Masquerade (43 page)

She ignored her shoulder, which was beginning to throb again, as she caught the sounds of cursing voices and heavy feet running toward her. Instantly she hurried up ten stone steps and out onto another narrow street, dim between high old walls. The feet still pounded somewhere back among the buildings. She paused and listened to the silence on the street. Beretta in hand, she trotted toward the far corner, which would intersect with the street she'd just left.

Three feet away, she sensed someone waiting, probably left behind to guard against her doubling back.

Beretta in both hands, she swung around the corner. He was crouched and rose up under the sweep of her gun. She slammed the muzzle across his sweating face, smashing blood from his nose. He stumbled back, reached out, grabbed her jacket, and pulled her down on top of him. She saw the shine of a knife in his free hand. Her Beretta was jammed against him. She fired. He grunted, coughed, and rolled over on his back, mouth open, eyes glaring at nothing.

Holding tight to her nerves, she grasped her painful shoulder as she walked swiftly toward the corner and the congestion of the rue Vivienne.

She had almost reached the busy intersection when a tan Renault pulled up alongside. She saw the man inside.
Gordon
!

The hatred in his eyes told her what he could, and would, do to her. He rolled down his window and called out, “Right to me, guys. Bring her!”

She whirled. Four men were spread out behind her. In the Renault, Gordon sat between her and the relative safety of the rue Vivienne. They wouldn't kill her, but they'd wound and take her. There were enough of them, and probably more on the way, but she'd make the bastards pay. One bastard in particular.

She fired straight at the Renault. Gordon dodged, flung open the driver's door, and dove out the far side unharmed. She spun, shot the leg of the man nearest her. As he fell, she started to fire at the second, but he was too quick. With a flash of his foot, he kicked the gun out of her hand.

From somewhere there was a long tattoo of automatic gunfire. The man who'd kicked her collapsed beside her. A bullet creased her skull. The two remaining men flew back, torsos riddled with blood.

Sarah looked around, confused. It was the nanny! The baby carriage lay fallen on its side, and the gray-haired woman held an Uzi in her hands. Sarah's head swam. Vaguely she realized the “baby” in the carriage must have been the Uzi.

A siren wailed in the distance. Sarah fought, tried to stay conscious, and pitched forward into a black, cold abyss.

PART IV

The Carnivore

Chapter 49

Through the fog of her mind, Sarah heard the low hum of a window air conditioner. She opened her eyes. She was lying on a sofa in a small, shabby living room. The blinds were closed against the world, or the morning's heat, or both. Exercise equipment stood in the corner. A worn recliner faced a new wide-screen television. A scarred table with piecrust molding stood next to the chair. The mantel displayed the only merry spots in the drab room—a gaily decorated jester's hat, china poodles in pink tutus, and a photo of a cavorting clown.

“How are you feeling, Liz?”

A muscular man of medium height with a gray crew cut stood in the kitchen doorway and gazed worriedly at her. He appeared to be somewhere around fifty years old. He was drying a cup with a dishtowel. His makeup had been wiped away, but he still wore his nanny's dress, the thick stockings, and the sensible shoes.

“I don't know.” She felt the ache. “My head and jaw hurt.” She recalled grappling with the man who'd tried to knife her, and her head being creased by a bullet in the fight near Gordon's Renault. She touched her head and found a fresh bandage.

“I changed the one on your shoulder, too. You didn't tell me you'd been shot.” There was a question in his voice. He knew Liz Sansborough; she had to be careful.

“It was nothing worth talking about.”

She sat up. The man in the nanny's dress made no move to help. But once she was upright, he disappeared back into the kitchen. She looked around, considering where she was and who he was. He thought she was Liz Sansborough. She doubted this was the Languedoc, so he had to be one of the Carnivore's people. Unless there were other players she knew nothing about.

He returned with a tray and sat in the recliner. He poured tea and added milk and sugar. That must be the way Liz Sansborough liked it. He handed her the cup.

She drank. It was too sweet for her taste, but good.

“Take these.” He spoke English like an American.

