by Cleo Coyle
“What exactly do you mean by entertaining?”
“A gift here, a gratuity there, gold cuff links, diamond stickpins. A Rolex. Maybe a month’s rent. Just little tokens of their esteem—”
“Good God, Clare. This man is a gigolo!”
“Eh, scusami! It’s a living. And I do it well. Customer satisfaction has always been my goal.”
“So why did you grab Mrs. Dubois?” Matt demanded.
“We had a plan,” Benedetto confessed. “The Campanas and I. We know the woman means something to Gus, so we were going to trade her for the Eye of the Cat. Gus going to the hospital ruined that plan.”
“How were you going to fix it?”
“Bruno says the lady’s son inherited the Eye along with Sophia Campana. We are going to send him a ransom note—”
“With the poor woman’s finger, or her ear, included in the envelope?” Matt growled. “You’re no better than those ruthless kidnappers in South America—”
“Che schifo! We are not barbarians, sir! I would never touch a hair on that sweet woman’s head. Why, if she were younger, I would make the love to Mrs. Dubois. Si, fare l’amore! Sadly, Blanche is too old for a virile man like myself.”
Matt stared at Benedetto. “You’re at least eighty. What are you, delusional?”
He shrugged. “I prefer younger women.” His leering interest shifted to me—or more accurately, my cleavage. “Like this belladonna beside me.”
If I’d had dinner, I would have lost it then. Suddenly, I wanted out of this cab as fast as possible. Fortunately, we’d arrived at our destination.
When the cab sped away, it left us on a quiet one-way street with three- and four-story brick and sandstone row houses on either side. A few blocks away, a revitalized Court Street teemed with bistros, bars, bakeries, banks, and boutiques, but on Union Street you could hear a diamond stickpin drop.
Benedetto led us up a flight of concrete steps. He reached for a doorbell, but Matt stopped him.
“We cannot get in unless they buzz the door,” said Benedetto.
Matt shook his head. “We need the element of surprise.” He studied the sturdy door, and the leaded glass panels on either side.
Benedetto smirked. “I told you—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Matt reached into both of the old man’s white pants pockets and turned them inside out. Coins scattered on the ground.
Matt ripped one pocket free, then the second.
“Eh! These are tailored pants!”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find someone who will entertain you with a new pair.”
Matt slipped both pockets over his right hand. With the makeshift boxing glove in place, he punched the glass panel. The first blow cracked the glass, the second shattered it. Then he reached through the gap and turned the doorknob from the inside.
A wallpapered foyer led to a short hall with three doors. Benedetto stopped in front of Number Two.
“Are there any guns in there?” Matt asked.
“What do you care? You have a gun, too.”
Matt grabbed his scrawny neck. “That’s not an answer.”
“I never saw a gun,” Benedetto wheezed. “But Bruno might carry one.”
“Knock,” Matt commanded. “Then call Bruno to the door.”
He did. It took a moment for a muffled response. “Who is it?”
“It’s me, Bruno. I have news.”
A shadow crossed the peephole. Matt and I stayed out of sight.
“Gino! What’s going on?”
As he spoke, Bruno unlocked the door.
As soon as it opened a crack, Matt surged forward and kicked it the rest of the way in.
EIGHTY-TWO
THE door bounced off Bruno Campana’s head, sending the man with the U-shaped scar crashing to the white carpeted floor.
Matt rushed in, to deliver a second blow. But he paused when he found Bruno sprawled on the carpet in natty pajamas, nursing a bruised noggin.
There was nary a weapon in sight.
“Mother! Mother!” Matt called. “Are you here?”
Still standing in the open door, Benedetto’s jaw dropped. “Did you say mother?! Mamma mia!”
There was a small kitchenette off the main room. I was about to push past Matt and rush in, when I saw a shadow backlit by fluorescent light.
“Matt! A gun!”
Donatella Campana, in a flowing nightgown, raced out of the kitchen. Arm outstretched, she clutched a dainty silver pistol in a manicured hand. Matt froze as the scowling woman leveled it at his forehead.
Then a second figure burst out of the kitchen—Madame!
With a satisfying crash, Matt’s mother smashed a bowl of red sauce pasta over her kidnapper’s head. The pistol, and a squiggly torrent of pasta and sauce, hit the virgin white carpet at about the same time Donatella did.
Ouch. Somebody’s not getting their deposit back!
“So much for your appalling cookery, you dreadful woman,” Madame declared, wiping her hands.
Matt snatched up the gun and pointed it at the man with the U-shaped scar. “Hands on your head, Bruno, where I can see them.”
Frowning, he complied. Matt tore a drapery cord off the curtained window and tossed it to the gigolo.
“Tie him up.”
Madame rushed forward for a tearful group hug.
“I knew you two would come for me,” she proclaimed. “I only wonder why it took so long.”
Donatella stirred and Matt dragged her beside her hog-tied brother. Meanwhile, Bruno groaned and began to pound his head against the wall.
“Bruno! Stop! Stop!” Donatella hugged her brother protectively, while shooting me an accusing stare.
