Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  Then everyone but Paulie seemed to be talking at once, all with their questions and stories, but only the two most vital parts finally breaking through and holding.

  Vittorio Battaglia, dearly beloved father and husband, was alive.

  And Henry Durning, attorney general of the United States, was not.

  When Paulie did at last speak, it was to ask one question, “When can I go see my dad?”

  “I’ll have the copter take you and your mom right now,” said Donatti. “You’ll be in Monreale in an hour.”

  The don was still holding Paulie’s hand. “You see this boy, Gianni? You know what this boy did?”

  Gianni knew exactly what Paulie had done. He had just been told. But this was nowhere near enough for Carlo Donatti. He had to tell it again.

  “He just goddamn saved the three of us. That’s all. At eight years of age, questo fanciullo, this boy had the coglioni to draw down on that assassino, blow him away, and turn himself into a made man.”

  92

  PAULIE DIDN’T FEEL much like a made man when he walked into his father’s room in the doctor’s house in Sicily. He felt more like a baby.

  The thing was, finally seeing his father was nothing like he had thought it would be during all those days and nights of imagining it.

  The boy had many different visions of his moment of return, but his most transcendently joyous was the one in which his father would be alone and hard at work in his studio. “Papa?” he would say. And as his father turned and looked at him with eyes worn red from worrying and not sleeping, Paulie would run across the studio and jump into his arms. In the fantasy, all movements were slow, silent, dreamy, a ballet without music, in which his father’s paintbrushes were thrown into the air and floated, and he and his father hugged and kissed and sailed right along with them. Then the only sound was that of his father laughing, and when Paulie looked at him, his eyes were no longer worn and red but were bright and laughing.

  Not so.

  When Paulie actually walked into the room and saw his father, Vittorio Battaglia lay asleep in bed, his face so pale and thin and old looking that the boy almost didn’t recognize him.

  What had they done to his father?

  He heard his mother make a small sound behind him, a sigh like that of escaping steam. It merely confirmed the tragedy.

  “Papa?”

  He barely got the word through the sudden flood of tears.

  A baby.

  The boy pressed his lids together to stem the shameful flow. What was wrong with him? Hands fluttering like birds, he brushed angrily at his cheeks. Quick. His father mustn’t see.

  But his father saw.

  First, his son. Then, his wife. He saw.

  Yet with all the fever, not even near to believing it.

  Then finally, somehow, believing it.

  When something close to rational talk was at last possible, Vittorio Battaglia said to his son, “So tell me, Paulie. Tell me where you were and what you’ve been doing.”

  The boy told him.

  He told him from the beginning, from the moment Dom whacked him over the head and carried him away, to the squeezing off of that single final shot in the clearing. He left nothing out. A son telling a father a bedtime story, a fairy tale, a dream of magic landscapes peopled by dragons and a lone giant. Who really was just a little boy.

  Vittorio felt weak, confused, baffled. His little boy, his secret thumb-sucker had done this? While he, his father, had been doing what? Shooting up the wrong people, getting shot up in return, and lying here dreaming of death.

  He had proven unfit, unprepared. He had owed things to his wife and son that he hadn’t been able to provide. Wild beasts roamed loose in the streets.

  Yet, somehow incredibly, he had raised a tiger, he thought, and felt the first faint stirring among the tombstones in his chest.

  It made the best of him want to lift up and fly.

  93

  IT WAS VITTORIO who told Tommy Cortlandt. But Peggy was the one who had to take the CIA chief of station back to the clearing where it had all happened.

  Cortlandt was alone as he looked at Henry Durning in the grass. Peggy had just pointed the way and stayed in the car. The high grass moved in a breeze. The attorney general did not move. Over the years, Cortlandt had looked at a lot of bodies. Sometimes they looked as though they were sleeping. But not Henry Durning. This was not sleep.

  Cortlandt returned to the car and asked Peggy to please leave him alone for a few moments. Then he used the cellular phone to call Arthur Michaels on his secure line at the White House.

  “Just listen,” he said, and told the White House chief of staff where he was and what had happened.

  Uncharacteristically, it took Michaels several beats to respond. “I’m afraid we’re going to need the president on this, Tommy. Hold on a moment.”

  It turned out to be a lot more than a moment. But when the president did finally get on an extension, Michaels had already briefed him.

  “I hear it’s ended up as just about the worst,” President Norton said tiredly.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Cortlandt. “But if you’ll let me act fast, the damage can still be controllable.”

  “How?”

  “By turning the whole thing into a tragic accident.”

  The president’s voice was hesitant. “That’s possible?”

  “It happens all the time on these crazy killer roads.”

  “I don’t know, Tommy. That kind of cover-up can be awfully dangerous if it backfires.”

  Cortlandt was silent.

  “Exactly who would know the truth?” asked Arthur Michaels.

  “The boy and his parents, Gianni Garetsky, Mary Yung, Carlo Donatti, a few of our own agents.”

