The Villa of Mysteries

by David Hewson

  “Maybe that’s what she liked,” Peroni suggested, trying to be reasonable with this man because he understood how essential he was to them. “I have kids. You get to understand these things. A little anyhow. Sometimes they do the opposite of what you want just because it is the opposite of what you want. It doesn’t mean you can go blaming yourself for what happens next. That’s how people are made.”

  Wallis nodded. “True.”

  “So,” Peroni continued. “Now you know this, how about we stop pretending, huh? We know she didn’t go missing just off the cuff. And I got to say, Mr. Wallis, you must have realized that all along. So let’s cut the crap. We got a little time before your appointment. You tell us. What really happened that day?”

  “Really?” There was some bitter amusement in Wallis’s face. Peroni didn’t like what he was seeing. This man just might help them, but he’d never relinquish control and never fully divulge anything he didn’t think necessary. “I’ve no idea. That is the truth. I swear to it. If I’d known—”

  He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “You’d have killed him?” Peroni suggested. “Just for screwing around?”

  Wallis nodded. “The person I was then . . . I would have killed him.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I live in Rome and read my books,” Vergil Wallis said quietly.

  He pulled the overcoat tighter around him. “A man can drown himself in a few illusions if he likes. Is there anything wrong in that?”

  Falcone and Peroni exchanged glances. Then Falcone tried to get things back on track.

  “Where did you think Eleanor was going that day?”

  “To some kind of party. Neri knew what interested me. Knew what interested her too. They were the same things. When we went on vacation together it was just after Eleanor’s birthday. Neri said he wanted to give her a gift. A surprise. Something out of the past. I’d given her Kirk’s book as a birthday present. She loved the stupid thing, read it all in a couple of days. So I mentioned this to Neri and said, maybe—”

  Wallis paused and sighed. “The next thing I know Neri’s fixed a meeting round at his house. Me and him and the Kirk guy, who’s all eyes at the idea he might get paid to throw the party of his dreams. If I’d thought about it maybe the alarm bells would have started ringing. I didn’t even know what a Dionysian ceremony was. Maybe that was why the Kirk guy kept looking at me, weird, all the time. I just didn’t . . . imagine.”

  He hesitated over this last point. “Eleanor knew, of course. Neri’s kid must have set her up for the whole thing.”

  “Where was this supposed to happen?” Peroni asked.

  “I don’t know,” Wallis replied. “I never asked. I could have gone along if I’d wanted. I didn’t.”

  “Why not?” Peroni wondered.

  Wallis glowered at him. “Watching some young kids dance around in costume? That’s what I thought it was. I’d been in Rome long enough to recognize all the tourist shit they try to sell you. They say it’s culture. I thought it was just one more turn around the block. If Eleanor wanted it . . . fine. I’d better things to do with my time.”

  Peroni shot Falcone a look that said unconvinced. “Did you drive her there?”

  “No. She went off on that little bike of hers. Like I said.”

  “You really have no idea where she might have gone?”

  “None at all. And that’s the truth.”

  They waited. Wallis wasn’t going to give this up to them easily.

  Falcone pressed him. “It’s nine in the morning and she’s left for this fancy dress party. Is she wearing the clothes we found her in?”

  “She had them in a bag. The Kirk guy sent them along with some other stuff.”

  “Then what?” Falcone asked.

  Wallis closed his eyes for a moment and Peroni felt his heart skip a beat because this could just be the point where the American thought “no further.” “Then nothing. For hours and hours. And I’m busy. I got people to talk to, calls to make. So I don’t think twice about it. Not until the evening and then I think . . . she never said when she’d be back. She went out there and she was so excited she didn’t even care about what time it all ended.”

  “Then you call Emilio Neri, right?” Peroni could work this through for himself. It was what you did as a father. Not approach the kids direct, even if you could find them. That was wrong. That was uncool. You phoned their dads and said, look, man to man . . .

  “Eventually, Neri calls me.” Wallis shook his head. “I never touched dope. Sold plenty. I never thought about it. It wasn’t anything that came near me. It never affected anyone I loved, not even back in the old days when I was just some black punk on the street. Dope just existed. It was a utility for us. Like water or electricity.”

