Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  The sick man’s lips worked dryly. He tried to smile, but the required muscles seemed to have forgotten what to do.

  When Emma opened the door for Durning the next night, she gazed at him as though he were an exciting new suitor. She had brushed her hair until it shone, and her eyes had new lights. She half glanced at the briefcase in Durning’s hand, then avoided looking at it again.

  Upstairs, Mike, too, seemed to have reconstituted himself. His breathing had deepened, and new blood, ordered like reinforcements, had added color to the pale translucence of his skin. This time, his muscles remembered how to smile. A pine spray had improved even the air.

  Durning opened his briefcase and placed it on the bed.

  “The bills are all hundreds,” he said. “They’re in fifty packs of twenty apiece. You can count them.”

  Mike lay there, looking at the open briefcase. Then he briefly closed his eyes, and a tiny moment seemed to stall inside him.

  “I don’t have to count anything. My friend’s name is Battaglia… Vittorio Battaglia.”

  Mike said it again, more slowly. Finally, he spelled it. Durning took out a pen and small notebook and wrote the name. Staring at the two words, he felt himself looking someplace he couldn’t see.

  “Where is he from?”

  “New York.”

  “What kind of work did he do?”

  “He never really talked about it, but I’m sure it was mob connected.”

  Durning nodded his head, looking slow and tired.

  Mike started to cough again and Emma brought him some tissues and water. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, holding the glass for him while he sipped through a straw.

  Durning sat watching them. He saw Emma’s full, curving back as she leaned toward her husband, and the way the overhead light caught the gray streaks in her hair. He saw that Mike’s eyes were closed as he lay there, as if he might be drinking the water in his sleep.

  This was how Durning would remember them.

  Exactly twenty-nine hours later, an explosion and fire eliminated Mike, his wife, his house, and everything in it. Evidence of a propane tank was found in the basement. Little remained above it except clouds, scarred scraps, and ashes.

  Reading about it in the news, the attorney general had felt the fact of it enter him. You never appreciate the true urgency of life if you haven’t seen how easily it can be taken away.

  In his mind, there was nothing else he could have done, of course. Considering what they knew, there was no way he could have just left them there.

  Still, it brought him no joy.

  Ten days, thought Durning, and stared off at the river thirty-three stories down and half a mile west.

  It had been a bad period of time for him and things showed every promise of getting worse. There was even a way in which his sudden personal trials seemed to proclaim the entire country. Like something dying in a brightly colored candy box, he thought. Terrible to watch, yet darkly fascinating. But then the dead had always fascinated him. They looked so indifferent to what had happened that dying almost didn’t seem so bad.

  He was well into his third Perrier when there was a soft knock and he opened the door for Don Carlo Donatti.

  They embraced and the attorney general breathed the don’s once familiar designer cologne. Some things did stay the same.

  Donatti held him with some deep authority of feeling. But whether it was for Donatti’s own need or Durning’s was impossible to tell. They had not, after all, met face to face for years. But inasmuch as it was Durning who had requested the meeting, and Donatti still had no idea of its purpose, the edge remained in the attorney general’s favor.

  “You look well, Don Carlo. You haven’t aged five minutes in five years. What’s your secret?”

  “Pure thoughts in a healthy body.”

  “Both way out of my reach.”

  “And mine, since your honesty shames me.”

  The two men smiled and something passed between.

  Durning poured Donatti some scotch and handed it to him. Then he switched on the radio, tuned in a Philharmonic recording, and pushed up the volume. He had already checked the suite for possible bugs and found it clean. But these days, with the latest electronic advances, it was impossible to be sure. The music also eliminated the inelegant, always embarrassing need to pat each other down. This was all understood and Donatti said nothing. It was for their mutual security.

  They sat facing each other beneath a soaring rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth.

  “A question,” said Durning. “Regarding that little favor you did me nine years ago. Was the man who handled it named Vittorio Battaglia?”

  Donatti’s face was blank. Then he nodded, “Something’s wrong?”

  “I’m afraid a lot’s wrong,” said Durning, and he told Donatti about Mike’s letter and everything that followed.

  Don Donatti listened in silence. Then he slowly rose, walked to the big window, and stood looking out over the city. Finally, he turned.

  “When did all this happen?”

  “Ten days ago.”

  “What have you been doing for ten days?”

  “Watching people disappear.”

  The attorney general’s next witch’s tale was the one about Gianni Garetsky, Mary Chan Yung, and the apparent melting away of the five men sent to question them.

  Donatti shook his head. “Why didn’t you come to me right away?”

  Durning sipped his Perrier and said nothing.

  His silence made the don smile. “You still don’t trust me?”

  “Nine years ago you assured me the woman had been taken care of. Now I find she’s alive. Is that a basis for trust?”

  “What can I say, Henry? It’s an embarrassment. But Vittorio was the best I had and he told me it was done. News of the accident was in the papers. I’m as shocked as you.”

  “Where’s Battaglia now?”

  “Christ only knows. He vanished a few weeks after the crash and I haven’t heard a word about him since.”

  “And that didn’t seem strange to you?”

