The Scarlet Thread (40 page)

“My clients,” O'Halloran said, “want to stay anonymous. Until they can be sure of their case.”

The manager understood that. He knew about clients and their need for anonymity. He said, “But surely the police are the right people to track them down?”

O'Halloran agreed. “Sure they are. But my clients don't want the publicity. They feel—and I have guaranteed it to them—that when the fraud is uncovered, the couple concerned will make full restitution rather than face criminal prosecution.”

The manager thought that was a sensible solution.

“And they operate in hotels as well as restaurants?”

“They specialize in hotels,” O'Halloran said. “They have worked their way through my client's chain of hotels and associated restaurants for the last three years. The sums of money have amounted to a big total. The last bill left unpaid was”—he consulted a nonexistent note in his briefcase—“three thousand eight hundred dollars. For a four-night stay.” He cleared his throat. “They also filled a suitcase with ornaments, including some prints off the wall of the suite. It's become part of their trademark.”

The manager said, “And the restaurants? They leave a signature there too?” He was personally interested now.

O'Halloran said, “The best vintage champagne, always a magnum. The guy always says they're celebrating. Then comes the caviar, the top of the à la carte list, and they disappear before you can put the check on the table.”

“Well.” The other man couldn't help looking satisfied. “We've had no such instance here, I assure you. So you're wasting your time coming to me.”

“They came here to dinner,” O'Halloran said. “They were here on September eleventh two years ago. We know because they left a receipted bill from your restaurant in the wastebasket the last time they booked into one of our hotels. It's our only chance to identify them. If you will let me have the names and what you know about them … I understand that you keep records up to three years.”

The manager nodded. “We do. We have a regular client list with credit ratings, and a list of casuals. I'll get it for you.”

An hour later O'Halloran left the office. He had a number of names and a lot of information. Steven Falconi had dined there with the senator and his wife. Six other couples were of possible significance. The maître d', Louis, was instructed to give O'Halloran what help he needed, and Louis didn't disobey the manager. Two couples he knew only slightly; the men were business executives, and they came in from out of town with a client now and then. Of the remaining four, one was a regular client: Mr. Forrest, who ran a big leather goods retailing business. He'd brought a lady guest that night. The other couples were unknowns; they came in for dinner and were not seen again. O'Halloran said thanks, he'd been a great help, and drove himself back to the office. There'd been something evasive about Louis when he talked about Forrest.

Mike O'Halloran decided to pay the man a call.

Clara was trying on her wedding dress. It was a simple cream silk sheath dress with a fitted jacket trimmed in ranch mink on collar and cuffs. They'd made a hat to match, a plain pillbox in the same material.

Her mother was sitting in the bedroom of the brownstone, looking distressed. “You shouldn't do this,” she was repeating. “It's unlucky. You know it's unlucky to wear it the day before!”

“Balls,” Clara said briskly. “I've never believed in all that stuff.” She took off the neat little hat and put it in its bed of tissue in the hatbox. Behind her, Luisa made the forked finger sign against the evil eye. Even when she was young, Clara had never listened to her mother. Now she wouldn't listen to anyone except her father. Luisa was a simple woman, but she understood simple things like jealousy. Bruno was jealous, and so was she. Father and daughter had shut them both out and didn't bother to be tactful about it. They paraded their intimacy, Clara especially, as if she gloried in her status of surrogate son. She was hard and coldhearted, Luisa thought bitterly. Clara was less of a woman because she was being given the respect from Aldo that belonged to a man.

It would end badly, Luisa felt certain. The marriage would fail like the first marriage. And Clara was defying every rooted superstition by parading herself in her wedding gown the day before she married.

There was a knock on the bedroom door. It was the new maid. Maria hadn't been able to stand up to Clara's tempers and moods, and her health began to suffer.

The new girl was made of stronger stuff. “Telephone, madame,” she said, and closed the door.

“Who is it?” Clara shouted after her. “She's such a dummy,” she snapped to her mother. “I've told her and told her to take a name.” She lifted the extension by her bed. It was O'Halloran. She said, “Mama, this is business. Go find a magazine or something, will you? I won't be long.”

