"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 being-maybe psychotic. While he was working, he was almost continuously hired by organized crime bosses to do the most important hits, the ones that had to be done by an outsider so that they could never be connected to the bosses. Some of his hits probably didn't even seem to be murders. There are undoubtedly some that seemed to be heart attacks or overdoses. He's potentially the most important informant the Justice Department has ever had. He's not somebody who can tell us about a thousand-dollar drug deal or a football pool that closed down ten years ago. His only business was murder."
"And why would he tell us anything about that?"
"He was always an outsider, not a made guy. He's not even Italian. At this point he has no loyalty to anybody, and now somebody has made him very angry. I didn't find him and ask him questions. He came to me and offered me information. This is an opportunity I don't expect to see again."
Hunsecker stroked his chin and cheeks, shook his head impatiently, stood up, and paced his office. "This opportunity you're bringing me is the news that you've found an unlocked door to the madhouse. Once we're taking orders from this serial killer, arresting whomever he wants us to, we're in an entirely different universe, and it's not one we want to inhabit. If, just to get information, we're going to ignore the crimes of a man who has probably killed scores of people, then what won't we ignore?"
"He-"
"Don't," he said. "It was a rhetorical question. My answer isn't going to change. The U.S. government isn't going to be in business with a man with a name like 'the Butcher's Boy.' We won't act on his information. If you've got something more on him than third-hand stories, then arrest and charge him. If not, we'd both better get back to our responsibilities."
"Yes, sir."
3
Elizabeth Waring looked up from behind the desk in her office and saw that the wall clock said it was after seven. She was still frustrated by this morning's conversation with the deputy assistant, but she had managed to distract herself with work until after the official hour for closing her section. It had been her intention to kill the extra hour or so by accomplishing a few things that would make tomorrow morning more productive. That way she wouldn't have to go to the underground parking garage and run into Hunsecker there, and she wouldn't have to look at whoever came down about the same time he did and know that Hunsecker had complained about her.
She knew that whenever he did tell someone, he would present his account as an example of the lack of ethics of some of the Justice Department's career employees. Or maybe he would just say that people like Elizabeth Waring, who had dealt too long with organized crime, began to be more and more like the enemy. Twenty years ago, when she had started out in the Justice Department, there probably would also have been an oblique hint that there was a moral uncertainty to women. A few of the old guard felt women didn't really belong in the Justice Department, but had been allowed in for purely political reasons. At least that was over.
Now she had to report to a man who really had been allowed in for purely political reasons. He had, through complicated family relationships, been made a partner in an old, respected law firm. The combination of family and law firm had made him a good fund-raiser for political candidates, and so he was a perfect choice for a post two levels down from a cabinet member. Fortunately, he could be counted on to leave eventually. He was a bit too arrogant to survive many meetings with his superiors, too unintelligent to inspire his staff to do great things he could take credit for, and too ambitious to stand still for long. Most of the value he could get from serving as a deputy assistant attorney general he'd had on the day he'd been sworn in. He would be able to play a bigger role in his law firm or sell out to a rival firm, and spend the next few years making up for a dull career by getting very rich.
She steered her mind around the inevitable comparison. She had begun as a data analyst in this same building more than twenty years ago. She had repeatedly, reliably done something that none of the political appointees had ever done: she had solved crimes and put the people who had committed them in prison. She had caused three crime families to fall into decline because of lack of leadership, then stood by to convict the followers as they made foolish mistakes and then turned informant to save themselves.