Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  My God, thought Gianni Garetsky. Five.

  He looked at Vittorio in the reflected light. His face showed nothing, and Gianni wondered what he had expected to find there. Then they were climbing through the open window and he had stopped wondering about anything at all.

  Vittorio led the way through the room, along a short corridor and into the front entrance hall. They had bought rubber-soled running shoes on the drive down and they moved without sound on the tiled floors.

  An orange night-light burned on the second-floor landing, and they climbed the stairs in its glow. Gianni felt himself moving as though in a fever, his face hot, the sweat running like tears.

  There were five doors facing the second-floor corridor, but only one was closed. Vittorio eased that door open. Then Gianni quietly followed him into the darkened room, breathed air redolent with sex, and hit the light switch.

  A naked couple lay sleeping on a king-size bed. The man was big, middle aged, dark skinned, and going to fat. The woman was young, beautiful, and wore a look of sweet, almost holy innocence.

  Their silencer-lengthened pistols leveled, Gianni and Vit-torio stood at the foot of the bed waiting for the light to waken the sleeping lovers.

  It was Ravenelli who stirred and blinked open his eyes first. He looked at the two men with their blacked-out faces and hands and their guns pointing loosely at his head. He half turned to see them better. Gianni admired his control. He did not make a sound and his face revealed nothing.

  The young woman came awake a few seconds later. She cried out just once. Then she carefully held herself silent and unmoving. It seemed so deliberate a performance that it might have been mistaken for an act of faith. Gianni made no such mistake. He knew exactly how frightened she was.

  The silence stretched until it ran out of air.

  Then Vittorio broke it. “You know who I am?”

  The don slowly nodded. “What I don’t know is how you got in here to point a gun at my head.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Gianni saw the dark face become a lesson in controlled pain. “They were five good men.”

  “I’ll cry later,” said Vittorio. “Right now I just want to know where you’ve got my boy.”

  “What boy?”

  Vittorio fired without warning or movement and a small hole appeared in the girl’s pillow. It was only inches from her head. Her eyes widened, but that was all.

  “The next one does her,” he said. “Now let’s try it again. Where’s my boy?”

  “About a half-hour drive from here.”

  It came without hesitation this time.

  “Your boy is all right,” said Ravenelli. “You don’t have to worry. We’re not animals here. We don’t make war on children. There was never any intention to do your son harm.”

  Vittorio Battaglia just looked at him.

  “On my honor,” said the don.

  Vittorio’s silence told him what he thought of his honor.

  Ravenelli turned to Gianni for the first time. “You must be Gianni Garetsky. I have great respect for your work. I’ve felt that way for years. Long before the critics. I myself own two of your paintings. They’re hanging downstairs in my living room. Maybe you saw them coming in.”

  Gianni stood there. The only pictures he had seen and still saw were the framed photographs across the bedroom walls… ancient family pictures of children and old people posing stiffly and unsmiling in their Sunday best. He wondered which of the little boys pictured was Don Pietro Ravenelli.

  The don turned to Vittorio. “You want to listen to me talk to your son on the telephone? Would that make you feel better about how he’s being treated?”

  “What I want is to talk to him myself.”

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea. Not for any of us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there are two men with him who would know I’m under the gun the second they heard your voice. Then they’d just move the boy someplace else before we got there. We’d all be unhappy.”

  Gianni watched as his friend considered it. He saw Vittorio study first the telephone on the bedside table, then the don and his wide-eyed, virginal-looking young woman lying so unself-consciously naked together in bed, then the telephone once more.

  “What’s your name?” Vittorio asked the girl.

  “Lucia.” It was the first word she had spoken and it half stuck, hoarsely, in her throat.

  “I’m sorry you had to be caught in this, Lucia. But you won’t be hurt unless your man is lying to me. If he is lying, and you don’t tell me about it now, I’m going to shoot you before I shoot him. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Do you believe I’ll do it?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Has Don Ravenelli been telling me the truth so far?”

