Devil You Know

by Bagshawe, Louise

  Rose pressed the bell. Before she got ready to strike the last item off her to-do list, she allowed herself a second’s delicious fantasy. She, Rose Fiorello, sitting behind Fred Rothstein’s desk. Running his company. And wearing his son’s ring …

  Perfect revenge. Her father would have been proud.

  A maid came to the door. “This way, ma’am.”

  *

  Rose was ushered in to Magnus Soren’s gorgeous living room again, where Daisy enveloped her in a bone-crushing hug. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Rose scrutinized the familiar features. “Me too,” she said.

  Daisy caught the tone.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No. Let’s sit down.”

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “Nasty Limey habit, but I’ll take some coffee, if you’ve got any.”

  The maid disappeared to the kitchen before Daisy could make the request. “So tell me,” Daisy pleaded. “I know you’re hatching something; I get that look myself.”

  “I was thinking, maybe you’re right about finding our birth parents. Just to allay the curiosity.”

  Her sister sighed. “I really don’t think it can be done. I’ve been trying for a year, and even Janus, who were very bullish at first, say they’ve come up with a blank.”

  “From what I’ve heard of them, that seems unlikely,” Rose said.

  Daisy blinked. “You’re suggesting they just pocketed my money and didn’t bother to do any work?”

  Rose shook her head. “Far more likely, they were scared off. They haven’t been on this case long enough to make a determination like that.”

  Daisy was silent for a few moments.

  “I think I can find out for sure,” Rose said. “But it would mean getting your hands a little dirty, so we should probably get Poppy to sign off on it, too, before we started.”

  “What exactly are you talking about?”

  The coffee arrived, and the maid poured it into a couple of wafer-thin bone china cups, disappearing as discreetly as she had materialized.

  Rose sipped the fragrant brew, making sure she was gone from earshot before she leaned forward and half whispered to her sister, “Do you know who Don Vincent Salerni is?”

  *

  Poppy was drawing up wedding plans when Rose called. Running a record company was one thing; getting married was a whole new nightmare. She had to calm her mother down, but Marcia eventually accepted that having a congressman, soon to be senator, as a son-in-law was some compensation for her daughter marrying a gentile …

  Poppy had tried, as gently as possible, to break the news of her two sisters to her parents. After they had lowered their hands from their mouths, they were insistent that Rose and Daisy come to visit. Poppy winced.

  “Don’t you think we all need a little time to adjust?”

  “Adjust? What’s to adjust?” her father demanded. “If I can adjust to all your longhaired druggies, Poppy, they can adjust to the family…”

  When Rose called, Poppy and her mother, who was utterly determined not to be cheated of her role as Planner-in-Chief, were going over swatches of bridesmaids’ fabric.

  “This is a very good color, strong,” Marcia said approvingly.

  Poppy sighed. “I can’t ask Dani to wear tomato-red. She’ll look like an actual tomato.”

  “So she should drop some weight,” Marcia insisted.

  “Mom—”

  “Poppy! Phone!”

  “Thank heaven,” Poppy muttered, racing downstairs.

  “Hey, it’s Rose. Sorry to bother you at home.”

  “Don’t be. Wedding preparations.” Poppy grimaced. “Ugh. Las Vegas and an Elvis impersonator looks pretty good right now.”

  Rose chuckled. “You too, huh? It’s spreading like a virus. We’re all getting married.”

  “What, you too? Who?”

  “Jacob Rothstein.”

  “I thought you hated the Rothsteins.”

  “Oh, I do. It’s a long story. But this isn’t about that. Daisy and I were thinking of finding our birth-parents. There’s something off about how we were adopted, and I can’t let it rest without finding out what, exactly.”

  Poppy paused. “I appreciate how you feel, but it’s no go. Daisy already told me. If Janus came up blank, hiring anyone else would just be a waste of time. They’re the best.”

  “I have another option,” Rose said, and told her.

