The Scarlet Thread (34 page)

The meetings were very discreet. An oath of silence was taken at each one. Only five of the eight heads of the Fabrizzi family were willing to talk to Roy and Victor, but those five were important men, powerful and respected only second to Don Aldo himself. They listened to the Guglielmos and said nothing of the plan to wipe out Lucca Falconi and his people. That oath of silence was as sacred as the one they had taken when they agreed to meet with Roy and Victor. It was agreed in principle that something had to be done if the implications were true. Those who knew Bruno Salviatti were easier to convince. He might be a stud for the daughter, but he was no heir to Aldo.

It was suggested, and agreed, that a spy should be introduced into the Don's household. Someone who could check on the stories about weekly conferences between Clara and her father. One of his most trusted friends and henchmen from the early days offered to handle it. He was anxious to prove to them, he said, that the rumors were no more than silly gossip. He would ask Don Aldo to house a young relative for a few weeks. As head of the family, the Don would not refuse a plea for help.

“How much longer is she going to stay here?” Clara demanded.

Her mother was placatory. “Only a week or so. She's a good girl, she helps me, just like Anna did. She doesn't get in your way.”

Luisa eyed Clara apprehensively. She was more difficult than ever these days. She had a handsome man, a wedding to look forward to, a new life; but she didn't seem to care.

She and Aldo talked privately together, and even at the family table they were apart from the women. She watched her daughter and wondered at the change in her. She showed little respect or regard for Bruno. His swaggering didn't deceive the older woman. She might not have Clara's sophistication, but she knew men, and she could tell he was ill at ease. And resentful. It wouldn't be a happy marriage unless Clara changed her attitude.

But she didn't dare say anything. She was glad to have someone like Gina staying with them. Of course, Aldo agreed to give her a home until the family problems had died down. He was a good man, and he knew his duty to his people. The girl's father was in prison. She had run away from her mother's boyfriend to save her virtue. If she was living under Don Aldo's protection, the mother and her man wouldn't dare try to force her back home. And by the time she did leave, her father's relatives would have sorted out the problem.

Gina was quiet and shy. Luisa was kindhearted and maternal by nature. She couldn't mother Clara, and there were no small children to occupy her. She was happy to take care of someone in trouble. She was happy to be needed. Clara didn't think of anyone but herself anymore.

Clara lit a cigarette. She resented having another girl living in her parents' flat. She had accepted the hard-luck story with little sympathy. If her father had to offer protection, she couldn't argue. But she didn't share her mother's opinion of the girl. Clara thought she was sly and far less the wronged innocent than she pretended. Clara positively disliked her and made it plain. Why couldn't some other relative have taken her in, she demanded when the original two weeks stretched out to a month, with no sign of her leaving.

“Only your father is powerful enough to keep her safe,” Luisa explained. “The mother is living with a bad man, very bad. A man of violence.”

Clara didn't care. She didn't feel easy with Gina on the other side of the door, but she couldn't explain that feeling to her father.

She had Bruno stay in her house when she wanted him. She took a cruel pleasure in their sexual relationship. He tried so hard to dominate her in the only way he knew and she was able to resist him so easily. The convulsions of the body never inspired a spark of tender feeling in her. Lust, but not passion. She indulged her lust, but passion was what she had felt for Steven. To Clara passion meant love, with its vulnerability and pain. She never thought of Bruno Salviatti in any context except bed. He was coarse and ill-educated, vain and stupid. She disregarded his good qualities because she wasn't interested enough to notice them. He was loyal, generous in his way, sentimental about children. He was brave. Roy and Victor Guglielmo weren't too worried about brains, but they could vouch for Salviatti's courage. Clara didn't think of him at all, and if she gave him expensive clothes, it was because his lack of style annoyed her.

Aldo was content. Bruno was full of respect for him. He seemed to treat Clara well. Luisa approved of him. She had never felt comfortable with Steven Falconi. And father and daughter were deeply involved in a business scheme, which had been Clara's inspiration.

