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  Novak remembered that the Strike Force was originally founded in order to stop the bickering over federal informants. The plan was that each agency would assign one above-average, highly motivated special agent to work under seasoned government prosecutors. Thus cooperation among the agencies would force a united front against the sophisticated leaders of organized crime.

  But in government work, as Novak had learned over the years, all such task forces eventually deteriorated into competing duchies of bureaucratic self-interest.

  Therefore, rather than stopping the competition for informants, as was intended, the Strike Force institutionalized it. Rather than above-average, highly motivated special agents and seasoned prosecutors, the various law-enforcement agencies assigned agents who were either problem children, drones, or retired-on-the-job types. The prosecutor slots were filled with either young lawyers who'd worked on the last presidential campaign, oddball assistant U.S. attorneys who couldn't find any other way to get transferred out of Washington, D.C., or glory seekers who realized that the easiest way to get reporters to attend a press conference at the federal courthouse was to mention the words "organized crime."

  A half hour or so later, John Novak was sitting in a window booth of the Highland Coffee Shop, a modern looking place located a mile or so off the Las Vegas Strip. Having finished breakfast, he kept his eyes on the entrance to the parking lot. As he sat there among tables filled with people reading glossy menus and eating mediocre food, he mused about how much time he'd spent in similar establishments during the last fifteen years-time spent not because he enjoyed greasy fare or the lingering smell of cigarette smoke, but because, whether it was in Newark, New Orleans, Miami, L.A., or Las Vegas, it was just plain safer to meet informants in public places.

  Bruno Santoro's black Cadillac cruised by the front of the restaurant and into the parking lot. Novak checked his wristwatch. Bruno was on time.

  Quickly, Novak left the table and moved to the cashier. He took bills from a well-worn leather case which also held his badge and identification card and paid up.

  Outside, as Bruno parked his Cadillac, Novak stood near the entrance for a moment. He surveyed the lot carefully. Still trying to think of a new tack to use on Bruno, he moved across the parking lot to his government sedan, which was parked at the other end of the lot facing Bruno's car. He unlocked the driver's door, climbed in behind the wheel. Having given the lot another once-over, he pulled the headlight switch of the G-car: on and off twice. Immediately the headlights of Bruno's Cadillac returned the same signal.

  The Cadillac pulled up next to Novak's car. The diminutive Bruno, wearing a rumpled sharkskin suit and eyeglasses with sleek frames matching his gray hair, exited the Cadillac and moved to the passenger side of Novak's car. He glanced about, straightened his silk tie unnecessarily, opened the passenger door, and climbed in. Immediately, he pulled a fresh package of Camels out of his jacket pocket.

  "Parisi's been acting funny all week," Bruno said as he tore cellophane from the cigarette package. "And yesterday there was a car parked down the street from my apartment with two guys sitting in it. For all I know, Tony has paper out on me right this very minute. I might be a dead man already." He tapped a cigarette out of the pack, hung it on his lip.

  "Maybe it's just your imagination."

  Bruno flamed the cigarette with a gold lighter. He turned his head slightly and emptied his lungs of smoke. "Look, G-man," he said finally, "I don't have no imagination. I grew up in a reform school. I been with rounders the whole fuckin' fifty-three years of my life. I'm telling you the man is treating me differently."

  "Differently like how?"

  "He doesn't really tell me anything anymore. That's why all I've been able to get for you in the last couple of weeks is bits and pieces."

  "So bits and pieces are better than nothing," Novak said.

  "So waking up in the morning is better than sleeping with the fishes."

  "What have you heard this week?" Novak said.

  "Like I said ... bits and pieces. Something about Tony paying off somebody on the Federal Prison Board."

  "You mean the Federal Parole Board," Novak said.

  "Whoever does the springing of people from federal joints."

  "Who does Tony want sprung?"

  "It's somebody who's gonna work for him, or do something for him, make some money for him. Some shit like that. I don't have a name." Bruno puffed more smoke. He coughed softly.

  "Anything else?" Novak said.

