Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  “Durning told you that?”

  “He implied it. Which is the best I can hope for with him. But he also asked how I’d like to meet him in Capri for an idyllic week of sun, sea, and love.

  “When?”

  “He’ll be flying to Naples late tomorrow evening for some sort of conference. But he doesn’t expect to be hanging around there long and said he hasn’t had a real vacation in years.”

  “Then you won’t be going together?”

  “No. I’ll be flying Alitalia, and he’ll be on a government plane with the delegation.”

  Gianni sat staring at the gun in his hand. It was no longer shaking. “And you think this is all tied in with Peggy?”

  “It has to be.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Henry never mentioned a word about Capri or g6ing to that Naples conference until after his last meeting with Carlo Donatti. Which was right after he found out Peggy was actually alive. Then he suddenly turned all sweetness, light, and hope and love. Remember, Peggy is the heart of this whole nightmare for him. Only when she is dead is he finally in the clear.”

  “Do you really believe Durning has plans to kill her himself?” Gianni asked, stunned.

  “Of course. That’s why he’s going to Italy tomorrow. Who else but himself can he finally trust to do it? He’s learned the hard way. Ten years ago he trusted the job to Donatti, who trusted it to Vittorio, who went and married Peggy instead of killing her. Then a few days ago he again trusted Donatti to get the job done. But all the don did was tell Henry she was dead, and hold her for whatever kind of deal he was trying to work out.”

  Mary slowly sat down, as if the weight of all this deception was simply too much to handle on her feet.

  “Which leaves only Henry himself to do it,” she said. “Not someone else to squeeze the trigger and possibly talk about it later. And certainly no witnesses to be there and see him do it. Just Henry and Peggy. As alone together as when they started out ten years ago.”

  Mary Yung sat mutely, eyes stricken as though witnessing the actual scene as described. “And afterward,” she said tonelessly, “if Henry’s really learned from past experience, he’ll make sure her body is never found.”

  Gianni watched her sitting motionless, fingers clasped like spikes in her lap. “You’ve done a lot of thinking about it.”

  “What else do I have to think about,” she said dully. “How I made it all happen? How I destroyed a whole family for my million? You said it all when you walked in here. Except you were too kind. At least a whore gives an honest trade. Herself for the money. I didn’t even sell myself. I sold others.”

  He felt, as he listened to her, the weight of her heart.

  “How you must hate me,” she said.

  Gianni was silent. He had lost even that. If he despised anyone, it was himself. For being such a damn fool.

  “Since Vittorio’s not with you,” she said, “I guess they killed him.”

  “Not quite. He’s in a hospital with two holes and a bunch of tubes in him. But he thinks his wife and son are dead. So the best of him is dead, too.”

  Mary Yung’s eyes, brimming all this time, suddenly spilled over and ran down her cheeks. It made Gianni feel no better, and he looked at his gun and silencer and the back of his hands.

  “What are your plans?” he asked.

  “I’ll meet Henry in Capri and see what I can do.”

  “You mean besides fuck him?”

  Mary nodded, her expression unchanged. “He wants very much for me to love him. Maybe that can at least help save the boy. If not Peggy.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I have to.”

  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. A little girl’s gesture.

  “And you?” she asked. “What are you going to do?”

  Gianni just looked at her.

  “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust me, either.”

  Gianni holstered his piece and rose to go. “Will your Henry notice the slit in the window screen tonight?”

  “He won’t even be in here.”

  “You’d better have it fixed while he’s gone tomorrow. No point in making him wonder.”

  Mary Yung nodded.

  She walked to the back door with Gianni.

  “Please,” she said. “Just try to believe this. Every word I said to you tonight was true.”

  Gianni quickly turned away. He didn’t want to have to see what was taking place on her face as he left.

  He checked into a Holiday Inn not far from the airport. Then he got out of his clothes and showered for the first time in two days.

  Gianni stayed under the hot water for about half an hour. When he finally came out, he toweled himself dry with almost brutal roughness. In the mirror over the sink, his face stared back at him through a film of steam. He smiled as though testing the muscles, then shrugged and turned away.

  The soap he had used was scented and there seemed to be a clinging, distinctly feminine fragrance in the air that had nothing to do with Mary Yung, yet filled the room with her presence. Insanely, he felt himself begin to melt down under the bright lights, finished up quickly, and left the bathroom.

  Gianni put on fresh underwear and lay down stiffly on the bed. He didn’t own pajamas or slippers or a robe. These were for sickness or lounging, and he was never sick and never lounged. The moment he was up he put on his pants and shoes, put on his man’s responsibilities and dignity His wife had teased him about not knowing how to relax, but had understood his needs better than he.

  Teresa. He suddenly seemed to have lived two lifetimes since she was gone. How simple things had been with her. There was love, you knew what you had, and that was that. And now? Pain and deception.

  Watching the time, he waited until midnight. Then he put through a call to Dr. Helene Curci’s home number in Mon-reale, Sicily, where it was just 6:00 A.M. But it was Lucia’s voice that he heard answer.