“When the jewelry business started to fail, Bruno got a job in a shipyard. A steel pipe struck him in the side of his face. Since the accident, he gets migraine headaches.” She turned her dark gaze on Matt. “And now that awful man has hurt Bruno again!”
“He helped kidnap my mother, lady. He’s lucky I only hit him with a door.”
“Blanche!” Gino Benedetto cried. “In all of our charming conversations, you never once mentioned your son was so strong and so manly. And now, with the Eye of the Cat under his stewardship, so wealthy, too.”
Benedetto faced Matt. “No need to thank me for all I have done to rescue your beloved mother, signor,” he announced with stunningly silky nerve. “But you might entertain the notion of a small reward. A token of your appreciation.”
Before Matt went ballistic, I spoke up.
“Now that we’re all together, I’d like our kidnappers to go on the record with a very important question.” I stared at Benedetto. “Especially you.”
He gave me an innocent shrug. “Whatever, my belladonna.”
“A young woman who works for Gus told us that Mr. Benedetto knows a secret, something so terrible that he blackmailed Gus for sixty years, demanding payments to stay silent. She says something happened aboard the SS Andrea Doria that you witnessed, Mr. Benedetto. A secret so sensational that you were going to reveal it at tonight’s party in hopes of peddling the story as a bestselling book or Hollywood movie.”
Benedetto was squirming and adjusting his collar.
By now, I knew the answer. I’d overheard Donatella reveal it at tonight’s party, but I wanted this man to say it—with Matt and Madame as witnesses.
“Come on,” I coaxed. “I know this secret is more than the Eye of the Cat being stashed away, and I want you to state it for the record, get it out in the open for good.”
Benedetto stubbornly shook his head.
Matt displayed that scary grin again as he waved his smartphone.
“Tell us, Benedetto. What is this secret? Mother wasn’t hurt, no harm done. If you come clean, I might let you walk away. If you don�
�t, you can all spend the rest of your days in a US federal prison.”
Benedetto looked at Bruno, who seemed oblivious to what was going on around him. The gigolo shifted his gaze to Donatella, hugging her brother.
“Tell them,” she commanded. “Gus is in a coma; there is nothing more to do. If the story will make them go, then tell it. You can still sell it. The truth is the truth and you witnessed it.”
“Okay,” Benedetto said with a nod. “Here is the real truth—”
Before Benedetto could say another word, we all heard an odd, unidentifiable sound. Not an explosion, more like a muffled thud. It came from the hallway outside the apartment.
Suddenly, Gino Benedetto jerked as if struck.
I watched in horror as a scarlet blossom of spouting blood stained the front of his white tux. Without uttering a sound, the man from Rome sank to the floor, dead.
“Get down, everyone!” I cried as I took my own advice.
Matt scrambled behind a chair, dragging his startled mother with him.
Bruno, still tied, reacted in helpless horror to his co-conspirator’s fate. In shock, Donatella’s eyes went wide, but she failed to move. Her arms merely tightened around her brother.
An eerie silence ensued for five long seconds, until the only sound I heard was my own breathing. I’d found dubious protection behind a heavy glass coffee table. But in truth, I was waiting for the bullet that would kill me.
Good-bye, Mike, I thought. Wherever you are, I love you . . .
But instead of a bullet, there was a loud pop, then a long, sustained hiss. A smoking canister bounced through the open door, followed by a muffled voice saying something really odd.
“Lekker dux.”
I expected to be suffocated by a choking, poisonous gas.
Instead, I smelled posies—and then everything went black.
EIGHTY-THREE
I woke up with a mouth full of bad taste, and an aching head. It only got worse when I opened my eyes—then blinked against the glare of a single naked lightbulb in the center of a mildewed, spiderwebbed ceiling.
“Clare! You’re awake.” Madame hurried to my side.
I sat up—and immediately felt woozy.
Lekker dux.
Those cryptic words from a muffled voice were the last thing I remembered before the knockout gas. I repeated them aloud.
“Sweet dreams,” Madame said.
“What?”
“That’s what it means—in Afrikaans.” She shrugged. “I have a friend who grew up near Cape Town.”
“We’re not in South Africa, are we?”
“No, dear. I’m fairly sure we’re still in New York,” Madame replied. “We’ve been dumped in a one-room basement apartment. We’re locked in, but not alone. That’s the only door out, and there’s a man with a gun guarding us on the other side.”
I rose—not from a piece of furniture but something soft.
I’d been stretched out on stacks of old newspapers—New York papers, I noted—piled on a rickety bed frame used as a makeshift couch. Broken, mismatched chairs had been arranged in a circle. Empty beer cans, wine bottles, and crumpled cigarette packs were scattered around as if the place had been used by street kids as a party room.
The room had two windows spray-painted over in black. A fist-sized piece of glass had been knocked out of one of them, revealing iron bars.
Wobbling on my cruel shoes, I moved to examine them. The floor was warped and sagging in spots, and my too-tall heels didn’t make walking any easier, so I took them off.
All I could see outside was a dark courtyard with dead leaves, dying weeds, and more beer cans.
There’s no getting out that way. And, according to Madame, a man with a gun is behind door Number One. Actually, it’s the only door. If we scream, he’ll hear us—and probably do something awful to shut us up.
