Requiem For a Glass Heart (15 page)

Irina stared at him. Just when she thought Bontate was easing back on his tension, he revealed it once again, in so subtle a way that it caught her by surprise. His suspicion was far from allayed. He was not satisfied. The worm, it seemed, never rested in Carlo Bontate.

“Do you understand my confusion?” he asked. “I think even those clouds out there are guided by a purpose,” he said, lifting his chin to the plain below. “My job is to find out if that purpose has anything to do with me. And if it does, then I have to know if it means to harm me or to help me. That is as natural to me as breathing and having sex. I have thought like that since I was ten years old, so you can’t expect me to think any other way now. When my good friend Sergei Krupatin sends me a beautiful woman such as yourself and tells me that I should trust her in everything she says and everything she does, what am I to think?”

He paused, tilted his head at her, and shifted his eyebrows in a sympathetic appeal.

“And then—such a surprise—my good friend Signor Wei volunteers to fly you here to see me in his own private jet. Well, this is even something more to think about. What do I imagine from this? I squint my eyes and think to myself, this is something. This is something I need to think about very hard.”

Irina looked into Carlo Bontate’s face. The bright amber eyes were narrowed slits, glowing at her like a cat’s. Nothing but a conspiracy would satisfy this clever, thick-jowled Sicilian. Nothing but a new angle would sound sensible. If Irina wanted to survive this intrigue of Krupatin’s, she was going to have to be as inventive as a poet. She was going to have to pull angels out of the sky and send them to this Sicilian with a secret that would compel even the Great Deceiver to believe.

T
HEY TALKED ON INTO THE LATE AFTERNOON.
F
ROM THE SECOND
-floor loggia of Bontate’s villa, they watched the lengthening silhouettes in the olive groves as the gnarled trunks of the trees melted into their own shadows as if in a Surrealist painting, spilling across the hard Sicilian soil in uniform ranks away from the falling sun.

The shade grew deeper on the loggia as they emptied two of the don’s unlabeled bottles of wine. They were now nearing the dregs of the third. Irina excused herself to use the bathroom, and one of Bontate’s young men emerged from the somber reception room and escorted her down the corridor, where he waited a discreet distance from the doorway. After finishing, she washed her face with cold water. Though Bontate’s vines had produced a surprisingly smooth wine, she should not have taken so much of it on an empty stomach. Bontate himself seemed deliberately to be seeking a numbing level of consumption, a considerable task in view of his healthy girth.

Returning to the loggia, she was relieved to see that a meal had been set up on a second table beside the one where they were sitting. The table was laden with grilled meats, a platter of bread, and bowls with a variety of olives. There were serving dishes of baked squash, potatoes roasted with
peppers and onions, and platters of cheeses, fresh tomatoes, and sliced fruits. There was also another bottle of wine.

Bontate was finishing a cigarette, which he ground out in the tin jar lid.

“I was hungry,” he explained. “Anyway, it’s time to eat.”

Without ceremony, he handed her a crockery plate with a knife and fork lying on a white linen napkin in the middle of it and took a second plate for himself. Then, still without speaking, he began serving up the food.

They ate as the setting sun turned the white village of Marineo to pinkish gold on the foothills across the valley. Nighthawks came out, darting in the dusk for insects, and down in the
moscato
vineyard a bird with a languorous, quivering trill sang among the rows of vines.

Bontate ate like a laborer, in silence, preoccupied, often gazing out to the darkening valley that fell away from the villa. Irina could only wonder what kind of progress she had made with this man of simple habits and violent reputation.

As dusk passed into evening, dim lights came on along the loggia, and Irina could hear the domestic sounds of women’s voices and the opening and closing of doors echoing through the tile hallways and cavernous rooms. Once or twice she heard the small voice of the child, Bontate’s daughter, the keeper of the speckled hen, gift of the hooli-booli man.

Bontate ignored all this until the last light in the sky was gone and the voices in the house had receded into the quiet places of privacy that were peculiar to the rhythms of every household. It was a strange, silent meal, a moody repast that had the effect of stealing away the appetite that Irina had brought to the table. She ate mostly vegetables and bread and olives—and drank more wine.

Suddenly Bontate laid down his fork loudly and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He looked at his watch and then at Irina, his amber eyes aglow in the soft light of the loggia.

