Deceptions (24 page)

Durning was out of his head for a week. But Wayne and the captain were able to give lucid detailed accounts of what had happened.
On the basis of these, Durning was hailed as a hero and received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Thinking of it now, almost twenty years later, he still felt he should have been court-martialed instead.

So, Brian.

Under that surface crust dwelt pure mush. How long could
he hold together once Hinkey’s sharp jackal’s teeth began ripping at him?

Something would have to be done about the lawyer.
And
his client.

Such were the nocturnal considerations of Attorney General Henry Durning.

None of which calmed him enough to let him go back to sleep. For that, he tried drifting into an appealing erotic fantasy
of the beautiful Mary Chan Yung.

It began with her body pictured in the position of ascendancy, with her face and breasts close above him. He placed his hands
on the dip of her waist and studied the result for a moment. Then changing his mind, he slipped his hands beneath her breasts,
cupping them lightly, his palms barely making contact, and all of it shining out of a velvet midnight dark.

There were soft purple shadows about her eyes and under her cheeks and chin.

He saw the play of light across her forehead and smooth, shining hair.

Her lower lip, he decided, was extraordinary, with the kind of sensuous fullness that could probably break some unsuspecting
man’s heart.

He pictured her breasts as surprisingly full for so slender a woman, with brownish-pink nipples and flesh that gave off a
pale, porcelain glow.

She bent to him and they kissed and held one another.

Then he was in her.

He closed his eyes.

In his little mental charade he envisioned it being several weeks since they were last together, and they both responded to
it. Separation. Still the most powerful aphrodisiac available. It made the upstairs bedroom seem much too far away. In the
less than five minutes since she had entered his house, they were naked on the living room rug.

It had been a long, tiring, tension-filled day, but he could feel her pumping new life into him. For these few moments, in
this warm dark, he had no brain, no plan, no wit, no care, no desire, other than the sexual. It was as if everything that
had happened until now was just so much dead skin, waiting to be peeled away.

For now, they belonged solely to each other. He had some distinct notion that there might well be a world beyond the immediate
reach of his body, but it held no interest for him.

Then, inevitably, at the very moment his desire seemed most insatiable, it was sated.

He kept her there beside him. Finally she brought him sleep as a special gift.

R
OME OFFERED
G
IANNI
Garetsky well over a hundred art galleries to comb through for something he might recognize as having been painted by Vittorio
Battaglia. And along with Mary Yung, he was covering about twenty of them a day.

But Rome was, after all, one of the most romantic cities in the world, it was summertime, and the more immediate threats to
their lives seemed to have eased.

So it really wasn’t all that difficult to take a little time off here and there to pleasure themselves. And if it wasn’t quite
the sublime honeymoon idyll that Mary Yung had teased Gianni about, it did come startlingly close.

They stayed at a charming
pensione
within walking distance of the Trinita dei Monti.

They ate at delightful, out-of-the-way restaurants, where everyone seemed warm and friendly, where it was impossible to get
a bad meal, and where the mandolins came close to making you weep for the years spent anywhere else.

They strolled by moonlight on the slopes of the Palatine Hill on which the emperors of Rome’s golden age erected their palaces
opposite the Colosseum and the Arch of Con-stantine.

They stood mute before some of the greatest art ever pro
duced by the civilized world, and held hands to better share each moment.

“I can’t imagine anything sadder,” said Mary Yung, “than to have to look at things like this alone.”

How did she know to say that?
Gianni wondered.

Once, sitting on a bench opposite the Spanish Steps, he watched her walk over to a stand to buy some flowers for their room.
She had on a pale yellow blouse dotted with leaves. A breeze brushed the blouse softly against her breasts as she stood in
front of the clustered blossoms. Because of the sun, Gianni couldn’t tell what her face was like. But he had a curious need
to wave to her, so he did.

She kissed him when she came back.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For waving to me.”

He looked at her, this beautiful, solemn-faced woman who said such strange things.

“No one’s ever waved to me like that before,” she said. “I mean just for no reason.”

