The Trouble with Mirrors (An Alix London Mystery Book 4)

by Charlotte Elkins

  Alas, no telephone calls were required, and at ten minutes past seven Alix sat waiting at an umbrella-shaded table on the outdoor terrace of Schooners Coastal Kitchen and Bar, which was perched on concrete pillars twenty feet above the hypnotic slap of the surf below. The evening sun was golden and glorious, the huge expanse of the bay a wonderful, luminous butterfly blue. Below, and not a hundred feet away, seals lay on the rocks on their backs, their flippers raised, giving themselves up to the sinking sun. Alix gazed out at it all, but it was purely out of a sense of duty. How could you sit in so much beauty without being grateful for the privilege?

  And so she did gaze, but gratefully, no. She was at her lowest point since finding that old photo of Tiny on her closet shelf. With Chris this afternoon, they’d joked about a plan B, but neither of them had suggested what it might be. The trail they were on had now petered out and died, and there wasn’t any other trail they knew of, so where was there to go from here?

  Given the rotten mood she was in, the appetizer and wine she’d ordered both tasted rotten, the Chardonnay watery and insipid and the barbecued chicken wings too garlicky. She took an occasional glum sip of the first and pretty much just pushed the second around her plate with a cocktail fork. She was restless and cranky. Where the hell was Chris? You’d think if she was going to be late, she’d at least have telephoned.

  But as she stewed over these grumpy thoughts she spotted Chris striding forcefully along the hotel’s main terrace on the level above, and she immediately cheered up. It was hard not to smile at the sight of this tall, striking woman dressed as gaudily as good taste—reasonably good taste—and expensive clothes allowed. Apparently, she had stopped in her room to change from the sedate, skirted business suit she’d worn for the day’s interviews to more typical, marginally outrageous Christine-garb. This evening it was a particularly fantastic combination: an elbow-length black tunic patterned with brightly colored, embroidered tulips and worn over a red turtleneck, along with black suede hip-huggers, and high-heeled black velvet ankle boots. A long, gold-link hip belt dangled its loose end down the outside of one thigh. With those heels she stood an Amazonian six-five, and Alix watched heads, male and female, swivel as she passed. Somehow, she got away with these outfits of hers, bizarre as they might be. The fact was, she looked smashing in them.

  Alix, still wearing what she’d had on for the afternoon—a favorite outfit: pale-blue summer sweater, big and loose, with push-up sleeves, faux-designer white jeans, and sandals with one-inch heels—suddenly felt a little dowdy, but she was used to that when she was with Chris by now and it didn’t bother her. Chris was Chris, Alix was Alix, and she was happy with both facts.

  “Chris, hi!” she called, and Chris waved back from the top of the concrete stairway that led down to Schooners. As she started down, her phone rang. It took her all the way to the bottom to find it in that cavernous shoulder bag of hers, and she stood to one side at the foot of the steps to answer it, just a few feet from Alix’s table.

  “Yes, hello, Viv . . . Oh, great, glad to hear it. Really? That’s wonderful, give him my love and tell him I’ll be there next week.” She hung up. “That was my aunt Viv,” she told Alix as she dropped the phone back into the bag. “My uncle just had a hip replacement. Operated on this morning, home this afternoon, starting therapy on a portable set of stairs tonight, can you believe—Whup!”

  Two men had come barreling down the stairs behind her, shoving and pushing like a couple of rowdy kids, except that these weren’t kids and one of them was huge, and they had obviously been into whatever they were drinking for some time. They were paying little attention to where they were going, and they didn’t see Chris right in front of them, still fooling with her purse. The big one lurched sidewise into her and sent her sprawling to her hands and knees onto the tiled deck. The purse went flying, spewing its varied contents.

  “Scusi, scusi,” mumbled the big guy, reaching clumsily down to grab her arm, but only making it harder for her to right herself.

  “It’s okay, I’m all right,” she said, getting to her feet with a small assist from Alix, who had jumped up to help.

  “Chris, are you really all right?”

