Deceptions (43 page)

Gianni Garetsky found himself so moved he kissed her hand.

“Please,” she said. “What are cousins for?”

Gianni went back to where Lucia was sitting and gave her the black dress and the head scarf.

“I bought the dress three sizes too large,” he said. “If you stuff a pillow inside, they won’t know you for sure.”

The girl went into a room to change. When she returned—her hair covered by the black scarf, her plumped-out body stooped over
as she walked—she might have been an aging Sicilian peasant woman long widowed and gone to seed.

They sat together through the waiting. They spoke little. They watched the green doors, a big clock on an opposite wall, and
those entering the reception area and speaking to the dark-haired woman at the desk.

Gianni, having not really slept for almost forty-eight hours, occasionally dozed off. It was while he was briefly in this
mode, dreaming of Mary Yung, that Lucia squeezed his arm and woke him with a start.

“I know those two,” she whispered.

Gianni followed her glance toward the reception area and saw two men talking to the woman at the desk.

“They look like police,” he said.

“They are. But what does that mean around here? Pietro had half the
carabinieri
on his payroll. I’ve seen those two at the villa at least five or six times.”

The girl drew back her chair as she huddled under her old woman’s shawl. Gianni fingered the automatic beneath his shirt.
He watched the two cops talking to the woman and gazing about the emergency entrance area. The whole concept of the police
being involved was disturbing. It brought
that much more scope and depth to the search. It meant there would not be a doctor, clinic, or hospital on the island that
wouldn’t be checked out several times over the coming days.

Gianni saw one of the men pull over the emergency room register and examine the admissions for last night and this morning.
Then apparently satisfied by what they saw and whatever the woman had told them, they turned and left the hospital.

Breathing deeply, Gianni blessed his new cousin.

He saw Dr. Curci come through the green doors. It was more than four hours since she had disappeared behind them, and her
movements were slow, tired, almost trancelike in their deliberation. Watching her approach, Gianni sensed Vittorio Battaglia’s
death preceding her along the corridor like a dark angel. He felt Lucia stiffen in the chair beside him, confirming his judgment.
When the girl put her hand on his, her touch was one of condolence.

Good-bye, Vittorio.

They both stood to receive the news. It was instinctive, a show of respect for the newly departed.

“I don’t know how,” said Dr. Curci, “but your friend did get through surgery.”

Gianni looked at the drawn-faced woman in her rumpled and spotted hospital garments and suddenly thought her beautiful.

“Thank you for everything.”

“Don’t thank me yet. He can still be dead in an hour.”

Gianni Garetsky nodded. “Where is he now?”

“In recovery.”

“And then?”

“Surgical intensive care.”

“I have to be with him.”

“It’s not allowed.”

“I can’t leave him alone,” said Gianni. “They’ve already been here looking for him. They went away, but others will be back.
They’ll finish him for sure. You know these things better than I.”

Helene Curci thought about it. “Come with me.”

She prepared Gianni with a sterile mask, cap, and gown
and set him up behind a screen in a corner of the room. He sat there, gun in hand, listening to the small, frightening sounds
of the monitors.

What I’ve done to this man and his family.

I
T WAS MORNING
and Peggy had decided. Today she would do it.

She lay on her stomach in bed, in the safe house, her chin resting against the backs of her hands. She thought of her husband
and child and what they’d had together. Until it began tearing her apart.
I can’t do that. If I do, I’ll be useless.
The thought was by way of apology.

A few strands of hair fell across her eyes and she stared out the window through them.

She saw some bushes and a tree nearby and a mountain in the distance. A breeze came off the mountain and filled the thin white
curtains and pressed them against her face. A stream ran downhill a short distance behind the house, and although she could
not see it, she could hear the sound of the water and the sound of the wind blowing above it. The water sounded close enough
to be flowing over her feet and washing them.

After a while she got out of bed and bathed in the stream. Although she was not hungry, she took something to eat because
she had never started a day without eating, and she was not about to change now.

Then she set about doing all the other things she felt needed to be done. It was all part of the compulsive order by which
she had always tried to live her life—as if by imposing order on the small parts, the details, she could soothe the disorder
that threatened to tear apart the whole.

She had no idea whether Vittorio was alive or dead, but
she wrote him a note anyway. In case he ever did come back here, she didn’t want him wondering what had happened to her. Then
she left the few scrawled sheets of paper where they had long ago agreed to leave such things if it should ever be required.

At the end, Peggy moved more quickly. As if speed itself would be enough to keep her from thinking too much.

She walked out of the house, locked the front door, and left the key over the lintel.

Once, before getting into her car, she stopped and looked back at the house that was supposed to be so safe for them. Then
she slid behind the wheel and drove away in the late-afternoon sun, circling slowly down out of the mountains in the direction
of Ravello.

She drove stiffly, tensely, watching the front and rear with the kind of caution she knew had more to do with fear than logic.
If they were out searching for her at all, she thought, it wouldn’t be up here on a narrow, winding mountain road. Still,
her knuckles were white on the wheel, and her eyes kept glancing back and forth between the road ahead and rearview mirror.

When Peggy reached Ravello, she made three passes through town, watching for pedestrians or cruising cars that looked the
slightest bit suspicious. She had done a dry run the day before and had chosen the pay phone she thought it would be best
to use. Ready now with a bag full of the necessary coins, she finally parked her car and walked over to the public phone in
the gas station. There she placed a person-to-person call to Attorney General Henry Durning, the Department of Justice, Washington,
D.C.

When she heard Henry Durning’s personal secretary say that the attorney general was out of the office at this time, Peggy
asked the operator to pass on the message that Irene Hopper would call again at exactly 1:30
P.M.
Washington time, and that it was absolutely vital for the attorney general to be there to speak with her.

