Lucky (79 page)

‘So this is the kid?’ Tim Wealth asked.

‘This is the geek,’ Brigette agreed.

‘Not a geek. Not,’ Roberto asserted.

‘Hold my hand, brat, and shut up.’ Brigette grabbed the small boy’s hand. Traffic was racing past on Sunset. All she needed was for Roberto to wander under a car. Lucky would never speak to her again.

Tim bent to talk to the child. ‘Hello there,’ he said.

‘Ice cream?’ the boy asked eagerly.

‘If you’re good,’ replied Tim.

Brigette giggled. ‘I bet people passing by think we’re a family,’ she said. ‘I’m mommy, and you’re daddy, and this is our little one.’ She exploded with mirth.

Tim looked quickly around. He didn’t want anyone noticing anything. Brigette was not exactly low profile in a red T-shirt with
HOT STUFF
emblazoned on the front, skin-hugging white jeans and cascades of long blonde hair.

‘Let’s go to my place,’ he suggested.

‘Ice cream,’ repeated Roberto, trying to wriggle out of Brigette’s grasp.

‘Shut up, Bobby,’ she snapped, thinking to herself that she should have left the kid at home. What was the
point
in bringing him along? CeeCee would be furious.

So what? She was only a stupid nanny. Who cared
what
her reaction was? In fact, it would do her good to worry. Brigette would never forget the spanking she had received from her when she was eleven. The humiliation still stung.

‘You promised the geek ice cream,’ she pointed out. ‘Let’s get it over with and send him home.’

There was no way she could let Tim drive Roberto back to the house. She had already decided to put him in a cab, and then call Alice and say he was on his way. Alice would believe anything. ‘Hi, Ali,’ she would say. ‘I’m over at my girlfriend’s house and we’re going to a movie. Bobby’s in a cab – he should be there any minute. And I’ll probably stay at my friend’s tonight.’ That way CeeCee couldn’t say a word to her. Yeah – the brat would be okay, it was only a ten minute drive. She couldn’t
wait
to get rid of him and be alone with Tim.

‘I’ve got ice cream at my place,’ Tim said.

‘You have?’

‘Haagen-Dazs. Chocolate, chocolate chip.’

Brigette linked her arm happily through his. ‘What are we waiting for?’ She grinned, pulling Roberto along with her other hand. ‘Let’s go.’

Information.

Carrie had the information her son required. And once Fred Lester confessed the truth it was all so simple.

Gino Santangelo was Steven’s father.

Gino. A memory from so long ago . . .

He had fathered her child and had no idea he had done so.

Gino Santangelo.

Over the years she had occasionally read about him in the newspapers. Once a gangster he was a big man now, and old, as she was. And respected. Only last week she had seen a picture of him in the newspaper at a charity function in Las Vegas with an ex-President. The two men had faced the camera with their arms around each other. Good friends.

Steven’s father.

She couldn’t care less. But Steven needed to know.

Carrie hurried along Lexington heading toward Steven’s brownstone on Fifty-Eighth Street. Her head was filled with thoughts. She was confused . . . so very confused. For forty-five years she had remembered Freddy Lester as nothing less than scum. And now he had re-entered her life. A perfectly respectable man. A good-humoured man with excellent manners and a kindly face.

It was so difficult to believe he had once been the drunken pig who had raped her. The unfeeling lout who had called her ‘. . .
a fucking dinge . . .’

He had told her his story while she stared at him, contempt written across her face.

He told her about his accident and his family and his life.

She had listened in stony silence.

Finally he had said, ‘If I
was
Steven’s father I would want to know so that I could begin to make up for all the lost years.’

Her voice was cold. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

‘But I
do
know,’ he had said very quietly. ‘Once I was in possession of all the facts, I made it my business to find out.’

‘How could you possibly do that?’ she asked.

‘If you are positive that Gino Santangelo and I were the only two candidates, then there is no doubt.’

‘My book is the truth,’ Carrie said icily. ‘I don’t lie.’

‘Well then, Gino is Steven’s father. I have an extremely rare blood type. I checked Steven’s medical records – genetics prove I could not have fathered him.’ He paused, then continued. ‘I took the liberty of investigating Gino Santangelo’s past. He was in jail between 1940 and 1947. They have a complete medical history. His blood type matches Steven’s exactly.’

Fred had continued further with confirming facts. He also had full documentation of all the evidence he had collected, which he handed to her.

Eventually he stopped speaking and she gathered herself together.

‘Mr Lester,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t wish to proceed with the plans for my book to be published.’

‘But—’

She raised her hand to stop his protestations. ‘Please. I need time to think. Maybe I’ll feel different next week, next year. I simply don’t know.’

‘I hope so,’ he said anxiously. ‘I can’t tell you how important it is to me that we publish this book. It is a—’

‘Ah, as long as the names are changed,’ she interrupted dryly, ‘to protect the not-so-innocent.’

He gestured helplessly. ‘Carrie. It all happened a long long time ago . . .’

‘Not long enough, Mr Lester. Not nearly long enough.’

She left his office and walked unseeingly down Fifth Avenue. Now it was late afternoon and she was approaching Steven’s house. He had to know the truth at once.

There was an ambulance parked outside, and a small crowd had gathered to gawk.

Carrie pushed, her way through. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked a well-dressed woman.

‘Suicide I think,’ the woman said, eyes agleam. ‘Don’t light a cigarette, the whole neighbourhood,’ go up. Gas I think. Can’t you smell it?’

For one heart-stopping moment Carrie thought the victim might be Steven. But thank God, before she could panic he came rushing out of the building, and behind him hurried two ambulance attendants carrying a stretcher.