She sat on the edge of the bed in her wedding suit and listened, while her long fingers beat a silent tattoo on her knee—a habit she had lately developed. Suddenly her fingers were still.

“I think I've found something,” O'Halloran was saying. “Like I said, everyone checked out except this guy Forrest and the dame who was with him. I went to see him, and he was ready to talk about it—he was still sore at the way she'd behaved. She ran out on him in the middle of dinner, sent a message by the hatcheck girl that her son was sick. She called him later to apologize, but he wasn't buying. I got a lot of details about her out of him. She was English, representing some PR firm he used in London. So I figured I'd better talk to the hatcheck girl. She wasn't working for Les A anymore, but I found her. Now hang on to your hat, Mrs. Falconi. It took a little sweet-talking and a few dollars on the table, but she told me the woman left with your husband. She also said she looked like she didn't want to go, but he had ahold of her. The hatcheck girl was scared; she knew your husband, and she did what she was told. She remembered your husband sent a message to some senator he was with, and the dame said something about her boy being sick; she acted frightened. The girl said your husband would have scared anybody, the way he looked. He called her Angelina; she remembered that.… Mrs. Falconi?”

“I'm here,” Clara said. “Angelina? Did you say that's what he called her?”

“Her name is Angela Lawrence; Forrest told me. He gave the address of the apartment she was staying at, so I went there. Two fags answered the door. I gave them a spiel about trying to trace a Mrs. Lawrence for a relative in the States, and they bought it. They liked to gab; you know the type. They'd lent the apartment to a Mrs. Lawrence and her son as a favor to the guy she worked for back in London. They spilled everything you could think of. Why don't I come over and see you? I've got a hell of a lot of stuff on this.” She didn't answer. He backtracked in case he had gone too far. “Listen, it can wait if tonight's not convenient.”

“It can't wait.” She was breathing hard, with something choking in her voice. “You come on over. Give it half an hour. I'll see you then. And bring everything you've got with you. Don't make any other appointments.” She put the receiver back on its cradle. She opened her free hand. The long painted nails had scored her palm, breaking the skin. Angela. She said it out loud. Angela. Angelina. The name he'd cried out as he made love to her on the first night of their honeymoon. Her mother had come back into the bedroom. She had one of Clara's fashion magazines rolled up under her arm. They weren't her kind of reading. “Clara? Clara, you all right?”

To her surprise, her daughter answered quietly, almost kindly. “Yes, Mama. I'm all right.”

“You don't look it.” Luisa's motherly instincts took over. “You look sick,” she said anxiously.

She hurried to her daughter and slipped an arm around her. She was ashamed of her harsh judgment of the past few months. The girl was the color of a sheet. And in the deep black eyes there was a sheen of tears.

“Tell me,” she said. “What is it? You nervous about tomorrow? Don't you want to marry Bruno? He's a good man, and he loves you, Clara. He'll make you happy.” And she added something she had never dared say. “He'll be better for you than the other one. He didn't make you happy. You take care of Bruno. Be kind to him. He'll be good to you. I know it.”

Slowly, Clara turned to her. She reached up and wiped a single tear from the corner of her eye. She said, “Don't worry about me, Mama. I know how to manage Bruno. Tomorrow's my big day, isn't it? It'll be a bigger wedding than the first one. People will talk about it for a long time. Now I'll call the car for you and you run back home. Tell Papa I'll be waiting for him right at eleven o'clock. I won't be late.” She squeezed her mother around the waist and abruptly kissed her on the cheek.

Luisa flushed. It was the way Clara used to be: willful and spoiled, but she'd turn loving suddenly, and that made it all right. She said, “You sure you won't come home to us and spend the night? You want to be all alone here this evening?”

“I won't be alone, Mama,” Clara stood up. She began unfastening the little buttons of the jacket. “There's a man coming over on business. We have a lot to talk about. And don't worry. I won't be late tomorrow.”

Mike O'Halloran stared up at her. “Mrs. Falconi,” he said. “She's dead. She's been dead for twenty years.”

