There were no preliminaries.
“I’ve just heard from my connection,” said Donatti.
Durning didn’t like the way his heart was drumming against his chest.
Imagine, At this stage of my life.
“And?”
“The news isn’t good.”
Durning sat there. He stayed exactly where he was, staring across the big walnut desk in his study. He felt a pulse going
in his temple. His hand pressed the receiver against his ear as if trying to shove it clear through his brain.
“What happened?”
“We’d better meet.”
“When?”
“Can you make it at six tonight?” asked Donatti.
“Same place as last time?”
“If that’s all right.”
“I’ll be there,” said Durning, and hung up.
He still sat there. Insanely, with all that could be blowing up in his face, he found himself wondering whether Mary Yung
had been among those killed. There was no doubt in his mind that people had died. It was just a matter of his learning which
ones they were.
Their control and timing were such that they arrived at the airport motel room within minutes of each other.
Durning started the radio going. Then he searched for a classical station and finally found some Brahms.
They embraced and Carlo Donatti poured them each some scotch from the minibar. The small act alone added weight to the attorney
general’s depression. To Donatti, scotch was a very serious drink.
“So?” said Durning.
“The way it sounded,” said Donatti quietly, “nobody’s exactly sure what happened. Four good soldiers went into Posi-tano,
and only two came out. The other two haven’t been heard from. And they probably won’t be.”
Durning ignored his serious drink and remained silent. It was Donatti’s story.
“Battaglia had to be waiting for them,” said the don. “So my feeling is Gianni and his
cinese
got there first and blew the whistle.”
“Where are they now?”
The don shrugged. “They were all gone when someone checked the house later. The only sign of anything was a smashed window.”
“And this is what you’ve brought me?”
“Not quite. We’ve also got Battaglia’s kid. So it’s not all bad.”
The attorney general started at Donatti. “What does that mean?”
“We’ve at least got a string on Battaglia. He and his wife won’t just disappear on us while we’ve got the boy. They’re going
to have to deal.”
“I don’t want them dealing, Carlo. There’s nothing to deal. I want them dead. Haven’t I made myself clear on that?”
“Very clear. But first they’ll deal.
Then
they’ll be dead.” Something in that made the don smile. “You’re head of the whole damn Justice Department, Henry. You should
learn more about how justice works these days at the basic levels.”
Durning breathed a joyless odor in the air that had nothing to do with Donatti’s expensive designer cologne.
“How old is the boy?” he asked.
“About nine or ten.”
“Who’s keeping him?”
“The two men who picked him up in Positano.”
Durning’s face was blank. “He’ll be able to identify them. He’s old enough.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
Durning felt a new mix of disgust and damage take root inside him. Now he was accepting the murder of children?
“How do we find the parents?” he asked.
“We don’t. They’ll find us.”
Durning’s eyes were hard, yet curiously uncertain. He was a knowing, complex man accustomed to intricate situations. Yet he
suddenly felt himself in uncharted territory.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“By now, Battaglia and Garetsky have to know I’m involved,” said Donatti. “And the women certainly have told them of
your
interest. So either one of us can expect a call.” He paused. “Or maybe a bullet.”
Durning considered him. “You trying to scare me, Carlo?”
“Damn right. Why should I be the only one scared? And you’re the guy hooked me into this in the first place.” Donatti grinned
without looking happy. “We’ve got us a couple of tough, angry boys out there. I’ve known them both since they were kids. When
you try to waste their kind, it’s best to get it right the first time. Because mostly you don’t get any second chances.”
“You’re really making my day.”
The don laughed, and this time he seemed to be enjoying himself. “Nothing like a little dose of fear to get the adrenaline
going. But it’s nice we’ve got the kid. Without him, there’d be good reason to sweat. This way, Vittorio’s not going to do
a thing. Except maybe call up one of us and beg.”
Durning felt a faint hint of nausea drift through his lungs. “Anything doing yet with that other little favor I asked?”
