Deceptions (37 page)

Moving more quickly now, he laid them side by side on the bed.

Worlds circled as in a dream.

Both their faces seemed flat and they stared at him out of their own darkness.

Durning put on a pair of rubber cleaning gloves from the kitchen, took the 12-gauge out of the closet, and wiped it and the
shells free of all prints.

The rest would be all iron discipline.

Apart from everything else, there were certain details to be considered in a purported murder-suicide. Sometimes the murdered
party would be a willing victim… other times, not. In this instance, either way would be feasible. Shotgun shells made a much
bigger mess than rifle bullets but also
carried a couple of advantages. At close range, the result would never be in doubt. And any possibly embarrassing evidence
of earlier blows to the head would be eliminated.

He had, after all, been a prosecuting attorney.

All right.

He did Marcy first, of course, feeling his arm jump with the recoil, and going briefly deaf and numb from the explosion in
so small an area.

Jesus!

Cotton-mouthed, fighting nausea again, Durning carefully laid the shotgun on Brian’s chest. He placed the muzzle under Brian’s
chin, Brian’s left hand around the double barrel, and his right hand on the trigger.

Then kneeling beside the bed, Durning kept his head down and away as he squeezed Brian’s thumb against the trigger until the
second shell exploded.

He knelt there, neither moving nor looking at the result, but just breathing the smell of cordite as though it were a new
antidote for death.

He felt a scaling wash of sorrow for which he was unprepared.

We were friends once, and young.

Still, it was said the best way to die was with someone you loved. And how many were able to arrange that?

Holding to his discipline, Durning spent fifteen minutes wiping prints from everything he had touched.

He swept up the bits of broken cocktail glass from the living room floor and threw them in a pile of trash out back.

He washed his own glass and put it back into the liquor cabinet.

About to leave, he closed his eyes and felt cold, quiet waters flow over him.

Then he started home.

D
ON
C
ARLO
D
ONATTI
was engaged in a long-term love affair with his life. He adored it. Each day he saw it with new and freshly appreciative
eyes. It was the thing about him that made him appear and feel younger than his years.

This morning he was having breakfast on the terrace of his Sands Point home. The house overlooked Long Island Sound, and the
don saw the acres of evenly trimmed lawn sweeping down to the water, the specimen trees catching the early sun, the sky as
pure a cerulean blue as any he had ever seen over the Mediterranean. And he consciously savored everything he saw.

The fact was, Donatti took nothing he had, nothing around him for granted. He knew it did not have to be this way. Not his
imposing home, not the respect and power he enjoyed, not the soaring midtown Manhattan headquarters of the Galatea Corporation,
where he spent the better part of his days and years. In a way, the office tower itself had become the prime symbol of his
good life, of his long-hoped-for and ever-growing legitimacy. On clear days, when the light was right, he could sometimes
see the tallest of its spires. They gleamed even from here. And suddenly, it was threatened.

Just the thought of it ruined Carlo Donatti’s mood, brought beads of sweat to his forehead and upper lip. And it took only
one man with a safety-deposit box to be able to do this to him. But it was a box that could be more dangerous than a gun.
Henry Durning could be dead and the box could still ruin Donatti, send him to prison, take away everything that mattered,
force him to march through his remaining years in lockstep.

Who would have expected anything like this? And all because of something that had happened nearly ten years ago. Or, rather,
something that had
not
happened. Durning had wanted a woman dead. Donatti had thought he had taken care of it for Durning. And now, a decade later,
she’d suddenly turned up alive—while all these others kept dying for
no better reason than that this woman is still breathing out there someplace.

Some woman,
thought Carlo Donatti.

He looked off at a scattering of birds working some of the feeders he kept around the grounds. He sipped his second cup of
espresso. He thought about the woman whom Vittorio Battaglia, one of the best made men ever, had decided to disappear with
almost ten years ago.