She had drawn on her own experience in employing private detectives to spy on Steven. Why not start their own agency and enlarge it to a chain across the state? It could provide the material and the front for a blackmailing operation that could be limitless. Politicians, public figures, movie stars—she listed the money-making potential. It was a long-term project, possibly five years, and the parent agency had to be controlled at arm's length. The higher the fees, she insisted, remembering how she herself had been fleeced, the richer, the more vulnerable, the clients. Aldo was gratified, and intrigued. She was a smart girl, with smart ideas. He saw even further than she did in terms of the power such an organization would give the man who actually controlled it. He told Clara to find a suitable office, and then they would start by registering the agency.

Clara was engrossed in business. He had come to depend upon her as a sounding board for his own ideas. He consulted her on everything from a small discrepancy in the quarterly “take” to the abilities of someone he thought of promoting.

Within the year, she had become his closest confidante and adviser. And inevitably they grew a little careless. The door wasn't always closed, the telephone conversations were sometimes unguarded, and once Gina came into the living room while they were both double-checking some accounts.

Six weeks after her arrival, Gina's relative called to collect her. Aldo welcomed his old friend, and the old friend kissed him on both cheeks and presented him with a case of fine cognac and a humidor of Havana cigars. A piece of elaborate Victorian glassware was his gift to Luisa Fabrizzi. Gina could go home. Her mother had got rid of her boyfriend; the man would not trouble either of them again. They were forever in Don Aldo's debt.

Aldo felt gratified. He liked to confer favors, to be admired as a patriarch.

Clara said acidly, “They should have given
me
something. She's been getting on my nerves long enough.” Then she forgot about Gina.

She had found a small detective agency in Newark, New Jersey, that seemed suitable. It was owned by two partners, former New York City policemen, one retired after a shooting, the other seeking more income to support a growing family. Both were men of reputation, with clean licenses. And not much money. The business had been established only two years, and Clara discovered that the family man had a mortgage on his house that was causing problems.

She drove down to Newark. It was a long day, but an interesting one. Posing as a prospective client, she managed to see and judge both partners in the firm, the Ace Detective Agency. How corny can you get, she wondered as she shook hands with the ex-cop who'd stopped three bullets in his stomach during a holdup. He had a lean, wary look about him, which she didn't like. He was still very much a cop, still missing life in the precinct. The man with the kids and the wife and the mortgage was in his late thirties. He was more what Clara had in mind. He was fit-looking, sharp-eyed. He was there with the lighter and the ashtray before she'd finished taking out a cigarette. He stared at the case a little too long. It was gold and expensive. He smelled a rich client. His partner smelled a rat.

She talked about her husband, reeling off the standard tale of suspected adultery, and noticed which one of them was bored and which was making his interest very apparent. She wasn't disappointed. She left without making a firm commitment, but promised to telephone when she'd decided to do something about it.

The married man was named O'Halloran. The other had an Italian name, and that had alerted her from the start. When Italians became cops they pushed harder against their own than against the Irish or the Jews. He'd have to go. If it worked as she planned, he'd be bought out. And O'Halloran would find himself with a new partner. A woman, whose only requirement would be access to his files, and whose contribution would be unlimited supplies of money and a brand-new office in midtown Manhattan.

She drove home. Bruno was coming for her. Clara never cooked, and eating at home with him bored her anyway. She'd made reservations at a new Chinese restaurant on Forty-seventh Street. She showered and changed, her mind busy with the details of her day. The weather was turning bitterly cold. She chose a dress of dark-red velvet that clung to her like a second skin.

Pouring a glass of bourbon, she settled down to wait for Bruno. He was never late. He came at eight o'clock exactly, sleek and trim as a boxer in a new pinstripe she'd bought him, with a heavy camel-hair coat draped across his shoulders. He was strikingly handsome, she thought calmly, and she let him fondle her and kiss her mouth open. When he started easing her skirt up, she pushed his hand away.

“Ah, baby,” he protested. “What's the hurry?”

“I'm hungry. And this dress cost three hundred dollars,” she snapped at him. “Stop pawing me. Come on, let's go.”

He moved to the tray of bottles. She didn't see the look on his face, and she wouldn't have cared anyway. “I'd like a Scotch,” he said.