“Signorina Serova,” he said, pushing away his plate and picking up the cigarettes again. He lighted one and exhaled thick blue streamers of smoke through his nostrils, and picked up his bistro glass. He drank the wine as if it were water.

“I still believe it is an odd thing that Sergei Krupatin wants you to do,” he said, “but life is full of odd things, and they are not all necessarily bad. That’s true.”

He smoked.

“And I think I understand what kind of woman you are, doing this thing to repay a debt … which is an honorable intention that I respect.”

He drank his wine.

“Now, I want you to understand what kind of man I am.” His stomach lurched with a suppressed belch. “I want you to go into Palermo with me. I want you to see something.”

He smoked.

“Have you had enough? I don’t want to rush you.” His voice was not solicitous.

“No, I’m through,” she said, shaking her head and wiping her mouth. At this moment she was grateful that she had drunk enough wine to sedate her nerves. An abrupt invitation to go to Palermo at night with Don Carlo Bontate was not a thing to be desired. But Irina had no choice. She was already deep into her game.

Bontate stood and leaned over the stone parapet of the loggia.

“Nino,” he called down into the courtyard, “let’s go.”

There were shouts below as young men relayed the message to each other. Hurried footsteps crunched across the gravel, and the motors of the two Mercedes started up in preparation for the trip.

“Have you ever been to Palermo?” Bontate asked, motioning for Irina to precede him. “It’s not too far—about forty kilometers to the neighborhood where we are going.”

When they got to the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the graveled courtyard, the car doors were open and waiting for them. Young men with serious expressions stood by each of the opened doors, waiting for a word from Bontate.

As Irina got into the back seat of the second car, Bontate stepped to the first and spoke with several of the young men, who nodded and nodded, listening to him. Then he came and got into the back seat with Irina, and the two cars pulled out of the courtyard and started down the dirt road from the villa, passing once again through the vineyards and olive groves. The Villa Bontate slowly receded behind them, its windows glowing yellow in the blue evening.

They sped across the valley, throwing up dust that hung like a dun mist in the still darkness of the
campagna.
They
climbed up into Marineo, where they encountered pavement and the big Mercedes roared through the cramped streets. Soon they were on a tortuous, narrow highway that the young drivers maneuvered with relaxed abandon, careening around curves and hurtling into the straightaways. Shortly they reached the main highway and turned north toward Palermo.

“This is an interesting story,” Bontate said to Irina as he settled into his corner of the back seat, oblivious to the reckless driving of his youthful chauffeur. “It has to do with a woman named Emilia.” Bontate had grown listless, finally showing the effects of the huge volume of wine he had consumed. “Emilia was the wife of a Palermo magistrate, a pompous old rooster who was twice her age and only half as clever. She was—and still is—a beautiful woman with a full and generous body. She was a good wife and, as the old rooster wished, entertained all the right social and political people in their
palazzo
near the Quattro Canti. There was always a lot of talk there. Gossip.

“But Emilia was too spirited for that old man. She had yearnings. Desires. It happened that I got to know her,” Bontate said vaguely, looking out the window indifferently, “and we were seeing each other quite often—and secretly—during 1992, when all of Italy exploded in a fit of wailing after the assassinations of Judge Giovanni Falcone and Judge Paolo Borsellino. Palermo was already a boiling pot because of Falcone’s self-righteous ‘Mafia investigations,’ and since the magistrates were often at Emilia’s house for social dinners, she was hearing all the talk from the government side of the situation. With the help of her information, I was able to keep my family out of the turmoil altogether and even to make lucrative arrangements with the Colombians and the Turks while some of the other families were preoccupied. Also, because of some things she told me, I was able to blackmail an industrialist in Milan and a banker in Rome. So the relationship was a very good one.”

“And why was she doing all of this for you, Signor Bontate?” Irina asked. “Did she love you?”

Bontate shrugged. “Maybe. But probably it was because I was putting a lot of money in a Swiss account for her.”

The cars were now flying toward the outskirts of Palermo, the city’s lights throwing a pale glow in the distance.

