Deceptions (58 page)

“You’ve brought me your command post?”

Cortlandt shrugged. “Why not? If I’ve got a phone, I can command anyplace. And this should make it a little easier on you.
You won’t have to lie here wondering what’s going on.”

Bunched muscles showed in Battaglia’s jaw.

“You’re a real doll,” he said. “Just don’t try to crawl in bed with me.”

P
AULIE WOKE LATER
than usual from his first night of sleep at home. He was shocked to see how high the sun had risen.

I guess I was tired.

The thought was by way of explanation and apology, as if the mere fact of his being in bed past the hour of eight broke some
holy commandment.

To compensate for the lapse, he showered and dressed in record time.

Paulie had just finished eating the scrambled eggs he had made for breakfast, when he glanced up and saw the man.

The man stood in the kitchen doorway, grinning as if they were old friends and he was very happy to see him. He
seemed kind of old, with mostly gray hair and a lot of lines on his face. Especially around the eyes, from grinning.

“Hello, Paulie,” he said. “Don’t be scared. My name’s Frank. Frank Langiono. I’m an old friend of your dad’s from America,
and I’ve got nothing but good news for you.”

The boy watched Langiono walk over to the table and sit down opposite him as he talked. He spoke Italian, but with an American
accent that made some words hard to understand. Up close, Paulie saw that his eyes were very blue and had tiny moving lights
in them where they caught the sun. Paulie was still shocked and was watching him very carefully. But he wasn’t frightened.
The man wasn’t a haircut, and if he’d wanted to hurt him or anything, he could have already done it.

“The doors and windows were all locked,” Paulie said. “How did you get in?”

“With my special burglar’s friend,” said Langiono, and held up a ring full of slender, lock-picking tools. “Ever see one of
these?”

The boy shook his head.

“If you know how to use this stuff,” said Langiono, “no door is closed to you.”

“Are you a burglar?”

Langiono laughed. “No. But I was a New York cop for twenty years so I got to know a lot of the B and E boys real good.”

“What’s B and E?”

“Breaking and entering.”

Paulie stared gravely at Langiono. He had so many things to think about at once that he wasn’t sure where to start. He understood
that the man was being especially nice so as not to frighten him, but this in itself tended to make him cautious.

“How did you know my father in America?” he asked.

“We were from the same neighborhood. It was in New York. A place called the Lower East Side. A lot of Italians. I was a lot
older than him and a cop besides. He was a real tough kid. But we liked each other and always got along great.”

Paulie thought about it.

“How did you know I was here in the house?”

“I’d been watching the place for a while and finally saw you come home yesterday.”

“How did you know I’d be coming here?”

Langiono grinned. “You sure you’re not a district attorney or something? You sure got questions enough.”

The boy didn’t smile back. He just waited.

“You were seen trying to get on the Palermo ferry to Naples. Which meant you were trying to get home. Right?”

“What did you mean before when you said you got nothing but good news for me?”

Frank Langiono put both his hands on the table where Paulie could see them. They were big hands and some of the knuckles had
been broken and had healed in crazy ways. Langiono looked at them as though seeing them for the first time. Then he looked
up at Paulie with his blue eyes, which had turned quiet now and serious.

“I’m going to take you to your mother,” he said.

The boy just sat there. His brown eyes went wide, then blinked rapidly for a moment, then looked gravely into Lan-giono’s
blues.

“Where is she?”

“Not too far from here.”

“You’re not just telling me that?”

“Why would I do that?”

The boy looked at Langiono without answering.

“I guess you’ve been having it kind of tough lately, huh?”

Paulie was still silent. He was suddenly finding it a little hard to breathe. What he didn’t want was to do something stupid
in front of this man, whom he kind of liked but didn’t know one damn thing about.

Langiono dug into his pocket, took out a woman’s brooch, and put it on the table in front of Paulie.

“Ever see this before?”

Paulie picked up the pin. He held it in the center of his palm. He felt it with the tips of his fingers.

