The Informant (43 page)

Katey snorted, wondering if there was any way to get through to Neil. “Okay, okay. She makes a super case, and you come away looking like Captain Marvel. But she’s still a snitch, man, and snitching is a high-risk business. She got burned. It happens.”

Beside him in the front seat of the car, Neil eyed the red light. “We used her. Used her, then couldn’t stand between her and whatever the fuck was out there.”

The light turned green. Katey shook his head. “Using her or whoever we need is the name of the game, remember? You ain’t workin’ out of no convent. You and me got to produce, or we get it cut off. Hey, I just want to say this to you. You’re too close to her. Everybody knows it. They talk about it.”

He looked quickly at Neil and saw he was too depressed to be pissed at what Katey had just said.

Neil, his head back on the seat, said, “Wasn’t close enough. Couldn’t stop the Judas.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Judas gave her up. Somebody told the shooter where to find her, somebody who knew, somebody who fucking well knew.”

“Like who?”

“Who knows? Could be anybody. Raiser didn’t want his CIA buddies to lose Cristina Reina. Didn’t want Logroño popped, but we got that done over his screaming and yelling. Maybe some political types down in D.C., maybe somebody here in New York. Lots of people hooked on to this case. Anybody could have …” His voice died out.

They were about to turn off Fifty-seventh Street into Tenth Avenue and park in the darkness behind Roosevelt Hospital. Katey, his voice fighting irritation, said, “Spics and niggers ’bout to go to war over seventy-five keys still floating around the country somewhere, and I’m sittin’ next to a bleedin’ heart. Look, we
supposed
to work her and anybody else that can get us on the board. What the hell do you see in that woman? She snitched good, period. Why you hangin’ on? You and Lydia Constanza. A love story that ain’t a love story. Jesus, I get ’em, don’t I? First Russell Gormes, now you. I always get married to a wacko.”

He slowed down, swung into a parking space.

Neil turned to him. “I got what I wanted, a case to end all cases. But I learned something, Katey. I learned that to be
that
good again means I’m gonna have to use people like crazy, play ’em like a violin. Only way, man, the only way. I been holding back, I admit it, holding back doing that until now. Now I know this is how the game’s played. Lydia, she made me take time out, made me think on whether I want to be a user, whether I really want to go that route the rest of my life. Time for a choice, understand?”

He fought for the words, fought against the tears. “Being an agent is my life. Ain’t no life for me
but
that. My wife couldn’t get behind it, but Lydia could. For the first time, with Lydia I had a woman who wasn’t fighting what I do, wasn’t pulling back from it. With her, I got more out of the job than I ever thought was there. Sure, she was my ticket to ride, and you’re right, I’m too close to her and I been called down for it. But I’ll tell you something I ain’t told a soul: Lydia, well, she’s like my last chance to be human.”

The tears came, slow, bright in the night. “Turned my back on my wife for this job. Marriage is over and gone.
Been
gone, to tell you the truth. Ain’t sure a man should live like that, you know? I mean, just living for something that ain’t a person, and using people to get that something. Lydia. Turn my back on her, man, and I’m in another category the rest of my life. Choices. You get where I’m comin’ from? I’m human, I just got to wonder what my life ought to be. For the rest of my life, is it me using people and not caring for a fuckin’ soul? Tell me something, what would you do? Lydia, man, she’s like maybe my last chance.” He let out a long sigh, blinking tears from his eyes. “Got to go. Gotta see her.”

He and Katey looked at each other; then Neil reached for the car-door handle and pushed against it.

Katey, eyes closed, shook his head, his heart pounding too fast, much too fast and he muttered, “Choices. Choices. Damn, damn, damn.” He punched the car horn, and Neil, half out of the car, turned.

Katey, looking straight ahead, opened his eyes and saw …

Neil, looking back at Katey, had no time to react as the cop swung his legs up on the car seat and violently kicked him forward, completely out of the car and down to the pavement.

