Impulse (31 page)

That removed the sexual gleam from his eye in a flash. He said carefully, “What do you know about that?”

“Dominick told us at dinner what had happened, and he mentioned it. I want to know, Marcus. I want to know everything and I won’t be put off.”

He said nothing as he came up to his feet and brushed off his slacks.

“Well?”

“Your belligerence doesn’t move me, Ms. Holland. I’ve got to see Dominick now. I’ll meet you at midnight by the pool. Oh yes, I do want to know why you’re a Forty-niner fan and not an avid Patriots fan. You do live in Boston, not San Francisco.”

“I won’t tell you,” Rafaella said to herself as she watched him stride away from her.

She returned to the house and was told by Link that Marcus was indeed closeted with Mr. Giovanni. She nodded and made her way upstairs to her room. She pulled her mother’s second journal out of the pile of books on the mantel and lay down on her bed.

She’d been rereading the journals, out of order, given her mood at any particular time. She opened the journal to March 2000, nearly one year ago today. But she read only a bit about the visit her mother had made with Charles to England and the god-awful fight Charles had had with Susan when they returned.
Money
, Margaret had written,
damned lousy stuff. If people don’t have it, they’ll do anything to get it. If they’ve got it, they’ll do about anything to keep it or get even more.
Rafaella closed the journal and thought instead about her two-hour interview with her father that afternoon.

He’d been, understandably, on edge. Withdrawn, somewhat absent. She’d offered to leave him, but he’d insisted that they keep on with it. And so she’d asked him about his years in Chicago. He’d raised a thin eyebrow. “What do you know about Chicago?”

“You forget, Dominick, I think I have every newspaper and magazine clipping ever done on you. I remember this one article that referred to you as a crime boss second only to Carlo Carlucci in Chicago. He’s not exactly a household name, but still, as a reporter, I’d heard of him. But that was after you’d married his daughter, I believe.” She kept her voice even, emotionless. She couldn’t let him sense that she was more than an ardent worshiper at his shrine, couldn’t let him feel her contempt for him.

“That was a very long time ago,” Dominick said finally, his voice remote. “A very long time ago. Did you know that old man Carlucci is still alive and still living in Chicago? He has this penthouse on the thirty-second floor of a building just off Michigan Avenue. He doesn’t have much active control anymore, but oddly enough, no one’s tried to bump him off. He’s evidently beloved for his fairness to his fellowman.” This was said with such bewildered derision that Rafaella didn’t know how to respond, so she simply waited for him to continue.

“I met him when I was twenty-eight years old and fresh from San Francisco—”

He made it sound as if he’d been fresh from college, when actually he was just fresh from San Francisco, the SFPD hot on his trail, she thought, but again, she merely waited.

“I was very young—”

“You were twenty-eight.”

His head whipped up and he stared at her, growing anger darkening his eyes to the same shade of gray hers reached when she was caught in emotion. She stared back at her father and said deliberately, “I’m almost twenty-six and am old enough to accept the consequences of my behavior.”

His entire body eased in the next moment. “You’re right, of course. I was a grown man. I knew what I was doing, and if what I did was unwise, well, there it is. I went into legitimate business. My businesses have always been legitimate. I bought a restaurant and immediately ran into trouble. I needed a liquor license and for some unknown reason the city wouldn’t give me one. Well, things like this are the same all over, so I simply made inquiries as to whose palm had to be greased. It was Carlucci’s, only his palm was immense, and the palm could turn into a fist on a whim.

“I met Sylvia, his daughter, quite by accident. She came into my restaurant one evening with another man, a creep who looked like a bodyguard.”

“What was the name of your restaurant?” When he just looked at her, Rafaella added, “A book that has specifics is more interesting. It makes it more real, you see, less generic.”

“I changed the name from The Golden Ball to The Golden Bull.”

Rafaella just arched an eyebrow at him.

He grinned. “Yeah, I know. I was real macho in those days, and full of myself. Hell, I was young, with my life ahead of me, and I thought I could do
anything.” He paused a moment and his eyes faded with memories. Rafaella just waited until he’d shaken them off.

