Bonnie was pretty sure this was true. It was the head shake that convinced her. In that one reaction Victoria Lazzaro had conveyed a habitual, reflexive anxiety that couldn’t be faked.
“Okay, I’m coming up.” She took the stairs, keeping one hand on the gun in her purse in case someone had followed Victoria here. It was possible she was being used as bait without her knowledge.
Up close Victoria looked younger than her age—which, as Bonnie recalled from her research, was thirty-two. She was red-haired and pale, with good bone structure and sad eyes. And she was scared. That was obvious.
She unlocked her door and ushered Victoria through the small anteroom into the office. The place was too small to offer more than a couple of hiding places, and a quick, surreptitious inspection established that no bogeymen were present.
“Gotta say, I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning.” Bonnie tossed her purse onto the desk. “How’d you get past the checkpoint?”
“I parked outside town and hiked in.”
“That’s about two miles in wet weather.”
“I’m a determined woman, Miss Parker.” Victoria took a chair facing the desk.
“How could you be sure I’d even show up for work?”
“I was prepared to wait. Your home address is unlisted. This was the only address I knew.”
“Had breakfast?”
“No.”
“I think I can scrounge up a candy bar or something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I am. It’s been kind of a rough twenty-four hours.”
Victoria studied her in the light from the window. “You do look a bit disheveled.”
“I’m always disheveled. I’m more Sam Spade than Kate Spade.” She stuck the manila envelope into a drawer. It would have to wait. “So how do you know about me?”
“A couple of weeks ago I was parked outside Alec Dante’s condo building. I saw someone else watching the place.”
“Someone being me.” Bonnie seated herself at the desk, pulled open the bottom drawer, and discovered a small stash of edibles. A couple of Snickers bars, a package of peanut butter and crackers, and a long-forgotten banana that had deteriorated into something horrible.
“Yes, it was you. I saw you follow Alec on foot when he left the building. When you got back to your Jeep, I—well, I followed you here.”
“That story raises more questions than it answers.” She chose a Snickers bar and peeled off the wrapper. “It also doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“This morning Frank told me Alec was dead. I’m reasonably certain you’re responsible. Why else would you have been tailing him that night?”
“Just for argument’s sake, let’s say you’re right. Aren’t you a little put off by the idea that I killed your nephew?”
“I expect you had a good reason. And he was Frank’s nephew, not mine. Nothing of my husband’s is mine.”
Even so, Bonnie felt the need to justify herself. “The kid was a rapist. He attacked a woman and threatened her and her husband to keep them quiet.”
“It doesn’t surprise me. All the Lazzaro men are comfortable with violence. It seems to be a family trait, like brown eyes or hammer toes.”
Bonnie started on the Snickers, talking around a mouthful of chocolate. “If you feel that way, why’d you marry into the family?”
“I was stupid. I thought it would be glamorous, being married to a man like him. I must have seen too many Martin Scorsese movies.” She removed something from her purse and started playing with it nervously. Rosary beads. “In my defense, I didn’t know the whole truth then. About his enterprises, I mean—and what he’s capable of.”
“But you knew he was connected?”
“Yes, of course I knew. But the details—even today I know only parts of it. He exports stolen cars, you know, through a holding company. Sends them to the Middle East—to Jordan, I believe. On return trips, the freighters carry various legitimate goods, along with black tar heroin and other commodities.”
Commodities. Not a word Bonnie would have used. Mrs. Frank Lazzaro had an education, and probably some money in her background.
“Your husband grew up in the projects,” she said, polishing off the Snickers. “I’m guessing you didn’t.”
“I grew up in Litchfield, Connecticut. Riding lessons, debutante balls. I suppose that’s how I could be so painfully naïve about Frank.” She went on fingering the beads, unconsciously counting them. “I met him at a political function; he’s a legitimate businessman, they said, and a pillar of the community. I quickly learned otherwise. But what he did—it wasn’t real to me. It was a fantasy, a role for Robert DeNiro or Al Pacino, someone like that.”
