“You’ve had intruders,” Franco said.
Don Salvini sat in his leather reading chair and motioned to patchwork. “Yes, it’s the reason I asked you here.”
Franco shook his head and stared at the smaller man. He knew Don Salvini was very respected in the Ndrangheta, but his family hadn’t been able to learn exactly what his position in the hierarchy was. His family had urged him to be respectful.
“I’m aware of your family’s troubles with the American agent,” the Don said. “And I think I can help.”
Franco wondered if the older man knew a traitor had disclosed Paul’s location. Or that his family hoped to expose the traitor and make him work for them.
The mafia boss gestured for Franco to sit. Franco squeezed his large frame into the chair.
“Two masked individuals broke into my home the other night. One woman. One man. They had American accents and asked specifically about two previous attempts to infiltrate the Ndrangheta.”
Franco remained impassive, but attentive. He hadn’t known about any previous attempts.
“These intruders did not ask about the spy who infiltrated your family.”
Franco understood the significance. “Describe them.”
Don Salvini appeared puzzled at the brusque order, but described the pair. Franco knew it was Paul and guessed the woman was the one named Shelly. He leaned forward and said, “I already know where they are.”
“Someone told you?” The older man smiled. “An old informant, perhaps?”
Franco hid the surprise he felt. Perhaps Don Salvini was on the La Provincia. Perhaps the rumors of his retirement were false.
“By your lack of reaction, I take it I’m correct.” He sat back in his chair and pressed his fingers together.
“For years now, the Ndrangheta have followed the Russians’ example and sought partners in government authority. It has allowed us to expand deep into North America and Europe. Lately, we’ve funded these governmental partners to run political offices. We expect that will increase our power markedly.” The Don paused, as if assessing Franco.
Franco nodded. He understood where this was going, but felt bored. This type of political maneuvering was something his brother Antonio would enjoy.
“We suspect…”
“We,” Franco said, thinking the man had inadvertently hinted at his role in La Provincia.
Don Salvini smirked, as if acknowledging his mistake. “I suspect that the traitor is informing you of the spy’s location because he’s on the verge of being exposed. If he is, that would expose much of what we’ve accomplished and our future plans.”
“Tell me who he is and I’ll kill him. As long as you restore my family’s territory.”
“It’s not as simple as that. This informant has recruited many of our political allies in the United States. And he’s clever enough to have some record of his actions. Something to prevent us from doing what we’re planning. We need you to make sure you get any documents he has. If you do that, and kill him, I’ll help your family re-acquire its lost territory or something comparable.”
“But I kill the man who destroyed my family first.”
“I expected that. It’s the other reason I wanted you, specifically, to handle this.” The Don gestured around him. “They shot up my house and killed several of my guards. I can’t let that stand.” He started pointedly at Franco. “I want you to kill them and make sure others know what you’ve done.” Franco grinned.
Chapter Forty-One
Paul and Shelly scrambled out of the water and dashed to his car, which he’d hidden on the side of the road. They were about a mile down from the boathouse. “We don’t have much time. They’ll scour Italy for us.”
“I know.” The cold air chilled their wet clothes. He started the car and blasted the heater, then sped toward the museum.
As he turned onto the main road, Shelly said, “The closest airport is the other way.”
“I think I know where the diamonds are,” he said, and described the memory he’d had in the water.
It was now early Sunday morning. The streets of Gioia Tauro were deserted. He slowed so no police would stop them for speeding. The Grimaldis’ power had diminished, but Paul had no idea what influence the Cataneo family had.
“And you think that means the diamonds are there?”
He slammed his fist on the steering wheel. “I don’t know! But I have to do something. I’ll never get this opportunity again.”
“We can have Forton or other people we trust search it tomorrow.”
“What if I’m wrong? What if they get there and there are no diamonds? The FBI would see that as a desperate ploy of a guilty man. It would be one more nail in my coffin.” He glimpsed her out of the corner of his eye. She stared at him with concern. Then he realized she was thinking about him, but also her daughter.
“But you have Tiffany to think about. I’ll drop you off at the next train station. You can ride it to the airport. I’ll head to the museum and make my own way out.”
She stared out the window as he drove, probably searching for threats as she thought. “We’ll go together,” she said. “Two of us can search much faster than one. And if the diamonds are there, it will clear up the whole Italian incident. Our lives can get back on track.”
She seemed about to say more, but kept quiet. They parked two blocks away and made their way to the museum through empty streets. Landscaping lights revealed the façade. The design resembled buildings constructed in the early 1900’s, but the tan stone and columns had been recently renovated. They surveyed the outside. The front doors were thick and had security glass. The first floor, however, had thin French doors spaced every ten feet. Horrible for security. Perfect for breaking and entering.
Paul inspected the door and didn’t see any security measures. He thought that was because although the museum housed beautiful pieces, none were particularly valuable. He picked the lock and entered. The dim lighting illuminated large spacious rooms with vaulted ceilings and ornately carved pastel walls imitating a French royal palace. Pictures hung from wall dividers in the center of the room. Sculptures and stone busts stood on pedestals.