Scrambling across the seat, Katey climbed out, feet, knees, one hand pushing Neil down, keeping him down, and a confused Neil tried to deal with this totally unexplained, off-the-wall behavior, wondering what the fuck was wrong with Katey.

Pulling at his belt holster, Katey screamed, “
Federal agent! Freeze, cocksucker! Freeze!
”

Neil, on the ground, struggling to get to his feet, heard the flat-sounding
crack-crack-crack
of gunshots, saw the orange flashes in the night, heard Katey say “uhhhh,” a soft groan, and hook an arm inside the car window to keep from going down and continue to pull the trigger on his .38 until it clicked empty.

Neil, his .38 in his hand, stayed in a crouch, hearing hospital windows around him go up, hearing people shout, seeing the darkness divide itself quickly into strips of yellow light separated by blackness. What the hell …?

Katey was down, lying on his left side, eyes rapidly assuming the too-bright, glassy stare of a man about to die. He coughed blood. Neil, hearing footsteps, picked up Katey’s piece and dropped it in his own overcoat pocket, running quickly across the pavement and onto the grass, where he’d seen more orange flashes. He found him lying facedown near high, thick evergreen bushes, his oversized dark glasses half-hidden under his neck. Neil turned him over. T. Lawrence had been hit at least three times, and in death his lips were curled back from his teeth, as though he were a wolf about to attack. Neil put his fingers on his neck. No pulse. Bending over, he carefully picked up T. Lawrence’s .38, sticking his pinkie through the trigger guard.

Neil yelled, “Doctor! Doctor!” He ran toward Katey, pointing at him. “This man’s a police officer. Somebody get a doctor!”

Katey’s breathing was obscenely loud. He said, “Die … die rich … choices … make choices. … Fuckin’ hurts, m-man, you know that?”

He died in Neil’s arms.

Three days later, Neil sat beside Lydia’s hospital bed watching her sleep, telling himself that only two types of people could be happy in this world: those who had everything they wanted and those who wanted nothing at all. Neil didn’t have everything he wanted, which is how he’d come to make his choice, the choice between Lydia and remaining an agent. He hadn’t told Lydia yet.

He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, steepled fingers against his mouth, and closed his eyes against the headache that squeezed his brain because he’d had damn little sleep since Katey and Lydia …

Katey. Poor bastard made a choice, and it killed him, thought Neil. My choice will kill only a part of me, but who the hell am I kidding? That could turn out to be a pretty goddamn big part. Katey showed me something. Showed me there’s no easy way of living, that anytime you stand up and choose, be ready to self-destruct. Any choice is going to hurt sooner or later.

Lydia was sleeping as though she’d just eaten a good meal instead of having two bullets dug out of her back. She was improving, doctors said, but she wouldn’t be getting sweaty armpits in a discotheque anytime soon.

It’s within reach, thought Neil. All I have to do is reach out and fill my hand with her or my job. Just fill my hand with it, and it’s mine.

Lydia. One small hand lay palm-up on the pillow, fingers curled. Yesterday when she’d come out of the anesthetic briefly, Neil had been there and she’d called his name, and he’d answered, gripping her hand tightly.

And now, again, her eyes opened, and she blinked at him, smiled slowly, saying his name softly, tearing at his heart, and without thinking, he leaned closer. She gripped his hand with both of hers, showing a surprising strength. Then he
remembered
, and with his eyes closed again and with more pain inside of him than he ever thought existed in the world, he pulled his hand away from hers, looking down at the floor, hoping he could live with the choice he’d just made.

T
HREE WEEKS AFTER THE
arrests and narcotics confiscation in the Mas Betancourt case, Jorge Dávila was found dead in a cheap hotel in Balsas, Mexico, his throat cut, his penis sliced off and stuffed in his mouth. Both eyes had been gouged out, and there were numerous cigarette burns on his back and along the inside of his thighs. An informant said Cristina Reina had ordered the brutal killing.

