“Yes, Don Donatti.”
“So the overseas operators in that area will have to be alerted in advance. Which means you’ll need plenty of police cooperation.
Can you get that?”
“No problem.”
“The attorney general will be doing all he can to stretch the conversation and hold the woman on the line as long as possible.
But everyone will still have to move fast to pick her up. I don’t care who gets to her first, your people or the police. As
long as she’s not hurt. That’s important. You understand that, Michael?”
“Yes.”
“If the police get her, you can pick her up from them and take her to that small white villa near the Palermo airport where
I once had a meeting with Don Ravenelli. You know the place?”
“I know it, Don Donatti.”
“If your own people get to her first, the police don’t even have to be involved. Just take her directly to the villa, call
me at my private number, and I’ll give you further instructions.”
“I don’t have your private number.”
Carlo Donatti gave it to him.
“You’re the only one who’s to know the number. Memorize it, then put it to a match. Do you have any questions?”
“Am I to know who this woman is?”
“She’s the missing boy’s mother.”
The line was silent for several beats.
“She doesn’t know her husband and his friend took the boy?” asked Sorbino.
“Evidently not. We don’t know that for sure, either.”
High in his New York office, Carlo Donatti glanced at his watch. “You have only about fifty minutes to make your calls and
set things in motion. I would suggest you arrange for as many cars as possible… police and your own… to be spaced every few
kilometers within a thirty-kilometer radius of Ravello. Then when the trace picks up the phone’s location, at least one of
the cars should be no more than a few minutes’ drive away.”
“I’ll arrange it.”
“Thank you, Don Sorbino.”
Forty-five hundred miles away, Michael Sorbino swelled with pride and pleasure at the first official recognition of his new
status as a boss. And from no less a personage than the all-powerful American
capo di tutti capi
himself, Don Carlo Donatti.
In New York, Donatti put down the phone and carefully went over the call in his mind. If all went well and his luck held,
it might well turn out to be one of the more significant conversations of his life. But his major wild card was still the
boy.
Where was he?
Was he even alive?
P
EGGY DROVE INTO
Amalfi at a bit after 7:00
P.M.
Italian time. She made two slow turns around Flavio Gioia Square and parked with a long line of tourist shops on one side
of her car, and the open sea on the other.
She had earlier chosen the phone she would use. It was in a glass booth at the far end of the square that would allow her
a clear view of the area and anyone approaching. Once she was talking, she wanted no surprises.
Peggy sat stiffly in the car and watched people walking by. The sun was low and turning orange, with everyone’s skin going
to copper. They looked like Indians, and Peggy suddenly wished she were an Indian. She wished she were just about anything
but what she was. Then not liking the way her mind was working, she stopped thinking entirely.
It had showered earlier, and puddles had collected in some of the low places in the pavement. They reflected the sky and the
buildings facing the square and sometimes people walking by. They were as smooth and perfect as mirrors until someone passed
through them and shattered both image and glass.
At 7:25 Peggy left her car and went into the phone booth to set herself up. It was an old-fashioned booth with a seat and
a small shelf, and she sat down and tried to make herself as comfortable and well organized as possible. She took a bunch
of coins from her bag and arranged them in neat piles. She prepared a pad and pencil for any notes she might have to take
relating to future calls or plans. She tried to breathe slowly and deeply to calm a growing sense of panic.
Then she lifted the receiver and once more began the process of putting through a long-distance, person-to-person call to
Attorney General Durning in Washington.
This time Durning’s secretary passed the call right through to him, but then the line was quiet.
“Henry?” she said.
“Hello, Irene.”
Nine years flew away. His voice was the same.
“Will anyone be listening in?” she asked.
“No. The moment I got on, the line became secure at this end. You can speak freely.”
“I don’t know how good I’m going to be at this,” she said. “So I’m getting right to it. Is my son alive or dead?”