“It’s my mom’s. Where did you get it?”

“She gave it to me.”

“Why?”

“Because she knows you’re a smart boy. She was afraid
you might not believe me without seeing something like this.”

Paulie sat staring at the brooch. He remembered touching it on his mother’s dress as a young child. He remembered that she
almost always wore it.

“Is my mom all right?”

“She’s fine. She just can’t wait to see you.”

“And you’re taking me to her?”

“That’s right.”

“When?”

“Soon. When I get a phone call. That’s when I’ll know how soon we’ll go.”

Paulie closed his hand around the brooch. He seemed to have forgotten Langiono was there.

“You sure don’t look very happy,” the ex-detective said.

Paulie said nothing.

“What’s the matter, kid?”

“If my mom’s so fine and can’t wait to see me, why can’t she come
here
to see me? At home.”

Langiono nodded as if he had been expecting precisely that question. “Because a deal’s been cut with another man and these
are the arrangements.”

“What about my dad? Why haven’t you said anything about my father?”

“Because I don’t know anything about him.”

“You mean you only know about my mother?”

“That’s right. Maybe that’s something she knows. When you see her, you can ask.”

Then it was quiet in the kitchen. It was quiet in the whole house. Outside, too, nothing moved.

Paulie sat looking across the table at Langiono, who sat looking at his hands again. The boy began to understand. Whatever
this Frank Langiono’s job really was, he didn’t like it very much.

G
IANNI
G
ARETSKY’S AND
Mary Yung’s Alitalia flight landed at the Naples airport at 7:05
A.M.,
which was about three and a half hours before Henry Durning’s government charter was due to arrive.

They disembarked separately, without visible connection. Then they picked up their bags, went through customs, and rented
their cars from two different agencies, with the same absence of noticeable ties. Both cars were telephone equipped, and they
exchanged numbers by leaving them on slips of paper in an outside phone booth.

Gianni led the way out of the airport complex. At the first turnoff, he pulled to the side of the road and waited until he
saw Mary Yung approaching behind him. Then he continued on with Mary following at a hundred-yard interval.

Suddenly, all their precautions seemed rather ludicrous to Gianni, strictly overkill. Who could possibly be watching them
at this stage? Durning was the only one he had reason to be concerned about, and the attorney general was still someplace
high over the Atlantic.

On impulse, he picked up the phone and hit Mary Yung’s call number. “Just checking you out,” he said when she answered. “Everything
OK?”

“Yes. But I’d like it better if we were in the same car.”

Gianni Garetsky was silent. He wondered how much of his tension had to do with Mary being along. It had all happened so fast.
One minute he had been more alone than ever. Then suddenly there she was, right in his lap.

So?

So why kid himself? He loved it. She could still do this to him, he thought, and was smart enough to leave it alone for now.

“Where do we get the hardware?” she asked.

“About ten minutes from here. Vittorio told me about this guy. He’s safe.”

They drove for a while with the line open.

“It might be a good idea to call your hotel in Capri,” Gianni said. “Tell them you’ll be a few hours late checking in. Then
if Durning tries to reach you when he gets to Sorrento, he won’t start thinking the wrong things.”

“I’ll do it right now,” she said, and broke the connection.

Fifteen minutes later, Gianni stopped in front of an old stucco house on the outskirts of Naples and saw Mary park a few blocks
back. Traffic kept moving in both directions. No other cars stopped.

Gianni was in and out of the house in less than twenty minutes with everything in a large canvas bag. Having learned from
Vittorio and recent experience, he was prepared for the worst.

He stashed the bag in his car, walked down to where Mary Yung was parked, and slid in beside her.

“All set,” he said, handing her a 9mm automatic and an extra clip of ammunition. “It’s fully loaded and the safety is on.

Mary Yung looked at the piece, checked the clip, and slid the weapon inside the belt of her slacks.

Gianni watched her accept the gun as part of everything that had already happened and would happen next.

