by John Moss
By the time Tony had climbed into the back and removed Miranda’s cuffs and hood, Elke’s were already off. Carlo Sebastiani held them in his hands as if they were lingerie. He waited for the women to get out first, admiring them as they squirmed out of the confined space.
Stepping from the garage into the house, Miranda was surprised. Far from being a place of confinement, it was an opulently appointed suburban house with gleaming hard furniture and plush soft furniture, all in earth tones with a few strategic accents of brilliant colour. Waiting for them in the living room was an attractive woman in her early fifties who rose to her feet, kissed Carlo in a familiar embrace, greeted Tony as a friend and smiled at the two women, waiting for an introduction.
“This is my wife,” said Carlo, with an awkward gesture to the woman whose imperial demeanour left no doubt about her status.
“Pleased to meet you, I’m Linda. You’re going to be staying with me for a while.”
“I’m Miranda, this is Elke. I’m a Toronto police detective.”
“I’m a stay-at-home empty-nest New Jersey housewife,” said Linda Sebastiani. “Sit down, make yourselves comfortable. Tony, will you find Carmen, have her get us some drinks. So, Detective, how do you like New Jersey so far?”
There was more menace in the woman’s charm than anything Miranda perceived in her husband’s obvious expressions of power. Miranda looked around. There were no bars on the windows, no guards posted at the doors, no attempt to stop her from taking in the details of their surroundings.
But, of course, she thought. There is a front garden and hedges. I could never identify this place from the street in a million years. As for breaking free, even if we got away, where would we go? We don’t know where we are. New Jersey. That covers a lot of territory.
The maid came in and took orders for drinks. Miranda asked for a Scotch, straight up.
“Of course,” said Sebastiani, “if you would prefer wine?”
“Let me guess,” said Miranda. “You have ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape at perfect cellar temperature.”
“Yes, we do, and as you say, it should be slightly cooled, enough to show a bloom on the bottle. Am I right, Ms. Sturmberg?”
Elke, who had seemed distracted to this point, either through fear or possibly frustration at yet another intrusion on her normally quiet and esoteric lifestyle, responded with surprising vivacity. “Yes, that is definitely best. I would always serve up a blended wine at cellar temperature. By the grape, I’d go cooler or warmer, depending.”
“On what?” asked Linda Sebastiani with genuine interest.
“On the grape. Beaujolais, which is Gamay, I might even chill. A Merlot, just below room temperature. Something heavy like Hermitage, which is Syrah, or an Australian Shiraz, if they’re good, I’d rest them on the table for half an hour before opening to let them warm, then let them breathe for another half hour before pouring.”
“You are in the wine business, of course,” the other woman noted.
“Yes, I am.”
“And what do you think of our contribution to wine culture?” Carlo Sebastiani asked.
“Italy’s, it’s —”
“No, no, Ms. Sturmberg. I am a patriot. Italy is, as a poet once said, a creation myth. I am a proud and loyal American. I am asking about our ChâteauNeuf.”
“You are a patriot who sells counterfeit French wine to a gullible American public,” said Miranda.
“Do not confuse honour with honesty, Ms. Quin,” he snapped back.
“Carmen,” said Linda in a voice sufficiently strident to interrupt the conversational flow, as she clearly intended, “would you bring up a bottle of Bordeaux from the cellar, say, Château Mouton Rothschild.”
“Yes, ma’am. What year would you like?”
“Our guests are special, let them decide.”
Without hesitation, Elke chimed in with, “Nineteen forty-five, that would be nice.”
“Bring us a nineteen forty-five, then,” said Linda.
“You have it!” exclaimed Elke. “Really?”
“Of course,” said Linda. “Carmen, you will open it, please, and leave it on the sideboard. I’m sure my friend would like it to breathe.”
Miranda was fascinated to see how Elke’s passion for wine displaced her sense of imminent danger or social propriety as the virtual prisoner in the home of a family of gangsters.
