dope, heads are gonna be rollin’, which I don’t wanna even think about.”
Praether closed Lydia Constanza’s folder. Jesus, he was glad he wasn’t Kates, glad he wasn’t Forster. And Lydia Constanza? Forget about her. She was in the middle, getting it from all sides. She was a hockey puck, getting batted from one end to the other, and if she got burned, tough. Nobody would cry about that, because she wasn’t worth crying over.
Lydia Constanza was a perpetrator, and that made her nothing as far as the department was concerned. The rule was: If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. So Lydia had to pay, and if she got wasted, used, killed, whatever, it didn’t matter. She owed, and she had to pay. The only question was when and how.