The Quality of the Informant Page 4

  "She's not home," Kelly said. He jiggled change in his pants pocket.

  Carr rang the doorbell. Still no answer. An older woman wearing a floral-patterned housecoat and a turban of hair rollers shuffled out of the apartment next door. Her arms were folded across her chest. She stared at Carr's forehead. He opened his coat and displayed the badge on his belt. "Federal officers," he said. "Have you seen Miss Gleason?"

  "She's in there," said the woman. "One of her many boyfriends was just over; he came and left in a taxicab."

  Carr felt like someone had slugged him in the stomach with a baseball bat. He was in Korea again, shells bursting; soldiers were screaming. He grabbed the door handle and turned. It was unlocked. He pushed it open. Linda was lying in a fetal position in the middle of the living-room floor, her hands clutching a man's belt around her neck. Her face was ashen and her eyes open, staring. Carr dropped to his knees next to her.

  "Holy mother of Christ," Kelly said. He crossed himself. Taking out a handkerchief, he reached for the phone on the coffee table.

  "Use the car radio," Carr said.

  Kelly rushed out the door.

  With two fingers, Carr closed Linda's eyes. He traced the tiny crow's-feet. He pulled his hand away.

  The woman in rollers edged in the door. Her hands flew to her face and she started to wail. Carr waved her back. She retreated like a wounded animal.

  Carr felt cold. He rubbed his eyes for a moment. He was drained, exhausted after twenty years on the street.

  Carr sat on the edge of a paper-covered examination table in the hospital's emergency room. Outside the room a nurse kept telling a sobbing child not to rub something or it would get worse. There was the smell of witch hazel. A young woman doctor with a nose that protruded almost as much as her ponytail stood in front of him holding a curved needle. She said, "This is going to hurt a little," as she took a stitch in his forehead. She was right.

  Kelly barged in through a set of swinging doors. "LaMonica's key fit one the safe-deposit boxes in the bank," he said, "but as I'm sure you've probably guessed by now, the box was empty."

  "Don't move your head, dammit," the doctor said.

  "Sorry," Carr mumbled.

  "That LaMonica is a fast thinker," Kelly said. "He thought up that whole little act after we arrested him." He shook his head. "Who would have figured him to go straight back over to Linda's, though? Any normal crook would have hot-footed it out of town without looking back. But not LaMonica; the first thing that came to his mind was revenge. He's vicious, a real animal."

  The doctor stuck the needle in again and Carr winced.

  "I bet that smarts," Kelly said. "You look like death warmed over."

  The doctor stopped sewing. She pointed the needle at Kelly. "Sir, would you mind getting the hell out of this room?"

  Kelly raised his hands and backed out the door.

  Paul LaMonica sat next to the window in the seat behind the bus driver. He rubbed his wrists. As the bus chugged along Hollywood Boulevard he felt anonymous, safe for the time being. He knew that cops did not stop buses to look for escapees.

  The sight of a police radio car cruising next to the bus startled him. He stared down at the vehicle as if viewing an alligator from a jungle barge. The radio car turned onto a side street.

  A half hour later, the bus pulled into the busy L.A. Airport traffic circle and inched along in the bumper-to-bumper crush. Finally it stopped. Paul LaMonica stepped off the crowded bus and smelled jet fuel. He blended into the bustling crowd heading for the international departures terminal. Inside, he stopped for a moment in front of a flight information screen and noted the departure gate number for a Paris-bound flight. He followed another crowd down a tiled corridor and up an escalator. At the top of the conveyance was a gift shop wedged next to a cocktail lounge. He strolled into the gift shop and purchased two newspapers and a cheap flight bag. After stuffing the papers into the bag, he zipped it up.

  Casually he sauntered out of the gift shop and into the cocktail lounge. It was a dark place with a long bar and windows that faced the airport runway. Travelers of all ages huddled around the tables in the room. There were lots of clocks on the walls. LaMonica wound his way across the floor, surveying the patrons. Finally, he sat down at a table next to an auburn-haired woman of medium build. She was about his age and dressed in a conservative dark skirt and blouse. An enormous purse and an overnight case were in the chair next to her. The case had a Paris baggage tag.