She had been walking up and down, up and down, pacing the floor like a prisoner in a cell. “It's the same one,” she said. “Angela. Angelina. The same name. And she left New York on the same day my husband walked out on me!”

“There are thousands of Angelas,” he said. “It's a common name. Why don't I get you a drink. I could sure use one,” he added.

She made an impatient gesture. “She was at Les A that night. I'd had a row with Steven, and I didn't go. They met there, that's what happened. That's when it started.”

O'Halloran poured himself a stiff Scotch.

“She had a son,” Clara went on. “A boy of fifteen, sixteen—isn't that what the owner of the apartment told you? Well, that figures too. The woman was pregnant when my husband married her—”

“Listen, Mrs. Falconi,” he protested. “This dame was killed—your husband told you. How could she be alive and in New York? It's all on account of the name.” He swallowed hard on the Scotch. He couldn't stop her; she wouldn't listen to anything he said. She had made up her mind.

“Everything fits,” Clara insisted. “How did he know she was dead? He never saw a body. He saw some goddamned watch he'd given her; it could have dropped off. She didn't die, Mike. She wasn't killed. She had the child and she met up with my husband that night at Les A. God knows what she told him. But he left me for her. He walked out on his family, they faked a death in that car to cover for him, and he's gone to be with her.” She went and poured herself a drink, her hands shaking. The glass rattled against the bottle.

She came and sat down, facing him. She said in a low voice, “He wanted children. When I called her a whore, he hit me. We never had any kids.” She clutched the drink in both hands, and suddenly it flew across the room, scattering the whiskey, crashing against the wall and splintering all over the carpet. O'Halloran had good nerves, but it made him jump.

He thought suddenly,
She's crazy. What the hell have you got yourself into?
He tried again. “You're speculating. You're crucifying yourself on a hunch, that's all it is. Okay, your husband ran out on you, and he's alive someplace. But you've no proof the first wife wasn't killed in that hospital. You've no proof that woman in the restaurant had anything to do with her.”

She said, “I nearly had it. I set a detective on him; not for the first time. But this was different. He was so happy. He was singing. I knew this wasn't some hooker, like the others he screwed around with. But the detective never got further than that night at Les A. My husband took care of that. He had something to hide. And you've found it. Clever Mike.” She scared him by bursting out laughing, and stopping as abruptly. “He married her,” she said. Her eyes were black slits.

He said, “You told me. In Sicily.”

“I want you to go there.”

He swallowed Scotch the wrong way. “You what?” He coughed.

“I want you to go there. I want you to check up on the marriage, the bombing of the hospital. Then I want you to follow it up. Go to England. You know where this woman worked in London—didn't they tell you? Yes, they told you. Find her, Mike, and tell me when you do. Tell me if my husband, Steven Falconi, is living with her.” She didn't laugh this time. She smiled, and it was as if she was in dreadful pain.

“You said I hadn't any proof it was the same woman. I don't need it. I know it here.” She pressed one long hand against her heart. “I'm right. You'll find I'm right, and you'll come and tell me so.”

“What about the agency?” He knew it was a hopeless try, but he took a chance.

“Fuck the agency,” she said. “It can tick over. You've got enough people for that. This is the assignment I want you to work on. And don't worry, Mike. I know you. You like money, and there's plenty of it if you do this right. You can write your own expense account, and I won't even check it.”

She watched him silently. He hesitated, argued with himself and made his choice. “Okay, if that's what you want.”

“It's what I want,” she said.

Mike O'Halloran got up. “And if this whole crazy business comes out that you're right—what happens next?”

Clara rose. She smoothed her hands down over her skirt, in search of creases that weren't there. “One time when we weren't getting along,” she said quietly, “some years ago now, I put a scare into him. I had someone fire a shot at his car. I didn't mean to hit him, you understand. It was bulletproof, armor-plated. I just wanted to scare him into being nice to me. Next time, it'll be for real. You'd better go now. I have to get some sleep tonight. Tomorrow I'm getting married. See yourself out.”