The Kaisho (37 page)

He stood very still for a long time, attuning himself to the minute vibrations of the church. As if a set of slides had been slipped into a projector, he could feel the age of the place, the succession of peoples who had built it, then rebuilt it from the ruins of previous incarnations: the Cycladians, the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, the myriad peoples of Asia Minor who in time came to call themselves Venetians.

This had been a holy place for all of them; he could sense the lines of power running toward this spot like spokes radiating from the hub of a wheel. They were ancient, now all but forgotten by the priests who went about God’s business in the modern world. And yet this was no less a holy place now than it had been in centuries past. The power abided, scented of ripe fruit and heated embers, like the breath of a slumbering leviathan.

He was drawn here.
This was Nicholas’s thought, riding unbidden on the tide of the elemental vibrations.
He, too, has felt the force and wants to be part of it.

“Blood,” Nicholas said suddenly. “I see blood.”

Celeste drew a sharp breath. “Where?”

“This way.”

Nicholas took them into the schola cantorum and through it. On the other side was a set of small rooms—no larger than cells—hewn out of the cyclopean stone blocks. The flickering light from reed torches grew dimmer as they went from room to room. The first one held a cot with a straw mattress over which were drawn undyed muslin sheets and a thin wool blanket. A cell, indeed. The second room was obviously used as a kind of storeroom. Piles of hymnals and musical scores for the choir lay atop crates that contained candles, holy wafers, and bottles of sacramental wine.

The third cell appeared to be empty save for thick shadows pouring down its walls and across the small square of floor. The ubiquitous smell of mildew was absent, replaced by the astringent odor of a strong disinfectant.

“There’s nothing here,” Celeste said.

Nicholas closed his eyes. “Nevertheless, the smell of blood is stronger.”

“Was that why the disinfectant was used?”

He nodded. “Perhaps.” He walked away from the center of the cell where they had been standing. As he did so, he seemed to vanish into the deep shadows at the back of the cell.

“Nicholas?”

The silence seemed to stir the silken hairs at the back of her neck.

“Celeste, come here.”

His voice was watery, echoey, as if it came from a great distance. She followed the sound, saw him then at the rear wall. For an instant, his image flickered, as if it were only a reflection. Then she was beside him, and it was as if she had stepped through a translucent opening in the iris of an enormous eye. She turned to glance behind her and was certain the far side of the cell appeared yards away.

Nicholas’s arms were up, the palms of his hands flat against the stone. “Something here.”

She heard him grunt, then she gave a little start as the wall began to move. Or, more accurately, a part of the wall. A moment later, the two of them stepped through the hidden doorway.

They found themselves in a minuscule garden. Flowering clematis clawed its way up the stone walls that rose on all sides, brocaded with purple-blue flowers, dark brown vines, and small green leaves. Birds twittered in a ginkgo tree, white-barked as a skeleton, whose upper third could be seen above the far wall.

The ground was damp, exacerbating the stale smell of autumn, but the rain had ceased. Ashen sunlight fell as if exhausted, broken apart, so that it seemed as if they were in a deep forest glade far away from all civilization.

An ancient wrought-iron bench stood in the center of the garden, facing away from them. The ground was green and spongy so that Celeste knew they were walking on moss, not grass. Close at hand, a bird sang and then was still. It was so silent here they could make out the faint lapping of a
rio
somewhere beyond the high walls.

“Look!”

Nicholas pointed as they came abreast of the bench. Lying on its seat was a Venetian mask, broken in half. It was covered in blood that had already dried.

Celeste gave a little cry, said in a whisper, “That’s the Domino, the mask Okami-san gave me to wear when I met you.”

“How can you tell it’s the same one? There must be over ten thousand Dominos in Venice.”

“Mine was not mass-produced. It was signed by the maker. Look there in the corner on the underside.”

Nicholas peered at the part of the mark she pointed out.

“Nicholas, what is this doing here, covered in blood? Whose blood is it? Okami-san’s?”

“I wish I knew.”

He crouched down, took out the photo of her they had found in Okami’s study. Celeste crouched down beside him.

