Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  Then Paulie drew his knees up against his chest, the spasm passed, and he felt something very near to hope.

  With it, on the tossing, rolling truck, he was able to believe that the storm would be over by morning, that Naples would be safely reached without his dying of a poisoned pizza, and that his mother and father would be waiting for him in Positano when he got there.

  Instant magic. A moment’s freedom from pain.

  But it didn’t last long. Because soon the cramps came back and they were so bad that he cried out, and cried out again, and then again. Until he became so afraid someone would hear him that he stuffed his handkerchief into his mouth to muffle the sound.

  Finally, he closed his eyes. As if shutting out all sight of the tarpaulin over his head would shut out the pain as well.

  But it didn’t. And when he opened his eyes again, the tarp had been pulled away and a man’s face was there instead.

  “Holy Christ!” said the man.

  All they seemed able to do was stare at each other.

  The man was big and tough looking, and Paulie guessed he was the driver of the truck. Now he was in for it. Now he’d be handed over to the carabinieri, who’d pass him on to the haircuts, who’d give him to their capo, who’d shoot him full of holes for what he’d done to Dom and Tony.

  “What the hell’s going on?” said the man.

  The boy made a muffled, choking sound against the handkerchief in his mouth. He seemed to have forgotten it was there.

  The man plucked it free. “What are you trying to do, kid? Choke yourself to death?”

  As if suddenly rendered mute, Paulie shook his head.

  “What then?”

  “I’m sick.” The boy’s face contorted as another spasm hit, gripped him, and passed. “I didn’t want to make any noise.”

  The man studied him. “Where does it hurt?”

  Paulie pressed a hand to his stomach.

  “You running away, or what?”

  Paulie was afraid to answer.

  “You been hiding here since Palermo?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you trying to go?”

  “Home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Paulie stared at him.

  “Don’t worry, kid. I won’t turn you in. You got enough trouble. Just tell me where you live.”

  “Positano.”

  The trucker nodded. “If you don’t die first, maybe I can drop you not far from there.”

  The boy felt a rush of something that made his eyes start to water. He fought it back. He hated that about himself. It was like he had a fountain in his head. The least thing set it off.

  “Listen,” said the man. “You don’t have to lie back here with all this shit. I got a better place for you up front. Right back of the cab.”

  Paulie shook his head.

  “It’s all right. No one’ll see you there. It’s where I sleep on long hauls. I got some stuff for your cramps, too. What kind of garbage you been eating?”

  “Anchovy and sausage pizza.”

  The trucker made a sour face. “Next time you want to kill yourself, try jumping off a high building. It’s faster and don’t hurt anywhere near as much.”

  Paulie could barely straighten up, and the ferry was still pitching and rolling badly. So the man carried him to his secret place behind the driver’s seat and stretched him out on some nice soft padding with a regular pillow for his head. Then he gave him a swig of some pink stuff from a bottle that he promised would make his cramps go away in less than half an hour.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Paulie.”

  “I’m Nino. You want to sleep, go ahead. No one’ll bother you here.”

  Paulie was tired enough to sleep, but he didn’t want Nino to see him sucking his thumb. Also, the trucker’s being so nice to him was beginning to make him worry a little. He’d heard all about the kind of men who liked to play around with young boys’ weenies. He’d never actually run into anyone like that, but a couple of the kids from school had told stories about what had happened to them with such men.

  The boy closed his eyes.

  He wondered what he would do if Nino suddenly tried to fool around with him. Would he jump out of his truck and run away, or pull out his gun, or just let him do it?

  Then he opened his eyes and saw Nino sitting there, looking at him, with that real tough face of his kind of smiling.

  “Cramps going away a little?” he asked.

  Paulie nodded.

  “Good. Your mom and dad know you’re coming home?”

  “No.”

  “I guess you’re going to surprise them, huh?”

  “I tried to call them but no one was home.”

  “Well, they’ll sure be happy to see you. My kid ran off once. Was gone for two days and nights. Nearly drove me nuts. I swear I wanted to kill him. Then he walked in the damn door, and all I did was hug and kiss him and start crying like an asshole.”

  The boy silently rolled with the truck and the ship. Somehow, he didn’t think Nino was one of those men with young boys’ weenies on his mind.

  “Thanks for helping me,” he said.

  The trucker shrugged. “Shit. Who wouldn’t help a kid trying to get home? Besides, I like your guts. Imagine sticking a handkerchief in your mouth to keep from crying out.”

  Paulie lay there, his cheek resting against his hand. He didn’t think there was anything so special about his not wanting to cry out and maybe get caught. But he liked the idea of Nino thinking he had guts.

  68

  THE SEATBELT SIGN had just come on for the descent to Washington’s Dulles International, and Gianni Garetsky thought, I’m coming full circle.

  Leaving Palermo that morning on the earliest scheduled flight, he had spent the last twelve hours flying first to Naples, then to Rome, and finally on to Washington, where he would be landing at approximately 3:00 P.M. local time.

  He hadn’t taken off his clothes or slept in a bed for more than thirty-six hours, although he had dozed occasionally in the air. With his thoughts and emotions running at flood tide, he had neither the need nor the patience for serious, all-out sleep.

