Impulse (26 page)

“Not that I don’t think DeLorio will straighten out. He will. He’s my son. He’ll have to. As for his wife, well, she is just a girl, young and silly and unthinking. Ah, forgive me, Merkel, carrying on like this and embarrassing you. You’re taken with the Vermeer, hmmm? I like it. Soon though I’ll exchange it with the Turner that’s in the vault. Just look at those colors—so soft, almost blurry, yet so real and stark. It sounds impossible, yet it’s true, that wondrous effect Vermeer achieves. If only life could hold such beauty dear and unchanging, but it doesn’t, does it? No, it’s always changing, mostly for the worse. It isn’t really fair, but there you have it.

“Now, Merkel, I wanted to see you because I will start working with Rafaella this very afternoon. Marcus is seeing to business, the dear boy, and I have nothing else to worry me.

“Yes, Rafaella will do a fine job. I explained things to her last night, slowly and carefully. She understands her role. She won’t try to cross me, I’m certain she won’t. She won’t play the ruthless reporter out to find dirt. She’ll write exactly what I want her to write. She will present me as I should be presented to the world: a man of ingenuity and imagination, a man of great vision, an intuitive man, a philanthropist. She will be my amanuensis, if you will.

“You, Merkel, you will ensure that peace reigns
here. You and Link and Lacy. Poor Link, he’s such a shy fellow, so diffident. He doesn’t seem to be able to grasp innuendo. Well, he’s still a fine marksman and he does please me with his tales of long-dead murderers.” Dominick paused and sipped more of the gin lemonade.

Finally Merkel said, “Mr. Giovanni, you sent Marcus to France because you wanted to be alone with Miss Holland?”

How odd of Merkel to speak his mind so frankly. How unexpected of staid old Merkel. “Oh, no, I needed him there, to handle Bertrand. Don’t you think I can trust Marcus?”

“Yes, of course. He saved your life. Didn’t give it a second thought, you know, and—”

“Ah, that’s exactly what worries me. A man who just rushes into something, a man who doesn’t weigh his options, a man who doesn’t stop and think. I don’t think that such a man is all that trustworthy.”

Merkel just stared at him. “He saved your life,” he repeated. “He took a bullet in the back to save your life.”

Dominick picked up a gold pen, fiddled with it a minute, then tossed it into the air, deftly catching it. “Perhaps you’re right. Marcus has been with me over two years now. He’s bright, seemingly loyal, has made a good deal of money for me and for himself.” His voice suddenly turned hard, his eyes cold. “Keep everyone away from me and Rafaella. I want her to myself. She is to write the story of my life. There are to be no distractions.”

Merkel was afraid he did understand. He nodded and left the library. But what about his promise to Marcus?

Dominick didn’t move for many more minutes. Certainly he trusted Marcus. Hadn’t Marcus told him just this morning before he’d left for France that he’d finally gotten the opportunity to search Rafaella’s villa? There
hadn’t been a bloody thing there. That’s what Marcus had told him. Marcus hadn’t told him that Rafaella was illegitimate. Dominick wondered why. It wasn’t important; that was what Marcus had decided. Still—

And Marcus had told him about Rafaella’s mother, lying in that hospital in a coma. And Marcus had counseled him not to let her come to the compound. He’d said it was too dangerous. Marcus was timid and a coward. He didn’t realize that Dominick controlled everything and everyone. Controlling one more woman was child’s play.

Dominick tossed down the rest of his drink. His book would be a masterpiece. He would be seen by the world as he should be seen. It was about time.

Giovanni’s Island March 2001

Rafaella opened the journal. The date April 5, 1994, was neatly entered at the top-left-hand side of the page. She looked at her mother’s rather crabbed, very straight handwriting and felt tears sting the backs of her eyes. She closed her eyes a moment, dealing with the pain. It would be endless pain, because even if her mother fully recovered, the other pain would still be there for all of those who loved her. Rafaella’s throat felt wet, and she swallowed.

She had to succeed. She closed the journal just for a moment and thought about calling from her father’s compound every morning to the Pine Hill Hospital on Long Island. Surely Dominick monitored all calls that went out from here.

But he already had to know that Rafaella called Long Island every morning. Marcus would have told him, just as he’d told him about her mother being in the hospital, in a coma.

