Deceptions (48 page)

Never underestimate the enemy.

A lifesaving aphorism in Vietnam, but obviously just as valuable here at home. It was just that he had somehow failed to keep
in mind that Carlo Donatti was his enemy.
With my safety-deposit box rammed against his jugular like a hunting knife, how could the sonofabitch love me?

But suddenly there were other, less abstract things to be dealt with.

“What made you think that John Hinkey and his client were so important to me?” he said.

Mac Horgan was still giving it his best, most disarming grin. “Come on, Hank. I’m not stupid.”

“I never said you were stupid. And your intelligence or lack of it has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked you.”

Durning switched off the interior light, and the two men sat looking at each other in the sudden blue dark.

“All I meant was, I know what’s going on.”

“Do you?”

The PI’s smile was gone now. “Well, I don’t really
know,
of course. But it’s not that hard to figure out.”

Durning just stared evenly at his eyes.

“Look,” said Horgan. “These were the two who sank
Brian Wayne and his wife with what they were threatening to expose. And everyone knows the Waynes were your closest friends,
right?”

Durning was silent.

“So like the real good friend you are, you made a deal with this head
goombah
to do a job on Hinkey and Beekman to save Wayne’s career. Except two things went wrong. One, you never knew about Hinkey’s
letter telling his son to air his dirt on national TV if he died or disappeared. And two, Donatti decided to go in business
for himself and keep Hinkey and the woman on ice. I don’t know for what. But it sure as hell can’t be good
fox you”

Durning nodded slowly, weighing everything.

“It’s true,” he said. “You’re not stupid.”

The PI’s grin came back. “I hit it right?”

“On the nose,” said the attorney general. “Now tell me this. Did Donatti go anyplace else this week that was a break from
his usual routine?”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact he did.” Horgan took out his notebook and checked a few pages. “He took off from Kennedy at 7:18
P.M.
yesterday in one of the Galatea Corporation’s long-range jets.”

“Who was on board? Any corporate executives?”

“No. Just a flight crew of four and two personal bodyguards.”

“Did you find out where they were headed?”

“Yeah. Sicily. Palermo airport.”

Naturally,
thought Durning.

He awoke in the night. The curtains at the windows were silver. The moon was a cool stone over the city. Mary Yung lay naked
and asleep beside him. She had been asleep when he came to bed at about one o’clock, she hadn’t wakened, and she was sleeping
still. The luminous hands of the clock by his bedside put the time at after three.

Durning wished she was awake. He needed her. But for perhaps the first time, his need was more than physical. Still, he wouldn’t
wake her. He felt his waking her would somehow spoil it, take away the good, rob it of its magic. For it to work she had to
feel his need and come to him out of herself.

A child’s game.

Yet he was no child. Nor was she. Although lying there, face up in the moonlight, she was pure virgin. Clean.

Come on, love,
he thought.
Come on
…
come on… come on…
.

His incantation.

I’m Merlin.

Her eyelids fluttered as if at his touch. Her eyeballs appeared blind in the silver light, without pupils. Then she saw him.
He was up on one elbow, looking at her.

“I tried to wait up,” she said. “But I guess I didn’t.”

He lay close and held her. His breath tore from his throat so quickly it burned.

She suddenly was wide awake and alert.

“What is it?” she said. “What’s wrong?”

Her voice was soft, anxious.
My little mother,
Durning thought,
comforting me.
It made him smile.

“Something is funny?” she asked.

“You’re so sweet.”

“No one has ever called me that before.”

“Only because no one has ever known you before,” he said.

“Who taught you to say things like that?”

He laughed softly. “You can’t be taught. It’s either there or it isn’t.”

They lay holding each other. All the space in the room, from the walls and windows in, seemed to be composed of delicate glass.
A wrong move from either of them would shatter it.

“Are you ready to tell me now?” she said.