“You can have one at Chow's. We'll miss the table.”

She went into her room and swept back, wrapped in a long hooded wild-mink coat. He was drinking from a full glass. Clara glared at him.

“I said we'll be late,” she said, her voice raised.

Bruno didn't move. “When we're married, I'll eat at home. I'll have my Scotch and my food on the table when I want it.”

It wasn't much of a challenge to her. He often made gestures of independence, and she knew exactly how to cope with them. She drew the coat back, rested one hand on a jutting hip and said, “When we're married, big man, I'll be your little homebody wife. But right now, I'm going to dinner. You want to stay here, feel free.”

He caught up with her outside the front door.

That night, when Clara was asleep beside him, Bruno Salviatti lay wide awake. He didn't like Chinese food. It left him feeling empty. He had been bored and sleepy through the evening because inside he was very angry and he couldn't let it show. He'd made love because she wanted it and she knew how to rouse him till he forgot about everything else. But afterward it tasted sour in the mouth. He felt like a circus animal, performing new tricks every time. At first he had been fascinated, challenged by her, lured by the prospects of such a marriage, but now he lay naked, hip to thigh with her, and thought how much he hated her already. She had bitten deep into his self-esteem. He found that hardest to bear. She diminished him as a man. Other women had bought him clothes and presents, but he'd accepted them as his due. He liked women to look up to him, and in return he could be generous, he could be good to women. This woman used and despised him.

He'd been ready to marry even before he met her, ready to raise a family. He was doing well, he had a reputation. Roy Guglielmo had given him a district. Then he saw her at that anniversary party and set out to make her. He wanted to show off before the young
ragazzi
.

It had looked like such a great chance to rise in the world, to marry the daughter of a don without sons or grandsons to follow him. It didn't seem so now. When he woke in the morning, Clara was still asleep. He didn't wake her. The maid was in the kitchen. She made him coffee and eggs. He thought, looking at her shuffling around him,
This will be my life. My life at home
. He banged out of the house without finishing his breakfast or looking in on Clara to say goodbye.

Ex-Detective Sergeant Mike O'Halloran was coming up on forty. He'd put his savings into the agency with his friend Pacellino, and for the first year his wife had been happy. Happy that he was not in danger, that he was home at regular hours and able to spend time with his children. She looked ten years younger, and their marriage picked up. It picked up so well that before they realized it she was pregnant.

That made four children, on top of the mortgage on the new house. After that it started to go downhill. Small debts became bigger; the agency had some lean months in the first year, and the doctor's bills for his wife and the baby were a worry. He was sorry she'd persuaded him to leave the force. She nagged, and he started losing his temper.

They got some good jobs, but the work wasn't consistent. A lot of it was small stuff, short on expenses. Routine surveillance for divorce; court appearances, which took time.

Pacellino was a bachelor. He had a small rented apartment and a girlfriend who worked in real estate. O'Halloran bore the real burden. When two days went by and the rich bitch from New York didn't phone in, he became depressed. She'd looked like real money. Then she called him personally and invited him to lunch. O'Halloran couldn't believe his luck. He even agreed to her request to keep the meeting private. Just between themselves. She had a proposition to put to him.

He didn't say anything to Pacellino. He just took off at lunchtime and went to the hotel she'd suggested. She was in the restaurant when he got there, a glass of bourbon on the table. He apologized if he'd kept her waiting. She had a cool look about her. She pulled her sleeve back to check her watch, and then she smiled at him and asked him to sit down. He had a gut feeling as he did so that this had nothing to do with a cheating husband.

His mind was a long way off his investigation that afternoon. He sat outside an apartment building, watching a client's wife go in to spend time with her boyfriend, and he thought about the offer the woman had made. She wanted a detective agency all her own, but she didn't want the connection made public. She had emphasized the necessity of complete secrecy, and there was just a hint of threat in the way she repeated it. She was a beautiful, sexy dame, O'Halloran admitted, but he'd just as soon put his hand into the tigers' cage at the zoo as try and feel her up. When she mentioned the investment, he managed to keep his face straight. If the business prospered, she added, they would expand to other major cities.