Blood Money (50 page)

From Delfina and Catania, certainly, but Delfina was too devious to act without having the numbers on his side. DeLuca thought of the possibilities and felt his chest shrinking inward away from his shirt. Catania had probably brought a few other families with him from the beginning. The only ones that made sense would be a couple of other New York families. He wouldn’t want anyone at his doorstep waiting for a chance to take him out.

DeLuca thought of a few preliminary precautions. He would keep guys at O’Hare. There would be a few people in the arrival areas to spot the invaders, but the real meat of the crew would be outside, where they could do something about it. They would need some way of communicating, so spotters could alert the shooters to targets. Radios? He had a strong suspicion that it was a bad idea. There were so many radios already at work in an airport that somebody would end up telling an American Airlines pilot to shoot the man with the yellow tie, and everybody would go to jail. Cell phones, maybe.

There should be teams along the last stretches of the big highways—Interstate 90, certainly, and maybe one or two others. People should be placed in windows near all of his businesses. He would give them binoculars. There would be a few heavily armed defenders inside to hold off the assault.

That was the anvil. He would have to prepare a hammer for it. He would need to institute a flying squad. Every time the defenders got hit, a ready, massive force would sweep in and smash the invaders from behind. He would probably need two or three squads. Chicago was too big for one group to cross whenever there was trouble.

DeLuca glanced toward the window, and things looked different. After a second, he realized that the pair of security lights on the eaves above the window that went on at night and off at dawn weren’t illuminating the yard. He walked to the window and looked up. Both bulbs had burned out. He sighed in frustration.

He would have liked to have one of the soldiers who came later replace the bulbs. But he couldn’t call in his people for a fight to the death and give them chores like handymen. Besides, by then it might be dangerous. Once he called everyone in, the enemy would know he was on to them. These might be the last few hours when a man going up on a ladder in front of the house would be entirely safe. He decided to forget the bulbs.

He looked out the window at the light fixture in hatred. He couldn’t just forget it. That light was the one that illuminated the thick shrubbery along the house, and the middle section of the driveway. Leaving those areas dark wasn’t safe. They were the spots where a hit team could sneak up to the house.

DeLuca went to the basement and returned with a stepladder, then went to the cupboard in the laundry room and found two new bulbs. He went out the kitchen door with the two bulbs under his left arm and the aluminum ladder banging his knee at each step, and came around to the front of the house.

He set the bulb box on top of the thick hedge, opened the ladder and planted it firmly in the dirt under the eaves, then climbed up to reach the dead bulbs. He began to unscrew the first one, but it came too easily. On a hunch, he turned it clockwise.

The light came on. DeLuca’s heart began to pound. He whirled, and the shot pierced his left eye. He was dead, but more shots came rapidly, punching into his chest, his belly, his arm as he fell, then pounding into the side of the house where he had been, and through the window.

When Di Titulo heard the gun’s
click-click-click
, he opened his eyes. DeLuca was gone, but Di Titulo dimly understood that he must have been hit. There was blood on the side of the house where he had been. Di Titulo sprang to his feet and crashed through the hedge. He hurried across the lawn to the street as the car pulled up.

As Di Titulo ducked through the open door to the back seat, he realized he still had the gun in his hand. The car moved off so fast that the door swung shut, then rattled all the
way to the corner. When the car bobbed in a half stop before the turn, Di Titulo put the gun in his left hand and slammed the door shut. He felt the gun being taken from his left hand, and turned to look at Saachi.

The thin, cadaverous face was close to his, and the odor of cigarettes was overpowering. The pointed teeth were bared all the way to the gums, and Di Titulo sensed it must be a smile. “You okay?”

Di Titulo felt pressed with claustrophobia. He wanted to open the window, to push the door open and get outside. He wanted the car to stop, and he wanted it to reach the speed of light. He hadn’t understood what Saachi had said, but he knew what it must have been. “That was … awful.”

Saachi nodded. “Don’t worry. It gets easier.”

