Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  Henry Durning laughed and she found the sound surprisingly warm and easy.

  “I appreciate it,” he told her.

  “You should learn to trust people more.”

  “I’m afraid I’m in the wrong profession for trust. I’m a lawyer. But I’m trying, Mary.”

  How lovely. I’m Mary now.

  “OK, here it is,” she said. “Vittorio’s in Positano, Italy. He has a wife and son, and he’s calling himself Peter Walters.”

  There was a long silence.

  When Durning spoke, his voice was charged with feeling. “Thank you. This is very important to me.”

  “I know. You’ve already shown me its importance.”

  “The money’s the least of it.”

  “Not to me, Mr. Durning.”

  The line hummed between them.

  “Tell me, Mary. Have you and Gianni actually seen Vitto-rio yet?”

  “No.”

  “When do you expect to see him?”

  A warning light went on behind her eyes. “I don’t know. That’s up to Gianni.”

  “Well, do yourselves a big favor. Don’t go anyplace near Battaglia for at least twenty-four hours. I can’t tell you more than that. But you have my word it’ll be best for you both.”

  Durning again gave her his best laugh. “You see? Now it’s your turn to do the trusting. Thanks again, Mary,” he said, and hung up.

  With no more than that to go on, Mary somehow found herself believing him.

  Anyway, what did she have to lose?

  Picking up some tourist brochures of Capri… a short ferry ride from nearby Sorrento… Mary Yung had an overnight honeymoon extension all planned by the time she rejoined Gianni at the Hertz counter.

  Gianni had no problem with the idea. He was learning about pleasure. You didn’t put it off.

  Whatever it was that Vittorio had to tell them would keep for one more day.

  29

  HENRY DURNING CALLED Carlo Donatti’s private number moments after he hung up on Mary. If he hoped to keep her alive, which he did, he had little time to waste.

  His conversation with Donatti was cryptic and brief. But when it was over, the two men had arranged to meet at an airport motel near La Guardia in exactly two hours.

  The attorney general reached the designated meeting room fifteen minutes early. But Don Carlo Donatti was already there, waiting for him, the radio blaring at its usual high volume to cover possible bugs and wire packs.

  They went through their ritual embrace and greeting with apparently undiminished zeal, but their eyes were cold.

  “It’s good of you to come on such short notice, Don Carlo. I appreciate it.”

  “It sounded important.”

  “It is. I’ve located Vittorio Battaglia.”

  The don slowly sat down. “Where?”

  “Italy. More exactly, Positano. I believe he’s living with the woman he was supposed to have done for me nine years ago. And they have a child. A boy.”

  “Under what name?”

  “Walters. Peter and Peggy Walters.”

  “Who found them?”

  Durning hesitated. “I suppose you have to know that.”

  Donatti extended both hands, palms up.

  “Garetsky and Mary Yung,” said the attorney general.

  The don’s brows lifted ever so slightly.

  “So Gianni did find him.” The idea seemed to surprise and amuse Donatti. “Which means you paid off the cinese?”

  Durning ignored the question. “Time is important, Carlo. If it can be handled fast… say no more than eighteen hours… it’ll be best for all concerned. Can that be arranged?”

  “Anything can be arranged. But why the rush? What happens if it takes a few hours longer?”

  “Then your boy Gianni and the Chinese woman might have to be done, too.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They’re just on their way to Positano now. They don’t know yet what Battaglia and his wife can tell them.”

  “And you don’t want them to know?”

  “Not them and not anyone else.” The attorney general looked at Donatti. “That’s what this whole thing is about, Carlo.”

  “Of course.” The don spoke softly, as if anything voiced less gently might cause him pain.

  They sat considering each other. To Durning, the feel was of new mysteries being exchanged for old, and of secrets yet to be discovered.

  “It’ll be done,” said Donatti. “This has been a deep embarrassment for me. Vittorio Battaglia has made me feel like a fool. I’ll be as relieved as you to finally put an end to it.”

