The Scarlet Thread (43 page)

Roy nudged him into silence. He said, “Anything we can do, Clara. We don't own properties outside the city, but anything else …” He let the sentence die away. She looked around at them and quietly moved out of Aldo's chair and onto her feet. The black mourning dress hung loose on her. “I have a place I can stay. I guess it's far enough away.”

They came up and embraced her, those old friends of her father's; others, who weren't on such close terms, shook hands. They all promised anything she needed.

Tino Spoletto made a little bow. “Don Lucca says, anything you want, just say the word.” He was thin and pale, with spectacles and a wide forehead that signified incipient baldness. He stared for a moment into Clara's eyes, his own eyes distorted by strong lenses. He had never been afraid of a woman in his life, and had feared very few men, in spite of his lack of weight and inches. But she filled him with fear.

“My thanks to Don Lucca,” she said. “Tell him to get well soon.” She turned away.

She didn't come to the door; she said goodbye, and one by one they filed out and got into their cars, the engines running. She stood behind the shelter of the curtains until the last of them had gone. The street was empty. She was alone in the house. She had offered wine and the traditional olives. Some of them had smoked, and the haze was visible in the artificial light. It was a wet, overcast day in March, and the heavy curtains were not fully pulled back. It was a house of mourning, of darkness. Clara found a cigarette and lit it; she opened a cupboard and poured herself a straight Scotch on ice. “Clara, Clara,” her poor dead mother had protested, “you drink like a man.”

They had agreed on the murders. They had gone back on their oath to Aldo and reprieved the Falconis. The men her father had hired had been assigned different targets. So simply done. And they'd all come with their sympathy and their offers of support, and told her to get out and stay out and not try to cause trouble. She sat down, not in her father's chair—that had been a gesture—but on the sofa, where the two of them had usually sat together. She drank the whiskey and finished her cigarette. She was off the dope now. No more tranquilizers. The rest and sedation had let her heal. She had played the part expected of her, because she knew, as they knew, that she was helpless. She couldn't strike back. They were men of power. She was just a woman, and no one would go against them for her sake. Not even for all the money she could offer. There was nothing left for her but exile and obscurity. The villa in the Bahamas … She laughed aloud at that: somewhere she could be watched, where the Mafia had influence and friends. Paris. She'd thought of it in the hospital, as she came out of the haze of shock and medication. Paris, where the apartment she'd bought in secret lay empty and dust-sheeted. Unused all these years. The apartment she'd planned as a retreat for Steven and herself, a place in which to recapture their honeymoon happiness. She'd go to Paris. She'd throw off the black drapery of mourning.

She'd let them all think they were safe, that the terrible cry for vengeance wouldn't be uttered. She had painted her mouth symbolically, daring them to read the sign. They would pay for Aldo. For her mother, struck down through grief. For Bruno, falling backward with half his brain shot out. But Steven Falconi would pay first.

She had Mike O'Halloran to thank for that. The file on Steven was locked in her father's desk drawer.

Joe Nimmi was going to the opera that night; he was anxious to get home in time to change his shirt. He loved opera; Verdi was his favorite. He had a fine collection of records and thought Tito Gobbi was the greatest baritone in the world.

Victor and Roy were going home. They lived on the same street, in houses two doors down from each other. Their children played together, went to the same school. Their wives were related. Every two years they took their families on holiday to Naples, where the Guglielmos had lived two generations back. Victor said to his brother, “I still feel lousy about Bruno.”

“Yeah, me too. But it had to be. Bruno would've made trouble; she'd have seen to it. He was her husband. And he had honor. He wasn't just a punk.”

“He was a good guy. Roy, I guess she knows. The way she said, ‘I appreciate all you've done for papa and me.'”

“Sure she knows,” Roy said. “But what the fuck can she do? She brought the whole goddamned mess on herself. Her and Aldo. She knows what's expected. She'll take her ass off someplace. Forget about her. Why don't we all go to Gino's for dinner tonight? We'll bring the kids, make it a party.”