Gianni had to turn away. She was reaching that far into him. He could no longer pretend the feeling wasn’t there or that it
was only lust.

The flowers looked bright and hopeful in their room. When the sun or the light from a lamp caught them, they seemed to dance.
Mary called them her bridal bouquet and laughed when she said it. But only her mouth was laughing. Her eyes were doing something
else. It was her eyes that Gianni cared about most.

In bed, they couldn’t seem to leave each other alone.

Mornings and late afternoons were Mary’s favorite love times. She said night was mostly for peasants, who were too bashful
or ashamed to look at each other.

Gianni was like an adolescent, newly arrived at the feast. The pleasure she gave was exquisite at any time, but in his thoughts
the moment he kept reliving was that of climbing the stairs to their room behind her, watching her hips move and anticipating
what was ahead.

God,
he would think,
this woman has got to be too much.

On their fifth morning, they lay side by side in the afterglow.

The blinds were drawn but the early sun broke through in splinters of brightness. Gianni’s body seemed weightless to him,
anointed. He knew he should be getting up to start the day’s search, but he felt only a vague inertia.

It was warm in the room and they lay naked on the sheets. Mary’s flesh gleamed in the morning light.

Another ten minutes,
Gianni promised himself.

“How many more galleries do we have left in Rome?” Mary Yung asked.

“About fifty or so.”

“And if we don’t find anything in those?”

“We go on to Florence.”

“And then?”

“Venice, Naples, Palermo. You know the list.”

She stirred beside him. “I have a terrible confession to make.”

Gianni waited.

“I sometimes wish we never find anything.”

He stared at the ceiling.

“That’s really crazy, isn’t it?” she said.

“It sure is.”

“I know. It’s just that these past days have been so lovely.”

Gianni was silent.

“At least for me,” she said.

“For me, too.”

She rolled over and kissed him. “You didn’t have to say that.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Only because you’re such a nice man.”

“No. Only because it’s true.”

Mary lay still, holding him. Golden flecks came and went in her eyes as the curtains stirred in a breeze and shifted the sun’s
rays.

“What if we never do find Vittorio,” she said. “Would it really be that awful?”

Gianni let the possibility enter him, felt it start moving
around inside. It was no worse than swallowing ice water too quickly.

“With care,” he told her, “and a bit of luck, I suppose we might survive it.”

“That’s not the answer you’re supposed to give.”

“I’m sorry. I guess I’m just not very good at these games.”

“It might not be a game. There’s always the chance it could happen. Haven’t you ever thought of that?”

“How could I not?”

“And?” she said.

“Most of the time I just brush it aside.”

“And when you don’t brush it aside?”

Gianni lay with it for a long moment. “It can run pretty deep and dirty. We’d need plastic work on our faces. We’d have to
live looking back over our shoulders and never stop. We’d be reinventing ourselves a day at a time and knowing it’s not going
to change.”

“You mean like Vittorio’s probably been doing for the past nine years?”

Gianni nodded, although he hadn’t really thought of it in that light.

Mary sat up in bed to look at him. “You kept saying
we.
Does that mean you’d want us to be together?”

Gianni was silent and sat very still on the bed, allowing the beautiful naked body and the exquisite face to make all the
more obvious arguments in her favor.

“We could end up hating each other,” he finally said.

“There’s always that danger.”

“We’d have to be very strong and very good to make it last.”

“Yes.”

Then they just looked at each other until he finally pulled her to him.

“This is just bullshit,” he whispered.

“I know.”

He kissed her and felt drunk on her taste.

When he could speak, he said, “At worst, I’d rather hate you than be without you.”

Sadly, she didn’t believe it for a minute.

* * *

Having just crossed off their first two unsuccessful galleries of the morning, they walked in the sun along the Via Veneto
and stopped at some sidewalk tables for an espresso and
briasche.

The Via Veneto, thought Gianni dimly… where the women are young and beautiful, the men rich and distinguished, and where never
is heard a discouraging word.

At least, as long as you picked up the check.

Their next scheduled stop was the Galleria Raphael on a nearby side street. Before going in, they stood studying several paintings
in the windows.