  When a young waitress approached, he ordered a straight soda. She returned with the drink and he paid. As she walked away, LaMonica hefted his glass to the woman sitting next to him. "Happy travels," he said with a fatherly wink.

  The woman hesitated, then picked up her glass. "Same to you," she said. She sipped and set the glass down.

  "Paris?" he said.

  She nodded. "My first trip."

  "You'll love Paris. It's a beautiful city. I'm a pilot; I fly there every other week. I'm going over today to pick up a flight."

  "I just can't wait to get there. It's my first trip to Europe.

  LaMonica smiled. Nothing was said for a while.

  "Are the lines at the ticket counter always so long?" she asked.

  "I'm afraid I wouldn't know. As a pilot I'm not required to check in at the ticket counter."

  "Of course," she said in a slightly embarrassed tone.

  "But I did see an extremely long line at the passport office. I'm lucky enough to have a friend who works there, so I just dropped off my passport. He told me he'd stamp it and I could pick it up just before departure time."

  The woman's hands plunged into her purse. She pulled out her passport. "A stamp?" she said as she flipped through the pages.

  "It's a new requirement," he said. "A passport officer places a trip stamp on the last page of each passport. If one arrives in France without such a stamp, it causes nothing but problems."

  The woman looked worried. "My travel agent didn't tell me. Where is the passport office?"

  "It's right next to the pilots' check-in office," he said. "I'm on my way to pick up my passport right now. I'll be happy to show you the way."

  "Thank you," the woman said. She struggled to pick up her luggage.

  "If you'd like, I can have your passport stamped while I'm there. It'll save you carting all your luggage."

  The woman furrowed her brow.

  "And perhaps you'd be kind enough to keep an eye on my flight bag while I'm gone."

  The woman hesitated for a moment. She gazed at the flight bag. "Uh, yes. That would be very kind."

  LaMonica held out his hand and she gave him the passport. She stuffed it into his shirt pocket. "Be back in a few minutes." He went down the escalator and joined the crowd of travelers heading for the street. At a rental-car desk near the ticket counters, he used a credit card to rent a sedan. From the airport, he drove directly to a printing supply house on Sepulveda Boulevard and picked up the inks and bond paper he had ordered. Having loaded the items neatly into the trunk of the rented car, he drove to the San Diego freeway and headed south.

  After stopping for lunch at a coffee shop, he entered a bank and purchased one $500-denomination traveler's check. Taking care not to fold it, he slipped the check into an envelope. Back on the freeway again, he went over the supply list in his mind. Unless he was wrong, he had everything he needed.

  ****

  Chapter 6

  SO FAR, the interview was going pretty much as Carr had figured it would. After warning him of his rights, Special Agent in Charge Norbert Waeves, fortified behind a desk covered with nameplates, photo cubes, and pipe paraphernalia, had asked Carr to recount his activities for the entire day "in question" and followed up with an inquiry about how the case had originated. With each of Carr's answers, Waeves would make a little puff of pipe smoke and jot something down on his ever-present yellow notepad. A tape recorder sat on the desk between them like a large black magnet.

  Waeves, a kinky-haired, fr
eckled man who was a few years younger than Carr, held up his pencil like a dart. "Again,"he said. "What time was it when the prisoner escaped?"

  "About five," Carr replied. His eyes were on the wall behind the desk, where Waeves's framed headquarters commendation letters (the preprinted kind other agents threw away) and photographs of his gun collection were displayed.

  "I'd like a more accurate estimate. Was it closer to after five or before five?" Waeves said. His smile was strained.

  "Like I said, it was about five." Suddenly Carr realized what looked different about Waeves. It was the new suit. Shoulder pads.

  "How do you know it was five?" Waeves insisted. "Why couldn't it have been four or six?"

  "I don't know. I guess I looked at my watch." Carr frowned.

  Waeves glanced at the yellow pad. He printed what looked like the word five and underlined it. He put the pen down. "So, you called for help and searched for the escaped prisoner," he said. "Then what?"

  "We couldn't find him."