  Carlo Donatti shrugged. “Nothing’s strange in Vittorio’s line of work. There are always enemies. People disappear. Even the best. So I just lit a candle and kissed Vittorio goodbye.”

  “What about his friend, the artist? You think he knows where Battaglia is?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “When did you last see Garetsky?”

  Donatti considered his scotch through hooded lids. “A few nights ago. There was a reception in his honor at the Met. I went to pay my respects.”

  “He didn’t call or come to you for help after that?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s put the pistols on the table, Carlo. We’ve always been comfortably quid pro quo, we two. Something for something. Right?”

  Donatti sat completely still.

  “Many years ago,” said the attorney general quietly, “as a prosecutor, I quashed a serious murder indictment against you. Some time later, in return, you were supposed to take care of Irene Hopper for me. Now it turns out you never did.”

  “I’m sorry. Until five minutes ago I thought I had.”

  “Maybe and maybe not. In either case, it’s irrelevant. All that matters now is that I suddenly find there are two people out there who can effectively ruin me anytime they choose.”

  Donatti stared down into his drink. He might have been considering the entrails of a blood sacrifice. “If they haven’t done it in nine years, why would they do it now?”

  “You’re missing the point. I can’t live with this hanging over me. I won’t live with it. For God’s sake, Carlo! I’m not what I was nine years ago. I’m now attorney general of the United States. And I could be more. Who can tell the workings of people’s minds? Who knows what can suddenly push them to do what they haven’t done before?”

  Donatti was silent.

  “I’m dead serious,” said Durning.

  “You think you have to tell me that?”


  “What I think is that you’ve seen this Gianni Garetsky since the night at the museum. Which means you’ve already lied to me.”

  Donatti’s eyes were cold, but he said nothing.

  “I’m holding you responsible for this disaster, Carlo. So when Garetsky next contacts you, as I’m sure he will, I expect to hear about it.”

  Don Donatti sat letting the words settle. “You’re looking in the wrong place. My feeling is that Gianni Garetsky doesn’t know anything.”

  “You let me judge that.”

  Henry Durning studied the way the late sun came through the window and painted the walls. He smiled, but there was no humor in it.

  “And just in case you get any foolish notions, Carlo, please… just remember three things. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, the evidence against you is still locked in a bank vault, and every bit of it will go straight to the DA if I should accidentally die.”

  Majestically, Beethoven filled the following silence.

  20

  MARY YUNG SAT at a table in the great reading room of the main branch of the New York Public Library. Feeling her excitement building, she was utterly unaware of those about her. For the past hour she had been studying the contents of the manila folder delivered to her there by one of Jimmy Lee’s messengers.

  The enclosed microfiche printouts included every detail… as reported by The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time… surrounding the crash in which Irene Hopper had died more than nine years ago. And what struck her most strongly were the many recurrent roles played by Henry Durning.

  It was Durning’s plane that Hopper was flying when she crashed.

  It was Durning who was described as having originally hired Irene Hopper for his law firm, become her mentor and benefactor professionally, and formed a seemingly close relationship with her outside the office as well.

  It was Durning who delivered an emotional eulogy for her in a moving memorial ceremony conducted a week after the crash.

  It was Durning who apparently established a generous scholarship in Irene Hopper’s name for the benefit of needy and deserving law students at her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.

  But for Mary Yung, what were undoubtedly the two most meaningful bits of information she knew about Henry Durning had nothing to do with what she was seeing on the microfiche. The first was that Durning was the man with whom Irene Hopper had been two-timing Vittorio nine years ago. While the second had to do with Durning’s appointment several years ago as attorney general of the United States. Which not only established him as titular head of the Department of Justice, but actually placed the FBI itself under his jurisdictional control.

  Meaning what?

  Perhaps everything.

  Or, just possibly, nothing.

  But a forest of nerves had started making sparks inside her, and she knew better than to negate it.

  She had it all.

  Henry Durning was behind the whole thing. He had too many connections to too many key elements not to be involved. She had no idea what his reasons were, but reasons hardly mattered. At this point, all she saw was an unbelievable opportunity. Which, if handled right, might just possibly help lift her out of the nest of snakes she’d been calling home for as long as she could remember.

  Mary Yung floated on excitement as she left the library. Her new Nikes barely touched the wide, stone steps to Fifth Avenue. She sensed her own pulse in the air.

  Still, she felt one of her sudden needs for reassurance, a compulsion to be sure, to remove even the smallest remaining doubt.

  So fired, she again found a public phone and called Jimmy Lee.

  “Aah,” he said, hearing her voice. “Filled with undying gratitude, you’ve called to thank me for my graciousness.”

  “Yes. You’re indeed supreme. And I’ve called also to put myself even further in your debt, if I may.”

  “You may, you may. What is it, little flower?”

  “I have to call the attorney general in Washington. But I want to reach him without going through half a dozen switchboards, secretaries, and assistants.”

  “You’re shooting high these days. What are you trying to steal from this poor shyster?”

  “My life,” she said. “And if I’m lucky, maybe a little something extra.”

