Wolfkind

by Stephen Melling

  From beyond the door came sounds of laughter and then splashes from the pool. Other residents. Joshua listened to their sounds of play as he unfolded a large street-map of Los Angeles and tacked it to the wall right of the door. Several locations were already circled in red. His index finger traced a path from the Hollywood Jewel to the nearest mark. Stromboli Mansion was scrawled next to it. Annotations were scribbled beside other pre-marked locations: the Jamaican’s warehouse stronghold in Inglewood; several casinos; a red circle in the Fox hills district indicated Regan’s mansion.

  Hands on hips, he stepped back and surveyed the map. The stall was set for whenever he was ready. Discovering who the renegades worked with – or worked for – would involve a process of elimination, beginning of course with the most likely – Salvatore Durant.

  He tossed the magic marker and turned his head toward the sound of bathers by the pool. Someone laughed – a girl. Though a sweet sound, it made Joshua feel more desolate. More than anything he coveted their simplicity. Craved their anonymity. He envied each of them for not being him.

  At 6:55 on the morning of September 9th, Joshua Grenire stashed the Beretta deep in the wall safe in his motel room and took only the Minolta binoculars on this his first stakeout. The day was cloudless and bright, the sunlight spangling off the pool. A faint tang of Chlorine hung in the air. At this hour the sundeck was dry and deserted but for a lizard, which skittered away at Joshua’s approach.

  Following directions he had memorized last night, he steered a course to Missouri Ave, which according to the map overlooked Santa Monica Boulevard and presumably Salvatore Durant’s mansion.

  He cruised along Missouri until he found a secluded spot in the shade of a huge Eucalyptus. However, though less than a mile from Santa Monica Boulevard, Joshua’s lookout offered a poor view. Stromboli mansion, completely fenced, stretched two hundred yards along the boulevard. Although Joshua could see most of the perimeter, trees and shrubbery masked anything beyond. Strategically placed walls and fences effectively screened much of the structure.

  He sighed and lowered the binoculars. From this distance all he saw were shimmering tree-tops; eucalyptus, spruce, palm trees and countless others, mainly evergreens; perhaps deliberately evergreens to create a perennial screen. To the naked eye, the view from the hillside was scarcely a heat-hazed mirage.

  A wink of sunlight on glass near the perimeter fence at the front of the property caught his interest; he quickly aimed the binoculars. A bright red BMW pulled into the gateway. Two suited men emerged from a small outbuilding to observe the visitor. A moment later, the tall black gates proceeded to swing open. A brief puff of exhaust smoke, and the red car rolled through, reappearing in glimpses through the evergreens.

  Minutely adjusting the Minolta’s focus, he tracked the car’s progress until the growth of foliage completely blocked his view. He lowered the lenses, and with the naked eye searched for signs of the red car, but the woodland barrier was impenetrable. “Damn.”

  Joshua dropped the binoculars on the passenger seat and drove a few hundred yards farther along the road. From this new angle other parts of the grounds emerged from cover. He leaned out of the window, as though gaining an extra two feet might significantly improve his view.

  Though less of the driveway was visible from here, more of the actual structure was revealed. Particularly, a slice of the steps and the entrance porch. Two armed men stood sentry. The doors opened and a third man stepped into view, hands outstretched in a welcome gesture. This man looked familiar, and Joshua teased the focus dial, searching for a sharper image. Yes, the ponytail gave him away. Divo Serefini – Durant’s personal bodyguard – and a potential renegade.

  Joshua’s stomach lurched.

  The person to whom Serefini was gesturing came up the steps, brisk and businesslike. A young woman who, by the offhand manner in which she brushed off the bodyguard’s welcome, appeared to be in a foul mood. Joshua saw only a brief profile; though even at this range, he suspected she was Genna Delucio, the big man’s younger daughter. Not down as a suspect, but...

  An idea struck him. Durant’s daughter was supposedly a civilian, no longer a part of her father’s corporation – if she ever had been. And by the manner of her arrival she did not look like she planned a lengthy stay. Perhaps he could wait for her to emerge; follow her. She should be far less suspicious than a gangster. Could be this the easier route? Maybe a back door into Durant’s clan.

