The Villa of Mysteries (41 page)

One figure turns and he sees Barbara Martelli, now sixteen years younger than the woman he never really knew, long locks down to her waist, smiling face full of warmth, pleased to see someone.

Barbara opens her mouth. No sound emerges. She is a gift. He understands that just by looking at her, the way she stands, the way she beckons, and something in Barbara’s face seems to say she’s aware of this too.

Her slim arms, tanned, still a little chubby from her youth, reach out, seeking a man’s touch and the gift it will bring.

Barbara knows, he thinks. Barbara wants.

Miranda’s lips, damp and scorching, move against his ear.

She whispers,
Look
.

A second figure turns and he feels his heart become stone, feels the air disappear from his lungs.

Eleanor Jamieson stands in front of him, alive and smiling, and Miranda is right. She is more beautiful than any of them, not because of how she looks, but from the simple light that shines from her eyes, the naÏve, unworldly light of innocence begging to be dimmed because it burns too brightly for the rest. This is her undoing. Men will see this flame, perhaps women too, and want to suck on its power, steal the life from within it, jealous of its intensity. And she understands none of this. She simply smiles, and beckons.

She doesn’t know, fuckhead
, the old voice croons.
She doesn’t have a clue
.

Eleanor Jamieson opens her perfect mouth and smiles.

Her teeth are the colour of mahogany. Her wide, unseeing eyes are pools of black, as deep and as dead as the foetid Tiber.

In her throat something glitters, silver and gold. A coin to pay the ferryman.

Behind her back something moves in the shadows.

VERGIL WALLIS SAID NOTHING for a good five minutes after he read the lab report. At his boss’s suggestion, Peroni went out for some coffee and to find out if there was any news. The men who had been combing had found nothing. Mickey Neri seemed remarkably well organized.

He came back, discreetly shook his head behind Wallis’s hunched figure at the desk, and placed a cup in front of the American. Wallis had the makings of tears in his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“Sorry,” he said eventually. “You’ve got a lot of surprises around here right now.”

“Too many,” Falcone replied. “You had no idea? You never knew she and Mickey were messing around together?”

This was the moment, Peroni realized. Vergil Wallis could stick to his guns, pretend he had pretty much told them the truth all along and just try to brazen the whole thing out. And if that happened then Nic Costa would be dead, along with the Julius woman and her kid. Everything hung on this old crook’s decision.

“No,” Wallis answered dolefully. “I still can’t believe it. You’d never have guessed it from seeing them together. Eleanor was smart. A little naÏve. Maybe that was why I indulged her from time to time. But she could have walked into any college she liked. The Neri kid was just an oaf. Worse than his father, if that’s possible.”

“Maybe that’s what she liked,” Peroni suggested, trying to be reasonable with this man because he understood how essential he was to them. “I have kids. You get to understand these things. A little anyhow. Sometimes they do the opposite of what you want just because it
is
the opposite of what you want. It doesn’t mean you can go blaming yourself for what happens next. That’s how people are made.”

Wallis nodded. “True.”

“So,” Peroni continued. “Now you know this, how about we stop pretending, huh? We know she didn’t go missing just off the cuff. And I got to say, Mr. Wallis, you must have realized that all along. So let’s cut the crap. We got a little time before your appointment. You tell us. What really happened that day?”

“Really?” There was some bitter amusement in Wallis’s face. Peroni didn’t like what he was seeing. This man just might help them, but he’d never relinquish control and never fully divulge anything he didn’t think necessary. “I’ve no idea. That
is
the truth. I swear to it. If I’d known—”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

“You’d have killed him?” Peroni suggested. “Just for screwing around?”

Wallis nodded. “The person I was then . . . I would have killed him.”

“And now?”

“Now I live in Rome and read my books,” Vergil Wallis said quietly.

He pulled the overcoat tighter around him. “A man can drown himself in a few illusions if he likes. Is there anything wrong in that?”

Falcone and Peroni exchanged glances. Then Falcone tried to get things back on track.

“Where did you think Eleanor was going that day?”

