Naked Moon (13 page)

Dante followed Greene outside. If Greene was the businessman he seemed—if he had nothing to do with his cousin's
death—he'd turn tail right now, Dante thought. He'd get the hell away from me. His cousin, however, dealt with a lot of people who were on the borderline. So it was possible this man had nothing to do with the company, or with the Wus: that he was an independent operator with whom his cousin had considered making a deal. Dante transferred the stiletto from his jacket pocket to his hand.

They walked down the alley, and Serafina's was just ahead. Dante had been out there the other day, watching Stella's son load the mechanical lift that rose up out of the walk.

“I don't know anything about your cousin,” Greene said. “He was recommended to me, that's all.”

“For what?”

The man started to talk about his business, something about fabrics, about container size and wholesale distribution patterns, the kind of talk Dante had engaged in himself once upon a time, as part of sting operations, or what masqueraded as such, because as often as not the company was making deals of the sort that facilitated the passage of goods in exchange for certain kinds of information.

There was something disjointed about Greene, something off in the small pinpoint of light way back in his eyes. Dante suspected the man was fucking with him, one way or the other.

“Which one you want?” Greene asked.

“Which one?”

“Inside, the blonde or the brunette. Which one?”

“Neither.”

“That's not very nice.”

“This isn't about them.”

“Then what's it about?”

“You.”

“Me? Listen,” he said. “It isn't smart for you to talk to the police—you know that as well I do. I talked with your cousin, true, about running some shipments, but there's no use talking about it now. With all the heat, there's no way.” Greene threw his cigarette on the ground and put it out with his foot. “I think I am done with this,” he said, but stood there nonetheless, as if waiting for Dante to make the first move: to turn around and go ahead of him inside the bar. The man bent down to tie his shoe, taking his time about it, eyes on Dante the whole while.

“Your girl, Marilyn, she's a nice-looking one,” the man said. Dante didn't like the sound of her name in his mouth. “She's not the type that stays tucked away, though, is she?”

Dante had seen a picture of the diplomat's wife. A good-looking woman. He remembered how Marlilyn had preened under Greene's attention. There was a softness in the man's menace, something likeable and foolish in the turn of the lips, the sidewise smirk. They were at stalemate now, each waiting for the other to go on ahead.

“Things have changed,” Greene said. “Sorry your cousin is dead. Truth is, I didn't need him in the first place. And I don't need you.”

A fresh cigarette hung from the man's mouth. He made a move then, jerking his hand down into his pocket. It was a sudden move, like a man stumbling, just clumsiness, too much to drink, but at the same time his eyes gleamed and
his lips pulled back into a grin, and there was something deliberate, too deliberate, about the way his hand grasped down into the fabric. Dante pummeled forward. It was an instinctive move. Too late to do anything else.
The shot is coming
. He would take it in the kidney. He drove one palm down, hoping to deflect what was coming, the quick burst of fire out of the man's pocket—and with the other hand he gripped the stiletto. There was an instant when he considered his impulse might be wrong—when he understood there might be no shot coming, when perhaps he could have stopped himself—but then he was already in motion, his hand on the slide button. Whether what happened next was out of volition or the sheer force of the mechanism, or the anger inside himself, the result was the same. The blade sprang out as it hit the man's chest, and he pushed it through in a single thrust, through the rib cage, the cartilage, into the heart. It was something he'd done before, self-defense, but he'd accomplished it too adroitly to doubt his skill in such matters. He had his own training, his own instincts. He pushed Greene into the wall, into a cranny in the brick, legs against legs, staring into his eyes and watching the tiny prick of light fade, glass over, as the man's mouth fell open and his body jerked and then jerked some more and the air hissed out and the fluids gushed. Some people passed at the mouth of the alley, but they kept going, not seeing, or not wanting to see. Thinking what they glimpsed was something else altogether, the way the one man held the other so tight, face-to-face, chest to chest, thrusting him fiercely against the alley wall.

D
ante entered Serafina's through the back door, jerking up on the faulty handle Stella had been joking about a few days before. He pushed the button that triggered the lift in the alley, then lowered Greene into the basement. Dante yanked the man's ID and rummaged the pockets. He found a revolver in an ankle holster, but nothing in the pants pockets, only a plastic Bic. It was possible he'd been mistaken about Greene's identity, but the way the man had been hovering, he didn't think so. It would be weeks before the new owners tackled the place, according to Stella. Weeks before anyone found the body. Likely the company would notice the disappearance of an agent before then. When they did, they would come after Dante harder than ever, but at least Marilyn was safe for the time being. He had bought some time. Now he dragged Greene's body off the lift, farther into the cellar darkness, down to where the ceiling dropped and the outline of an old door showed in the trowel work on the concrete wall. Once upon a time, all the basements had been interconnected. A man could crawl through these tunnels. You could make wine in Stella's basement and vanish up through a manhole cover onto Fresno Street. Nevertheless, all those doors were gone, the passageways sealed. Dante went back upstairs. He stripped off his bloody shirt, exchanging it for a clean one in the dishwasher's closet. Then the next morning he took the stiletto and the shirt, and anything else that might incriminate him, and threw it in the Bay.

