Second Skin (26 page)

‘She’s clear,’ the voice said, ‘an’ so’s the car. It’s like she said, she’s solo.’

A car door slammed and Margarite squinted through the glare of the headlights at a bloblike shape. This was not going to be so easy; seeing wasn’t so good from where she was standing. As she took a step toward the darkness, a voice stopped her.

‘It would not be wise to move, Mrs D.,’ another voice, deeper, thicker, said. ‘I have your daughter here an’ I know you wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her at this late date.’

Margarite’s heart flipped over painfully. ‘Francine!’

‘Mom!’

Thank God!
Margarite breathed.
She’s here!

‘Are you okay?’

‘Mom, what’s going on?’

Margarite’s heart went out to her daughter. She’d gone through so much already. ‘Don’t worry, angel. This is just business. Caesare wants to –’

‘That’s enough wid the chitchat, you two,’ the deep voice said. ‘Mrs D., my name’s Marco. Now that you know we have your daughter, I want you to walk straight toward me. I’m standin’ next to the rear door to the black Lincoln. Get in an’ I’ll put your daughter in beside you an’ that’ll be that. We’ll take care a the Lexus.’

‘But I –’

‘Mrs D., you do just as I say, nothing more, nothing less. I wancha t’know your daughter is standing directly in fronta me. Vinnie’s at the wheela the Lincoln an’ he’s armed. So’m I. I gotta gun against the backa your daughter’s head.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Go ahead, kid, tell ’er.’

‘He’s got something pressed against my head, Mom!’ Francine piped up in a voice quivering only slightly with held-in tension and fear.

‘All right, all right!’ Margarite called. ‘I’m coming straight toward you.’ She stepped out of the headlight beams, heading toward Marco and Francine. ‘I’m doing just what you said.’

‘That’s good, Mrs D.,’ Marco said. ‘Makes my job easier an’ your daughter –’

He never got to finish his thought because, at that instant, Margarite had come abreast of him and, whipping the muzzle of the .45 beneath his jaw, pulled the trigger and blown the top of his head off.

Francie screamed from the sharp report of the pistol’s discharge and from the spastic jerk of Marco against her. Margarite grabbed her daughter, shoved Marco’s heavy corpse away, and trained her gun in Vinnie’s direction. But she needn’t have bothered. There was another sharp report, echoing over the bay, and a surprisingly small section of the Lincoln’s windshield shattered inward. The rest of it had turned into a vast and complex spiderweb behind which Vinnie could be seen spread-eagle against the seatback, staring upward at the large hole in his forehead.

Margarite threw down her .45, kicked it beneath Marco’s body as the form of Detective Lieutenant Jack Barnett picked its way fastidiously across the tarmac.

‘Mrs DeCamillo, are you and your daughter okay?’

She raised her voice long enough to say, ‘We are, Detective.’

She cuddled Francine and whispered urgently in her ear. She devoured Francie with her eyes, and seeing her own face reflected in her daughter’s, she thought,
she’s all right.
She kissed both her cheeks, stroked her curling red hair, which she wore long and wild. She stared into Francie’s hazel, quicksilver eyes, trying to read a world in a split second.
She’s so beautiful,
Margarite thought,
the only good thing to come out of my marriage to Tony. But she’s pure Goldoni. If there’s any DeCamillo in her, I can’t see it.
The long-legged, coltish body trembled like a fawn’s in Margarite’s embrace. Francie, in wide-legged Gap jeans, well-worn Tony Lama cowboy boots, an inside-out black tee, and a rumpled denim jacket with the sleeves rolled up her forearms, pressed herself against her mother, but she was staring wide-eyed at the dead men.
How fragile youth is,
Margarite thought.
And how precious. It’s snatched away in the blink of an eye and then it’s gone forever.

‘That first shot gave me quite a start.’ Barnett, coming up on mother and daughter, squinted through the hole his shot had made through the Lincoln’s windshield. He was holding a Husqvarna rifle, outlined with a night-scope, in his left hand; in his right was his service revolver. He was a dapper-looking man in his early forties with sandy hair and light eyes, although in the glare of the headlights Margarite could not tell their exact color. He possessed the face of a man who had seen many things and passed through them all as a fakir walks over hot coals, with a mixture of faith and practical knowledge of the way the universe works. He was dressed in a dark suit with surprisingly few creases. His tie, which now flew over his shoulder in the freshening wind, was elegant rather than loud.