  Finally, he was going to the source.

  Gianni had made the decision about fifteen hours ago at Vittorio Battaglia’s bedside, with Vittorio himself forced into reluctant agreement. Not that they had any real choices. What the two men did have in their few final nighttime hours together in the hospital was a tiny spark of hope, still fighting to hold on against an avalanche of negative logic and reason.

  “I’ve accepted it,” had been Vittorio’s coldly stated position. “My wife and son are gone. I can’t bring them back. But as soon as I am able to walk out of here, I’m at least going to save what’s left of my sanity by making payment.”

  “How?” Gianni had asked. “By blowing away burning?”

  “Along with Don Donatti. I hold them both responsible.”

  Gianni had remained silent.

  “You don’t agree?” Vittorio had asked.

  “We don’t really know for sure that your son and wife are gone.”

  “You might not know. I know.”

  “And if you’re wrong by some miracle… ”

  “I don’t believe in miracles.”

  “If by some miracle,” Gianni repeated quietly, “one or both of them are still alive at this moment, and you find out later that you gave up on them just a little too soon… how do you imagine your sanity would react to that?”

  Vittorio had stared at Gianni until there was no air left in the silence.

  “I can’t deal with this shit,” Vittorio had finally said. “I’m not worth a damn here in this bed. What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing. Just get well.”

  “Then what do you want to do?”

  “I want to go to them both. First, Durning, then Donatti. But fast. Right now even miracles have time limits.”

  “And do what?”

/>   “Put a gun to each of their heads and ask for answers.”

  “And if there are no miracles?”

  “I’ll squeeze the trigger. Twice. Once for each.”

  “You’ll be able to do that?”

  “Take a good look at me, Vittorio.”

  Battaglia had taken a good look. Then he nodded, tiredly. “Yeah, you can do it. Though that’s really my job.”

  “I’ve got my own stake in it.”

  They had considered each other in the silent room with its hospital smells.

  “Just one thing,” Vittorio had said. “I’m giving you a name and a phone number. If you need help, or anything at all. Call this man and tell him it’s for Charlie. You can trust him with your life. I’ve already trusted him with mine.”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name’s Tommy Cortlandt and he’s been my company contact and chief of station for the past eight years.”

  Garestsky had stared blankly. “You mean like in CIA?”

  “Exactly.” Vittorio had written the name and number on a slip of paper for him. “Memorize this along with the code word Charlie. Then tear it up.”

  It had taken Gianni a while to absorb. “That’s some surprise.”

  “No big deal. Just a need I had.”

  It occurred to Gianni that Vittorio Battaglia had always done pretty much as he wanted with his life. He had never just accepted what was handed him.

  It was less than a week since Gianni Garetsky had left the country with Mary Yung, but coming back, he felt as if he had been away for years.

  I’m back, he told his wife. And I’m alone. You never warned me. You never taught me that all women are not like you.

  Well, now you know, said Teresa.

  Picking up his bag and going through customs, he saw that people suddenly seemed beautiful. The girls were slender and bouncy and walked with their breasts high, half smiling as if remembering some secret pleasure the night before. The young men looked strong and immortal. The children were laughing and energetic. The elderly were neatly dressed and appeared philosophically relaxed about whatever might lie ahead,

  Among them, he felt like the proverbial specter at the feast. Come to threaten. Come to shoot and kill.

  He found himself deeply weighed by his mission. So much so, that for the first time in years a few words of Hebrew, learned as a boy from his father, came back to him. Hazak, v’ematz. Which was the order God gave to Joshua and meant strengthen thyself.

  He rented a black Cougar from Hertz. Then he drove into Alexandria to rearm himself, having had to abandon his weapons before boarding the first of his trip’s many planes. Vittorio had given him the address of a gun dealer who would satisfy his needs without questions. And an hour later, Gianni was on his way to Washington with a sharpshooter’s rifle and scope sights in his car trunk, a 9mm automatic in a belt holster, and silencers that he could attach if needed. Trying to anticipate his needs, he also picked up some high-powered binoculars and a pair of infrared night-vision goggles.

  At shortly before 5:00 p.m., he was parked near enough to the Justice Department Building to be able to spot the attorney general when he came out.

  Seeing a steady stream of town cars and limousines coming and going, Gianni suddenly felt joyless, dispirited. All this great officialdom of the world’s last remaining democratic superpower, and everyone with their own line of dirty secrets. The higher you went, the dirtier they got. While at the very top, a past, present, and future killer.

  Gianni felt it as something beyond him, some eternal seepage from the nation’s waste pipes. And the more you held your breath the more it stank.

  For over a week now he had been crawling through some pretty mean streets. They tore away the pink wrappings and exposed the maggots. Blood flowed like honey, and a lot of people got their livers chopped. Memorial candles burned day and night in too many windows. Everyone had their own landscapes. His had become studded with a grotesque blend of lies, violence, and ice cream sundaes.

