Blood Rites (29 page)

“At first, he was too smart to leave any bruises for Grandpa Domaro to discover. Later, he drank too much and got careless and I guess Grandpa warned him to behave because for a while he never touched her. Instead, he started working Russ over.”

“And you, yes?”

“No. He made Russ hit me. It started when Russ was about six and I was three. He’d order my punishment when Mother wasn’t home and if Russ didn’t do a good enough job on me, the old man would belt him. It went on for years before Mother surprised him at the game. She had a temper herself and I remember that she went for him. When that free-for-all ended, he called an ambulance to take her to the hospital and we were alone with him. We were smart kids. When he pulled out his bottle, we hid in the closet behind some boxes.”

“And then?”

“I never saw what happened then, but when we first heard about what Russ had done to those girls, Dominic got really spooked. We met for drinks and I thought I might get his mind off of this mess but he kept wanting to talk about it. After Grandpa saw Mom in the hospital, he went to Raymond and asked him to force some sense into my father. Raymond came to our house in person, that’s how important Grandpa Domaro was, and he made threats. One thing led to another and my father died with a knife in his stomach. Dominic said it was self-defense but it might have been planned. You know, good Catholic girls don’t get divorced.

“Now I never left that closet but when Russ heard the scuffle, he did. Dominic told me that while Raymond stood over the body, he saw Russ watching him from the doorway with a look on his face that said he’d seen everything. Ray Carrera didn’t know what to do. I mean, how would Grandpa Domaro have felt if Ray knifed his eleven-year-old grandson. Some favor, huh?

“I don’t know why he left Russ at the scene but he didn’t have to worry. When the police came, Russ told them he hadn’t seen a thing. Russ went to the Carreras’ real estate office the next day. He worked there after school and on weekends. Between whatever Russ did for them and Grandpa Domaro’s help, we lived better with Mark Lowell dead than we ever did when he was alive.”

“How did Dominic know what had happened?”

“His father told him. He said, ‘You can always trust Russ.’ The night we got the news, Domie must of repeated that sentence ten times. I never guessed they were that close.”

“And he worked for the Carreras all these years?”

“Except for the war years when nobody worked for them but some nasty old men. Ray Carrera was patriotic. He didn’t buy deferments for his guys. Russ got sent to the Pacific. He didn’t talk about it after he got home.”

Toni had said enough, probably more than enough, but the man pressed on in his musical voice, relaxing her and making her want to continue. “After the war, Russ became Ray Carrera’s right-hand man. Russ got me a job, a good one, managing the office of a trucking firm. Sometimes, not often, he’d call me and ask that a certain driver get assigned to a certain route. That was his payment, I guess, for getting me the job.

“We hardly ever saw one another. Then Ray died. Three months later, Russ disappeared. I thought he was dead until I read about what he’d done. I can’t believe it but somehow I do, you know what I mean?”

The visitor nodded. “And who is Dominic Carrera’s current right-hand man?”

“Look, talking about Russ is one thing but . . .”

“Who!”

Toni could actually feel the effort of that command as the compulsion to respond stunned her like a well-aimed slap. “Domie doesn’t talk about business but I think it’s Angelo Volpe,” she said with disgust.

“You don’t like him?”

“If he disappeared tomorrow, I sure as hell wouldn’t mourn. Sometimes, when he knows Carrera is coming over, he shows up a half hour or so early. Then he can catch me decked out in something like this so he can sit and stare at Carrera’s meat and go home to his family, feeling so self-righteous that he resists temptation. Like I’d put out to that fat slob if he asked. You know what I mean?”

“I do.” Throughout the evening, Stephen had felt a growing kinship with Carrera and now more than ever. Toni reminded him of Amalia, the madame in Chaves—practical, intelligent, honest. “Please tell me about Volpe—what he is like and where he can be found when he is not working.”

