Deceptions (26 page)

Gianni had no special reason to expect trouble in Positano. The weapons, like their second car, were, as he had explained
to Mary, just in case of the unexpected. In situations like this, he’d always found it a lot safer to have too much of everything
rather than not enough.

Gianni drove at a steady fifty kilometers per hour, not rushing, swinging easily into the seemingly endless turns. The Amalfi
Drive was cut out of solid rock, with a sheer drop to the sea on one side, and the mountains shooting straight up on the other.
In places, the curves were so sharply angled that mirrors had been hung to help drivers see if any traffic was coming around
the bend. Gianni watched the road, the sea, and in the rearview mirror, Mary Yung’s car.

The road split into a one-way descent as they approached the cutoff into town.

Gianni thought about Vittorio… what he’d look like, what he’d say, how he’d react to suddenly seeing him like this.
Twenty years.
It was hard to believe any part of it.

Then the traffic began tying up as they circled down into the old cliffhugging town’s center. Tourists were everywhere, crowding
the streets and shops.

Gianni checked the mirror and saw that a car had squeezed between them. Most of the side streets were narrow, steep, broken
by stone steps, and closed to all vehicular traffic. Moving bumper to bumper, he finally pulled into the town parking area
and found a place. He saw Mary park a short distance away.

First, he needed a telephone directory. There was one in a tobacco shop, and he looked up Walters. There they were… Peter
and Peggy. The address was listed as 14 Via Contessa.

Garetsky bought a street map of Positano and got back into his car. He glanced only once at Mary where she sat parked and
waiting. There was no need to talk at this stage. They had made most of their plans last night. They both knew exactly what
to do.

He located the Via Contessa on his map and drove in that direction. Mary Yung followed him, staying about fifty feet back.

The street circled and climbed up the mountain. Slowing down, Gianni edged around a curve and saw the house… white, flat-roofed,
and graced by the region’s typical Moorish arches. Stone steps climbed from the road up through a garden to the entrance.
Below the garden, just off the road, two cars were parked in the cleared and leveled-out space.

The two cars probably meant they were both home.

Gianni kept going. The road ended farther up the mountain in a cul-de-sac and he stopped there. A moment later, Mary Yung
parked beside him. There were no houses in sight, just rocks, cliffs, brush, and scrub trees. In the distance the sea.

They left their cars and stood together.

“You saw the house?” Gianni said.

Mary nodded. “Very sweet.”

Her voice held more than a hint of irony. But her eyes, as sensitive to mood as the antennae of a cat, carried dark, hidden
secrets. More than that, they seemed worried.

“Easy,” he told her. “It’ll be fine.”

She was silent.

“You OK?” he said.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be OK?”

He stepped close and held her, feeling the tension, the surprisingly frail bones so close beneath her skin.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re almost home free. This is the easy part.”

“I know. This is so stupid. Just kiss me once for luck.”

They kissed and she pressed him hard.

“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?” she asked.

“I’m sure. I don’t want to hit Vittorio with both of us at once. I’ll be enough of a shock for him alone. And it’ll be easier
for us to talk this way.”

“All right.”

“Have some lunch at Sta Via. It’s that place with the green awning where we were parked before. Give me about two hours, then
come. If there’s any change, I’ll know where to reach you.”

She stared at him.

“What is it?” he said.

“I think I could get to love you.”

He laughed. “Is that why you’re looking so miserable?”

“Probably.”

“Stop worrying. It’ll pass.”

“I don’t think so.”

Gianni Garetsky watched her walk to her car and drive off.

Moments later he followed and parked alongside the two cars already in front of the Walters house.

Then he climbed the seventeen curving stone steps to the entrance, and lifted the brass knocker.

He felt a plunge of lead weights at the bottom of his stomach.

The man who opened the door stood looking at him.

“What can I do for you?” he asked in Italian.