“And now that you’re married to the mob, it’s not what you expected.”
“No. Not what I expected at all.”
Victoria rose from the chair and started pacing the room, still counting on the rosary.
“Let me tell you what it’s like to be with Frank Lazzaro. You know how some people say they can read auras? I never used to believe it. I do now. Frank has an aura, and it’s pitch black, like smoke. Like fire and brimstone.”
Bonnie watched her from her chair. “He’s not the devil.”
“Don’t be so sure. He lives for money and power … and violence … and death. It’s all he cares about. He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t love the babies. He owns us. We’re his possessions, like his Mercedes or his hunting knife, the one with notches in the handle. I know what those notches mean. Maybe there’ll be a notch for me someday.”
“Victoria—”
“Frank was at the supermarket yesterday. On the news they said a man was killed in the parking lot. Stabbed. It happened in the right time frame. I checked Frank’s raincoat. There were spots on it. Blood spots, possibly. He could have killed that man.”
“What motive would he have?”
Victoria released an odd little laugh, as if a child had said something unintentionally funny.
“You don’t get it. He doesn’t need a motive. Giving him a dirty look is a motive. Burning dinner. I’ve been married to him for five years, and he’s broken my nose three times. Three trips to the emergency room, three lies about walking into a door. Everybody knows I’m lying. They pretend to believe, because they know who my husband is.”
Bonnie took out a pack of Parliament Whites. “If it’s that bad—”
“It’s worse. You don’t know what it’s like. To sit there and watch him smash every piece of china in the house …” She hitched in a breath, remembering. “I didn’t move a muscle, even when he threw some of the dishes at me. You know what I did?”
“Recited the rosary?”
Victoria blinked. “Yes. Silently, of course. How did you—” She become aware of the beads in her hand. “Oh. Well, what else can you do in the presence of pure evil?”
Bonnie didn’t have an answer for that. She tapped a cigarette into her hand and lit it.
“The babies cry all the time. They sense it too. They know I’m afraid, and they know why. And I’m afraid for them. A few weeks ago I came into the nursery, and Frank had scrawled words on the wall with a black felt marker, words three feet tall. HATE … KILL … DEATH. In our babies’ room.”
“Why?”
“Stop asking why. He’d had some kind of breakdown, I guess. An episode. I told you, anything can set him off. Anything.”
“So he’s overly fond of Cocoa Puffs. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No, it’s not what I’m saying. Frank’s not insane. Insanity is a disease. It’s no one’s fault. Frank is …” She searched for the right word. “He’s a monster.”
“You’re making him out to be something more than human.”
“No. Something less. The beatings he gives me, that’s nothing, I can live with that. It’s not knowing what he’ll do next, when you know he’s capable of anything. And he’s been getting worse. Ever since Santa Muerte.”
“Santa what-n
ow?”
“Santa Muerte.”
“I’m guessing whoever that is, he ain’t as jolly as Santa Claus.”
“It’s a peasant superstition. A skeleton woman who stands guard over drug runners and murderers. Frank found out about it a couple of years ago. Now he’s obsessed. He built a shrine to Santa Muerte in his bedroom. He prays to that thing, that voodoo idol. Sometimes—sometimes I think he’s actually possessed. It sounds crazy, I know, but you haven’t seen him. He can be almost normal, and then it’s as if a switch has been thrown and he’s … I don’t know what he is. An animal.”
Bonnie took a long drag on the cig. “You don’t think he’d let you leave him?”
“I told you, I’m his property. I broached the subject of divorce not long ago. He nearly put me in the hospital again. He’ll never let me go. He’ll kill me first. In our marriage that’s the only way out. Till death do us part …”
She stood at the window, looking out, a caged bird forlornly contemplating the sky.