  Lucia took a moment. “As far as I know. But there may be things Pietro hasn’t told me. It’s unfair to blame me for those.”

  “What’s happening to my son is even more unfair.”

  Vittorio looked at Ravenelli. “Where’s an extension I can listen on?”

  “In the next room. On your right.”

  “Watch them carefully,” Vittorio told Gianni, and went to hear his son’s voice.

  He stood listening to five rings on the other end before a man’s voice finally answered.

  “Who’s this?” said the don. “Tony or Dom?”

  “It’s Tony, Don Ravenelli.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Sure. Everything’s fine.”

  “No problems with the boy?”

  “Not one, Don Ravenelli. Right now he’s sleeping like a little angel.”

  “Good. Wake him up and put him on the phone. I want to talk to him.”

  “You mean now?”

  “No. Next week. Just put the boy on.”

  “Sorry, Don Ravenelli. I’ll get him.”

  Waiting, Vittorio gripped the receiver so hard his fingers began to cramp. Then he heard the small, sleep-clogged voice say hello, and felt something go soft inside him.

  “Sorry to wake you, Paul,” said Ravenelli, “but I just wanted to make sure Dom and Tony are treating you OK.”

  “Are you the big boss?”

  Ravenelli laughed. “I don’t know how big, but I’m the boss.”

  “Dom and Tony are treating me good, but I want to go home. When can I go home?”

  “Pretty soon now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe a couple of days. Maybe sooner.”

  “Will you tell that to my mom and dad so they won’t worry?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are they OK, too?”

  “They’re great.”

  “All right,” said the boy.

  A moment later Vittorio heard the connection broken. My son, he thought, and for the first time in days he was able to consciously allow himself the luxury of hope. Still, even this was a fine, delicately balanced thing, and he walked cautiously going back to the next room for fear of disturbing some part of it.

  The three-figure tableau appeared unchanged as he reentered Don Pietro Ravenelli’s bedroom.

  “Let me explain something,” the don said. “This whole thing isn’t my operation. It’s just a courtesy I’ve been pressured into doing to accommodate Don Carlo Donatti. And that courtesy has so far cost me seven good men and a lot of dignity. So you don’t have to worry about me. I’m just as happy to end the whole misery right here.”

  Vittorio Battaglia nodded. “Good. Now you and Lucia can put on your clothes and I’ll make you even happier.”

  48

  PAULIE WAS BACK in bed. But he was very far from falling asleep. His mind was too busy trying to make sense of the phone call, trying to figure out what it meant. Because the only thing he was sure of at that moment was that it had to mean something.

  The thing was why would the big boss call up in the middle of the night and get him brought to the phone ju
st to ask if Dom and Tony were treating him OK? As if the boss cared how he was being treated.

  Even that business about his going home in maybe a day or two had to be nothing but a lie. If it wasn’t a lie, Dom would have said something about it after the call. Not Tony. But Dom would have. Yet Dom hadn’t known a thing about it when Paulie asked him later.

  Then there was all that excitement after Tony hung up, with he and Dom arguing, and Tony making his own phone call and yelling at whoever was at the other end of the phone. The trouble was, they had their bedroom door closed through it all, and Paulie couldn’t make out what they were saying. They were still going at it, and the boy saw the crack of light under the door that meant they weren’t even thinking about going back to sleep.

  When the whole thing got to be too much, he slid out of bed and trailed his long chain into the living room. He wanted to get closer to Dom and Tony’s bedroom door. If he got near enough, he might be able to hear something.

  The boy never reached the door. He went only as far as the big, overstuffed armchair that Dom had been dozing in earlier. It was here that he saw the mobster’s holstered automatic, complete with belt, pressed half under the back of the seat cushion.

  For an instant, it froze him in place, and something cold ran through his stomach. Then barely breathing, he snatched up the holstered pistol and attached belt, carried it back to his bed, and slid it under the sheet with him.