  “Pretty lucrative utility, Mr. Wallis,” Peroni observed. “Bought you that nice house on the hill.”

  “Bought me part of that nice house. Not as much as you think.”

  “Does that hurt? Now you realize the kid got burned by dope?”

  For a moment Peroni thought Vergil Wallis might take one of those big black fists out of the pocket of his leather overcoat and smack him with it.

  “But she wasn’t, was she?” Wallis replied calmly. “Someone cut her throat. Neri said it was dope. He acted like he was furious too. Said he came in on the thing and found the kids had been popping stuff on the side, and even the professor guy never knew it was that bad. He said—”

  Vergil Wallis could have been a good actor, Peroni thought. Or maybe he did feel this cut up after all these years.

  “There’d been an accident,” Wallis continued. “Eleanor had over-dosed on some bad crack one of the kids—not Mickey—had smuggled into the party. She’d gone into a coma. They’d called a doctor they knew. They’d tried everything. She was dead. Nothing they could do.”

  “Then what?”

  Wallis stared at his long black hands. He hunched up inside the coat looking as miserable as any man Gianni Peroni had ever seen. “For an hour or two I went crazy. Went round smashing things. Beating up on anyone I could find. Trying to find someone else to blame.”

  “You blame yourself,” Peroni said instantly, and found, against his wishes, some feelings of sympathy rising inside himself. “That’s how it works.”

  “That’s how it works.”

  “But after,” Peroni continued, “when you stop feeling quite so mad, what do you do? Go to the cops? No. Because you’re a crook, Mr. Wallis. And crooks don’t go to the cops. We’d start asking where that dope came from. We’d start asking all kinds of stuff.”

  Wallis nodded and didn’t say a word.

  Peroni thought about this. “And those bosses of yours back home wouldn’t be none too pleased, I guess. All the same, I’d want to see the body. Didn’t you want to see the body?”

  “Seen a lot of bodies in my time, mister,” Vergil Wallis murmured. “That’s one I didn’t want coming back to haunt me at nights. I just told Neri to get on with it. He’d offed the kid he said brought in the dope. Or so he claimed. I just went back into my shell. And I remembered.” The black eyes flashed at both of them. “I remember well.”

  “Dope.” Peroni hated working drugs. Everything got so unpredictable. “Once you walk into that place it all gets so messy. Who’s to say that wasn’t what killed her, really? That it wasn’t little Mickey out of his head thinking he was the love god come to call? And getting all cut up or something when she says no, and by the by, Mickey, I’m carrying a little present for you?”

  Wallis pushed his big fists deeper into the overcoat. “What is it you want of me? There’s nothing I can do to bring her back.”

  Peroni bridled at that. “There are two women and a cop you could help bring back, Mr. Wallis.”

  “Why me?”

  “Mickey Neri says you know the way,” Falcone reminded him. “Do you?”

  “I have no idea what the hell he’s talking about. All I can guess is what you can gues
s. He wants me there for my hide. I’d need a damn good reason to lay it on the line for people I don’t even know.”

  Falcone glanced at the clock on the wall. It was two minutes to nine. “You might get to find out who really killed her. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t that the lure Mickey’s really dangling in your face? Also, you get me and half the cops in Rome behind you. We quit chasing bombers, quit chasing street thieves and dope dealers, pimps and murderers, and try to save your lying ass instead. The choice is yours, Mr. Wallis. But if I have to pick up any more dead bodies at the end of this, your cosy sweetheart deal with the DIA goes out the window. I don’t see you sitting comfortably in that house of yours on the hill for much longer now. Do you?”

  Wallis grimaced. “Is that a deal you’re offering me? Play ball and you stay off my back?”

  Peroni was quietly whistling through his teeth, looking livid.

  “If that’s the way you care to see it,” Falcone replied.

  “And you think you’re good enough to keep me alive? All the dead bodies I’ve seen on the news this past couple of days don’t give me much in the way of optimism.”