Mas Betancourt was shot to death in a bathtub in the Manhattan apartment of Graciela Negrón six weeks after his lieutenants had been arrested and the white heroin he had smuggled into the country was confiscated. Upon learning that his
babalawo
’s prophecy about a woman had come true, Mas went into a deep depression. Informants added that Mas, also worried about his wife’s health, went into seclusion, refusing to lead the Cuban distributors and dealers who depended upon him.

Three days after his murder, his wife, Pilar Betancourt, committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

While proceeding with the prosecution of the Cubans and blacks arrested in the case, the United States government quietly allowed Rupert Logroño to post bail of four hundred thousand dollars, over the objections of federal narcotics agents, who testified that Logroño would certainly flee the country. The State Department hoped he would, thereby sparing them a diplomatic dilemma. Venezuela was to reciprocate by extraditing Kelly Lorenzo, who had been hiding there since the failure of
la última.
As expected, Logroño jumped bail, but Kelly Lorenzo was never seen alive again. Informants said that important officials in the Venezuelan government wanted Kelly dead rather than have him give highly embarrassing testimony regarding the extent of police and government corruption involved in the smuggling of narcotics from that country to America.

Detective Sergeant Edward Merle Kates, because he had saved agent Neil Shire’s life that night behind Roosevelt Hospital, was given a hero’s funeral attended by New York City’s mayor, a representative from the governor’s office, and representatives from federal-narcotics-law enforcement in both New York and the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. One hundred uniformed policemen and women were also in attendance. There was no official mention of his being the informant who had betrayed Lydia Constanza and Jorge Dávila to the people he had helped to arrest. His friend Margaret Soames, most of whose medical bills Kates had recently paid, was cleared of any involvement in the Mas Betancourt case. Eighty-five thousand dollars in cash was recovered from Kate’s safe-deposit box, along with his police shield and ID; apparently Kates, according to popular police custom, carried only copies of his shield and ID, rather than lose the originals and be fined five days’ pay. He received posthumous commendations for slaying the hit man and sacrificing himself to save the undercover federal narcotics agent he had so often risked his life with in the past six months.

Lieutenant Walter F. X. Forster, Kates’s superior, was questioned extensively regarding certain actions by Kates in this case and cleared of any complicity. However, he retired two years short of a full twenty years’ service. The reason given was ill health.

Lydia Constanza recovered from the two gunshot wounds in her back, losing part of her right lung. She still receives medical treatment for these injuries incurred as a paid informant, and along with her daughter, Olga, now lives in another city under a new name.

Neil Shire was promoted to a higher civil-service grade, receiving several commendations, including a signed letter from the president of the United States. He continues to work out of the bureau’s New York office, where he is recognized as an expert on Cubans and Latins. His divorce is pending; his wife now lives in Washington, D.C, where after the divorce she is expected to marry a junior official with the State Department. She has served notice that she intends to seek full custody of Courtenaye, her four-year old daughter by Neil.

Neil Shire keeps a red-and-white bead necklace with him as a lucky charm, causing some of the Latin informants he works with to call him Changó. Once in a while his telephone will ring at the office and he’ll pick it up and hear nothing. The sudden ache starts in his heart, and he whispers her name, looking around him to see if anyone notices, but she never answers.

However, he knows it’s her. As his fingers squeeze the beads and he listens to the silence, he knows it’s her.

T
HIS BOOK COULD NOT
have been written without the kind help of certain men in narcotics-law enforcement, three pros who took time out to talk to an amateur and pass on a small portion of what they have learned the hard way. A heartfelt thanks to Bill Manning, Garfield Hammonds, and Joe Q.

A special thanks to editor Michael Seidman, who over dinner in London’s West End said that he had an idea for a novel to be called
The Informant
, and was creative enough to contribute much more than that, as he has to so many other books.

MARC OLDEN

New York City

May 1977

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