“But a hypocrite, ya know,” Veronne said softly. He winked and tapped his nose with an index finger. “He tells Kitty he’ll go along only because of George. Because George was willing to give his life for Kitty and it wasn’t up to him to spoil George’s story. Hypocrite.” Veronne made a dry, hacking spitting sound. “Hypocrite.”
“But just to be on the safe side, after all the scheming and plotting, after all the game-playing, you had Martucci hit anyway?”
The bright eyes froze; the thin lips pulled back into a wolflike grin. “Vincent was a dead man all along. It was only a matter of time. He knew that.”
“Then why all this? Why drag me into all this?”
Veronne shrugged. “Why not?”
Quietly, two of his sons had entered the room with a third man, the doctor. Veronne looked past me and gestured vaguely for the doctor to approach.
“Mr. Veronne, you’re exhausting yourself, sir. Have you finished speaking? All of this, all of these people coming to visit, it is all too much for you.”
“I’ll tell you what is too much for me,” Veronne said in a hard, strong voice. “You. You’re too much for me, coming in here and telling me what I am able to do and not able to do. Get out of here, you’ll get me soon enough. But for now, get out. Tell my friends I want them to come and see me. Send them in, send them in, it’s too damn quiet in here.
“And you ...” Veronne grabbed my sleeve and pulled me toward him. “Look, Peters. What I done for my daughter—all her life, the best, the best of everything in the world.”
“Except the surgery she really needed.”
The small clawlike hand tightened its grip. “That’s not for you to say, bastard,” he hissed at me. “What do you know of it? It’s not for you to judge.”
I leaned in close again, so that the people who had come into the room could not hear anything that I said to him. Only Alfredo Veronne could hear, which is exactly the way I wanted it.
“I’m not going to judge you, Veronne. I’m going to tell your daughter the truth the minute you’re dead. Then, let
her
judge for herself.”
His hand fumbled up my sleeve as I pulled back and plucked his fingers from me. He made a terrible, strangling sound, and two of his sons and his doctor rushed toward the bed. He looked right past them, trying to find me. I just stood back, mingled with the rest of the observers.
Somehow, he found the strength to shove the doctor aside, to pull himself upright in his bed and to turn his head from side to side, trying to find me. He looked around wildly, his eyes bulging slightly as they found mine and he realized that he had no way of controlling the situation.
Veronne sat absolutely rigid; then he raised one arm and pointed in my direction. “Jesus Christ,” he gasped, “Jesus Christ, you ...”
Then he fell over back onto his four-foot-wide pillows, and the doctor leaned over to confirm what we all knew. There was a general sighing, a muffled, soft sort of grief, a whispering: get the daughter, get the grandchildren.
Then, over all the polite, controlled sounds, a woman, some heavyset, black-clad old aunt, screamed out, “He saw God. Did you hear? He called out the Savior’s name with his last breath!”
The woman fainted and was carried away. In the general commotion, I backed out of the room, stood back carefully as the daughter was wheeled into her father’s death scene. I mixed with the rest of the company; kept my face down after I spotted Lorenzo Pellegrino approaching Veronne’s room, his long dark face streaked with tears.
It took me about five careful minutes to slip out of the house via a side door. After that, it took me about one minute flat to get to my car and head for home before someone decided to ask questions about old man Veronne’s last private conference.
T
HE VARIOUS DOCUMENTS AND
statements and notes and street maps and reports were still scattered all over the surface of the extension table, just where I had left them. I collected everything, tapped edges of papers into some semblance of order, then ended up just shoving and stuffing all of it into the red manila accordion file folder. I wrapped the frayed red string around the folder, then dumped it into a top drawer of the bedroom bureau.
Then I went to bed and fell into one of those unbelievably deep sleeps that don’t leave you feeling rested, just confused and disoriented: the kind of sleep usually accomplished with sleeping pills or booze, neither of which assisted me. I imagine the lack of proper food, irregular habits and exhaustion had plunged me right past the supposedly therapeutic r.e.m. and into the void.
It was nine-thirty the next morning when I woke up; I called the office, asked Gelber if anyone was looking for me. He said no; I said fine, I’d keep in touch; he said okay, fine.
