House Secrets (45 page)

When he and Harry arrived at the restaurant there was a
CLOSED
sign in the window but Harry opened the door and walked in. The only one in the place was the owner. DeMarco recalled that his name was Benny and remembered how he had thanked Harry for all the things that Paul Morelli had done for his son and daughter. Benny didn’t look so grateful now.

Twenty minutes later two men walked into the restaurant. The pair looked enough alike to be brothers—scary brothers, the type who quit boxing because it wasn’t violent enough. They were in their mid-forties, with dark wavy hair and permanent five o’clock shadows. Not tall, but very broad—52-large jackets and 38-short pants. One wore a blue suit, the other wore gray.

Blue Suit took Benny by the arm and walked him toward the rear of the restaurant to check out the kitchen and restrooms. Gray Suit just stood there, looking at DeMarco and Harry. Blue Suit returned to the dining room, nodded to Gray Suit, and took up a position near the entrance. Benny came back into the dining room with a bottle of wine. He proceeded to clear away the glasses and ashtray that Harry and DeMarco had been using, put on a fresh tablecloth, and placed the wine bottle and three glasses on the table. He stopped a moment to survey his work, then took a vase of flowers from a nearby table and placed it in the center of DeMarco’s table. Gray Suit said something to Benny in Italian and he removed the flowers, then left the dining room.

After Benny had disappeared, Gray Suit made a motion for DeMarco to rise. There was something odd about the man’s hands, DeMarco noticed. They looked as if they’d been caught in a lawn mower and put back together. After he patted DeMarco down for a weapon, he told DeMarco to unbutton his shirt, then ran his scarred hands over DeMarco’s bare chest and back checking for a surveillance wire. As he searched, he stared impassively into DeMarco’s eyes. There was no animosity in Gray Suit’s face; he was just a man doing his job, going about his trade with as much emotion as the guy who changes the oil in your car. He’d look at DeMarco the same way shoving a knife into his heart.

Gray Suit gave the restaurant one final sweep with his eyes, then nodded to his partner, who turned and exited the restaurant. A minute later, Dominic Calvetti came through the door.

Calvetti ignored Harry and DeMarco while one of his bodyguards helped him with his topcoat and took his fedora. They both rose as Calvetti approached the table. Harry held out his right hand and Calvetti shook it, his grip soft. “Harry,” he said, his voice cool and noncommittal.

“Dominic,” Harry said, “this is Joe DeMarco. He’s my godson.” Calvetti ignored DeMarco’s outstretched hand and said to Harry, “I came tonight, Harry, because we’ve known each other a long time.
But I can make you no promises, no commitments, where this man is concerned.”

The fact that Calvetti knew who DeMarco was confirmed everything he suspected.

As Harry had said, Dominic Calvetti was old. He was wearing a suit, a white shirt with a slightly frayed collar, and a wide, old-fashioned tie. His hair was white and very fine; his complexion a burnished bronze; and there was a network of wrinkles around his eyes and a single deep furrow on each side of his mouth. He had probably been handsome in his youth but age had elongated his nose and ears and put a slight curve in his spine. His eyes were black and empty, like stellar black holes, absorbing light and life, belying any possibility of mercy.

Gray Suit poured a glass of wine for Harry and Calvetti. He pointedly turned DeMarco’s wine glass upside down. Harry gave DeMarco an apologetic glance.

“And how’s your health, Dominic?” Harry said. “You look good.”

“No, Harry,” Calvetti said with a small shake of his head. “No chit-chat. Just tell me what you have to say.”

Harry nodded, his face becoming serious. “Dominic, my godson’s a good man. An honest man. I want you to listen to him. If I didn’t believe him I wouldn’t have brought him here tonight.”

Calvetti didn’t respond.

“He’s also Gino DeMarco’s son,” Harry said. “You remember Gino? He worked for Carmine Taliaferro.”

Calvetti raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Is that right?” he said, and Harry nodded.

It was a hell of thing, DeMarco thought, when a blood link to a killer was considered a character reference.

Calvetti glanced at DeMarco and said, “I see the resemblance now. I thought this man was a civilian.”

“I am, Mr. Calvetti,” DeMarco said. He was tired of this guy not looking at him and speaking only to Harry. “I never had anything
to do with the Taliaferro family. I’m just a lawyer who works for Congress.”

“Not just a lawyer,” Calvetti said, giving DeMarco the full force of his eyes. “You’re a man who traps other men using young women for bait. You’re lower than a pimp.”

