Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  “I really hate this stuff, Sal. Lots of guys love it, but I’m not one of them. What I love is my son. So just tell me where he is, and you can put your clothes back on and stay in one piece. Otherwise, I’m afraid your friend, Frankie, is going to end up the lucky one.”

  “I swear I don’t—”

  He was cut off by a quick flash of Battaglia’s knife across his chest. The blade barely broke skin. But it did leave a faint, almost invisible line that slowly widened and deepened until a single crimson drop formed, rolled down Sal Ferrisi’s lower chest and stomach, and vanished into the darkness below.

  “No more lies,” said Battaglia. “My wife’s upstairs this minute with a great big hole in her heart, and all I’ve got to patch her up with is you. So give us an answer we can live with, or I swear to Christ I’ll peel you like a fucking apple.”

  Ferrisi wasn’t really listening. He was too busy staring at the tiny drops of blood that kept forming, rolling and disappearing on his body. There had been no pain in the touch of the blade. But the act itself had been so swift and indifferent that he suddenly felt like a side of beef in a butcher shop. And he knew his nakedness was all part of the softening-up process. He’d used it himself. It was the first thing you did. You took away clothes, along with an essential human dignity.

  “I mean it, Sal,” said Vittorio. “I’m going to tie you to this chair, do you piece by piece, and finally feed you your own balls for dessert. And I’m not just talking. Believe me.”

  Sal Ferrisi believed him. His problem wasn’t belief. His problem was that he was dead either way. Even if he talked, they could never safely turn him loose. They’d have to bury him with Frankie. And if by some miracle they didn’t, by the time Don Ravenelli got through with him, he’d be wishing they had. Ferrisi thought it through coldly, without particular malice. It was just the way these things worked. If he had any slight chance at all, it was to go for broke before they tied him to the chair. Once they did that, he was gone.

  He sat gazing through the big window at the sunset, wondering why he’d never paid any attention to stuff like that before. He heard Walters asking him the same questions about his boy twice more, and heard himself giving back the same answer.

  Then Walters was suddenly looking tired, like someone had cut all his strings. Even his voice sounded worn out when he told the other guy, Gianni, to go into the kitchen and get some rope he had there.

  Sal saw Gianni walk slowly out of the room, not happy about the whole thing. So who was happy about it?

  He and Walters were alone, staring at each other. The gun was in Walters’ hand, cocked, and with the safety off. But Walters seemed to have forgotten about it. At that moment there was an emptiness in his eyes that Sal Ferrisi felt gave him an advantage, and he entered it, driving his legs like two great pistons, and for a moment everything in the room was calm and slow.

  Ferrisi saw Walters’ eyes widen as he came up out of the chair, not going for him and his gun, but driving past him with all his force to the high window. He took the impact on his head, shoulder, and good arm, feeling the shock for only an instant before the glass shattered and he sailed on through.

  The empty stillness of falling filled his chest. The length and speed of the fall surprised him. It seemed to go on and on, making him breathless, confused.

  He hit the ground before he ever understood.

  Then there was no more time.

  Vittorio reached him several moments before Gianni.

  Sal Ferrisi lay among the rocks and shattered glass with the special awkwardness of the suddenly dead. His eyes were open, looking a thousand miles beyond Vittorio. His head and neck were twisted into the impossible angles of a broken doll.

  Vittorio Battaglia looked up at the remains of his studio window more than fifty feet above. He guessed Ferrisi hadn’t seen the depth of the gully until it was too late.

  A breeze came in off the sea and he turned his face toward it. The smell was as old as the world.

  Now I’ve got nothing, he thought.

  36

  “THERE’S A LOT to do,” said Vittorio Battaglia, “so we’d better get started.”

  The four of them were gathered in his studio. It was less than ten minutes since Sal Ferrisi had flown through the window. A gust of air blew past the broken glass and ruffled Frankie’s hair where he still lay on the floor. No one looked at him. Nor did they look at each other. They had their own things to think about. But they were listening to Vittorio because it gave them something to do.