Victor brightened. “Why not? I got an idea for setting up Bruno's old lady. There's a nice little grocery over on Twenty-first. The guy's a real schmuck. We could move Bruno's mama and the kid brother into the business. It'd give them a good living.”

“Why not,” Roy agreed. “We owe them. Okay, we go to Gino's and then maybe take in a movie. Find out what the kids want to see.”

Clara had closed up her parents' house. She let the maid stay on as caretaker. The woman had two sons and a lazy husband who pretended to have a weak heart if anyone suggested work. Clara would have thrown him out years ago, but her father had a soft spot for him. He'd been a good man once, Aldo used to say, refusing to hear any complaint against him. Clara left the family there out of respect for her father.

She hadn't been back to her own house since she left to go to her wedding. That was going to be a real test of nerve. She didn't mind sensing her father in the familiar rooms, seeing her mother's sentimental mementos of her early life and marriage—the silver-framed photographs of dead grandparents, the picture of Clara as a child, robed in innocent white for her first communion like a tiny bride in veil and flowery headdress—none of this frightened Clara.

But if she went home and found Aldo there, waiting for her as he had on the last morning of his life … waiting to take her down the steps to the limousine dressed in silk ribbons … What was she thinking? Must be her nerves, that was all. A brief death rattle from the old nightmares that had her screaming in the hospital.

She swallowed a very strong Scotch and drove herself uptown. She opened the front door. It was very quiet inside; the blinds were drawn. There was no one to greet her and make a cheerful human sound. The maid had left after the tragedy. She didn't feel she owed anything to Clara, who had done nothing but shout at her. It was quiet, Clara thought. But no Aldo. No shade in the corner. The Scotch had chased him away.

She laughed, and heard a funny echo that scared her. “You go on like this,” she said out loud, “and you'll be back in the hospital instead of Paris. For Christ's sake take hold of yourself and don't go looking for a drink. They warned you about that, didn't they?” She opened the blinds; immediately the sunshine flooded in. The magazines on the table were two months out of date. She drew a finger over the tabletop; her finger tip was smeared with dust. She took a deep breath. No ghosts. Only memories, and all of them bitter as gall. Her life there with Steven in the early years. Her dashed hopes of having children. Month after month ending in tears. The loveless coupling in the end, when she was desperate for him and he only performed as a duty. The fights, the walkouts when she knew he had gone to some other woman. Her self-inflicted torture of jealousy. The last insane act of spite, when she refused to go to dinner with him, and he went alone and found the woman whose name he'd gasped out on their wedding night as he climaxed inside her. “Angelina.”

She put a hand to her cheek as if she'd been struck a blow. He had struck her, she remembered. As she told O'Halloran, he'd slapped her when she called the woman a whore. She took the detective's report from a desk drawer. It was Angelina who was the cause of what had happened. Like some malignant figure in a Greek tragedy, she had drifted onto the stage of Steven's life and out again, and blighted Clara's happiness from the wings. Only to return from the dead and claim him. The bloody cycle of betrayal, vengeance and, finally, death began with her. It would end with her, and Clara would be there to see it. Not like the woman who had taken Steven from her for a night in Monte Carlo.

She hadn't thought about that since it happened. The memory made her smile. Clara felt suffused with a cruel sense of power. That woman had paid a price for having Steven Falconi in her bed. Clara's papa had seen to that. All it had taken was a telephone call and a sob in her voice to cause a woman's disfigurement and near death. But she'd had only a newspaper clipping to soothe her jealousy.

Now that Aldo was dead, she had to deal with such problems herself. She was so rich she could pay any price to get what she wanted. And the money was flooding in. The agency was her operation, staffed by people who owed favors to no one except the frontman who paid them. O'Halloran had been a good choice. She thought about him. He was as rotten as she had suspected he might be. As corrupt as she had made him. A cop gone bad was the worst. Thank God. He was efficient; he'd recruited people outside the families.

She hadn't spoken to him since he got back to New York. He'd sent flowers to the hospital. Someone had told her afterward, when she'd begun to return to awareness.

Now, at last, she was ready to act. She'd read his report and begun to make plans. She reached over and picked up the phone. His assistant answered.