“Cameras,” Shelly whispered, as she pointed toward the archway ahead of them.
The cameras were fixed and trained on the art in the room’s center. It was unlikely they’d catch them if they hugged the walls. If they did show up on a security monitor, the guard would call the police. Given his past subterfuge, the Grimaldis would soon realize that a museum break in the same night he was back in town was no coincidence.
They navigated through the archway and entered the next room. He oriented himself and crept through that room to the next and saw the statue from his memory. It was a bronze sculpture of two naked women. One was bent over the other’s foot, removing a thorn.
Heavy footsteps squeaked on the hardwood floor. The steps were even. Measured. A security guard was making his rounds.
Shelly glared at him pointedly. He needed to hurry.
He examined the piece. It was solid bronze. The pedestal on which it stood was marble. Nowhere to hide diamonds. Perplexed, he searched the area around it.
The footsteps became louder. Heading in their direction.
Shelly grabbed his arm, but he pulled away. He couldn’t understand why he’d remembered this statue. Had he and Eric talked about another statue? Were the diamonds in another museum? If that was the case, he’d never find them without remembering the events after his torture. Museums in southern Italy were as prolific as Starbucks in Seattle.
The guard was close to the doorway. Shelly tugged his arm hard and he followed her. As they exited the room, Paul heard the footsteps stop. A radio squawked and a voice in Italian said, “There are puddles of water on the floor. We may have an intruder. I’m checking now.”
Paul had forgotten about their wet clothes.
He searched the floor and noticed a trail of water that clearly showed their path. Shelly and he increas
ed speed while trying to stay out of the camera’s sight. The guard picked up his pace.
They reached the French doors and rushed through them. When they hit the sidewalk, they ran toward their car. As they rounded a corner, they saw a police car parked in front of their stolen vehicle. One officer searched the vehicle while the other spoke to two rough looking men dressed like the local mafia. One of the mafia enforcers was talking into a cellphone.
“They know we’re here,” Paul said.
At that moment, an alarm blared from the museum. The officers and mafia thugs froze in a moment of confusion, then ran toward the museum. Shelly and Paul spun around and sprinted away, darting around the next corner. They ran three blocks and found a non-descript car. They broke in, hotwired the engine, and raced toward the main highway.
“Our best bet is Sicily,” he said. “That’s where they’ll have the fewest informants.”
“There’s an airport in Catania. We can fly to an international airport from there.”
As Paul turned onto the main road, he saw one mafioso point toward them and speak into his radio.
Chapter Forty-Two
Shelly sat in her storage space office and poured over the videos collected from Italy. She and Paul had driven to the Sicilian airport. Knowing the Grimaldis were searching for two people, Paul had insisted she fly out of Catania while he drove to the next airport. She took the first flight to a random destination. Upon arrival, she changed her appearance, switched passports, and took two other indirect flights to Albany, NY. From there, she’d driven to New York City.
Shelly had been reviewing the videos for hours. She’d seen nothing revealing on the videos of the lawyer’s residence or even the ‘Ndrangheta’s house.
As she loaded the video from the Vice Superintendent’s house, she feared her plan to discover the traitor through his ‘Ndrangheta contacts was a dead end. The man was the least likely suspect.
She watched as Paul quickly crept through the house, passing a newly delivered flower arrangement and a tasteful front foyer. The white Tuscan-style house was tasteful, but modest. As befitted a Vice Superintendent. Paul opened all the doors and richly finished cabinets, picked up and thumbed through all the books, and pressed all the wall panels for secret compartments. He whispered observations and analysis into the microphone. It took a long time.
The basement, living room, and bathrooms held nothing of interest or anything out of the ordinary. The master bedroom and bath were marble and tile and tastefully decorated, but they also held nothing of interest.
As Paul panned through the policeman’s wood paneled study, however, he focused on a glass enclosed display behind the man’s oxblood leather chair and said, “This is unusual.” Shelly paused the video and zoomed in on the small gray gear wheel with a single eyepiece sticking out.
She’d learned about itin her cold-war espionage class at the FBI. It was a microdot camera.
She remembered her lectures from class. Microdots had been around since the 1870s. Essentially, they were pictures shrunk down so small that they looked like the periods at the end of a sentence. Originally, they took time and several types of chemicals to produce. As technology improved however, the entire process could be handled by a small camera exactly like the one she now stared at.
It could be part of an eccentric collection, like how some people collected stamps or autographed baseballs, but she didn’t think so. It was too neat. Too coincidental. And in an age of digital surveillance, non-digital communication was very safe. She paused the video and pulled out the policeman’s file.
She scanned the documents and kept coming back to the fact that his mother had owned a flower shop—one that still existed. A memory tugged at her, and she rewound the video and saw a fresh flower delivery on the dining room table. She fast-forwarded the video and saw a florist’s card was on the policeman’s desk. The period at the end of the sentence had been cut away.
Excitement flashed through her. She knew she’d figured it out. The traitor and policeman were passing messages to each other by embedding microdots into cards attached to bouquets of flowers. They probably used one or two people as cut-outs.
