The Informant

8

EDDIE MASTREWSKI HAD always had his own philosophy. "Killing is just one of a lot of things people ought to do for themselves, but end up paying somebody else to do for them. They pay some pimp to provide a woman who will go to bed with them, and they buy a fancy car and hire somebody to drive it for them. That's no way to live, but their mistake is a fortune for people like us. Do your own killing, drive your own car, find your own girls."

He started the boy in the trade by taking him along on jobs. On the first job, the target was a man who was difficult to approach. He spent his days in a corner office on the tenth floor of a well-guarded office building. There were surveillance cameras, sign-in sheets, calls made to verify appointments before anybody was permitted to go to the elevator. On the tenth floor, all the people in the reception areas, cubicles, and hallways stood between the elevator and the target. When he left work, he walked a hundred yards with a couple of colleagues and went down with thousands of people into a subway. When he came out at his stop, he was a hundred yards from his high-security apartment. The only times to get him were the walk to the subway or his walk from it. When the day came, the boy wore a baseball cap and carried his outfielder's glove. He and Eddie joined the crowd on the sidewalk and came up behind the man. Eddie reached into the boy's glove, pulled out a small pistol fitted with a silencer, shot the man twice behind the ear, and put the pistol back in the glove. The man fell onto the sidewalk, Eddie grabbed the boy and stepped around the body, as though shielding him from the sight of the man dying of a heart attack on the street. Other bystanders stepped between the boy and the dreadful spectacle, trying to get their bodies in his line of sight while others knelt beside the body. In less than a minute Eddie and the boy were down the steps to the platform and getting on the subway train.

The boy found that after a while there were very few jobs that seemed difficult to him. Most of the time it was like turning off a light. Eddie would walk up to the side window of a car stopped in traffic, pull out a pistol, fire a shot into the driver's head, and walk on. Or he would knock on an apartment door, wait until he saw the peephole turn dark because the man inside had his eye up to it, and then fire through the door into the man's chest.

"Learn your trade," Eddie said. "You do that and you'll always have the edge. You'll be luring people out into the night when your eyes are used to the dark and theirs aren't. Plan a job for days, but do it in seconds. The guy should be dead before he has the time to figure out if he should be scared or not. You walk into a store or a restaurant to get somebody, you're like an egg in a frying pan. If you take too much time, you heat up and burn. Do it fast and get out."

By the time he was sixteen, he had acquired the discipline and the skills. He had also picked up Eddie's philosophy. Eddie had said, "Everybody dies. It's just a question of timing, and whether the one who gets paid for it is you or a bunch of doctors. It might as well be you."

After all these years, the essentials of killing had not changed. He needed to kill Tosca, and if Tosca wasn't at his house in Glen Cove, the next place to look was his house in Canada. From New Jersey he drove to Rochester, New York, and found a hotel near the airport. He had always liked staying in hotels like this because they were full of men exactly like the one he was pretending to be. They were businessmen, most of them in sales, visiting their clients on regular rounds. But an increasing number of them were entrepreneurs trying to get some fledgling enterprise a loan from a bank or license some bit of software from another company. Sometimes when he was having a meal in a mediocre restaurant in an airport hotel, he would be seated near a table of five or six of them, all smiling and chuckling through the flop sweat as they tried to sell each other things. There would always be one or two so young that they looked unaccustomed to wearing suits. But there would also be a man a generation older who might be a district manager or an owner, depending on the size of the company.

When he had first started working long-distance hits, he had looked just like one of the young ones—a bit skinny and awkward. Now he looked like the older one, the boss who knew the way these trips worked. The older man knew that his side wasn't going to go home with everything they came for, but also knew the company could live without it. The older man was usually a little calmer, less eager.

He cultivated the appearance, watching the businessmen to be sure he got it right. Now at half of these business lunches there would be at least one laptop computer on the table. That night he decided that he should buy a laptop and carry it around with him. It was a small concession that would cement his identity as a business traveler. The next morning he drove to a computer store and bought one, signed on to the hotel's wireless system, and searched for news articles about the Balacontano family

There were plenty of old articles about Carlo, some available in newspaper archives going back to the 1950s. There was a flurry of hits for the year when Carlo had been convicted of killing Arthur Fieldston and burying his head and hands and the silenced pistol on his horse farm outside Saratoga Springs. Schaeffer knew all about that because he had done the killing and the burying and made the anonymous call to the FBI. What he was looking for was new information about what was going on right now. MAFIA ON THE RUN. THE DECLINE OF A DYNASTY. There were six of that one, in three different decades. Newspaper writers had said the Mafia was dead so many times that he had sometimes wondered if the Mafia was paying them to say it.