“You mean John Hinkey and the Beekman woman?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all set for tonight.”
“Both of them?”
Donatti nodded. “That’s the best way to do these things. No piecework. Then you don’t have one of them going around asking
questions about the other.”
“I appreciate it, Carlo.”
“Hey!” said the don. “A couple of sweethearts like us… we’ve got to look out for each other, right?”
It was a little past ten that night when John Hinkey left his Washington law office and started the drive home. He was dog
tired but exhilarated. He’d been working tough, sixteen-hour
stretches, but he finally had things adding up on the Beekman case and he was almost ready to run with it.
This was going to be his big one. He may have had some of the same feeling before on other cases, and he’d done pretty damn
well with most of them. But there’d never been any quite like this. Not with this kind of stature. This one was putting him
on another level entirely. This fucker was taking him right over the top.
Hinkey hummed tunelessly as he drove, while his fingers tapped along on the wheel to some beat of his own.
And who’d have expected it that first day, with Bonnie running to him half-hysterical because Jim was off on a case and hadn’t
called her in a couple of days? No use kidding himself. If they hadn’t been old friends, he’d have had her out of his office
in five minutes flat. Then the Bureau had started the stonewalling and the top secret bullshit and the whole thing just took
on a bad smell. So when the three bodies finally turned up, he wasn’t all that surprised and he really started digging. Which
led him to the wife of another seemingly missing agent, this one out of the Philadelphia office.
But the real clincher had come today, when he’d called in every favor owed him at the Bureau over the past ten years and learned
that all five agents… the three dug up dead in Greenwich, and the two allegedly on top secret cases and out of touch with
their wives… were all listed as being on special-duty assignments to the head man himself, FBI Director Brian Wayne.
So what’s it all about, Alfie?
He had given the director three days to either tell Bonnie where Jim was, or let her speak to him on the phone. Brian Wayne
had done neither, and his time was up. So tomorrow would be Hinkey’s personal D day. He had decided to bypass the Justice
Department’s Office of Personal Responsibility, call his own news conference, and go public with what he had.
There was little doubt in his mind that Jim Beekman and the missing agent out of Philadelphia were as dead at this moment
as the three agents dug out of the Greenwich woods. Which was the saddest part of all. Not that these tragic overtones
were going to hold him back in any way. Just the opposite. He absolutely couldn’t wait to get at it in the morning.
At about eleven o’clock, Hinkey pulled into the high-rise apartment complex where he lived, and parked in his assigned space
in the underground garage. He had brought home a briefcase full of papers, and he was fumbling with an open clasp when a lead
billy caught him just behind his right ear.
He neither saw nor knew what hit him. Nor was he aware of the two solidly built men in stocking masks who stretched him out
in the back of a dark, compact van, bound, gagged, and blindfolded him, and drove quietly out of the garage.
Bonnie Beekman rolled over in her sleep, reached for her husband and touched his empty pillow. It was enough to wake her with
an oppression close to strangling in her throat.
Oh, God,
she thought, and wept.
He was gone.
Never mind what they told her at the Bureau. She knew better. He’d have to be dead not to have somehow gotten word to her.
In twenty years, nothing like this had ever happened. Even stuck up there in the wilds of Maine that time, he’d arranged for
someone to call and say he was OK. He was like that… always thinking about her, not wanting her to worry for no reason.
But no more.
And who was there to think about her now?
Maybe if they’d had children, it would be better for her. But she didn’t think so. Not with what they’d had together. Kids
had their own lives. They couldn’t take the place of your man. And her Jimbo was some man. Jesus, they didn’t come any better.
Maybe he’s not really gone,
she suddenly thought.
Well, no one had showed her a body.
So maybe the call would come in the morning.
She could imagine herself hearing the ring, picking up the phone, and listening to him say, as always, “Hi, hon. Miss me?”
And she could hear herself answering, as always, “You’d better believe it, love.”
