Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel (18 page)

“Just being careful.”

“I’m gonna take a wild stab here and say the body in the morgue isn’t you.”

“No.”

“So who is it?”

“His name was Dante Puglisi.”

“Age?”

“Sixty-four.”

“Address?”

“He lived here.”

“A relative?”

“No. He was in my employ. Had been for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Since we mustered out of the SEALs together.”

“What did he do for you?”

“Little of this, little of that. Driver. Bodyguard. Workout partner. Sometimes he helped out around the place.”

“Didn’t his family wonder where he was the last three months?”

“His parents were killed in a car accident twenty years ago. We were the closest thing to family he had left.”

“He looked a lot like you.”

“He did.”

“Similar features, same height and weight, same eye and hair color, same Van Damme arms and Schwarzenegger chest.”

“That’s correct.”

“Was anything done to enhance this resemblance?”

“About ten years ago, he had a little work done, yes.”

“Why?”

Sal glanced at Yolanda. She nodded, indicating it was okay to answer.

“Shortly after I opened our strip clubs, I became involved in a dispute with some of our state’s more unsavory characters.”

“Carmine Grasso and Johnny Dio,” I said.

“You know of this?”

“I do.”

“Well, perhaps you can understand why it seemed advisable to employ a double.”

“When the two of you were together, the Mob wouldn’t know which one to shoot,” I said.

“Quite right.”

“And you could send him on errands posing as you.”

“From time to time I did that, yes.”

“Last September, he went to the Derby Ball in your place.”

“He did.”

“And it got him killed.”

“Yes.”

“What was he there for?”

“I’d prefer not to get into that.”

“I was there, too,” I said, “covering the event for the
Dispatch
.”

“Were you now.”

“I was. I saw him there, cozying up to the governor. Of course, I thought it was you. The governor probably thought so, too.”

“Perhaps he did.”

“Conducting some business for you with the governor, was he?”

“That’s not a subject I am prepared to discuss.”

“Does it bother you that you put a target on Dante Puglisi’s back?”

“More than you know.”

“Of course it bothers him,” Vanessa broke in. “Dante wasn’t just an employee. He was like family.” She swiped at her eyes—maybe wiping away a tear, maybe just making a show of it.

“Yes, he was,” Sal said. He reached for one of the decanters, poured three inches of whiskey into a tumbler, and drank it straight down. “Please help yourselves,” he said. “The Scotch is Bowmore, a seventeen-year-old single-malt. The bourbon is sixteen-year-old A. H. Hirsch Reserve.”

No one did. Sal poured himself another.

“Dante knew the risks,” Sal said. “He volunteered for the job, and I paid him well for it, but that doesn’t make us feel any better. I miss him every single day.”

“The body looked enough like you to fool the state police,” I said.

“Apparently so.”

“So you decided to play dead.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Surely the reason is obvious.”

“You didn’t want the killers to know they hit the wrong guy.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think the Mob was behind this?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had any trouble with them in years.”

“But they have long memories,” I said.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Anyone else who might want you dead?”

“I’ve made some enemies over the years.”

“Families and boyfriends of porn actors?”

“A few of them, yes.”

“Rivals in the porn business?”

“Perhaps.”

“The Sword of God?”

“They’re a dangerous bunch of lunatics, and they’ve made it clear that they disapprove of us,” Sal said.

“The Sword of God hates everybody,” Vanessa broke in. “Gays, Jews, blacks, liberals, moderates, feminists, abortion doctors, Obama, the media, the government. They scare the hell out of me.”

“With so many enemies out there, why resurface now, Sal?”

“Something came up that required my attention.”

“What would that be?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Can you tell me where you’ve been for the last three months?”

“Here and there,” he said.

“That’s a little vague.”

“I prefer to keep it that way.”

“Got a hideout you don’t want anyone knowing about?”

“Something like that.”

“The state police asked the navy for help in identifying the body and got stonewalled,” I said. “You have something to do with that?”