“This is a nice place,” she said. “Perhaps I could use your phone.”
“Thank you,” said Carlo. “We only use it now and then, for special occasions. Think of it as a family cottage. It is a safe haven from life on the mean streets — and the main streets. It’s nice. But, of course, as anonymous as a one-dollar bill. Even the police don’t know about this place. And no, you may not use the telephone.”
“Captain Clancy is going to miss us. He’ll know by morning.”
“He will know you are safe.”
“No way!”
“What?”
“He’s not on your payroll?”
“As you say, no way. But he understands certain things, he will know not to worry.”
“What is going on here?” Miranda demanded.
“As I said, my dear, I am a patriot.”
“You are a hoodlum.”
“They are not mutually exclusive.”
There was an awkward lull in the conversation. Miranda watched Linda Sebastiani for any sign of empathy, something she could play on. The woman seemed serene, the only one in the room not agitated by the silence.
“So,” said Carlo. “You want to talk about wines?”
“I would like to know why we’re here.”
“If you knew, you would not be here.”
“Say again?”
“If you understood the situation, you would be at home. You would be back in Canada.”
“Canada,” said Linda, savouring the word as if she were trying to identify an unusual flavour. “Toronto. Yes, you must know Francine Ciccone, the poor woman.”
“Poor woman, I doubt. I know who she is. I’ve met her husband.”
“Who is dead.”
“Yes. I’m sure you know the situation between us.”
“Yes, I do. Sometimes, despite what my husband says, honesty and honour come together. It was a good thing you were trying to do for Vittorio.”
“It was not for Vittorio Ciccone. It was simply what happened.”
“And your partner, he is an old friend of Francine’s.” Linda said this as a statement of fact.
“They were in school together.”
“And college,” said Linda. “Did you know Tony went to the same university? It was in Toronto, am I right?”
“Yes, and you?”
“Wellesley. Outside Boston.”
“Did you graduate?”
“Yes, Detective.”
“Magnum cum laude,” exclaimed her husband with pride.
“Magna, not magnum,” said his wife gently. “Carlo studied on the streets of New York and did his graduate work in Toronto, but not at the university.”
“Vittorio,” said Carlo, “he was my professor, eh.” He seemed proud of knowing to add eh to the end of his sentence.
“I thought you went to law school?”
“Carlo!” exclaimed Linda.
“Yeah, that’s just something I say.”
“I didn’t think Bourassa studied law,” said Miranda.
“Ah, but he did. I didn’t. He failed out.”
Miranda glanced at Elke who, after her initial display of terror, seemed to be settling in as a houseguest. Whatever her post-traumatic response to yet another harrowing event, it had quickly passed. She had her eye on the ’45 Château Mouton that the maid had brought in, opened, and set on the sideboard.
“Normally, I would insist such a bottle be opened in my presence,” she said, addressing Carlo.
“You’ll just have to trust me,” he responded with a good-natured shrug.
“If you’d sell plonk as Châteauneuf-du-Pap
e,” said Miranda, “why wouldn’t you re-use a Mouton bottle for special occasions like this?”
Surprisingly, Elke rose to the defense. “It isn’t plonk, Miranda. That’s the ironic part. If they — you guys — had marketed your Ninth Chateau as a legitimate blend, you could have done very well, won a few prizes, sold it for twenty or thirty dollars a bottle, built a major business.”
“Yeah,” said Carlo, “we could have. But we didn’t. You want a swig of this?” He got up and grasped the Mouton by the neck.
“Be careful!” Elke exclaimed. “You’ll stir up the sediment, you’ll bruise it.”
“If there is sediment,” said Miranda, still dubious about the wine’s authenticity.
Carlo held the bottle up against the overhead light. The others gathered around him, taking turns gazing into the sombre opacity inside the base of the green glass.
“Looks real,” said Elke. She turned to Miranda. “Have you any idea what it’s worth, do you know what we’re drinking?”
“A lot?”
“A whole lot.”
“As in, how much?”