“Here, you’re wearing this Domino costume, and now we come upon the same mask. Perhaps it’s the Domino that holds the answer as to where Okami-san has been taken.” He thought a moment. “What did you tell me about it that night?”

“Let’s see, I said that the name came from the Latin
benedicamus Domino,
meaning ‘Bless the Lord.’ I think it was a kind of joke the ancient Venetians played on their putative papal masters. At Carnival, after all, whoring was one of the prime activities.”

“Latin. So the Domino was one of the archetypal Italian characters.”

“I don’t think it was,” Celeste said. “But I don’t know enough of
maschere
history to say for sure. There is someone who can tell us everything there is to know about the masks of Venice and my Domino mask in particular. The man who made it.”

Lew Croaker’s first sight of Margarite Goldoni DeCamillo was across the long expanse of lawn—still summer green. Perhaps this color, glowing, almost incandescent in the full sun of noontime, was what lent the scene its intensity, as unforgettable as an object that defies the law of gravity.

He saw the mass of dark, curling hair that spoke to him of cool jazz and double espressos at some long-forgotten Greenwich Village club. Then she turned at his approach up the flagstone walk and he saw the strength and tenacity in her jawline, her prominent nose. Her eyes regarded him coolly. Not with the hostility or suspicion he had expected but with a genuine curiosity.

“You’re out of luck,” she said as he came up to where she stood in a multicolor woven wool jacket. She wore black leggings and ankle-high boots. Her ears were adorned with earrings made of old Roman coins, and a large diamond solitaire ring was on her marriage finger.

“Why is that?”

“My husband’s not home.”

“He assured my office when they contacted him that he would be.”

She shrugged. “Tony’s Sicilian. Either he respects people or he doesn’t.”

Croaker looked at her, wondering what she thought of her husband. She had said that one word
Sicilian
through clenched teeth, as if it were an epithet. “Meaning he doesn’t respect me.”

“You’re the cop.”

“Used to be,” he said with a smile. “NYPD. But that was some time ago.”

She cocked her head. “What did you do in the used to be?”

“Detective. Homicide.”

“Just your meat, then.”

“What do you mean?”

She laughed in his face. “Come off it, Detective, or whatever the hell you are now, you want to talk to Tony about my brother’s murder.”

“But he’s not here. Maybe I ought to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say on the subject. Dom’s dead, that’s the end of it.”

“Not to me it isn’t.” Croaker watched a wiseguy walking the perimeter of the estate, a powerful-looking young man who watched him from the corner of his eye. “I’m charged with finding out who killed him and bringing him in.”

“Dead or alive?” she said, staring at his biomechanical hand.

“Well now, that depends,” he said, lifting it up and flexing the articulated fingers, “on how he reacts when I find him.”

She examined each finger, touching them in the way an artist would an armature on an incomplete sculpture, as if imagining the effect the finished design would have on the viewer.

“These look lethal.”

“I can also do the most delicate work with them,” Croaker said, extruding a steel blade from the tip of one finger.

She looked into his face. “Has it changed you?”

“What?”

“This... hand.”

“Why would it?”

Margarite abruptly shifted her attention and the moment was gone. She watched the wiseguy as he lit a cigarette. “Hey,” she called to him, “remember to put the butt in your pocket.” Then to Croaker: “You’re very sure you’ll find him—the man who murdered Dom?”

“I’ll find him.”

She looked at him for a long time, the sun in her eyes so that he could not tell whether she was merely curious or there was something deeper there.

“I think I’ll stay awhile,” he said.

She turned, began to follow a branch of the flagstone around the side of the house. “Don’t expect an invitation inside. I have workmen sanding a new tongue-and-groove wood floor, and there’s plastic sheeting and sawdust all over the place.”

“No problem.”

She put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “You mentioned your office before. Just who do you work for?”

“Damned if I know,” he said, then grinned at her look of consternation. “Federal bureau,” he added obscurely. “This case has national repercussions.”

“Don’t bullshit me,” she said, swinging around on him. “My brother had national repercussions. The FBI kissed his ass for years.”

