Stay Dead (32 page)

‘You want to go on with it then?’ he said. ‘What you were telling me? Not that I believe a word of it.’

‘Where was I?’
Please believe me
, she thought, staring into his eyes.
I love you, I need you
,
I want you so much,
please
don’t let this be the end of
it.

‘You said you and he were going to be “friends”,’ he said mockingly.

Annie let out a sharp sigh. ‘Has Gary told you exactly where Constantine is yet?’

‘Gary’s out of town right now.’

Good,
she thought. ‘So you really want to know what happened next?’

‘I’m here and I’m bloody well asking. So after that first time – when he said he was going to get a hit done on me – Alberto stepped in and Constantine backed down
and said you’d be friends instead. Very fucking likely, I don’t think. So you went back. You felt sorry for the cunt.’

‘Yeah. I did. But . . . it was a problem.’

‘In what way?’

‘He behaved himself for a while. And then he started trying to get me drunk.’

Max’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her face. ‘What, he was trying to get you pissed and have you over the table, that’s it?’ asked Max.

‘You have such a delicate way with words. But yeah. I think he was.’

‘You barely touch a drop, though. And when you wouldn’t drink . . . ?’

‘He got moody.’

‘I bet he did. Did he try that much?’

‘Couple of times.’
Maybe ten, maybe twenty.

‘And then he gave up?’

Annie nodded.

‘OK, then what?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I knew Constantine Barolli. He might have
appeared
to have given up, but my guess? He hadn’t.’

‘You’re right,’ said Annie.

‘So what happened next?’

‘He started wheeling out the hookers.’

‘What?’

‘Women. Very expensive call girls. I’d go in to dinner, and there they’d be. Half-naked or even performing sex acts on him. Right in front of me.’

Max was quiet for a long, long time, then he got to his feet and came over to the bed. ‘And how did
that
go down?’ he asked. ‘With you?’

Annie felt anger rising. She was tired, edgy, and here he was again with the inquisition. Yes, she wanted him back. She
needed
him. But this? Right now? It was too much.

‘How do you think?’ she asked.

‘That’s what I’m asking. Did it bother you, seeing him with other women?’

Annie reached out for her robe, awkwardly pulled it on, and swung her legs off the bed, sending him a glare as she stood, tied the sash, pulled the robe tight around her, right up to her bruised
throat.

‘Why the fuck would it bother me, Max? I told you: all that was dead and gone. Just like
he
should have been.’

‘Yeah, so you keep saying.’

‘And I mean it.’ Annie went over to the dressing table and started angrily pulling a brush through her hair. ‘Can’t you get it through your skull? We were
finished
years ago. He was just a lonely, desperate man and . . .’ she hesitated, her hand pausing on the brush. ‘You don’t understand what it was like. How things changed over these past
five years, how
he
changed.’

Max came up behind her and his eyes locked with hers in the mirror. ‘Meaning what?’

Annie put the brush down. ‘I don’t want to talk about this now,’ she said.

‘Well, fuck your luck.
I
do.’

Annie turned, confronting him. She let out a sigh.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘Come on.’

‘I saw a change come over him,’ she said. ‘He loved reliving his old glory days, when he was
Il Papa
, sending Lucco and Alberto out, his
caporegimes
, to pass on
his orders to the
capos
and the foot soldiers on the streets of New York. He liked to talk about his family back in Sicily, all the things that had happened over his lifetime. As time went
on, he changed a lot. The hookers didn’t come any more. He stopped trying to get me drunk. He just wanted to talk – about the past, mostly.’

‘And . . . ?’ he prompted.

‘Over five years I saw it happen. He didn’t take care of his appearance any more. He became vague. A bit confused. Max . . .’ Annie looked at him earnestly. ‘The thing
you seem to have forgotten here? He’s thirty years older than me. When I married him, New York was scandalized because of the age gap, but he was still a young, vigorous man. And now
he’s old, Max. You know what he wanted from me, more than anything, at the end of the day? He wanted my company.’

Max was silent, his eyes on her face.

‘It shocked me, realizing he was growing old,’ she went on. ‘But I couldn’t miss it. His shoulders started to stoop, his hair was growing thinner. He liked to talk,
sometimes he liked me to read to him. That crack you made about playing board games? Sometimes, that’s what we did. Chess, or card games. Just passing the time. Things like that.’ She
frowned. ‘And then
it
happened, and I realized what was going on with him.’