  Paulie was no longer cold. Suddenly, he was sweating. From barely breathing, he was sucking in great gulps of air. The air made him dizzy and things started to spin. He closed his eyes and lay without moving until his head settled. Finally, he was able to think.

  He needed just one thing… the key to the handcuffs that connected the long chain to his ankle. But Tony always carried that in his pants, and the pants were with him in his bedroom. Paulie had once seen some guy in a movie shoot off a pair of handcuffs with a gun, but that wouldn’t work here with him. Dom and Tony would just come flying out after him with the first shot. So the only way was to go in after the key.

  It took him five minutes to prepare his head.

  The first thing was to release the safety, which he did now because he was afraid he would forget later in all the excitement. Then he went over the rest that Dom had taught him about using a two-handed grip, and extending his arms, and holding his breath at the right moment, and squeezing and not jerking the trigger.

  All that, he thought, and wondered how he was ever going to remember everything at the moment of shooting. But he did not really expect it to come to that. They would see the gun, Tony would give him the key, he would be gone from here, and that would be the end of it. In his mind, there was no way he could imagine himself actually shooting either one of these two men.

  Then moving with care, Paulie approached the bedroom door, quietly turned the knob, and entered the room. He walked in like an undersize sleepwalker, gun and extended arms leading the way, and every visible part of him aquiver.

  Domenico was the first to see the boy. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered.

  He and Tony lay in their underwear on twin beds, and the boy swung his arms and gun back and forth from one to the other. His dark eyes were wide, his mouth tightly set. The men stared at the shaking muzzle of the automatic. Neither of them moved.

  “Easy, kid,” said Dom. “That fucker’s got a hair trigger. Just stay nice and easy and talk to us. Just tell us what you want.”

  “The key. I want the key to these handcuffs.”

  “Sure,” said Tony quietly. “No problem. Things can be worked out. We’re all friends here.”

  The boy swung the automatic toward Tony and held it there. “I don’t want to be friends. I want the key.”

  “Hey, it’s yours, Paulie. It’s right over there in my pants. Draped over that chair. If you’ll let me, I’ll get it for you.”

  Paulie licked his lips and tried to swallow. He couldn’t. And the trembling inside him was getting worse, not better. In a crazy way he found himself glancing at Dom, as if for advice. Would it be safer to go for the key himself, or let Tony get it and give it to him? Dom’s blue eyes shone in the overhead light. They told him nothing.

  “I feel bad about this,” said Tony, and smiled, which he never did. “I thought you were having kind of a good time here with us. I never thought it was that terrible for you.”

  “It was great for me. I love being chained up like a dog. Try it sometime. Maybe you’ll love it as much as I did.”

  Domenico laughed. “I told you he’s a tough kid, Tony. He takes no shit. Give him the damn key and let him go.”

  “I’m waiting for permission to move. You think I want to get shot by your gun? Talk about bright moves. Imagine going to sleep and leaving a loaded piece lying loose out there.”

  Dom was silent. His eyes had stopped shining.

  The boy spoke to Tony. “OK. Give me the key. But do it real slow. Because I’m very nervous right now.”

  Tony nodded and took the two steps needed to reach the chair.

  “Tony.” Dom’s voice stopped him before he could pick up his pants, and he turned.

  “Yeah?”

  “Give Paulie the key.”

  “Sure. That’s just what I’m going to do.”

  “I’m serious, Tony.”

  “Good. ’Cause I’m serious, too. And I know the kid here has got to be serious as all hell. So I guess that means all three of us are serious, right?”

  With all his shaking, the boy stood as still as he was able. He understood that something was going on between the two men, but he had no idea what. Not that it mattered. Because what he was concentrating on mostly was Tony and Tony’s pants and the all-important key to freedom that lay somewhere inside them. He saw Tony’s face as he bent over the chair and picked up his pants. He saw the muscles in his jaw and the way his eyes narrowed as he dug a hand deep into one of the pockets.

