It went through Garetsky like a dose of salts. Somehow, with all the talking, he’d assumed they’d left his newly dug grave
behind. Evidently not.
“I thought you said everybody’s got a choice.”
“Yeah, but I don’t like mine. Mostly, what I don’t like is you walking away knowing I’m alive and here. My own son knew, and
even he sent me you. Now you know and who do you end up sending me? My own fucking angel of death? Carlo Donatti?”
Alberto’s words hung in the stillness, numbing the air, and Gianni knew there was nothing more to talk about. He had
already accepted it as part of what had happened and what would probably happen next.
He briefly closed, then opened his eyes. “If you’re in no great rush, how about a last butt?”
“Sure. I just wish my Angie had your guts.”
“Why? So he could die young, too?”
Frank Alberto was reaching for his cigarettes when a handful of dirt caught him in the face and eyes.
An instant later Gianni had Alberto’s shotgun by its barrel and needed to swing it just once.
The old Moustache Pete was still unconscious but breathing evenly when Gianni left him beside the open grave and headed for
the Pittsburgh airport.
Gianni had done the express drop-off on his rental car and was approaching the gate 10 boarding area for his return flight
to New York, when he spotted the two men.
There really was nothing unusual about them. They were dark haired, of medium build, and dressed respectably enough in sport
coats and slacks. But Gianni had been born into and lived his entire life with this sort of thing, and all he had to see were
those ever-so-slight bulges around the left armpits, and the restless, searching eyes. Of course they might just as easily
have been local plainclothes cops, not feds. But he didn’t think so.
He picked up a courtesy phone about forty feet from where the two men were standing, and he called the Passenger Service Counter
in the main terminal lobby.
“Could you please help me?” he said. “I’m calling from gate twenty-five, and I’ve somehow missed some friends who were supposed
to be meeting my flight.”
“What’s your name?” the attendant asked.
“Gantry… Kevin Gantry,” said the artist, which was the name on one of the clean credit cards that Don Donatti had given him,
and the card he had used early that morning to book his round-trip flight from New York to Pittsburgh.
“Please stay just where you are, Mr. Gantry.”
Moments later, the announcement came over the public address system. “Attention, please. Will those meeting arriv
ing passenger Kevin Gantry please go to gate twenty-five, where your passenger is now waiting.”
Watching the two men, Garetsky saw them turn and stare at each other as the words faded. Then half jogging down the crowded
corridor, they headed in the direction of gate 25.
Bingo!
Gianni swore softly to himself.
Don Donatti?
Impossible.
Until he remembered the don’s own words.
You’re not stupid, Gianni, so don’t say stupid things. Finally, everybody talks.
But it still didn’t go down easily, and he stood there, trying to work it through. You didn’t give up a lifetime of that kind
of feeling… that kind of friendship, loyalty, even love, without a fight.
Then the very intensity of his sentiment sickened him and he lost patience with it.
Think, damn it!
Flying directly back was out. They’d be monitoring every flight to New York for at least the rest of the night. Maybe longer.
Although after the fake paging of Kevin Gantry they’d know he was on to them and expand their surveillance to other flights.
Possibly even to rental cars and bus terminals. It depended on how many people they were using. He couldn’t believe he was
that high a priority. Until he remembered it wasn’t him. It was Vittorio Battaglia. Yet even that explained nothing.
A sudden weakness filtered through him. The past days had taken their toll, and he was beginning to feel like an aging fighter
near the end of a grueling twelve-rounder, when his legs were rubber and he could barely hold up his arms. In the distance,
he could still make out the bobbing heads of the two hunters on their futile run to gate 25. He was nothing but game to them,
a fox in a swamp with the hounds baying all around.
The bastards, he thought, and the anger itself brought a much-needed rush of adrenaline.
Checking the posted flight schedules, he rushed to a ticket
counter and booked himself onto a 6:15 to Boston, which would be taking off in less than ten minutes.