“The old rooster died,” Bontate went on, “a stroke of
good fortune for Emilia and bad luck for me. She was no longer any good to me. But that was okay. She had made a lot of money for me, and she had made a lot of money
from
me, so it had been a good bargain for both of us. Well, she inherited the
palazzo
near the Quattro Canti, but as soon as she got everything straightened out legally, she bought a place in Rome and began spending most of her time there. The truth is, Palermo was always too small for her anyway. Sometimes I would go to see her when I was in Rome, but after a while we lost touch.”

Bontate stopped, leaned forward, and tapped the shoulder of the young man sitting beside the driver. He made a drinking gesture, and the man handed a flask over the seat. Bontate unscrewed the lid and took several deep swallows. Irina could smell the liquor, and she wondered how he could handle it on top of the heavy wine.

“A year ago Emilia contacted me,” he went on, resting the flask on his thigh. “When I met her in Palermo, where she had come for the weekend, she told me that she had made some acquaintances who might interest me. It turned out that she was seeing an Israeli businessman who wanted to buy a great quantity of heroin. She gave me a lot of information about him, and I had my people check it out. He was ex-Mossad. He was connected with some very big names in Eastern Europe. Sergei had done business with him. And Wei, too. We talked to the Colombians. We did all the right things. This took several months, but in the end he seemed to be someone we could work with. Finally, over a period of five months, we sold this man a total of three tons of heroin, moving it through Europe for him, pushing it through our channels. We got our money. He ordered more.”

Bontate took another long drink from the flask, capped it, and tossed it into the front seat with a gesture of disgust.

“Then four days ago we learned he was an American DEA agent.” He looked out the window again. “Last night he was killed in Brindisi.”

They were entering the outskirts of Palermo. For the last four or five kilometers they had been on the major motorway, but now they turned off and were making their way into the belly of the old city. Palermo was a city of romantic decay. The streets were narrow and cobblestoned and lined with crumbling shops and dilapidated
palazzi
At night dim lights
and darkened doorways led to mazes of courtyards and secluded piazzas. History was a potent force here, where the dense architecture evoked the past and every stone held memories of Saracens and Normans and Spaniards.

Familiar with the serpentine streets, Bontate’s young men wheeled their cars swiftly through ancient passageways and pulled into the walled courtyard of an old
palazzo
where a sallow light glowed within the barrel-vaulted portico of the front door. Gar doors flew open, and the young men spread out in the courtyard. Bontate sighed hugely and crawled out of the back seat with a stoic groan. A single light burned in one of the tall ground-floor windows.

Irina walked with Bontate into the portico, where one of his men was already waiting by the front door. They stepped inside and entered an enormous and gloomy
sala grande
furnished with elaborate antiques in the formal manner of a bygone era and revived only in the homes of the wealthy in love with the past. To one side of this room, sitting at a small, ornate game table, was a woman as dark as a Gypsy, who looked at them with sultry eyes that bore an expression of philosophical melancholy. She wore an evening dress which bared her lovely shoulders and displayed a generous décolletage that was the perfection of seduction. She held a deck of cards, and beside her elbow was a liquor bottle and a glass.

She stared at them as they crossed the room.

“Who is this, Carlo?” she asked, her voice sad and gently scolding.

“It doesn’t matter, ’Ilia,” Bontate said. “A friend.”

Emilia drank from her glass, her eyes on Bontate. She was drunk, but it was the steady inebriation of a woman used to the condition. Putting the glass on the green baize of the table, she lay down a few cards and looked at them. Irina saw they were Tarot.

The woman studied the cards a moment and then looked up at Bontate.

“I thought, perhaps, one last seduction,” she said, turning her heavy eyes on Irina. “But …”She tilted her head to one side in resignation and looked at Bontate. “Go ahead, Carlito, sit down.”

Bontate sat across the card table from her, his manner respectful and polite, all the coarse country mannerisms he
had displayed at his villa subordinated in deference to this compelling woman. They looked at each other in silence.

“What got into you?” he asked. The question carried a tone of regretful disappointment. The only light in the cavernous room came from a lamp near the entry and a rustic wrought-iron floor lamp beside the card table. The deep gold light pooled around the two of them, but the shadows in the upper reaches of the high ceiling loomed above them like brooding clouds.

She looked at him, almost in tears, and her mouth quivered into a smile.

“Passione, mio caro.
The same as always. It was so crazy.”

“You couldn’t find passion somewhere else? It had to be with this man?”