The Devil You Know (59 page)

The other two cooed over the apartment, from which Jacob had tactfully absented himself, and perched on the elegant couch while Rose served up some cinn,amon coffee.

‘Don Salerni will be here soon. Now, I want you guys to -‘

‘Wait. What did you say? He’ll be here? I thought we were just getting an update.’

‘He wants to see you two in person. Curiosity factor, I guess.’

Poppy shuddered. ‘Man. I don’t know … some murdering thug …’

Rose paled. ‘Hey, you don’t know if he murdered anybody. Not for sure. And we need him, at least if we want to figure out what happened to our birth parents.’

‘Which we do,’ Daisy said firmly. ‘It’s the piece that’s missing in my life, Poppy. We should be nice to him.’

‘OK, OK,’ Poppy said, spreading her hands. ‘If he gets results…’ She shrugged.

‘You need to be very respectful to him,’ Rose said. Then, catching the look on her sister’s face, she added, ‘And if you can’t do that, at least keep quiet.’

Poppy grinned. ‘Fair enough.’ The buzzer sounded. Rose picked up the handset.

‘Speak of the diablo,’ Poppy muttered, and Daisy kicked her in the shins.

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‘Sure,’ Rose said to the doorman, shooting a warning look at Poppy. ‘Send him right up.’

Rose had the door open when Salerni arrived, and she ushered him through it into her fianc6’s apartment.

‘Acceptable,’ he said, glancing around.

‘Don Salerni, may I present my sisters - Daisy Markham and Poppy Allen.’

Salerni stared. ‘Porca miseria! It’s like a three-way mirror.’ His thin tongue slid fractionally out of his mouth, and moistened his narrow lips, appreciatively.

Rose saw Poppy start to grimace. ‘Sit down, please sit down,’ she said, blocking Saterni’s view. ‘Can I bring you anything? Mineral water, coffee?’

Salerni pointed at the cut-crystal decanter. ‘Scotch on the rocks.’ Daisy couldn’t stop her eyebrow lifting; it was 9 a.m.

‘Story like this, my pretty, needs a little something,’ Salerni told her, and instantly Daisy was all ears.

‘You know something, urn, Don Salerni.’

‘You could say that,’ Salerni replied. He waited until Ros,had presented him with a tumbler full of golden liquid and clinking[ice cubes, took a pull of it, and started to speak. He was a quiet-voied man, and that somehow made him more menacing. Even Poppy felt herself fascinated, half-hypnotised. He had that kind of presence.

‘First, so you two girls know’ - Poppy bristled at ‘girls’, but Salerni ignored her - ‘I do a little business with your sister. She asks me for a favour…’ - he spread his hands, as Poppy had done earlier - ‘a padrone doesn’t refuse a client. So I made a few calls. You,’ he nodded at Daisy, ‘went to Janus. Smart move, but somebody had told them to back off. Which intrigued me, when I found out it was true. The guy on your case had somebody ring his house and leave an answermachine message.’

‘What was it?’ Daisy asked.

‘A gun being fired six times,’ Salerni told. her. ‘Same message was left at all the guy’s places: his country house, even the secret apartment, he rents under another name where he stashes his girlfriends. He decided you could go fuck yourselves; he wasn’t getting involved. So I got a copy of his files.’ His eyes warned them not to ask how; none of them did. ‘Guy hadn’t got far but he’d gotten a couple leads. This man involved with the adoption agency in London died in prison, convicted as an accessory to murder. The

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murder was related to the Frederici crew, that’s a small crew out of Naples, died out. So I asked around some old guys who used to do business with that crew. About three girls got adopted. They didn’t know much, but we kept asking around, legit sources too. Finally came up with something. Three babies were abandoned at the door of a monastery in Abruzzo, and they were snatched up for adoption by the Fredericis. Unusual - a family getting involved in anything like that. But the Frederici woman the monks gave the girls to didn’t raise them.’

‘Did you ask her what she did with them?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘What do the monastery records say?’

‘Monastery got destroyed in an earthquake.’

‘God damn it,’ Daisy said, her fists clenched in frustration. ‘No need for language like that,’ Salerni said mildly. ‘Excuse me,’ Daisy said, a little frightened.

He enjoyed that look in her eye. ‘My guys think the woman lied to the monks. She never wanted to raise the kids, and her crew placed them abroad, split them up. Question is, why bother? Now the Fredericis were never a big crew, never a big family. I think whoever picked ‘em was sin, art, because they don’t arouse much interest. Kept to themselves, not big producers,’ his lip curled in contempt, ‘nothing but local shit. They would have got paid nice to bother with this, send someone abroad.’