“He’s a tall man, maybe six-two and when I was a kid I remember that he used to be solid, you know, the kind of guy that can break somebody in half without even trying? But that was when he was younger and he worked in the packing house and collected bad debts for Ray Carrera. Now he’s over fifty and gone to flab. When he’s not at Domie’s or at home, he’s at his brother’s tavern. Or at church. When death hits Angelo Volpe, he intends to be prepared. The way he takes care of himself, that’s probably wise. Oh, yeah, one other thing—he has a father in a nursing home on the west side. He spends every Friday night with him.” She added the details of names and places.

“Is there anyone else particularly close to Carrera?” Stephen asked when she’d finished.

“I only know about Jason Halli. He’s . . .”

“Don’t bother. I’ve met him.” Stephen hesitated. Toni did not know anything of Carrera’s businesses and Stephen had almost exhausted the personal details as well. “One final question—I know Carrera has a real estate office on Mayfair. Does he have another, a more private place?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. You know, we’ve been talking for what, about two hours? And I haven’t even asked if you’d like a drink or anything.”

“I wouldn’t.” He stood and patted the side of the package beside the table. “Tomorrow you should arrange to have this package delivered to Carrera. Please do not open it.”

Normally curious, she decided to not even touch it. “Listen, do you have to go?” she asked. “I mean, your arrival ruined my plans for the evening. You want to stay and make it up to me?” She stared at him with absolutely no trace of shame.

“Why did you become Carrera’s lover?”

“Probably because when you get handed a shit like Mark Lowell for a father you want to glom on to every good opportunity that comes your way. Carrera was the best of mine.” She stretched, arching her back as she did so, revealing more of her body than she ever would in Volpe’s presence. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay awhile?”

The privacy of the wilderness, where he could hunt every day, had spoiled Stephen. Though the life he had taken only a day ago could easily sustain him for weeks, habit made him hunger for this girl. A thousand years ago he would most likely have left her ravaged body for her lover to find. Now, as he stared at her, he considered only two problems: How much would she have to remember? How much must she forget?

Certainly, for her sake, she must never recall anything she had told him, perhaps that she had spoken at all.

Toni grabbed his hand and tugged. Caught unaware, his arm reached its full length for an instant, brushing the top of his knee just before he crouched beside her, sending a strong mental command that she forget what she’d just seen.

His command half worked. Though she still remembered, she no longer felt any curiosity. He silently cursed himself for his chivalry. Though he had been able to use the drug in her system to relax her and exonerate her confessions, it also unfocused her mind, making it harder for him to grasp and control her now.

Well, one dilemma was solved. Only her blood could create the bond necessary to wipe her memory. He would be dining tonight.

“Roll over,” he said. When she had, he rested a hand on the small of her back, rubbing his fingers over the copper satin, then moving his hand slowly up her spine, his mind concentrating on her body, forcing it to respond. She bent one knee, then straightened the leg hard against the cushions. “For Christ’s sake, what are you . . .”

Though she tried to turn over, he pressed against her back too tightly and ran his lips down the side of her neck. Just above the hairline, he bit. Even the scent of her blood could not drown out her perfume. If this were more than a quick simple use, he would insist that she shower.

She began to struggle, believing, he knew from the bond already forming, that he had used a needle to drug or poison her. He held her, feeding her visions of what she wanted him to do until, convinced of their reality by the passion growing in her body, she relaxed and let him control her completely.

He saw no need to hurry, to take or give any less than he would to any other victim. A quarter hour later, while she hovered near consciousness, he sat motionless beside her, oblivious to the room around him as his mind did its familiar work, selectively wiping her memories, filling in the gaps in the ones that remained, mentally reviewing the scene until it seemed convincing and real as any imperfect human memory.

He left her sleeping, the two tiny spots of blood at her hairline, the box on the table and his description as the man who had delivered it the only indication of his presence here this evening.

Downstairs, the guard heard a noise in the service room behind the elevators. When he went to investigate, Stephen walked out the door, as unobserved as when he had arrived.

By the time Stephen returned to the hotel, the sky had turned a pale shade of grey. Pausing outside the door, Stephen ordered Richard into a deeper sleep so he would not wake when Stephen opened the door. Stephen did not want to answer Richard’s natural questions now, to plot or plan or justify anything he had done tonight.