“I’d buy this one in a minute,” said Mary Yung.

Gianni looked at the canvas. It was a freely brushed portrait of a solemn, dark-eyed boy with the sun lighting his hair and
an azure sea behind him.

Gianni stood silently staring. And he knew he had a moment then. For the boy in the painting spoke to him. Something in the
deep of the boy’s eyes, some familiar radiance, traveled out of a far-off past and into his brain.

“We’ve hit it,” he said softly. “This is Vittorio’s.”

Mary Yung looked at him. “You’re sure?”

Gianni nodded, feeling himself nothing but open, raw depths.

“How do you know?” she said.

“Because I first met Vittorio when he was eight years old, and he had the same face. If this kid isn’t his son, I swear I’ll
eat the canvas.”

He felt Mary’s fingers dig into his arm.

“Also, that’s his brushwork. It’s the way he always handled flesh color in direct sunlight. See? Two cadmiums, yellow and
red—broken, unblended, and both on the brush at the same time.” Gianni was excited now. “Can’t you just feel the vibration,
the damn sun itself on the kid’s cheeks?”

Mary bent to squint at the name in the lower left-hand corner of the painting. “Guido Cosenza,” she said.

Gianni took a deep breath, let it out with a sigh, and led her inside the Galleria Raphael.

The proprietor was involved with another customer at the rear of the shop, and Mary and Gianni browsed on their own. Gianni
saw two more paintings signed, “Guido Cosenza,”
and recognized Vittorio’s hand and talent in both. A vein in his temple throbbed as though about to go into riot.

The other customer left and the proprietor came over.

“Is there something I can help you with?”

He spoke to them in fluent but slightly accented English. Like almost everyone else they’d had anything to do with in Rome,
he had them instantly stamped as American. Which Gianni preferred. It allowed him the advantage of keeping his Italian to
himself.

Gianni smiled. “My wife and I have fallen in love with Guido Cosenza’s handling of that young boy in the window. So few artists
ever know what to do with children. They always seem to turn them into undersize adults.”

“That’s true,” said the art dealer. “But not many people are perceptive enough to see that. Are you interested in the painting?”

“It’s very appealing,” said Gianni. “But what we’re really interested in is having Mr. Cosenza do a portrait of our son in
that same style.”

The man stood looking at them, and Gianni could almost feel him estimating price as measured by their ability and willingness
to pay.

“I hope Mr. Cosenza accepts portrait commissions,” said Mary Yung. “We’d be so disappointed if he didn’t.”

“To be honest,
signora,
I couldn’t answer that. I’d have to speak with his representative. Is your son with you here in Rome?”

“Yes. And he’s about the same age as the boy in the painting. That’s what got us so excited about the whole idea. We’d certainly
appreciate it if you could make a call and let us know where we stand. Is that possible?”

The dealer was busy staring at Mary Yung’s eyes, a meticulously tailored connoisseur of beauty in any form who, Gianni saw,
had just been inducted into his alleged wife’s fan club.

He smiled with less-than-perfect Italian teeth. “Everything is possible,
signora.”

“We’d be so grateful.”

The proprietor offered a small bow with his head, went to
the phone on his desk at the rear of the gallery, and checked a number in his Rolodex.

A moment later he was talking to someone in rapid-fire Italian.

Pretending to study some of the paintings, Gianni worked his way close enough to the dealer to hear just about everything
he was saying. The artist’s rep was obviously giving him a hard time, and his voice kept growing louder and more emotional.
When he finally hung up, he was furious.

“
Signora… signor
… I am decimated. I am so sorry… so sorry.”

Arms waving in frustration, the art dealer was abject in his apologies.

It appeared that Guido Cosenza not only didn’t accept portrait commissions, but detested them. In fact, he didn’t even like
children. Evidently not even his own, since the boy in the painting did indeed turn out to be his son. What normal father
would put a price on his own child’s head. It was like selling the child’s soul on a piece of canvas. God was too careless
in handing out talent. Guido Cosenza was unworthy of his gifts.