Impulse (21 page)

“That sounded completely legitimate.”

“Of course. My name is Coco Vivrieux and I was born and raised in Grenoble.”

“Yes, a wonderful place to ski. But seriously, Coco, you’re wrong. We haven’t had sex together. I swear it.” It sounded like the truth because it was, and Coco bought it, temporarily.

“All right, I believe you. But—” She shook her head. “This whole thing is very strange. Now, my dear girl, the reason I’m here is to invite you over to the compound. Dominick has decided to let you do his authorized biography.”

Easy. Just that easy. Rafaella couldn’t believe it. So easy. Now what was she going to do?
You’re going to get him to tell you everything and you’ll get him to let you see his papers, to show you things no one else has seen, and you’ll get him to trust you and then you’ll publish a book that will blow the damnable bastard out of the water.

No, she was the bastard. He was the bastard’s father. And she was going to have her revenge, she was going to take her mother’s revenge, and it would be in print and it would be there forever to haunt him. It would be sweet revenge.

She’d bet he’d even sent weapons and parts to Iraq. She’d expose him, oh indeed she would. Probably he’d sent Russian Kalashnikov automatic rifles and RPG-7 grenade launchers to North Korea. She wouldn’t even be surprised if he’d sent RPK light machine guns and those 38/46 heavy machine guns to Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, one maniac that most arms dealers claimed they’d never deal with, according to the research she’d done. She was rather pleased that she still remembered the names of some of those weapons. Suddenly she had an image of herself introducing Dominick to Charles Rutledge.

“
I’d like you to meet my real father, Charles. He’s an arms merchant. He claims he’s white-market but it’s a lie. He’s very smart and very shifty, so folks don’t know much about him, but he’s as black-market as they come. This is only his latest venture into crookdom. I’ll tell you so much more in my book. To know him is to love him. Just ask my mother; just ask your wife.
”

Yes, Rafaella was certain that Dominick got State Department clearance once for every six crooked deals. She’d nail him but good. He could still live on his damned island, but he’d never again dare to leave it. She must check to see if there was an extradition treaty between Antigua and the United States.

“Rafaella?” Coco snapped her fingers in front of Rafaella’s face. “Where are you?”

Rafaella forced a grin. “Oh, no place very exciting.”

“Is it Marcus that’s responsible for your swoon?”

“Swoon? Good God, no.”

“You know, Rafaella, Marcus was right about one thing. Perhaps it isn’t the best time for you to be here writing this book. Maybe it would be better for you to go back home until all the mystery is cleared away.”

“Coco, I love mysteries, and this one’s a corker. You ready for some breakfast?”

Marcus held the phone tightly. “I don’t like it, Dominick.” Actually he was worried to death, but he couldn’t come across that strong.

“Sorry, my boy, but I’ve made up my mind. How’s your shoulder? You didn’t hurt it in the crash, did you?”

“No, everything’s fine. Did Merkel find anything?”

“No, not a bloody thing. It could have been tampered with or it could have been an accident. If it makes you feel any better, Merkel agrees with you. Sabotage more than likely. And I don’t like it any more than you do. Also, Miss Holland was with you both times.”

“Don’t do it, Dominick. I don’t trust her, but more than that, why risk her life? Send her away for the time being. She really isn’t—”

“Look, Marcus, you’ve told me everything you know. I told you what I’d found out. She’s a smart girl, she’s published a biography, so there’s no cause to doubt her credibility. She’s got ambition—she didn’t use any of Rutledge’s clout, and undoubtedly he offered.”

“Still, something just doesn’t feel right to me about her, and—”

“Look, Marcus, bottom line, she’s still just a woman. If I don’t like what she writes, well then, maybe I can use her in another capacity. I don’t particularly like her aggressiveness, but her body is quite satisfactory. Perhaps I’ll try her out in bed. A woman, Marcus, that’s all she is. Do keep your perspective, my boy.”

“She isn’t like Coco or Paula,” Marcus said, his voice amazingly neutral even as anger surged through him. Had Dominick lost it completely? An assassination attempt and two other attacks? What if they’d been on him? Would he bleat about scare tactics? Damnation, what a mess.

“No, not on the surface. Who knows? That pushy mouth of hers just might add a bit of spice to things, to a lot of things. Stop carping.”