I showered, shaved, got dressed. Then I packed a few things into an overnight suitcase; just a few things.
Then I called Kitty and told her I was corning over to see her. She sounded very soft, very vague.
She looked fragile and beautiful and delicate and pastel in a long pink cotton robe. She had just a touch of moist pink lipstick on; no other makeup. Her long beautiful thick light hair was pulled back from her face. Her cheekbones gleamed like fine polished porcelain.
She went through a ritual with coffee cups and a plate of biscuits. The coffee was fresh perked and we both drank it black; neither of us touched the biscuits. For the first time since I’d met her, she was wearing no jewelry: none of the clittering silver bracelets, none of the intricately twisted silver rings.
“Are you all right, Kitty?”
She nodded without looking at me. Her hands rested motionless on her lap. Her face was turned toward the sunlight which cut from the window in a wide band along the carpet and across her feet. Her profile showed a clear-cut perfect beauty. She turned without expression and I studied the fragile face marked with the anguish and pain of too many deaths, too much grieving; too many losses. There was something puzzled, a bewildered innocence and remoteness which made it nearly impossible to form the connection between this Kitty and all the things that happened because, on one long, sticky, unpleasant, exhausting and disappointed night in April, a sick and irritable little boy had thrown up one time too many. And that had led to the death of two little boys; to the death of their father; to the death of Vincent Martucci; to the “retirement” of Marvin L. Schneiderman; to the guaranteed election of Jeremiah Kelleher; to the appointment of Tim Neary as Police Commissioner. And my own future? Whatever I wanted, I guess.
Finally she blinked and regarded me with a patient faint smile. “What is it, Joe?”
“When’s the last time you spoke to Jay T. Williams?”
She frowned and tapped a finger along an eyebrow, a trick she used sometimes when she was trying to remember something; or trying to decide
why
she was being asked to remember something.
“Jaytee. I guess it was last Monday night. When he and Jeff Weinstein and I got together.”
“Monday. That was the day of Vincent’s funeral.”
Her dark-blue eyes took on a strange intensity: a kind of
listening,
a sharpness of concentration. “Yes, Joe, that’s right.”
“And that was when he told you that you’d plead not guilty when you go to court next Monday. And that then you’d just ride out all the delays and postponements until such time as the D.A. feels it would be politically feasible to let the charges against you drop.”
“Yes, Joe. And I told you that I wanted him to force the D.A. to bring me to trial. That I want to be tried and acquitted, once and for all.”
“Do you remember, Kitty, a couple of weeks ago, when we were up in my cabin, you told me that Jaytee had passed along a deal to you? That the D.A. offered to reduce the double murder-one charge to manslaughter, one count. And promised you wouldn’t serve more than three to five years. In return for the name of your accomplice?”
She leaned forward slightly, alert and wary. “Yes, Joe, I remember telling you about that offer.”
“Do you know where Jaytee Williams is right now, Kitty?”
“Why?”
“Do you know where Jaytee Williams is right now, Kitty?”
“Yes, Joe. He’s in his New York office.” She came over to the couch, reached down for my hand, turned her head to one side to look at my wristwatch. “He’s probably at his desk right now.”
I caught her hand, which still rested lightly on my wrist; studied the long white fingers, the wounded nails; held her hand to my mouth, pressed the knuckles against my lips, against my teeth, tasted lightly with my tongue the sweet flower taste of her soap, held her hand in both of mine and, not looking at her, said, “Call him, Kitty. Call him and tell him you’ll take the District Attorney’s deal.”
She slid her hand from my light hold and stepped back to get a better look at me. There was a steady, quiet demand in her voice, “Why, Joe? Why should I do that?”
The jagged-edged knife point stabbed and twisted at the raw, untreated ulcer with a pain that shot both down and through my body before it subsided into a familiar dull throb that I could hold with my hand.
“Because, Kitty, if
you
give him Lorenzo, then you still got a pretty good deal going. If
I
give him Lorenzo, then the double murder-one charge will stick and you’ll risk the next twenty to thirty years of your life as against a guaranteed three to five with a probable early parole.”