Sal looked at Yolanda, and she shook her head.

“Still got some old pals working in the Pentagon, do you?”

Sal didn’t answer.

“I assume your family knew you were alive,” I said.

Sal glanced at Yolanda again. “We are not prepared to discuss that subject,” she said.

I turned back to Sal. “Obviously your wife and daughter knew you had a double. You said he
lived
here.”

“Yes,” Sal said.

“Yet your wife positively identified his body as you,” I said.

“Anita Maniella is an older woman,” Yolanda said. “She was distraught and confused.” I was surprised by how different she sounded. Her lawyer voice was nothing like her “I don’t date white guys” voice. You might think she’d never met me before.

“Mrs. Maniella is only sixty-two,” I said. “This is the story you’re going to stick with?”

“That is our position, yes,” Yolanda said.

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Captain Parisi is gonna love this. Have you talked to him yet?”

“Not yet, no,” Yolanda said.

“Figured you’d try the story out on me first?”

No reply.

“Well, if that was your plan,” I said, “I can tell you right now there are a lot of holes in it.”

33

Vanessa rose from her chair, walked to the hearth, and added a log to the fire. Then we all went to the wall of windows and looked out at the dark, still lake.

“The roads must be treacherous,” Sal said. “You and Yolanda are welcome to dine with us and spend the night. We have plenty of room.”

Being a pornographer’s overnight guest wasn’t on my bucket list, but it was better than the alternative.

We ate by candlelight, Sal’s wife, Anita, joining us at a carved antique table that could have seated twice our number. Two uniformed servants piled slabs of roast beef, grilled vegetables, and mountains of mashed potatoes onto expensive-looking china plates. Classical music, something with a lot of strings, played softly from hidden speakers. Sal pulled the corks on three bottles of Pétrus, a pricey red wine whose virtues were wasted on me.

The conversation veered from the Patriots’ playoff prospects, which we agreed were not good, to the Red Sox’s signing of pitcher John Lackey, which we all deplored. I waited for Yolanda to soften up a little and throw in something about the Cubs or the Bears, but apparently she was still on the clock. After the servants cleared away our plates and returned with hot coffee and generous wedges of apple pie, Anita turned the conversation to President Obama’s proposal to reform the banking industry.

“What he should do is restore the wall between investment banks and retail banks,” she said. “Institutions that trade in derivatives, equity securities, fixed-income instruments, and foreign exchange should not be allowed to accept savings deposits.”

I didn’t understand much of that, but she didn’t sound confused to me.

I stared at her, wondering how many plastic surgeons it took to keep a woman looking that good into her sixties. Then I stared some more, wondering what kind of a woman would marry a pornographer. She caught me looking and smiled.

“Go ahead and ask,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

“Does it bother you?” I asked. “The way your husband makes his money?”

“And my daughter, too,” she said. “Don’t forget Vanessa.”

“Her too,” I said.

She laced her fingers under her chin and studied me over the top of them. “You’ve never been a woman, have you, Mr. Mulligan?”

I thought it might be a trick question, so I went with a politician’s answer: “Not that I can recall.”

“Being a woman is all about choices. Long ago, I made the choice to support my husband’s passion. Sal’s passion is not pornography. It’s not being surrounded by the naked women on his payroll. Sal’s passion is making money and using it to buy his family nice things. I trust his path. And I like nice things, too.”

“But—”

“Everyone involved in the business—the performers, the customers, even my daughter—is chasing something they’ve dreamed about. Most people just don’t dream as big as Sal.”

Sal chuckled at that. “Let me tell you what I’m dreaming about this week,” he said, and steered the conversation to what I gathered was his favorite topic. Swann Galleries in Manhattan had scheduled a January auction of rare British mystery and spy novels, and he was pretty excited about it. I would have been, too, if the pre-auction estimates didn’t make me choke.