He paid with cash, wishing he’d done the same with his Pittsburgh tickets, instead of trying to preserve his hard currency
for possible future emergencies. Although he was probably lucky to have found out where he stood with Don Donatti while he
could still control the damage. At a different time and place, using another of the credit cards, licenses, or passports so
graciously provided by the don, he might have been picked up cold.
Gianni Garetsky thought about Carlo Donatti all the way to Boston.
Every act of betrayal carried its own level of hurt, and this one cut deep. The don wasn’t of his blood, but since the deaths
of his parents, Carlo Donatti was the closest thing to blood that Gianni had left.
No more than five nights ago the don had come to the Met to honor and embrace him with flooding eyes. One night after that,
he had given him a gun, a hundred thousand in cash, allegedly clean papers, his heartfelt blessing, and a warning not to trust
even him.
This was the man he had known all his life.
At Boston’s Logan Airport, he caught the next shuttle to New York without incident and arrived at La Guardia less than an
hour later.
He called the Sheraton from the first phone he saw on leaving the arrival gate, and heard Mary Yung’s voice say hello.
“How are things?” he asked, according to their agreed-upon code.
“Terrible.”
Something ran cold in him. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve missed you like the devil.”
He stood there, the receiver shaking in his hand. “For Christ’s sake, Mary!”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I mean fine. Things are fine.”
The wire hummed between them.
“But I still missed you like the devil,” she said.
* * *
It was well past eleven, but neither of them had eaten so Mary Chan Yung had room service send up a late supper.
Gianni found something curiously domestic in it. The breed was insanely adaptable. Their fourth night together, and there
was already a sense of shared histories. Another two nights, and they’d be hanging new curtains and going into family planning.
He decided to say nothing about Don Donatti and the two men at the Pittsburgh airport. But he did tell Mary Yung what happened
with Frank Alberto, his shotgun, and his waiting grave.
“Your
compaesano
sounds like a real doll,” she said flatly. “But after sleeping with a shotgun for nine years, who can blame him for being
a little cautious?”
“Not
you.
Right?”
Mary Yung looked at him long and evenly. Then she decided to let it go.
“So what do we do now?” she said. “Take an all-inclusive Parillo Tour of Italy?”
“I’d like to pick up a bit more to go on.”
“How?”
“By talking to a couple of people.”
“Who?”
“You’re beginning to sound like a district attorney.”
“That’s the nastiest thing you’ve said to me yet.”
Gianni laughed. It felt strange, and he wondered if he’d ever be laughing again on any kind of regular basis. The warm, sweet
feeling this woman was giving him felt even stranger, and he wondered about that, too.
“I want to talk to my gallery rep and my old art teacher. My teacher was also Vittorio’s teacher.”
“What can they tell you?”
The artist worked on his third glass of the special chardon-nay that Mary had ordered to go with their dinner. She seemed
to know and care a lot about such things. He didn’t. But neither was he finding it especially painful.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe nothing. But since wherever Vittorio is, he’s probably painting, each one of them knew him
well enough as an artist to be able to come up with something I might not think of myself.”
* * *
Something awakened Gianni.
He sat up with a start and stared into the darkness.
Then he heard Mary Yung cry out and he knew this was the sound that had awakened him.
Now it just kept coming, a keening, almost childish wail, so sharp and shrill that Gianni felt it enter him like a blade.
He turned on a lamp between the two beds and the room quivered with a yellow light.
Face contorted, eyes tightly closed, Mary Yung thrashed about her bed. She might have been fighting an invisible army of wizards
and fiends.
Gianni caught her wrists and held them. “Easy,” he whispered. “Easy, it’s OK.”
She worked against him, testing his grip. She was surprisingly strong.
Then her eyes opened, went wide at their centers, and the wailing sound stopped. She lay staring at him, her face and body
wet with perspiration, her gown plastered to her skin.
“It was only a dream,” Gianni said. “Everything’s all right.”
Everything’s all right.