So now what?
Madame shook her silver-white head. “Kidnapped twice in one week. I feel like the Lindbergh baby . . .”
“Can you please tell me why you got into Benedetto’s car in the first place?” I asked. “Didn’t you know he was a very bad man?”
“Of course I knew! I also knew why that horrid little man was blackmailing Gus, and I wanted to put a stop to it.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“I went to see Gus instead of joining you at the vault because I wanted him to confess the truth, and he did.”
“Gus confessed to you?”
“He admitted that he’d stolen a dead man’s identity, and his wife. The person we know as Gus Campana is an imposter. His real name is—”
“Silvio Allegro,” I finished for her.
Madame nodded. “It’s true. The young man who stepped onto that New York dock with Angelica and Perla was my late husband’s cousin—in Gustavo Campana’s clothing.”
“Yes, but why the six-decade deception?”
“He did it for love.”
Madame explained that as a young apprentice, Silvio fell in love with his employer’s sad, mistreated young wife. At first his relationship with Angelica was platonic. But soon the young woman’s own passion began to burn for the kind, gentle apprentice.
Meanwhile, the fires of rage and injustice roared inside of Silvio.
“When the real Gustavo Campana tried to lock his wife and young daughter inside of their stateroom to drown in the sinking ship, he was killed for it—”
“But not by Silvio. It was his own wife who murdered him.”
“Yes!” Madame gawked at me in surprise. “How did you guess?”
“Not a guess, a discovery . . .” As I told Madame about my little undercover project on the new Andrea Doria (and my Lido Deck eavesdropping), a tantalizing scent tickled my nose.
“I smell coffee,” Madame whispered.
I jumped to my bare feet. That’s not just any coffee, I realized. That’s my Village Blend Fireside roast!
I hurried to the window again and took a deep breath through the little opening. “I know where we are. We’re inside that vacant building near the Village Blend!”
“The one you complained about to the community board?”
“The same . . .”
It was also the building that Panther Man used to shoot Sully. And, according to Quinn, Eduardo De Santis was the silent owner.
“But taking us here makes no sense . . .”
If Eduardo De Santis is engaged in criminal activity, why would he have us knocked out in Brooklyn and dragged all the way here to the West Village to be kept prisoner in the basement of his own building? I shook my head. It’s simple. He wouldn’t!
And that’s when I knew. This is a frame job!
I didn’t want to alarm Madame, but I was certain we were being kept alive only temporarily. Very soon we’d be shot dead. And having our dead bodies found here would continue the incrimination game that a genius was playing on Eduardo De Santis.
“What are you trying to figure out, dear?”
“Hold on . . .”
I tiptoed to the front door and looked through the peephole.
In the dim light of the shadowy hall, I saw our guard. He was talking distractedly, a Bluetooth in his ear, gaze locked on his smartphone, his face clearly illuminated by the screen.
I know this man!
He was the same olive-skinned bodyguard with the dead cold eyes I’d seen at the 21 Club with Eduardo De Santis. But did he actually work for De Santis? When I spied him on the new Andrea Doria, he was shadowing every step of Victor Fontana!
“I wonder where they took my son?” Madame said. “I pray Matteo isn’t hurt.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said. “The people who shot Gino Benedetto and kidnapped us need Matt alive.”
“Why?
“The same reason the Campanas wanted him. So
Matt can get them inside the Lyons vault, unlock that safe-deposit box, and hand over the Eye of the Cat. He’ll do it for them because we’re hostages, and they will kill us if he doesn’t . . .”
I was certain they were going to kill us anyway, and leave our bodies here for the police to find, but there was no need to worry Madame about the inevitable, so I held my tongue.
“Who are they?” Madame asked.
“Victor Fontana, his bodyguard, and a small crack team of jewel thieves. They’re setting up Eduardo De Santis as a patsy. He’s going to be blamed for everything—and I’m betting he won’t have a chance to defend himself. Fontana is too smart for that. He’ll make sure the police find De Santis’s body in some kind of deadly traffic accident or sudden fire, along with evidence that he committed a host of crimes. Then Fontana and his tight crew of criminals will sail away clean.”
I dropped to my knees and started digging through the garbage.
“What are you doing, Clare?”
“Looking for something that will get us out of here—aha!”
I held up a smudged and dirty disposable Bic lighter someone had discarded. At that moment, it was more precious to me than a sixty-carat diamond.
“It’s truer than ever,” I said.
“What?”
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!”
EIGHTY-FOUR
I had to flick the Bic a couple of times, but once the flint was free of dirt, I got a flame.
“What do we do now?” Madame asked.
“First we very quietly move that bed frame . . .”
Madame and I positioned the metal frame so it would barricade the front door. If our guard tried to get in, the angled frame would dig into the floor and make it difficult to enter—without time and effort. And that critical bit of time was what I needed to buy if my escape strategy was going to work.
“Now what?” Madame whispered.
“Now we’re going to set a fire outside that window. The smoke will go into the courtyard, and someone in an adjacent building is sure to dial 911 . . .”