Gianni would hardly have known him to be Vittorio Battaglia. Apart from what the years had added, he had a full moustache
and beard, his eyes were an almost startling blue rather than hazel, and he definitely seemed taller, bigger, huskier than
the Vittorio he remembered, with a fighter’s
chest and shoulders and heavily muscled arms. Only the paint-stained jeans and T-shirt held a touch of familiarity.

And what about how I must look to him ?

Then suddenly flooded with remembered warmth, Gianni grinned and peeled off his fake gray hair, his moustache, and his horn-rims.
He stood there, stripped to the truth.

“Does that help any? Or is it always trick-or-treat around here?”

Even then, it still took Peter Walters a long moment.

“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” he whispered in English.

“That’s nothing new. You always were, buddy.”

Abruptly narrowing, Peter’s eyes swept past the artist and took in his car, the road, the steps, the garden, the whole immediate
landscape.

Then while Gianni was still standing there grinning, he suddenly found himself grabbed and yanked into the house, his face
slammed against a wall, and his automatic snatched from his belt and pressed to the back of his neck.

“Hey!” Nose mashed and bleeding against the plaster, Gianni could manage little more than a muffled grunt.

Walters shut the door and threw the bolt. The muzzle of the automatic stayed hard against the back of Gianni’s neck.

“Who’s out there with you?”

Gianni mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “Nobody.”

“Lie to me, Gianni, and I swear I’ll blow your head off.” His voice was quiet, calm, but he was breathing heavily.

“I’m… not… lying.”

Walters increased the gun’s pressure.

“Did Don Donatti send you?”

Garetsky tried to shake his head.

“Who then?”

“Nobody… sent me.”

Gianni Garetsky swore silently. He cursed his own stupidity for not anticipating exactly this reaction. What had he expected
after so many years and God only knew what else. A fucking kiss on the lips?

A woman’s voice called from upstairs. “I heard a knock before, Peter. Is someone there?”

Walters sighed. “Better come down. And don’t be frightened. It’s probably not as bad as it looks.”

Peggy came down the stairs, saw what was there, and covered her mouth with both hands.

“Oh—” She cut it off. She’d been waiting for something like this for nine years.
Handle it,
she told herself.

“Where’s Paulie?” her husband asked.

“Off painting somewhere.”

“Fine. Now listen to me. This
goombah
here is my old buddy, Gianni. I don’t know how he’s found us, or who’s with him or sent him. He says nobody and maybe that’s
the truth and he’s just gotten stupid. But I haven’t seen him in twenty years and I’m not taking any chances. So lock all
the doors, close the blinds, and activate the alarm system. Then get me that gray suitcase in my closet. You know the one?”

Peggy nodded.

He smiled, trying to ease it for her. “It’s OK. It’ll be a good dry run for us.”

She left, and Walters shoved Garetsky into the kitchen, dumped him into a chair, and gave him a towel and bowl of ice for
his nose.

“Now talk,” he said. “And it better be good or you’re dead as Kelsey’s nuts.”

A
LITTLE BEFORE
2:00
P.M.,
just as Gianni Garetsky was once more beginning the witch’s tale that seemed to have become his most popular solo recitation,
a pair of gray Mercedes sedans left the Amalfi Drive and circled down toward Positano.

There were two men in each car, and they had flown into Naples that morning from Palermo. They were attractive
and solidly built, with the kind of smooth-faced, well-bar-bered good looks in which a particular breed of Italian men tends
to take pride. Dressed as well-to-do tourists, in obviously expensive designer sport clothes, they carried several equally
costly cameras to push their desired image one step further.

Yet someone who knew about such things had only to look at their eyes, which were flat and curiously without expression, to
know they were anything but tourists. What they actually happened to be were four of Don Pietro Ravenelli’s best soldiers,
made men every one, on a very delicate mission for someone who was reputed to be the
capo di tutti capi,
the boss of all bosses, of an important American
famiglia.

As such things went, the mission was considered a plum, a great honor. If well performed, it could bring far-reaching respect
and advancement for those involved. If botched, it could just as easily destroy careers, reputations, lives.