  "Bruce O'Hara."

  "I take it you mean the movie actor?"

  Bruno gave an impatient nod. "After my shift at the blackjack table I'm sitting at the bar in the Stardust. Tony gets a call. I hear him say the guy's name."

  "That's all? He just mentioned his name?"

  Bruno nodded. "I want off the fucking hook," he said after a pause. "Things are too hot for me and I want out."

  Expressionless, Novak folded his hands. "I thought we had a deal."

  "When we made our deal you promised me I could pull out if things started getting hot. You said I could pull out anytime I wanted."

  "I need you in there with him. You're my only source of information."

  "You told me that when the time came you would move me. You promised to set me up with a new identity."

  Novak nodded slowly as he tried to think of a way to change the subject.

  Bruno tapped ashes into the dashboard tray. "I kept my part of the bargain. I've been a rat against Tony. I helped you lock up three people who work for him. Now I want a moving van and a new name."

  "The deal was that if I fixed things with the Strike Force attorneys and convinced the judge to let you stay on the street, you would do Tony for me."

  Bruno rubbed his eyes, ran fingers through his hair. "I've tried. I've done every fuckin' thing I can think of to help you make a case on him. You know that."

  "I can't ask the judge to suspend your sentence because you were trying to put Tony in the joint. She'll laugh at me. You know how federal judges are."

  Bruno stared out the window. "I know how you feds are too," he said finally. "You like to squeeze people for everything you can get."

  "If you suddenly just drop out of sight, Tony'll know it was you.

  "By then I'll be in the wind."

  "I think you're worried about nothing," Novak said. "If Tony had put out a contract on you, I would have heard about it from another source already. These things get around."

  "So if you got so many rats on the street, why do you need me?"

  Novak massaged the steering wheel. "All I'm asking is that you keep your ears open for one more week. Then, if you still want out, I'll take you into the witness protection program. That's a promise."

  Bruno looked at his cigarette. "That's the same double-talk you gave me last week."

  Because it was, Novak said nothing.

  "I shoulda known you people would end up fucking me in the ass," he said. "If I had it to do over I would just go do my time instead of putting all my friends in jail."

  "All I'm asking is one more week."

  Bruno opened the wind wing and pushed the cigarette out. He fidgeted. "You'd do anything to get Tony. You could care less what happens to me." Rapidly, he lit another smoke.

  Novak bit his lip for a moment. "You refused to testify about Tony before the federal grand jury. So the attorney-in-charge of the Organized Crime Strike Force won't approve witness protection."

  "Fuck the attorney-in-charge," Bruno said angrily. "You gave me your word. That's why I went along with what you wanted me to do. I believed you."

  "All I'm asking is a few more days."

  For a moment, Bruno Santoro examined his well-manicured dealer's nails. Then he reached for the door handle.

  "It'll look better for the judge if you testify against Tony in front of the federal grand jury," Novak said. "It'll help your case."

  Bruno shook his head in dismay. He took two deep puffs on his cigarette. "It's al
ways just one more thing," he said sadly. "Every time we meet you squeeze me for one more thing."

  "You can testify in secret."

  "Tony has ways of finding out shit like that," Bruno said after a while.

  "But like you said, by then you'll be in the wind."

  Bruno took a deep drag from his cigarette. He rolled the window down and flicked it a long way. "Are you telling me that if I testify I won't have to go to the joint?"

  "I can't make you any promises-"

  "Is that what you're telling me?" Bruno interrupted.

  Novak nodded.

  Bruno swallowed and cleared his throat.

  "When I was twenty years old this family guy who was running broads calls me into his restaurant. He tells me a guy named Guido fucked him out of some money and went to Florida. The family guy asks me if I want the contract. I'm hungry. Guido is an asshole. So I take the paper. I find Guido in Florida, case the place where he was staying. He was with his kids." Mournfully, Bruno shook his head, stared into the distance.

  "What happened?" Novak said.