  “I don’t know who sent these guys or why,” he said. “But I know there’s going to be more of them coming. So we’re getting out of here.”

  Vittorio looked at Mary Yung and Gianni. “Peg and I have this old ruin of a safe house we keep. It’s way up in the Rav-ello mountains, and no one knows about it. I’m taking Peggy there.”

  No one said anything. Peggy’s face was set. She was looking at the blood Frankie had leaked onto the wood flooring. Mary and Gianni weren’t looking anyplace.

  “Unless you two have other plans,” Vittorio added.

  “What other plans?” said Gianni. “We came looking for you. That’s why we’re here.”

  Mary Yung just stared off somewhere. She didn’t seem to be listening anymore.

  Peggy began to weep. She wept silently, not wiping the tears but just letting them run down her cheeks and onto her blouse. Vittorio watched her. He saw there was nothing that meant anything to her now but her son.

  Working quickly, carefully, they cleaned up all traces of blood and broken glass—inside the house and out—and loaded the two bodies into the Mercedes.

  Peggy and Vittorio packed a couple of suitcases and put them into their own cars. One of the bags held a full range of weapons and ammunition, including grenades, gas, and explosives. Vittorio made a final check of the house. He walked past Paulie’s room without glancing in. He didn’t have the courage.

  Other than for the broken window in the studio, everything seemed in order. None of this was for the benefit of the police, who would probably know nothing about anything. Actually, Vittorio wasn’t sure who it was for. The only ones likely to enter the house would be those sent to follow up on Sal and Frankie, and they weren’t about to be fooled by anything they did or didn’t find. He guessed it was mostly for himself, for his own sense of order. He didn’t change old habits easily. For this, he wasn’t even trying.

  Peggy called Roberta at the gallery to say she was going on an unexpected trip with her son and husband and wouldn’t be in for about a week. She told her assistant to bring in whatever extra help she needed, and not to worry if she didn’t hear from her.

  Vittorio had to walk out of the room while she was talking. It wasn’t Peggy’s fault. She was handling it very well. It was just that all at once, he wasn’t doing so well.

  It was shortly after dark when they pulled away from the house in a four-car convoy.

  Battaglia drove the lead car, the Mercedes, with Sal and Frankie in back, neatly folded under a blanket. He headed southeast at a steady sixty kilometers, feeling like the hearse driver in a funeral cortege. And in an all too real sense, he was.

  Peggy came next in her red Fiat. Temporarily shielded from her husband’s eyes, she wept without control. It began blinding her to the point that she knew she had to either stop crying or stop driving. She stopped crying.

  Directly behind her in Vittorio’s Toyota, Mary Yung drove under the unforgiving weight of conscience and dread. For her big million dollars, she’d as good as murdered a child, and she might yet end up doing the same for his parents, Gianni, and quite possibly herself if she didn’t get out of here fast. Unless, of course, she told them about the attorney general. And that would be the same as putting a gun to her head and squeezing the trigger.

  Another fifty feet back in his rented Ford, Gianni Garetsky brought up the rear with his own sharply nagging brand of penance for something he hadn’t even done. But thinking he had, it remained an
extinction. In his mind, it no longer seemed to matter where he went or what he did. He had already done his damage.

  Vittorio stopped the convoy on a winding mountain road about ten miles out of Positano.

  With the three last cars parked out of sight in a pine grove, Vittorio and Gianni maneuvered the Mercedes to the edge of an almost vertical three-hundred-foot drop. What remained of a rotted wooden guardrail was broken apart with rocks. They put Sal in the driver’s seat and Frankie beside him. They fastened the seatbelts around the bodies, kept the engine running in neutral, and locked the doors. Vittorio dipped a length of rope into the gas tank, reversed it, and left a saturated six-inch piece hanging out as a fuse.

  Then he and Gianni leaned into the rear bumper of the car.

  When it started to roll, Vittorio put a match to the end of the rope and saw it flare. They gave the car a final shove and watched it pick up speed and go over the edge.