“I thought having children might make it better somehow. Soften him, give him something to love. Something we could share. My God, I was such an idiot. The children have only made it worse. Now I’ve got them to worry about, as well as myself. And it’s not just that he might … hurt them. The worst of it is wondering what they will become. His sons. He’ll make them into carbon copies of himself. He’ll make them into monsters, and I’ll be the breeder of monsters …”
She leaned against the sill, head down, crying silently.
Clearly some words of solace and comfort were required. Unfortunately Bonnie didn’t have that gear. Empathy was not her gift.
She gave it a shot. “Mrs. Lazzaro—Victoria—you need to get a grip.”
It didn’t land. Victoria raised her head, disappointment and outrage on her face. “That’s all you can say? Get a grip? As if I’m being hysterical over nothing—”
“I didn’t mean …”
“You haven’t heard a single thing I’ve said, have you? Or you just don’t care. Well, maybe you’ll care about this. You killed Frank’s nephew. That’s the kind of insult he takes very personally. He may or may not be on to you yet. But he has a way of sniffing out the truth about these things. He’s smart like that, supernaturally smart. It’s as if he has a sixth sense. He will find out about you.”
Bonnie expelled a rippling feather of smoke. “He already has.”
“Has he? You’re sure of that? Good. That makes it easy.”
“Makes what easy? Just what is it you want me to do?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I want you to kill him.”
Bonnie fixed her with a cool blue gaze. That stare had been known to unnerve some people, but Victoria Lazzaro was apparently accustomed to dealing with hard cases. She returned the look, unflinching.
“Kill your husband,” Bonnie said finally.
“Of course. You’re an assassin, aren’t you? A hit man, or hit woman …?”
“Hit man is still the preferred term. Not too many of us gals have cracked the glass ceiling.”
“Well, why else would I be here? Why would I have been sitting in a car outside Alec’s building that night?”
“That was something I kind of wanted to ask you about.”
“I was trying to work up my nerve to go in and see him. I wanted to see if I could talk him into killing Frank.”
“What made you think he’d have been up for that?”
“He was a violent man. And he resented his uncle for keeping him out of the business.”
“It was still a high-risk play. What if he’d told your husband?”
“That was a chance I was prepared to take. I was desperate. But then I caught sight of you, and I decided to wait and see what you were up to. Now I know.”
“You don’t know I killed Dante. It could be a coincidence that I was following him that night and he was bumped off a couple weeks later.”
“I don’t think so. I think Alec crossed the wrong person, and that person hired you to take him out. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Bonnie said nothing.
Victoria nodded. “All right, then. Now I’m hiring you. We need to move quickly. You can do it tonight.”
“Not that soon. Things like this take time. Especially in this case. Your husband is what’s known in the trade as a hard target.”
“He doesn’t have to be. I’ll give you the security code for our house and the combination to the padlock on the gate. You’ll wait for him to go to sleep and then …”
“Shoot him while he’s in bed with you?”
“We sleep in separate rooms. I’m with the babies in the nursery down the hall. He’s alone in the master bedroom.”
“How about servants?”
“There are none who live at the house. They work from eight to six. They’re gone at night.”
“Dogs?”
“We don’t have any.”
“Cats, ferrets, boa constrictors?”
“No pets. No staff. I can walk you through it, every step of the way.”
Bonnie expelled another jet of smoke. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Lazzaro. As tempting as your offer sounds, I can’t let you do it.”
“But why on earth not?”
“Because the way you’ve set it up, the police will know it’s an inside job. And they’ll be all over you like ugly on an ape.”
“I won’t tell them anything.”
“Even if you don’t, Frank’s business associates will know. For both our sakes, it’s gotta be worked out so you’re not the obvious suspect.”
“How can you arrange that?”
“This ain’t my first rodeo. I’ll think of something.”
“Well, think fast.” Victoria rummaged in her purse and handed over a slip of paper. “This is the number of my cell phone. I have it on my person at all times. Call me when you’re ready. And don’t wait too long.”