He handed her two white tablets. His hands were huge and appeared very strong. He wasn't particularly tall, but he was broad and muscled. Maybe a former football player or wrestler, who'd kept in shape. Automatically she smelled the pills and touched her tongue to them. Aspirin. She saw him staring at her, realized she'd made a mistake.

She'd indicated she didn't trust him.

She laughed. “I must be in shock. I forgot where I was.”

He shook his head. “You scared the hell out of me. What did you think you were doing?” His voice radiated barely controlled anger, kept in check until he was sure she was all right. He cared about Liz.

“I surprised you,” she said. “Sorry.”

He smiled, and in the smile she saw a photo in her mind. It was a black-and-white photo of a man with an identically smiling mouth. The rest of the features were different, and the man in the picture had been much younger. Who was he?

His mood changed. “You could've ruined everything. They're searching for us everywhere. Especially you, because they know what you look like. Your disguise is good, but obviously not good enough.”

If he demanded details she would be in trouble. She needed to change the subject. “How did you get me out of there? The last I remember was your shooting those men. And what happened to Gordon Taite? Did you kill him, too?”

He coughed into his napkin, and it vanished. He pulled it
from the throat of his nanny's dress. He was a specialist in sleight of hand. “Arrogant asses. A couple of them had been watching you while you were hanging around the Café Justine, then more arrived. I couldn't contact you. So I waited until they made their move. Taite decided retreat was wisest, and he was goddamn right. I had the firepower.”

Her voice was casual. “Anything new on the coming-in?”

“All the arrangements are in place. But is that the kind of life you really want? You may be making an enormous mistake.”

“It's no mistake. It's time to go in.”

Bingo. This man was part of the Carnivore's team. How could she find out his real name and where Liz Sansborough and the Carnivore were?

He drank tea. “You haven't told me yet, Liz, what you wanted there.” He leveled his gaze at her, and she knew what it must be like to be a protozoan beneath a microscope.

She had to say something. “Why were you there?”

The broad features stiffened. The eyes grew flinty, detached. A Walther appeared in his big hand. “My Liz gives direct answers to my questions. And she hasn't carried a Beretta in years. Who are you?”

She was trapped. She sipped her tea, lifted her gaze, and looked steadily into his eyes. “You care about Liz. I'm her cousin, Sarah Walker. I'm looking for her. We need to talk.”

Astonishment lighted his face for a moment. Then the Walther moved closer to her head. “Don't lie. Sarah Walker and Liz aren't twins. And you don't act like Walker. A celebrity profiler?” He sneered. “Hughes Bremner would eat her alive, bones and all, and still be hungry.”

She was stunned. How did he know what Sarah Walker had looked like? How did he know her work? But she had no time to think about that now. His fingers were white on the Walther.

“Tell me who you really are and why you've been surgically made to look like my Liz!”

She kept her gaze steady on his cold face. “I am Sarah Walker, and I don't know why. Except it has something to do with the Carnivore's coming-in.”

“How would Sarah Walker know about the coming-in?”

“Because it was Hughes Bremner who had my face changed and then ordered me trained to act like Liz.”

He studied her. “Prove you're Sarah Walker.”

“My mother is Jane Sansborough Walker. Liz's father was Harold Sansborough, her brother. My father, Hamilton Walker, is a college professor. I—”

“You could have been told all that.”

“Okay, you seem to know Liz well. If you do, you'll know she had a grandmother who often made a special Italian bread flavored with rosemary. Her name was Firenze.”

“Grandmother Firenze?” His eyes probed. “But she wasn't your or Liz's grandmother at all, was she?”

Sarah frowned. “No. She was our
great
-grandmother.”

He sat for a moment, then lowered the Walther, and he smiled that smile she'd seen before. Somewhere—

He asked, “What do you want with Liz?”

“I have reason to believe Hughes Bremner's going to pull some kind of trick and try to kill the Carnivore.”

He leaned forward, thick shoulders and barrel chest incongruous in the bogus nanny dress. “Tell me everything you know.”

“I can't give the information to just anyone. I need to know who you are.”