  "That night I checked into a motel and I tried to get my balls up-to talk myself into doing it, you know? The family guy keeps calling me. I kept putting him off, picking up the gun, putting it down. But I just couldn't do it. Even though I knew I wouldn't be able to show my face in the neighborhood ever again, I still fucking couldn't kill anyone." He turned to face Novak. "If I woulda been smart, instead of coming to Vegas I woulda joined the navy or something. My father wanted me to join the navy. Fuck."

  "The grand jury meets tomorrow." Novak said. "I'll pick you up here."

  Bruno sat there a moment. "It's the last thing I'm doing for you people," he said.

  Then he opened the passenger door and climbed out.

  FIVE

  Red Haynes, a lanky, sleepy-eyed man with fiery tousled hair and over-sized ears, sat in the stuffy waiting room of the Federal Health Clinic. His arms were folded across his chest. Seated opposite him was an emaciated, stringy-haired woman wearing an extremely short skirt. He watched as, keeping her knees primly together, the woman nervously reapplied both lipstick and pancake makeup for the third time during the twenty minutes or so that he had been waiting. A wired-up pillhead, he said to himself.

  To Haynes's right was a fortyish man dressed in a bureaucrat's uniform- short-sleeved white shirt with ballpoint-pen marks on the pocket, baggy trousers, and cheap wing-tipped shoes. Come to think of it, Haynes said to himself, except for the on-sale polyester sport coat that covered his gun and handcuffs, he was dressed the same way.

  A door opened. A tall, bubble-butted black nurse stepped into the room. "Agent Haynes?"

  "That's me."

  "Dr. Rhodes will see you now."

  Red Haynes came to his feet and shuffled behind bubble-butt into the doctor's office. The doctor, a parrot-nosed man much younger than Haynes, looked up from his paperwork and nodded. Haynes took a seat in front of the desk. On the walls were diplomas, psychiatric-internship certificates, other crapola which impressed Haynes about as much as a television commercial. The door closed behind him.

  "Your file says you've been an FBI agent for twenty years," the doctor said as he removed his thick glasses and wiped the lenses, then the frames, on a small rag.

  "Right."

  "Do you know why you're here?"

  "Because I received a low yearly performance evaluation and the agent-in-charge said I'm depressed."

  "Do you think you're depressed?"

  "No."

  Dr. Rhodes nodded his parrot beak. "Why do you suppose your supervisor said you were depressed?"

  "To screw me."

  "Why do you think your supervisor would want to...uh...to cause you problems?"

  Red Haynes interlaced his bony fingers. With a brisk, well-practiced movement, he loudly cracked his knuckles. The doctor winced.

  "Because that's the way he is."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "He is an asshole."

  "And you feel he wants to cause you harm?"

  Haynes shook his head. "If you are born an asshole you cause people harm whether you want to or not."

  Dr. Rhodes lifted his eyeglasses from his nose for an unnecessary cleaning, lenses only this time, then tipped them back onto the deep eyeglass indentation on his beak. "Do you ever have nightmares?"

  "I did a few years ago."

  "What were they about?"

  "Shooting somebody."

  "Anyone in particular?"

  "A bank robber."

  "What was occurring in your life around the time you started having those nightmares?"

  "I'd just shot a bank robber with a twelve-gauge shotgun.

  Dr. Rhodes stared at Haynes for a moment, as if doing so would help solve some great riddle. "What did you do immediately after the shooting?"

  "I went to a bar with the other agents. We celebrated."

  "And it was after that you began to have nightmares?"

  "That very night."

  "What occurred during the nightmares?"

  "I would shoot the guy and see the blood and gore all over again. It was in Technicolor."

  "Perhaps you felt guilty about what had occurred?"

  "I just told you we went and had a party after the shooting. Does that sound like I felt guilty?"

  "You had nightmares."

  "They went away after a while."

  "There's a notation in your file that you received a reprimand after the shooting incident. What was this about?"

  "I got written up for following the FBI manual."

  "Please go on."

  "It says in the FBI manual that all prisoners must be handcuffed, no matter what the circumstances of the arrest."