That conclusion, of course, was based on circumstantial evidence, she’d have to acquire one of the microdots to be sure, but Shelly believed she was right. She stood up and stretched. She’d found out how the traitor communicated, but not who he, or she, was. She’d focus on the American side now. She’d sneak into the homes of the two FBI suspects and see if they had a microdot machine.
A glaring problem jumped out at her. It was the holidays. She’d have to surveil them 24/7. What would she do with her daughter? Her husband would use any unusual behavior against her in the custody hearings. And if she let Tiffany stay with Frank, he might manipulate her into demanding she stay with him. Her only other options was to ask Paul to do it.
Soft footfalls sounded in the hall. Shelly froze. They were the footsteps of someone trying to be silent. Silent steps in a deserted storage company at this hour meant only one thing.
Not knowing how many people waited for her, she realized escape was far better than blindly shooting her way downstairs and perhaps running into more killers.
She shoved her gun between the small of her back and her waistband. Next, she grabbed her laptop and stuffed it into a tote bag then slung the bag over her shoulder.
The steps sounded closer. She tried to be as quiet as she could and hoped the killer or killers wouldn’t know the exact unit she was in.
She snatched a phosphorus grenade from the floor and clipped it to her waistband as she hopped onto the table.
Bullets punched through the unit’s door. They sounded like a small caliber automatic with a silencer.
She gripped the ceiling’s crossbeam and pushed the wire mesh covering away. A bullet grazed her leg. She cried out.
The killer fired rapidly, the shots ricocheting off the walls. Shelly leapt up and pulled herself through the ceiling. A stinging pain hit her side and she knew another bullet had grazed her. She crawled over the crossbeams to the next unit. There was a skylight at the end of the row. If she could get to it, she could escape.
The killer must have heard her because his next bullet whizzed by her ear before she heard the gun click empty.
She had only seconds. She yanked the phosphorus grenade from her belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it into her unit. Then she scrambled forward like a kid racing over monkey bars.
She heard the slap of a magazine jammed into a gun and the sharp shock-shick of the slide being drawn back, and prayed she’d timed things well.
A bullet punched a hole in the ceiling inches in front of her then the grenade exploded. The force of the blast blew her forward. She nearly fell into the unit below, but the wire mesh saved her.
A fire alarm rang. Sprinklers rained water.
After a moment’s pause, a gunshot ricocheted off the wall behind her. The explosion hadn’t caught the killer.
She thought again about using her gun, but she couldn’t see the killer. Escape was still a better plan. She scrambled toward the skylight. It was ten feet away. Bullets edged closer. The killer knew her direction, even if he didn’t know her exact location. The water spraying down made the going slippery.
She reached the skylight. It was right next to the concrete wall of the last unit. But it was above a hallway. She’d be exposed if she reached for it. If the killer came around the corner of units, he’d have an instant kill shot.
Shelly had to chance it. It was her only way out. She twisted the lock, but it wouldn’t budge. Another bullet landed behind her. She had only moments. She grabbed the side of her tote bag and banged on the glass as hard as she could.
It broke and she used the edge of the canvas bag to quickly clear away the shards. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the barrel of a gun aimed around the corner.
She leapt out the skylight and rolled down the roof. Her water soaked clothes made her slide too fast and she could
n’t stop. As she tumbled over the edge of the roof, she caught herself on the lip and hung for a moment. Her phone fell out of her pocket and she watched helplessly as it smashed into the cement below. Looking below her, she realized she was out of position. She swung her body to the left and dropped onto the rubbery top of a dumpster.
In seconds, she had rolled to the pavement and rushed down the street as fast as her injured leg would carry her, wondering if the killer had partners.
Chapter Forty-Three
Paul dreamed about Eric again. They were back in Italy. Eric had tried to kill him and Paul caught up to him in an alley outside Franco’s club. He asked him, “Why’d you try to kill me?” Eric responded, “Part of the act,” but this time he smiled wickedly and reached for his gun. Then Eric grew in size, like he was a giant among men. He yelled at Paul, but his voice was garbled. Paul focused on his words and—
His phone alarm went off. His eyes popped open. “No!” he screamed, trying to capture the retreating images, but they faded like mist.
“Damn it,” he said, marching to his Post-it board. He wrote down notes from the dream and wondered why he’d had a dream that was part memory and part fiction. It made no sense.
He’d travelled from Sicily to Montreal by various plane routes and had arrived at Hillcrest early this morning and collapsed into bed.
He dressed quickly and hurried into the hall, hoping the sunrise might help him gain insight. Purples and reds reached into thick clouds that covered the horizon. He imagined they’d have snow by the weekend.
Paul let his mind drift. He tried to steer his thoughts back to Eric. Nothing happened. He tried again and grasped the vague outlines of Eric laughing at a blonde with glasses and…
“Mr. Taylor?” a voice asked, yanking his thoughts back to the hall at Hillcrest.
“Fuck,” he said, before he could catch myself. David Morales looked up at him, looking hurt.
The Italian Deception Page 18