She would simply, very matter-of-factly, ask Dominick if she could call the hospital every morning. If he asked her what she was doing here in the Caribbean with her mother so very ill in New York, well, she’d just tell him what she’d told Marcus, more or less.

She’d be more convincing with Dominick for the
simple reason that she had to be. There was too much to gain, too much to be lost.

And he had no more idea who Margaret Rutledge was than who his daughter was. Even if he remembered a Margaret, it was Margaret Pennington, not Margaret Holland.

Rafaella smoothed open the journal again, picturing her mother in her mind, sitting at her small Louis XVI writing table, pen in hand, her eyes staring off, remembering the pain of the past, wondering about the future, obsessed in the present.

It’s Tuesday today, my dear Rafaella, and you’re here on spring break from Columbia. It still makes me grin to think how very appalled Charles was when you told him you didn’t want to go to Yale—his alma mater—but rather to Columbia, locked in Spanish Harlem, dangerous to the unwary, but the best school of journalism in the United States, in your estimation. How Charles started at that. “Columbia,” he nearly yelled at me. “For God’s sake, Columbia!”

I cajoled him, flattered him, loved him until he was silly, but I refrained from telling him that it was, in fact, none of his business where you went to school. He’s very fond of you, Rafaella. It troubles me because I think he’s more proud of you than he is of his own son, Benjamin. Sweet, unpretentious Benjie—proof that genes do come through, only not necessarily in the configuration one could wish. Benjie’s an arty type, as you know, as was his mother, Dora. He really does fine watercolors. But Charles disdains all modern sorts of endeavors. He does, however, approve of those masters who had the good fortune to paint at least three centuries ago, e.g., Hals, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Brueghel. Practically all those masters are Dutch; his library is filled with them, some, er, acquired through less than pristine means, I doubt not.

But I digress. I will tell you, Rafaella, even if the
great Michelangelo himself had been Charles’s son, Charles would have given him hell.

Am I mocking my husband? I suppose so, but it’s healthy, not malicious. He’s human, and that’s just fine with me. Oh, yes, he’s all too human—not at all like Dominick, who cared nothing for anyone except himself and his dynasty and—I never understood his obsession with founding a dynasty unless it was his own overweening need to see himself immortal—was there anything else?

He’s had only the one son. His name’s DeLorio and he’s only eight months younger than you are, Rafaella. I don’t know much about him except that he lives with his father, and has for years. So much for his blessed dynasty. As for his wife, Sylvia Carlucci Giovanni, she doesn’t live with him, hasn’t for more than a decade. She gave him a son, started drinking like a fish because he probably didn’t give a damn about her and showed it, and is now living near us, of all the ironic things. She lives in a small hamlet called Hicksville, a very exclusive place, private, and the word is that she has a succession ofhandsome young men coming and going. Ah, here’s your mother, gossiping like an old fool. Which I am. No doubt about that. What else can a young fool become anyway?

There was another rumor about Sylvia. After DeLorio’s birth, she had her tubes tied—to spite Dominick, the word was. Her father, old Carlucci, was peeved with her, but he ended up siding with her when Dominick would have divorced her in a flash. The old man, it was said, threatened to kill Dominick if he ever tried to divorce his daughter. So Dominick has only one son and won’t ever have any more legitimate ones unless Sylvia dies and he marries again. Irony, Rafaella. Life seems to abound in it. It’s quite frightening sometimes.

There was a knock on the door and Rafaella quickly closed the journal.

“Just a moment.”

She placed her mother’s journal haphazardly in among a pile of books—novels, travel guides, biographies, a couple of reference books on the Caribbean, two more of the journals—on top of the fireplace mantel, all in full view of anyone who happened to look, then opened her bedroom door.

“Oh, hello, Merkel. How are you? It’s so quiet. Is Mr. Giovanni ready to begin our work?”

Merkel didn’t like this, not at all. She was young, far too young for Mr. Giovanni, honest and open, and she’d made her preferences clear. It was Marcus all the way.

“I like that tie you’re wearing. The stripe is very classy.”

“It’s the latest style, according to
Gentleman’s Quarterly.
It’s made in Britain and can only be ordered from there. Thank you for noticing. Mr. Giovanni would like to begin now.”

