Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

“This Tony and Domenico,” said Vittorio. “How well do you know them?”

  “Very well.”

  “Well enough for you to knock on the door and have them let you in without being suspicious?”

  “Yes,” said the girl. “Unless they’ve gotten a call from someone since Pietro was killed.”

  Vittorio lay back once more and thought about it. He was in pain, sweating, and breathing heavily just from the effort of raising himself. He felt his bandages and knew he was bleeding again. Still, he said, “Let’s go,” fought his way to a sitting position, and promptly passed out.

  When he opened his eyes moments later, Gianni and Lucia didn’t appear to have moved an inch.

  “I guess I’d better wait for you here,” he said thickly. “Just goddamn bring me back my boy.”

  They circled through the trees and crouched behind some brush about thirty yards to the left of the house. It was a small, one-story stone villa, and the lights were on in two rooms. High bushes made it difficult to see inside.

  “Have you ever been in the house?” Gianni Garetsky asked the girl.

  “Yes.”

  “What are the lighted rooms?”

  “The one in the front is the living room. The other is a bedroom.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Another bedroom and a bath in back, and a kitchen and an eating place in front. On the far side of the entrance.”

  They crouched there, listening. The windows were open but they heard nothing.

  Gianni flicked off the safety on his automatic. “Wait here while I take a look.”

  Keeping low, he moved quickly up against the house and peered into the living room. It was empty.

  Then he went to the lighted bedroom window and saw a dark-haired young man lying on one of two twin beds. His eyes were open and staring, his once white undershirt was almost entirely red with blood, and he most certainly was dead.

  Gianni felt something dark and leaden take hold of him and refuse to let go.

  Looking further, he saw a second man stretched out on the floor beside the other bed. A crimson pool had spread about his head and carried to the wall.

  Gianni stood there, listening to the hard rush of his own breathing. He pressed his face against the cool glass of the window and felt sick beyond all reason. Please. Not the boy, too. Whatever else, not him.

  He turned and motioned for Lucia to join him.

  “Look,” he told her. An instant later he heard her sharply drawn breath.

  “Is that Tony and Domenico?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  They huddled together at the window.

  “I’m going in,” Gianni said.

  He lifted the window higher, climbed through, and moved quietly from one room to another.

  He found just two signs of Vittorio’s son. A pencil sketch the boy had evidently drawn of one of his captors, and a long chain with handcuffs at one end, and the other end locked onto a pipe in the second bedroom.

  Nothing.

  Yet how infinitely better than the horror of the other possibility: finding the boy’s body.

  Vittorio clung to the borders of consciousness. Every breath he took felt drawn on the cutting edge of a knife. He lay propped on the backseat of the car, waiting for his first glimpse of his son walking toward him through the woods.

  Which was how he finally saw Gianni and the girl, and how he did not see Paulie.

  He half wondered if he were delirious and not seeing things as they were. And in his despair he felt a rush of sorrow like that of a child about to cry.

  He closed his eyes and thought of his son, thinking of all the things he didn’t know about him and now would probably never know.

  When Gianni and Lucia finally reached him, he was no longer conscious.

  50

  HENRY DURNING WAS in his office, going through the motions of work, when he saw his secretary hurrying toward him. She was white faced, her eyes glistened with tears, and her first words were barely intelligible.

  The FBI director and his wife had been found dead of gunshot wounds at their shore home. There were no more details than that. Everyone was stunned, disbelieving.

  The secretary’s tears were for Durning.

  “I’m so sorry,” she wept. “I know how close you were. How terrible for you.”

  Worse for them, thought Durning.

  He ordered his official limousine brought around at once. Apart from his personal relationship, he was the attorney general of the United States and, nominally, Brian Wayne’s superior. It was only proper that he should put in a prompt appearance at the scene. The better parts of him needed to be there anyway.

  The first of the police barricades, set up a full quarter of a mile from the house, were quickly moved aside to allow the attorney general’s limousine through.

  Farther ahead, Durning saw every sign of a large-scale law and media feeding frenzy in progress. The FBI, state police, and locals were all there in a full blaze of whirling colored lights, with reporters and television crews yapping and going after them in packs, like starving jackals.

  The limousine pulled up close and Durning got out.

  Recognizing him at once, police and FBI agents backed away from his path as Durning entered the house and continued his march through the living room, the kitchen, and finally into the small back bedroom where the two bodies lay.

  Police, official photographers, and an in situ forensics team were at work as he entered. But they made room for him at the bedside, and Henry Durning silently stood there, looking yet not looking at what lay in front of and below him.

  And standing there, he felt pain. As he should feel it. If only because he had required, and was still requiring, so many people to die for his own needs. How long could he stand up to such inner beatings?

  As long as I have to,

  It was at that moment that he felt the tears come, felt them even as a photographer’s flash went off, with one part of him imagining and approving the beautiful effect of so human a shot on the seven o’clock news, but the rest of him knowing his tears were real. Just as his pain and sense of loss were real.

  He opened his mouth to relieve the pressure. But it did no good, and he felt fresh tears on his cheeks.