  *

  Her sisters had little faith in Rose’s plan, but they agreed to go along with it. Rose wasn’t concerned. The other two girls came from different worlds; they had no idea what a man like Don Vincent Salerni was capable of.

  She made an appointment to go and see him. Don Salerni received Rose in the penthouse suite at the Rego Park complex, Rose’s first and still most-beloved big real estate deal. She had spared no expense in fitting it out; the walls had been ripped down and replaced with Armorlite, UV treated and three inches thick, that glittered like the glass it impersonated and gave Salerni exquisite views over Queens—along with protection from snipers’ bullets. If any would dare. The floors were marble, and the ceiling painted in a faux-Italian mural, a pastoral scene. Rose had had the taps and shower head plated with gold, she had installed central air, a garbage chute, the best appliances on the market—everything the modern mob boss could desire. And Salerni had obviously been pleased, because he had kept out of her hair.

  More than that. Rose Fiorello had one of the best-run construction sites in the business. Her workers were never late and they never slacked off. The very association with Salerni was enough to get her that respect.

  Rose had not had many dealings with Salerni. She had not chosen to get involved with him in the first place; but there was no getting away from it, when he owned the hotel. Still, she knew her father would have disapproved violently. Salerni was an extortionist, a murderer.

  And yet she was still here.

  Rose willfully pushed her doubts aside. Jacob was right. She wanted answers. And this was the only way she knew how to get them.

  “Don Salerni,” she murmured, pressing his hand. She had to force herself not to bend and kiss it. This guy wasn’t the Pope.

  “Rose. Sit.” He waved her to a chair, his narrow eyes scanning her, checking her out. She was modestly dressed in a business suit from Donna Karan, a cream silk shirt and a string of pearls, and somehow his glance made her feel as dirty as if she were in a stripper’s tassels and G-string.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure? My personal charms have finally gotten to you?”

  Rose swallowed, hard. She’d rather die than let this guy touch her. “They would have, Don Salerni,” she said carefully, “but I’ve recently gotten engaged.”

  He chuckled. “No need to flinch, kid.”

  She blushed.

  “Auguri,” he said. “Is it an Italian, like you?”

  “No. A Jew.”

  He frowned, so she moved on, quickly. “Don Salerni. I have a problem. I wondered if I could seek your help.”

  The narrow eyes danced. “Finally. I was wondering how long it would take you. Trouble with the Rothstein boy in Alphabet City?”

  Rose paled. “No. No! I am engaged to Jacob Rothstein.”

  For the first time, Salerni looked wrong-footed. He blinked, then he burst out laughing. “Crazy girl!”

  “It is about my parents. My real ones,” Rose said. “I want to find them.”

  “You hardly need me for that.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than usual. If I could explain…”

  *

  Salerni listened intently. Rose was a little put off by how much he seemed to be enjoying her story. He did not interrupt, and neither did he answer his phone, which buzzed quietly at intervals.

  “I was thinking it was odd, a firm like Janus, just up and quitting like that.”

  Salerni nodded. “Yes. Well, we can start with the fact that you are
Italian.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “I knew it from the second I saw you, bellissima.”

  “Possibly,” Rose said, smiling slightly. She bore the name Fiorello, it would be nice to be Italian. And it might explain her desire to be avenged …

  Salerni smiled thinly. “Despite what you read in the papers, we still have some reach. Especially in the old country, though things are going to hell down there … They even have women running some crews.” He grimaced.

  Rose didn’t dare say a word. She knew that half of Italy was under Mafia control, especially Sicily and the poor south. She’d done a little research into international real estate, and the harsh climate and earthquake potential weren’t all that dampened property values in what was, after all, a G8 nation; nobody wanted to live in a town or village controlled by the Cosa Nostra.

  “I can make a few calls,” Salerni said finally. “Do you a favor. Perche no?”

  “Grazie,” Rose murmured, “Don Salerni.” She swallowed, hard.

  His sharp eyes picked up on it immediately. “There is something else?”