His muscled body adjusted itself into the recliner as if he'd never be quite used to it or any other comfort. “I work for the Carnivore. They call me Quill.” He passed his palm an inch over his short, gray crew cut. “My history is unimportant.”

“Then tell me about the Carnivore and Liz. Something so I know I can trust my information to you.”

“I could make you tell.”

“If you did, you'd never be sure it was the truth. I don't want Bremner to have the Carnivore killed. Do you?”

He gave a hollow chuckle. “Tidy reasoning.” He considered her. “I've been with the Carnivore a long time. He'll understand if I reveal a little, especially since many will hear soon enough.” He sipped tea. “You might be interested to know he's an American. In fact, he grew up in Beverly Hills, a rich kid,
wild and unmanageable. By the early '50s he was smoking grass and stealing cars. He was in and out of jail. His father was a big society lawyer who finally got tired of the kid's problems. He threw him out. So the kid went to live with his mother's relative in Vegas, an Italian uncle named Bosa.”

Bosa
! She remembered the Langley dossier on the Carnivore: His name was believed to be Alex Bosa!

Quill stood and paced. “In Vegas my friend got a job in his uncle's casino, and he married and tried to settle down. But he was still restless. So he picked up a couple of girl friends. His wife found out, and she took a boyfriend in revenge.” Quill paused, not happy with what he was about to say. “His wife got beaten to death by her boyfriend. The cops did nothing. They said they had no evidence. After the funeral the boyfriend got a new girl. But the boyfriend was a maniac, and he beat her, too. My friend, who in a few years would be called the Carnivore . . . he couldn't stand it. The boyfriend was a bastard, and the bastard was getting away with it. Sure as hell he'd murder this new girl friend, too. So the Carnivore killed him.”

Quill shrugged. “Of course, my friend had to skip town. His father refused to see him. His Italian uncle—he was La Cosa Nostra, you know—got my friend enforcement work with his New York family. That's when my friend took the name Alex Bosa, his uncle's name.” Quill smiled, thinking about what came next: “When he got a contract, Alex spent weeks on the details. He got so good, the family lent him to other families who needed out-of-town enforcement. You see, he had an analytical mind like his father's. He liked that link to the old man, especially doing work the self-righteous old prick would hate.

“Then, after a couple of years, Alex got a really tough assignment: Take out a Cuban general who'd refused to pay his gambling debts. But the guy was President Batista's best general, and his death just then was a big help to Fidel Castro when he was trying to capture Havana.” Quill's grin was wintry. “In international circles this impossible hit made Alex Bosa a respected man.”

So Langley's file on the Carnivore had been accurate: A mob hit had helped Castro take power, the Carnivore was born
in the late 1930s, had at least one U.S. parent, and was heterosexual.

“Why the name
Carnivore
?” she asked.

“The godfather felt Alex deserved a name to reflect his talent, so he called him Il Carnivoro. The Carnivore.” Quill stroked his Walther and looked up. “After the Cuban job, Alex asked to go private. He promised the godfather he would still do any ‘special' work the family needed. This was an honorable request, so the godfather agreed, and the Carnivore was in business.”

Quill set the Walther on the piecrust table and poured himself another cup of tea.

“I'd like more, too.”

He took her cup. She felt another moment of admiration from him. For her coolness, perhaps. She had her training at the Ranch to thank for that. The training and psychological makeup that were now integral to her.

He watched as she took her brimming cup. Her hand showed not a tremor. She said, “How did you happen to be at the Café Justine this morning?”

“A note from a contact to let me know Bremner was doing some strange things at a health spa on the rue Vivienne,” Quill said. “I'd say you were lucky. Now, tell me about Bremner.”

“But I need to see Liz! This isn't idle curiosity. How can I prevent him—” She stopped, aware of his sudden wolfish grin.

A wave of menace swept hot and violent from him.
“I
will take care of Hughes Bremner. You will tell me what he's been doing. Everything! Begin with your face. When—”

The rapid beeping of a digital alarm filled the apartment. Quill pressed a small button on his watch, and his oversized TV screen flashed on to show a long hall filled with armed men moving stealthily toward the camera. Sarah saw Gordon's determined face as he urged the others on.