  “Yes, really, I’m fine. Where’s my—oh, there,” she said, spotting her purse a couple of yards off. The big one’s playmate, an older man and much smaller, had stooped beside it, and Alix’s first thought was that he was making off with it, that this whole thing was a staged robbery.

  “Hey . . .” she began, but then she saw that what he was doing was gathering up the stuff that had popped out of the bag and dropping it back in. She watched with extra care to see that the wallet went in with the rest of the things, which it did, and after which he brought the bag to Chris, holding it out to her in both hands.

  “I’m so very sorry, signora,” he said earnestly. “You’re not hurt?” The accent was northern Italian, Alix thought.

  “No, I’m perfectly fine, please don’t worry about it. It was an accident.”

  “My friend and I, we’ve been celebrating, you see. His wife, she is back in Italy, she has had a little baby girl, and . . . well, I suppose he may have had a drink or two too many—or three,” he added with a quick, little rictus of what seemed to be a smile.

  Or four, Alix thought, or five. And you might have seen where you were going if you weren’t wearing those sunglasses.

  “Beppe,” he said sternly, “chiedi scusa alla signora.” Apologize to the lady.

  Beppe glared at him, waiting a pointed two or three seconds before he complied. “Mi scusi, signora, mi dispiace molto.” The words were right, but he delivered them with something between a leer and a smirk. Alix, her attitude darkening, wondered if he hadn’t managed to get in a grope and this was his way of letting Chris know that it was no accident, and that he’d enjoyed it very much, and how about doing it again sometime?

  “That’s all right,” Chris said, but her voice had hardened; she didn’t know Italian, but she knew offensiveness when she heard it. She turned to the other one. “Thank you,” she said, “I appreciate—”

  Meanwhile, the glowering Beppe was off to the side, grousing as if to the air. “Why don’t you watch where you’re walking?” he muttered in Italian. “Stupid—”

  Alix’s temper, held in check till now, flared. “She wasn’t walking,” she said angrily in Italian. “She was standing perfectly still. You were the one who walked into her—make that staggered into her. If you weren’t so, so smashed—”

  She realized that Chris had put a hand on her forearm and she glanced up to see one of those cautionary, furrowed-brow looks of hers that was every bit as clear as words: Alix, do we really want to get into a fight with these characters?

  No, we do not, Alix thought after a millisecond’s consideration. She closed her mouth and left unspoken whatever else she was going to say.

  Before Beppe could respond to Alix his companion moved to stand in front of him, as if to block him, although how he could have done it was a mystery. The top of his head barely came up to Beppe’s chin, and his chest looked about as thick as Beppe’s neck. “Andiamo,” he said—Let’s go. It was an order, not a suggestion, and when Beppe didn’t move the older man actually jabbed him with a forefinger—hard—in the chest. “Andiamo!” he commanded again, but this time it was more like a threat, or at least a warning.

  Beppe, surly to the end, took his time responding, but eventually turned, and up the steps he started.

  The other man turned back to them, spread his hands and shrugged, as if to say, “Well, what can you do? When he’s sober he’s really quite a nice fellow.” Then he followed Beppe, helping him along with a shove in the small of the back. Beppe turned his head and complained but all that got him was another forceful shove with the flat of the hand. Alix and Chris watched them until they were gone.

  “Well, that was exciting,” Chris said. “He’s got a lot of nerve, that little guy, I’ll say that for him. I kept thinking old Beppe was going to
lose it and just break him over his knee.”

  Alix nodded. “It was like watching a lion tamer in a cage with a lion who wasn’t in the mood. Any minute you expected him to get his head chomped off. You’re really all right, aren’t you?” she asked as they took chairs at Alix’s table.

  “Sure,” she said, but quickly followed it with “Oh, no! Damn!” She was looking down at the back of her hand, held at table height, a few inches from the table’s rim.

  “Oh, Chris,” Alix said, “your knuckles—they’re really scraped.”

  “What? Oh, who cares, that’s nothing, but look at this.” She raised one knee into Alix’s view. The black suede had been deeply scuffed, revealing the pale, smooth leather beneath. “Damn!” she said again, but with more vigor. “I could kill that guy.”

  “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone else who made Tiny look like a midget.”