  Rose struggled with her courage. “Yes. This is to involve my sisters. Don Salerni, they are not of our world … I know, when someone receives a favor from a Don, that person is in his debt. But I tell you fairly, you cannot have a hold over my sisters and me. I will never submit to it, and I will not do anything illegal…”

  “So you refuse to be the mule for the sixty kilos I wanted to get through Newark next month?” Salerni asked, then chuckled at Rose’s shocked face. “Ah, bellissima, you never would make a soldier. You are a woman. What would I do with you?”

  Rose felt bizarrely annoyed that Salerni said he couldn’t use her. She could be a fine Mafiosi if she wanted to be …

  “You have balls,” Salerni said. “I like you. For you, that’s enough.” He waved at the apartment. “And you keep this place good.”

  Rose blessed the day she had decided to outfit Salerni’s penthouse with the best of everything and present it to him free of charge.

  He flicked his hand, indicating her audience was at an end. “I’ll see what I can do,” Salerni said, and Rose withdrew.

  Sixty-Four

  When she got the call almost a month later, Rose decided her sisters had to be in on it. Poppy flew in from L.A., delighted to be away from wedding planning for a little while, and Daisy flew over from England, where she had been staying with her parents. Rose was surprised to discover how much she liked seeing the other two girls. She hugged them, and meant the hug. It was almost like family, she thought to herself with a grin. Maybe Daisy was right; maybe in the end, blood would out, after all.

  The other two cooed over the apartment, from which Jacob had tactfully absented himself, and perched on the elegant couch while Rose served up some cinnamon coffee.

  “Don Salerni will be here soon. Now, I want you guys to—”

  “Wait. What did you say? He’ll be here? I thought we were just getting an update.”

  “He wants to see you two in person. Curiosity factor, I guess.”

  Poppy shuddered. “Man. I don’t know … some murdering thug…”

  Rose paled. “Hey, you don’t know if he murdered anybody. Not for sure. And we need him, at least if we want to figure out what happened to our birth parents.”

  “Which we do,” Daisy said firmly. “It’s the piece that’s missing in my life, Poppy. We should be nice to him.”

  “OK, OK,” Poppy said, spreading her hands. “If he gets results…” She shrugged.

  “You need to be very respectful to him,” Rose said. Then, catching the look on her sister’s face, she added, “And if you can’t do that, at least keep quiet.”

  Poppy grinned. “Fair enough.”

  The buzzer sounded. Rose picked up the handset.

  “Speak of the diablo,” Poppy muttered, and Daisy kicked her in the shins.

  “Sure,” Rose said to the doorman, shooting a warning look at Poppy. “Send him right up.”

  *

  Rose had the door open when Salerni arrived, and she ushered him through it into her fiancé’s apartment.

  “Acceptable,” he said, glancing around.

  “Don Salerni, may I present my sisters—Daisy Markham and Poppy Allen.”

  Salerni stared. “Porca miseria! It’s like a three-way mirror.” His thin tongue slid fractionally out of his mouth, and moistened his narrow lips, appreciatively.

  Rose saw Poppy start to grimace. “Sit down, please sit down,” she said, blocking Salerni’s view. “Can I bring you anything? Mineral water, coffee?”

  Salerni pointed at the cut-crystal decanter. “Scotch on the rocks.”

  Daisy couldn’t stop her eyebrow lifting; it was 9 A.M.

  “Story like this, my pretty, needs a little something,” Salerni told her, and instantly Daisy was all ears.

  “You know something, um, Don Salerni.”

  “You could say that,” Salerni replied. He waited until Rose had presented him with a tumbler full of golden liquid and clinking ice cubes, took a pull of it, and started to speak. He was a quiet-voiced man, and that somehow made him more menacing. Even Poppy felt herself fascinated, half-hypnotized. He had that kind of presence.