Sometime in the course of the evening, Richard had taken off his suit, arranging it neatly on a chair. Now he slept with the revolver on the floor beside the bed, covered only by a sheet though the air conditioner made the room cold and dry. He’d propped an extra pillow under his head and something about his position and the unevenness of his breathing made Stephen concerned.

He rested a hand on Richard’s forehead and carefully touched his mind, feeling the dull nagging pain in his chest, the clumps of runaway cells growing stronger as their victim weakened.

With all the power his kind possessed, all the centuries given them, the Austras could never alter the natural course of another’s life. Those they cared for died and their curse often seemed to be in caring at all.

Though he would try to bargain with Carrera, the man would not listen any more than one of Stephen’s kind would turn away from vengeance at the plea of a stranger. Then, released from his promise to Richard, Stephen would give him the only gift he could—a few months of peace.

He had not killed a man since the beginning of the last great war. In spite of the increasingly dark Austra annual reports, he had found the years of peace a comfort, a personal omen of calmer times. Nonetheless, he warmed to this hunt and the thought of killing filled him with familiar anticipation.

Soon he would face his prey.

I

Later Carrera would remember that he’d been warned.

The message came while Carrera was eating a late breakfast with his wife and two teenage daughters in a small private room of one of his favorite downtown restaurants. The Pay-tons and their wives were eating at one table in the main room, Volpe and a couple of the guys at another. Two more were sitting in a car parked close to the door ready to move in if there was trouble. Since his arrest, Carrera had become justifiably paranoid. He knew so much about so many people who didn’t have any reason to trust him. Hell, even he’d considered striking a bargain with the feds. The odds were horrible, though. Better to take the fifteen than turn on the guys up the ladder from him. But though he would have preferred to lay low, he was seen in public with his family far more than in the past. He understood the need to look confident before his trial, to build sympathy by creating the facade of an ideal family man. The papers had picked up on this immediately, but instead of exposing the lie, they played along with it, informing the public about the psychiatrists and doctors Carrera had hired to treat his son, the family’s anguish and shame when the boy had died.

Carrera’s wife would have preferred to mourn her tragedies in private but she understood her duties. She even managed to sometimes feel genuinely content. Dominic had not paid this much attention to the women in his family in years.

While they sat at the linen-covered table eating warm rolls and honey, a messenger hand-delivered the box Stephen had left with Toni. Angelo Volpe knew Russ was in Canada, assumed it had to have come from him, and, following Carrera’s orders, immediately brought it to his table. Carrera’s guards unwrapped the box and pulled out a sealed wide-mouth urn coated in black lacquer.

Carrera chuckled. Russ showed excellent taste. “Open it,” he said, fully prepared to slip the film into his pocket to be developed later.

When the urn was unsealed, Carrera’s oldest daughter got a whiff of whatever was packed inside and wrinkled her nose. As the lid was lifted, she ran for the bathroom, vomiting on the carpet in the lobby. Her younger sister looked into the urn and ran after her, screaming. The manager rushed to the back room while a few guests who had recognized Carrera when he’d arrived quietly exited the front. Others craned their heads to see in the doorway to where Carrera sat staring at the head of Jason Halli looking up, seemingly at him, from inside the urn, an expression of perfect terror on his severed head. Carrera, who had killed often and with relish, had never seen a man die in such horror. Never. Oblivious to his wife, to his daughters, to the police mingling with the diners in the outer room, Carrera stood and pounded on the table bellowing a challenge to everyone around him, “Find me the man who did this! Get me the son of a bitch who did this!”

As he stormed from the room, he heard his wife call his name in a soft, broken voice. He began to turn when he saw his daughter standing in the doorway, unwilling to come back in, her lilac dress stained on the skirt, the mascara he’d forbidden her to wear smudged on her cheeks. “Take the pot out the back, Ang,” he said to Volpe. He ordered two of the men to escort his family home, then picking up the empty box and carrying it as if it still contained something heavy, he told the others to accompany him to his office.