After dinner, the Maniellas retired to their rooms. I went to the garage, found my parka still hanging on its peg, and pulled my antibiotics prescription and omeprazole tablets from an inside pocket. Then I reentered the house, passed Black Shirt and Gray Shirt standing watch in the foyer, and entered the library, where Yolanda was sitting on the couch.

“Not what you expected, are they,” she said.

“No.”

“You thought they’d be pigs.”

“Maybe they are,” I said. “All that dirty money can buy a lot of lipstick and deodorant.”

“They’re not,” she said. “They’re pretty nice when you get to know them.”

“Nice for pornographers, you mean.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a
puritan,
Mulligan.”

“Neither did I.”

She gave me a searching look. “Pornography is legal,” she said. “They’re not doing anything wrong.”

“A lawyer’s answer.”

“I
am
a lawyer. I leave the moralizing to the preachers.”

“Perhaps I’d like them better,” I said, “if they didn’t keep sending their thugs after me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The two ex-SEALs followed my car the other day and cornered me in a Subway parking lot.”

“What did they want?”

“To beat me up.”

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I showed them my gun, and they went away.”

“You carry a gun?”

“Only when I’m feeling threatened.”

“Why were they after you?”

“Because I was asking questions about the Maniellas.”

“They didn’t seem to mind your questions today.”

“They didn’t answer the important ones.”

The candles in the candelabra had burned to stubs, and one of them had gone out. I relit it with my lighter.

“When are you going to tell Captain Parisi that Sal is alive?” I asked.

“Tomorrow, if the roads are better,” she said. “It’s something I should do face-to-face.”

“Taking Sal with you?”

“No.”

“Parisi’s going to want to question him.”

“I’m not going to allow that,” she said.

“Mind if I call the captain in the morning and give him the news myself?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Because it would amuse me.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, but I can’t stop you.” She paused and then added, “I guess it wouldn’t do any harm.”

I picked up the decanter of bourbon from the table and thought about how good it would feel on the way down. Then I thought about what would happen when it hit bottom and returned the container to the table.

“Patricia Smith is going to be at the Cantab in Cambridge the second week in January,” I said.

“Is that so?”

“They say her readings are amazing. We should go.”

“Maybe, but not together.”

“Separate cars would waste gasoline,” I said. “Don’t you care about the environment?”

“Going together would just encourage you,” she said.

Vanessa stepped into the library to announce that our beds would be ready shortly. Then she noticed the way I was looking at Yolanda and asked, “Will you be wanting one room or two?”

“One,” I said.

“Two,” Yolanda said.

Vanessa chuckled and slipped out of the room.

*   *   *

In the morning, Sal stood on the front porch with his wife and daughter and waved good-bye as Yolanda and I headed down the snow-covered dirt road to our cars. I helped her clear the snow from hers. Then I brushed off Secretariat. I locked my .45 in the glove box and placed a plastic bag holding Grant’s two-volume memoir on the floor by the front passenger seat. I started the car, turned on the heater, and let the engine warm while I made the call to Parisi.

“Guess who I was just talking to,” I said.

“I don’t play guessing games, Mulligan.”

“Sal Maniella.”

That five-second pause, and then: “You talking to dead people now?”

“Sometimes I do,” I said. “But he looked alive to me. He was walking and talking, and his breath turned white in the cold.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Because if this is your idea of a joke…”

“It’s not.”

“Then who the hell is in the morgue?”

“A retired Navy SEAL named Dante Puglisi. Sal had been using him as a double. They looked a lot alike, and Puglisi had some plastic surgery a few years back to perfect the illusion.”

A five-second pause again. “Plastic surgery scars were noted in the autopsy report, but we chalked it up to vanity.”

“I would have, too.”

“Sal’s been playing dead because somebody tried to kill him?”

“Yeah.”

“His wife played along by falsely identifying the body?”

“Sal’s lawyer claims she was distraught and confused.”

“You met her?”

“I did.”

“She seem confused to you?”

“No.”

“Did Sal tell you who wants him dead?”

“He says he’s got a lot of enemies.”

“I’ll bet. So where do I find him?”