Durning didn’t answer for so long that Peggy felt her son’s death enter the silence. Then he said, “He’s alive.”
“And well?”
“Yes. He’s well, too.”
“All right. Then set him loose and you can have me. I’ll go wherever you say. I’ll do whatever you ask me to do.”
Once more, Durning let the silence stretch. “Just like that?” he said softly.
“Just like that.”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”
“Why not? It’s
me
you want. Not Paulie. So I’m giving you me and you’re releasing Paulie. What makes that so complicated?”
“We do,” said Henry Durning. “You and I. Who and what we are. The fact that lives are at stake. The kind of guarantees that
would be needed to deal with our all-too-understandable mutual distrust. All these things that would have to be worked out.”
What he did
not
tell her was that he was simply stalling for time to get a trace going.
“Then for God’s sake, let’s work them out. I just want Paulie safe in the hands of the International Red Cross in Naples.
When that’s been confirmed, I’ll fulfill my end of the deal.”
Durning’s sigh drifted from Washington to Amalfi. “You used to be a damn good lawyer, but you’re certainly not talking like
one now. Once your son is safely with the Red Cross, what guarantees would I have that you wouldn’t just disappear again?”
The operator broke in at this point to ask for additional money, and Peggy spent the next several moments clanging more of
her coins into the box. By then, something from a long way back had entered her like a private, all-but-forgot
ten woe, and it was enough to set her off into another time and direction.
“How could you have done it, Henry?” Even her voice had changed, had gone soft with a ten-year-old hurt.
Her sudden transformation had lost him. “How could I have done what?”
“Sent someone out to kill me. I mean originally. Ten years ago.”
No longer lost, he still had no answer for her.
“Didn’t you know me at all?” Peggy said. “I adored you. I’d have died sooner than betray you. I’d have done anything for you.
I
did
anything for you.”
It took Henry Durning a long time to answer. When he did, his voice seemed as much changed as Peggy’s.
“It was my own craziness that betrayed me, not you. What can I tell you, Irene? That if I had it all to do over I wouldn’t
have done it? All right. I wouldn’t have done it. Do you think I’m proud of what I’ve become? I’ve done the worst. But taking
your boy was never my idea. I hope you believe that.”
“Why should it matter what I believe?”
“Because you loved me once. And as insane as it now sounds, I loved you.”
Peggy sat staring with blind eyes. The lying bastard could get his mouth to say just about anything. Yet with it all she was
almost ready to believe it. “That’s just history,” she said tiredly. “The only thing I care about now is getting my son freed.
You mentioned guarantees before. You said you didn’t want me disappearing once Paulie was safely with the Red Cross. All right.
Tell me what kind of guarantees you want.”
“I’m afraid it’s more than just that.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a question of belief,” Durning said. “I guess I can’t really get myself to accept the idea of your being willing to—”
Peggy heard no more.
A man she had not even seen approaching had opened the booth, pulled the telephone receiver from her hand, and hung it up.
“Police,” he said, and showed her a badge and ID.
She stared dumbly at them. Then she saw that there were two other men with him. All three wore plainclothes, not uniforms,
and their car was parked no more than ten feet away. The car carried official plates, but was otherwise unmarked.
Were they really police?
Not that it mattered much in this country. The long arm of the mob reached into just about everything. And in this particular
case, Henry Durning was clearly at the far end of the arm.
God, have I messed things up.
Then Peggy entered a small circle of calm and let it close around her. She knew that once she left it, there would be nothing.
“Would you please come with us?” said the detective who had showed her his badge and police identification.
“I don’t know what this is all about, Officer,” said Peggy, “but there’s obviously some mistake.”
“No, signora. There’s no mistake.”
“Who do you think I am?”
The detective just stared at her. As did the two men with him. They evidently had no identification for her other than the
fact that she was talking on this particular phone at this particular time.