  "So you handcuffed the man you shot?"

  "That's right. If I hadn't, the supervisor at the scene would have written me up for not following procedure."

  Dr. Rhodes maintained eye contact with Haynes. "Then what exactly was the dispute concerning the handcuffing of the...uh... prisoner?"

  "The supervisor said what I did was unbecoming a federal officer."

  "Why would he say that?"

  "Probably because some of the onlookers in the bank got upset."

  "I take it this was because the man you handcuffed was injured?"

  "No. It was because he was headless."

  "You handcuffed a headless corpse?"

  "It was either that or be written up for not following procedure."

  Dr. Rhodes stared at the personnel file for a moment, shook his head. "Did you really believe your supervisor would have reprimanded you for failing to handcuff a dead man?"

  "Yes."

  Dr. Rhodes swallowed a couple of times, reached for his eyeglasses, then stopped himself. He picked up a report, cleared his throat, spoke in a businesslike manner. "This rating report says that you lack initiative, seem constantly 'blue,' and that you have a 'tendency to find fault with everyone and everything.' What is your reaction to these comments?"

  Red Haynes gave his right ear a tug. One by one, he cracked each of the knuckles on his right hand by tugging sharply on each finger. "My reaction is that the person who wrote that is a pencil-necked Bureau ass-kisser and a general all-around prick who's not qualified to write an evaluation on anyone."

  "Nevertheless, he's someone you have to work with," Dr. Rhodes said.

  "Not anymore. He transferred me from the Las Vegas field office to the Organized Crime Strike Force almost ten months ago."

  Rhodes flipped the file folder's cover to check the date. He blushed as he noted it. "We are a little behind in consultations."

  "The whole government is behind. That's because it has second-rate people working for it. In fact, if you were such a hot-shot psychiatrist you'd be out making big money somewhere, instead of collecting a federal paycheck to work in a chickenshit government clinic."

  Dr. Rhodes made a notation in Haynes's file. "I think you are suffering from severe depression, Agent Haynes."<
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  Haynes cracked his knuckles again. The sound was extra-loud, like twigs breaking.

  Exasperated, Dr. Rhodes let out his breath. He made notations in the file. "I'm going to recommend that you get into an exercise program...jogging, maybe. When you feel stress coming on I want you to drop whatever you are doing and start jogging."

  "I should start the moment I feel stress coming on?"

  Dr. Rhodes stopped writing, looked up. "That's right."

  Red Haynes came to his feet in a quick-step march. With his bony knees and arms working like pistons he jogged to the door. Keeping his legs moving, he opened the door and jogged directly from the room, through the reception area, and out the front door.

  At the federal courthouse, Novak parked the G-car in his assigned spot in the parking lot.

  Inside, he took an elevator to the third floor. At the end of a hallway he stopped in front of an unmarked door. He punched numbers on the door's cipher lock. The lock made a snapping sound, and he let himself into a drably decorated room which contained six government-issue desks, some filing cabinets, a radio base station, and a teletype machine. Next to the window was a bulletin board covered with black-and-white photographs -blown-up surveillance shots of Tony Parisi talking to men in casino parking lots.

  At an immaculate desk in the corner of the room, Along-for-the-Ride Frank Tyde, a seedy, middle-aged U.S. Customs agent who invariably wore the same brown polyester sport coat and frayed necktie, sat with his feet up on his desk, head turned to face the window, hands behind his head with fingers interlaced, meerschaum pipe jutting from the side of his mouth emitting smoke. It was a position from which he seldom moved. Probably because it would have caused him an unnecessary expenditure of energy, he did not acknowledge Novak's arrival in any way.

  John Novak sat down at his desk, rummaged through some paperwork.

  "Big day planned, Frank?" Novak said as an aside.

  "This afternoon I'll get a haircut, do some shopping at the government store, make a few phone calls around the country to see who's getting promoted...and brief Elliot, our fearless prick of a leader, on an old case. That'll be the hardest part of the day," Tyde said without taking the pipe out of his mouth.