Blood Wine (18 page)

“A gangster.”

“The word has a certain ring to it.”

“And ‘these are special times.' Would you care to explain?”

“No.”

Miranda felt the interior of the car was like a bathysphere and the surrounding street scene, gleaming softly through the smoked glass windows, was another world. The limousine door opened and Tony crawled into the spacious interior to squat and face them. Suddenly he had a black hood in his hands and whipped it over Miranda's head before she had time to respond. Her fists flailed and then strong hands grasped them together and snapped handcuffs over her wrists.

“Elke,” she said, in a muffled voice. “Elke, you'll be all right.”

Elke said nothing.

“Carlo!” said Miranda. She paused. “Very interesting. I appreciate, you rescued us. Now take the goddamned hood off before I …” After another long pause, she said, “I'm amazed you failed out of law school. Must have screwed up the ethics part. So what now.”

“Now, my dear, we go for a ride.”

“I've seen that in the movies. It never ends well. Going for a ride usually means, well, going for a ride.”

“Yes, it does, Miranda. In this case, to a safe house as my guest. The hood is to protect you. I think it is better if you don't know where you are.”

“And how long am I going to
not
know where I am? When do we get turned loose?”

“All in good time. Meanwhile, you will be safe.”

“Who were those guys?”

“Your assassins.”

“Okay, Carlo. Who were our assassins?”

“Men who want to kill you, that is all you need to know.”

“No, it is not all I need to know.”

“Detective, it
is
all. Please sit back, enjoy the ride. Tony, let's go.”

Miranda could feel Elke's thigh pressed against hers. It was strangely comforting. She listened to the cross streets, counted the lights they stopped at, and within a couple of minutes was thoroughly disoriented. Then she felt the car descend and heard a sustained rush of air. She knew exactly where she was, in the Hudson Tunnel, on their way to New Jersey.

The Safe House

A
fter
an interminable drive, the car slowed and wound its way through a series of gentle curves. They must be in suburbia, Miranda thought. Expensive suburbia, with streets laid out in sweeping geometric patterns. She had not heard a sound from Elke since before the hoods were put on.

“Elke?” she said.

There was no response.

“Elke, do you really think there's a gay cabal to subvert femininity?”

“What a bizarre question, given our present condition,” said Elke.

“Well, do you?”

“No, I was just playing the devil.”

“Meaning what?” said Miranda, who was incredibly relieved her companion was responsive.

“If you two are talking in code, it won't help,” said Carlo Sebastiani. “As the saying goes, ‘resistance is futile.'”

“That's not a saying,” said Tony from the front seat as they pulled into a driveway. “That's the motto of the Borg.”

“The Borg?” said Carlo Sebastiani. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“
Star Trek
,” said Miranda.

“Shit,” said the Mafia boss. “Seven of Nine. Yeah, great tits, I've seen her, what, you think I'm culturally illiterate?”

“Too sophisticated, Carlo. You've got more on your mind,” Tony responded with companionable grace. “That's why you're the boss.”

“Fucking right,” said Carlo.

“What on earth are you people talking about?” said Elke impatiently. “What's a seven-of-nine?”

Miranda heard automatic garage doors roll open, the car shunted forward, then the decisive rumble as they closed.
This is it
, she thought.

By the time Tony had climbed into the back and removed Miranda's cuffs and hood, Elke's were already off. Carlo Sebastiani held them in his hands as if they were lingerie. He waited for the women to get out first, admiring them as they squirmed out of the confined space.

Stepping from the garage into the house, Miranda was surprised. Far from being a place of confinement, it was an opulently appointed suburban house with gleaming hard furniture and plush soft furniture, all in earth tones with a few strategic accents of brilliant colour. Waiting for them in the living room was an attractive woman in her early fifties who rose to her feet, kissed Carlo in a familiar embrace, greeted Tony as a friend and smiled at the two women, waiting for an introduction.

“This is my wife,” said Carlo, with an awkward gesture to the woman whose imperial demeanour left no doubt about her status.

“Pleased to meet you, I'm Linda. You're going to be staying with me for a while.”

“I'm Miranda, this is Elke. I'm a Toronto police detective.”

“I'm a stay-at-home empty-nest New Jersey housewife,” said Linda Sebastiani. “Sit down, make yourselves comfortable. Tony, will you find Carmen, have her get us some drinks. So, Detective, how do you like New Jersey so far?”

There was more menace in the woman's charm than anything Miranda perceived in her husband's obvious expressions of power. Miranda looked around. There were no bars on the windows, no guards posted at the doors, no attempt to stop her from taking in the details of their surroundings.