She said, “Mr. O'Halloran, please.… Never mind who's calling. Put him on! … Mike? … Yes, it's me.… I'm fine now.… Yes, I've read it. You did a good job. How's the blackmail business?” She laughed, hearing him swear in surprise. “Are we doing all right? … I'm sure. You must bring me up to date. I'm flying out tomorrow.… Paris.… Yes, Paris. I'm going to live there for a while. And I want you to come out. I'll be staying at the Crillon. Get there by Thursday, will you? We've got a lot to talk over.” She hung up. The silence came down on her like a shroud.

I'll sell this place
, she decided.
I'll get good money for it. When I come back, I'll live in Papa's house. I can do it over
. She had deliberately said “when,” not “if.” They had written her off, Nimmi and the rest of the old friends who'd sentenced her father to death. Let them. All she needed was time. And to settle the first of her debts of honor.

O'Halloran had never been to Paris. He hadn't been to Europe till he took the trip to Sicily. The flight had been via Naples. He had heard that old adage about seeing Naples and dying. He wasn't sure what it meant. He thought the city was sprawling and dirty; he got acute indigestion from some shellfish. Sicily was cold and dry like a desert, with powerful colors that appealed to him and a sparse landscape dominated by mountains. He had to take an interpreter to the village where the Falconis had originated. The interpreter talked to the young priest for him. How strange he should be asking about Signor Falconi. Everyone knew about him. He was the village benefactor. Their protector. Yes, he had been married there during the war. It was in the church registry.

O'Halloran copied down the entry. He wrote it in English, with the interpreter's help. Stefano Antonio Falconi. Angela Frances Drummond. The date in 1943 and their signatures.

The priest saw them out, smiling. He didn't even ask why the American wanted to see the evidence of the marriage. He was a simple, trusting man.

From Sicily, O'Halloran flew to England. That was the worst part of the trip. The weather was vile, raining dull and cold. He stayed in a comfortable little hotel in London, made his contact with David Wickham over the telephone, using a careful cover story.

Wickham was cagey but polite. O'Halloran was amazed at how polite the English were, with their thank yous and pleases. He didn't like them any better. His old man had been a fervent Irish Republican. He'd brought up all his children on the iniquities of English rule in Ireland over eight hundred years.

Wickham made Mike feel clumsy and out of place in the elegant office, as if he'd left his fly undone. But he took the bait about Angela Drummond, being sought in connection with a legacy from a distant American relative and traced to an apartment in New York lent her for a vacation.

Yes, he knew Angela Drummond, Wickham said. She'd been engaged to work as his assistant. It was his bad luck that she went on her New York vacation; it was he who had got her the loan of the apartment. The bad luck, he explained to O'Halloran, was her meeting a man and getting married, without taking up her job. Wickham's dislike of the bridegroom loosened his tongue. O'Halloran was getting the picture: a man honored as its protector by a Sicilian village; an Italian-American whom the Londoner was sticking his knife into. He could have painted Falconi's portrait from those two descriptions. He'd seen a number of such men during his years in the Department. Older men, men with expensive suits and gold watches, who'd earned their place in the hierarchy the hard way. With guns and knives and ice picks. They had brains, and they went on to sit behind the desks and let others bloody their hands.

And then his picture of Steven Falconi went out of focus in a two-bit English village, as different from the hilltop cluster of houses in Sicily as a pothole on the surface of the moon: Haywards Heath, a village with a sodden area of grass surrounding a stone cross on a plinth commemorating the war dead; with old houses, almost too picturesque, standing behind little walls and railings and front gardens, all bare and dripping in the godforsaken winter weather. He'd found the house with the brass plaque, and they told him in the pub, as he forced down tepid beer, that the old doctor didn't practice anymore. He gave the same story he'd told Wickham, with a different ending. He was ninety percent certain that the Angela Drummond he was looking for was not Dr. Drummond's daughter, but he was just drawing a line across all the old leads. He expected to find the young lady in Scotland. He said Scotland because he knew Drummond was a Scottish name.