“I met Sylvia. It was in 1962, in November. The weather in Chicago was already too miserable for humans.” He unconsciously rubbed his arms. “I hate the cold, always have. She was really quite lovely then. Not at all innocent, of course, but who cared? We married in February, her old man decided he liked my zeal, my ambition, and things began to go well. The Golden Bull became well-known, and my other ventures prospered as well.”

“Such as?”

Dominick waved his hand vaguely. “Just branching out into other areas—like oil and food markets and shoe stores—things like that, legitimate things.”

Did he honestly believe that she’d take any of this seriously? “Tell me about your marriage.”

“Before we married, Sylvia told me she wanted a dozen kids. After we married, she didn’t get pregnant. For a very long time. I was patient with her, Lord knows. I liked her father…”

Ha! You were scared to death of her father.

“Then she finally got pregnant in 1975 with DeLorio. I was thrilled. I wanted many children, many sons.”

“Just sons?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I would have loved daughters, lots of them.”

She stared at him, unable to tell him that he was a liar. But oh how she wanted to.

“Boys first, that’s all I asked, boys to follow in my footsteps, and I would have trained them and they would have been successes, my successes.” He paused a moment, staring beyond Rafaella’s shoulder. Then he shrugged. “After DeLorio was born, she began being openly unfaithful to me. It was then that, to get revenge, I suppose, I began to sleep with other
women. We spoke of this before, Rafaella. In any event, I have never divorced her, as you know. Also, I never see her. Nor does DeLorio. He knows the sort of woman she is.”

Rafaella was jerked away from those memories by the shouts from her open French doors that gave onto her balcony. Men shouting. An intruder?

She jumped from her chair and raced out onto the balcony. It was very dark tonight, but she saw the jerking beams from flashlights.

Then she heard DeLorio’s voice, cold and furious. “Stop it, you idiots! It’s me—put down those guns!”

She heard Dominick, his voice sharp, worried. “What are you doing back here? Did something go wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. I left Paula there to do some shopping and flew back to St. John’s. I took a helicopter to the resort and a motor scooter over the ridge home.”

“Why didn’t you call me? I would have sent someone for you.”

DeLorio didn’t answer.

And Rafaella knew the answer at that moment. DeLorio hadn’t called because he feared his father wouldn’t have wanted him to come home. She felt fury at Dominick and a wave of pity for his only son. But then, there’d been the worry in Dominick’s voice.

DeLorio mumbled something, then yawned loudly. “I’m tired, sir. I think I’ll go upstairs.”

Then there was silence. Rafaella turned away from the balcony and closed the French doors. She went to bed fully dressed because she planned to go to the swimming pool at midnight. To see Marcus. She told herself she just wanted to talk to him, to find out what all the secrecy was about. She needed to know.

She didn’t sleep. She just stared at the digital clock on the bedside table. When it was five minutes to midnight, she left her room and as quietly as possible
made her way downstairs and outside. She was stopped by one of the men and identified herself. Everyone would know that she was meeting Marcus.

It couldn’t be helped.

He was waiting for her down by the deep end, near the diving board. “Good evening, Ms. Holland,” he said, giving her a grin. “Yes, I know, you needn’t say anything. Every man in the compound knows that we’re meeting out here. And no, I don’t see your panties. And no, I don’t plan to let you seduce me, even though I know that’s what you came out here for. Let’s just sit over there on the recliners and talk. All right?”

“You’ve said about everything,” she said, and with a sigh sat down.

“We can hold hands.”

She slipped her hand into his. He kept both their hands between them.

“Now, tell me about the snake.”

“You’ve already heard everything. It’s already reached tall-snake-tale proportions.”

“The sucker attacked you?”

“Yes. It was horrible.”

“What I find interesting about the whole thing is that whoever put that snake there also knew that Link was keeping an eye on you. So, no matter that the snake would try to squeeze the life out of you, Link would save you.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said slowly. “You’re probably right. Then it was just another warning—Coco was probably on target.”

“About what?”

“The other accidents. Maybe I was the target all along, not you.”

“I’ve thought of it, and it’s possible, so I want you to leave the island tomorrow.”

“No way.”

He sighed. “I know you must have been terrified.”