But, of course,
she thought.
There is a front garden and hedges. I could never identify this place from the street in a million years. As for breaking free, even if we got away, where would we go? We don't know where we are. New Jersey. That covers a lot of territory.

The maid came in and took orders for drinks. Miranda asked for a Scotch, straight up.

“Of course,” said Sebastiani, “if you would prefer wine?”

“Let me guess,” said Miranda. “You have ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape at perfect cellar temperature.”

“Yes, we do, and as you say, it should be slightly cooled, enough to show a bloom on the bottle. Am I right, Ms. Sturmberg?”

Elke, who had seemed distracted to this point, either through fear or possibly frustration at yet another intrusion on her normally quiet and esoteric lifestyle, responded with surprising vivacity. “Yes, that is definitely best. I would always serve up a blended wine at cellar temperature. By the grape, I'd go cooler or warmer, depending.”

“On what?” asked Linda Sebastiani with genuine interest.

“On the grape. Beaujolais, which is Gamay, I might even chill. A Merlot, just below room temperature. Something heavy like Hermitage, which is Syrah, or an Australian Shiraz, if they're good, I'd rest them on the table for half an hour before opening to let them warm, then let them breathe for another half hour before pouring.”

“You are in the wine business, of course,” the other woman noted.

“Yes, I am.”

“And what do you think of our contribution to wine culture?” Carlo Sebastiani asked.

“Italy's, it's —”

“No, no, Ms. Sturmberg. I am a patriot. Italy is, as a poet once said, a creation myth. I am a proud and loyal American. I am asking about our ChâteauNeuf.”

“You are a patriot who sells counterfeit French wine to a gullible American public,” said Miranda.

“Do not confuse honour with honesty, Ms. Quin,” he snapped back.

“Carmen,” said Linda in a voice sufficiently strident to interrupt the conversational flow, as she clearly intended, “would you bring up a bottle of Bordeaux from the cellar, say, Château Mouton Rothschild.”

“Yes, ma'am. What year would you like?”

“Our guests are special, let them decide.”

Without hesitation, Elke chimed in with, “Nineteen forty-five, that would be nice.”

“Bring us a nineteen forty-five, then,” said Linda.

“You have it!” exclaimed Elke. “Really?”

“Of course,” said Linda. “Carmen, you will open it, please, and leave it on the sideboard. I'm sure my friend would like it to breathe.”

Miranda was fascinated to see how Elke's passion for wine displaced her sense of imminent danger or social propriety as the virtual prisoner in the home of a family of gangsters.

“This is a nice place,” she said. “Perhaps I could use your phone.”

“Thank you,” said Carlo. “We only use it now and then, for special occasions. Think of it as a family cottage. It is a safe haven from life on the mean streets — and the main streets. It's nice. But, of course, as anonymous as a one-dollar bill. Even the police don't know about this place. And no, you may not use the telephone.”

“Captain Clancy is going to miss us. He'll know by morning.”

“He will know you are safe.”

“No way!”

“What?”

“He's not on your payroll?”

“As you say, no way. But he understands certain things, he will know not to worry.”

“What is going on here?” Miranda demanded.

“As I said, my dear, I am a patriot.”

“You are a hoodlum.”

“They are not mutually exclusive.”

There was an awkward lull in the conversation. Miranda watched Linda Sebastiani for any sign of empathy, something she could play on. The woman seemed serene, the only one in the room not agitated by the silence.

“So,” said Carlo. “You want to talk about wines?”

“I would like to know why we're here.”

“If you knew, you would not be here.”

“Say again?”

“If you understood the situation, you would be at home. You would be back in Canada.”

“Canada,” said Linda, savouring the word as if she were trying to identify an unusual flavour. “Toronto. Yes, you must know Francine Ciccone, the poor woman.”

“Poor woman, I doubt. I know who she is. I've met her husband.”

“Who is dead.”

“Yes. I'm sure you know the situation between us.”

“Yes, I do. Sometimes, despite what my husband says, honesty and honour come together. It was a good thing you were trying to do for Vittorio.”

“It was not for Vittorio Ciccone. It was simply what happened.”

“And your partner, he is an old friend of Francine's.” Linda said this as a statement of fact.

“They were in school together.”

“And college,” said Linda. “Did you know Tony went to the same university? It was in Toronto, am I right?”

“Yes, and you?”

“Wellesley. Outside Boston.”

“Did you graduate?”

“Yes, Detective.”

“
Magnum cum laude
,” exclaimed her husband with pride.

“
Magna
, not
magnum
,” said his wife gently. “Carlo studied on the streets of New York and did his graduate work in Toronto, but not at the university.”