  “Good Lord,” whispered Norton.

  The CIA agent said nothing. He looked at Peggy Walters where she stood a short distance away, staring at some trees. She might have been on the rim of the earth. Less than two hours ago, she had been. It occurred to him that it had all started with her.

  “How can we trust that man to keep quiet?” asked the president.

  “It’s not really a question of trust.”

  “What then?”

  “The national good, Mr. President. Also, none of these people has any reason to want to cause trouble. All they want is to forget it and get on with their lives.”

  “And if they someday decide they don’t want to forget it?”

  “Then all they’d have is this wild story, without a shred of hard evidence, that no one in his right mind would ever believe.”

  “Maybe so,” said Norton. “But I still don’t think I’d feel comfortable with that many people knowing.” He paused. “What’s your feeling on the subject, Arthur?”

  “Very different from yours, Mr. President,” said the White House chief of staff.

  “Why?”

  “Because if we don’t go this route, we are left with only the ugly truth. And dear, sweet Christ, I do mean ugly.”

  The connection was silent for what seemed a very long time.

  “Since in this particular case,” Arthur Michaels went on, “what the truth really means is either a special prosecutor or a congressional committee enjoying a yearlong field day of digging up smelly murders, and cover-ups, and abuses of government office, and who knows what else. And all carried out by a United States attorney general carefully selected and appointed by you.

  “Not to mention exactly how much of this shit you yourself might allegedly have known before, during, or after the fact.”

  This time the following silence seemed even longer than it had before.

  “Tell me, Mr. President,” said the White House chief of staff. “Do you really want to put us through all that?”

  Norton’s sigh was barely audible. “You’re wasting your time here, Artie. What you should really be doing is selling rugs.”

  94

  IT WAS A strange period for Paulie.

  He was hap
py, of course. Why shouldn’t he be? His mother and father were alive and they were all together again. But there also were times when he was sad. And this bothered him. Because it was almost as if it wasn’t enough for him that his parents weren’t dead. That he somehow wanted more. Which wasn’t true.

  Still…

  At moments he could be sitting alone, or standing, or doing something, or just lying in bed at night, and suddenly there would be all these people. They would sort of come drifting by, maybe one at a time, or a few together, or even all at once… and there would be Dom, and Tony, and those three kids with their knives, and Nino the trucker with his flatbed, and Frank Langiono, and Carlo Donatti, and Henry Durning.

  No, thought Paulie, not just and Henry Durning. It was more like mostly Henry Durning. Because he was the one who seemed to come around so much more than any of the others,

  Which was the craziest part of all. Because he had never even heard of Henry Durning before those few moments they’d spent together in the grassy clearing. And even then, he didn’t know who Henry was. It wasn’t until late the next day, when he and his father were watching the television news in his father’s room, that Paulie began to learn certain things.

  Delivered in somber tones, the announcer’s lead line described it all.

  The attorney general of the United States, Henry Durning, was killed in a tragic accident last night when the car he was driving went off the Amalfi Drive not far from the Sorrento and exploded in flames.

  There were pictures of the fire-blackened car being lifted by crane from the bottom of a cliff, and of a smashed guardrail, and of an olive-green body bag being carried to an ambulance.

  Shots of Attorney General Durning talking to reporters at the Naples airport as he arrived earlier with the American delegation to the Sorrento Justice Conference.

  A close-up of the attorney general laughing at a question one of the reporters had just asked.

  Afterward, Paulie had questions of his own.

  So his father tried to explain how it was better if everyone believed that the United States attorney general had been killed in a car crash, instead of being shot by an eight-year-old boy he was about to murder, along with the boy’s mother and an American capo di tutti capi named Carlo Donatti.

  Paulie understood some parts of this, but not all. And what he didn’t understand, he tried to imagine. Beyond the few facts offered by his father, there really wasn’t much more he could do.

  Then watching Henry Durning’s funeral by satellite some days later, there was even more that Paulie didn’t understand.

  It was a very grand funeral in Washington, D.C., with a lot of important people present, and the president of the United States himself standing up and talking about Henry Durning. The boy listened carefully to every word. Since the president was talking about the man that he, Paulie Walters, had blown away with his snub-noser, Paulie felt that the president was really talking to him.

  And what did he hear the president saying while so many people sat listening?

  That Henry Durning was an outstanding American patriot and one of the great men of his time.

  That Henry Durning was a war hero who had put his own life at risk to save the lives of others, and been decorated with his country’s highest military award.

  That as head of the United States Department of Justice, Henry Durning had brought fresh meaning to the word jus-tice throughout the free world.

  That Henry Durning’s death was a tragic blow that couldn’t help but lessen the lives of people everywhere.

  So that listening to all this and more, Paulie thought, How can this be?

  When it was over, he spoke to his father, who had been watching and listening with him.

  “Does the president of the United States know what really happened to Henry Durning?”