“It seems I’ve been played for a fool,” he said. “Which is never enjoyable. But in this case it can also be dangerous.”

“Whom are you talking about?”

“My big American don. My
capo di tutti capi,
who’s been the Master of the Hunt for me in all this.”

“What has he done?”

“It’s more like what he hasn’t done,” said Henry Durning.

“I’ve learned just tonight that a couple of supposedly buried threats haven’t been buried at all but are being primed
to use against me. And it suddenly looks as though Vittorio’s wife falls into that same category.”

“You mean Peggy hasn’t been eliminated after all? She’s still alive?”

“It does seem that way.”

Mary Yung looked at Durning in the silver light. “Forgive me if I can’t get too upset about that.”

“I never really expected you to, love.” Durning found himself smiling once more. “As a matter of fact, in an insane sort of
way, I don’t really feel all that terrible about it myself. Unless that’s because I’m suddenly faced with so many more immediate
threats.”

“Like what? How do you think all this affects Peggy’s boy?” asked Mary.

“I don’t know. Other than I obviously can’t believe anything the lying sonofabitch has told me about him.”

P
AULIE FELT THE
tightness all through him as soon as he entered the streets of Palermo.

He didn’t like the noise, and the traffic, and the crowds of people, and the policemen wherever you turned, and the feeling
that every one of them had strict orders to watch for
him.

The feeling became worse when he reached the harbor area and walked onto the dock where the ferry to Naples was waiting to
be boarded. The ship looked as big as an ocean liner, and there were all these cars, trucks, and buses lined up in rows, and
lots of people with baggage pushing and yelling as if they were angry and looking for a fight.

The boy saw signs pointing to where you had to go to buy your ticket, and he headed in that direction. When he finally got
to the place, he stopped a short distance away and watched to see how it worked.

There was just one ticket office, with men selling tickets at three different windows and a line of passengers slowly moving
in front of each. Two
carabinieri
kept a careful eye on those buying tickets. As did three young guys with good haircuts and nice suits who could have been
brothers to Dom and Tony.

Thinking it through earlier, Paulie had decided this would be the most dangerous part of all for him. They knew he would have
to leave the island to get home to Positano, and there were just two places where he could catch a ferry to the Italian mainland…
Palermo and Messina. So all they needed were a few people to watch the ticket lines in each port.

And what made it even easier for them was that there probably wouldn’t be any other eight-year-old kid alone and buying his
own ticket.

How could he have been so dumb?

But he had to do something pretty quick because the ferry was due to sail in less than an hour, and another one wasn’t scheduled
to leave for Naples until tomorrow.

Or was he doing all this worrying for nothing?

Paulie decided to find out.

He saw a boy of about his own age kicking around a soccer ball and joined in the play for a few minutes. Then he stopped and
said, “Hey! you want to do me a big favor and I’ll give you three thousand lire?”

“You kidding?”

“No.”

The boy grinned, all curly dark hair and white teeth. “Whose throat do 1 cut?”

“Nobody’s. All you do is buy me a ferry ticket with some money I give you, and I’ll give you three thousand lire.”

The kid did a fancy riff in place with the soccer ball.

“That’s all I have to do?”

Paulie nodded. “Nothing to it.”

“If there’s nothing to it, why don’t you buy the ticket yourself and save the three thousand?”

“Because I ran away from my fucking old man yesterday, and I figure he’s got
carabinieri
watching for me.” Paulie
aimed his chin at the ticket windows. “Like those two dick-heads over there.”

“No shit?” The boy’s grin grew broader. “Where you going when you get off the ferry in Naples?”

“My grandma lives in Rome. I guess I’ll go there.”

The boy’s eyes were all jealousy and admiration. “Jesus!”

“Will you do it for me?” said Paulie.

“Sure. Why not?”

Paulie counted out the money for the ticket. Then he watched his new friend deftly work his soccer ball through the crowd
to the nearest ticket line, about fifty yards away.

Now I’ll know.