  “This is Gianni,” he said in Italian. “I’m sorry if I woke you. How’s Vittorio?”

  “Weak, but getting better. He keeps asking if you’ve. called. Do you have news for him?”

  “Yes. And it’s good. His wife and son are alive.”

  “Oh, Gianni!” Lucia’s voice went thick with emotion. “He’s been so sad, so sure they were gone. Where are they?”

  “Somewhere in Italy. I don’t know any more than that. But tell him I’ve got some leads.”

  “Wonderful. You take care.”

  “You, too. We owe you and your cousin everything.”

  It was later that Gianni felt the depression setting in. How much false hope had he conveyed, and how much damage would it do if and when it came to nothing?

  Still, even false hope was better than none, he thought, and he was almost able to believe it for a while.

  Then he turned out the light, lay back once more on the bed, and pictured Henry Durning coming home to his Georgetown house, walking into his bedroom, taking off his custom-tailored dinner clothes, and placing his naked body between the smooth, welcoming thighs of Mary Yung.

  Gianni’s motel bed felt damp and haunted with lumps, and his body lay rigid. He forced a yawn to fool himself into believing he was ready for sleep. But it failed to work.

  Slowly, Gianni began to swear. He swore carefully, almost fastidiously, in a low, even voice. When he had exhausted every vile word he knew in English and Italian, he dug back for a few Yiddish words and added these, reciting his bitter, trilingual litany with as much sincerity as he could muster in the solitary dark of the quiet room.

  69

  ABOUT TWO HOURS before Gianni Garetsky’s call to Lucia, Vittorio Battaglia had felt himself trapped in a nightmare.

  On his first night out of the intensive care unit and in his own room, he was suddenly dry mouthed, sweating, and unable to breathe, with some animal claw making marks on his chest, and the devil himself choking him on his own air of foul intent.


  But it was no nightmare, no animal, no devil. It was just an iron hand gripping at his throat, and a pillow jammed over his face.

  There was a sound of heavy breathing, nothing more, a quiet pressing and straining, pulse packed against pulse in suffocating blackness.

  They’ve found me, he thought, and for an instant he actually was grateful. Let it be over, he told himself. Then a view of what was on the other side of darkness came to him: a lovely vision of his wife and son laughing in the glow of a summer evening, waiting, unhurt, whatever damage they might have suffered in their passage having been magically healed. He was weary with a most honorable fatigue. He’d had enough. What was there without them anyway? Only being alone, and more degraded clowning, and all the best of it was behind you and gone.

  Vittorio was as far into himself as he had ever been. Until spasms began opening and something cried out.

  Don’t let the bastards get away with it.

  Then the anger and hatred came, passing into him in waves. His hand drove between his legs, and he groped for what remained of his manhood. Which at this possibly final moment of his life was to be found not in his poor limp thing, but rather in the sweet hard butt of his automatic.

  The wonder was that he had enough control and presence of mind at that point to remember to release the safety.

  But he did.

  And he aimed straight up against the weighted sheet directly above him.

  Then he squeezed once, twice, hearing only the soft sound of the silencer. No more than that. Until there was a single grunt and he felt the full weight of his intended killer collapse against his chest.

  Vittorio pushed the pillow off his face and sucked air. He saw flashing lights that whirled in a dream. When he felt ready to trust his eyes, he opened them.

  A heavyset, dark-haired man he had never seen lay half on and half off the bed. Vittorio felt for a pulse. But both shots had entered the man’s chest and he was dead.

  The door was closed and Vittorio lay aiming his piece at it in case the dead man hadn’t come alone. But no one entered the room, and the corridor outside was quiet.

  So they’d found him. Which was no surprise. The wonder was that it had taken them this long. The mob had eyes and ears everywhere, and there were simply too many shifts and too many people working in a hospital to keep something like this quiet.

  Vittorio Battaglia closed his eyes. Much of his fury had passed, and he felt no great urgency to take action. Not that there was much he could do, or even felt like doing. Although he was out of intensive care, no longer connected to tubes, and able to take short walks along the corridor, he was weak as an infirm old man and subject to recurrent bouts of dizziness. Still, unless he didn’t mind being dead within the next few hours, he would have to get his pale, fevered ass out of here as fast as possible.

  So Vittorio set about doing just that.

  He slid the body out of sight under his bed. He got out of his hospital gown and into his street clothes. And he quietly eased past the nursing station while the two on-duty nurses were busy in patients’ rooms.

  By the time he reached the parking lot behind the hospital, he was soaked through with perspiration and had almost passed out twice. Finally, he was dizzy enough to have to lean against a car to keep from falling.

  Great.

  Vittorio wondered if he was hemorrhaging from all the moving about. But he didn’t feel a thing. Which wasn’t to say nothing was happening to him. Like spirits of the dead, emotions tore at him and refused to leave. He wished he had been smarter, braver, more gifted and aware, as if it somehow were hidden failures of his own that had wasted his family.

  You get what you deserve in this life.

  And what kind of idiot had come up with that one?