She’d shot and buried three government agents who’d come to question, torture, and probably kill her. She was homeless and
on the run. Powerful, anonymous forces were out hunting her even now. If she had any future at all, it would more than likely
take place in some as yet undefined chamber of horrors.
How much worse could a mere dream have been?
She began shivering. It became very bad. It became so bad that Gianni could hear her teeth chattering. He went into the bathroom
and brought back a towel and a terry robe.
“You’d better get that wet gown off,” he said.
Mary struggled with it. But she was shaking so violently, he had to help her. Then he dried her with the bath towel.
Naked, she all but took his breath away.
His reaction was involuntary, pure reflex. Nevertheless, it shamed him. The human animal. It might not always prevail, but
it sure as hell was going to survive.
Back under the covers, Mary Yung was still trembling.
“Hold me,… ” she pleaded.
Gianni lay close and held her. She held him. They lay there holding each other. Finally, the trembling stopped.
But neither of them let go. They might have been imprisoned in each other, which was almost the way Gianni had begun to think
about it. Still, good sounds were taking place somewhere in his head, and something bent on pleasure was loose. The fact was,
he couldn’t bear to move apart from her. Yet he had an intimation he mustn’t think too much about it. Certainly, not now.
It was she who offered the first kiss, of course. God help him if
he
had been the one to start. Some disastrous break in the heavens might have resulted. But when he touched a hand to her breast,
he was ready to commit the rest of his life to contemplating the sensation. It was as if something was demonstrating to him
that until this instant he had never even come close to understanding the true miracle of a breast.
Determined to miss nothing now, he moved on to further miracles. And with what a state of grace. Even the excitement held
its separate measure of calm. He looked at her eyes, at the lovely riddle of her face, and had never seen anything more open
to him. It was true. Whatever he wanted was his. He had only to reach for it.
And the cost?
Who could tell with a woman like this?
Yet, somewhere near the middle of it, like a bonus he didn’t deserve, something wistful and good took root in him, as if a
new part of his life had begun. So that going up with it, then down, then up once more, he was able to look at her soft alien
eyes, suddenly alight with pure gold, and hope for something he knew in his heart wasn’t there.
It was only later, when Mary was asleep, that he thought of his wife and went cold with it.
This has nothing to do with you,
he told Teresa.
Not Mary Yung, not any woman, can ever touch what we had.
I’m making progress.
G
IANNI WAS ABOUT
to call Don Carlo Donatti on his private
safe
phone…
buried in lead cable, no taps.
He had decided he couldn’t live with it this way. The evidence was strong, but totally circumstantial. After so many years,
the don deserved at least the chance to talk.
He was at a gas-station phone on Northern Boulevard, just across the Nassau County line and about a twenty-minute drive from
Donatti’s Sands Point home. It was a bright, sunny morning, and a cool breeze carried a whiff of the sea off the quiet waters
of Little Neck Bay. It was much too nice a day for what he was doing.
Gianni dialed the special, easy-to-remember number,
even panic won’t block it out
… and heard the don answer on the third ring.
“It’s me,” he said.
“Gianni! I’ve been worried sick. You OK?”
“I’m alive, Don Donatti. How are you?”
“I asked you to keep in touch. It’s been four days. I didn’t know what to think.”
Gianni heard the reprisal of the neglected parent in his tone. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. But it’s been a hard
few days, with a lot of running. Still, that’s no excuse and I apologize.”
“
Grazie a Dio
you’re all right. Something bad happened and I had no way to warn you.”
Garetsky waited in silence.
“All that safe stuff I gave you?” said Donatti. “Burn it. None of it’s any good.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is a terrible embarrassment for me, Gianni. It’s lucky you didn’t use any of the credit cards. They would have had you
if you did.”
“But I did use a card.”
The wire hummed briefly.
“Whose name?” asked Donatti.
“Kevin Gantry’s. It was for airline tickets.”
“And nothing happened?”
“It could have. But I spotted a couple of agents at the departure gate before they spotted me, and took a different flight.”