The Last Days of Il Duce (18 page)

“Let me iron your shirt.”

Marie was not the type for ironing shirts, not usually, but we were both under the spell of that blue dress. I got the shirt for her and some clean slacks and the suit jacket Stephano's had cuffed and delivered the day before. I shined my shoes and she fussed over my clothes and we acted for a little while more like the couple in the fairy story.

“Those pictures?”

“What pictures?”

“The ones of Joe. In your photo book.”

“Yes.”

“The ones that are missing?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“There were some blank pages. From a few years back.”

“I imagine there's a number of blank pages.”

“Do you know what happened to those pictures?”

“No.”

There'd always been a side to Marie that I didn't understand and that frightened me. When we were young, she'd been caught once by her uncle in Portsmouth Square, holding hands with some stranger twice her age. Rumor was that she'd had a number of affairs like that, with older men. I didn't know if I believed such stories. The talk of old women and neighborhood gossips. Marie was a wild girl, they said. Because of the father who'd disappeared. Because there was no discipline in her uncle's house. And such wildness, once it got into a girl's heart, it never went away. The first time around I'd listened to those spinsters' talk, I guess, and ended up with Anne. The second time I'd listened to my father, and ended up with nothing.

Now Marie touched the iron with her fingertips and ran it briskly across my shirt.

“You need to look good.”

“Yes.”

“You need to make a new start.”

“I know.”

“Micaeli wants to help you. Then when you're off the ground, and some time has passed, we can be a little more public. We can do things like they're supposed to be done.”

“That's what I'd like to see.”

She handed me the shirt and I buttoned it up. I tucked the tail into my pants and knotted my tie in the mirror.

“Then maybe you can start your own practice. We can get someplace nice. Outside the city.”

“Nothing fancy.”

“No. Fancy isn't important.”

So the conversation went. Meanwhile I put together my wardrobe and she fussed over me, and we went on with our little theater, just the two of us, though who we were acting for and why were secrets we each kept to ourselves.

Pretty soon I was all dressed and ready to leave. If the phone hadn't rung just then, maybe everything would have been different. Maybe I would have kissed Marie goodbye, then driven over to Sausalito and Micaeli Romano and begun my new career without a hitch. Then when I got home, maybe I would've called Marie on the phone and told her all about my day. And one thing would have led to another, one working day to the next, and sooner or later I would have forgotten all about my brother's death, letting it slip away, and the police would have let it slip away too. Marie and I would have moved out of the city into one of those little cottages that people come from across the country to buy, putting down their life savings for some stucco and some wood and a bougainvillea vine outside the window. But none of that happened. Because the phone did ring and I picked it up.

It was old man Romano.

“Nick, the Hong Kong people—there's some business here, trickier than an old man like me expected. I need to talk to them alone, for the next hour, maybe a little more.”

The old man's voice was all charm and sunshine. The kind of voice that makes you feel like you are standing on a hillside overlooking the sea, nothing but days ahead of you and money in your pocket.

“I understand,” I said.

“I still need you here, but later. About two. This okay?”

“Yeah.”

“They'll be gone then, and I can catch you up. We can talk. This is no trouble?”

“No. Not any.”

“Good.”

“I look forward to seeing you.”

“Two o'clock.”

“Sharp,” I said. “With bells on my shoes.”

During all this Marie stood by the slatted blinds with the light pouring all over her. The age showed more plainly in her face, and while I could still see the young Marie—her brown hair and sky-colored dress—the presence of youth and age together no longer touched me in the way it had earlier, but now each seemed to mock the other. I could see again the desperation in her eyes and the conviction that nothing would work out.

“What's going on?”

“Not much. He just changed the time. He wants me to come out a little later today.”

“Why?”

“Something came up. It's just a couple hours more.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?”

“No. You go home. I have some notes I should go over anyway. Legal stuff. It's good to have the extra time.”

“Are you sure?”

“You go home. I'll call you when I get back.”

