Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  “You kidding?”

  “No.”

  The boy grinned, all curly dark hair and white teeth. “Whose throat do 1 cut?”

  “Nobody’s. All you do is buy me a ferry ticket with some money I give you, and I’ll give you three thousand lire.”

  The kid did a fancy riff in place with the soccer ball.

  “That’s all I have to do?”

  Paulie nodded. “Nothing to it.”

  “If there’s nothing to it, why don’t you buy the ticket yourself and save the three thousand?”

  “Because I ran away from my fucking old man yesterday, and I figure he’s got carabinieri watching for me.” Paulie aimed his chin at the ticket windows. “Like those two dick-heads over there.”

  “No shit?” The boy’s grin grew broader. “Where you going when you get off the ferry in Naples?”

  “My grandma lives in Rome. I guess I’ll go there.”

  The boy’s eyes were all jealousy and admiration. “Jesus!”

  “Will you do it for me?” said Paulie.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Paulie counted out the money for the ticket. Then he watched his new friend deftly work his soccer ball through the crowd to the nearest ticket line, about fifty yards away.

  Now I’ll know.

  There were about a dozen people ahead of the boy, but the line was moving well and he was soon number five.

  It was when he had advanced to three that Paulie saw one of the two carabinieri approach, bend down to the boy’s height, and start talking to him.

  Damn, thought Paulie, and began slowly easing away, moving a short distance back into the crowd.

  There was no one in front of the boy now, but the cara-biniere was still talking to him. While a few of those at his back began moving around him to the ticket window.

  Paulie saw the kid standing with his head low, sometimes talking, but mostly listening. At one point he had his hand open and was showing his money to the policeman, who looked at it very seriously.

  A moment later the boy turned and stared at where he had left Paulie, but he didn’t see him. Then he did see him a bit farther back in the crowd, and he pointed and kept pointing until the carabiniere saw him, too.

  The policeman cried out something Paulie couldn’t hear, and then he was up and running toward him with the other carabiniere close behind, and the three haircuts right in back of them, and all five of them running like the devil.

  Paulie had a last glimpse of the kid’s face. It was scared white. And Paulie was scared, too.

  Then Paulie was just running, weaving in and out of the crowds, and between the great trucks with their diesels growling and gears grinding, and the slowly moving lines of cars and buses. He ran without glancing back, cutting back and forth between the vehicles and people, understanding now that everything he had been worried about was true, and the carabinieri had been watching the ticket lines for an eight-year-old kid, and the same with the mob haircuts and suits, and if they ever caught up with him now, Jesus only knew what they’d do to him.

  Then he slammed into the side of an eighteen-wheeler that wasn’t even moving, and suddenly and for several seconds nothing at all was clear.

  Still, gasping for breath against the heavy tarp that lay stretched over the big, open flatbed, he felt remarkably calm. At that moment he saw no one and was sure that no one saw him. What he did see in close detail were the twisted fibers of the hemp rope that fastened a corner of the tarp to the truckbed. And he saw, too, the fine hand of God offering him salvation.

  He quickly untied the rope, slid under the tarp and onto the open truckbed, and securely refastened the tarpaulin above him.

  Paulie lay in the sudden darkness. He kept hearing voices passing, but no one approached him.

  A short while later, he felt the truck start to move. It moved slowly, in fits and starts, part of the long snake of traffic rolling into the great belly of the ship. There was a different sound and feel when the truck hit the steel decking. It was all kind of hollow and smooth. If he had to give it a color, in his mind it would be a dark blue-green. It seemed so long since he had painted, he began to wonder if he’d remember how.

  Which was kind of crazy. Might as well wonder if he’d remember how to breathe.

  After a while he felt the vibration of the ship’s engines, then the long rolling motion of the swells as they put to sea.

  He thought it might be all right for him to leave the truck now and wander around the ship. But he decided to stay where he was for the time being.

  So he lay there in the darkness under the tarp, trying to concentrate on as much good stuff as he could remember from before all this started to happen.

  Which was all right for a while. It was like staring off into the pale, pink mists of memory, where things always seem just a little brighter and nicer than they really were.

  What he liked best about the remembering was that his mother and father always were there. The worst was that no matter how bright and clear they seemed in his thoughts, they still couldn’t touch him.

  Paulie guessed that was what he missed most right now.

  Being touched.

  63

  VITTORIO BATTAGLIA LAY alone in the night with his tubes and the blinking lights of his monitors and wished that Gianni Garetsky would come back.

  The thoughts that came when he was alone were worse than the pain, and the pain was very bad. But he knew it was a sign of healing, because they were taking him off the morphine.

  Pain is good for the soul.

  And what idiot had said that?

  An idiot who obviously had never experienced real pain or known a damn thing about the soul.

  But it wasn’t his pain or his soul that bothered him most in the night. It was his fear. Although even this was for his wife and son, not himself. It was the only thing that seemed real among the hallucinations of his semidrugged state. Which made it the only thing of true importance.

  Gianni, bring me some good news. Please.