  “Yeah, I know, the man’s a monster. But let us speak of serious things . . . What do you think of the outfit?” She held out her arms and turned side to side in her chair so Alix could admire the piratical cut, the embroidery.

  “Well, it’s quite . . . striking . . . and very colorful . . . and, um . . .”

  Chris laughed. “It’s Ukrainian style. According to Vogue, and I quote, it’s the latest in ‘au courant street-style bait.’”

  “Is that good?” Alix asked.

  Chris shook her head. “You are truly hopeless. So what’s with the chicken wings? Something wrong with them?”

  “No, they just didn’t appeal to me. Help yourself.”

  Chris did, quickly disposing of two, and signaling to the approaching waitress that she wanted a glass of whatever Alix was drinking.

  “I gather that you didn’t have any luck either,” Alix said, hoping that perhaps Chris had a surprise in store for her.

  She didn’t. “Nope,” she said glumly, “and we’ve hit every single seafood place in the city. So what’s plan B again?”

  Alix tried another sip of her wine. Still too bland, she thought. “I don’t know, Chris. I can’t stand the idea of giving up, but what options do we have?”

  “Well, let’s give it one more day.”

  “To do what?”

  “Never fear, we’ll think of something tomorrow. It’s been another long, busy day today and we’re tired now. Oh, besides, I do have a surprise waiting for you tomorrow.”

  Alix brightened. Hope flickered again. “About Tiny?”

  “Afraid not, but I think you’ll like it. Too late to give it to you now. I want you to see it in daylight. What do you say we get up early tomorrow and take a couple of hours off for recreation in the fresh air. Might clear our heads and help us come up with something.”

  The waitress was back with Chris’s wine, and to take their orders. They decided to make a dinner from the bar menu’s “small bites” appetizer list: pork belly sliders, chorizo skewers, cheddar quesadillas, and half-a-dozen oysters on the half-shell. “Oh, and what the hell,” Chris added, giving her menu to the waitress, “may as well throw in one of those little pizzas. Or do you think that would be too much?”

  “Not for me, honey, and I’m guessing not for you either. And what about you, ma’am, would you like another Chardonnay?”

  “I think I’ll have a lemonade instead, please,” Alix said, handing over her half-full wineglass.

  By the time they’d finished dining (Chris having had three of the four pizza slices), they were both in a fairly optimistic mood and looking forward to the next day, although they had yet to come up with a workable plan.

  Later, as Chris was getting off the elevator at the second floor (Alix’s room was on the third), Alix propped the door open with one hand. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “You never said another word. You’re really not going to tell me what this surprise thing is, are you?”

  Chris responded with a complacent, close-mouthed grin. “Nup.”

  “Not even a hint?”

  “Not even a glimmer, not even an intimation, not even an allusion, not even—”

  Alix sighed. “Sleep well, see you in the morning,” she said, letting the door slide closed.

  CHAPTER 26

  All in all, the mafiosi had had a better day. After their success at the Starfish, they’d continued to tail the two women, splitting up when the women did, with Martucci staying with Alix London and Beppe trailing the other one, the big one. Martucci had ruled out any further follow-up interviews with restaurant staff, partly because he was concerned about being spotted, but mostly because it was no longer necessary; safer to just stay with the women and let them do the work and lead them to signor Beniamino Abbatista.

  At a little before 5:00 p.m., Martucci had received a telephone call that made things even easier. The caller was a courier who had driven down from Milpitas in the Silicon Valley with a little device that had to be ordered before leaving Genoa because, while it was supposedly legal in Europe, it had proven unavailable. In America, on the other hand, it was illegal but available—if you knew the right people, who knew other right people, who knew other right people. Which, it should go without saying, Martucci did.

  This device, known to the trade as a micro audio recorder-transmitter, was manufactured in a residential garage in Milpitas by two graduate students in computer systems engineering at nearby Northern Pacific University, who used their circuitry skills and intuition (and their access to NPU’s testing laboratories) to assemble components from Japan, China, Israel, and Germany into a remarkable eavesdropping tool with the same weight, size, and look of a credit card (with front and back customizable).