“To some kind of party. Neri knew what interested me. Knew what interested her too. They were the same things. When we went on vacation together it was just after Eleanor’s birthday. Neri said he wanted to give her a gift. A surprise. Something out of the past. I’d given her Kirk’s book as a birthday present. She loved the stupid thing, read it all in a couple of days. So I mentioned this to Neri and said, maybe—”

Wallis paused and sighed. “The next thing I know Neri’s fixed a meeting round at his house. Me and him and the Kirk guy, who’s all eyes at the idea he might get paid to throw the party of his dreams. If I’d thought about it maybe the alarm bells would have started ringing. I didn’t even know what a Dionysian ceremony was. Maybe that was why the Kirk guy kept looking at me, weird, all the time. I just didn’t . . . imagine.”

He hesitated over this last point. “Eleanor knew, of course. Neri’s kid must have set her up for the whole thing.”

“Where was this supposed to happen?” Peroni asked.

“I don’t know,” Wallis replied. “I never asked. I could have gone along if I’d wanted. I didn’t.”

“Why not?” Peroni wondered.

Wallis glowered at him. “Watching some young kids dance around in costume? That’s what I thought it was. I’d been in Rome long enough to recognize all the tourist shit they try to sell you. They say it’s culture. I thought it was just one more turn around the block. If Eleanor wanted it . . . fine. I’d better things to do with my time.”

Peroni shot Falcone a look that said
unconvinced
. “Did you drive her there?”

“No. She went off on that little bike of hers. Like I said.”

“You really have no idea where she might have gone?”

“None at all. And that’s the truth.”

They waited. Wallis wasn’t going to give this up to them easily.

Falcone pressed him. “It’s nine in the morning and she’s left for this fancy dress party. Is she wearing the clothes we found her in?”

“She had them in a bag. The Kirk guy sent them along with some other stuff.”

“Then what?” Falcone asked.

Wallis closed his eyes for a moment and Peroni felt his heart skip a beat because this could just be the point where the American thought “
no further
.” “Then nothing. For hours and hours. And I’m busy. I got people to talk to, calls to make. So I don’t think twice about it. Not until the evening and then I think . . . she never said when she’d be back. She went out there and she was so excited she didn’t even care about what time it all ended.”

“Then you call Emilio Neri, right?” Peroni could work this through for himself. It was what you did as a father. Not approach the kids direct, even if you could find them. That was wrong. That was
uncool
. You phoned their dads and said, look, man to man . . .

“Eventually, Neri calls me.” Wallis shook his head. “I never touched dope. Sold plenty. I never thought about it. It wasn’t anything that came near me. It never affected anyone I loved, not even back in the old days when I was just some black punk on the street. Dope just existed. It was a utility for us. Like water or electricity.”

“Pretty lucrative utility, Mr. Wallis,” Peroni observed. “Bought you that nice house on the hill.”

“Bought me part of that nice house. Not as much as you think.”

“Does that hurt? Now you realize the kid got burned by dope?”

For a moment Peroni thought Vergil Wallis might take one of those big black fists out of the pocket of his leather overcoat and smack him with it.

“But she wasn’t, was she?” Wallis replied calmly. “Someone cut her throat. Neri said it was dope. He acted like he was furious too. Said he came in on the thing and found the kids had been popping stuff on the side, and even the professor guy never knew it was that bad. He said—”

Vergil Wallis could have been a good actor, Peroni thought. Or maybe he did feel this cut up after all these years.

“There’d been an accident,” Wallis continued. “Eleanor had over-dosed on some bad crack one of the kids — not Mickey — had smuggled into the party. She’d gone into a coma. They’d called a doctor they knew. They’d tried everything. She was dead. Nothing they could do.”

“Then what?”

Wallis stared at his long black hands. He hunched up inside the coat looking as miserable as any man Gianni Peroni had ever seen. “For an hour or two I went crazy. Went round smashing things. Beating up on anyone I could find. Trying to find someone else to blame.”

“You blame yourself,” Peroni said instantly, and found, against his wishes, some feelings of sympathy rising inside himself. “That’s how it works.”

“That’s how it works.”

“But after,” Peroni continued, “when you stop feeling quite so mad, what do you do? Go to the cops? No. Because you’re a crook, Mr. Wallis. And crooks don’t go to the cops. We’d start asking where that dope came from. We’d start asking all kinds of stuff.”