“If it reaches the point where you have to use this on him,” he said, “are you sure you can do it?”

“Yes.”

Gianni waited for something more than the one word answer, but Mary Yung was silent.

“There’s still nothing that says you have to do this,” he told her.

“I know.”

She blinked at him, her eyes looking slow and tired.

“Any more dumb final remarks?” she asked.

“I’ll try to think of some.”

“Don’t bother.”

They sat looking at each other, and Gianni Garetsky saw that everything was settled.

“All right,” he said. “You saw where their buses were parked, waiting for them?”

Mary nodded.

“I’m sure Durning will be riding to Sorrento with the rest
of the delegation,” Gianni said. “It’s only about fifty kilometers from the airport to their hotel. But if for some reason
he doesn’t get on one of the buses with them… if he gets into a limousine or anything else and the buses leave without him…
make sure you stay with him and call me at once.”

Mary sat listening.

“If he’s on a bus as expected,” Gianni told her, “there’s no problem. You’ll just follow them at a distance. But remember.
They’ll have police cars leading and tailing the convoy. Some of the cars may be unmarked, so you’ll have to stay way back
to avoid getting trapped someplace in the middle.”

“Exactly where will
you
be?”

“I can’t answer that until I get to the hotel area and see how things are laid out. I’ll call you as soon as I know.”

They sat watching the traffic going by.

“You’re still sure Durning’s going to handle this alone?” Gianni said.

“Absolutely.” Mary looked at him. “Why? Are you having a problem with that?”

“A bit. What you said in Washington yesterday makes sense. And you sure know the man a lot better than I. It’s just that I
can’t see him going to meet Carlo Donatti without security.”

“I didn’t say he wouldn’t have security. I said he wouldn’t have witnesses.”

“But if he has no backup, what’s protecting him from Carlo Donatti?”

“The same thing that’s been protecting him all these years. His safety-deposit box.”

“How do you know that?”

“He as much as told me.”

“When?”

Mary Yung stared off somewhere. “During one of his more vulnerable moments.”

Gianni didn’t press it.

“You remember the way back to the airport?” he said.

“No. I’ll probably get lost and no one will ever know what happened to me.”

He said nothing.

She turned and looked at him. “You don’t have to worry about me, Gianni.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. But it happens to be true.”

Their eyes met and held.

“So?” she said. “Are you going to at least kiss me goodbye, or just sit there like a half-Jewish schmuck?”

Gianni leaned forward and kissed her.

It may not have been the sweetest kiss he’d ever had, but it certainly was the most knowing, with something in it of the unfilled
hopes of the numberless men she must have kissed and finally left behind. And all it did as he walked back to his car was
make him sad.

C
ARLO
D
ONATTI’S LONG
-range corporate jet landed at Palermo Municipal Airport at 8:20
A.M.
and was met on the tarmac by a single gray sedan.

No one but the driver was in the car, and no one was standing any place near it. The closest vehicle was an airport service
van parked about two hundred yards away, and the only people in sight were working mechanics and other airport personnel.

Donatti appeared to be the sole passenger. He disembarked alone, carrying a single piece of luggage, and entered the waiting
sedan.

The car made a brief, ritual stop for the special passport accommodation always accorded the don, drove out of the airport,
and headed south in the direction of Partinico.

Nothing followed.

Don Donatti knew this because he was watching his side-view mirror every foot of the way.

What he did notice a few minutes later was a nondescript
sedan pulling out of a cross road and falling in behind them at a distance of about a quarter mile. The car maintained this
interval for perhaps fifteen minutes before finally turning off and disappearing.

But it was replaced almost immediately by a dark service van of some sort, which also maintained a steady, quarter-mile interval.
The van stayed with them until they left the road and entered the long driveway that led to the white villa where Peggy Walters
was being held. Watching, Donatti saw the van pass the turnoff and just keep going. But he was almost certain another vehicle
would take over within minutes, park somewhere, and watch the house.