‘Steven,’ she called out desperately. ‘What happened?’

A very pleasant nurse kept Costa sane while Ria spent hours in delivery.

He continually tried to phone Gino but a stupid machine kept on answering the phone, and Costa had no intention of speaking to a machine. Finally he called Olympia’s mansion to speak with CeeCee and Roberto, but a maid informed him everyone was out.

Was there no one he could give the good news to? He, Costa Zennocotti, was, at the age of seventy-five – about to become a father.

*   *   *

CeeCee had bad feelings, she didn’t know why, but they were powerful bad feelings. The day Dimitri Stanislopoulos died she had suffered from the same thing. Woke in the morning. Cleaned her teeth and washed. Got Roberto up and fed him his favourite hash and scrambled eggs. Then together they had gone to visit his father, as they always did.

Mr Stanislopoulos was sitting in his usual place. He looked weak and tired.

‘Good morning, CeeCee. Good morning, Roberto,’ he had said. Just as usual. And she had known, at once, that he wouldn’t last the day through. Now she was racked with those ominous forebodings again.

She glared at Mr Golden’s foolish mother and her foreign companion, for they were responsible for Roberto being left with Brigette longer than he should have been.

Brigette was irresponsible. She had no idea how to look after a four-year-old child. She was spoiled, selfish, and jealous of Roberto – she always had been.

CeeCee sighed loudly. She had not known Marina del Rey was such a long drive. If she had been aware of the distance, she would have ignored her tooth, stuck it back with chewing gum or something. On top of everything else, Alice had left her sitting in the dentist’s waiting room for nearly two hours. CeeCee was silently fuming.

Finally they were on their way back to Bel Air in Olympia’s white Rolls-Royce.

‘How long before we’re there?’ CeeCee asked the chauffeur.

He was a dour-faced Englishman in full uniform. ‘About half an hour, madam, depending on the traffic,’ he said pompously.

‘Thank you.’ She wished the bad feelings would go away.

‘Do you like me?’ Tim Wealth asked.

Brigette didn’t know what to say. Roberto sat at the kitchen counter slopping chocolate ice cream all over himself, and Tim was asking her the most important question of her life.
I don’t like you, I love you
, she wanted to shout out loud, but maybe it was a bit too soon. After all, he hadn’t mentioned love to her.

‘You know I do,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t do the things we do with anyone else. I more than like you.’ Hint, hint, maybe he would take it.

‘I like you too,’ he said, very seriously. ‘But I know something about you that’s bothering me.’

‘What?’ she asked quickly.

‘More ice cream,’ demanded Roberto.

Oh God! She could smack the dumb little geek!

Tim moved to the fridge and took out another carton, which he placed in front of the child.

Brigette fidgeted impatiently, and waited to find out what it was that bothered him.

He did not keep her in suspense. ‘I know how old you are,’ he said.

She felt herself begin to blush. ‘I’m eighteen,’ she bluffed.

‘You’re fourteen,’ he countered.

‘I’m not,’ she lied desperately, feeling humiliated.

‘You are,’ he said grimly. ‘And have you got any idea what that makes me guilty of?’

‘What?’ Her tone was sulky.

‘Statutory rape.’

The only sound in the room was Roberto slurping his ice cream. Brigette wished he wasn’t there. She wished the floor would open up and swallow her. Tim Wealth was just about to tell her he couldn’t see her any more and she wanted to die.

‘How did you find out?’ she muttered, red-faced.

‘You’re not exactly a state secret,’ he said. ‘I was reading about your grandfather and his will.’

‘It’s all lies.’

‘What is?’

‘My mother says that everything the newspapers print is lies.’

‘Maybe so. But I checked, little girl, and you
are
fourteen. Your fifteenth birthday isn’t until December.’

‘Happy birthday to me,’ she mumbled.

Roberto had spotted a television in the corner of the one-room apartment. ‘Wanta watch,’ he said, pointing.

Brigette flopped on the end of the couch that converted into Tim’s bed.

Tim switched on the television for Roberto, and the child climbed down from the counter, took his carton of ice cream, and sat on the floor a few inches in front of it, totally absorbed.

‘I don’t want to be fourteen,’ Brigette sulked. ‘I hate it. I really hate it!’ Tears filled her big blue eyes. ‘And now you hate me too.’

‘No I don’t,’ Tim said soothingly, putting his arm around her.

‘Yes you do,’ she whimpered.

‘No I
don’t.
But we’ve got a big problem, and you have to help me find a solution.’

She wished Roberto wasn’t there. He was getting on her nerves just being in the same room.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said truculently. ‘I’m going back to school in Switzerland in a week, so I won’t be such a big problem any more.’

‘Do you want to go?’ he asked quickly. ‘Or would you like to stay with me?’

The possibility of staying with him had never even entered her mind. But now he’d mentioned it, it was
exactly
what she’d like to do.

‘How can I do that?’ she asked hopefully.

‘Listen to me, little girl, and listen carefully. I’ve got a plan.’

Paige Wheeler called home at five-thirty. An urgent business trip to San Francisco had come up – she wouldn’t return until the next day.

‘Aren’t you even going to pick up an overnight bag?’ Ryder asked.

She explained about the Arab client with the private plane impatiently waiting to leave.

Ryder understood. Business was business.

Gino called the rented Beverly Hills house. There was nobody home, just the answering machine.

‘This is an adventure,’ Paige purred, with a wicked smile. ‘I haven’t had an adventure in a long time.’ She lay back on the bed and stretched contentedly. ‘You’re so persuasive, Gino.’