  He dumped the binoculars on the passenger seat, keyed the ignition and peeled away from the curb. The Camaro left a line of rubber on the road behind, which Joshua saw in the mirror. This coaxed a little smile from him. All at once his actions felt structured, imbued with a sense of purpose, directed by more than just plain guesswork. He took the first left off Missouri and headed down to Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Genna Delucio counted three men as they filed out of the gatehouse at Stromboli Mansion. She quick-glimpsed each of them; none looked familiar. If her father was recruiting outside guns, more paid soldiers, to stand between himself and the Invisible Assassin, he had to be fretting.

  Good. She liked to think of the cold-hearted bastard worrying. Anything capable of denting his sense of control could not be all bad.

  No sooner had the gates opened sufficiently for her car to fit through she pressed the gas, weaving her way through the grounds. Landscaped borders flanked the driveway. Lawn verges so well groomed that at first she mistook them for Astroturf. For reasons she could not define, this sickened her.

  In front of the house the driveway’s island centerpiece was profuse with color, the flowers in their peak of bloom. Something about the arrangements looked wrong; then she had it, and stifled a humorless laugh. Such was her father’s legend it appeared to her the flowers stood to attention under Sal Durant’s command. Open your petals to the sun or the seedlings get it. The immaculate gardens suggested her father enjoyed horticulture, but she doubted he knew Juniper from Jacaranda.

  Stromboli Mansion, a huge Spanish Modern residence, stood firm in the sun like a monarch. Wide stone steps served the main entrance, flanked by flower-filled hanging-baskets suspended from low balconies. Wings ran east, west and north, each serving eight rooms. This she remembered from her short childhood here. Returning today stirred no pleasant memories. Devoid of a mother, and therefore a mother’s love, her early life became virtually sterile under the control of her insidious father in this impersonal, barren house.

  Genna pulled up in front of the steps. She left the engine running and the door open. Looking neither left nor right, she strode along the gravel path to the steps. Two suntanned guards, armed with automatic weapons, stood sentry. One of them pointed. “I’ll have you car moved to-”

  “It stays there.” She knew the guards thought she was a bitch, but she didn’t care.

  As she mounted the steps the double oak doors swung open and Divo Serefini stepped out grandly, arms wide in greeting.

  Genna swatted at air between them. “Out of my way.” Without skipping a beat, Serefini dropped his arms, letting his finger trace a path across her shoulder. She turned pinned him with a piercing stare. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

  Serefini gave a light, disarming shrug, returning her stare levelly. “Just being friendly.”

  Regardless of the low esteem in which she held Serefini, despite her indomitable sense of self-possession, the son of a bitch rattled her. Somehow he managed to penetrate her stern defenses and make her feel molested simply with his eyes, as though his gaze were a physical entity poking and prodding at her clothing.

  A year ago, right after Suzanne was hurt, Genna came across him at the hospital. Confused and angry and overwhelmed with grief, she had fallen under the siege of paparazzi in the reception area. Serefini had muscled in and pulled her away and into an unoccupied room. In the relative brief quietness of that room, he’d made as if to comfort her, placing his hands on her shoulders. Genna, still in deep shock, had not immediately realized S
erefini’s hand slipping down her lower back. Then the doors had burst open and more reporters flooded the room. Thereafter Serefini regarded her with a furtive grin.

  Right now, on her father’s porch, he displayed that same expression. “Friendly?” She replied evenly. “I’d rather be ravished by wagon-full of ringworm-ridden bikers.”

  His macho expression shifted a touch.

  “The study,” he said shortly. “Your father’s expect-”

  Genna turned her back while Serefini was still talking. Head held high, she marched along the polished oak floor. The porch opened into a spacious hall that split into two ground floor wings. A double staircase ran up the walls, turned ninety degrees and met in the center, rose another flight, where the corridor split into the two second floor wings.