“I was, but I’m not a coward. Well, so I am, but it doesn’t matter. I want to know who’s behind this, Marcus, and I’m not about to be forced away. The thing is to go ahead and be scared witless, but regardless, you just don’t give up, turn tail, and run. I won’t do it. Now, tell me about Marseilles and this fifteen-year-old girl of yours.”

He did, omitting nothing.

She was silent for a moment, warming up, he thought, looking at her mobile face.
“Bathsheba
now, if you please.”

“I would have told you a couple of days ago to forget it, but now it seems that everyone who counts in this business—all over the world—already knows all about it, so who cares if one more nosy reporter knows?” He began talking, telling her about his trip to Boston. “It was so bloody cold there—”

“I was there and didn’t even meet you.”

“I’ve thought the same thing. I could have taken you to a hockey game. In any case, Dominick called me and told me everything had been finalized and to come home.” He paused a moment, watching one of the guards light a cigarette. All he could see was the fire-red tip. And he thought of Jack Bertrand and his Gauloise cigarettes.

“—and there were green letters on the cabin of the helicopter.
Bathsheba.
That was all. The two Dutchmen killed themselves before they could be questioned. I was laid up in bed for nearly a week. And that’s it. We don’t know who or what this
Bathsheba
is. But all Dominick’s competitors know that he was nearly taken out, and it will destroy him.”

“That woman—Tulp—she really shot you?”

“Yep, right in the back. I didn’t want to kill her. Merkel did, with a kick in the nose that—Well, she died then. It was weird about the Dutchmen, though.”

“Poisoning themselves?”

“There was no reason for them to do it. No reason
at all. It made no sense then, and it makes even less now.”

Rafaella had a sudden very sharp memory. “What day was that? The day of the assassination attempt?”

“March 11.”

She was silent for a moment, counting back. Suddenly she whirled to face him, grabbed his arm, and shook it. “You won’t believe this—hell, I’m not sure I do! Marcus, that night the night of the eleventh—I awoke from a violent dream. I heard several gunshots, crystal clear they were, and I felt tremendous pain—in my left side—my shoulder, my arm, all my left side, as if I’d been shot. I got up, nearly certain that the shots had to have come from outside my apartment. There wasn’t a sign of anything, of course, but the pain didn’t go away for a while.”

He felt the gooseflesh rise on his arms, then laughed. “You’re talking fate here, Ms. Holland? You felt the pain when I was shot, as if we were somehow joined, even then?”

Even then.

“Not that I don’t like the idea,” he continued, amusement in his eyes as he looked at her. “Joined spiritually or psychically, then physically. I guess the deep end of the swimming pool was also inevitable, also fate?”

“Go ahead and poke fun, but it happened, Marcus, it surely did.”

It occurred to her then that her father had also been shot in the left arm. That made her shiver violently. She much preferred the connection to Marcus. She saw that Marcus was focusing in and quickly said, “But there was just the one assassination attempt.”

“Yes, just the one. Then the three attempts on my life or on yours—”

“Or just warnings.”

“Yes, or warnings. If you turn your face this way, I’ll kiss you.”

She turned to face him. He just touched his mouth to hers. He was warm and she wanted more. She leaned toward him, but he pulled away. “No, sweetheart. Not now, more’s the pity. Have I told you everything your reporter’s little heart yearns to know?”

“Yes. I must think about this, or at least try.” She sighed. “You’ve shorted out my circuits. But you know, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Who would want to kill Dominick? Who would want to warn you away, or me, for that matter? Who would advertise
Bathsheba
, and what does it mean?”

Marcus shrugged. “We now have a lead. Olivier.”

“As in Roddy Olivier?” At his nod she said, “I read about him. From all accounts, he’s not a very nice guy.”

“No, he’s not. Olivier is primarily a gray- and black-market arms dealer. He and Dominick have hated each other since three years ago when Dominick cut Olivier’s legs out from under him in a deal to Iran.”

It was then, quite suddenly, that it struck Rafaella with renewed force: Marcus was just as much a criminal as Dominick Giovanni. She swallowed. He was a criminal, and she hated it. What about fate? Surely fate wouldn’t fashion a criminal for her.