There were about a dozen people ahead of the boy, but the line was moving well and he was soon number five.

It was when he had advanced to three that Paulie saw one of the two
carabinieri
approach, bend down to the boy’s height, and start talking to him.

Damn, thought Paulie, and began slowly easing away, moving a short distance back into the crowd.

There was no one in front of the boy now, but the
cara-biniere
was still talking to him. While a few of those at his back began moving around him to the ticket window.

Paulie saw the kid standing with his head low, sometimes talking, but mostly listening. At one point he had his hand open
and was showing his money to the policeman, who looked at it very seriously.

A moment later the boy turned and stared at where he had left Paulie, but he didn’t see him. Then he did see him a bit farther
back in the crowd, and he pointed and kept pointing until the
carabiniere
saw him, too.

The policeman cried out something Paulie couldn’t hear, and then he was up and running toward him with the other
carabiniere
close behind, and the three haircuts right in back of them, and all five of them running like the devil.

Paulie had a last glimpse of the kid’s face. It was scared white. And Paulie was scared, too.

Then Paulie was just running, weaving in and out of the crowds, and between the great trucks with their diesels growling and
gears grinding, and the slowly moving lines of cars and buses. He ran without glancing back, cutting back
and forth between the vehicles and people, understanding now that everything he had been worried about was true, and the
carabinieri
had been watching the ticket lines for an eight-year-old kid, and the same with the mob haircuts and suits, and if they ever
caught up with him now, Jesus only knew what they’d do to him.

Then he slammed into the side of an eighteen-wheeler that wasn’t even moving, and suddenly and for several seconds nothing
at all was clear.

Still, gasping for breath against the heavy tarp that lay stretched over the big, open flatbed, he felt remarkably calm. At
that moment he saw no one and was sure that no one saw him. What he did see in close detail were the twisted fibers of the
hemp rope that fastened a corner of the tarp to the truckbed. And he saw, too, the fine hand of God offering him salvation.

He quickly untied the rope, slid under the tarp and onto the open truckbed, and securely refastened the tarpaulin above him.

Paulie lay in the sudden darkness. He kept hearing voices passing, but no one approached him.

A short while later, he felt the truck start to move. It moved slowly, in fits and starts, part of the long snake of traffic
rolling into the great belly of the ship. There was a different sound and feel when the truck hit the steel decking. It was
all kind of hollow and smooth. If he had to give it a color, in his mind it would be a dark blue-green. It seemed so long
since he had painted, he began to wonder if he’d remember how.

Which was kind of crazy. Might as well wonder if he’d remember how to breathe.

After a while he felt the vibration of the ship’s engines, then the long rolling motion of the swells as they put to sea.

He thought it might be all right for him to leave the truck now and wander around the ship. But he decided to stay where he
was for the time being.

So he lay there in the darkness under the tarp, trying to concentrate on as much good stuff as he could remember from before
all this started to happen.

Which was all right for a while. It was like staring off into
the pale, pink mists of memory, where things always seem just a little brighter and nicer than they really were.

What he liked best about the remembering was that his mother and father always were there. The worst was that no matter how
bright and clear they seemed in his thoughts, they still couldn’t touch him.

Paulie guessed that was what he missed most right now.

Being touched.

V
ITTORIO
B
ATTAGLIA LAY
alone in the night with his tubes and the blinking lights of his monitors and wished that Gianni Garetsky would come back.

The thoughts that came when he was alone were worse than the pain, and the pain was very bad. But he knew it was a sign of
healing, because they were taking him off the morphine.

Pain is good for the soul.

And what idiot had said that?

An idiot who obviously had never experienced real pain or known a damn thing about the soul.

But it wasn’t his pain or his soul that bothered him most in the night. It was his fear. Although even this was for his wife
and son, not himself. It was the only thing that seemed real among the hallucinations of his semidrugged state. Which made
it the only thing of true importance.