  “Yes,” said Vittorio.

  “How does he know?”

  “Because I told a friend who’s an American intelligence agent, and he passed it on to the president.”

  Paulie looked at his father, still so pale and weak in bed. “Why did you have to tell him?”

  “Because he would have found out anyway. And I figured it would be better if he got it from me.”

  The boy felt the full chill of it enter him.

  The president of the United States knew that he, Paulie Walters, had shot to death this famous man.

  What could be worse?

  The answer to that one came very quickly.

  What could be worse was having this famous man shoot his mother, and him, and Carlo Donatti to death.

  It made the boy both frightened and angry.

  “Fuck!” he said, using the terrible F word in front of his father so he’d know how he felt.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Why does the American president have to be such a liar?” he said. “Why did he have to make up all those lies about Henry Durning just because he’s dead?”

  Vittorio Battaglia looked at his solemn-eyed tiger, at this overly serious miracle he had raised.

  “Those weren’t lies,” he said. “The man really did all those things. And a lot more that the president didn’t even talk about.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how could he?”

  The boy’s eyes were wide and troubled. He understood a lot, but this was way beyond him.

  “He was going to murder us all,” he said. “I swear, Papa. In another minute he would have done it.”

  “I know. I believe you. But people aren’t just one way. There are different parts to us all. Some parts can be real great. But other parts can stink to high heaven.”

  For Paulie, it was a mixed-up, suddenly frightening thought. And it stayed with him.

  He didn’t like the idea of there being different parts to everyone. It made him feel sad. He didn’t mind shooting the bad part of Henry Durning, but what about all that great stuff he had blown away along with it?

  Lying in bed that night, it made the boy remember the famous man turning to look at him during those last few seconds.

  It made him see again that funny look that was like the beginning of a smile.

  As if they had some secret joke that was for only the two of them.

  Except he now knew it wasn’t a joke at all.

  It was the great parts saying good-bye.

  Instead of laughing, Paulie wept.

  95

  GIANNI GARETSKY FELT none of Paulie’s need to weep. Instead, he felt the sweet spring of his brush against a tightly stretched linen canvas and remembered what it was like to be an artist.

  Better than being a shooter, he thought.

  People were, of course, still shooting one another. He supposed they always would. But this no longer had anything to do with him. Not directly, anyway. What he was interested in mostly was Mary Chan Yung and the substance of their days. The ones still ahead. Considering all that had happened during the past weeks, he felt himself ahead on points. From here on he had the same odds going for him as anyone, the same chances for joy and sorrow. He was pleased to accept them. As was Mary.

  Gianni had taken her directly from Sorrento General to a villa on Capri, where the light was soft and steady on most days, and the limitations on artists and lovers were strictly their own.

  Although Mary was still wan, weak, and convalescing, Gianni had already started her portrait. How could he stop himself? Never mind all that had gone out of her. To Gianni, what remained in the drawn, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, in the hurt, vulnerable lips, added up to far more than anything she might have lost to pain.

  Stepping back, the artist absently wiped his brushes and squinted as he studied what he had done so far.

  It was a rough-hewn, boldy rendered oil portrait, with the brush strokes showing strong and sure, the paint heavy, and the colors bright and broken. Mary’s eyes burned darkly from hidden places, her cheeks shone pale and gaunt above ridges of bone, and her mouth was a full-lipped, sc
arlet bow with the barest suggestion of a smile. Yet the painting seemed touched, all of it, with an almost inexpressible sadness.

  “Is that the way I look?”

  Mary had quietly slipped out of her chair and come up behind Gianni.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Is it? You’ll have to tell me.”

  She stared at him. “But you’re the one painting it?”

  “No. I’m just holding and moving the brushes. You’re the one who’s making it whatever it is.”

  Mary stood there for a long moment. “Then I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t know I was making it like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “So sad,” she said, and pressed herself to him.

  Holding her, Gianni felt how frail, how weightless she had become.

  “And I shouldn’t have,” she whispered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I love you too much to be looking so sad.”

  Yet it really was not that strange. Gianni had long been noticing that those who loved the most, often had the saddest eyes. Even when they were happy, parts of them seemed to be preparing for hurt. He supposed it was a kind of protection they used. They found it hard to trust what might lie ahead. Don’t get yourself too worked up, said the eyes. Don’t be too happy about your love because it’s not going to last. You’re going to lose it. In one way or another, it ends.

  Which was true, Gianni thought. Love was terminal. Sooner or later one of you, either you or your love, changed, faded, went away, or died. And the eyes knew it.

  But of course, with Mary, Gianni knew it was more than simply that.

  So that sitting together high above the water later, with the setting sun turning the sea crimson and a flight of gulls crying overhead, Gianni felt compelled to touch upon their com mon ghost. There was no escaping him anyway. Even unseen, Henry Durning still had a certain presence.

  “He won’t leave you alone, will he?” Gianni said.