  It was the closest Vittorio had ever come to pleading.

  Despite himself, he must have dozed. Because his next awareness was of Gianni Garetsky sitting in his usual bedside chair, staring at him.

  “Did I conjure you up?” he murmured. “Or are you real?”

  Gianni’s smile was faint. And even that almost required more effort than he could scrape together.

  “I’m real.”

  Vittorio’s eyes searched Gianni’s face for messages. They found none that meant anything.

  “How long are you here?”

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “I figured you needed the sleep.”

  “I need good news more.”

  Gianni said nothing, and Vittorio Battagli listened to the silence and heard everything there was to hear.

  Vittorio closed his eyes and breathed slowly, deeply.

  “Did you find her dead?” he finally asked. “Or was she just not there?”

  “She wasn’t there. But she left a message. It was where you said it would be.”

  “Read it to me.”

  Gianni hesitated. “Maybe you’d better read it yourself.”

  “No, I don’t think I can. Read it to me.” Vittorio’s voice was flat, but otherwise controlled. “Please.”

  Garetsky took out the blue envelope. He removed the letter, spread it open on his lap, and tried to press out the creases with the flat of his hand.

  Then he tried to clear the thickness from his throat. It was hopeless.

  He read the date and the time of day at the top of the page.

  “My love,” he began.

  Gianni read it slowly, quietly, the words rising and losing themselves quickly in the heavy-aired silence of the hospital room.

  Vittorio lay there, listening, growing angry.

  Gianni Garetsky’s soft, slow voice read on. Immutably. It was impossible to stop.

  Then the anger
went away. It left a deep sickness in its place, an oppressiveness, a ghostly pain in his stomach. No. In his heart, his lungs, everywhere, that had nothing to do with the real bullets that had entered him earlier. And he knew that no amount of morphine would be able to make it disappear.

  But then the sickness, too, subsided.

  And there was nothing.

  It took Vittorio a few moments to realize that Gianni had stopped reading. He accepted the silence.

  Then even that became too much.

  “She’s gone, Gianni,” he said.

  Garetsky looked at him. Vittorio appeared dry eyed and blank faced. Then a tear suddenly appeared in a corner of his eye. It ran down his cheek, moving fast, like sweat on a cold glass.

  “We don’t really know that,” said Gianni.

  “You just read me her letter.”

  “Yes. But that’s all it was. A letter.”

  “You think she or Durning didn’t go through with it?”

  “I don’t know what I think,” said Gianni. “But no one’s dead until they’re dead.”

  Gianni looked into Vittorio Battaglia’s eyes. Until he saw the hope there. Then he had to look away.

  Gianni waited until shortly after 9:00 A.M. Then, using a hospital pay phone, he put through a person-to-person call to the director of the Naples office of the International Red Cross. When he got the official on the line, a Signor Ferrare, he said, “This is Ralph Billings calling from the United States consulate in Palermo.”

  “Yes, Signor Billings.”

  “I’m hoping you can help me,” said Garetsky. “We’ve just received word that an eight-year-old American boy, a Paul Walters, was to be left with you people for safekeeping until he can be picked up by his father. Offhand, could you give us any information about that?”

  “Exactly what would you like to know?”

  “Whether the boy is with you now. And if he’s not, whether your office has heard anything further about him or the situation.”

  “I’ll certainly check on it. When was the boy supposed to have been left with us?”

  “We don’t know precisely. But it should have been sometime during the past day or two.”

  “Please hold on, Signor Billings. I should be able to find that out for you right now.”

  Gianni stood waiting. He didn’t know what he wanted to hear. If the boy was there and safe, in all probability his mother was dead and gone. If the boy wasn’t there, it could mean anything. With the odds strongly in favor of nothing good.

  “Signor Billings?”

  “Yes,” said Garetsky.

  “I’ve just spoken with the two people who would know about such things. So far, neither of them has any information about a boy being sent here. Would you like us to call you if the boy does come here?”

  “Thank you, but I expect to be traveling for the next few days. So I’ll check back with you if I may.”

  Gianni thanked Ferrare again and hung up. Then he slowly walked back to where Vittorio lay waiting to hear.

  “Nothing,” he told his friend. “They haven’t heard a damn thing.”

  Each held a separate silence.

  “I’ll tell you,” Vittorio said. “I’m not surprised. I didn’t really expect Paulie to be there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it wouldn’t be in that bastard’s nature to make a deal and stick with it. He’d always be looking for an extra edge of some sort. And Peg wouldn’t have a prayer with a man like that.”

  Garetsky started to say something. Then he changed his mind and remained silent. What was there to say without lying and sounding like a fool, or speaking the truth and making it worse?

  “What the man’s done,” said Vittorio tonelessly, “is murder my wife and son. That part’s finished. Now I just have to accept it. Then maybe I can get on with the rest.”

  Gianni turned to him. Vittorio Battaglia’s eyes were two black holes and his skin appeared drained of blood. He was a ghost. His face, surrounded by hospital pillows, was the size and shape of little more than the bones beneath it. While Vittorio himself was the same color as the bones.