Rafaella gave him a sunny smile. “I’m ready to go. Let me get my tape recorder. Oh, yes, Merkel, as you might know, my mother is in a hospital on Long Island. I like to call her every morning. Do you think it will be a problem?”

Merkel just stared at her. Marcus had been wrong. She was exactly what she seemed to be. She wasn’t trying to hide anything. She was a reporter who wanted to write Dominick’s biography and she didn’t have any secrets. She could be trusted, at least to a point. “Certainly, Ms. Holland. I will speak to Mr. Giovanni.”

Dominick was in the living room, looking at his Egyptian jewelry. He motioned her over to where he stood.

Rafaella joined him and peered down into the palely tinted glass case.

“Do you recall my telling you these pieces were from the Eighteenth Dynasty? Of course you do.
You’re young, not old and forgetful. Well, many people consider the jewelry from this time to be overly ornate, decadent, but I don’t think so. It’s lovely, isn’t it? Especially this.” He lifted a wooden box carved in the shape of a small dog and opened it. Inside was a sweet-smelling scent Rafaella couldn’t identify, and a child’s bracelet of pounded gold sat atop a swell of blue velvet. It looked so delicate she was afraid to breathe on it.

“Very lovely,” she said, and to her relief, Dominick closed the lid and gently placed the box back under the glass case. He flicked a switch on, wiped his hands on a pristine white handkerchief, and smiled at her.

“Anytime you wish to look at any of these things, simply ask me, Rafaella. Just touching the pieces, just knowing that they’re here, that they’re mine for a brief period of time, brings me peace, serenity. They connect me to the past, make me realize that all of time is fluid and unending, that all of us will continue to exist, in some fashion, into the future, into infinity. Ah, but I pretend to be the philosopher when I am but a simple man.”

“You’re anything but simple, sir.”

“‘Dominick,’ please,” he said, and looked pained.

She wondered what effect “Father” would have.

“Very well, Dominick.”

“We’re going to become quite close, Rafaella. As long as you understand what it is I expect of you—” He paused a moment and she nodded. Oh, yes, she understood his ground rules, his plans for her, her place as the recorder of his greatness. She would agree to whatever he said in order to remain here on the compound. She was still very curious about him. He was her father and she now accepted that. She also accepted the fact that she was going to do her best to ruin him. She would write his biography and hold it up to the world. “Good. You won’t deviate from what it is I wish.
You will produce a masterpiece, you’ll see. Oh, yes, I also have a fondness for art, as you know. When you would like to see the pieces in the vault, you have just to ask.” And he touched his long cool fingers to her cheek and caressed her.

Rafaella didn’t move. She was too surprised. She hadn’t considered, hadn’t even thought, that he would possibly be interested in her as a woman. Even if he didn’t recognize her as his daughter, she was young enough to be one. She smiled and managed to step away from him, hopefully not showing her shock and distaste. “Come into my library, it’s cooler.”

“I would really prefer being on the veranda that faces the swimming pool. The smell of the bougainvillea and the frangipani is so wonderful.” It was also more open there. “Is there a plug for the tape recorder?”

“He nodded, his smile never slipping.

“—so my papa was a man dedicated to getting all his family out of Italy and over to beautiful San Francisco. By the time he died in 1965, he’d succeeded. His brothers, sisters, cousins, the whole bloody lot of them, most moochers, but it didn’t bother him, he had this strange sort of drive, to be the dependable one, to be the one everyone could count on, everyone except his only son, that is.

Rafaella dutifully wrote in her own specialized shorthand, adding her own personal notes to his reminiscences on the tape recorder, filling page after page. So he’d felt neglected by his father, had he? Too bad he hadn’t choked on it. She could tell that he’d thought about this, thought about the order in which he would present his life to her, and what in his life he would tell her. There was no deep bitterness, no hurt in his voice when he spoke of his father. Just a sullen kind of whine she’d heard once from DeLorio. It shocked her to hear it from him.

Finally he paused and raised a hand. Jiggs appeared, dressed in his usual waiter-white, and received his orders.

“I asked for a lemonade for both of us, Rafaella.”

“That’s fine.”

He stopped talking then, pressed the off button on the tape recorder, sat back in his chair, and steepled his fingers, tapping the fingertips together.