  The double doors to her father’s study were closed. Without bothering to knock she turned the handle and marched in.

  Salvatore Durant stood with his back to the door, his tall figure silhouetted by French windows and the sunlit gardens beyond, flanked by two of his men. A large board-room table, polished to a glaring shine, reflected her father’s shadow.

  She slammed the door behind her, punctuation for her arrival; still she provoked no reaction. Only the metronomic ticking of a large grandfather clock fractured the quietness.

  Hardened by years of experience at intimidating people, maintaining an illusion of precise control, Salvatore Durant turned only when he wished it. “Genevieve,” he said, as though she’d surprised him. He wore a Gucci suit over an open throated shirt; no necktie. His face was somewhat paler than she remembered. However, his eyes were exactly as she remembered them - they were soulless.

  When she stiffened at his cheek kiss, a studied, quizzical expression fell across his face. The son of a bitch actually tried to look wounded. After all the suffering he had put her through; the constant shadowing by his men, he still tried to push her sentimental button.

  Finding her own space again, Genna said: “Here’s the skinny: unless you stop having me followed I shall write two letters; one to the police, one to the press. I’ll create such a stinking pile of bad publicity every legitimate business you have interests in will run for cover. And after all the newspapers have scraped through the dirt and hung you on the rack, I’ll take Suzanne from here in LA and move her to a hospital in Canada. You’ll see neither of us again.”

  Her father remained pokerfaced for exactly five seconds. Then he cocked his head and smiled. “I underestimate you – again. You’ve got strength. And in this world…” he raised an index finger.

  “Spare me the commercial,” she said ungraciously. “I didn’t come here to listen to your big-talking Godfather speeches – you might fool these clowns,” she indicated the guards, “with well-rehearsed talk, but you and I know it’s no more than hot-air and horse-shit. I’m tired of being an object of your ‘care’. The pretense is killing me.”

  Without turning to look at his men, he said: “Carlos, Archie. Take a walk.”

  They did not wait for directions.

  Genna watched her father stroll over to his desk and pick up a large brown envelope. He slipped two fingers inside and pulled out what appeared to be photographs, which he placed on the table in front of her.

  “Take a look at these,” he father suggested. More than ever he resembled Boris Karloff. No false expression softened his rigid features. He appeared as he did to the world at large: a mean old bastard. Nothing had changed – he’d just switched tack; endeavoring to shock her into submission. Another ploy in a long line of ploys.

  “I won’t,” she said.

  “Look at them,” he ordered, grabbed them off the table and pushed them in front of her eyes.

  Driven to some extent by morbid curiosity, Genna glanced at the topmost photograph. At first she saw nothing recognizable in the image, and so she narrowed her eyes. Then the architecture resolved and she saw the man within the mutilation. Then she couldn’t unsee it. “Oh my God.”

  After overcoming her initial shock, Genna straightened and matched her father’s stare: “This is what your way of life represents: pain and death. That’s not the life I choose.”

  Her father shrugged and placed the snaps on the table. “Beyond these walls everything may appear fine, but you can forget the sunshine, the cool pacific breeze and the take-away meals – they’re illusions of common people. Out there, a war is being waged, a war which you’re part of-”

  “Will you stop saying that?” She yelled. “I’m part of nothing you created. I exist in spite of you. Live and move in spite of everything you are and pretend to be.”

  “Don’t disrespect me, Genevieve,” he said.

  “You think you’re worthy of respect? That’s an illusion you’ve conjured for yourself, with bullying and threats of violence.” She grabbed a handful of the photographs. “This is the only kind of newsreel you create; death and carnage and goddamn heartbreak. This stuff has been in my head for years and I’m…sick of it.”

  Her father remained cool.

  She threw the photographs at him; they seesawed to the floor at his feet. “Stick them in your portfolio.”

  “You’re upset.”

  “Yes, I am upset – very much so. If you really wanted to change that, you’d stay the hell out of my life.”