Considering Vittorio’s reputation with women, she had to be something very special. And considering Durning’s need to have
her dead, she also had to be very dangerous.

At least to Henry Durning, Donatti thought.

Then having thought this, Don Carlo Donatti wondered at his never having thought it before. But he did think about it now,
letting the concept drift through his mind while he nibbled at the sudden sweetness of its possibilities.

Donatti continued to think about Peggy Walters as he finished his espresso and was driven into midtown Manhattan in one of
the three identical Lincoln towncars he used to confuse his enemies. And he was still thinking about her as he settled behind
his oversize desk high in the Galatea Building like a man who has finally arrived at either the beginning or the end of something.

Peggy Walters had been alone in their so-called safe house now for more than a day. She had heard nothing from Vittorio. And
she was becoming more certain by the minute that no news had to be bad news. If her Paulie was going to end up dying sometime
during the next few days, she knew better than anyone that the ultimate blame had to lie with her.

Yet she did have her moments of hope.

It was, after all, Vittorio himself who was looking for their son. If anyone could find him, he could. Vittorio knew about
such things.

In her mind, she took to playing out the small progression of hope… the searching, the finding, the coming home… all so real
that she was able to weep genuine tears of joy. It was one of the things that helped keep her sane.

Another thing that helped was staying busy.

She prepared meals that were not eaten. She scrubbed walls and floors that were already clean. She gathered wild-flowers into
endless bouquets until the small stone house resembled an indoor garden.

Finally, although Peggy Walters had rarely if ever prayed, she prayed now.

It was nighttime and she stood barefoot in the damp grass, feeling the earth under her feet, her face raised in the darkness
like some supplicant to the stars. Although she supposed it was probably less a matter of praying than of trying to work out
some sort of deal.

Take me for my Paulie, Lord, and You’ll never get Yourself a better bargain because nobody will ever work harder for You than
I’ll work.

Or was deal making with God just another form of blasphemy?

If it was, no offense intended.

Anyway, she was doing her bargaining with the wrong party. Because if she was at all serious about this, the one she really
had to deal with was the devil, Henry Durning.

Which was precisely how the idea was born.

Still, it did take one of her worst waves of fear to convince her of what she must do. It hit her when she realized the odds
against Vittorio and Gianni getting themselves anything but dead in what they were attempting to do, and that this was finally
going to have to be all hers.

Paulie was
her
baby.

It was decided as simply as that.

She sat with it for a long time in the grass in the night, loving the new calm that came with it.

She breathed the cool night air and studied the way the dark rim of the mountains stood out against the lesser dark of the
sky. All her reverence for life, all the love she felt for her son and husband sang softly inside her. For a while it kept
her from feeling quite so alone.

It was quiet in the small house high among the Sicilian hills. Paulie was doing a pencil sketch of Domenico as he sat posing.
Tony was sprawled on the couch, glancing through a picture magazine and sipping beer.

At the moment, Paulie was having a problem with Dom’s mouth. It was closed and didn’t seem to look natural that way. But that
was how Dom kept it, so that was how Paulie was sketching it. Mouths and eyes were always the hardest for him. They kept changing.
They looked different every minute.

“What are you working on now?” Dom asked, intrigued by the whole process of reproducing his face on paper.

“Your mouth,” said Paulie.

“Women tell me that’s my best feature. They say it drives them crazy. Be very careful how you handle that mouth. It’s my whole
future.”

The boy sketched the same way he did everything. With quiet solemnity. He wished he had his paints and a canvas so he could
do a proper, full-color portrait. But a pencil was still better than nothing, and drawing did make the time go faster. And
he liked Dom’s face, liked the rough, crooked features. They looked as if they had once been broken apart in the middle, and
never been put back together exactly right.