“Dominic . . .,” Harry said.

“Mr. Calvetti,” DeMarco said, “I’m not going to deny that I destroyed Paul Morelli’s career. But you need to know why I did it.”

“You did it because you work for some other politician,” Calvetti said. “We don’t know which one yet, but we’ll find out. Maybe we’ll find out tonight.”

DeMarco had an immediate image of Gray Suit’s huge, mangled hands pounding on his face until he gave up Mahoney. It wouldn’t take long.

“I destroyed Paul Morelli because he killed his wife, Mr. Calvetti. Your daughter. I couldn’t let a man like that become president.”

DeMarco had thought that mentioning Lydia’s death would have some emotional impact on Calvetti, but if it did, DeMarco couldn’t see it. The mobster’s face remained completely impassive.

“Why would he murder his wife?” Calvetti said. “If he was dissatisfied with her, he would have divorced her. It’s what Americans do.”

That was rich: murder was apparently acceptable to Calvetti but divorce wasn’t.

“He killed her,” DeMarco said, “because she was going to tell the newspapers what she knew about him.”

“What did she know? She didn’t know anything.”

DeMarco hesitated; what he was about to say could get him killed on the spot.

“Lydia was going to tell the press that Paul molested your granddaughter.”

Calvetti came out of his chair with surprising speed, and backhanded DeMarco across the face. His bony, old man’s hand stung and DeMarco could taste blood on his lower lip. DeMarco noticed
that both bodyguards had drawn guns and now waited like Dobermans for the command to kill.

Harry stood up and said, “Dominic, wait. Listen to him. Please.”

Calvetti remained standing for a minute, looking down at DeMarco. His thin chest rose and fell from exertion and emotion. Finally he turned to his bodyguards and motioned for them to put their weapons away. He sat back down, lit a cigarette, then said to DeMarco, “You know
Arabian Nights
? Scheherazade?” There was a thin, cruel smile on Calvetti’s bloodless lips.

DeMarco nodded. He knew exactly what the old gangster meant: tell a good story or he wouldn’t see morning. DeMarco wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and began by saying, “I had always admired Paul Morelli.”

DeMarco told Calvetti everything, everything he learned from Lydia Morelli and why he was certain that Paul Morelli had killed Lydia and Isaiah Perry. While he was speaking, Calvetti was silent, smoking one cigarette after another, staring at DeMarco through half-shut eyes. DeMarco had never been a trial lawyer. He had never made a desperate plea to a jury to save an innocent man’s life. This was his day in court—and he would have liked it better if someone else’s life had been at stake.

DeMarco finished speaking and Harry said, “Dominic, this thing with Paul and women. There was a woman here in New York . . .”

Calvetti raised a hand, stopping Harry in mid-sentence. He looked at DeMarco for what seemed a lifetime. DeMarco could tell that Calvetti had not immediately dismissed his story as a self-serving pack of lies. No, he had doubts about Morelli, that much was clear, and now he was obviously trying to come to a decision. It occurred to DeMarco then that Calvetti was, in his own right, an executive. He made decisions all the time based on the information available and his instincts. He wasn’t going to argue or ask for clarification—he had heard all he needed to hear. Now it was just a matter of deciding. At last he spoke.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “you be standing in front of Harry’s apartment at ten o’clock.
Capisce
?”

DeMarco nodded. “Dress warm,” he added.

Dress warm?

Calvetti rose and Gray Suit helped him into his topcoat. Blue Suit left the restaurant first, while Calvetti and Gray Suit waited by the door. Blue Suit gave the all’s-clear signal from outside, and Gray Suit opened the door for his boss. Before leaving, while placing his fedora on his head, Calvetti turned to look at DeMarco a final time. Looking into Calvetti’s eyes was like looking down the barrels of a shotgun—if you saw any light at all, it meant the triggers had been pulled.

It was a brilliant December morning, Christmas only two days away.

The winter sun sparkled off the roofs of a million Yellow Cabs and people bustled by with shopping bags in their hands, the season generating smiles for strangers. As DeMarco stood waiting for Calvetti, the old Indian expression about it being a good day to die flashed morbidly through his mind.

A long black Lincoln pulled up to the entrance of Harry Foster’s apartment building at exactly ten a.m. The man driving the car was Gray Suit, the one with the deformed hands who had frisked DeMarco at the restaurant. Today he wasn’t wearing a suit. He had on a navy peacoat over a plaid shirt and wool pants. On his head was a dark blue stocking cap. He looked like a guy who should be stamping his feet for warmth outside the longshoremen’s union, waiting for his name to be called.