Di Titulo’s eyes widened. “I thought … I’m not a … I thought it was just this one, because of the bomb in my car.” Saachi looked at him, but his face showed no sign that he had heard. Di Titulo tried again. “I’m a businessman.”

Saachi looked ahead over the driver’s shoulder. “As of two minutes ago, we’re at war. Everybody’s a soldier.” He turned suddenly to hold Di Titulo with his eyes. “This is your job now. Get good at it.”

J
ane looked up at the second-floor window beside the big maple tree. The bedroom light was off, but she had seen a glow in the casement windows at the front, and now she could see that the kitchen lights were on. She stepped to the back door and reached for the knob, but it swung open and Carey took a stride toward her and gathered her into his long arms,
holding her gently and rocking her a little. It felt warm and safe and restful.

After a long time she said, “I guess you do remember me.”

He kept her in his arms. “Sure. You’re the reason I never felt the urge to get a cat. I already have something sleek and beautiful that never comes when I call it, just drops in when it feels like it and goes away again.”

She burrowed deeper into his arms, then leaned back and lifted her face to kiss him. The kiss was soft and leisurely and perfect. “Can I come in?”

They walked through the little entry into the big old kitchen, where Jane could hear the watery chugging of the dishwasher. She stepped into the dining room and ran her hand along the smooth surface of the table.

“Checking for dust?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I don’t need any dust right now, thanks. This feels more like one of those occasions for champagne, and I can’t remember if we have any.”

“Of course we do,” he said. “I’ve always kept some in case somebody spills something on the carpet.” He pulled a bottle from the refrigerator and peeled off the foil.

“Champagne doesn’t do that. You’re thinking of club soda.”

“Oh?” He popped the cork. “This isn’t any good, then.” He stared at it sadly. “Might as well drink it or something.”

Jane reached into the cupboard for a pair of tulip glasses. “I think we have to. Otherwise, when we put a note in the bottle, it’ll get wet.”

They sipped their champagne and walked into the living room. She turned and faced him. “Have you seen these nice clothes I bought?”

“Very fetching, as my grandmother would have said.”

She began unbuttoning the blouse with her left hand, then glanced at him. “Have you been sufficiently fetched?”

“More than enough,” he said. “I wouldn’t need to see them again for a long time.”

“Good.” The blouse slipped off her shoulders. She undid the clasp of her slacks and stepped out of them, and Carey’s
arms enveloped her again. There was the gentle touch of his fingers that gave her chills, then the warm, firm feeling of the palms of his hands, smoothing her skin, defining the shape of her body, always moving as though he needed to touch her everywhere at once. She needed it too, as she had needed to take off her clothes in the first minutes after she saw him.

It wasn’t just because she felt she couldn’t wait, but because part of it was showing him that this was what she wanted. And she wanted to see and feel his joy at knowing that she did. Her own hands were nimbly, urgently undoing buttons and buckle and slipping off his clothes. They made love where they had stopped in the living room, then went upstairs to their bedroom and lay in the dark on the cool, clean sheets with the warm summer breeze pushing in the curtains to direct itself across their bodies. After that they lingered over each moment, letting the night reach its dark, unchanging no-time, pretending that night was permanent and they could stay like this forever. Hours later, Jane caught sight of the glowing red digits of the clock on the nightstand, and wasted a second hoping she had read them wrong.

She said, “It’s nearly three
A.M.,”
but his lips pressed against her mouth to silence her, then stayed. His hand moved gently along her throat, and already her feelings were building again.

When she was able to look at the clock again, she heard the first tentative chirps of a sparrow in a tree across the back yard. She turned away from it to look beside her at Carey, and she could see that he had fallen asleep. She very softly placed her hands under his heavy forearm and held it while she slipped out from under it, then set it down on the bed where she had been.

She kept her eyes on him as she walked quietly toward the door. She let herself adore his long legs and his big feet and the peaceful little-boy look his face acquired when he was dreaming. I had this, she thought. If I die now, at least I recognized and accepted the best thing that life offered to me.