As Marie went down the stairs, I watched her body take on a different stride, as if escaping from under the weight that had grown between us in that room. There was a little juke to her step, like that of a young girl, and though this stirred my desire all over again, I was glad to see her go.

TWENTY-THREE

MURDER IN MY HEART

I had lied to Marie. I had no legal notes and there was nothing for me to prepare. The point of the upcoming meeting with Micaeli had not been details, rather to break me in with his Asian cronies, to do so at his waterfront condo with a big meal, a glass of wine, a handshake. The change of plans made me wonder if he'd had a change of heart. Maybe he'd talked to his son and decided to keep me in the background. Or maybe they planned to do for me like they had already done for Joe.

I went over to Mama Mia's Restaurant to grab some lunch. I tried reading the paper, just some mindless stuff, want ads and cartoons and batting averages, but my head felt empty and nothing would stick. When I looked out the window at the clouds and the sky, I felt as if they were passing through me. The people outside the window strolled through my reflection, down the pavement, and my thoughts rose up in my head, floating away before I had a chance to know what I was thinking. Then an image would bubble up: my brother's face; the apartment I'd lived in with Anne; my old law office—and I would feel anger, a knife deep in that empty head of mine, all the objects of the world etched in clarity.

I didn't like this clarity. I wanted to be rid of it. I thought a beer might help so I went down to the Naked Moon. The first show of the afternoon was a couple of hours away but Carlo, the owner, was already serving drinks. There wasn't anybody else much around, just a few crumbums and one of Carlo's girls. She had black-painted eyes and a bruise on her cheek that maybe Carlo had given her, he was that kind of guy. The place smelled of cigarettes and beer and pussy and cum, and the beer Carlo pushed me tasted as if it had been filtered through a dirty rag.

“So'd they find your brother's killer?”

“No.”

“You know I saw that first wife of his down here a couple weeks back. The blonde. It was just before he died.”

“Probably she was walking home. She lives up the hill.”

“Maybe. But I saw her through the window, just standing there, by the meter. Then she walked on.”

“And so?”

“I don't know. Nothing. I'm just saying I saw her. She ain't bad.”

“How would you know?”

Carlo shrugged, sheepish. I usually got along with him well enough, though at the moment I couldn't much stand the guy. Some ways he was everything about North Beach I despised. Thick through the chest. Big arms. An accent that sounded like the stupid side of New York. He liked to tell stories about the heyday of the neighborhood, though in fact he'd only lived here a few years himself. I finished off the beer, then ordered another, drinking with my back to the bar, my stool swiveled so I could see out to the street.

“What the cops tell you about the investigation?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” I said. “Give me another beer.”

“You hear Gino's has reopened?”

“Gino's?”

“Yeah, you know. Gino's. In the fifties Italians came from all over to drink at Gino's. From Chicago. New York. Cleveland. Even Sinatra, the big somebody, he stopped in for a beer one time.”

“I thought Gino Solano was dead.”

“This is his son. Looks just like 'im.”

“Must be an ugly son of a bitch.”

Carlo laughed, like this was the funniest thing he'd heard in years.

“How about that beer, will you?”

He pushed it over to me. I drank it, then I ordered another.

“It's the beginning of a renaissance, you ask me,” Carlo said. “The Italians are coming back.”

“I'm convinced of it. Da Vinci, Pulcinella, they're all flying in tomorrow.”

I remembered Gino's kid, not exactly a young man himself, maybe a dozen years older than me. I remembered him all dressed up, working the door at his father's place. We'd been on a first-name basis once upon a time, nodding to each other in the street, but I wasn't in the mood for memories. I wanted rid of that clear feeling in my head and I didn't want to be bothered thinking about Gino or Carlo or anyone else. Only now the clear feeling was being replaced with something muddy, and I thought again of those empty spaces in Marie's scrapbook. I started to got lost there in the muddiness.

Romano had arranged my brother's death. I was convinced, I told myself. Even so, there was something obvious I was missing, something right in front of me, but I still couldn't see it.

