Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  Then Henry Durning saw the boy running out into the clearing. He ran like he was all skinny arms and legs held together by rubber bands. His hair stood straight up, pressed by the breeze he made as he ran.

  How small and thin he is, thought Durning. I never imagined he would be so small and thin.

  The boy’s mother didn’t move at all. She just stood frozen beside Carlo Donatti, both hands covering her mouth, watching her son struggle toward her through the high summer grass.

  Insanely, Durning felt a hard dryness in his throat.

  Jesus Christ, how did I ever get to this?

  That same stupid question.

  With its same irrefutable answer.

  Trying to keep afloat.

  When I should have just let myself sink a long time ago. I can still do it.

  For an instant, in the imagining, he was stirred. But then, considering what it would mean, all it finally did was make breathing difficult for him.

  Across the clearing, the boy and his mother held each other as Carlo Donatti stood watching.

  Durning rose, quietly came up behind Frank Langiono,. and shot him once in the back of the head. With a silencer in place, the sound was barely more than a whisper.

  The attorney general holstered his gun and circled around through the brush before revealing himself to those in the clearing. Then carrying his bag of evidence, he walked toward the man, woman, and boy who stood silently watching him approach.

  He saw the long bag in Donatti’s hand and recognized the beginning of it all.

  He saw Irene’s surgically altered face and found enough fear and loathing there to make him believe in demons.

  He saw Paulie’s eyes and they froze his heart because he knew he was going to have to kill the boy, too.

  So, of course, he offered them his best smile and warmest, most winning manner.

  “It’s been a long time, Irene, and you look just as lovely this way as you did nine years ago. Carlo, I’ve never seen a more dramatic entrance. Imagine dropping out of the sky that way. You make even the gods jealous.”

  Then Durning bent to the boy. “And you must be Paulie. Where have you been all this time? Didn’t you know half the world’s been looking for you?”

  Paulie stared into Henry Durning’s eyes as though he were trying to crawl inside them. “Where’s my father?” he said. “What have you done to my father?”

  Henry Durning stayed level with Paulie’s eyes. For one long moment he felt himself in the same place with him. “I’m afraid I don’t know where your father is. I’ve never even met him. But I hear he’s a good man.”

  “He’s better than you.”

  “I’ll bet he is.”

  The attorney general rose slowly, feeling a less-than-ratio-nal urge to stroke the boy’s hair. Then he turned and looked at Carlo Donatti.

  “You have all the material, Carlo?”

  The don nodded. “And you?”

  “Right here in this bag.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  There was no visible drama in the exchange. All things considered, thought Durning, the whole business seemed rather mundane. If there was any touch of the exotic it came from the setting of a glorious sunlit clearing under an azure Mediterranean sky. Otherwise, there were just two aging men opening their bags and handing each other assorted papers and objects, while an attractive woman and her young son stood silently watching, and an unseen dead man lay staring up through the trees.

  When Durning finally tired of pretending to examine the plastic-wrapped rifle, jewelry, and forensic material he was squatting beside in the grass, he looked up and found Carlo Donatti gazing at him over the blued steel barrel of an automatic.

  The attorney general blinked. It was pure reflex.

  “You always did have a rather bizarre sense of humor, Carlo.”

  “I know. That’s why I never tell jokes.”

  “What would you call this?”

  “I’d say it was real serious stuff, Henry.” Donatti’s eyes were steady, cold as black ice. “You see, I’m not giving you Mrs. Battaglia and the boy. I figure we’re all squared away now. And, sweet Jesus Christ, finally, enough has got to be enough.”

  Durning squatted there in the grass. Among other things, he felt utterly foolish. He looked at Irene and Paulie and saw them staring back at him with such gravity that even the air and grass seemed charged with it. So he laughed. He had no idea what the laugh meant. It was just that at this particular moment it was the only thing he could think of that might make him feel a bit less ludicrous and restore a measure of grace.

  “Why not?” he said, and offered another smile as well. “I have no problem with that. As long as everybody is happy.”

  No one seemed convinced.

  “Fair is fair,” said Donatti. “You’ve got the rifle and forensic evidence, so there’s no real case against you. And Mrs. Battaglia’s assured me she just wants to forget the whole miserable thing.”

  Durning turned to her. “That’s true?”

  “I told you when we spoke on the phone,” Peggy said. “You should have trusted me before. I would never have given you away.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I just want to be with those I love and get on with my life.”

  Henry Durning slowly nodded. How lovely, he thought, and felt a quiet desperation in just how much he ached to believe that this sudden pathway to light, to some vague hope of redemption, could still be possible. He felt he had good things in him that were yet to be done. He was sure he had them.

  He looked at Paulie, standing close against his mother, and saw it all in the incredible solemnity of the child’s face. Such a serious little boy, he thought, and wondered whether he ever laughed, or even smiled. He looked at those dark, tragic eyes, still level and steady on his, and felt them enter his heart. He had promised Mary he would save the boy and wondered if he might yet be able to do it. Except that it suddenly seemed to be less for her than for himself.

  Durning smiled at the kid.