‘What?’

‘We were clearing the chessboard one day and he said to me, “You were never much of a player, Gina.”’

‘He mistook you for his sister?’

‘He did. I said to him, don’t you mean Annie? And then he said that he’d
said
Annie, what was I talking about. He got very angry. Almost aggressive.’

‘Go on.’

‘The next time I visited, he called me Maria – that was his first wife’s name. I queried it again, and he got angry again. He said what the fuck was I talking about? And then
he asked me where Nico was, he said he kept asking that housekeeper woman where he was, but she didn’t know.’

‘Nico?’ Max frowned. ‘Who the fuck’s Nico?’

‘Nico used to be Constantine’s right-hand man. He died in the early seventies.’

Max stared at her. ‘That was the one who hid Layla when she was a kid, right? The one who got hit outside the Palermo.’

‘Yeah,’ said Annie sadly. ‘That’s him.’

‘You’re saying Constantine’s been going senile?’

‘That’s
exactly
what I’m saying. And that’s what makes what
you
think so fucking stupid. At the beginning, yeah, maybe he tried it on. Or thought he would.
But within a couple of years, that was right off the agenda. I
pitied
him, Max. I went there to keep him company because it was clear how lonely he was. Alberto couldn’t visit very
often, it was too risky. So I went there. The castle, all that grandeur, it was just another prison. And I was just a visitor.’

Max’s eyes narrowed as he stared at her face. ‘So it was all very close, you and Constantine up there playing cards and discussing ancient history.’

‘It was OK for a while, yes. I hated the deception, Max, I really did. I wanted to tell you. I couldn’t.’

‘So you say.’

‘I
do
say. It was pitiful to see, Max. He was forever asking after people who died long ago, forgetting they were dead. And there were other things: a change in his character, a
shortness of temper. He just wasn’t Constantine any more. And then, six months ago, it got to the point where he didn’t know me at all. He barely spoke to me, and if he did it was to
ask, “Who the hell are you?” He’s not the Don any more, he’s just a confused old man.’

Max said nothing.

‘It seemed pointless to keep going there, so I stopped. And now . . .’

‘Now what?’

‘He’s asked to see me again. He wants me to go.’

‘Like fuck you are,’ said Max, and grabbed her wrist, spinning her round to face him and pulling her in close against his body.

Annie gasped in surprise. His grip hurt, it was so hard. ‘I know you don’t believe me, but—’

‘Don’t I? Maybe I wouldn’t believe that shit about him losing his marbles, if I hadn’t seen his sister.’

Annie’s eyes widened in realization as they stared up at his face. ‘That was it then? I couldn’t work out why Gina would have done that, broken the code. So
that’s
why.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Could that be a family thing? Passed down, father to son, mother to daughter . . . ?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘I know you don’t want to hear this,’ said Annie. ‘But you know what? It’s heartbreaking to see him like that. Once he was so powerful. Now he’s just . . .
nothing. You’ve no idea.’

‘Yeah, I have. Remember – I saw Gina.’

‘You’re hurting my wrist.’

Max stared into her eyes for a long time, then he let her go. Annie went back over to the bed, sat on the side of it, pulling her robe in tight around her.

‘I really can’t tell you anything else,’ she said tiredly.

‘What, and you think I’m leaving it there? I haven’t finished with you yet. Not by a bloody long chalk.’

Max came over to the bed too, sat down on the edge of it, and looked at her.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘So first he tries to force you to stay, then he starts trying to get you drunk, and then he was showing you what you were missing?’ said Max. ‘And then . . .’

‘Yeah.’

‘. . . you’re telling me he got confused. Lost it. Like his sister.’

‘That’s right.’

He was silent, watching her face. It was unnerving. Then he said: ‘So what’s with the sheets? And the robe?’

‘What?’

Max flicked a finger at the robe she was holding up to her chin. ‘This. Every time I’ve been in here, you’ve done this. Pulled the sheets – or this damned thing –
up like a Victorian virgin, like I haven’t seen everything you’ve got to show about a thousand times before.’