I sipped more slowly now and Carlo left me alone, realizing at last I didn't want to talk to him. He had seen me in such moods before and knew how angry a drunk can be. So he went to the other end of the bar to talk to the woman with the bruised face. Pretty soon it was one o'clock. I knew I should get going if I wanted to make my appointment with Romano, but I took my time and when I was done I slapped down a quarter for a tip, because Carlo was an ugly son of a bitch and a guy like him needed all the sympathy he could get.

I lingered outside a moment, standing in the spot where Carlo said he'd seen Marie. Though I supposed it was possible she might walk this way, coming home from downtown, maybe, it didn't seem likely, and either way I couldn't see how it mattered. A few steps further on I passed J. Ferrari's. I wouldn't have noticed the place if the door hadn't been pushed open, but it was, and I happened to glance in, and my eyes caught those of the monkey-faced little man, looking up from his sheaf of papers. There was nothing much in that office but the little man and his desk. The walls were painted black throughout, so you could not be sure the room was as small as it seemed, and there was at least the illusion of a corridor receding into the blackness behind the desk. I saw all this in an instant, and there was the slightest hesitation in my step, as if I were considering going in, and the monkey-faced little man noticed this too, as if he had seen other people make the same little hesitation. Then that moment was over, and I kept on going.

I went back up to my apartment to straighten myself up. I checked myself in the mirror, my tie was askew, and I sat at the edge of the bed telling myself I shouldn't go, I should just fuck it all off. I thought about Romano and his adopted bastard son and my brother bleeding his guts out on Linda Street. I should just walk away from them all and from Marie too, if that's what it took. I began to wish Romano had not called this morning and given me this extra time to think things over. To think about last night and about what a louse I was for screwing my brother's wife. Because if Micaeli hadn't called, I'd be out there with him already. Charmed by him like everybody was charmed. Not believing him capable of any evil in the world. But instead he'd given me these extra hours. So I kept thinking about those empty pages in Marie's book and those men's shoes in her closet. Then I did what probably had been in my mind all along. I reached into the bottom drawer. I pulled out my brother's gun. I hefted it in my hand, feeling its weight, and shoved it in my suit coat pocket. Then I drove across that beautiful bridge to the other side of the bay.

TWENTY-FOUR

THROUGH THE GATE

I drove across the Golden Gate. It's a suspension bridge, trembling and vibrating, swaying in the wind, and the combined weight of the cars rushing over sets it to trembling yet more. I remember feeling that trembling through the soles of my shoes back when I was a kid, when Joe and I would walk across on the sidewalk, cars rushing by on one side, the wind on the other, and the ocean down below. We liked to stop halfway, where the jumpers stopped, peering towards Alcatraz. We would feel ourselves suspended there, way up high, where the bay meets the ocean and the sky turns to fog, and we'd listen to the wires humming overhead with the combined trembling of all those people crossing.

Now I headed across in the center lane of traffic. I took the Sausalito exit and found my way into town.

Sausalito is like a million California towns, an old main street lined with pepper trees, silver-haired nobodies strolling underneath, doddering over the antiques. It had been a real town once. Dry docks for the building of battleships. Women who drank all day in houseboats, waiting for their husbands to return. And when they did, those fishermen, they stunk like the bay and sold their catch on the lousy wharf. These days, though, real estate was a million bucks an acre, and tourists strolled up and down the cobbled streets, charmed out of their minds. I strolled with them, gawking up at an old mansion that had once belonged to Amadeo Giannini, the Italian banker. Now it was a hotel for the rich and on the other side of its gardens stood Romano's condominium.

I passed through the old mansion grounds, flush with bougainvillea and star jasmine and flowering yuccas and birds of paradise, all growing behind the stone setbacks, tended and perfect. An Asian couple sauntered there, distinguished, well-dressed; and an older white woman in a flowered dress—beautiful, too, in her own decrepit way—sat reading beneath an umbrella. I hurried past her down a walkway that took me to Micaeli's townhouse, fashioned in imitation of the mansion behind it, a balcony off the front, glass doors opening to the bay.