He came around the side of the Lincoln where Margarite stood with Francine tucked protectively into her body and stared down at Marco’s crumpled form. ‘Hmm. Two down and only one shot fired.’ He sniffed. ‘I’m good but, much as I hate to admit it, I’m not that good.’ His eyes swung up to fix Margarite in a gaze as hard as the glare from sodium lights. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Mrs DeCamillo?’

Margarite was thinking of an answer when Barnett was slammed against the side of the Lincoln. The Husqvarna flew from his grip and he leaned against the shiny black metal with a confused and slightly sad expression on his face. He looked up at her and his eyes crossed. That was when she noticed the rapidly expanding boutonniere of blood damaging his beautiful suit. She gripped Francie more tightly as she felt a choked-up scream burning her throat like acid.

She wanted to reach out to poor Barnett even though the flower of blood emanated from over his heart, but a low moan escaped Francie’s lips and her daughter began to tremble in earnest. Margarite kissed the top of Francie’s head. She couldn’t let go of her, and yet, as Barnett slid to the blood-spattered ground, she felt she had to do something. She began to reach out toward his service revolver, but a voice made her freeze.

‘Oh, do try for it. Shooting an armed woman is much less problematic than killing an unarmed one. And so much more fun.’

She turned then and saw a man coming through the Lexus’s beams. He walked with a peculiar hip-tilting gait, as if one leg didn’t work right or was shorter than the other. He had compensated for this disability by employing an almost skipping motion in his walk, so that he moved quickly and at sharp angles, reminding Margarite of the small, colorless sand crabs she had seen on the beach in the Caribbean.

There was nothing colorless, however, about this man. Though he was somewhat short, he was nonetheless imposing. He had a wide face, square as a block of ice, with mackerel eyes that seemed dead, yellow as yesterday’s marrow. He wore a neat, unfashionable goatee that gave him something of the aspect of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine, women, and song, who was said to be part animal. Like Bacchus, he had jet-black, curling hair that fell in shiny ringlets across his forehead and down the nape of his neck, a wide, sensual mouth, and a long, straight, Roman nose. A striking man, though the heaviness of some features prevented him from being handsome.

He was dressed in a striped, collarless shirt beneath a handsome pig suede jacket dyed the color of whiskey, black jeans, and boots of whiskey-colored alligator with high Cuban heels and custom toes shod in what looked like stainless steel.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ Margarite said.

‘You do an’ you don’t. I’m the ghost of Black Paul Mattaccino. I’m his son, Paul Chiaramonte.’

‘I know that name. You’re part of the Abriola family my husband trusted with his life. The Abriolas have served the Goldonis faithfully for decades.’

While he smiled a lopsided grin, he lifted a leg and, with the finesse of a ballet dancer, flicked Barnett’s weapons away into the darkness. He held a long-barreled gun in his left hand.

‘Bad Clams warned me not to trust you and he was right. But then he’s always right.’ Paul Chiaramonte clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in that reproving sound old ladies make during sex scenes in the movies. ‘Well, we can say good-bye to Vinnie and Marco.’ He shrugged. ‘Not the best of talent, anyway.’ He gave her that lopsided grin again. Because of his sensual lips, it was almost a leer, and Margarite found herself putting her hand over Francie’s face to shield her further. ‘In the old days they called soldiers like Vinnie and Marco cannon fodder because they were gonna die on the battlefield.’ He shrugged again. ‘That’s gotta happen to someone. Why waste A-list talent when it’s so hard to find these days?’ He chuckled, showing teeth like a wolf’s, sharp as paring knives.

His eyes fell upon the body of Detective Lieutenant Jack Barnett. ‘But who’s this?’ His stainless-steel boot toe kicked Barnett in the side and Margarite winced even though the detective was dead. Paul Chiaramonte grinned up at Margarite as he knelt down. ‘Bodyguard or boyfriend? Maybe both.’

He carefully used one long fingernail to peel back the blood-sodden jacket, reached inside, and opened the small plastic wallet he found there. ‘Not much of a sport, I see.’ Then, he let out a little cry and dropped the thing as if it had stung him.

His eyes, black and ripe as grapes, goggled at Margarite. ‘Are you fucking mental? This guy’s a
cop,
for the love of Mary!’ He did a tiny jig, making him look as if he were summoning up the woodland nymphs for an orgy. ‘I whacked an NYPD blue. Oh, holy shit! Who coulda figured?’