There were hundreds of articles, but they told him virtually nothing. Some guy in California was denied a liquor license because he had been seen with members of the Balacontano family. A few basketball players who were apparently well known were under investigation because their favorite strip club was owned by a Balacontano soldier and their bills were comped. There were investigative reports about companies in the trash-hauling business, the linen-supply business, investment banking, sports, music. There was even one on the link between the Balacontanos and a company that ran prisons in Midwestern states. The search engines picked up anything with the right key words in it. Apparently there were Balacontanos who had nothing to do with the crime family, and the Internet picked up every time one of their kids pitched in a high school game, got married, or got promoted. He left the laptop plugged in to charge the battery while he lay on the bed, looked up at the ceiling, and considered.

He wasn't certain where Frank Tosca had gone, but his best guess was that he had taken his family to Canada, to the house he owned on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. He might have noticed all the surveillance teams outside his house on Long Island and figured a good way to stop the clock on any federal proceedings against him would be to go to Canada for a while. He had owned the house on the river for a long time and could hardly be accused of fleeing the country to avoid prosecution.

Over the years in England, Schaeffer had kept renewing his U.S. passports in the names Michael Schaeffer and Charles F. Ackerman. He chose the Ackerman passport for this crossing because he didn't want to compromise the Schaeffer identity. He decided to take some minor precautions with the two pistols he had taken from Tosca's soldiers. First he drove to a sporting-goods store and shopped for something that was the right size and shape. He settled on a tennis net that had posts at either end that could be sunk into holes in a court. They were essentially two three-inch steel pipes with caps at the upper ends and plugs at the lower. He brought the set back to his hotel and opened the lower ends of the pipes.

The two pistols he dismantled on the bed. He slid the slides, springs, barrels, triggers, sears, handgrips, and magazines into the two pipes, then plugged the pipes again. That left the two flat steel pistol frames, which he placed on the floor of his car on the driver's side under the floor mat.

Two hours later, at seven in the evening, he was crossing the Rainbow Bridge over the wide, blue Niagara toward Niagara Falls, Ontario, with the daily caravan of Americans coming over the river to leave their money on the green felt tables of the casinos. He could see the incongruous new additions to the staid architecture he remembered from the time before he'd gone to England. The colored lights looked as though a small part of Las Vegas had been brought here and planted. When he got to the end of the bridge, the Canadian customs woman looked at him and barely focused her eyes on his passport, handed it back, then waved him into Canada.

He drove east on the Queen Elizabeth Way along Lake Ontario toward the St. Lawrence. As he approached Toronto, night was falling, and he was once again on a dark highway that could have been anywhere on the continent. He could remember clearly the only time he had been to Tosca's summer house. It had been a hot summer day, and they had come over the bridge at Alexandria Bay and entered Canada east of Gananoque. The house was on a narrow, pebbly beach, one of a stretch of houses that were not the usual small, wooden buildings that were everywhere on the Canadian side of the river and the Great Lakes. These belonged to prosperous people from Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, and they were as substantial as their houses in the city. Tosca's was made of brick, had two stories, a garage, a brick patio, and a boathouse with a ramp like a little railway to let the boat glide down over the pebbly beach into the water just beyond the shallows. Once the boat was in the water, four of Tosca's men would remove the ramp in sections, then put it back in when they were ready to take the boat back to its boathouse.

He stopped a few miles past Toronto to eat dinner. He liked to travel later at night, when traffic would thin out and little about him was visible. When he came out to the parking lot, it was full night. The sun had gone down an hour ago somewhere off in the direction of Cleveland. The diners all seemed to like to park in the lighted area near the door of the restaurant, so no one was near him in the back of the darkened lot. He opened the trunk of his car, took out his two metal posts, and brought them with him into the car. He emptied the posts onto the front seat, retrieved the frames from the floor near the gas pedal and the brake, and arranged the parts of his two guns for assembly.

The exercise brought him back again to his adolescence with Eddie Mastrewski. Eddie had been in the army, and he had been taught to fieldstrip and reassemble his rifle blindfolded. He had felt that blindfolded stripping and reassembling weapons was so valuable that he would always insist the boy do the same with whatever weapon he would be using on the next job. He had started him with a heavy Springfield Model 1911-A1 .45 automatic that was too big for his hand. The boy had protested that the whole idea was stupid, as everything teenagers didn't want to do was stupid. But after two hours of practice, he could accomplish the task quickly and efficiently. The next weapon was easier, and the one after that more so, and soon his hands were familiar with all of the minor differences between the common makes and models, the variations each company made in its products. He never forgot. As he assembled the guns tonight, he could practically see every part in the dark with his hands.

At midnight he reached the house. He went past it and drove a half mile farther down the road to an apartment complex that had not been there, could not have been there, in the old days. He parked in a space behind the building that was stenciled VISITOR, and walked back along the beach to Tosca's house. He stayed on the hard, wet stones along the line where the gentle waves sloshed in, not higher on the shore where there might be dirt that would hold his footprints.