  While more cameras joined with the first to record them.

  He came home late, near midnight, to find Mary Yung waiting up for him in the living room. She took one quick look at his face, moved close, and held him.

  “What do you want me to do for you?” she said quietly. “Just tell me. What will help most?”

  “A bullet in what passes for my heart.”

  She stroked his hair, his neck, the small of his back. “It’s been that bad?”

  “Wouldn’t you say it ought to be?”

  Mary gently eased away, poured some Remy Martin into two snifters, and handed him one. Then she led him to the couch and sat close.

  “I can’t believe you mean that,” she said.

  “Only because you don’t know what I’ve done.”

  “Of course I know.”

  Durning looked at her for a long moment.

  “Tell me,” he said at last.

  “You shot your friend and his wife, then set it up to look like murder-suicide.”

  She said it matter-of-factly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because otherwise they would have destroyed you.” Mary Yung sighed. “And because in your position, I would have probably done the same thing.”

  Durning looked at her eyes with their needlepoints of light, and some of the feeling he hadn’t yet been able to share with her or anyone else in more than half a lifetime of living came rising up in him like a small bomb.

  It made him hug her again, but this time with all the gentleness gone. Until in the end, they were clutching each other in the kind of wild, tearful passion that can make a man and woman feel closer than anything else known. Closer than sex, he thought.

  “Do you know what I think?
” he said when the moment had passed.

  “What?”

  “That we’re going to be finding it very hard to fool each other from now on.”

  “Which means what?”

  Henry Durning bent and kissed her.

  “That we’re going to have to be either very good, or very careful.”

  51

  DON CARLO DONATTI’S armored gray stretch moved smoothly upstate along Route 17. The don sat alone in back, enjoying a bottle of his favorite red, and watching a repeat videocassette performance by Henry Durning on yesterday evening’s network news.

  This was the fourth time he had run the segment, but he had picked up something new from it with every showing. Know your enemy was perhaps the single best piece of advice his father had ever given him, and the attorney general was certainly that. His enemy.

  Watching him now, the don saw Durning arriving at the site of the double tragedy, striding blank-faced and imperious through the small army of reporters, photographers, and police, and entering the house of the late FBI director and his wife.

  From here, one camera or another was on him all the way as he walked straight through the entrance hall, living room, and kitchen, and into the bedroom where the Waynes’ bodies lay. Of course the bodies themselves were never on camera. But Henry Durning’s face was long, with his tears and obvious grief. At which point Donatti hit the pause button and froze the frame.

  Even after four viewings, the don remained fascinated. The tears and grief were genuine, not a performance. It was heartfelt.

  It hit Carlo Donatti as a double shock. First, that a tight-assed WASP prick like Durning could actually be capable of such emotion. And second, that feeling as he did about his longtime friend and his wife, he was still able to murder them. For there was absolutely no doubt in Donatti’s mind that the attorney general had done it. By his own hand.

  Imagine the threat that such a man posed.

  The limousine passed through the old Catskill town of Liberty at about 9:00 P.M. and pulled up in front of Donatti’s cabin less than ten minutes later. Although to describe his father’s great pile of half round logs as a cabin, thought the don, would be like describing St. Peter’s Basilica as a church.

  Simply getting out of the stretch and standing before the house, Donatti felt diminished. As if he were still the little boy, being brought up here by his father for a weekend of fishing or hunting. His favorite times, with just the two of them and maybe a couple of quiet goombahs for security, and his father laughing all the time. Which he hardly ever did away from here. And no women. Not even his mother.

  His chauffeur followed him up onto a porch, lighted by an old electrified lantern, and into a huge, timbered, two-story main room. There was a great, fieldstone fireplace at one end, and four men playing cards at the other.

  The men put down their cards and rose in respectful greeting. Don Donatti waved them down and three sat. The fourth man, a young, thick-necked bodybuilder named Sal, came forward and shook the don’s hand.

  “Welcome, Don Donatti. Everything’s all set.”

  “Where do you have them?”

  “The big bedroom.” Sal pointed up to one of four doors leading off a second-floor balcony that covered one entire side of the main room.

  “What do they know?”

  “Nothing. Just that the boss is coming to talk to them. And that they’ll have to be blindfolded and handcuffed while they’re with you.”

  “Any problems?”

  Sal shook his head. “Just bullshit stuff. The guy’s a real wise-ass. Big talker. But we straightened him out fast. The lady’s OK. Mostly scared.”

  “And they’ve never seen anyone’s face?”

  “Hell, no. We’ve been doing like you said, Don Donatti. We always wear our masks around them. They wouldn’t know us from shit.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  Carlo Donatti followed the young man upstairs to the balcony. Then he waited there while Sal put on his mask, un locked the door, and went inside to take care of his charges’ handcuffs and blindfolds.

  Sal was out in three minutes. “They’re all yours, Godfather.”