  Gianni had been waiting for almost an hour when he saw Henry Durning leave the Justice Department Building and get into the back of an official, dark-gray, chauffeur-driven limousine. Moments later, the car drove off and he followed.

  Keeping a safe interval in the heavy, early-evening traffic, Gianni tailed the attorney general out of the immediate area of working Washington and through some of Georgetown’s more picturesque streets. When the limousine finally deposited Durning in front of a narrow Federalist town house, Gianni circled the block and parked within sight of the entrance.

  The limousine had disappeared.

  At about eight o’clock, a black woman left the house and drove off in a gray Toyota.

  Gianni sat there until it was fully dark. Then he left his car and worked his way around to the rear of the house.

  Lights showed in two rooms… one, on the first floor… the other, directly above it on the second floor.

  Gianni eased himself between some shrubs and looked into the lower room. It was a library, with a desk, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, an oversize couch, and some comfortable-looking chairs. And sitting and reading in one of the chairs was Mary Chan Yung.

  She was alone in the room, with the same stillness of a photograph that Gianni remembered from his first sight of her through another window, in Connecticut.

  I’m sleepwalking, he thought.

  Yet she was there, right enough. No mistake in that. Where else should she be? The devil’s own whore was simply where she belonged. With the devil. And as if the sight of her alone wasn’t enough, he began breathing her perfume through the open window.

  Then the attorney general came into the room. Obviously on his way somewhere, he was in dinner clothes. An imposing man, thought Gianni coldly. He exuded confidence and control.

  He bent and kissed Mary Yung where she sat reading, an easy comfortable kiss that pretty much showed where they were.

  “Sorry, love,” he said, “but it shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours at most. At least I got out of the dinner part.”

  Mary Yung rose and walked him to the door. “I’ll watch you on television.”

  “Christ, you don’t have to.”

  “I want to. You do it so well.”

  Then they were out of Gianni’s sight and hearing.

  Moments later he realized that the limousine had returned and then sped away with Durning in the backseat.

  Gianni quickly cut a slit in the screening, reached in and opened two latches, and was waiting in the room when Mary returned.

  Her eyes went wide.

  “Gianni!”

  Only the single word escaped.

  “That’s still my name,” he said quietly. “What about you? What’s your name these days?”

  Mary was silent. All she seemed able to do was stare at him. As though at a ghost, Gianni thought. As though I look as dead to her as Vittorio looked to me.

  “I’m surprised to find you here,” he said. “I guess the one million wasn’t enough, was it? Who are you selling him now? Or is it just your usual whore self?”

  Gianni’s hands were shaking so badly it made him ashamed. What kind of man was he? She’d betrayed him and everyone else. She’d caused God only knew how many deaths, and how many more to come? And he was the one standing here with trembling hands.

  “Gianni.”

  She said his name again, this time so softly he could barely hear it. Was it finally the only word she was able to say? Was this her penance? Doomed to repeat the name of her fool through all the circles of hell?

  To quiet his hands and make him feel less ashamed, he took out his piece, screwed on the silencer, and aimed it between her eyes.

  “Where do you want it love?” he said softly and mockingly, using the endearment because this was how he had heard Henry Durning address her, thereby soiling the word for all time. “Between your lying eyes or your whore’s thighs?”

  He watched as her eyes flooded.

  Then he w
atched her grip his gun hand in both of hers to steady it, and lean her forehead against the silencer.

  “Go ahead,” she whispered. “Do it. If it will make you feel any better, just do it.”

  They stood that way. The only sound was their breathing. Until something broke inside him and he brought the gun down.

  I’m ludicrous, he thought. ] can’t even do this right.

  “Why?” he said. “Of all the men in the world, why did you have to come here, to him?”

  Her eyes still flooding, she stared blindly at Gianni. “For the same reason you came,” she said. “To get him to save the boy, or to kill him.”

  Gianni considered her. Was it possible? Not likely. Yes, but was it possible?

  “Durning would do that for you?”

  Mary Yung shrugged. “He wants me. He seems to see something in me.”

  “And what do you see in him ?”

  “Maybe some small hope of redemption.”

  “In that animal?”

  “He’s not an animal, Gianni.”

  “What then?”

  “A man in trouble. Who’ll do anything, even kill, to get out of it.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself while you’re fucking him?”

  Mary took the question seriously. “I’ll say this. I’ve felt dirty with any number of men, but I’ve never felt dirty with Henry. He says he loves me and I’m not sure exactly what that means to him. But I know he finds things of value in me that no one has ever found before.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I didn’t expect you to understand. But you asked me a question and I tried to answer.”

  Feeling a bit wobbly, Gianni sat down on the couch. “What about Peggy and the boy? Are they alive or dead?”

  “No one seems to know about the boy. The two men guarding him were found shot to death a few days ago, and no one has seen Paul since. But Peggy is definitely alive.”

  “Where?”

  “Someplace in Italy. Henry just found that out. After Carlo Donatti had told him she was dead. It seems he and Donatti have been playing their own little power games with her. With the don now apparently using her as a bargaining chip.”

  “For what?”

  “I have no idea. Henry never goes into details. But I do know he and Donatti have worked something out.”