She looked down to be sure her bare foot touched the two pieces of hardwood floor closest to the hinge of the door,
where it never creaked, then slipped down the long second-floor hallway to the best of the spare bedrooms. She showered in the bathroom there, then put on an old sweatshirt and jeans and went downstairs to start making her husband’s breakfast.

When Jane had let Carey sleep as long as she dared, she went back up to the bedroom and kissed his cheek. He didn’t move. She kissed his neck, then kept her lips pressed to his cheek and watched his eyelids. “Hypocrite,” she said. “You’re awake already.”

“I’m playing dead,” he said. “Waiting to see just how far you’re willing to go.”

She stood up. “Mother was right. Men are too dumb to do anything but keep going until you tell them to stop.” She dropped her pillow on his head. “The good ones, anyway.”

He swung his feet to the floor and stood up. She pretended not to look at his long, lean body, and ached to hear him say she had made a mistake, that it was Saturday. He said, “I smell something good.”

“That’s right. I want you to have time to taste it and wake up before you go to the hospital and try to cut something out of somebody.”

“Very responsible of you,” he said.

She put her arms around him and held him. He stood still, facing away. He said, “I was afraid I’d wake up and you would be gone.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m home now, and I’m going to be the wife of your dreams.”

He turned, his face intrigued. “Oh?”

She nodded. “It’s because you didn’t say anything about my hair. You hate it, but you didn’t say it. That means you’re too smart to just throw away.”

She went downstairs and waited for him, then sat at the table with him and pretended to eat so she could be close to him. After a few minutes, he asked quietly, “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“Yes,” she said. “But there’s too much to tell now. It’s over and I’m home.”

“Why didn’t you call again?”

Here it was, so soon. No, this wasn’t soon. It seemed abrupt, because it was something that she should have said in the first seconds, and hadn’t. “Things turned out to be much … stranger than I expected. There wasn’t anything I could have said that would have made you less worried.”

He stared at her for a second, then went back to his breakfast. She could sense what he wasn’t saying. She put her hand on his. “I love you,” she said. But that was just what people said when there was nothing else to say—like a dog nuzzling up to lick his face. “You know why I went. Somebody needed help. I felt I had to help her.”

“Just like Richard Dahlman,” Carey said. “That wasn’t what you were going to say, because we both know it. I understand. I made you promise never to do this again, and then, when it was somebody I cared about, I asked you to save him.”

Jane shook her head. “You’re wrong. We have to get this story straight right now, or it will be between us forever. You didn’t make me promise. I just promised. It wasn’t hard. I wasn’t giving up something. It was just part of being married to you, and I made it to myself before you ever thought of it—before you knew that there was going to be a need to ask for it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is what you want now. Today.”

Jane took a deep, painful breath, and kept the tears out of her voice. “I want more than anything to stay here with you. I want to call Joy at your office and have her cancel your surgery and your afternoon appointments and maybe never let you out of my sight again. We’re thirty-four years old, and we might have forty or fifty years left. I want every day of that so much that I don’t want to let any of them slip by when I don’t reach out and touch you at night before I close my eyes.”

“But this girl came along, and you heard her story, and off you went.”

“The promises we made to ourselves about the nice life we were going to have were in place. They just had to be forgotten until I had done what was required to keep my self-respect.”

“That’s what we said when we decided to help Richard Dahlman.”

“I guess it is. They’re both proof that when you make rules about what’s going to happen in the future, the universe doesn’t always hear what you say.”

“So a promise is like a wish,” he said. He stood up.

Jane had tears in her eyes now. “No. Or I guess it’s yes. What I’m trying to say is that this isn’t fair. I did something good. I can’t forget what I know, or who I am. If the same thing happened in the same way tomorrow, I would do it again. Just because I risked my life a year ago to save Dahlman, I shouldn’t lose the kind of closeness to my husband that I had.” The tears came, and she stood to face him. “Don’t you see? I don’t want you to shut up and stand aside. I want you to say what you think—that your breakfast tastes like soap, or my haircut looks funny, or—”