Although working on Dom’s face, Paulie was watching Tony as well. He felt it important for him not to miss anything about
either of the two men. He saw how Tony kept glancing around even as he flipped through his magazine. It seemed to him that
Tony was always looking around and waiting for something to happen. Even when he was very still, his eyes were moving. The
boy guessed they were gun-fighters’ eyes. In Westerns he had seen about gunfighters, they always watched a man’s eyes to know
when he was going to draw.

“Why is it taking so long?” Dom said.

“This isn’t long. Leonardo da Vinci took seven years to do the Mona Lisa.”

“Hey. I’ll be dead in seven years.”

When the sketch was finished, Paulie gave it to the mobster to see. Dom laughed and shook his head in wonder.

“That’s me, all right. You’re a genius, kid. You even got my beautiful mouth.” He showed the portrait to Tony. “Great, huh?”

“Just what the world needs. Another face like yours to look at.”

“You want me to do one of you?” the boy asked. He was trying to be nice to them both. It had come to him that it would be
better if they got to like him and believe he liked them, too. Then they might get a little careless and give him a chance
at something.

Tony shook his head. “The
carabinieri
got too many pictures of me as it is.”

Later, Paulie sat at the end of his long dog chain watching Domenico clean and oil his gun. The boy appreciated the way he
did it, touching and holding the separate parts as though each was something special. Paulie guessed that in a gangster’s
business, everything had to be special. If just one tiny part wasn’t right and got messed up, you could be dead.

Dom glanced up at him. “You like guns?”

“I don’t know. I never had one. I don’t know anything about them.” Then by way of explanation. “I’m only eight.”

Dom laughed. “When I was eight, I’d already shot four guys.”

Paulie stared gravely at him.

“Hey, I was only joking.”

The boy was silent for a few moments. “If you teach me about guns, I’ll teach you how to draw.”

“It’s a deal, kid. Then maybe you can grow up to be a rich made man, and I can retire and be a famous artist.”

The pistol was a 9mm automatic, and Domenico explained the parts and the way they worked, with the weapon’s mechanism automatically
throwing out the empty shell after each shot, putting a new one into the chamber, and preparing the pistol to be fired again.

When Paulie understood all this, Dom taught him about shooting.

Tony sat shaking his head. “I don’t believe I’m seeing this shit.”

The boy noticed the change that came over Domenico, how serious he became as he talked and described how things should be
done. There was none of his fooling around now, no teasing him as a child. Paulie understood that Dom wanted
him to know that guns were a man’s business, not a kid’s, and that people got killed by them. You didn’t play games with guns.
You didn’t point one at somebody unless you were ready to shoot that person. And if you ever did have to shoot, there was
a right and a wrong way of doing that, too.

The right way was to first make sure that if the gun had a safety switch, you turned it off. Then you aimed the pistol with
both hands, extended your arms, held your breath, and gently squeezed, not jerked, the trigger.

With the ammunition clip removed, Dom demonstrated how all this was done. Then he handed the empty automatic to Paulie and
told him to try it himself.

The boy felt the weight of the gun along with a sudden trembling in his knees. He released the safety. He gripped the butt
with both hands, extended his arms, and aimed the front sight at a crack in the wall. He held his breath and gently squeezed
the trigger.

“Bang,” he said.

The big surprise was that it was all so easy.

T
HE HOUSE OF
Don Pietro Ravenelli was just about where the old man in Naples had told Vittorio and Gianni it would be. It stood in the
foothills of northeastern Sicily, about ten kilometers west of Palermo, and not very far off the coast road to Punta Raisi.

It was a big, white, Mediterranean-style villa, with an orange tile roof, a high wall surrounding its several acres of manicured
grounds, and four heavily armed security guards patrolling the areas between the wall and the house itself. Additionally,
there were strategically placed floodlights and closed-circuit television cameras to cover whatever the guards might miss.

It was getting close to early evening, and Gianni and Vit-torio had been reconnoitering the house and grounds for the past
four hours, locating whatever they had to, noting everyone who entered and left the compound, and of course making absolutely
sure that Ravenelli himself never drove out of the place.