  “And what about you, Paulie?” he said with that quiet, half-grave, half-facetious manner with which he had never failed to charm children of all ages. “Do you think there’s some hope for me?”

  The boy gazed at him. He didn’t understand facetiousness. He had a natural depth of perception that dug beneath and had no use for charm.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “Do you think if I tried real hard, I might get to be even a little bit as good as your father?”

  Paulie considered the question. “Are you an artist?” he asked, because regardless of whatever else his father might do in the course of his life, to Paulie he would always remain first and foremost an artist.

  “No. Though I sometimes wish I were.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “A lawyer.”

  “I don’t like lawyers.”

  The attorney general laughed. “Who does?”

  Then Durning suddenly remembered the dead man behind the bushes and felt it all go bad inside him.

  Wait till they discover this one.

  So much for dream time.

  The whole thing had been crazy anyway. He had come too far on blood to suddenly start counting on good will to keep him going. Too many knew about him. He might be able to handle those in Washington because they depended on such niceties as legal and political considerations. But people like Donatti, Battaglia, and Garetsky were limited by no such constraints.

  Too bad, he thought, and felt something near to total despondency, as if such heartfelt remorse made him better in some way. Finally, you were nothing more or less than what you did. And he knew exactly where that placed him.

  “So that’s it?” he asked the don.

  “You tell me, Henry.”

  “I’m not by nature a villain, Carlo. I didn’t enjoy it and I had to work very hard at it. Since my basic survival needs seem to have been met, I’m more than happy to retire as the heavy in all this.
”

  “Good. Tutto buono. For all of us.”

  “Can I count on your getting the word to Battaglia and Garetsky?”

  “As soon as I find them.”

  Kneeling in the grass, Durning had started gathering together the jewelry and forensic evidence Donatti had brought him, and putting the separate pieces in his bag.

  “Will they listen to you?” he said. “Will they accept an armistice? Or will I be living with armed guards for the rest of my life?”

  “No problem. All Vittorio ever wanted was his wife and son. Now he has them.”

  Henry Durning nodded as he put the last of the forensic evidence in his bag.

  And I have you, he thought, and fired the big .357 magnum through the canvas Adidas bag, its full-scale, unsilenced explosion filling the clearing and echoing from the cliffs. The don went over backward as if slammed by a bat. Durning saw his automatic fly loose and disappear into the grass. Peggy and the boy stared blankly, stunned by the explosion, trying to understand what had happened. Then Henry Durning stood up with the magnum out of the bag and in his hand, and they understood.

  Paulie felt his mother grab him, but he didn’t look at her. He was too busy watching the two men. The explosion had filled his head and overfilled it until there was nothing else.

  He saw the man called Henry standing with the big gun in his hand, and the other man, Carlo, down in the grass with his shirt getting red all around his right shoulder.

  But Carlo’s eyes were still open and he was pushing himself up with his left arm so he could see Henry better, and maybe know what he was going to do next. Which was pretty dumb, the boy thought, because anybody should know that what Henry was going to do next was shoot Carlo right through his head.

  Then something else suddenly seemed even dumber. Because where was Frank Langiono? If he was supposed to be Carlo’s bodyguard, why wasn’t he out here doing something?

  Because he was dead.

  Paulie understood this even as he thought it. Just as he understood that Henry was going to kill Carlo, then his mother, and then him. He didn’t know why. All he knew was that it was going to happen.

  Except that Henry somehow seemed in no rush to do any of it. He just stood there with the big gun in his hand, looking at Carlo while Carlo looked back at him with this funny expression on his face.

  “If you’re going to do it, then goddamn do it,” Carlo said. “I just hate all this messing around.”

  “I’m sorry, Carlo.”

  “I know. You’re always sorry. Every time. Only it never seems to stop you, does it?”

  Henry stood there without answering.

  Watching him and moving very carefully, Paulie took his snub-noser out of the pocket where he’d been carrying it for the past two days and nights. He lifted it with both hands and aimed it at the back of Henry’s head. His mother was no longer holding him, but he felt her eyes and hoped she wasn’t going to say or do anything to make Henry turn. He knew that Carlo was able to see him from where he lay sprawled in the grass, but he wasn’t worried about Carlo. He was someone who would understand exactly what he should and shouldn’t be doing.

  “How did you know about my man back there in the brush?” Paulie heard Carlo ask, to keep Henry talking.

  “Because it’s how you think.”

  The boy took a deep breath, as Dom had taught him, held it, and began to squeeze the trigger.

  I’11 get only one shot, he thought, and it was exactly then that Henry turned and looked at him.

  Paulie saw something funny on his face, almost like the beginnings of a smile. As if they had some secret joke that only the two of them knew about and understood.

  Then the revolver fired and blew it all away.

  91

  GIANNI GARETSKY SLOWLY regained consciousness.

  He could see the sky through only one eye. He was on his back in the dirt. But he wasn’t dead. Yet his head burned like hell.

  He pushed to a sitting position. With his one good eye, he saw the wasted car a few feet away, and his own car, intact, farther down the trail.

  Then he remembered the man with the bloody face lifting the gun, and felt again the familiar stillness of falling.

