“I’ve learned something in the twenty years since you saw me. Nothing’s a piece of cake.”
Vittorio groped out a cigarette and lit it with the dashboard lighter. The orange glow reflected on his face.
“There’s this old man in Naples who owes me a few big ones,” he said. “He knows every
famiglia
in the area, and what he doesn’t know he’ll find out. So we go there first.”
“You mean the United States attorney general has Neapolitan mafiosi in his back pocket?”
The car was quiet.
“A little background,” said Battaglia. “I first met Peggy almost ten years ago when Don Donatti sent me to kill her. It seems
clear now that it was Durning who took out the contract for the hit. But I’m sure it’s the don who’s got the long reach.”
Battaglia glanced at Gianni and saw his confusion.
What the hell,
he thought. The guy’d been dragged into this only because they’d been friends. Didn’t he at least deserve to know what he
might be dying for?
“You’d better hear the rest,” he said, and went into it as he drove.
Vittorio told the full story, and just the fact of putting it
into words and sharing it with someone brought a measure of comfort. Then carried away by the further euphoria of the confessional,
he threw in his covert government work as well. Something that not even Peg knew for certain.
“Now you have it all,” he said. “Or have I just confused you more?”
Gianni felt the full weight of the tale pressing him.
While I’ve been painting my pictures.
“You haven’t confused me,” he said. “You’ve just made me see the kind of self-absorbed, make-believe life I’ve been living
all these years.”
Vittorio came up on a slow-moving truck, hit the horn, swung out of lane, and passed it.
“You’re not complaining, are you?”
Gianni was silent.
“For Christ’s sake!” said Battaglia. “You’ve done it all. Everything we ever used to dream about and more. While I’ve been
swimming in blood and crawling through shit.”
“I’d change with you in a minute.”
“You’re out of your skull. Where the hell do you think I’m goddamn sitting?”
“I know the kind of trouble your family’s in. And it’s awful. But at least you’ve got a family.”
Vittorio looked at Gianni’s face. He glimpsed what crossed it and disappeared.
“I read about your wife,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Gianni nodded. At that moment Teresa and all his years with her suddenly seemed very far away. It almost panicked him. Then
he put things in place.
The car stayed quiet for a while. It was nearly dark, with the last of the light turning the distant sea red.
“Listen,” said Vittorio Battaglia. “I talk big about getting my boy back, but it’s just talk. I’m so scared I could puke.
They’re going to keep him just so long. Then that’s it. Past a certain point, he’s too dangerous to hold.”
Gianni remembered enough from the old days to know it was true. No matter what anyone wanted, sometimes you got into things
and there was no way to get out.
Battaglia sighed. “You know how I keep my lid on? I’ll tell you my secret. I just think about what I’ll do if the sons
ofbitches kill my Paulie. In my mind I do them one at a time, and nice and slow. First I do Henry Durning, then Carlo Do-natti,
then everybody over here who had anything at all to do with it. And that’s how I keep from screaming and beating my fucking
head against the wall.”
For a long time they rode in silence.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” said Vittorio. “I can still talk to you like to nobody else. Peg is my life, but some things I
could never say to her. Stuff she couldn’t take, or understand, or might sit in judgment on. Know what I mean?”
They were in the center of Naples by 8:30
P.M.
Vittorio stopped at a gas station, left the car, and made a phone call. He was back in five minutes.
“Our man is home,” he said. “He’ll have the apartment clear and be alone by the time we get there.”
They headed north on the Via Santa Rosa.
“Who does he think you are?” asked Gianni.
“An Italian-American businessman with good connections.”
“And I?”
“A close friend. Anonymous. It’s all right. He knows better than to ask questions.”
“You said he owed you. What did you do for him?”
“Save his life. Also, his wife’s.”
“What do I call him?”
“Nothing. You won’t be introduced.”
Vittorio parked on a poorly lighted street three blocks west of the Via Santa Rosa. They crossed a cobbled courtyard, entered
a building lobby, and rode up three flights in a highly polished brass elevator. Vittorio knocked three times on the door
of apartment 4B, and they stood waiting.
