Blood Wine (19 page)

“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 things, 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?

The last thing Miranda thought as the hollow silence of the soundproof room closed around her and she drifted off to sleep:
Damn her, she peed on my floor.

She peed on my floor.

Old Friends

M
organ
fell asleep on the blue sofa. The television was flashing indecipherable images when he peered through squinted eyes, trying to read the time on the digital display on the VCR below the screen. It was exactly three in the morning, as if the clarity of curvilinear digits had awakened him much the same way old-fashioned clocks used to click in anticipation of the alarm going off. Three, zero, zero. As his eyes brought the read-out into focus, the final digit transformed to a one. He sat upright and fumbled for the wand, turning off the television. The time panel remained illuminated. It was the only light in the room. He had had the presence of mind, before falling asleep, to turn off the reading lamp.

It had been an unsettling day and he had denied himself closure by not going upstairs to his bedroom to sleep. He was wearing boxer shorts, which meant he had got himself ready for bed before settling in on the sofa. He wore boxers as summer pajamas, never as underwear.

He had been under restraint. It was only the direct orders of the superintendent that had kept him away from Francine Ciccone. Most of the day he had spent in the office, correlating forensic information from the various plots and subplots that followed from Miranda's discovery of her lover's corpse in her bed. He was searching for the grand scenario, something that would tie all the details together in a coherent account.

That's how Morgan's mind worked. He was inductive, he would accumulate facts and impressions and gradually or suddenly a pattern would emerge. That was how he thought of himself, thinking. Miranda was deductive. She would pick up a detail and extrapolate from it an entire narrative. That was how he thought of her, thinking. Part of the mythology they shared was the assumption their minds worked in opposite but complementary ways.

This was a bit of a joke around the department. For the most part, their colleagues thought of them thinking exactly alike. They cultivated the myth of difference but worked so well together precisely because they were not. In spite of the dissimilarities in character, sex, experience, and disposition, they were very much the same.

He had called her in the morning at Elke Sturmberg's apartment in Greenwich Village. Inexplicably, when she got on the line, he decided not to tell her about his experience at the warehouse. It seemed like an imposition.

“You okay?” he had asked.

“Sure, of course. We're off to Saks Fifth Avenue in a few minutes. And Elke wants to show me some shops too small to advertise in
Vogue
. How're you doing?”

“I'm fine,” said Morgan, reassuring himself as he spoke that he was telling her the truth. Last night seemed far away, like a Bruce Willis movie he had watched on the late show, while at the same time reading one of his esoteric books, perhaps on Ontario country furniture.

“You're sure?”

“Yeah, you're the one in the war zone.”
Goodness
, he thought,
what a cliché
. He had been every bit as much under fire in Toronto the Good.

“Well, the war's over. The NYPD want us to stay around for a bit, though. Clancy, he's running the show, he's easy with the hostage situation, that it went down like we said —”

“But it didn't?”

“Not exactly. But, you know, Morgan, Elke was caught in the middle, she did what she had to do. The bastard sold her out, he was going to have her killed.”

“Really?”

“No, but he sent her off to Rochester, he set her up to take the fall for exposing the wine scam … and she ended up in the wine marinade in Niagara.”

“And she executed a two-bit hoodlum under the Humber Bridge.”

“Morgan, she's in the next room,” said Miranda in a low voice. “We can argue the fine points later. The fact is, explanation, exoneration, she was the hostage taker, but she was also the victim — it would have been complicated to explain to Clancy. I just cut through the red tape. The woman is innocent, except maybe of overreaction.”

“Blonds are usually the victims.”

“What does that mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, she is … both. And she's taking me shopping.”

“Why not.”

“Exactly!”

“You take care in the big city. Don't spend too much.”

“See you in a couple of days. Don't solve any murders without me.”

“Later.”

Morgan picked up the phone on impulse, then put it down. He should call her back, let her know what had happened. He had spoken to Clancy at the NYPD; he'd pass it on. She would be furious, finding out about the warehouse standoff second-hand. He set the phone down gently. He got up and walked to the bathroom, washed up, climbed up into the darkness of his sleeping loft, and got dressed. It was three fifteen in the morning.