  Salvatore Durant turned and poured a shot of whiskey. “You may have taken your mother’s name,” he said, knocking back the drink. “But you are a Durant. You are my blood. Perhaps one day you’ll understand, maybe even learn to appreciate, what I’m trying to do - which is simple. I need you to move back in here for two...maybe three weeks, until this….assassin business blows over.”

  Genna laughed high and long in near comic frustration. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said.” She threw him a contemptuous look. “Like a machine, you switch off until it’s your turn to speak. March around your big house demanding to be heard and refusing to listen. I don’t live in that world. I never will.”

  With that she turned and pushed through the doors, down the corridor and through the main entrance. The BMW was as she had left it, door hanging open. The armed sentries did no more than exchange looks as she passed them, but snapped to attention as Durant came striding after her.

  “Genevieve.” He caught her arm.

  She stiffened at his touch. “Don’t you dare put your hands on me.” So icy was her tone that he released her at once. The sentries exchanged more furtive glances.

  “I can provide anything you need,” Durant said quietly.

  “I need my independence,” she said. “To walk down the street without being followed by the three stooges. I want a boyfriend you won’t intimidate.” She slammed the door and lowered the window. “And it would be especially nice,” she said with deliberate ungraciousness. “To get laid by the same guy more than once.”

  Durant did not look her in the eye. Instead, his gaze came to rest on the red BMW, Suzanne’s red BMW. And finally, his expression changed.

  Genna felt a rush of irreverent satisfaction. Her old man’s face twitched, and then finally he did look at her. Although Genna believed she felt no real love for her father, tears welled behind her eyes. Then all at once her resolve came down like a lead shutter, crushing the emotional rebellion beneath its heel.

  She patted the steering wheel. “Suzanne can’t drive anymore…remember?”

  Much to Genna’s surprise, her father raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, rubbed them together and showed her his empty palms. Then he turned away and strode back inside.

  Taken unawares by this notably rare show of resignation, Genna narrowed her eyes at his turned back. Then she threw the car into gear and retraced her path toward the gatehouse, continually checking the rearview mirror.

  Outside Durant’s mansion, where traffic continued to cruise by on Santa Monica Boulevard, Joshua watched for the red BMW. During the last fifteen minutes no one had gone in or come out of the gates. He had begun to fear that Genna Delucio had alre
ady left during the time it took him to get here from Missouri Avenue. Or Maybe Stromboli Mansion had alternative exits.

  At that moment, the nose of the red BMW poked out, paused briefly for a gap in the traffic, then joined the flow and soon became lost in the steady stream of cars.

  Joshua ditched the map he had been pretending to read and slipped into the line of vehicles, cutting up the car behind. He glanced once at Durant’s gatehouse, where three men stood together watching the BMW drive away. Fortunately they gave no sign they had connected her leaving with his hasty acceleration into traffic. Which was convenient, for now he was free to…free to what?

  He looked stupidly at his reflection; his reflection looked stupidly back: don’t ask me. The harder he thought, the easier his mind remained blank. He realized he was functioning purely on impulse. Inventing this as he went along. A moment ago he had clung to the half formed plan that he would somehow acquaint himself with the woman in the car. How he would execute this brilliant plan he hadn’t a clue. ‘Hello Miss Genna. I’m in town hunting assassins. By the way I’m Joshua.”

  Though still tracking the BMW, he dropped farther back. As he watched, another car inserted itself, increasing the gap. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, hoping for inspiration, wondering what silky technique James Bond would use. But nothing came. His mind was freewheeling in neutral.

  “Well thought out, smart guy,” he said, reluctantly admitting that, in the absence of a plan, his compulsion alone would have to suffice. The art of meeting women was a talent in which he possessed zero experience. Nevertheless, he hung on the BMW’s tail.

  After turning onto Wiltshire and heading east toward La Cienga, less than three miles from Stromboli mansion, Genna noticed her hands were trembling. All at once there was not enough air in the car and she felt the onset of nausea. A dim part of her suspected this might happen. After fights with her father, particularly the wowzers, she would get the shakes. The desperate energy she burned to remain steadfast and aloof during the earthquake often left her vulnerable to aftershocks.