The four men in the two Mercedes had been briefed personally by Palermo’s illustrious Don Ravenelli. Great care had to be
taken, he told them. There must be nothing crude or heavy-handed. He wanted no big, noisy shootouts with a lot of police,
press, and international notoriety.

Moving smoothly and silently, the twin Mercedes followed the local traffic into Positano, circled the general area twice for
the required familiarization, and finally parked side by side in the open space at the center of town.

Nervously waiting and eating an ice cream cone in her own car, Mary Chan Yung watched the two identical gray German cars parked
no more than forty feet from where she was sitting.

She saw the four almost identical men in their expensive clothes get out, stretch their cramped muscles, and stand looking
about them with their flat, expressionless eyes that somehow reminded her of Jimmy Lee.

And she noted too the slight yet all too significant bulges in their chest and hip areas that were the unmistakable marks
of their trade.

Mary Yung had never seen these four men before, yet she
knew them as well as she knew the inside of her own skin. She wasn’t fooled by the designer sport clothes or the cameras.
Today was just another of their normal workdays, and this was where they had come to work. And she knew as surely as she had
ever known anything that it was her phone call that had summoned them.

Mary suddenly felt sick.

When the four tourists left the parking area to stroll along the nearby streets, she began following at a safe distance.

She saw them separate into two pairs and go into about half-a-dozen shops, where they seemed to be asking a lot of questions.
They also made several small purchases that included a map, a couple of rolled up posters, and some picture postcards.

At one point they opened the map and gathered about it for a few minutes, pointing and talking.

Then they returned to the two Mercedes and drove out of the parking area. This time three of the men were in one car, leaving
the fourth man alone in the other.

Mary got into her rental and followed. Thinking no further than that, she had no idea what she was going to do about anything.
It just seemed right to stay with them.

Reaching a fork in the road, the man alone bore left and headed out of town and toward the road edging the water. The car
with the three men stayed to the right and drove in the direction of the Walters house, with Mary tailing them from far back.

As they approached 14 Via Contessa, Mary picked up a bit of speed and drew just close enough to catch a glimpse of the Mercedes
as it came to an almost complete stop in front of the house, hung there for a few moments, then continued on up the winding
road and out of sight.

Toward the cul-de-sac,
Mary thought.

If she’d had any small lingering doubts before, she didn’t now.

Reaching number 14, she pulled into some space beside Gianni’s car, dashed up the house’s entrance steps as fast as she could,
and banged on the door.

It opened almost immediately.

Mary Yung looked at the fair-haired, blue-eyed, bearded
man facing her and didn’t recognize him as anyone she knew.

Then she saw the automatic pointing loosely at her chest.

“Come on in, Mary,” Vittorio Battaglia said. “Join the party.”

The man traveling alone, a dark-haired young Sicilian named Domenico, drove only a few hundred yards out of town and parked
at a scenic turnoff overlooking the water.

A short distance below, he saw the ruins of an old Saracen tower that one of the local shopkeepers had described, and started
down toward it. The path was rough, with much of it carved out of rock, and Domenico picked his way cautiously, with particular
concern for his brand-new Gucci loafers.

Nearing the tower, he heard the water lapping at the rocks and the cry of a gull, but he still saw nothing. That asshole bean-counter
didn’t know what the hell he was talking about.
Amalfians.
They were all shit-eaters. He’d never met one that wasn’t.

Then he scrambled around the edge of a sharply angled carob tree and saw the boy.

He was kind of a small kid, with these skinny arms and legs that instantly reminded Domenico of his brother before he’d been
mashed flat as a pizza by an oil truck. The boy’s back was toward him, and the kid was standing at an easel, painting. The
canvas was only about half-done, but it looked beautiful to Domenico, very real and lifelike, with the water all shiny, and
the sun on the rocks bright enough to make you squint your eyes. The thing was, it didn’t look like anything you’d expect
a kid to be able to paint.

“Hey.”

The boy turned.

“You Paulie?” Domenico said in Italian.

Paul nodded.