“Vittorio,” said Carlo, “he was my professor, eh.” He seemed proud of knowing to add
eh
to the end of his sentence.

“I thought you went to law school?”

“Carlo!” exclaimed Linda.

“Yeah, that's just something I say.”

“I didn't think Bourassa studied law,” said Miranda.

“Ah, but he did. I didn't. He failed out.”

Miranda glanced at Elke who, after her initial display of terror, seemed to be settling in as a houseguest. Whatever her post-traumatic response to yet another harrowing event, it had quickly passed. She had her eye on the '45 Château Mouton that the maid had brought in, opened, and set on the sideboard.

“Normally, I would insist such a bottle be opened in my presence,” she said, addressing Carlo.

“You'll just have to trust me,” he responded with a good-natured shrug.

“If you'd sell plonk as Châteauneuf-du-Pape,” said Miranda, “why wouldn't you re-use a Mouton bottle for special occasions like this?”

Surprisingly, Elke rose to the defense. “It isn't plonk, Miranda. That's the ironic part. If they — you guys — had marketed your Ninth Chateau as a legitimate blend, you could have done very well, won a few prizes, sold it for twenty or thirty dollars a bottle, built a major business.”

“Yeah,” said Carlo, “we could have. But we didn't. You want a swig of this?” He got up and grasped the Mouton by the neck.

“Be careful!” Elke exclaimed. “You'll stir up the sediment, you'll bruise it.”

“If there
is
sediment,” said Miranda, still dubious about the wine's authenticity.

Carlo held the bottle up against the overhead light. The others gathered around him, taking turns gazing into the sombre opacity inside the base of the green glass.

“Looks real,” said Elke. She turned to Miranda. “Have you any idea what it's worth, do you know what we're drinking?”

“A lot?”

“A whole lot.”

“As in, how much?”

“Ten–fifteen thousand. One bottle sold at auction a couple of years ago for $31,000 U.S. dollars.”

“Thirty-one thousand!”

“Yes.”

“Dollars!”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Sebastiani, you make it almost worth being your captive.”

“Our guests,” said Linda softly, as if clarifying a minor social faux pas.

Miranda nodded to her in a gesture of temporary acquiescence and held out her glass.

Carlo poured, and in fact handled the Mouton with great delicacy. He looked around him.

“Here, Tony. Where's your glass. Carmen,” he called. She emerged through a door from the dining room. “Get a glass, you gotta try this.”

Just as Miranda was beginning to like this man, he exclaimed, “It's worth more than she makes in a year!” The maid put down the glass she had picked up, smiled, and with the vaguest intimation of a curtsy, she eased herself out of the room.

“Immigrants,” said Carlo, “no taste!”

Elke held her glass lightly by the stem, filled to just below the widest part of its bulge, leaving room for the wine to breathe. She swirled it in slow motion and pressing the rim to her nose, drew in deeply. Then she held the glass away from her, examining the wine against the light.

“Beautiful brick colour,” she said. “Perfect nose. Ripe blackberries, bitter chocolate, vanilla, dried grass. It has a depth beyond words.”

She placed the glass to her lips. The others watched in anticipation. She took a sip, swirled it in her mouth, breathed through her open mouth, mouthing the wine, and swallowed.

“Thank you, Carlo. That is an experience to die for — not literally.”

The others drank, each imitating the procedural details of Elke's tasting, and all shared her sense of wonder. For a few minutes the perverse dynamics of their relationships were obscured by their pleasure.

Then Miranda set her glass down. She addressed Carlo. “You're not really interested in wine, are you?”

“You are mistaken. I love a rare, good wine like this.”

“But you have no interest in making it. The winery was a cover, right? You and Vittorio Ciccone, others from New York, the ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape thing was an elaborate bit of distraction.”

“Why would we do that?” said Carlo. “We are not in the habit, if you are referring to me and my business associates, of simply amusing ourselves.”

“I meant distraction as — never mind. Then what?”

“What, what about what?”

“You've got us here as prisoners, and it has something to do with counterfeit wines. Don't we deserve an explanation?”

“It is not necessary.”

There was dead silence.

“Perhaps you are tired,” said Linda. “I will call Carmen. She will show you to your room. I am afraid you will be sleeping in a suite downstairs. Do not be alarmed, the room is well appointed, but it has no windows to distract you. Don't you agree, Detective Quin, windows, they can be a distraction.”

Miranda ignored her. She was annoyed for letting the woman's social skills, her husband's generosity in sharing the incomparable wine, distract her from the gravity of their situation.