  The tank blew when it was about halfway down the cliff. The car hit bottom and a giant fireball erupted in a second explosion. It turned everything a flaming orange.

  Then Vittorio got behind the wheel of his wife’s Fiat, and led the remainder of the suddenly bodiless cortege farther up into the mountains.

  37

  ATTORNEY GENERAL HENRY Durning’s anxiously awaited call from Carlo Donatti finally reached him at home at 3:16 P.M., Washington time. Which made it 9:16 P.M. in Positano.

  There were no preliminaries.

  “I’ve just heard from my connection,” said Donatti.

  Durning didn’t like the way his heart was drumming against his chest. Imagine, At this stage of my life.

  “And?”

  “The news isn’t good.”

  Durning sat there. He stayed exactly where he was, staring across the big walnut desk in his study. He felt a pulse going in his temple. His hand pressed the receiver against his ear as if trying to shove it clear through his brain.

  “What happened?”

  “We’d better meet.”

  “When?”

  “Can you make it at six tonight?” asked Donatti.

  “Same place as last time?”

  “If that’s all right.”

  “I’ll be there,” said Durning, and hung up.

  He still sat there. Insanely, with all that could be blowing up in his face, he found himself wondering whether Mary Yung had been among those killed. There was no doubt in his mind that people had died. It was just a matter of his learning which ones they were.

  Their control and timing were such that they arrived at the airport motel room within minutes of each other.

  Durning started the radio going. Then he searched for a classical station and finally found some Brahms.

  They embraced and Carlo Donatti poured them each some scotch from the minibar. The small act alone added weight to the attorney general’s depression. To Donatti, scotch was a very serious drink.

  “So?” said Durning.

  “The way it sounded,” said Donatti quietly, “nobody’s exactly sure what happened. Four good soldiers went into Posi-tano, and only two came out. The other two haven’t been heard from. And they probably won’t be.”

  Durning ignored his serious drink and remained silent. It was Donatti’s story.

  “Battaglia had to be waiting for them,” said the don. “So my feeling is Gianni and his cinese got there first and blew the whistle.”

  “Where are they now?”

  The don shrugged. “They were all gone when someone checked the house later. The only sign of anything was a smashed window.”

  “And this is what you’ve brought me?”

  “Not quite. We’ve also got Battaglia’s kid. So it’s not all bad.”

  The attorney general started at Donatti. “What does that mean?”

  “We’ve at least got a string on Battaglia. He and his wife won’t just disappear on us while we’ve got the boy. They’re going to have to deal.”

  “I don’t want them dealing, Carlo. There’s nothing to deal. I want them dead. Haven’t I made myself clear on that?”

  “Very clear. But first they’ll deal. Then they’ll be dead.” Something in that made the don smile. “You’re head of the whole damn Justice Department, Henry. You should learn more about how justice works these days at the basic levels.”

  Durning breathed a joyless odor in the air that had nothing to do with Donatti’s expensive designer cologne.

  “How old is the boy?” he asked.

  “About nine or ten.”

  “Who’s keeping him?”

  “The two men who picked him up in Positano.”

  Durning’s face was blank. “He’ll be able to identify them. He’s old enough.”

  “That won’t be a problem.”

  Durning felt a new mix of disgust and damage take root inside him. Now he was accepting the murder of children?

  “How do we find the parents?” he asked.

  “We don’t. They’ll find us.”

  Durning’s eyes were hard, yet curiously uncertain. He was a knowing, complex man accustomed to intricate situations. Yet he suddenly felt himself in uncharted territory.

  “Tell me about it,” he said.

  “By now, Battaglia and Garetsky have to know I’m involved,” said Donatti. “And the women certainly have told them of your interest. So either one of us can expect a call.” He paused. “Or maybe a bullet.”

  Durning considered him. “You trying to scare me, Carlo?”