To ensure against possible mistakes, Peggy insisted that the secretary repeat the entire message.

She hung up and walked back to her car. Then she sat
watching the people strolling along the streets, going into and out of shops, and driving by in their automobiles.

I used to do all these things.

Henry Durning returned to his office from a White House meeting half an hour later and received Peggy’s message along with
a bunch of others. It had been clocked in as an overseas call at exactly 11:32
A.M.
Durning told his secretary to hold all calls until further notice and got the head of the Justice Department’s Communications
Section on the line.

“A person-to-person call came into my office from Italy at 11:32
A.M.
,” he said. “I want to know precisely where it originated. City, town, switching station, phone number, location. Everything.
And fast.”

The attorney general had it all seven minutes later. Not only that the call had come from Ravello, but that it had been made
from a pay phone, in an Esso service station, on the Via Contari where it crossed the Via Teno.

He walked out to where his secretary was sitting and put the memorandum on her desk.

“Did you take this call yourself?”

She glanced at the flimsy. “Yes, sir.”

“Did you hear the woman speaking at the other end?”

“Yes.”

“Was she speaking English or Italian?”

“English.”

“With or without an accent?”

“Without. As a matter of fact, she sounded like an American.”

Durning returned to his office and closed the door. Using his secure phone, he called Carlo Donatti’s personal number in his
New York office tower.

The don answered on the third ring.

“It’s me,” said Durning. “Are you alone?”

“No. Hold just a moment, please.”

The line was silent. Durning’s mouth felt like sand when he swallowed. He drank some water and turned it to mud.

“All right,” said Donatti. “What’s happening?”

“I’ve been out of my office all morning. When I returned a
few minutes ago, there was a message that the woman we’re looking for had called me person-to-person at 11:32 and would call
back at exactly 1:30
P.M.”

“You’re sure it was her?”

“Who else could it be? A woman calling person-to-person from Italy and, according to my secretary, speaking English like an
American. Anyway, I had the call checked by Communications. It came from a pay phone at an Esso station in Ravello. Can you
get word to some of your people in the area?”

“Of course,” said Donatti. “If they can’t get there themselves, they’ll reach others who can. How do you want it handled?”

“The way it should have been handled ten years ago.”

Donatti was silent.

“You have only about an hour and twenty minutes to set it up,” said Durning. “And the chances are she’s not going to be calling
back from the same telephone or even from the same town. But I’ll try to hold her on long enough to let your people get a
trace going.”

“What do you suppose she wants?”

“Her son. What else? She wants to make some sort of deal for him.”

“Would you be interested?”

“Why not? At least on the phone. I’ll agree to anything to keep her talking long enough for your people to reach her. After
that, there’s only one kind of deal that can give me some peace. And you know what that is.”

“I’ll call when I have something,” said Donatti.

“If you have something, I’ll probably know before you do. Remember. I’ll be on the phone with her when it happens.”

The don accepted his unexpected good fortune with the same quiet equanimity with which he had learned to accept the bad. Had
he planned this latest twist of fate himself, he could not have arranged things any better for his own needs. He felt the
warmth of it pulse through him in the same way he had once felt the warmth of an especially desired woman. Except that if
this went right, its results would be more sig
nificant and longer lasting than anything ever offered to him sexually.

With no time to spare, he quickly made a call to Don Pietro Ravenelli’s private number at his villa outside of Palermo.

The man he heard answer was definitely not the Sicilian
capo.
And as far as Donatti knew, no one else had the authority to unlock and pick up Ravenelli’s secure phone.

“Who is this?” he asked.

“Michael Sorbino, counselor to Don Ravenelli.” Sorbino sounded tentative, quietly deferential. “With much respect, Don Donatti,
I’m at your service.”

“You know my voice?”

“We’ve met several times, Godfather. But of course you wouldn’t remember.”

“What are you doing on this phone? Where is Don Pietro?”

Sorbino allowed himself a long moment before he answered. “He’s dead, Don Donatti. In the middle of the night. A terrible
tragedy. Along with five of our family. It was that crazy man and his friend. The two you’ve been after. First, they hit two
guards here at the villa. Then they took out three more after we thought we had them trapped. You wouldn’t believe such a
disaster. And all because of the boy.”

Carlo Donatti let it filter through him. They had planted a wisp of a breeze and reaped a whirlwind.

“And they got away?”

“Yes. But we believe the boy’s father took at least a couple of hits. All doctors and hospitals are being checked.”

“And the boy himself?”

“The boy is gone, Don Donatti. Disappeared during the night like a ghost. And the two men guarding him were found shot in
their bedroom.”

Donatti worked to control himself. “The men are dead?”

“Yes. Two of our best.”

“You think it was the boy’s father and Garetsky?”

“I can’t think who else. They had Don Ravenelli’s woman with them. She could have known where the boy was being held and taken
them there.”

Donatti didn’t agree. If Vittorio had his son back, why would his wife be calling Durning? Unless they had not been in touch
since last night, and she didn’t know the boy was with his father. But Carlo Donatti had something more important on his mind
right now and time was getting tight.

“I take it you’re in charge there now, Michael?”

“I’m trying my best, Don Donatti. As you can understand, it’s a sad time for us all. But if I can be of service, you have
only to ask.”

“As a matter of fact you
can
be of service. And it’s vital. If you can help me in this, I’ll be most grateful.”

“Please. Just tell me what you need.”

“Good. Then listen carefully because there’s a clock ticking. At 7:30 this evening, your time, a woman calling herself Irene
Hopper will be making a person-to-person call to United States Attorney General Henry Durning in Washington, D.C. She’ll be
calling from a pay phone either in Rav-ello or someplace not too far away. And you’re going to have to get a trace going on
this call from the moment it’s put through. Are you with me so far?”