  “First, so you two girls know”—Poppy bristled at “girls,” but Salerni ignored her—“I do a little business with your sister. She asks me for a favor…”—he spread his hands, as Poppy had done earlier—“a padrone doesn’t refuse a client. So I made a few calls. You,” he nodded at Daisy, “went to Janus. Smart move, but somebody had told them to back off. Which intrigued me, when I found out it was true. The guy on your case had somebody ring his house and leave an answer-machine message.”

  “What was it?” Daisy asked.

  “A gun being fired six times,” Salerni told her. “Same message was left at all the guy’s places: his country house, even the secret apartment he rents under another name where he stashes his girlfriends. He decided you could go fuck yourselves; he wasn’t getting involved. So I got a copy of his files.” His eyes warned them not to ask how; none of them did. “Guy hadn’t got far but he’d gotten a couple leads. This man involved with the adoption agency in London died in prison, convicted as an accessory to murder. The murder was related to the Frederici crew, that’s a small crew out of Naples, died out. So I asked around some old guys who used to do business with that crew. About three girls got adopted. They didn’t know much, but we kept asking around, legit sources too. Finally came up with something. Three babies were abandoned at the door of a monastery in Abruzzo, and they were snatched up for adoption by the Fredericis. Unusual—a family getting involved in anything like that. But the Frederici woman the monks gave the girls to didn’t raise them.”

  “Did you ask her what she did with them?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “What do the monastery records say?”

  “Monastery got destroyed in an earthquake.”

  “God damn it,” Daisy said, her fists clenched in frustration.

  “No need for language like that,” Salerni said mildly.

  “Excuse me,” Daisy said, a little frightened.

  He enjoyed that look in her eye. “My guys think the woman lied to the monks. She never wanted to raise the kids, and her crew placed them abroad, split them up. Question is, why bother? Now the Fredericis were never a big crew, never a big family. I think whoever picked ’em was smart, because they don’t arouse much interest. Kept to themselves, not big producers,” his lip curled in contempt, “nothing but local shit. They would have got paid nice to bother with this, send someone abroad.”

  “The man who died in jail … whom did he kill?”

  “Very good,” Salerni said, winking at Poppy. “He was found guilty of killing a Mrs. Harrison.”

  Daisy recognized the name. “The woman who fronted the agency I was adopted from, who then disappeared.”

  “Right. She went to Blackpool and was shot. The Frederici guy go
t caught.”

  “So.” Rose was working it out in her head. “Someone pays the Fredericis to take us from the monastery, and then send us abroad. They hire people to make fake adoption agencies and then to make sure nobody talks, they kill those people. Except that one of their crew got caught, died in prison. He was the only link back.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then the question is, who hired the Fredericis, and why?”

  Salerni took over. “I found the whole thing intriguing, at this point. I had my people keep hammering. Why … you must have mattered to someone. A lotta trouble, just over three anonymous girls. And there aren’t a whole bunch of triplets born, least not before they made up those fertility drugs. It got easier after I knew the date.”

  All three girls looked interested.

  “About seventy-two,” Salerni informed them. “They may have put false ages on you at the three agencies. Anyway, you could have been peasant kids, but not likely … why would anybody go to such trouble over peasants? I thought maybe you were daughters of some family, maybe smuggled out to stop a vendetta. But you were all girls. Nobody bothers when it’s girls.” He grinned at Poppy’s outraged face. “That’s the truth, toots. Nobody thinks a girl will come after them.”

  “Don’t they,” Rose said softly.

  Salerni looked approving at her tone, and nodded. “So I assumed you were born in a hospital. We checked records. There were only four sets of all-girl triplets recorded that year. One set was premature, died early. Two other sets are still living, but they are accounted for. The last set also died.”

  Daisy was disappointed. “So no hospital records…”

  “I didn’t say that. The premature babies I wrote off, because they died in the hospital. But the last set died in a fire. Their bodies were never found.” He shook his head. “I didn’t buy that; did some checking. These were rich girls, very rich. Their father was Count Luigi Parigi, and right before the fire, he died in a shooting accident. His skull was found in the woods, years later; they identified it by dental records. If you believe that.”