“Her mother’s in a coma in a hospital on Long Island. It was a hit-and-run, a witness said, and the guy driving the other car was weaving all over the highway. I just found that out this morning.”

There was a long unbroken silence on the line.

“Don’t you think it’s strange, Dominick, that she’d be here when her mother just might be dying?”

The silence continued.

Marcus sighed. “You think about it. If you still want her to stay at the compound, I’ll bring her over this evening.”

“Use one of the motor scooters. I don’t want you in a helicopter again anytime soon. Besides, now I’ve got only one that’s operational. I can’t spare it.” Dominick chuckled and Marcus frowned into the phone.

“Okay. Think about it.”

“Good-bye, my boy. Oh, by the way, Marcus, you might consider not mentioning what you learned to her. There are a few more things I want to work out. Leave it all to me.”

Marcus hung up the phone and leaned his head back in his chair. He wasn’t so sure it was all that smart to have told Dominick about Rafaella’s mother. He just wanted her off the island. He didn’t want her hurt or dead. But there was no reason for Dominick to hurt her unless—The thought of her in bed with Dominick wasn’t a pleasant one. One thing he knew for sure: Rafaella Holland would never willingly go to bed with Dominick Giovanni.

He finally managed to shake the thought out of his mind. Almost immediately the Dutchmen came into focus. He couldn’t forget them, couldn’t forget that they’d poisoned themselves. But why? To the best of Marcus’s knowledge, Dominick had never resorted to torture. DeLorio—now, that sadistic little son of a bitch was another story entirely. But, dammit, he’d been in Miami, supposedly meeting with Mario Calpas. About drug trafficking? Against Dominick’s express orders? He remembered the one and only incident when DeLorio had acted on his own and pulled off a drug deal with some Colombians. DeLorio had gotten off scot-free but the DEA had found out enough about the deal to blame Dominick and they’d sworn to get him. DeLorio had made a cool quarter of a million dollars on the deal. Marcus had watched Dominick burn each one-hundred-dollar bill in front of his raging son. He wondered then if DeLorio would snap, but he hadn’t. It was later that one of the servant girls, a teenager from Antigua, had been found raped
and beaten. The girl swore she didn’t know who had done it to her. She’d been paid off and shipped back to Antigua. Marcus had no doubt it had been DeLorio. Dominick had never said a word, merely commented it was high time for his son to marry and he knew just the young lady who would suit his and DeLorio’s requirements.

Marcus’s thoughts veered back to the first assassination attempt. All the checking around about those Dutchmen had led to nothing concrete. Dominick had many competitors, fierce competitors, in arms dealing.

Marcus knew that as the white market had dwindled markedly during the 1990’s, the gray and black markets had become bloated with business opportunities. Antonio Cincelli, a powerful dealer in Italy, for example. He’d come awfully close to being busted by the Italian police just last year when it was discovered that a small southern Italian weapons manufacturer he used was shipping mines and other weapons to Iran. Cincelli had gotten off, but he’d blamed Dominick, among others, for the fiasco, and sworn, quite graphically, to shoot his balls off. Marcus himself had wondered if Dominick had tipped off the Italian police, used his influence in the corrupt government; but he’d never found out for sure.

Then there was Oscar C. Blake, an American citizen born in Munich, Germany, who worked for and around the CIA, buying mostly Soviet-style weapons because they were less easily traced to the U.S. and they were cheap. He was a hard nose, a real professional who claimed everything he did was just business. Never anything personal. Who the hell knew? Marcus didn’t. Nor could he dismiss Roddy Olivier. Talk about a ruthless psychopath. And powerful, so powerful it boggled the mind. He and Dominick had discussed these men and a good half-dozen others. All powerful men; all ruthless and determined. They
called themselves businessmen, but the kind of hardball they played was deadly.

What did
Bathsheba
mean? Why the devil couldn’t anyone trace that helicopter? Or that ridiculous name?

Odd, but Marcus would give more to understand that than he would to know the name of the man behind the attack on Dominick. Of course the two were tied together. They had to be.

Marcus didn’t want Rafaella at the compound. DeLorio wouldn’t leave her alone. Paula would go after her. Why did she want to do a biography of Dominick Giovanni? Another Louis Rameau he wasn’t. He wasn’t a hero. He was a criminal. He wasn’t a romantic criminal, far from it, even though he could appear that way on the surface with his educated charm. Not all that many people even knew about him, except for all the feds and cops in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York.