  The dizziness passed and Vittorio pushed himself away from the car and began carefully making his way out of the parking lot.

  Heading where?

  He had no idea.

  Of course he could always call Lucia and her doctor cousin, impose himself on them, and probably end up making them pay with their lives for all their kindnesses.

  But he would sooner wander off into the woods and cover himself with leaves. They deserved better. Inasmuch as the mob had found out he was in the hospital, they undoubtedly also learned who had brought him there in the first place. Which meant they would head straight for Dr. Curci’s house as soon as they discovered him gone and their assassin dead.

  So much for that.

  He was barely out of the parking lot when he saw the lights of a motel off to his right and a few blocks down the road. With half-a-dozen stops along the way, in just under fifteen minutes, he was able to make it to the entrance of what was called the Palermo Motor Lodge.

  It was a big commercial establishment and the parking area was almost full. Which was good. Because it was the kind of place where it wasn’t unusual for guests to be checking in at all hours of the night.

  Vittorio rested against the hood of a parked car until his breathing was easy and quiet. Then he wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief, finger-combed his hair, and walked into the lobby without falling on his head in front of the desk.

  He registered, using one of his several CIA names and credit cards, and said he expected to stay for two or three nights. Then the clerk gave him his room key, wished him a pleasant stay, and returned to the paperback he had been reading when Battaglia appeared.

  Something took hold of Vittorio and drew him toward the sanctuary. He felt as though he were in a powerful magnetic field where some force without sensation was leading him to perform one small act of survival after the other without a single contribution from anything resembling a will of his own.

  Until it took him to his room, opened the door with his key, closed and locked the door behind him, and stretched him flat out on the bed without his turning on a light or taking off his clothes.

  Suddenly it was all quite clear. The decision had been made for him in his hospital bed with that pillow over his face and those steel fingers clutching his throat. He wasn’t going to die tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. He was going to live and get his strength back, and finally do what had to be done.

  He wasn’t going to let the bastards get away with it. It was the thought that had kept him alive when he was nearly gone earlier, and it would go on keeping him alive for however long it took to get them.

  But get them he would.

  As poor Gianni would try to do. But wouldn’t be able to. And would finally die of it himself.

  He told his old friend good-bye.

  As he already had told his wife.

  And as he told his son.

  Good-bye… good-bye… good-bye.

  * * *

  It was just 6:30 A.M. as Vittorio silently offered his final good-byes. Which was about the time Lucia was driving to the Monreale Hospital to bring him the good news from Gianni.

  70

  PEGGY WAS SITTING on the back terrace of the Sicilian villa when one of her guards came out with a telephone.

  He plugged the jack into a nearby connection and handed her the receiver. “It’s for you, signora,” he said, and went back into the house to allow her privacy.

  Not that she was without surveillance. Another guard sat about a hundred yards away, in the shade of a tree. They were omnipresent. It was the only visible indication that she was anything other than the pampered lady of the manor she appeared to be.

  Except perhaps for the whiteness of her knuckles as she gripped the telephone, and the nest of snakes that never left her stomach.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “It’s Carlo Donatti in New York, Mrs. Battaglia. I hope you’re well.”

  “If you consider going quietly mad and vomiting every few hours being well.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Donatti. “But I have some good news for you. Before too long, I believe you should be together with your son.”

  She felt a flutter i
n the lower eyelid of her right eye. “What does‘before too long’ mean?”

  “It’s hard to pinpoint something as complex as this. But I don’t think thirty-six to forty-eight hours would be too far off the mark.”

  Peggy took a long, deep breath. She had a horror of suddenly starting to scream and not being able to stop.

  “Can I really believe that?”

  “Absolutely. But first we have a few details to take care of. You mentioned buried jewelry and the murder weapon as backup evidence. You said you could tell me where to find them. I assume that’s true.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then please tell me now because I must have these things confirmed.”

  “You’ll have to write it all down. There’s too much to remember.”

  There was a metallic sound from the other end as something hit the phone.

  “I’m ready,” said Donatti. “Go ahead.”

  Peggy gave it to him then, in full detail. She had carefully memorized it almost ten years ago, hoping she would never have to use it, but knowing, too, that if she ever did need it, the need would be a critical one.

  She started with road and landmark directions that would bring a searcher to within fifty yards of the burial site, and ended up with the kind of foot-by-foot, inch-by-inch measurements that could only have been produced by a professional surveyor’s level on a tripod. Which, as Peggy told the don, she actually had rented and learned to use before she and Vittorio fled.

  Carlo Donatti was impressed. “You’re an incredible woman, Mrs. Battaglia.”

  Knowing you can’t get good news by asking for it, Peggy asked anyway. “Do you know anything about Vittorio?”

  “Nothing. And it’s just as well. With Vittorio, any news would have to be bad.”

  The line hummed between them and Peggy groped for a way to hold on. She didn’t want the connection broken. It was her one link to hope.

  “Please,” she said. “You’ve known Vittorio since he was a boy. Up until this whole terrible business with Henry, wasn’t he always loyal to you?”