  The interrogator nodded. "Go ahead."

  "Go ahead what?"

  "What did you do then?"

  "I called the informant from a pay phone," Carr said. "Her line was busy."

  "Why did you try to call her?"

  "To tell her LaMonica had escaped."

  "How do you know the line was busy? Couldn't the phone just as easily have been out of order?" Waeves made a sucking sound on the pipe.

  Carr closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. "Her line was busy so we drove over to her apartment."

  "How long did it take?"

  "To do what?"

  "To drive to her apartment."

  "Because of the rush-hour traffic it took about a half hour," Carr said.

  "Would you say it was closer to twenty-five minutes or thirty-five minutes?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes, what?"

  "It was about half an hour," Carr said.

  Waeves's angular face became blotchy. He coughed nervously. "How long had Linda Gleason been your informant?"

  "About five years."

  "And how was she recruited?"

  "She was a walk-in," Carr said. "Her husband was murdered on a contract let by Tony Dio the loan shark and she wanted to get even. She gave me enough information on one of Dio's hoods that I was able to get a search warrant for his house. I found fifty grand in tens and the weapon that was used on her husband inside the house. Headquarters authorized a cash payment to her after the conviction, and from then on she just kept feeding me information. She always worked as a cocktail waitress in one or the other of the local hood hangouts. They trusted her because her husband had a reputation for being solid. No one ever suspected her as far as I know." You know the story as well as I do, you two-faced bastard.

  Waeves leaned back in his chair. He rolled a pen on the back of his knuckles. "You arrested LaMonica at the informant's apartment, leaving no doubt as to her role as the informant," he said. "What is your explanation for this tactic?"

  "It was her idea," Carr said. "She felt comfortable with the scenario and I accepted that." Carr was talking to the recorder. He knew the tape would be played like a party record by the inspectors in Washington, D.C. "Linda Gleason was an active, longtime informant whose original revenge motivation had turned into a financial one. She got a few extra bucks now and then for doing nothing more than repeating bar talk. She had provided information on at least forty cases. It was common for her to make up the scenario for her undercover role."

  The recorder squeaked. The tape had run out. Waeves punched the "eject" button with a bony finger and the cassette popped out. He yanked open the desk drawer and rummaged around for a fresh cassette.

  "You don't have anything on me," Carr said. "My operation will be ruled 'in policy.'"

  Waeves slammed the drawer shut and opened another. He moved things around. "We'll see," he said.

  "Take your best shot, pencil pusher," Carr said.

  Waeves pulled a cassette out of the drawer and stuffed it into the machine as if plugging a dike.

  Carr's tone changed to one of courtesy. "Are there any other questions, Mr. Waeves?" He was looking at the tape recorder.

  "Yes," said the blotchy-faced man. "What time was it when...”

  It was after 9:00 P.M. by the time Carr arrived at Ling's bar. He pushed aside a portal of hanging beads and looked around for his partner. Ling's, like the other haunts in Chinatown, was kept mysteriously dark. Bar jokes had it that the cavelike atmosphere was due to Ling's desire to save on utility bills, but Carr suspected that the detectives who drank there preferred the lack of light.

  Kelly waved, drink in hand, from a bar-stool perch facing the door. Carr made his way to him and sat down.

  Ling, wearing his usual bow tie and long-sleeved white shirt, wiped his wire-framed eyeglasses on his sleeve. He put them back on. "Charlie," he said, grabbing a Scotch bottle. He poured a drink and set it down in front of Carr. "Lady sheriff detective ask about you last night. Big blonde," he whispered. "She want to know if I have your address since you transfer back. I thought maybe I give her my address. Maybe get her in bed with me and lay her before she know what happens!" He gave a high-pitched laugh.

  Carr smiled and shook his head.

  Still laughing, Ling poured more drinks and rushed to the other end of the bar.

  "How long did he have you in his office?" Kelly said.

  "About two hours."

  "Same here," Kelly said. "Christ, you'd think we'd killed Linda." He shook his head sadly.

  "That's just the way he is," Carr said.