Morgan ambled through the muted light of the city at night, from the Annex down to College Street and across, past the monolithic Police Headquarters building, admiring the rectilinear tumble of rose-coloured granite and gunmetal steel that surged against the sky as he walked closer and passed by in front. At Jarvis, he paused. Ahead and to the south lay Cabbagetown, now one of the chic addresses in the city, but when he was growing up, as the name suggested, derived from the staple of boiled beef and cabbage eaten by denizens of the largest Anglo-Saxon slum outside England, it was a far different place, a curious mixture of tenements, tumble-down townhouses, and prized restoration projects. A short distance to the north was another world entirely, one enclosed by walls of privilege and power.

Morgan turned north and, still well before sunrise, he found himself in the heart of Rosedale, surrounded by fine homes, manicured front gardens, strolling over red brick sidewalks under the spreading canopies of towering silver maples along the narrow boulevards and winding streets.

A cruiser pulled up beside him and a uniformed officer asked what he was doing.

“Walking.”

“Walking? Where's your dog? Have you got ID?”

“Yes.”

The uniformed officer got out of the car. His partner got out the passenger side. She had her hand draped casually over her gun, not menacing but wary.

“Let's see it.”

“What?”

“Your ID. What're you doing, walking around here, this time of night?”

“Would you be asking that anywhere else?”

“Okay, my friend, up against the car, hands down, spread 'em. Now, carefully, reach in, get your wallet, hand it to my partner.”

Morgan was neither amused nor angry. He was interested, curious to see how the situation would develop. He handed his wallet to the officer standing at his side.

“David Morgan, you're us. Gaffield, ease up. He's a detective, Homicide.”

Gaffield, who had a strong hand firmly on Morgan's shoulder, did not release his grip.

“Find a picture,” he said. “Photo ID. Check his driver's licen
c
e.”

“Gaffield!”

“Could be stolen.…”

“Gaffield. I recognize him. Detective Morgan. You know, one of ours.”

Gaffield let his hand drop from Morgan's shoulder. “Yeah, okay. Sorry, Detective. You never know.”

“No, “ said Morgan, “you never know. Have a good evening, both of you.” He turned away and walked off. The cruiser caught up with him and rolled along at his pace with the window down.

“You might want this,” said Gaffield, holding out Morgan's wallet.

“You're not supposed to take the wallet,” said Morgan, retrieving his wallet.

“You can't be too careful,” said the officer behind the wheel. It was the woman now. They had switched.

“No, just doing your job.”

“Goodnight, Detective.”

Morgan did not respond, and the cruiser slowly pulled ahead, then sped up around the next corner and wheeled out of sight. Morgan stopped and looked around. He was in front of the Ciccone house. He had, he knew, been coming here from the beginning, from the moment he woke up on his blue sofa.

There was a low wall and a thick hedge across the front. No attempt had been made to secure the premises; it was not necessary in Rosedale. People did not go around invading other people's houses. Break-and-enter specialists avoided the neighbourhood. Virtually every property was equipped with alarms and surveillance devices, somewhat undermining the illusion of invulnerability but emphatically discouraging burglary.

Morgan slipped though the front gate, which was secured by a simple lift-latch. Set back to the left was a carriage house over the garage. He knew there was a couple living in the carriage house. They were not servants. People like the Ciccone family are jealous of their privacy; they do not allow domestic help to stay overnight. The couple was married, with no children. The woman managed the household and was Frankie Ciccone's confidante, and although their relationship lacked parity, it was not reciprocal. Her husband was a specialist in protection. He would take a bullet for the Ciccone family, or dispense one if necessary, without a moment's hesitation.

While the Ciccones might be considered more vulnerable than most of their neighbours due to their business interests, for the same reason they were protected by their reputation from criminal invasion.

Morgan understood that the four children had moved out. Frankie and Vittorio lived alone. Frankie, now, on her own.