She crossed to the office door, terminating the dialogue. Bonnie waited until the woman had her hand on the doorknob before saying, “I’ll do what I can. But sometimes these things can’t be rushed.”
Victoria turned. “If he knows your name, you’re already a target. Either he has you in his sights or he will soon. If you don’t take action tonight, it may be too late.”
Bonnie leaned back, smiling around the cigarette in her mouth. “Trying to scare me, Mrs. Lazzaro?”
“Miss Parker, if you’re not scared already, you’re a bigger fool than I ever was.”
The door shut after her, leaving Bonnie to think about that.
CHAPTER 23
Frank Lazzaro had never needed a lot of sleep. Three or four hours would do it for him. He had shut his eyes around three in the morning and awakened at seven. He checked his cell, thinking he must have missed a call from Rocca and Belletiere about Alec’s car. But there hadn’t been any call.
“What the fuck is up with those clowns?” he muttered.
He tried Rocca’s cell, then Belletiere’s. Both calls bounced to voicemail. He tried Belletiere’s home phone. His wife Sophie said he hadn’t been home all night. She wasn’t worried; Paul didn’t exactly keep regular hours.
But Frank was getting a little concerned. It occurred to him that the boys might have run into some trouble with the police. They’d been trespassing on the island, after all. If they’d been arrested, they would have called Frank’s attorney, Howie Springer. Frank got in touch with him. Springer hadn’t heard a thing.
This was starting to get spooky. Something wasn’t right.
Over breakfast, Frank tracked down DiRosario and Costello and told them to go to Devil’s Hook and see if the car had been moved. Victoria, washing dishes in the sink, overheard his end of the conversation and had to be told about Alec. She didn’t exactly break down in tears. She’d never been a fan of the kid, or of any of Frank’s family members. Ordinarily, Frank might have taught her a little respect, but at the moment he had other things on his mind.
He shaved, showered, and dressed
in his trademark Armani suit and Charvet necktie. He was reviewing some paperwork when Costello got through to him on his cell. He and DiRosario were at the cottage, and they had bad news.
“It’s a goddamn crime scene,” Costello said. “Cops all over the place. Paulie and Lou—they’re dead, Frank.”
He shut his eyes, feeling suddenly winded. “How?”
“Dunno the details. It’s not like we can go up to the cops and ask. But Paulie’s Impala is there, and we seen two body bags being loaded onto a morgue wagon. You got a TV signal at your place?”
“Yeah, the dish is still working.”
“Turn on channel four. They got a news van here and they’re gonna go live in a minute.”
Frank switched on the set in the den and watched the live update from Devil’s Hook. Two reputed mobsters killed in a shootout. A car linked to a third party, the cottage’s owner, Alec Dante, currently a person of interest to the authorities.
Frank stamped at the remote, killing the TV. He put his head in his hands and tried to make sense of it. How the fuck …?
Maybe that little scrote Fish Face had been jerking him off. Maybe the Long Fong Boyz knew about Alec all the time and were keen on having a war. It had to be something like that. He couldn’t believe this woman, Bonnie Parker, was behind it. One gun-toting twat couldn’t do that much damage, and why would she have been back on Devil’s Hook anyway? For that matter, what would the Long Fong Boyz be doing there?
None of it added up. He was feeling itchy and antsy, and he could sense the black beast stirring in its cave.
That was when he’d left the house in Saddle River, heading into Jersey City in search of answers.
The drive was rough, and not just because the roads were fucked. He had trouble concentrating. Rage and sorrow competed for his attention. He couldn’t believe Rocca and Belletiere were gone, just like that. They’d been with him for years. Not the brightest bulbs, but loyal and dependable and always good for a laugh. Dead now—killed while running a stupid errand, picking up a car. After all the shit they’d been through, all the threats they’d survived.
The last he’d seen of them was when they left the warehouse, having helped Frank put Tommy Chang into the drum.
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