The other man in the front seat of the Lincoln wore a black leather jacket over a heavy sweater, tight-fitting jeans, and ankle-high boots. On his hands were lightweight leather gloves the same color as the jacket. He was tall and sinewy, with close-cropped white-blond hair. Wire-rimmed glasses magnified pale blue eyes. The driver, DeMarco guessed, was pure muscle. The other guy was some sort of specialist—and DeMarco didn’t want to think about what he specialized in.

The specialist unfolded himself from the front seat of the car and told DeMarco to take his place. He didn’t look at DeMarco. Instead his eyes swept the stream of people going by on the sidewalk and the windows above their heads. He was holding an aluminum briefcase in his right hand, and for some reason—too many movies, he supposed—it occurred to DeMarco that the suitcase could contain a rifle, one that came apart in sections, the pieces fitting neatly into felt-lined indentations in the case. He wondered if he would subconsciously feel the tickle of the cross hairs as they moved up his face, to a spot in the center of his forehead.

As DeMarco entered the Lincoln, he glanced at Calvetti, who sat in the rear seat, directly behind the driver. Like his driver, Calvetti was dressed for cold weather: a heavy parka, wool pants, and on his feet, thick-soled boots. The parka was zipped up to the neck even though the temperature inside the car was hot enough to grow orchids. The old Sicilian looked at DeMarco without expression, his black eyes giving away nothing.

The driver told DeMarco to take off the too-tight ski jacket he had borrowed from Harry. He made sure the pockets of the jacket were empty, then prodded the fabric with his fingers to verify nothing was hidden in the down lining. Finished with the jacket, he had DeMarco kneel on the seat so he could frisk his body above the knees, then had him sit back down and stretch his legs out so he could complete the search. Finally satisfied, he said, “He’s clean, boss. You want him to sit up here or there in back with you?”

“Up there,” Calvetti said. “Mr. Loomis will sit in the back.”

DeMarco didn’t like having Loomis directly behind him with his damn aluminum case.

As soon as Loomis shut his door, Calvetti said, “Take off, Eddie,” and the black Lincoln merged into a stream of Manhattan taxis like a shark parting a school of tuna.

DeMarco turned to look back at Calvetti, and said, “May I ask where we’re going?” He was proud that he sounded calm and nothing like the way he was really feeling.

“Shut up,” Calvetti said. “I’ll talk to you when I’m ready.”

They left Manhattan via the Henry Hudson Parkway and continued north on Highway 9, parallel to the Hudson River. As they drove, DeMarco tried to convince himself that he had made the right decision. He could have tried to hide from Morelli and Calvetti, but eventually they would have found him. He could have gone to the authorities and asked for protection but he had little confidence in the police’s ability—or desire—to protect him. So he had put his fate in Dominic Calvetti’s hands, hoping the gangster’s love for his granddaughter would prevail over his loyalty to Paul Morelli.

DeMarco had thought about calling Emma last night to ask for her help and knew that if he had, she’d have been on the next shuttle to New York. He could have had the comfort of knowing that she was following Calvetti’s limo, heavily armed, lethally able, and would be there to kill Calvetti if he needed killing. But in the end he had decided not to call her—and he didn’t return her phone call when she called him. As far as DeMarco knew, Morelli, and therefore Calvetti, had no knowledge of Emma’s involvement in the operation, and that being the case, DeMarco didn’t want to expose her. Enough people had died because of what he’d done. He’d face this situation on his own.

He glanced back again at the man to whom he had consigned his life, and saw that Calvetti was staring impassively out the tinted windows of the Lincoln at the river. A few minutes later, Calvetti closed his eyes, his head dropped onto his chest, and he began to snore gently. DeMarco’s fate was obviously weighing heavily on his mind.

They crossed the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie and headed west on Highway 44 until they entered Catskill Park. Calvetti woke up a few minutes later, lit a cigarette, but remained silent and brooding. As the car gained in elevation, the amount of snow piled up on the sides of the road increased until it seemed they were driving through a white tunnel. They passed a dam near a small town with the silly name of Lackawack, and just beyond a whistle stop named Sundown, at the base of Sampson Mountain, the driver pulled off the main road.
They drove a few minutes more and came to a stop near a stand of evergreens. No houses were in sight; there were no people around. It was a good place to kill someone, DeMarco thought, but he was sure they hadn’t driven this far just to kill him. They could have found a fallow field in New Jersey if that had been Calvetti’s intention.