‘You didn’t have to kill him,’ Margarite pointed out. It was an inane thing to say, but she was now so terrified and so shocked at what she had done she couldn’t think of anything else.

Paul Chiaramonte jumped, his face black with rage. He shoved the muzzle of his gun into the soft spot beneath the point of her chin, making her cry out.

‘Mom!’

‘Hush, angel,’ she said as tears of pain ran freely down her cheeks.

‘You and your cop buddy whacked two of my crew,’ he shouted in her face. ‘I should blow the toppa your head off for you.’ He had gold rings on all his fingers, including his thumb, which made it look deformed, heavy with menace.

‘Killing a woman. That would be just your speed,’ Margarite said.

Paul Chiaramonte hit her backhanded across both cheeks, his gold rings gouging her flesh and making her bleed.

‘Shut up and stand like a statue!’ he said with his lips pulled back from his teeth. ‘Christ Jesus, I haven’t seen so much trouble since your stepmother lived here.’

‘What do you know about Faith Goldoni?’

‘Plenty.’ Paul Chiaramonte sneered. ‘My mother was Sara Chiaramonte. She was the only woman Black Paul Mattaccino ever loved.’ He was staring at Francine, who seemed as mesmerized by him as she would be by an exotic animal. ‘He was locked in a loveless, lifeless marriage with Faith, the bitch. But he was Catholic, from the old school, and wouldn’t divorce her.’ His eyes, quick as an adder’s tongue, flicked to Margarite’s face. ‘So she killed him slowly with poison in the black figs he adored, so she could marry your father, Enrico Goldoni.’

‘Are you trying to frighten me? Everyone knew that rumor about her. But that’s all it was. She told me. People were jealous of her, marrying my father. Faith was incapable of killing anyone.’

‘I know better. But who gives a shit, anyway? She’s dead now so at least she can’t lie to you anymore.’

Fright and disgust mingled so thoroughly in her Margarite could no longer look at him. So she stared at Jack Barnett’s face, which was no help at all. It was a handsome face, especially with that sandy hair lying across his eyes. Did he have a wife? A child, maybe Francie’s age? She didn’t know, never would know, and after all, it was irrelevant because he was dead. In the name of revenge, she had brought him into this, and to this end.
As surely as night follows day, suffering and death will ensue,
Bernice had said. But Margarite had thought she was smarter than that, was sure that she could beat the odds, change the rules, and upset the game. Instead, look what had come of it. She had reached out with her power – the power of the Goldonis – and had brought death to an innocent man.

What was it Bernice had told her?
It isn’t power itself that corrupts us. It is the abuse of it.
She had abused her power, and suffering and death was the result.

Everyone thought Faith was dead – even apparently Paul Chiaramonte. But the truth was she had merely changed identities. She was now Renata Loti, one of Washington’s major power brokers. Margarite saw her stepmother infrequently. Theirs was a thorny and unsatisfying relationship. She had been nine when her father, Enrico Goldoni, had married Faith, too old to easily lose her bond with her real mother, too young to fully grasp the difficulties Faith was facing with a new husband and a new – and hostile – family.

Margarite had always kept herself aloof from the common neighborhood belief that Faith, in Machiavellian calculation and cold blood, had murdered her first husband. But perhaps that had only been out of a sense of self-preservation. What child would want to be brought up in the same house as a murderess?

Your soul is choked with tears,
Bernice had said, reading her with uncanny insight. Margarite wailed inside, and she jumped as that wailing became a real sound.

Sirens ululating in the night, startling all three of them.

‘Hello, we must be going,’ Paul Chiaramonte said, paraphrasing Groucho Marx. Using the muzzle of his gun, he roughly herded the two women up the incline and into the ghostly hotel’s parking lot. Phosphorescence glistened out on the bay. It was probably best not to know its source, Margarite thought.

A fire-red, vintage Thunderbird convertible crouched in a shadowed corner of the lot. He directed Margarite to bind Francie’s wrists and ankles. They bundled her into the cramped back space. Then, working swiftly and surely, he did the same with Margarite.

‘This isn’t necessary. I’ll sit beside you in the front. You have my daughter. You can trust me.’

‘Like Marco and Vinnie could trust you?’ Paul Chiaramonte sneered. ‘Your stepmother raised you well. You’re a fuckin’ viper, lady.’

He stuffed his handkerchief into her mouth, pressed her head down, pushed her on top of Francie. Then he slammed the door shut, got behind the wheel, fired up the T-bird, and swung out of the lot.