  Gianni touched his head where it burned, and touched his blinking eye. He felt dried blood in both places. If the bullet had hit a quarter inch lower, he wouldn’t be sitting up. Ever.

  His watch said he had been unconscious for almost two hours.

  On his feet, he stumbled over to the man who had shot him. This time he was as dead as his companion. Finally.

  With effort, and touches of dizziness, Gianni made it back to his own car. He lost about ten minutes sitting there. It occurred to him that it was all lost.

  It was another five minutes before he was thinking clearly enough to pick up the car phone and call Tom Cortlandt’s direct line in Brussels.

  A woman’s voice answered.

  “I’m trying to reach Tom Cortlandt,” said Gianni. “It’s important.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Charlie’s friend.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Hold on, please,” said the woman. “I’ll check it.”

  She was back in a moment. “I have another number for you to call.”

  Gianni wrote the number down, hung up, and sat staring at it. Either the scalp wound had addled his brain, or this was Dr. Helene Curci’s home number in Monreale, Sicily. It certainly was the number he had called when he last spoke to her cousin, Lucia. It made no sense. But what did, lately?

  Gianni Garetsky called it.

  “Cortlandt here,” said the intelligence agent.

  Gianni felt a new madness enter him. “Gianni Garetsky,” he managed, and waited.

  The phone hummed.

  “Where are you?” Cortlandt’s voice had changed but held its calm. “And tell me what’s happened?”

  Coldly, flatly, feeling like a recording and holding back his own questions, Garetsky told him.

  “You’re sure both men are dead?” Cortlandt said when he had finished.

  “Yes.”

  The agent sucked in air. “This is all terribly unfortunate.”

  Gianni sat there feeling sick.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Cortlandt. “You had no way of knowing. And it was all handled very badly. But those were our people you totaled.”

  “Your people?” Gianni echoed dumbly.

  “Yes.”

  “What the hell were your people—”

  “They were just supposed to get you and Mary Yung off Durning’s back. Not start a goddamn war.”

  “Where’s Durning now?”

  “We don’t know. He’s not in his hotel. He must have taken off when our people were chasing you.”

  It all became too much for Gianni.

  “You and your fucking people! What have you goddamn been doing to us? I don’t understand all this shit. I thought you were trying to help Vittorio and his family?”

  “I was,” said Cortlandt. “I still am. Vittorio is right here in the room with me. But Henry Durning’s the attorney general of the United States. I had certain obligations to the national interest.”

  Gianni felt his control going completely, and he let it.

  “Fuck you and your goddamn obligations!” he shouted. “You had no goddamn right. I trusted you, damn it! You know how many lives this national interest crap of yours has cost? Those Company idiots of yours even went and killed—”

  Gianni stopped himself right there. He was only assuming the worst. He absolutely didn’t know for sure.

  But Tommy Cortlandt was with him all the way.

  “Mary Yung isn’t dead,” he said. “She’s not all that great, but she’s alive and being cared for.”

  Gianni let it filter through him.

  “Where is she?” he said thickly.

  “Sorrento General.”

  About to hang up and start the car, Gianni stayed with it a moment longer.

&
nbsp; “What about Carlo Donatti and Vittorio’s wife and boy?” he said. “Did your asshole people at least do any better with them?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Donatti somehow evaded them. And they never did find Mrs. Battaglia and the boy.”

  “Absolutely terrific,” said Gianni.

  His eyes cleaned, and the wound in his scalp treated, Gianni sat in Mary Yung’s hospital room, waiting for her to wake up.

  The late-afternoon light drifted in, and streaks of sun fell on her face, on that incredible nose and mouth, still visible among the bandages.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw a nurse, a doctor who had just stopped by to read her chart, then Gianni.

  “Gianni?” It came out as a confused whisper.

  He reached for her hand, feeling himself grinning and nodding insanely, a mute maniac clown.

  “You’re not dead?” she said.

  He shook his head.

  “I thought you were,” she told him.

  “And I thought you were,” he said, feeling dry, helpless tears somewhere deep in his throat. “That’s what it took. That’s when I was finally able to tell you. When you were no longer there to hear it.”

  “Hear what?”

  “That I love you. That I never stopped. That as far as an idiot like me can tell, I never will.”

  Later, as she slept, Gianni explained it all to Teresa. Not that he had to. Who would know any of this better than his wife?

  Things were being done to Mary Yung. So Gianni Garet-sky, his head bandaged, was out pacing the corridors of the emergency area when he passed the small group heading in the opposite direction.

  Abstracted, he was vaguely aware of a man being pushed on a wheeled stretcher, with a young boy holding his hand on one side, and a woman walking beside him on the other.

  “Gianni?”

  They must have been about twenty feet past him by then, and the woman’s voice was tentative, questioning. Then he turned, and any faint remaining doubt was removed.

  “Gianni!”

  To Garetsky, it came almost in the nature of a private non-religious epiphany, with Peggy clutching him, and the boy, Paulie, staring with his dark, serious eyes, and Carlo Donatti half raising himself from the wheeled stretcher like a gray-faced, suddenly resurrected corpse.