He walked stealthily, but in the open, around to the French doors at the back. There were no signs of a dog, no bare spots on the lawn or gnawed lower branches on the shrubs. He pondered the locked door for a moment, amused that even people in their line of work should trust the naïve conventions of home security.
And they are conventions
, he thought.
People will design elaborate locks on their doors, bolt their windows closed, and assume a pane of glass, one eighth of an inch thick, will keep out intruders. They will install elaborate alarm systems and only set them when they go out. They will leave on a light downstairs when they retire for the night, almost as a talisman to keep burglars at bay, as if they were afraid of the light the way children are afraid of the dark
.

Morgan selected a glass pane in one of the doors that was directly over a small Persian carpet on the hardwood floor in the dining room. He tapped it sharply with his elbow, there was a slight crackle, and the shards of glass fell quietly onto the rug. It was a Persian Qashqa'i, he noticed as he reached through into the light coming from the kitchen and unlocked the door. He could see the fixed red beacon on the alarm across the room and knew it was not armed.

He was fascinated by the presumptive carelessness of the Ciccone family. He thought of the hubris that brought down kings and felt a mixture of righteousness and regret.

Walking across the thick broadloom of the living room to the base of the stairs, Morgan admired the furnishings. Frankie had come a long way, in some respects. This was, so far as he could tell in the dull light streaming in from the street, in very good taste, of a particular sort. Not his taste, no personality (more
House Beautiful
than
Architectural Digest
). Given the over-the-top funeral, Morgan figured she had professional help with the house décor. He gave her credit that at least in this context she recognized her own limitations.

By the time he reached the top of the stairs, all whimsy had dissipated. She had set him up to be killed, using their friendship as the lure. He was irritated with himself for being stupid and hurt by her betrayal. He was sad, but he was angry. He paused in the hallway, his hand on what seemed most likely the door of the master bedroom.

What was he here for? Certainly not to harm her physically. He wanted to confront her, face to face. Just so that she would know that he knew what she'd done. He did not expect remorse or an apology, but he thought perhaps she might be humiliated for having sold herself out — not him, but herself. What satisfaction that would bring was uncertain.

He turned the knob slowly and pushed the door open enough to slip into the room. He could smell the delicate fragrance of feminine vanity. As he moved away from the door, he felt it swing slowly shut and sensuous strains in the air seemed to gather behind him. Without turning around, he knew she was there. The bed was empty, and he could smell the oiled steel of a revolver cocked close to the back of his head.

“Francine?”

“I thought it might be you, David.”

Neither of them said anything. Neither of them moved. He caught the scent of her warmth in the air. She moved very close to him. He could feel the muzzle of her gun pressed against his skull just behind his left ear. He could smell something else, and he was certain it was the smell of the ocean, the salt of her tears.

“Francine,” he said, gently. “Do you want to talk?”

“You dropped in for a chat, David? How considerate, you're here to console the widow.”

He said nothing.

“This is very cozy, and so wonderfully private. Did you know I sleep naked, David? Is that why you came? Or is it to gloat: crime doesn't pay, she'll end up in bed by herself. And she did. Is that it? It's been a long time since I've had a midnight caller, David. Vittorio and I slept in separate rooms. How did you pick my door? The Lady or the Tiger? The tiger is dead.”

“Francine, take the gun away from my head.”

“Do you want to turn around? Do you want to look at me naked? Is that what you always wanted.…” Her voice trailed off. She did not at all sound like the confident widow at the cemetery, nor did she sound like a woman who had tried to arrange Morgan's death. She sounded desperate, needing to be assured that with the death of her husband she was still a woman. She sounded infinitely lonely and lost.
This is the worst time of night to be alone,
he thought,
waiting on your own for the sun to rise
.

He turned slowly until his eyes connected with hers and she let the revolver descend to her side. He placed an arm around her shoulders as he took the gun in his hand and, setting it down, he led her to the bed. He fluffed out the top sheet in the air and eased her back against the pillows, then drew the sheet up to her shoulders and tucked it around her. He traced the back of his hand across her forehead and softly brushed hair away from her face.