  Then the hand came out of the pocket, and Paulie saw not a key or a bunch of keys, but the dull, blued steel of a gun barrel. And it was pointed at him. Him,

  He froze. Everything he had learned was forgotten.

  His trigger finger might have been a piece of wood. It would not move. He heard an explosion off to his right, where Dom was, and Tony cried out and was slammed against a wall.

  There was another explosion as Tony pointed his gun barrel at Dom. Then there were more shots, with the explosions coming one after the other from both sides of the room until they all seemed to roll together like thunder.

  Through it all, the boy stood paralyzed, the gun forgotten in his hand, and smoke and sound settling around him.

  Finally, it was quiet.

  Paulie breathed the bitterness of the gunpowder, which seemed to have a yellow smell, and saw Tony lying on the floor. The gangster’s legs were bent crookedly under him, he had a small hole in his forehead, and his eyes were staring at nothing.

  How? Why?

  Turning, Paulie looked at Dom, looked at the small, snub-nosed pistol still in his hand on the bedsheet, and began to understand some parts of it. He looked, too, at the blood leaking through Dom’s undershirt from two separate places on his chest, and he understood this as well.

  Domenico managed to grin with a clown’s own tragic gloom. “Hey… ” The whisper came out in a froth of red bubbles. “You didn’t remember… shit about… shooting.”

  The boy gazed half blindly through smoke and a sudden fall of mist. “I couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Dom lay there, making pink and red bubbles. “It’s… OK,” he breathed. “Just get… the key and get… out… of here.”

  Moments later, his eyes glazed over and he gave a slow look of surprise and died.

  Paulie sat with him. He thought about how he’d still be alive if he hadn’t shot Tony. Why had he done it? Why didn’t he shoot me?

  Dummy, he finally told himself. Because he’d rather Tony was dead, than you.

  After a while the boy rose, got the key from Tony�
��s pants pocket, and freed himself from his chain. It felt strange being loose, and he walked around for a few minutes to get used to it.

  Then about to call home, it occurred that having been brought here chloroformed, he had no idea where he was. So he reached the operator and learned he was in the area of Lercara Friddi, in northeastern Sicily. Of course, he thought. Home of the Mafia.

  Paulie looked at a clock, saw it was 2:54 A.M. and dialed his house in Positano. Feeling the heat of his excitement, he counted off twenty rings before finally hanging up. Then thinking he may have gotten a wrong number, he tried again for another fifteen rings with the same results.

  He was attacked by a whole new range of worries. If his parents weren’t home at this hour of the night, they weren’t likely to be home at all. So where were they? Out looking for him, of course. Where else could they be?

  Dead. They could be lying dead somewhere, like Dom and Tony. The thought hit him with such force, was so real to him at this moment, surrounded as he was by death, that he dissolved into tears.

  But he cut it off right there. Don’t be a damn crybaby, he told himself. Get your dumb baby self together. Get going from here fast, like Dom told you. Go home. When Mom and Dad can’t find you, that’s where they’ll go, too. That’s where they’11 be.

  Paulie found some maps in a desk. He saw exactly where Lercara Friddi was and tried to figure out his best way home. Sicily was an island and he would have to take a ferry from either Palermo to Naples, or from Messina to Reggio Calabria. The map said Palermo to Naples was the better choice. The land part was shorter, and the sea part longer. Which would be safer than having to spend more time on the roads, where the big capo would have his whole gang out checking and looking for him.

  Then there was the matter of money. He would have to be traveling for at least a few days and nights and would need to pay for the ferry, too.

  It made him sick but he forced himself back into Dom and Tony’s bedroom and took all the money out of their wallets. There was a great deal of it, more than he had ever seen at one time. Which was no surprise to him. Since everyone knew that gangsters were rich. Why else would they be gangsters?