“Funny. I thought it was the other way around, in the end.”

“Hah!” She had stopped to look at a sheared azalea that was looking none too healthy. Her fine-boned hands moved through the tight angle of branches with deftness and precision, and he guessed this was how she proceeded with everything she did. “For a fed you sure don’t know much.”

“Maybe, but I’m eager to learn.”

She straightened up, peered at him oddly. “That’s more than I can say for most of them.” They began to walk again. “They all have their own agendas, I’ve found.”

“You mean like interagency infighting?”

“Hell, no,” she said, pushing her fingers through her hair. “It’s all personal with them. They see these wiseguys they’re following day and night walking around in three-thousand-dollar suits, riding in BMWs, living high off the hog, and it sticks in their gut like a knife. So they decide they’re going to take this one or that one down.” Her face twisted into a wry smile. “You know, it’s like they tell you about watching sports events: they’re boring unless you pick one side and root for it. Make it personal. That’s what these feds do. To beat the boredom, they pick a target and make him a personal priority.” She glanced at him. “You think I’m making this up.”

“No, I don’t.”

They had reached the back of the house. In the distance beyond the covered pool Croaker could see a couple of men in among the trees. They were clones of the pair who had stopped him at the front of the property: hard-muscled wiseguys, ex-cons most likely with cynical eyes and quick reflexes, made for guard duty. One had a young rottweiler on a length of thick stainless-steel chain. It strained at the leash, interested now in Croaker, who was so close to one of the people it had been trained to protect.

As he watched the dog, Croaker was thinking of the dossier on the DeCamillo family Lillehammer had pulled up for him on the computer in the Air Force jet.

There was a scent in the air that transcended autumn. The bittersweet odor of crushed leaves could not quite hide the smell of change. He said on impulse, “That’s not the same dog, is it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You had a rottweiler named Caesar, but that one there is a new one.”

“What if it is?”

“What happened to Caesar?”

Margarite said nothing, but she was staring at the rottweiler in a curious manner.

“Caesar died,” she said. “I think he must have eaten a field mouse that was poisoned.”

“That must have been tough.”

She rounded on him, her cheeks suddenly flushed. “My brother’s murder was tough. This—” She lifted an arm, let it fall. “This was just a rucking dog.”

The rottweiler had stopped in its tracks, its head swung around. It had been Margarite’s sharp tone that had caught its attention, but it was Croaker those malevolent yellow eyes were fixed upon.

She looked from the dog to Croaker, abruptly amused. “If you make a move now, you’re dead.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

She made a sound in the back of her throat and the rottweiler backed down. Its flanks were still quivering, and Croaker did not much care for the look in its evil eyes.

“It’s okay now,” Margarite said, beginning to walk again. “But you’ll want to be more careful.”

“I’ll remember not to startle you in the dog’s presence.”

They went on, into the estate, over a small knoll, heading toward a wisteria-covered pergola. There was an ornate stone statue of the Greek god Poseidon, king of the sea. The tines of his trident looked very sharp. The wiseguys and the rottweiler followed at a discreet distance, like a duenna in Madrid with her highborn charge.

“I don’t believe my husband wants to talk to you.”

“Evidently not. I don’t blame him.”

They reached the pergola. Sunlight slanted through the gaps in the twisted, woody vines, spilling over stone benches green with moss on their bases.

“But you’re braver than he is. You’re talking to me.”

Margarite laughed. “It was fate. You caught me at home.”

She sat on one of the benches while he leaned against the main stem of the wisteria.

“I guess, being the capo now, Mr. DeCamillo feels he can run his own investigation into who iced his brother-in-law.”

“My husband’s a legitimate lawyer. Just ask any of his clients.”

“I don’t have to. Half of Justice and the FBI have already gone over that ground.”

She squinted up at him, making her appear more vulnerable than she actually was. “Then what ground are you on?”

“I told you. I want to get your brother’s murderer.”

“Why? What’s in it for you? Get your kicks rooting around in other people’s grief? Or are you a Mafia groupie like three-quarters of the feds?”