He almost smiled. There was a light on downstairs. Someone was here. He stood still on the beach beyond the place where the glow could reach him and watched the windows. He reminded himself that he had a decision to make: Tosca was probably here, but if he was, his family could be here too. He didn't relish the idea of killing women and children, but leaving a witness alive would be insane. As he stared in the windows, he thought about it. He didn't see them. Maybe they were upstairs asleep, and he could do Tosca downstairs without waking them. He thought some more. Tosca had made a choice when he had sent his men to England to kill him. It had been Tosca's responsibility to remember he had a wife and children before he had done that.

He moved closer to the house. There were windows open on the river side of the house, with no protection except the screens. He understood the impulse. When a building on the shore had been closed for a while, the damp air seemed to find its way in through invisible cracks, or maybe moisture just precipitated out of the air trapped inside. The first thing people did was fling open the windows and let the fresh, sweet air from the water blow in and clear out the musty smells. All he could see from this window was an empty alcove. Beyond it was the dining room, furnished with fake-crude country-style furniture, half-lighted by the glow from a light in the living room.

He made a small incision in the window screen to the left, because the light from the next room was brighter on the right. He pushed the blade in, unhooked the screen, then pulled it outward and climbed in the window.

He was in an alcove off the living room. Since he had been here the room had been heavily remodeled to look like the house of an old ship's captain, with elaborate ship models, paintings of sailing ships getting tossed around on dark, angry waves, and glass cases full of scrimshaw and brass astrolabes and compasses.

There was a low conversation going on in the next room, and it rapidly rose to become two men yelling. He pulled out one of his pistols and walked toward the sound. The yelling stopped abruptly, and then was replaced by loud, brassy music. Someone was watching television.

Schaeffer took slow, quiet steps to the doorway and looked inside. He could see the head of an older man in a tall-backed leather chair facing away from him. He could see hair that was thin and white, with a few strands of black remaining. It wasn't Tosca. He stepped inside the room, and the man turned to look over his shoulder. "You!" said the man. "I never thought you'd come back a second time."

It was Mike Cavalli, twenty years older but clearly recognizable. "What are you doing in Tosca's house, Cavalli? You don't work for him."

Cavalli sat back in his chair, facing the flat surface of the television screen mounted on the wall in front of him. "None of your f*cking business."

Schaeffer took the remote control from the table beside Cavalli's hand and turned off the television set so the big glass surface went black. Then he took the cell phone that was beside it and put it in his pocket. "Are you so old you don't remember who I am?"

"I remember you just fine. You'll kill me whether I tell you anything or not. You're a disease. Killing people is all you do."

"I'm not here for you. I'm looking for Frank Tosca."

"You can see he's not here."

"When did he leave?"

"Yesterday. He was taking his wife and kids someplace. They stayed here for a night and then went on."

"He didn't tell you where he was going?"

"No."

Schaeffer raised the pistol and fired four times at the back of the chair. The bullets burst out of the upholstery of the backrest on either side of Cavalli's face, each tear in the leather blossoming beside his cheek so he could feel the leather lash his skin.

"He told, he told," Cavalli said. "All right, he told me."

"Where is he?"

"He doesn't trust anybody to know where his family is, so he was hiding them himself. After that he was going to talk to a few of the old men."

"What about?"

Cavalli laughed, his eyes squinting and his mouth half open while his upper body shook. "What do you think? About this. About you."

"How long has he known I was coming?"

"When Delamina got killed. That's when he knew. He had sent a bunch of guys out to look for you. Delamina was in charge of one crew. Over the past year, people went to the places where somebody thought you were—Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Bangkok, London. They talked to people, even met some of the guys people thought might be you. Tosca kept sending people out. I guess you found Delamina before he found you, huh?"

"Why is Tosca suddenly interested in me? I never had much to do with him."

"I guess you haven't kept up with anything here. You been living in a cave in Afghanistan?"

"Tell me."

"He's been making a bid to run the Balacontano family. Nobody can do that without Carlo Balacontano's blessing."

"I'm amazed the old bastard is still alive."

"Well, he is. And even from prison he's always going to be the head. Anybody who runs that family is working for him. Now, what do you suppose old Carl Bala wants most, both as a gesture of respect to him and to prove the guy deserves to run the family?"

"Me."

"That's right. You're the one who dug the hole that got him sent away forever. He's always been pissed off that in twenty years, nobody has found you for him. He's going to be in prison until he dies, so the only thing that will make him happy is your head on a stake."

"They're all as stupid as ever. He's in prison for life. They could have told him anytime that they'd got me and shut him up. Maybe he would have died in peace by now."