  “Damn right. Why should I be the only one scared? And you’re the guy hooked me into this in the first place.” Donatti grinned without looking happy. “We’ve got us a couple of tough, angry boys out there. I’ve known them both since they were kids. When you try to waste their kind, it’s best to get it right the first time. Because mostly you don’t get any second chances.”

  “You’re really making my day.”

  The don laughed, and this time he seemed to be enjoying himself. “Nothing like a little dose of fear to get the adrenaline going. But it’s nice we’ve got the kid. Without him, there’d be good reason to sweat. This way, Vittorio’s not going to do a thing. Except maybe call up one of us and beg.”

  Durning felt a faint hint of nausea drift through his lungs. “Anything doing yet with that other little favor I asked?”

  “You mean John Hinkey and the Beekman woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s all set for tonight.”

  “Both of them?”

  Donatti nodded. “That’s the best way to do these things. No piecework. Then you don’t have one of them going around asking questions about the other.”

  “I appreciate it, Carlo.”

  “Hey!” said the don. “A couple of sweethearts like us… we’ve got to look out for each other, right?”

  It was a little past ten that night when John Hinkey left his Washington law office and started the drive home. He was dog tired but exhilarated. He’d been working tough, sixteen-hour stretches, but he finally had things adding up on the Beekman case and he was almost ready to run with it.

  This was going to be his big one. He may have had some of the same feeling before on other cases, and he’d done pretty damn well with most of them. But there’d never been any quite like this. Not with this kind of stature. This one was putting him on another level entirely. This fucker was taking him right over the top.

  Hinkey hummed tunelessly as he drove, while his fingers tapped along on the wheel to some beat of his own.

  And who’d have expected it that first day, with Bonnie running to him half-hysterical because Jim was off on a case and hadn’t called her in a couple of days? No use kidding himself. If they hadn’t been old friends, he’d have had her out of his office in five minutes flat. Then the Bureau had started the stonewalling and the top secret bullshit and the whole thing just took on a bad smell. So when the three bodies finally turned up, he wasn’t all that surprised and he really started digging. Which led him to the wife of another
seemingly missing agent, this one out of the Philadelphia office.

  But the real clincher had come today, when he’d called in every favor owed him at the Bureau over the past ten years and learned that all five agents… the three dug up dead in Greenwich, and the two allegedly on top secret cases and out of touch with their wives… were all listed as being on special-duty assignments to the head man himself, FBI Director Brian Wayne.

  So what’s it all about, Alfie?

  He had given the director three days to either tell Bonnie where Jim was, or let her speak to him on the phone. Brian Wayne had done neither, and his time was up. So tomorrow would be Hinkey’s personal D day. He had decided to bypass the Justice Department’s Office of Personal Responsibility, call his own news conference, and go public with what he had.

  There was little doubt in his mind that Jim Beekman and the missing agent out of Philadelphia were as dead at this moment as the three agents dug out of the Greenwich woods. Which was the saddest part of all. Not that these tragic overtones were going to hold him back in any way. Just the opposite. He absolutely couldn’t wait to get at it in the morning.

  At about eleven o’clock, Hinkey pulled into the high-rise apartment complex where he lived, and parked in his assigned space in the underground garage. He had brought home a briefcase full of papers, and he was fumbling with an open clasp when a lead billy caught him just behind his right ear.

  He neither saw nor knew what hit him. Nor was he aware of the two solidly built men in stocking masks who stretched him out in the back of a dark, compact van, bound, gagged, and blindfolded him, and drove quietly out of the garage.

  Bonnie Beekman rolled over in her sleep, reached for her husband and touched his empty pillow. It was enough to wake her with an oppression close to strangling in her throat.

  Oh, God, she thought, and wept.

  He was gone.

  Never mind what they told her at the Bureau. She knew better. He’d have to be dead not to have somehow gotten word to her. In twenty years, nothing like this had ever happened. Even stuck up there in the wilds of Maine that time, he’d arranged for someone to call and say he was OK. He was like that… always thinking about her, not wanting her to worry for no reason.