  When did he become a ghost?

  64

  IT REALLY WAS a small jewel of a villa, thought Peggy, with dazzling views of the mountains and sea, and the grounds spacious and well tended. And since Carlo Donatti’s visit, she had been treated with all the courtesy and deference of an honored guest. She had actually begun now to allow herself the almost forgotten luxury of hope.

  Or was this just her latest self-delusion to keep herself from flying into a million pieces?

  With the thought, panic came off her like a scent, dull and powerful, bringing her close to nausea. Paulie lay buried somewhere while she sat here being milked with false promises. The image itself was an extinction. She could feel all that was good in her going away.

  Then she breathed slowly and deeply and put all such thinking aside before she flaked out entirely and did no one any good.

  65

  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL flew into La Guardia by Justice Department helicopter at about 11:00 P.M. and dismissed the crew for the night. They were to be ready to fly back to Washington at 7:00 the next morning.

  An unlocked Ford Fairlane was waiting for him at a prearranged parking location. The keys were under a floor mat.

  A little less than two hours later, Durning drove the Ford behind a small, abandoned factory outside of Liberty, New York, and found Mac Horgan already parked and waiting. Asusual he thought. This time Durning left his own car and joined the private investigator in his.

  “Everything all right?” asked Durning.

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  “How far is it from here?”

  Horgan lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of one he had going. “Less than half an hour. It should be a piece of cake. I don’t know why you had to bother coming.”

  Durning opened a window to get rid of the smoke.

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “I bothered coming because this whole thing with Donatti has suddenly turned me paranoid.”

  Horgan grinned. “Hey. I’m not the fucking godfather.”

  “I know. It’s got nothing to do with you. It’s all me. You’ll just have to bear with me on this one.”

  Mac Horgan started the car, swung past the old brick factory building, and turned onto the deserted road.

  “No problem,” he said.

  “When did you get up here?”

  “Late this afternoon. I wanted a last look around while it was still daylight. I also wanted to be sure they were still there. Loose ends we don’t need.”

  “And?”

  “Full house. Three goombahs and the two of them,’’

  They drove north on Route 17 for about ten minutes. Then they turned east for a short while on 52. It was a clear night with half a moon and lots of stars. There were few cars moving, and the Catskills showed high and dark above the trees.

  They spoke little.

  Durning had been tense but fine until now. Then as they swung onto a narrow, two-lane blacktop that made up the final stretch, he felt the first faint stirrings of dread in his stomach.

  “What are you using?” he asked.

  “Plastique.”

  “Is that smart? There aren’t too many sources. Which makes it eminently traceable.”

  Mac Horgan shrugged. “They won’t trace this. I’ve had it stashed for too many years. Besides, it’s the only stuff practical to use on an operation like this. I wasn’t about to start scraping together and lugging around five hundred pounds of TNT.”

  Durning was silent.

  “What about Carlo Donatti?” said Horgan.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s going to know it was you.”

  “I expect him to.”

  “You don’t think he should be done?”

  “He will be,” said Durning.

  “I mean before this job.”

  “No. There are things he has to tell
me first. And I can’t have Hinkey and the woman floating around for however long that’s going to take. They’re too dangerous.”

  “Whatever you say, Hank. It’s all the same to me.”

  The attorney general fixed on Horgan as he drove. Not true. It wasn’t all the same to Mac. He enjoyed doing the goombahs best. And it wasn’t just the historical antipathy between the Irish and Italians. Mac’s dislike for the mob reached all the way back to his detective days, when he refused to accept bribe money, personally brought down a couple of top family capi, and found himself framed and broken as his reward. Durning had been able to keep him out of prison, but not out of forced retirement.

  Mac Horgan suddenly pulled off the stretch of narrow blacktop and parked behind some brush.

  “It’s about a five-minute walk from here.” said the PI. “Just over that rise. You can either wait here, or move in closer with me and see the action. It’s up to you.”

  “What kind of security do they have?”

  “Only the three guards and some photoelectric stuff across the driveway. There are no fences, no wiring on any windows, and no TV monitors. It’s an old hunting and fishing place of Donatti’s father, hardly used.”

  “I’ll walk in a ways with you,” said Durning.

  Horgan had everything in two canvas bags in the trunk, and he carried them both himself.

  They walked slowly through high grass, the night quiet and silver-gray about them. There was just enough moonlight to cast shadows. With each step, Durning felt the dread grow stronger in his stomach.

  Then they crested the knoll, and Durning had his first glimpse of the cabin, about two hundred yards away.

  It was much bigger than he had expected, a rustic two-story building with three fieldstone chimneys and huge, half-round logs chinked together in the Adirondack style of many turn-of-the-century camps favored by the old robber barons.

  They had approached the cabin from the side and rear. Other than for two night-lights, one upstairs and one down, the place was entirely dark. The moon silvered a wood-shingled, steeply pitched roof.

  Durning glanced at his watch. It was close to 2:00 A.M.