It was all so real and reassuring that she needed only two more pills to put her back to sleep.
Bonnie slept a dreamless sleep under a single bedsheet. A breeze ruffled the curtains at an open window, and a three-quarter
moon patterned the floor.
Two shadows briefly blocked the window, then silently approached the bed.
This time they used a shot of sodium pentothal instead of the leather-covered billy.
Bonnie struggled for a few seconds, but it seemed part of a dream, and she wasn’t consciously aware of it as real before the
shot cut off all awareness and put her out.
T
HEIR SO-CALLED
safe house was an old, half-crumbling ruin set high in the mountains above Ravello. Trees, shrubs, and cliffs made it all
but invisible until you came upon it. And to come upon it, you had to know exactly where to look.
Inside the house no one said much of anything.
Gianni saw the fragile looks between Vittorio and his wife and understood that in these exchanges there were touches of panic.
He sensed, too, that much of the same condition existed among all four of them. It was as if the boy, Paulie, whom Mary Yung
and he had never even met, was a common anchor, draped around their necks and dragging them all down. And they couldn’t as
much as talk to each other.
That was what Gianni wanted. To talk. He wanted to tell the boy’s parents again and again what he’d already told them… that
he was sorry, that he’d done everything possible to keep from being followed, that it was eating his gut to have been the
one to have done this to them. But he knew there was nothing he could say that they would hear.
The silence went on so long that it became unnatural. It made the old house and those in it seem unnatural, too. It made Peggy
begin crying again. Then it made her go into the next room and close the door.
The rest of them sat looking at the door.
Vittorio pushed himself up and followed his wife.
Peggy sat in a straight-backed wooden chair facing the door. A small bedside kerosene lamp was on, and it threw a flickering
yellow light that left deep shadows on her face and body. Her hands were folded in her lap and she was staring down at them.
She had stopped crying, but she didn’t look up as Vittorio came in.
“Please close the door,” she said softly. “I have something to tell you.”
Vittorio did it and sat down on the bed. Peggy was still staring down at her hands. She hadn’t looked up to follow her husband’s
movements.
“I think I know who’s behind all this.” Her voice, besides being barely audible, was toneless. “It’s Henry Durning.”
Vittorio felt something flop over in his chest.
“I lied when we first met and I told you I didn’t know who wanted me dead. I knew. I just didn’t want
you
to know.”
“Why?”
“Because there was too much I’d have to explain. And I was too ashamed.”
“Ashamed?” Vittorio stared at her. “Of what?”
“Of what I was. Of some of the things I’ve done.”
Some part of it caught in her throat then and she had to stop. A single tear appeared in a corner of her eye and slid down
her face. Numbly, Vittorio watched it.
“I was afraid I’d lose you if you knew. It was all so stupid. But now they’ve got Paulie and I just want to die. So there’s
nothing else I can do but tell you.”
Finally,
she thought, and felt it come out in what might have been a clot of tears and blood.
M
y DEVIL’S TALE.
Yet even now, in the telling, Irene Hopper knew she was giving Vittorio no more than the bare bones. To be explicit, to flesh
the story out, would be too much for either of them. The bones would be damaging enough. The rest of it, the ugliest of the
details, let them bury with her.
Her worst time had always been late at night, when Vittorio was away on one of what he chose to call his “business trips.”
It was then that her private bete noire would be let out of its cage to move in with her.
In time it became almost ritualistic.
As though seeking confirmation of her blackest thoughts, she would begin by staring into the big, baroque dressing-table mirror
in her bedroom.
More lies.
Even prepared for it, gazing at herself remained a shock. Her once long blond hair was now short and dark. Her nose was lifted,
turned up at the tip, instead of running straight. And with the additional magic of contact lenses, she and Vittorio had literally
switched the colors of their eyes. Suddenly he had become the one with the cornflower blues, while she gazed less than serenely
from her own bogus golden browns.