“I hear it’s ended up as just about the worst,” President Norton said tiredly.
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Cortlandt. “But if you’ll let me act fast, the damage can still be controllable.”
“How?”
“By turning the whole thing into a tragic accident.”
The president’s voice was hesitant. “That’s possible?”
“It happens all the time on these crazy killer roads.”
“I don’t know, Tommy. That kind of cover-up can be awfully dangerous if it backfires.”
Cortlandt was silent.
“Exactly who would know the truth?” asked Arthur Michaels.
“The boy and his parents, Gianni Garetsky, Mary Yung, Carlo Donatti, a few of our own agents.”
“Good Lord,” whispered Norton.
The CIA agent said nothing. He looked at Peggy Walters where she stood a short distance away, staring at some trees. She might
have been on the rim of the earth. Less than two hours ago, she
had
been. It occurred to him that it had all started with her.
“How can we trust that man to keep quiet?” asked the president.
“It’s not really a question of trust.”
“What then?”
“The national good, Mr. President. Also, none of these people has any reason to want to cause trouble. All they want is to
forget it and get on with their lives.”
“And if they someday decide they don’t want to forget it?”
“Then all they’d have is this wild story, without a shred of hard evidence, that no one in his right mind would ever believe.”
“Maybe so,” said Norton. “But I still don’t think I’d feel comfortable with that many people knowing.” He paused. “What’s
your feeling on the subject, Arthur?”
“Very different from yours, Mr. President,” said the White House chief of staff.
“Why?”
“Because if we don’t go this route, we are left with only the ugly truth. And dear, sweet Christ, I do mean ugly.”
The connection was silent for what seemed a very long time.
“Since in this particular case,” Arthur Michaels went on, “what the truth really means is either a special prosecutor or a
congressional committee enjoying a yearlong field day of digging up smelly murders, and cover-ups, and abuses of government
office, and who knows what else. And all carried out by a United States attorney general carefully selected and appointed
by
you.
“Not to mention exactly how much of this shit you yourself might allegedly have known before, during, or after the fact.”
This time the following silence seemed even longer than it had before.
“Tell me, Mr. President,” said the White House chief of staff. “Do you really want to put us through all that?”
Norton’s sigh was barely audible. “You’re wasting your time here, Artie. What you should really be doing is selling rugs.”
I
T WAS A
strange period for Paulie.
He was happy, of course. Why shouldn’t he be? His mother and father were alive and they were all together again. But there
also were times when he was sad. And this bothered him. Because it was almost as if it wasn’t enough for him that his parents
weren’t dead. That he somehow wanted more. Which wasn’t true.
Still…
At moments he could be sitting alone, or standing, or doing something, or just lying in bed at night, and suddenly there would
be all these people. They would sort of come drifting by, maybe one at a time, or a few together, or even
all at once… and there would be Dom, and Tony, and those three kids with their knives, and Nino the trucker with his flatbed,
and Frank Langiono, and Carlo Donatti, and Henry Durning.
No, thought Paulie, not just
and
Henry Durning. It was more like
mostly
Henry Durning. Because he was the one who seemed to come around so much more than any of the others,
Which was the craziest part of all. Because he had never even heard of Henry Durning before those few moments they’d spent
together in the grassy clearing. And even then, he didn’t know who Henry was. It wasn’t until late the next day, when he and
his father were watching the television news in his father’s room, that Paulie began to learn certain things.
Delivered in somber tones, the announcer’s lead line described it all.
The attorney general of the United States, Henry Durning, was killed in a tragic accident last night when the car he was driving
went off the Amalfi Drive not far from the Sorrento and exploded in flames.
There were pictures of the fire-blackened car being lifted by crane from the bottom of a cliff, and of a smashed guardrail,
and of an olive-green body bag being carried to an ambulance.
Shots of Attorney General Durning talking to reporters at the Naples airport as he arrived earlier with the American delegation
to the Sorrento Justice Conference.
A close-up of the attorney general laughing at a question one of the reporters had just asked.
Afterward, Paulie had questions of his own.
So his father tried to explain how it was better if everyone believed that the United States attorney general had been killed
in a car crash, instead of being shot by an eight-year-old boy he was about to murder, along with the boy’s mother and an
American
capo di tutti capi
named Carlo Donatti.
Paulie understood some parts of this, but not all. And what he didn’t understand, he tried to imagine. Beyond the few
facts offered by his father, there really wasn’t much more he could do.
Then watching Henry Durning’s funeral by satellite some days later, there was even more that Paulie didn’t understand.
It was a very grand funeral in Washington, D.C., with a lot of important people present, and the president of the United States
himself standing up and talking about Henry Durning. The boy listened carefully to every word. Since the president was talking
about the man that he, Paulie Walters, had blown away with his snub-noser, Paulie felt that the president was really talking
to
him.
And what did he hear the president saying while so many people sat listening?
That Henry Durning was an outstanding American patriot and one of the great men of his time.
That Henry Durning was a war hero who had put his own life at risk to save the lives of others, and been decorated with his
country’s highest military award.
That as head of the United States Department of Justice, Henry Durning had brought fresh meaning to the word
jus-tice
throughout the free world.
That Henry Durning’s death was a tragic blow that couldn’t help but lessen the lives of people everywhere.
So that listening to all this and more, Paulie thought,
How can this be?
When it was over, he spoke to his father, who had been watching and listening with him.
“Does the president of the United States know what really happened to Henry Durning?”
“Yes,” said Vittorio.
“How does he know?”
“Because I told a friend who’s an American intelligence agent, and he passed it on to the president.”
Paulie looked at his father, still so pale and weak in bed. “Why did you have to tell him?”