Gianni heard slow, halting steps and the tap of a cane. Then the door was opened by an elderly, gray-haired man with the bearing
of an Italian general out of central casting.
“Come in, come in. I’m honored.”
He had a husky smoker’s voice and a cigarette between his teeth. He embraced Vittorio, shook Gianni’s hand, and led them into
a large, high-ceilinged room crammed with heavy furniture and dark oil paintings. As Vittorio had promised, no introductions
were made and no names were mentioned.
The old man seated them around an elaborately carved coffee table and filled three glasses with red wine. He made a small
ceremony of it. The aromas of that night’s dinner still hung in the air.
They all sipped the wine and put down their glasses. It was only then that Vittorio Battaglia spoke.
“I need your help, my friend,” he said. “I have one child. A young boy. I’m sorry to say that yesterday he was taken from
me.”
The old man had a high forehead that was knotted by veins. Gianni saw one of them begin to pulse.
“He was
taken?”
said the man.
“Abducted. Kidnapped.”
“Ah. By whom?”
“I don’t know.” Battaglia paused to light a cigarette. “Four men, strangers, were seen coming into Positano in separate cars.
One behind the other. Two of the men took my boy, who was alone by the water, and disappeared. The others came to my house
to do away with my wife and me. But with the help of my friend here, they were killed instead.”
The old man slowly nodded. “And ended up at the bottom of a cliff not far from Ravello?”
“Then they’ve found them?”
“It was on tonight’s news. There was no identification yet. The explosion and fire didn’t leave much to identify.”
“I took their wallets,” said Vittorio. “Their names were Sal Ferrisi and Frank Bonotara.”
The old man was silent.
“Do you know them?” asked Vittorio.
The old man looked at the two men facing him, suddenly dreading having them in his home. Gianni Garetsky understood his fear,
along with the reasoning behind it. Just their presence here could kill him.
“I’ve never met them,” he said.
“But you’ve heard of them? You know who they are?”
The old man nodded and cigarette ash dropped on the front of his shirt. He didn’t seem to notice.
“They’re local mafiosi?”
“Not so local.”
“How far away?”
The old man drank some wine. His eyes were off somewhere and he appeared not to have heard the questions.
“How far away?” Vittorio asked again.
“Sicily.”
“Where in Sicily?”
The old man’s face went slack. He sat diminished in his chair, no longer looking quite so militarylike. He stared ap-pealingly
at Battaglia, but Vittorio’s face was cut stone. Watching the man’s silent struggle, Gianni found himself almost feeling sorry
for him.
“Palermo.” The answer was little more than a hoarse whisper.
“Who did they work for?” asked Vittorio. “Who would have sent them on a hit like this?”
“You know what you’re asking me?”
Vittorio didn’t answer.
A fly buzzed around the room and the old man’s eyes followed it hopelessly. He seemed to be growing more inert by the second.
Then something took hold in him, and Gianni saw it as an image of a man reconstituting himself out of sheer will.
“I’m in your debt,” he said. “But what you’re doing is pointing a loaded gun at my head and asking me to squeeze the trigger.”
“No one saw us come in here. No one will see us leave. And no one will ever know who told us.”
“Unless they got one of you alive. Then they’ll know soon enough.”
“That’s not part of our plan.”
“Men plan and God laughs,” said the old man.
Vittorio stared long and hard at him. It seemed to Gianni that for a full minute there was no sound anywhere in the room,
in the building, or in the city of Naples.
“You’re embarrassing me,” Vittorio finally said.
The old man reached for his wine. But when he picked up the glass, his hand was shaking so badly that he had to put it down
without drinking.
“But even worse,” said Vittorio quietly, “you’re shaming yourself. Which you’re too good a man to be doing.”
The old man tried to swallow but couldn’t scrape together enough saliva.
“How old are you?” Vittorio asked.
The man looked startled. “I’m seventy-nine.”
“My son isn’t even
nine.”