I don’t know exactly what I expected: hysteria, maybe; indignation, protest, denial. At least questions, a demand to know how, what, why. Not this quiet acknowledgment of what she’d been denying for all these weeks.
“What would be the point, Joe? What difference would that make, to anything? To anyone?”
I tried to see beneath this calm unsurprised surface. She repeated softly, almost encouragingly, “What difference would it make, Joe? To anyone?”
I shook my head, because I really didn’t know. She reached out and pressed my arm in some strange, irrational gesture of sympathy. As though
I
was the one who needed support; needed someone to lean on.
“It won’t change anything, will it, Joe?”
“I guess not.”
“I
know
not.” She spoke with a quiet certainty; a calm, steady assurance. “The boys will still be dead. George will still be dead. Vincent will still be dead. I loved my sons, Joe. I really loved them.”
“I know that, Kitty.”
“It was something that just happened so fast, so quick. It wasn’t something deliberate or cruel. I loved them, both of them. I never deserved any medals as the best mother of the year, but when it gets down to it, who the hell does?
I did love them.”
She spoke with a quiet passion, as though it was her love of her sons that she had to convince me of, nothing else.
“It happened, Joe. It was an accident. And from then on, things got out of my control. It was all out of my hands. I went to pieces completely. Nothing like that had ever happened to me, Joe. I couldn’t get George. Vincent talked and talked and tried to calm me down, but then I went back into their bedroom ... I started to fall apart all over again. I ... called Alfredo.” She shrugged. “And then it was all out of my hands. One thing happened after another ... Joe? What would be the point, at this stage?” For the first time, her voice broke. She brought her hand up quickly, pressed it against her mouth, to steady herself. “I have a lot of living left to do, Joe. I have a lot of life left to be lived.”
She moved against me; her cold hands sought warmth. Her body shuddered with a terrible, suppressed fear. Her heavy clean hair gave off the fragrance of flowers and fresh air and innocence. Her voice was warm and husky, her words inaudible as her tongue flicked my ear, lips brushed my cheek, slid to my mouth. Her lips tasted of some pink sweetness. I locked my teeth and stiffened.
Kitty pulled back abruptly, her hands on my arms, her face puzzled, her voice shaking. “Joe? Joe, please.”
For the first time since I’d met her, there was the sound and look of terror about her. “Joe, I haven’t told you this before, but I have some money. I have a great deal of money. I own property in the Bahamas, Joe, free and clear, and a percentage of a development company down there. We could wait, Joe, until all of this blows over. We could go down there together, Joe, you could take over my share of the company.... We could—”
I shook my head. “Not this time, Kitty.”
“What do you mean, Joe? What do you mean, ‘not this time’?”
“I’m not George-to-the-rescue, Kitty. And I’m not Papa Veronne.”
The words had a strong physical effect on her. She pulled back from me and studied me closely, her eyes narrowed and dry and hardening. Everything about her changed: the growing panic was gone, submerged beneath a cold, controlled anger. “You goddamn hypocrite,” she said slowly. “It isn’t what happened to the kids that night, is it, Joe?” She whirled around, found the
New York Times
which had been left at her door this morning. It was folded back to the obituary page, a continuation of the front-page story of Veronne’s death. Kitty jabbed at the article.
“You see all this, Joe? All this crap they’ve had waiting to print about him for such a long time? None of it, none of it even begins to tell about him.” She jabbed at the paper. “Here they tell all the ‘bad’ things: connections with this crime family, with that crime family. Now, here, Joe, here they tell about all the charities he supported, all the people he helped. Words, words, that’s all. Nothing here about the
man,
Joe. Nothing here about
the man.”
“My beautiful Kitty,” Veronne had said: “my beautiful Kitty.”
It was almost as though she could read my mind. She said, “Ask me about him, Joe. God, go ahead and ask me. You want to know, don’t you? It’s killing you, isn’t it, Joe?”
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Kitty.”
“And if I don’t tell you, you won’t have to think about it, later on, when you’re alone with your thoughts, right, Joe? It won’t get inside your head for you to live with and think about. Well, I’m going to tell you—”
“Kitty, it isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to change anything.”