Wallis nodded and didn’t say a word.

Peroni thought about this. “And those bosses of yours back home wouldn’t be none too pleased, I guess. All the same, I’d want to see the body. Didn’t you want to see the body?”

“Seen a lot of bodies in my time, mister,” Vergil Wallis murmured. “That’s one I didn’t want coming back to haunt me at nights. I just told Neri to get on with it. He’d offed the kid he said brought in the dope. Or so he claimed. I just went back into my shell. And I remembered.” The black eyes flashed at both of them. “I remember well.”

“Dope.” Peroni hated working drugs. Everything got so unpredictable. “Once you walk into that place it all gets so messy. Who’s to say that wasn’t what killed her, really? That it wasn’t little Mickey out of his head thinking he was the love god come to call? And getting all cut up or something when she says no, and by the by, Mickey, I’m carrying a little present for you?”

Wallis pushed his big fists deeper into the overcoat. “What is it you want of me? There’s nothing I can do to bring her back.”

Peroni bridled at that. “There are two women and a cop you could help bring back, Mr. Wallis.”

“Why me?”

“Mickey Neri says you know the way,” Falcone reminded him. “Do you?”

“I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. All I can guess is what you can guess. He wants me there for my hide. I’d need a damn good reason to lay it on the line for people I don’t even know.”

Falcone glanced at the clock on the wall. It was two minutes to nine. “You might get to find out who really killed her. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that the lure Mickey’s really dangling in your face? Also, you get me and half the cops in Rome behind you. We quit chasing bombers, quit chasing street thieves and dope dealers, pimps and murderers, and try to save your lying ass instead. The choice is yours, Mr. Wallis. But if I have to pick up any more dead bodies at the end of this, your cosy sweetheart deal with the DIA goes out the window. I don’t see you sitting comfortably in that house of yours on the hill for much longer now. Do you?”

Wallis grimaced. “Is that a deal you’re offering me? Play ball and you stay off my back?”

Peroni was quietly whistling through his teeth, looking livid.

“If that’s the way you care to see it,” Falcone replied.

“And you think you’re good enough to keep me alive? All the dead bodies I’ve seen on the news this past couple of days don’t give me much in the way of optimism.”

Falcone shrugged. “Take it or leave it. Either way we’re pulling away all those people from your gate. The DIA don’t do security. Who do you think’s going to guard your back then? Your golf buddies have got to go home sometime. Neri’s people aren’t going away. And they want blood over that accountant, I imagine. Thanks for the gift, by the way.”

Vergil Wallis leaned over the desk and pointed a long black finger in Falcone’s direction. “Listen to me, man. I didn’t touch Neri’s accountant. I’m retired. OK?”

Then he fell back into his chair and closed his eyes, waiting.

Bang on the minute — Mickey Neri was punctual — the phone rang. The two men watched Vergil Wallis. He waited, just long enough to make them nervous, then picked up the handset.

Wallis hit the button and barked, “Speak.”

He listened. It didn’t last long.

“Well?” Falcone demanded.

Wallis reached inside his coat and pulled out a piece, a silver pistol, nice and shiny, of a kind neither cop recognized. “You’re not thinking of taking this off me now?”

“My,” Peroni observed. “The things retired people carry around with them these days. Does that get covered by the state pension or what?”

Wallis opened the bag and dropped the gun inside. “Front steps of San Giovanni. Twenty-five minutes. I want Mr. Sweet Talk here to drive. I hear he played boss class once. Don’t want any amateurs stepping on my toes.”

MICKEY NERI SNIFFED in the dead air of the caverns and wished he had the courage to walk outside, out into good daylight, away from the mess he was in. That wasn’t possible. Adele had made him place the calls. She said they had no choice. They needed money. They needed his father to give them the chance to start again, free of his anger. So they just sat in one of the chambers in this stinking, dark maze, trying not to bitch at one another. Mickey just couldn’t work out the geography of the place. Adele walked around as if she knew every last corner, every last twist and turn. It pissed him off. He thought he was going to end up in charge. He was grateful for what she’d done at Toni Martelli’s. But he’d have killed the old bastard without her help . . . in the end.