"It's more complicated than that after all this time. The whole Balacontano family grew up hearing about you. You ended his life, but you ruined them too. The government got a lot of his money that would have found its way down to them. They lost soldiers, both to you and to the government, and those guys were their fathers, cousins, and uncles. People don't forget. Part of being in that family is wanting the chance to kill you. The kids pray at mass that they'll be the ones to get you."

"And why are you here, babysitting Tosca's house? You're from Chicago. You were in the Castiglione family."

"Did you forget you killed old Mr. Castiglione too?"

"He was older than God, living in a wheelchair in a place like a fort in Vegas. He hadn't run anything in a generation."

"This isn't about losing a boss. It's about honor, losing face. You killed a lot of people and nobody made you suffer for it, and everybody knows it. So the feeling gets worse, because of the shame."

"So that's what Tosca is talking to the old men about?"

"He's asking them to make you their problem. He's reminding them of what happened years ago. You didn't just duck the ambush and get out of the country. You lashed out in all directions. Some of the old men had relatives you killed. They have wives and aunts reminding them once a week that they haven't got you yet." Cavalli grinned. "He's going to raise the whole country against you, and they'll hunt you until you're dead."

"Is he going to them one at a time, or did he ask for a meeting?"

Cavalli shrugged. "I can see why you would want to know. But that's not the way this will play out. You're not going to win this time."

"How do you know?"

"You've taken on too much importance for that. You're a symbol, like the Thanksgiving turkey. Whether you like it or not, this is going to be a celebration, and you're the guest of honor. Frank Tosca is the first young, strong, smart leader the families have produced in years. He's like all our grandfathers—crazy-ambitious, strong, tough. He's acting just like them. If he can get the Balacontano family under his control, the rest will start to turn to him too. There are people who have been waiting for this for a long, long time. It'll be like turning the calendar back, so La Cosa Nostra is young again. Everybody wants that. But first, he needs you dead."

Schaeffer looked at him in silence.

"Carl Bala isn't the only one who lives in time. I can tell you from experience that every year you slow down—you lose a step here and there. Your reactions aren't as fast, and pretty soon it feels like you're always walking on sand or deep snow instead of sidewalk. Then one day, you notice that your hearing and vision are a little worse too. Pretty soon, it's not so hard for somebody to come up behind you, the way you did to me tonight. They wouldn't have gotten you easily when you were a kid. But you're not a kid now."

"I'm about to leave, and I'm taking your cell phone with me. If Tosca wants to talk about a way for this to end without anybody else dying, he can call your number anytime in the next eight hours. After that, I throw it away, and he'll lose his chance."

"When he doesn't call, don't blame me. You know he's not going to stop looking. He can't. In the past couple of days you've killed six of his guys. He can't ignore that, or he'll lose the others."

"Just tell him."

He backed away from the chair, still holding the gun on Cavalli. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure he was heading toward the door. Cavalli said, "Sure you want that?"

He said, "It's too late to keep this a secret. Everybody in the country seems to know I'm here. So just sit tight for a few minutes, and then you can call whoever you want on the house phone."

He could see Cavalli's reflection in the darkened flat screen of the television set. Cavalli was watching him the same way. He started to turn to open the door, but Cavalli's hand went to his coat pocket and came out with a gun. "Don't try that," he said, but Cavalli dropped onto his knees on the floor and brought his right hand around the chair back.

Schaeffer aimed low on the chair back and pulled the trigger six times, until Cavalli's lifeless hand released the pistol and it dropped to the floor. He could see in the reflection on the black television screen that he had hit Cavalli at least once in the head. He put the gun into his belt and went out the door.

This was exactly like all of those dumb bastards. There had been no reason for Cavalli to try that. He had just let the size of the contract on the Butcher's Boy eat away at him all the time they were talking, until he no longer had the strength to resist. He was over sixty, but he still couldn't pass up a sucker's odds to get rich by shooting a man who had just spared his life.

Schaeffer walked along the shore of the St. Lawrence until he recognized the building across the road where he had left his car. He took Cavalli's cell phone out of his pocket and pressed the wheel for the phone book. He found a number that said FRANK T CELL, selected it, and pressed the call button. He heard the ring signal, then a voice. "Yeah?"

"Hi, Frank," he said.

"Who is this?"

"I wanted Cavalli to give you a message, but he decided to be dead instead. I wanted to let you know that I'll disappear again if you'll forget the idea of tracking me down for Carl Bala. He'll die of old age soon, or be too old to remember I put him where he is."

Tosca sounded pleased. "Thanks for killing Cavalli. He had a lot of friends. In a day or two, everybody in the country who matters is going to be turning over rocks looking for you. When we've got you, I'm going to have some people dump your body outside the prison at Lompoc where Don Carlo Balacontano is so he can stand behind the fence in the exercise yard and watch the cops put you in a body bag."

"Wrong answer, Frank," said Schaeffer. "See you."