  “Lock the door behind me and go downstairs with the others,” said Donatti. “I don’t want any big ears at the keyhole. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The don went inside the room, closed the door, and heard it locked from the outside. Then he turned and looked at John Hinkey and Bonnie Beekman. The Washington lawyer and his client sat side by side on straight wooden chairs. They were blindfolded and their hands were cuffed behind their backs. It was Donatti’s first sight of them, a middle-aged, undistinguished-looking man and woman going to fat, who still had no idea what they were into.

  Donatti sat down facing them, took a small, rectangular unit out of his pocket, and spoke into it.

  “The reason I sound strange,” he said, “is that I’m using an electronic voice disguiser to keep you from identifying me later. So please bear with me.”

  “You’re the one who had us brought here?” said Hinkey.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” said the lawyer. “But if you think you can get away with this kind of—”

  The don cut him off. “You’re not a fool, Mr. Hinkey. So stop blustering like one and just listen to me.”

  Hinkey’s nostrils flared as he drew in air, but he remained still.

  “To begin with,” said Donatti, “I’m the only reason you two are still alive. If I had followed the orders given me, you both would have been dead the night you were picked up.”

  “My God,” whispered Mrs. Beekman and began quietly sobbing.

  “Whose orders?” asked Hinkey. “The FBI director’s?”

  “No. Wayne was a victim himself in all this. In fact he and his wife were found dead yesterday in what was set up to look like a murder/suicide but was actually a double murder.”

  “Fucking Christ!” For once, Hinkey was awed. “Who killed them?”

  “Someone even higher than Wayne. Someone afraid of Wayne breaking under pressure. The same person who pushed me into getting rid of you both, and even now thinks you’re buried somewhere.”

  Fresh graves, real and imagined, seemed to open in the room. Hinkey sniffed opportunity in them. “Then why are we still alive? Because you’re such a great humanitarian?”

  Donatti smiled. “That, and the sense that you might just possibly be able to do more for me alive than dead.”

  Other than for the soft sound of Mrs. Beekman’s steady sobbing, the room was silent.

  “OK,” said Hinkey. “So exactly what is it you want me to do for you?”

  “That’s something we’re both going to have to spend a little time thinking and talking about.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means I think you’re a smart man with brass balls who knows how things work in Washington. And what you don’t know, you’re not afraid to find out.”

  “Like where certain bodies might be buried?”

  Donatti was silent.

  Bonnie Beekman had stopped crying. “What about my husband? Please. Can you at least tell me whether he’s alive or dead?”

  The don considered his answer from two perspectives… the woman’s and his own. In neither instance was he able to see anything remotely positive resulting from the truth.

  “Your husband is alive,” he told her. “That’s all I can say for now. So please don’t ask me anything more.”

  “Thank you.” She began crying again.

  “Another thing, Mr. Hinkey,” said the don. “You might like to know your son appeared on national television two days ago. Assuming you and Mrs. Beekman were murdered, he followed your instructions and went public with everything you’d dug up on the dead and missing FBI agents. He was very moving and effective. It’s generally believed his revelations were what drove Wayne to kill his wife and himself.”

  John Hinkey nodded, slowly, his
body swaying with his head. Beneath the blindfold, his cheeks suddenly appeared flushed and damp.

  “But now you?” he said. “You don’t believe Wayne killed his wife and himself? You think they were murdered by someone higher up who was afraid of being implicated?”

  “I don’t just think. I know.”

  “I agree. And I know who it is.”

  “Yes?”

  “Henry Durning,” Hinkey’s voice was calm. “It has to be him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one else in the world was anywhere near as close to Brian Wayne and his wife.”

  “That’s no reason.”

  “Maybe not,” said Hinkey. “But it’s sure as hell an answer. And give me a little time and I’ll bet you a million bucks I can dig up a reason to go with it.”

  Carlo Donatti looked at him. It was a beginning.

  52

  PAULIE WALKED QUICKLY through the dark. He was going mostly downhill toward where the last road marker had said he would reach the next town in four kilometers. It was hard to read the name on the marker because the stone was old and worn and there was only a small piece of moon. But the name didn’t matter as long as he was headed in the right direction. Then his map told him the town had to be Lercara Friddi, so he was doing that part all right.

  So far, only two cars had passed while he was walking. He had seen their lights and heard their engines from a long way off, so he’d had plenty of warning to get off the road until they were gone. He knew it was kind of soon for anyone to be out looking for him, but why take chances?

  After a while a wind came up, and he felt cold in only a shirt and jeans. He guessed he should have taken something of Dom’s or Tony’s for added warmth, something to throw over his shoulders, but he’d had other things on his mind.

  He walked faster. Then he jogged a little to warm himself, and it worked. When he jogged, the gun in his pocket kept bumping against his leg, so he stuck it inside his belt. He had taken Dom’s small snub-noser instead of his big automatic because it was easier to hide in one of his pockets. The idea that he better take a gun along had come to him late and hard, just as he was leaving the house. The hard part was his remembering what he had just seen guns do. It was very different from seeing it in movies. Suddenly, blood was blood, and dead was dead, and nobody ever got up again for another picture.