  “I’m grateful.” Durning’s face was grave. “Now there’s just one last favor I have to ask.” The attorney general paused. “With your permission, Don Carlo?”

  “Ask… ask.” Donatti smiled, his good humor suddenly restored along with his sense of honor and dignity. “You observe our little ceremonies as if you were one of us.”

  “I am one of you.”

  Donatti nodded. “Now what’s the favor? I like it that I’ll be one up on you again.”

  “There’s this bigmouthed Washington lawyer and his client,” said Durning. “They’re about to cause a lot bigger trouble than they know.”

  “Who are they?”

  “The lawyer is John Hinkey. His client’s name is Beek-man, Mrs. James Beekman.”

  “She’s in Washington, too?”

  Durning nodded.

  “Her husband’s not part of this big trouble you mentioned?”

  “No.”

  “Then what is he part of?”

  “The FBI.”

  Donatti stared at the attorney general.

  “No problem,” said Durning. “He’s one of those your friend Garetsky buried somewhere. If he ever does turn up, he won’t be saying much.”

  Don Carlo laughed and he didn’t laugh often. “I’m beginning to understand a little about his wife and the lawyer.”

  “Then you’ll help me out?”

  Donatti was still chuckling. “Why not? There are too many wives and lawyers causing trouble as it is.”

  Durning sat in the helicopter taking him back to Washington and thought, Is this really the measure of me?

  He’d had a shot of brandy at the start of the flight, and it had lit small fires in the caves of his belly. But just before that, he had calmly arranged for the deaths of four people and felt only deep relief at having acted to preserve himself.

  Meaning what? That he was missing an essential human ingredient? Pity?

  Nonsense.

  In his current situation, pity would have been the ultimate indulgence, a futile emotional gesture that would have put an immediate end to all the good he was doing, and offered nothing in its place.

  In all modesty, he was probably the best single thing to have hit the Justice Department in almost fifty years. He had taken an inert, morally crumbling agency, so desperately in need of renewal that its best and brightest people were fleeing in droves, and had restored the heart of its legal and ethical foundations.

  He had pumped up the department’s moribund long view of the law and forced it not just to win cases, but to live up to its tarnished precept that the United States prevailed only when true justice was being done.

  And finally, he had himself inspired great numbers of lawyers with their present vision of the law as a magic wand for creating desperately needed social and political change.

  It’s all true. I’ve actually done these things. And more.

  Still, if he could be so heroic, how could he also have become so villainous?

  Not that he really felt like a villain. He had simply learned that when survival was at stake, you did what you had to and put the rest aside until Judgment Day.

  30

  GIANNI GARETSKY AND Mary Yung drove toward Positano in separate cars. Gianni Garetsky led the way. Capri had been magnificent but wasted on them. They couldn’t escape what lay ahead.

  Earlier, Gian
ni had picked up two 9mm automatics, a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, a .30 caliber rifle with scope sights, and enough ammunition to fight a small war. Everything but the two automatics was locked in the trunk of his car. He carried one of the handguns. Mary Yung had the other.

  Gianni had no special reason to expect trouble in Positano. The weapons, like their second car, were, as he had explained to Mary, just in case of the unexpected. In situations like this, he’d always found it a lot safer to have too much of everything rather than not enough.

  Gianni drove at a steady fifty kilometers per hour, not rushing, swinging easily into the seemingly endless turns. The Amalfi Drive was cut out of solid rock, with a sheer drop to the sea on one side, and the mountains shooting straight up on the other. In places, the curves were so sharply angled that mirrors had been hung to help drivers see if any traffic was coming around the bend. Gianni watched the road, the sea, and in the rearview mirror, Mary Yung’s car.

  The road split into a one-way descent as they approached the cutoff into town.