  Kelly set his drink down. "You're right there. He's the same pipe-smoking, ass-kissing, i-dotting, mama's boy bureaucrat he always was. Over the years I've had dreams about kicking the shit out of him. Literally pounding his friggin' head in."

  "I know what you mean," Carr said. He gulped fully half of the Scotch-and-water and put the glass down. Neither man said anything for a while.

  "Linda was getting careless," Kelly said. "She'd done too many cases. She shouldn't have brought the guy over to her apartment. It was a stupid thing to do."

  "She had a lot of guts."

  "We don't have anything to go on," Kelly said. "LaMonica could be anywhere by now."

  "We'll find him," Carr said after a while. "And when we do we're going to play catch-up."

  Carr and Kelly spent the next day standing around in the hallway outside judge Malcolm's courtroom waiting to testify. The case was a leftover that predated Carr's transfer to Washington. Because of assorted technicalities, Judge Malcolm had granted twelve defense motions for continuance in almost two years. Carr wasn't particularly surprised by the delay because he had seen the defense lawyer use the same strategy in other cases.

  At 4:00 P.M., Assistant U.S. Attorney Reba Partch, a harried young woman with thick glasses, wiry hair, and an oversized rear end, strode out of the courtroom. She wore a black velvet jacket with a matching tie and a huge dandruffy collar. "You two are excused," she said gruffly. "I let him plead to one count for straight probation." She dug a package of cough drops out of her jacket and popped a couple into her mouth. "It's a weak case anyway, and I'm sick of making court appearances on it. There've been a million continuances. Even the judge is sick of the case." She maneuvered the cough drops around in her mouth.

  Kelly's face reddened. "Since when is a confession a weak case?" he said. "He told us he did it. Not to mention the fact that he had a stack of phony twenties in his pocket when we arrested him. The jerk has a record a mile long."

  "If we went to trial on him and lost, then what would we have?" she said.

  "The same thing we have right now," Kelly said. "Nothing. "

  Her tongue arranged the cough drops so she could speak. "You people are completely out of touch with reality," she said, cough drops rattling against her teeth. She flung open the door and bustled back into the courtroom.

  Kelly was still talking about the incident that night as he drove south
past fog-shrouded motels and fast-food stands along the Pacific Coast Highway, a two-lane road that wound through the beach cities. "Her daddy raised her, paid for her law school, and juiced her way into a federal prosecutor's job with a nice fat political contribution. The only thing he couldn't do for her was try her cases."

  "You don't become a judge by taking cases to trial," Carr said. "You might lose. Sally told me that Judge Malcolm never tried a case during his days as prosecutor. He had a perfect record when he was appointed to the bench."

  "I don't want to talk about it anymore," Kelly said as he swung the G-car into a parking lot next to a smallish building. A flashing marquee on its roof proclaimed "Shorty McFadden's-Le Jazz Club." They got out of the car and strolled to the rear door of the place. The sound of a saxophone came from inside. Both men tightened their belts to keep their guns from bulging under their suit jackets. Carr opened the door and they went inside.

  Blue lights shone through cigarette smoke onto a stage that barely had room enough for the combo on it. Shorty McFadden, a fragile-looking, jockey-sized man wearing a French-cut white suit and a black turtleneck, was playing a fiery "Cherokee" on his sax. As he harmonized, his eyes were half shut and his knees bent with the rhythm. He had thinning brown hair and the chalky complexion of a man who had just been released from solitary confinement.

  The crowd was mixed: beach types, a few blacks, more than a few middle-aged hoods with young women, some sunken-cheeked hypes. The T-men were the focus of lots of stares, including one from a black woman bartender with corn-rowed hair who was as tall as a basketball player. Carr and Kelly took a seat at a corner table that provided a view of both doors.

  At the end of the set, Shorty McFadden bowed to the applause and told the audience in a hoarse voice that it was time for a break. He set the saxophone on its stand and lit a cigarette. Then he hopped off the stage and wound his way to the bar, shaking hands along the way. The Amazon bartender said something to him and he headed straight for Carr's table. Everyone shook hands. Shorty greeted the T-men without smiling. Come to think of it, Carr had never seen him smile. The diminutive man pulled up a chair.