  Falcone shrugged. “Take it or leave it. Either way we’re pulling away all those people from your gate. The DIA don’t do security. Who do you think’s going to guard your back then? Your golf buddies have got to go home sometime. Neri’s people aren’t going away. And they want blood over that accountant, I imagine. Thanks for the gift, by the way.”

  Vergil Wallis leaned over the desk and pointed a long black finger in Falcone’s direction. “Listen to me, man. I didn’t touch Neri’s accountant. I’m retired. OK?”

  Then he fell back into his chair and closed his eyes, waiting.

  Bang on the minute—Mickey Neri was punctual—the phone rang. The two men watched Vergil Wallis. He waited, just long enough to make them nervous, then picked up the handset.

  Wallis hit the button and barked, “Speak.”

  He listened. It didn’t last long.

  “Well?” Falcone demanded.

  Wallis reached inside his coat and pulled out a piece, a silver pistol, nice and shiny, of a kind neither cop recognized. “You’re not thinking of taking this off me now?”

  “My,” Peroni observed. “The things retired people carry around with them these days. Does that get covered by the state pension or what?”

  Wallis opened the bag and dropped the gun inside. “Front steps of San Giovanni. Twenty-five minutes. I want Mr. Sweet Talk here to drive. I hear he played boss class once. Don’t want any amateurs stepping on my toes.”

  Mickey Neri sniffed in the dead air of the caverns and wished he had the courage to walk outside, out into good daylight, away from the mess he was in. That wasn’t possible. Adele had made him place the calls. She said they had no choice. They needed money. They needed his father to give them the chance to start again, free of his anger. So they just sat in one of the chambers in this stinking, dark maze, trying not to bitch at one another. Mickey just couldn’t work out the geography of the place. Adele walked around as if she knew every last corner, every last twist and turn. It pissed him off. He thought he was going to end up in charge. He was grateful for what she’d done at Toni Martelli’s. But he’d have killed the old bastard without her help . . . in the end.

  If it worked out now they’d get some money, some kind of reconciliation, and they would earn the old man’s thanks. Mickey knew his father well. Gratitude was one thing that did count with the old man. Emilio had his faults but he had a thing about fairness, a thing that was almost a virtue. If he and Adele could deliver Vergil Wallis’s head on a plate, then it was possible—just—that everything else could be forgiven. Or if not forgiven, forgotten. These were, as Adele was swift to point out, changed times. Emilio Neri couldn’t go back to being a resident Rome hood, not after felling a bunch of cops with a bomb. His power was failing him. But the cops couldn’t touch Mickey with any of this. He could stick around, live off the cream of the estate. With or without Adele in tow—he hadn’t decided on that one yet.

  It all hinged on Vergil Wallis showing up. Without him, Mickey thought, they were both dead. And that thought didn’t leave him any the happier. If he were the big black crook up on the hill, trying to look respectable for all the world, the last thing he’d do would be to run an errand to his worst enemy. It made no sense.

  “What if Wallis don’t turn up?” he asked.

  “He will.”

  “Why are you so sure?”

  “You don’t understand anything, do you?” she snapped. “These are serious men. Maybe they do end up trying to kill each other. Maybe that would be good for us. But men like this talk, even in the middle of a war. They have to understand how everything lies, if there’s some middle ground between them. Wallis wants this settled just as much as Emilio. And also—” She gave him that frank look, the one that went right through him. “I imagine he wants to know what happened back then. Don’t you?”

  “Why ask me?” he demanded. “Never even knew the stuck-up little kid. Never even touched her.”

  “No?” She didn’t sound convinced.

  “No. Anyway, that was years ago. It’s time people started thinking about now, not what happened way back.”

  She laughed, shook her sleek, perfect hair and gave him the same kind of look his father wore so often. One that said: don’t be so dumb. “That’s what happens when you get older, Mickey. You don’t have so much future ahead of you. It’s the past that gets more real.”

  “What do you know? You’ve only got a year or two on me.”

  “Guess I grew up more,” she said, watching him reach for his cigarettes. “Don’t light that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if all this goes bad someone’s going to be shooting in the dark. Think, for once in your life. It’s easier to aim at a smell.”

  He swore and threw the pack onto the floor. “And if it goes well? What then?”