“Ten–fifteen thousand. One bottle sold at auction a couple of years ago for $31,000 U.S. dollars.”
“Thirty-one thousand!”
“Yes.”
“Dollars!”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Sebastiani, you make it almost worth being your captive.”
“Our guests,” said Linda softly, as if clarifying a minor social faux pas.
Miranda nodded to her in a gesture of temporary acquiescence and held out her glass.
Carlo poured, and in fact handled the Mouton with great delicacy. He looked around him.
“Here, Tony. Where’s your glass. Carmen,” he called. She emerged through a door from the dining room. “Get a glass, you gotta try this.”
Just as Miranda was beginning to like this man, he exclaimed, “It’s worth more than she makes in a year!” The maid put down the glass she had picked up, smiled, and with the vaguest intimation of a curtsy, she eased herself out of the room.
“Immigrants,” said Carlo, “no taste!”
Elke held her glass lightly by the stem, filled to just below the widest part of its bulge, leaving room for the wine to breathe. She swirled it in slow motion and pressing the rim to her nose, drew in deeply. Then she held the glass away from her, examining the wine against the light.
“Beautiful brick colour,” she said. “Perfect nose. Ripe blackberries, bitter chocolate, vanilla, dried grass. It has a depth beyond words.”
She placed the glass to her lips. The others watched in anticipation. She took a sip, swirled it in her mouth, breathed through her open mouth, mouthing the wine, and swallowed.
“Thank you, Carlo. That is an experience to die for — not literally.”
The others drank, each imitating the procedural details of Elke’s tasting, and all shared her sense of wonder. For a few minutes the perverse dynamics of their relationships were obscured by their pleasure.
Then Miranda set her glass down. She addressed Carlo. “You’re not really interested in wine, are you?”
“You are mistaken. I love a rare, good wine like this.”
“But you have no interest in making it. The winery was a cover, right? You and Vittorio Ciccone, others from New York, the ChâteauNeuf-du-Pape thing was an elaborate bit of distraction.”
“Why would we do that?” said Carlo. “We are not in the habit, if you are referring to me and my business associates, of simply amusing ourselves.”
“I meant distraction as — never mind. Then what?”
“What, what about what?”
“You’ve got us here as prisoners, and it has something to do with counterfeit wines. Don’t we deserve an explanation?”
“It is not necessary.”
There was dead silence.
“Perhaps you are tired,” said Linda. “I will call Carmen. She will show you to your room. I am afraid you will be sleeping in a suite downstairs. Do not be alarmed, the room is well appointed, but it has no windows to distract you. Don’t you agree, Detective Quin, windows, they can be a distraction.”
Miranda ignored her. She was annoyed for letting the woman’s social skills, her husband’s generosity in sharing the incomparable wine, distract her from the gravity of their situation.
“It is about drugs,” she said abruptly, turning directly to Carlo.
He said nothing, but he set down his glass with wine still in it, as if the best wine of the last century no longer held his interest.
“You’re making a big mistake, Carlo. You can’t keep us here forever,” she said, feeling vaguely uncomfortable for uttering clichés. The Mounties will come to our rescue, she thought. I’m a Canadian.
“Tony,” said Linda, indicating the decision was hers, “take the ladies downstairs, please.” Then, in a more congenial voice, she added, “Breakfast will be served at eight fifteen. Carmen is especially good at breakfasts. Good night.”
She turned to address her husband privately, making it clear their visitors, or prisoners, were no longer of interest.
Miranda turned to Elke and nodded their assent, and both followed Tony along a corridor and down a staircase into the secured suite below ground level. The door was so thick, it seemed like they were entering a vault.
“Soundproof,” he noted. “I hope you’ll be comfortable.”
“Thank you,” said Elke as if he were their host for a weekend visit.
“I’d better take your purses,” he said.
“Oh, come on,” said Elke, plaintively, “there’s stuff in there I need.”
“You’ll find everything necessary in the bathroom,” he said, and took Miranda’s proffered bag and then Elke’s, and motioned them to enter.