The old man stared out of his age and frailty. “And that makes his life more valuable than mine? You think being old makes
me ready to be thrown out with the garbage?”
Everyone understood that Battaglia had said the absolute wrong thing. It lay in the room like a long dead rat, numbing the
air and the three men breathing it.
“I’m sorry,” said Battaglia. “I apologize.” He gestured tiredly. “I’m getting desperate. It’s making me cruel and stupid.
I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did,” said the man. “You were just being honest. And who can blame you? You love your son and you’d happily sell
ten old farts like me to save him.” He sighed. “One of the things about getting old. Instead of making you smarter, it makes
you more afraid. It’s crazy. The less you’ve got left to lose, the more worried you get about losing it. And you were right
about my shaming myself. A few years ago I’d never have behaved in such a disgusting way.”
He made a small bow with his head. “It’s I who apologize to you.”
This time he was able to drink his wine. Gianni looked at his hand. It was an old hand with sunken, spotted skin, and every
bone was visible. But it suddenly seemed strong.
“So much for that poor misery,” said the old man. “The boss you’re looking for, the one who sent those men, is Don Pietro
Ravenelli. He lives in a big house about ten kilometers west of Palermo, off the coast road to Punta Raisi. I wish you and
your boy luck. I’m glad I’m seventy-nine and not nine. Who wants to go through it all again?”
They were back in the car and driving out of Naples.
“I’m not what I used to be,” said Battaglia flatly. “And I just hope we don’t end up paying for it.”
Gianni looked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“If I was smart, I’d have pumped one into his head before we left.”
“Why? He gave you what you wanted.”
“Yeah. But there’s still a better-then-even chance he’ll call Ravenelli just to cover his ass.”
H
ENRY DURNING WOKE
in the soft dawn light, looked at the sleeping face of Mary Yung on the pillow beside him, and smiled. Then it hadn’t been
just another improbable, wildly erotic dream.
She sleeps,
he thought,
with the total innocence of the young, the pure, and the dead.
Here in my bed.
The telephone rang on the table beside him. It set off a forest of jangled nerves. No one ever called with anything good at
6:10
A.M.
Then he remembered it was six hours later in Italy and picked up the receiver.
“Hank!” said Brian Wayne’s voice.
“What’s wrong?”
“Tune in. Fast. Neal Hinkey is coming on in a minute.”
Durning felt Mary Yung stirring awake beside him. “Who the hell is Neal Hinkey?” he said.
“John Hinkey’s son. He evidently works for his father. I don’t like the whole smell of this, Hank. I’ll call you when it’s
over.”
The FBI director hung up.
Durning hit the remote for his bedroom television. Then he kissed Mary’s cheek.
“Good morning,” he said. “You even sleep beautiful. And that’s something hardly anyone ever does.”
The screen came alive in a wall unit, and Durning saw a thin, nervous-looking young man sitting with the CNN commentator.
“Do you always start your day with the box?” Mary Yung asked.
“No. I hate the thing. But there’s something coming on I have to see.”
Then the attorney general turned up the volume as the interview began. Although it quickly became apparent that this was not
going to be the standard question-and-answer interview format, but something more like a breaking news item in the form of
a prepared statement.
What the commentator did was introduce his guest as Neal Hinkey, a son and law associate of John Hinkey, the nationally known
Washington attorney. He had an announcement to make that could have grave implications.
Hearing no more than that, Durning knew instantly just how bad it was going to be. And knowing it, he accepted it. For now,
at least, what else could he do?
Hinkey spoke in a young voice stretched thin with emotion. He was here this morning, he told a network audience of millions,
because his father and a woman who was a client as well as a close friend had been missing for close to three days and had
to be presumed dead.
The young man’s voice broke on the word
dead,
and he took a moment to compose himself.
When he continued, he explained that his father had left instructions as to what he should do if anything happened to him,
and that he was simply following those instructions now. He said that by appearing on national television this morning, he
was hoping to make the facts in the case known before they were buried by the same tainted power structure that had buried
his father and his female client.
Then Hinkey went into the specifics.