‘The man who died in jail … whom did he kill?’

‘Very good,’ Salerni said, winking at Poppy. ‘He was found guilty of killing a Mrs Harrison.’

Daisy recognised the name. ‘The woman who fronted the agency I was adopted from, who then disappeared.’

‘Right. She went to Blackpool and was shot. The Frederici guy got caught.’

‘So.’ Rose was working it out in her head. ‘Someone pays the Fredericis to take us from the monastery, and then send us abroad. They hire people to make fake adoption agencies and then to make sure nobody talks, they kill those people. Except that one of their

crew got caught, died in prison. He was the only link back.’ ‘Exactly.’

‘Then the question is, who hired the Fredericis, and why?’ Salerni took over. ‘I found the whole thing intriguing, at this point. I had my people keep hammering. Why … you must have mattered to someone. A lotta trouble, just over three anonymous

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girls. And there aren’t a whole bunch of triplets born, least not before they made up those fertility drugs. It got easier after I knew the date.’

All three girls looked interested.

‘About seventy-two,’ Salerni informed them. ‘They may have put false ages on you at the three agencies. Anyway, you could have been peasant kids, but not likely.., why would anybody go to such trouble over peasants? I thought maybe you were daughters of some family, maybe smuggled out to stop a vendetta. But you were all girls. Nobody bothers when it’s girls.’ He grinned at Poppy’s outraged face. ‘That’s the truth, toots. Nobody thinks a girl will come after them.’

‘Don’t they,’ lKose said softly.

Salerni looked approving at her tone, and nodded. ‘So I assumed you were born in a hospital. We checked records. There were only four sets of all-girl triplets recorded that year. One set was premature, died early. Two other sets are still living, but they are accounted for. The last set also died.’

Daisy was disappointed. ‘So no hospital records …’

‘I didn’t say that. The premature babies I wrote off, becaus .hey died in the hospital. But the last set died in a fire. Their bodies qvere never found.’ He shook his head. ‘I didn’t buy that; did some checking. These were rich girls, very rich. Their father was Ccmnt Luigi Parigi, and right before the fire, he died in a shooting accident. His skull was found in the woods, years later; they identified it by dental records. If you believe that.’

‘Parigi,’ Daisy said. ‘I think I saw that name before, in Hello!. But it wasn’t a count, it was a prince.’

Salerni nodded. ‘The Prince was first cousin to the Count. Still is. Your cousin.’

Rose felt her heart start to race. Her palms were sweating. ‘How can you be so sure? How can you know that?’

‘It’s simple,’ Salerni said, mildly, but with complete assurance. ‘Who stands to benefit from the hit? That’s the one that does it. This lKoberto was -working for his cousin. He’s the eider branch, but they got all the money. Anyhow … when the Count has children, he leaves his company to them. But if the Count, and then his wife and daughters, all die in a tragic “accident” …’ He shrugged again. ‘The Prince inherited everything.’

‘But how much can it have been? He was a prince, wasn’t he wealthy? Why go to the trouble?’

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‘It was worth it,’ Salerni assured them. ‘The firm was worth billions. Your billions.’ He lifted his glass to them. ‘Salud … Contesse.’

‘This is crazy,’ Poppy muttered, but Daisy was bright-eyed. ‘Can you prove it?’ she said eagerly.

‘Absolutely not,’ Salerni said. ‘You can try, but it’ll never happen; trail’s too cold.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ R.ose said, softly.

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Rome was everything Rose had ever imagined. She sat with Daisy and Poppy in the back of their hired limousine, resting her head against the tinted windows, exhausted after the long A1 Italia flight. The girls had sat together in first class, sipping champagne and discussing everything except the reason they were here. None of them wanted to talk about it, in case they were overheard; who knew where a man like loberto Parigi had his spies?

Rose had quietly read some back issues of Business Week, Forbes, and The Economist which covered the Parigi billions. She felt the anger simmer and seethe in her belly with each passing page.,. She now felt almost as exhausted by her emotions as she was by,the flight.

But this was Rome; and Poppy and Daisy were ooh-ing and ahing with each sight which slipped by their windows; there was the Circus Maximus, and the great ruined palace on the Palatine hill; and the pyramid of Caius Cestius, white and gleaming, incongruous in the 1Roman city; and lastly, the great curve of the Colosseum and the pillars and arches of the great Roman Forum. 1Rose couldn’t help but look; she felt a strong pull, a real sense of being home.