She couldn’t answer that. The only truthful answer was that she was trying to hide the bruises and the strapping from him; she didn’t want or need his sympathy.

‘You were so angry, the first time you came in here,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I just felt . . . defensive, I suppose. Under threat.’

‘But now you don’t?’

‘Not so much, no.’

‘Because you think you’ve softened me up.’

‘I don’t think that.’

‘Yeah, you do. Sitting there with those big innocent eyes.’

‘Max – I
am
innocent.’

‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you. So let go of the robe.’

Annie sighed and let the robe go at her throat. Max’s eyes went there and stayed there, on the faint finger-shaped bruises. ‘Shit. Did I do that?’

Annie nodded.

‘Untie it,’ ordered Max.

Annie looked at him in consternation. But what the hell. If she refused, he’d only rip the damned thing off her, she knew it. Slowly, deliberately, she untied the sash on the robe so that
it hung loose.

‘Take it off,’ he said.

With a heavy sigh, Annie slipped the robe off her shoulders. She sat there, naked, while his eyes roamed over her.

‘What the fuck’s
this
?’ asked Max, staring at the strapping around her ribcage and the purple bruises above it.

‘It’s . . .’ Annie started, wondering what the hell she could say. ‘I fell. An accident,’ she said. She didn’t want to go into all this, not now.

Max stared at her face. Then his gaze dipped again to the strapping. He reached out, touched the bruised skin above it.

‘Some fall,’ he said. ‘What’s the damage?’

‘Yeah, it was. It cracked a rib.’

Max stiffened. ‘Holy shit. When I slapped you up against that wall at Mum’s old place, you had this then?’

She nodded again.

‘That must have hurt like a bastard.’

‘It did. But not as much as having you think I’d been fucking around.’

His hand drifted up, cupped her right breast.

‘Max . . .’ she said.

‘Shut up,’ said Max, and his other hand took the left breast, cupped it, rubbed against it. Annie’s nipples sprang erect and a low-level ache of desire started in the pit of
her stomach. When the phone began ringing, she could have hurled it across the room. Max stopped what he was doing. After a moment to steady herself, Annie reached out gingerly and picked the
damned thing up.

‘Hello?’ she said.

‘I’ve found him,’ said Jackie’s trembling voice. ‘I’m not . . . I don’t . . .’

‘Slow down, Jackie. Take a breath. Tell me where.’

‘Essex way.’

The last time she’d seen Redmond, it had been on the Essex marshes.

‘Give me the address.’ Annie pulled a writing pad and pencil off the table and on to the bed. ‘Go on.’

Jackie sounded breathless, panicky. ‘Here’s the address, it’s . . .’

Jackie spoke quickly and Annie wrote it down. He sounded sober, and the stark terror in his voice alarmed her.

‘Where are you, Jackie? Right now?’

‘I’m in a phone box outside. It’s dark, there’s a wood on one side, it’s out in the sticks. I think . . . I thought I saw something move just now. Over the other
side of the road. I’m sure it was him, and he sort of stared over here, and he
grinned
.’

Annie felt a shudder of unease go straight through her as she pictured Jackie standing there like a sacrificial goat with Redmond Delaney stalking around outside. She clamped down on her own
rising anxiety and said clearly: ‘Jackie. Get back in the car. Lock the doors. Get the fuck out of there.’

‘I dunno, maybe I’ll sit it out a bit longer, but I don’t know—’

‘Jackie. Listen to me. Get out of there.’

‘Oh shit. Oh holy fuck.’

‘What?’ Annie’s fingers clenched so hard on the phone that it hurt. Max was watching her, frowning. ‘Jackie, what? What’s happening?’

‘It
is
him. He’s coming over.’

‘Oh
shit
,’ said Annie, and Max snatched the phone.

‘Jackie? You heard what she said. Get out of there,’ he said.

Annie was craning her head close to Max’s to hear what was going on. They both heard a sound like a kiosk door being opened – and then a scuffling and a hideous, nerve-prickling
noise. Tough-nut Jackie Tulliver was screaming like a wounded baby.

‘Jackie!’ shouted Annie, but there was no answer. The scream died away to a thin cry, and then there was silence except for the steady muted background noise of a car engine running
nearby.

‘Jackie?’ said Max into the mouthpiece.