“I’m not a criminal,” Peggy said softly, out of her new calm. “I’m Mrs. Peter Walters, I’m an American citizen. I live with
my husband and son in our own home in Positano, and I’m the owner of the Leonardo da Vinci Gallery of Art in Sorrento.”
She handed the alleged detective her purse. “If you’ll look in my bag, you’ll find my driver’s license, credit cards, and
any other identification you might want.”
He gave her back the purse without opening it.
“I don’t doubt you, Mrs. Walters. But I’m afraid you’ll still have to come with us.”
“Come with you where?”
“To the Amalfi police station.”
“On what charges? Talking on a public pay telephone in Flavio Gioia Square?”
Then apparently out of patience, the officer in charge took her arm and started trying to pull her out of the booth.
Peggy grabbed the anchored telephone, braced herself, and held back.
“If you don’t let go of me, I’m going to scream, and kick, and yell, and make enough of a scene to bring two hundred angry,
frightened people running to find out who’s being raped. Now is that what you’d really like to see happening here?”
The detective let go of her arm.
“Be reasonable, Mrs. Walters. We don’t know any more about this than you. We’re just trying to follow orders and do our job.”
“What are your orders?”
“To bring in whoever’s talking on this phone.”
In the following moment of stillness, she decided they were police after all. If they were mob, she’d be lying quietly dead
at the bottom of the booth, and they’d be gone. Which could mean little in the long run but might allow her a bit of slack
for now.
“If you’ll let me make just one phone call to the American consul in Sorrento,” she said, “I’ll go with you without further
fuss.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Walters. No phone calls.”
“Is that part of your orders?”
The detective nodded.
“What’s your name?” Peggy asked.
“Trovato. Sergeant Trovato.”
“Well, Sergeant Trovato, it looks as if you’re going to have to take me in kicking and screaming.”
The sergeant appeared genuinely puzzled.
“I don’t understand this whole thing, Mrs. Walters. All we’re asking you to do is take a five-minute ride to the Amalfi police
station. If there’s some mistake, you’ll be out of there in no time. Why are you making this so hard for us all?”
“Would you like the truth, Sergeant?”
Trovato showed a set of white, near-perfect teeth… a handsome, no doubt decent police officer, thought Peggy,
who hadn’t the faintest idea what he was in the process of doing to her.
“In my line of work,” he said, “the truth is such a novelty that I’ve forgotten what it sounds like.”
“Then I’ll try to refresh your memory,” Peggy told him. “You won’t believe it, but the reason I’m making this so hard for
us all is that once I’m in your police station, I know that no one will ever see me alive again.”
He stared at her. “You can’t be serious, Mrs. Walters.”
“See? I said you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And the crazy part was, she thought, that he probably
was
sorry. A polite, unusually attractive man just trying to do his day’s tour of duty and go home to his family without causing
unnecessary pain or harm.
So that even as he gently reached out to touch her, it seemed no more than a warm, human gesture, one member of the species
reaching out to another at a moment of deep stress and emotion.
Yet an instant later she was feeling humble as a saint, as the fading evening light dimmed even more and she was entering
a sweet new realm of peace and darkness.
She never sensed she was falling, because Sergeant Trovato was holding her before she was able to feel her legs starting to
go.
Peggy knew she was in a prison cell the moment she opened her eyes.
She lay with her head facing a window, and the bars were dark against a translucent orange sky.
There was no pain, just a faint soreness at the pressure point on her neck where the gentle sergeant must have briefly cut
off the flow of blood to her brain.
If she felt anything at all, it was rather like the exhausted state of grace that sometimes came after a long, intense session
of making love, with the heavy action behind you, and nothing to do for a while but drift.
The thing was, they hadn’t killed her.
It was a mark of her current view of things that this fact alone was enough to make her euphoric.
T
HE ATTORNEY GENERAL
went over some papers and had lunch in his office as he waited for Carlo Donatti’s call. But he was only going through the
motions of working and eating. His thoughts were solely on the woman he had once known as Irene.