  She moved close to him, smiling, and placed a slender hand against his chest, toying with the buttons on his shirt, a gesture he knew was mocking him somehow. “Then we get to inherit everything. You and me. We can make a couple. Can’t we?”

  “Yeah.” He could hear the uncertainty in his own voice. He was trying to stay on top of things. It wasn’t easy. “What’s the cop doing here now, Adele? And that woman too? What do we do with them?”

  She shrugged, playing with his collar. “You don’t have anything to worry about except your old man. Leave the rest of them to me.”

  “What? This guy’s a cop. If they think I whacked him they’ll never leave me alone. I want this shit over when we get out of here. I want to be free of all this crap.”

  “Mickey,” she said firmly. “When I say this isn’t your problem, I mean it.”

  He tried to laugh but it didn’t ring true. “So you’re the boss? You’re going to take on Emilio and that Bucci animal all on your own? There’s just the two of us. How’s that gonna happen?”

  She just smiled and it wasn’t a smile he recognized. He wasn’t sure he really knew this woman anymore.

  “You don’t need to worry about Bruno. I screwed him before I screwed you.”

  Mickey Neri suddenly felt dead stupid. “Really?” He didn’t know what to think, except that it offended him. “That’s nice.”

  The cold eyes blinked then stared into him. “Yes. Nice. I did it just the once. That was all it needed. Thanks to that I got a little warning about what was going on in Emilio’s sick head when he found out about us last night. Thanks to that I knew enough to get out of the damn house before he blew it to pieces, and to save your pathetic ass. It means we stay alive and Bruno gets to prosper too. That’s called diplomacy, Mickey. It’s a skill you have to learn. Bruno knows he doesn’t have what it takes to run a family. There’d be a war within months and he’d lose. He’s a number two. He’s smart enough to realize that.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “So long as it stays that way he’s got n
othing to worry about.”

  “No.” She was mocking him and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Not yet anyway.

  Some time the previous day Adele had put some blonde stuff on her hair, mixing it over the red. It was more noticeable under the yellow light of the caves. It made her look different. More classy somehow. And younger.

  “You coloured your hair,” he said, and reached to stroke it, thinking that maybe there was time to fit something in. Maybe this damp, stinking place in the earth was just the place for it. She could go down on him maybe. They could even stay in this little room and fuck. “I like it.”

  She snatched his hand away. “I didn’t colour it, you moron. This is what it’s meant to be like. And don’t touch me, Mickey. Not without my say-so.”

  He tried to think back over the years. She was right. She did used to be blonde. It just didn’t last too long for some reason. “Why not?”

  The green eyes were so hard now, full of something not far from hate. “You need to learn what ‘no’ means. You might as well start now.”

  She hesitated. She looked a little nervous just then and he couldn’t work out whether this was good or bad.

  “Do you remember what I told you?” she asked. “Can I rely on you, Mickey?”

  “Yeah. Just don’t fuck around with me afterwards.”

  Her skinny hand came up and touched his cheek. “No,” she said, smiling.

  “Adele?” She was walking out of the room, without another word. “Adele?”

  She stopped in the shadow of the open door and blew him a kiss.

  “You’ve got to cope with this on your own now, Mickey,” she said. “I’ve got other things to do.”

  Teresa Lupo went back to her office with Gianni Peroni’s words ringing happily in her head. A little praise went a long way. Her thoughts were beginning to clear a little too. The vicious flu virus in her head was in retreat from a bombardment of aspirin, and with its abatement came some clarity. She’d found the change of clothing she kept in the office, showered, and now felt fresh and clean. Her hair was combed and back in the businesslike crop. If she peered in the mirror—which she didn’t plan to do—she guessed her eyes wouldn’t even be that bloodshot anymore. The mood was a touch infectious. Monkboy had recovered some of his composure too when the report from the lab came through. It had confirmed what Teresa, in her heart, already knew. The paternity of the tiny preserved foetus she’d recovered from Eleanor Jamieson’s corpse may have been more about morale than closure. No one had any idea where the Neris had fled overnight. But morale mattered. Maybe everyone was still walking in the dark but at least they had a spring in their step.