  Slipped into a wallet or a purse, or just about anything, it could pick up whispers up to six feet away, which could be listened to, either live or recorded, anywhere in the world by simply calling the thing’s SIM card and putting in the approved code. It was voice-activated, and had an astounding battery life of thirty hours at full-time usage. The narrow six-foot range could be a drawback, but then how far from their wallet or purse did people get when they were talking to someone else?

  Now, with one of these recorders safely in the big one’s purse (despite the drunken, belligerent Beppe’s nearly making a mess of it), they wouldn’t have to follow the women around the next day to learn what was going on. They could just listen in, relax at the hotel and get over their jet lag, maybe unwind for a while in the rooftop Jacuzzi. The problem would be keeping Beppe away from the bar.

  And then there was the gun; that was worrisome too. Nessuna pistola, Martucci had firmly told him at the start. No guns. Beppe had responded with an offhanded shrug and an unpleasant laugh. “Mi bastano le mani,” he’d said. All I need are my hands. That was back in Genoa, but today Martucci had discovered that Beppe had a gun, after all, a pocket-sized 9 mm Beretta Nano that he’d somehow gotten through security, or more likely had picked up here one way or another, despite Martucci’s effort to keep him in sight at all times.

  Martucci had confiscated it the minute he’d seen it, though not for long. Fausto Martucci was known for his ability to intimidate just about anyone, but a flushed, enraged, wild Beppe with a few glasses of wine in him was another thing altogether, notwithstanding Rizzolo’s instructions to obey Martucci. Martucci took the prudent course and backed off. Perhaps he could return to the subject in the morning and make Beppe see the light, make him see that having a firearm brought far more in the way of dangers than advantages.

  But he doubted it. Who, other than Rizzolo, had ever made the Animal see the light about anything?

  “There are two gentlemen here to see you, signor Ferrante.”

  “Ah.” Ferrante was on one knee going through the bottom shelf of the two-level wall safe in his office, and he did not look up. Except for a barely perceptible stiffening, he knelt as still and solemn as a sculpture of a man at prayer.

  So it had come to this, after all.

  “No appointment?” he mumbled, his head still bowed. Less a questi
on than an expression of resignation. It was 7:00 a.m. Friday. He had waited too long.

  “No, signore.”

  He nodded. “All right, ask them to wait a few moments and then bring them in.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that. I . . .” Filomena hesitated. “I think they may be Don Rizzolo’s men.”

  Yes, Filomena, I think so too. “Do your best, Filomena. Just for a minute or two. Joke with them, perhaps, or flirt if you have to.”

  Filomena’s mouth turned down. Joking and flirting were among neither her job responsibilities nor her gifts. “I’ll try, signore. Shall I make coffee?”

  “I don’t think so, no.”

  When she left he closed the safe, stood up, and slipped on the subtly pinstriped charcoal suit coat that was draped over the back of his chair, buttoning the middle one of its three buttons so that it would drape smoothly. He went to the corner grouping of armchairs, where there was a mirror. In front of it he tinkered with the faultless knot of his silk tie, brushed invisible specks from the shoulders of his jacket, and smoothed back the already impeccably groomed, silver wings of hair at his temples.

  Staring into the mirror, he shook his head at himself. “How could you let it come to this?” he asked softly. The aristocratic, strangely calm countenance looked soberly back at him, but offered no answer. “Well, never mind,” Ferrante said with the slightest of smiles, only a little forced. “The question is moot.”

  Indeed, he knew perfectly well that his arrival at this lamentable point was his own doing. Like some groveling schoolboy eager to ingratiate himself with the master, he’d run to Rizzolo to boast about how quickly he’d recognized the mirror on the magazine cover for what it was, and about his oh-so-brilliant plans for tracking this “Tiny” down.

  How much wiser he would have been, Ferrante thought now that it didn’t matter anymore, to have simply kept his mouth closed, to have gone about the task without telling Rizzolo. If in the end he’d succeeded, he would have been back in the game, a major player again. If he’d failed, he would have been out a few thousand euros, that was all. The don would never be aware that he’d even tried. But he hadn’t kept his mouth closed, and now here he was.