They stepped into what looked like a moderately expensive hotel suite, complete with matching cabinets for the television and mini-bar.
“The bathroom’s in there. The thermostat’s here.” Tony indicated the thermostat by the door. “There’s lots of fresh air pumped in to make up for no windows. There’s kinky stuff in the drawers there, in the dresser, if you two want to play. Handcuffs and leather. Enjoy yourselves, think of this as a holiday retreat.”
“Thanks,” said Elke, walking over and sitting on one of the twin beds. Then, provocatively, she added, “Since you can’t stay, you’d better go. See you in the morning, Tony.”
She smiled. He smiled back.
Tony closed the door and locked it from the outside. Miranda noticed there was a steel bar that could be bolted across the door from the inside to make the room virtually impregnable. Why, she could not imagine, unless even crime bosses need a safe room.
Miranda checked out the bathroom and came back into the bedroom. She couldn’t shake from her mind the image of the final exchange between Elke and Tony. She was responding to something indefinable, and it sent a chill shooting through to the bone.
The two women explored. There were cotton pajamas neatly folded on each bed, along with toiletry kits like the ones airlines give away in business class. Miranda picked up her kit and pajamas and went back into the bathroom. She had a shower and rinsed out her underwear. She used the hair dryer to dry her hair and returned to the bedroom. Elke was slouched against the backboard of her bed, stripped down to her panties and bra.
“My turn,” said Elke. “You didn’t use up all the hot water, did you?”
Miranda shook her head and pulled back the spread. She drew the sheet up around her, then as Elke stepped into the bathroom, she hopped out and opened the TV cabinet, and climbing back in, she directed the remote control wand at the screen and switched on CNN.
Talking heads. American politics. Terrorism in the U.K., either IRA or a group called al-Qaeda, both claimed the credit. Weather, then a panel of talking torsos arguing vociferously from fixed opposing perspectives.
Elke emerged, towelling her hair. Miranda switched off the television.
“I don’t like those thin
gs, those driers, they give you split ends.”
“Elke?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to ask you a question.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Actually, it’s not a question. But perhaps you have an explanation. You were not wearing a hood, were you, in the car. You weren’t manacled with handcuffs?”
Elke walked around to the far side of her own bed. She glanced up at an air vent, then back at Miranda, who understood they were being observed. Then she thought about Elke, waiting in her underwear for her turn in the shower. Was she being modest, or teasing? Were they being watched in the shower as well? Was Elke conscious of an audience? There was a lot about Elke more important than her mode of undress that concerned Miranda right now.
“Elke? Did you hear me?”
Elke turned her head halfway toward Miranda, and she seemed to be smiling. Than she stripped off the bedspread and stretched out on top of the sheets.
“Goodnight, Miranda.”
Miranda did not answer. Her mind was racing. She reached over and turned off the bedside light. There was the glow of a night-light seeping out from under the bathroom door. If Elke Sturmberg was not blindfolded or tied down in the car, it was because she knew these people. The implications ran rampant through her head. How was this woman connected to New Jersey gangsters, to the Mafia?
Miranda settled her head deeply into the pillow, prepared to stay awake through the night. She felt profoundly betrayed. She was not afraid of Elke, but suddenly she recognized Elke as part of a frightening conspiracy. Questions roared through her mind. Did Elke arrange for their abduction? Was her work at Beverley Auctions a cover? Was she involved in the drug trade? Did she set up Ivan Muritori to be killed? Did she execute the man by the Humber River in cold blood? That’s what Morgan had intimated. Did she have anything to do with Morgan’s ambush? Did she lure them to the winery in Niagara to be killed? No, she ended up with them in the bullet-riddled vat. What was her Canadian connection? How come she knew the landmarks west of Toronto — was it because she was registering details in response to her terror, or something more sinister? Why did she end up at Miranda’s apartment? With a severed hand in her Monica Lewinsky knock-off handbag?