The Informant Read Free Page B

wiretap, it had better be on somebody who is going to be convicted of a crime in fairly short order."
    "There are dozens of surveillance operations on Mafia figures right now."
    "All the more reason to question why we need another, particularly if it's just a roundabout way of getting to someone else."
    "Let me talk to the New York agent in charge. If they're stretched too thin, maybe we can work something out using a small number of agents from other parts of the country on temporary loan." She could see he was not interested in the idea. His sour face had returned. "Something's bothering you."
    "Mrs. Waring."
    "Actually, it's not
Mrs.
Waring. I'm a widow, and his name was Hart. So I'm Mrs. Hart at my kids' school. Just call me Waring."
    "What's troubling me most is that this informant of yours is manipulating the Justice Department into launching an operation to put away someone he doesn't like. That's what all of this is about."
    "That's probably what it's about for him, but not for us. We just happen to be lucky that he dislikes someone who is a murderer and a public menace."
    "But isn't he a murderer and a public menace too? You said he was a professional hit man."
    Elizabeth took in a deep breath to calm herself and let it out. "I know it may seem as though they're about the same. They aren't. My informant is a very bad man. There's no question of it. Twenty years ago I was following a series of violent incidents all over the country—some solitary killings of mob leaders, fire fights in the centers of big cities. Most of law enforcement thought it was a war between two or more families. But when I began to look into it closely, I began to hear rumors. What the minor players were most afraid of was a man called the Butcher's Boy. Nice name, isn't it? What I believe now is that this man performed a hit for the Balacontano family, and Carl Bala didn't want to pay him, so he had him ambushed in Las Vegas. It didn't work because the Butcher's Boy read the situation correctly and killed the ambushers. Then he got angry. What looked like a gang war was actually this man reacting to that betrayal."
    "And now you're proposing to help what amounts to a serial killer by putting his enemies in prison."
    She straightened and stared at him. "We've been handed an opportunity to put away the heir apparent of one of the five New York families—a man who is young, very violent, and growing more powerful every day. I've been trying to help dismantle the Mafia for over twenty years, and I can tell you that I haven't seen any nice snitches. Good, honest people seldom know anything useful about the Mafia. The people who have the information we need are usually criminals."
    "I understand. And I caught the reminder that I'm a recent political appointee, and you're a careerist. Our differences are not imaginary. But contrary to your assumption, they're not all in your favor. What you're proposing is the old way of doing business. The government has been protecting one criminal so he'll tell on another for—what? Fifty or sixty years? And what has this gotten us?"
    "Half as many criminals."
    "That's hardly been demonstrated by the current pervasiveness of organized crime. And it's a deal with the devil that could make this man a bigger problem later. If he's this spectacular hired killer, he could kill anyone—a visiting dignitary, a Supreme Court justice, a president."
    "He hasn't been seen in about ten years. He hasn't been working."
    "You mean he's been in prison."
    "I don't think he has been, or someone would have recognized him and tried to collect the price on his head, or told the guards who he was in exchange for privileges. He's been away—maybe out of the country, or maybe just living a quiet life in some backwater. Something riled him up. Whatever got him upset had to do with Michael Delamina and, therefore, with Frank Tosca. It's what brought him to me."
    "You actually sound starstruck."
    "I'm not. I told you, he's a bad human