PART FIVE

D
avid Lake's house stood just off the crest on Sacramento Street, at the outer edges of Pacific Heights. A large house, impeccably kept, freshly painted—a Victorian in a block of Victorians. Lake stood in what earlier times had been called the parlor room, furnished now in a fashion that blended the modern and the antique. He dressed in a nondescript way, but with a tucked-in look—a sandy-haired man who might be called good-looking, though there was at the same time something a bit too pampered. It was tempting to dislike him, except there was a tinge of irony in his manner, as if he had been placed in this position by a hand other than his own. There was also wholesomeness, perhaps, a determination about his features that made one hesitate in such judgment.

Dante had not come alone. The person with him, Jake Cicero, was not someone familiar to Lake: a short man, mid-sixties, in a yellow polo and khaki slacks who looked as
if he just stepped out of a tanning salon. David Lake studied them both, not turning away, but Dante's appearance on Lake's doorway, here with Cicero, had taken him aback. Lake and Dante had encountered each other before—on social occasions, on account of Marilyn—and there was an uneasiness between them. Then there was the matter of Dante's trade, an ugly trade, and Lake's suspicion that he himself had been studied and surveiled, his life imagined and re-created by this man in front of him.

But ultimately the reason behind his discomfort was more personal.

They were both in love with the same woman, David Lake and this man in front of him. This investigator with the smell of violence about him. With his long nose, his dark eyes. A face that seemed perpetually hidden in shadow.

D
ante had met with Cicero earlier that same day, down at the office of Cicero Investigations. During that meeting, he had sketched out the situation for his boss, but the situation he described, and the reality, did not correspond in all their details. Jake Cicero did not need to know everything. Jake did not need to know, for example, about the dead man Dante had left on the storage room floor beneath the Serafina Café.

“I need to get Marilyn out of town.”

“She's involved?”

“No, but I'm worried, just what these people will do.”

“What does she know?”

“Nothing. And it would be best to keep it that way. For her to leave—without knowing anything about this.”

“What would inspire that?”

“There's a man, David Lake.”

“What about him?”

“He proposed to her.”

Cicero surveyed the street outside the office window. He did not press Dante, not right away. He knew something of Dante's relationship with Marilyn. He also knew something of the time Dante had spent in New Orleans and the kind of associations lingering in his past.

“You want her to go away with this man, David Lake.”

“Yes.”

“Your cousin's murder. There's something you're not telling me.”

“You won't be aiding a suspect, if that's what you are worried about.”

“What makes you think Marilyn will go along with this? You and she …”

“Things between us”—he hesitated—“I'll take care of that. I'm more concerned, when she leaves, no one knows where she's gone. Or with whom.”

“It will cost money.”

“I know.”

Dante put an envelope on the table, and inside the envelope there was a good deal of cash. Dante had worked for Cicero for a number of years. They were friends, after a fashion, but friendship went only so far. A different man might have made a show of not wanting the money, but
Cicero was not that way. He'd been in the business for a long time.

“These people, they're dangerous?”

“Yes,” said Dante.

“I went to the doctor's office yesterday. For my yearly.”

Cicero had used to be pretty slack about his health, but he'd grown more diligent lately, since marrying Louisa.

“What's the verdict?”

“I could live another million years, a heart like mine. So long as I don't fall off a cliff.”

Behind Cicero, bocce trophies lined the wall, but Cicero did not play bocce much anymore. It was an old man's sport. His new wife was some twenty years younger than himself, and he had instead taken on a program to keep up with her.

Tennis in the mornings. Diet. A little bit of Grecian Formula for the hair.

Sharper clothes.

A yellow polo open at the collar and a Rolex watch.

Dockers and black loafers, tasseled.

“How is Louisa?”

“She's fine.” Cicero thumbed through the cash with an expression of a man caught between two worlds. He was not one to embark on idiot adventures, but on the other hand, Louisa had expensive tastes. Cicero was a fool sometimes, an old fool, but he enjoyed his life.

“This Lake, he's a wealthy man?”

“Yes,” said Dante.