“Because he would have found out anyway. And I figured it would be better if he got it from me.”
The boy felt the full chill of it enter him.
The president of the United States knew that he, Paulie Walters, had shot to death this famous man.
What could be worse?
The answer to that one came very quickly.
What could be worse was having this famous man shoot his mother, and him, and Carlo Donatti to death.
It made the boy both frightened and angry.
“Fuck!” he said, using the terrible
F
word in front of his father so he’d know how he felt.
“What’s the matter?”
“Why does the American president have to be such a liar?” he said. “Why did he have to make up all those lies about Henry
Durning just because he’s dead?”
Vittorio Battaglia looked at his solemn-eyed tiger, at this overly serious miracle he had raised.
“Those weren’t lies,” he said. “The man really did all those things. And a lot more that the president didn’t even talk about.”
“He did?”
“Yes.”
“But how could he?”
The boy’s eyes were wide and troubled. He understood a lot, but this was way beyond him.
“He was going to murder us all,” he said. “I swear, Papa. In another minute he would have
done
it.”
“I know. I believe you. But people aren’t just one way. There are different parts to us all. Some parts can be real great.
But other parts can stink to high heaven.”
For Paulie, it was a mixed-up, suddenly frightening thought. And it stayed with him.
He didn’t like the idea of there being different parts to everyone. It made him feel sad. He didn’t mind shooting the bad
part of Henry Durning, but what about all that great stuff he had blown away along with it?
Lying in bed that night, it made the boy remember the famous man turning to look at him during those last few seconds.
It made him see again that funny look that was like the beginning of a smile.
As if they had some secret joke that was for only the two of them.
Except he now knew it wasn’t a joke at all.
It was the great parts saying good-bye.
Instead of laughing, Paulie wept.
G
IANNI
G
ARETSKY FELT
none of Paulie’s need to weep. Instead, he felt the sweet spring of his brush against a tightly stretched linen canvas and
remembered what it was like to be an artist.
Better than being a shooter,
he thought.
People were, of course, still shooting one another. He supposed they always would. But this no longer had anything to do with
him. Not directly, anyway. What he was interested in mostly was Mary Chan Yung and the substance of their days. The ones still
ahead. Considering all that had happened during the past weeks, he felt himself ahead on points. From here on he had the same
odds going for him as anyone, the same chances for joy and sorrow. He was pleased to accept them. As was Mary.
Gianni had taken her directly from Sorrento General to a villa on Capri, where the light was soft and steady on most days,
and the limitations on artists and lovers were strictly their own.
Although Mary was still wan, weak, and convalescing, Gianni had already started her portrait. How could he stop himself? Never
mind all that had gone out of her. To Gianni, what remained in the drawn, hollow cheeks and sunken eyes, in the hurt, vulnerable
lips, added up to far more than anything she might have lost to pain.
Stepping back, the artist absently wiped his brushes and squinted as he studied what he had done so far.
It was a rough-hewn, boldy rendered oil portrait, with the brush strokes showing strong and sure, the paint heavy, and the
colors bright and broken. Mary’s eyes burned darkly from hidden places, her cheeks shone pale and gaunt above ridges of bone,
and her mouth was a full-lipped, scarlet bow with the barest suggestion of a smile. Yet the painting seemed touched, all of
it, with an almost inexpressible sadness.
“Is that the way I look?”
Mary had quietly slipped out of her chair and come up behind Gianni.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is it? You’ll have to tell me.”
She stared at him. “But you’re the one painting it?”
“No. I’m just holding and moving the brushes. You’re the one who’s making it whatever it is.”
Mary stood there for a long moment. “Then I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t know I was making it like that.”
“Like what?”
“So sad,” she said, and pressed herself to him.
Holding her, Gianni felt how frail, how weightless she had become.
“And I shouldn’t have,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because I love you too much to be looking so sad.”
Yet it really was not that strange. Gianni had long been noticing that those who loved the most, often had the saddest eyes.
Even when they were happy, parts of them seemed to be preparing for hurt. He supposed it was a kind of protection they used.
They found it hard to trust what might lie ahead. Don’t get yourself too worked up, said the eyes. Don’t be too happy about
your love because it’s not going to last. You’re going to lose it. In one way or another, it ends.
Which was true, Gianni thought. Love was terminal. Sooner or later one of you, either you or your love, changed, faded, went
away, or died. And the eyes knew it.
But of course, with Mary, Gianni knew it was more than simply that.
So that sitting together high above the water later, with the setting sun turning the sea crimson and a flight of gulls crying
overhead, Gianni felt compelled to touch upon their com
mon ghost. There was no escaping him anyway. Even unseen, Henry Durning still had a certain presence.
“He won’t leave you alone, will he?” Gianni said.
Mary was silent for several moments. “It’s getting better.”
Gianni doubted it. Actually, the late attorney general seemed closer to becoming omnipresent in death than he ever could have
while alive. And the official lawyer’s letter, received only that morning and telling Mary she had been named Henry Durning’s
prime beneficiary, was doing nothing to lessen her brooding absorption with him.
“It’s not that I don’t understand how you feel,” said Gianni. “But let’s not forget what the sonofabitch was.”
“Are we all that sure we ever really knew?”
Gianni looked at Mary Yung and saw the remains of the day reflecting in her eyes.
“We’re sure,” he said. “Unless you feel a body count of about two dozen still isn’t enough to remove all doubt.”
Mary was silent and this in itself gnawed at Gianni.
“Or maybe it’s his apparently unforgettable claim,” he went on more softly, “that if you lived to a hundred, parts of you
would still know that no one ever came close to loving you as he did.”
Mary Yung sighed. “I guess I never should have told you that.”