He was a criminal, and Marcus had known about him, at least indirectly, since he was ten years old, way back in Chicago. He’d sure as hell known about Dominick’s father-in-law, Carlo Carlucci. To think of him made Marcus’s guts cramp with remembered pain.

Why had Rafaella chosen Dominick? He planned to ask her this very evening.

At six o’clock that evening Rafaella opened her villa door to his knock. He gave her a cocky grin. “You look quite nice, but I guess you already know that. Another designer thing?”

“It’s a silk sundress with flowers on it and you wouldn’t know the designer’s name so I won’t waste it on you.”

It was off-the-shoulders and he remarked, “No bra. I like it even more.”

“Well, I don’t like this,” Rafaella said as she eyed the motor scooter and the helmet she was to strap under her chin. “How do I know you can drive this sucker any better than you did the helicopter?”

“Put your arms around my waist and be quiet.”

She laughed. “Can’t take the heat? A very common male failing, I’ve noticed.”

He revved the motor scooter and spun out. Rafaella grabbed his waist and threw herself forward against his back. “I’ll get you for that.”

“Not until I stop this thing, you won’t.”

He didn’t stop it until they reached the helicopter remains on the middle ridge. “Off,” he said, and swung his leg over.

“Why are you stopping here?”

“I want to ask you something and you’re going to tell me the truth or I just might shake it out of you.”

Rafaella grew instantly still and braced herself.

“Just as I had expected, I found out a bit more about you. Like the fact that your mother’s in the hospital in a coma and you’re down here in the Caribbean jet-setting around trying to weasel your way in with Dominick. Why? And don’t lie, Ms. Holland. I know you—from the inside out, I guess you could say.”

What to say? How had he found out? Well, she hadn’t bothered to cover many tracks, because Dominick Giovanni wouldn’t recognize from her present connections that she was his daughter. He probably wouldn’t have recognized her if she’d walked up to him and said, “Hi, Daddy. You remember Margaret in New Milford back in 1975?”

“Why do you care?”

“Talk. Now.”

Rafaella just shook her head. She had to think, and think fast. Then she looked at him, really looked, and knew he was dead serious. His eyes were nearly black with concentration. She knew he’d catch her in a lie, and she wondered suddenly how he could have come to know her so well after such a short time.

She sighed, becoming as serious as he. “All right. I can’t tell you.”

“Just why the hell not?”

“I just can’t. Are you going to tell Mr. Giovanni?”

“I already did. Actually it didn’t seem to make all that great an impact. But with him you never know. He’s not all that straightforward, holds things close to his chest. I suggest you be very careful. If you’re here for reasons other than a book, you should leave while you’ve still got your sweet hide intact.”

“I’m here to do a book on him. That’s all, I swear it.”

“You’d better be telling the truth, because I think he finds you a bit toothsome. You could end up on your back in his bed if he doesn’t like your writing.”

Sleep with my father?
She very nearly laughed at that. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no.”

“You prefer younger men, do you? Why did you leave your mother?”

“My mother’s accident, her current condition—it’s not relevant to this. I’d already planned to do this book, and my stepfather told me there was nothing I could do back home. I was there for nearly a week after the accident. Now I call him every day to check on her condition. Nothing’s changed. But then, I assume you know I call every day to Long Island.”

“Yes.”

“Not a very trusting sort, are you?”

“Since you’re about as trustworthy and as up-front as most women, I’d say I’m pretty smart not to trust.”

“Sexist.”

“Not really. It’s Dominick who’s the sexist, which, if you stay, you’ll discover for yourself. Take Coco, who’s one smart lady. She’s his mistress; he treats her well, buys her whatever she wants, but she’s not his equal—not in his eyes. She’s there to service him, to jolly him out of bad moods, to listen to him whenever he wants to talk, to feed his masculine ego.

“He wanted DeLorio to marry Paula because he thought, mistakenly, that she’d straighten him out and
produce offspring quickly and frequently. We’re talking barefoot and pregnant here. God, was he off target there. She’s hot for anything in Jockey shorts, and the last thing she wants is a kid ruining her figure. If she had a child now, no one would know who the father was. Oh, and there’s another thing. DeLorio will be after you in a flash. He’s like his old man in matters of the flesh. Unlike his old man, I’ve heard he isn’t all that considerate a lover. He likes a woman to be utterly compliant, submissive.”