  “Call me back in five minutes.”

  Mary Yung stood waiting. Someday she would like to spend six or seven hours just sitting and talking to Jimmy Lee. It would be like talking to the devil’s private gatekeeper. When she was through, she was sure she’d know enough to have the devil himself working for her. The only trouble was, she would have to shoot Jimmy first.

  She had her pencil and notebook ready when she called him back.

  “Take this number down,” he said, and read it to her. “It’s as close to the man as the president himself can get. It’s his private secretary’s number and she can put you right through.”

  “Honest to Confucius, you’re too much.”

  “I know. Except with you. With you I always feel I’m too little.”

  She prepared a fistful of quarters, dialed the number Jimmy had given her, and deposited the amount requested.

  “Attorney General Durning’s office,” said a woman’s voice. “Miss Berkely speaking.”

  “The attorney general, please.”

  “I’m sorry, but he’s in a meeting. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Just tell him it’s someone with information about Vitto-rio. Do you have that? Vittorio. And tell him if he’s not on the line in sixty seconds or less, I’m hanging up.”

  Mary watched the second hand of her watch. Seventy seconds was generally the mean trace time on a call from an automatic switching station, and she was using that factor to add pressure. She wasn’t really worried about being picked up. They’d have to be prepared in advance for something like that and they weren’t.

  At forty-five seconds, a man’s voice said, “Durning.”

  “This is Mary Chan Yung,” she told him. “I expect to know where Vittorio is in a few weeks or less. You interested in dealing? No questions, please. Just yes or no.”

  She watched seven seconds ticking off. It seemed longer.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’ll be in touch again,” she said and hung up.

  Exactly seventy-four seconds.

  Now she really did know.

  21

  GIANNI HAD STARTED to think of the evening as kind of a celebration. On a small scale, of course, with their hotel room as its entire site, and the two of them as its only celebrants.

  Still, what more was needed?

  A thunderstorm was raging outside, but he and Mary Yung were dry, untouched. They had the best of food and drink delivered to them with no more than just a quick telephone call. For the moment, at least, no unseen, threatening forces were breathing down their necks. And perhaps best of all, neither of them had to be alone.

  Madre Garetsky’s legacy.

  Whatever you do, Gianni, don’t do it alone. We’re born alone and we die alone. In between, it’s nice to have somebody to do things with.

  Even if it’s a crazy Chinese who fucks like a whore, kills like a pistolero, and probably can’t be trusted for a second?

  Even so. And since when do you use the F-word with your madre?

  Scusi, madre. But she can sure do it.

  Moments later, she was doing it again.

  And although it was no longer the first time for them, Gianni still had the feeling it was totally new, a sensation of something astral, a communion with cells he’d never even suspected he owned. Although the truth was he felt you didn’t really have sex with Mary Chan Yung. What you had was more of a species of psychic interplay. Dispatches went back and forth, bits of information, real and imagined, over which the brain had little control. Never had he met anyone so telepathic. After less than a week with her, he’d begun to feel he was in touch with a chorus of the devil’s own handmaidens, some of whom he’d
just as soon have left alone.

  But, oh, Lordy, Lordy… what she did have it within her to do to him sexually. Don’t worry, he told Teresa. It’s only lust, not love. I think.

  Yet it lingered even later, as they lay together.

  She sighed into his ear, then offered a kiss that was full of the smell of honeysuckle and very like a first kiss. Except that it was a gift, not a vow. No promises had been made between them. Even now, the act of love was very far from the reason they were in this hotel room together. It was only an exceptional fringe benefit.

  She smiled at him in the lamplight. “How lovely,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “To be going to Italy on our honeymoon.”

  “Some honeymoon.”

  “It won’t be all bad, Gianni.”

  “Unless they find us before we find Vittorio.”

  “You’ve got to look more on the bright side of things.”

  “I’m trying,” he said, and looked at that perfectly lovely face on the pillow beside him, a face no longer spectacularly young. Yet there was something even more special about this face, a silver cunning in the way it was woven together, a quiet air of hidden secrets, as if once there had been a deep sadness, and now a delicate humor had formed to cover the hurt.

  “But among other things,” Gianni told her, “we’ve still got the matter of clean passports, credit cards, and drivers’ licenses to take care of. Those I have are now worthless, and you have none at all that you can safely use.”

  “I’ll handle that.”

  “You?”

  She laughed. “Don’t be so superior. How do you think I’ve gotten along all these years without you?”

  He had started to learn how.

  “Fooling with stuff like this could be dangerous,” he said.

  “I know, Gianni, I know.”

  “You really have people you can trust?”

  “If I didn’t, I’d have been dead or in jail twenty years ago.”

  He stroked her hair where it caught the light on the pillow. She smiled at him with that look of nakedness that comes after great joy, or grief, or terrific sex.

  “I have a good feeling about this, Gianni. You’ll see. It’ll be fine. Italy’ll be fine. I love that country. It’s so unbelievably beautiful. I’m so glad Vittorio chose to go there. Even if we never find him, it’ll be a lovely trip.”