Because she was an Italian. And so had her father been.

Before they got on the flight, Daisy had insisted they find out everything about their birth parents. A Nexxis search had revealed old photographs from the late Sixties: a handsome father, on a yacht at Cannes, with his wife, a gypsy. ‘A gypsy!’ Poppy had exclaimed, her eyes wide with shock. ‘And look … Look!’ She pointed at the eyes, distorted by the pixels of the comport screen, but still unmistakable. Wolf-white, with flecks of silver, shocking in the aristocratic, haughty olive-skinned face. Daisy clutched at her, and all three women felt first the moment of communion, then sadness, and then, lastly, rage.

‘We’re our mother’s daughters,’ Daisy muttered, ‘that’s for sure.’

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1Kose said nothing. She turned instead to pictures of 1Koberto Parigi, and there were plenty, because he was still alive. Unlike her parents. And he was waiting for them.

‘Loves the high life,’ Poppy said, furiously. Parigi was pictured everywhere, consorting with Eurotrash, minor princelings from Monaco and Lichtenstein, attending film premieres, opera house openings. He had never married, but was photographed with an interchangeable selection of young blonde bimbos. He also did not

work, but simply hired the best people to do the work for him. ‘He’s prospered,’ Daisy said, grimly.

‘Up to now,’ Rose answered. ‘But maybe he knows we’re coming. When Janus started digging, that sent up a red flag, enough

to warn them off. He knows you, at least, are looking.’

‘Then we should move fast,’ Poppy said.

P,.ose grinned and extracted three first-class tickets from the inside pocket of her jacket. ‘We leave first thing tomorrow. Let’s go get this jerk before he decides to come and get us.’

They had all made phone calls, cleared a couple of weeks. Nobody wanted to do anything else. They couldn’t think of ,veddings right now, or record companies or books.

They had seen the fire in their mother’s eyes. And the face of the man who had put it out.

The sleek black car wound its way through the narrow streets of Rome, over cobbled roads and through passageways of buildings of ochre-coloured stone, covered in clematis and ivy, past little sidewalk trattorias where tourists sat outside, sipping their drinks; and finally pulled to a halt at the top of the Spanish Steps, disturbing a cloud of pigeons.

‘This the hotel?’ Poppy said, stepping out, her eyes hidden behind huge Sophia Loren-style sunglasses.

R.ose nodded, tipping the chauffeur some lire as he removed their Louis Vuitton bags and handed them to a bell-hop. ‘The Hassler. You’ll like it. It’s the best hotel in Rome, so Don Salerni says, and he should know.’

They checked in and were shown to their suite. An opulent living room, with fantastic views towards the great dome of St Peter’s, led out to a marble-and-gold bathroom the size of Rose’s old apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, and there were two gorgeous bedrooms, one with a king-size canopy bed, the other with two twin beds each draped in chiffon. There were cut-crystal vases everywhere, crammed with

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roses, and a bowl of fruit, as well as a silver ice-bucket on a stand containing a magnum of Cristal.

‘Very nice.’ Poppy yawned. ‘I’ll take the single room.’

‘As long as I can have the bathroom first,’ Daisy said, deftly slipping past Rose and locking herself in.

‘Bitch,’ Poppy cursed. ‘I need a shower.’

‘You’re going last,’ Rose grinned, ‘since you dived on the single room. I bet Daisy snores, too.’

Poppy yawned and reached for a peach. She took a bite; it was

delicious, golden-fleshed and rich and juicy.

‘I could get used to this fast,’ she said.

‘Don’t get too used to it,’ 1Lose said. ‘Tomorrow, we go to work.’

The next day dawned bright and clear. The girls showered, and took a room-service breakfast on the terrace overlooking the Spanish Steps; they sipped fleshly squeezed juices and nibbled at croissants, and downed thick, bitter black Roman coffee. Except for Poppy.

‘I don’t care how the Romans do it,’ she said. ‘I want bagels and cream cheese. I don’t work on an empty stomach.’

When the waiter had disappeared, Rose spread out the mp of Italy she’d brought with her. ‘We can hire a car and drive out there. There’s a palazzo, we should see that, and also Don Salerni saidthe

accident happened at a hunting lodge in the hills. I want to go there.’ ‘Who knows if it’s still there? They probably built over it.’