  Gianni thought about Vittorio… what he’d look like, what he’d say, how he’d react to suddenly seeing him like this. Twenty years. It was hard to believe any part of it.

  Then the traffic began tying up as they circled down into the old cliffhugging town’s center. Tourists were everywhere, crowding the streets and shops.

  Gianni checked the mirror and saw that a car had squeezed between them. Most of the side streets were narrow, steep, broken by stone steps, and closed to all vehicular traffic. Moving bumper to bumper, he finally pulled into the town parking area and found a place. He saw Mary park a short distance away.

  First, he needed a telephone directory. There was one in a tobacco shop, and he looked up Walters. There they were… Peter and Peggy. The address was listed as 14 Via Contessa.

  Garetsky bought a street map of Positano and got back into his car. He glanced only once at Mary where she sat parked and waiting. There was no need to talk at this stage. They had made most of their plans last night. They both knew exactly what to do.

  He located the Via Contessa on his map and drove in that direction. Mary Yung followed him, staying about fifty feet back.

  The street circled and climbed up the mountain. Slowing down, Gianni edged around a curve and saw the house… white, flat-roofed, and graced by the region’s typical Moorish arches. Stone steps climbed from the road up through a garden to the entrance. Below the garden, just off the road, two cars were parked in the cleared and leveled-out space.

  The two cars probably meant they were both home.

  Gianni kept going. The road ended farther up the mountain in a cul-de-sac and he stopped there. A moment later, Mary Yung parked beside him. There were no houses in sight, just rocks, cliffs, brush, and scrub trees. In the distance the sea.

  They left their cars and stood together.

  “You saw the house?” Gianni said.

  Mary nodded. “Very sweet.”

  Her voice held more than a hint of irony. But her eyes, as sensitive to mood as the antennae of a cat, carried dark, hidden secrets. More than that, they seemed worried.

  “Easy,” he told her. “It’ll be fine.”

  She was silent.

  “You OK?” he said.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be OK?”

  He stepped close and held her, feeling the tension, the surprisingly frail bones so close beneath her skin.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re almost home free. This is the easy part.”

  “I know. This is so stupid. Just kiss me once for luck.”

  They kissed and she pressed him hard.

  “You sure you don’t want me to go with you?” she asked.

  “I’m sure. I don’t want to hit Vittorio with both of us at once. I’ll be enough of a shock for him alone. And it’ll be easier for us to talk this way.”

  “All right.”

  “Have some lunch at Sta Via. It’s that place with the green awning where we were parked before. Give me about two hours, then come. If there’s any change, I’ll know where to reach you.”

  She stared at him.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “I think I could get to love you.”

  He laughed. “Is that why you’re looking so miserable?”

  “Probably.”

  “Stop worrying. It’ll pass.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Gianni Garetsky watched her walk to her car and drive off.

  Moments later he followed and parked alongside the two cars already in front of the Walters house.

  Then he climbed the seventeen curving stone steps to the entrance, and lifted the brass knocker.

  He felt a plunge of lead weights at the bottom of his stomach.

  The man who opened the door stood looking at him.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked in Italian.

  Gianni would hardly have known him to be Vittorio Battaglia. Apart from what the years had added, he had a full moustache and beard, his eyes were an almost startling blue rather than hazel, and he definitely seemed taller, bigger, huskier than the Vittorio he remembered, with a fighter’s chest and shoulders and heavily muscled arms. Only the paint-stained jeans and T-shirt held a touch of familiarity.

  And what about how I must look to him ?

  Then suddenly flooded with remembered warmth, Gianni grinned and peeled off his fake gray hair, his moustache, and his horn-rims. He stood there, stripped to the truth.

  “Does that help any? Or is it always trick-or-treat around here?”

  Even then, it still took Peter Walters a long moment.

  “I’ll be a sonofabitch,” he whispered in English.

  “That’s nothing new. You always were, buddy.”

  Abruptly narrowing, Peter’s eyes swept past the artist and took in his car, the road, the steps, the garden, the whole immediate landscape.

  Then while Gianni was still standing there grinning, he suddenly found himself grabbed and yanked into the house, his face slammed against a wall, and his automatic snatched from his belt and pressed to the back of his neck.

  “Hey!” Nose mashed and bleeding against the plaster, Gianni could manage little more than a muffled grunt.

  Walters shut the door and threw the bolt. The muzzle of the automatic stayed hard against the back of Gianni’s neck.

  “Who’s out there with you?”

  Gianni mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “Nobody.”

  “Lie to me, Gianni, and I swear I’ll blow your head off.” His voice was quiet, calm, but he was breathing heavily.

  “I’m… not… lying.”

  Walters increased the gun’s pressure.

  “Did Don Donatti send you?”

  Garetsky tried to shake his head.

  “Who then?”

  “Nobody… sent me.”

  Gianni Garetsky swore silently. He cursed his own stupidity for not anticipating exactly this reaction. What had he expected after so many years and God only knew what else. A fucking kiss on the lips?

  A woman’s voice called from upstairs. “I heard a knock before, Peter. Is someone there?”

  Walters sighed. “Better come down. And don’t be frightened. It’s probably not as bad as it looks.”

  Peggy came down the stairs, saw what was there, and covered her mouth with both hands.

  “Oh—” She cut it off. She’d been waiting for something like this for nine years. Handle it, she told herself.

  “Where’s Paulie?” her husband asked.

  “Off painting somewhere.”

  “Fine. Now listen to me. This goombah here is my old buddy, Gianni. I don’t know how he’s found us, or who’s with him or sent him. He says nobody and maybe that’s the truth and he’s just gotten stupid. But I haven’t seen him in twenty years and I’m not taking any chances. So lock all the doors, close the blinds, and activate the alarm system. Then get me that gray suitcase in my closet. You know the one?”

  Peggy nodded
.

  He smiled, trying to ease it for her. “It’s OK. It’ll be a good dry run for us.”

  She left, and Walters shoved Garetsky into the kitchen, dumped him into a chair, and gave him a towel and bowl of ice for his nose.

  “Now talk,” he said. “And it better be good or you’re dead as Kelsey’s nuts.”

  31

  ALITTLE BEFORE 2:00 P.M., just as Gianni Garetsky was once more beginning the witch’s tale that seemed to have become his most popular solo recitation, a pair of gray Mercedes sedans left the Amalfi Drive and circled down toward Positano.

  There were two men in each car, and they had flown into Naples that morning from Palermo. They were attractive and solidly built, with the kind of smooth-faced, well-bar-bered good looks in which a particular breed of Italian men tends to take pride. Dressed as well-to-do tourists, in obviously expensive designer sport clothes, they carried several equally costly cameras to push their desired image one step further.

  Yet someone who knew about such things had only to look at their eyes, which were flat and curiously without expression, to know they were anything but tourists. What they actually happened to be were four of Don Pietro Ravenelli’s best soldiers, made men every one, on a very delicate mission for someone who was reputed to be the capo di tutti capi, the boss of all bosses, of an important American famiglia.

  As such things went, the mission was considered a plum, a great honor. If well performed, it could bring far-reaching respect and advancement for those involved. If botched, it could just as easily destroy careers, reputations, lives.

  The four men in the two Mercedes had been briefed personally by Palermo’s illustrious Don Ravenelli. Great care had to be taken, he told them. There must be nothing crude or heavy-handed. He wanted no big, noisy shootouts with a lot of police, press, and international notoriety.

  Moving smoothly and silently, the twin Mercedes followed the local traffic into Positano, circled the general area twice for the required familiarization, and finally parked side by side in the open space at the center of town.

  Nervously waiting and eating an ice cream cone in her own car, Mary Chan Yung watched the two identical gray German cars parked no more than forty feet from where she was sitting.