Lust, Money & Murder (26 page)

“Do you have any exercise clothes I can wear?” she said.

Tony raised his hands as if it was a ridiculous question. “Do we have clothes?
Signora
, this is Giorgio Cattoretti’s house!”

* * *

Tony showed her to a comfortable changing room that was packed with workout clothing, everything from tennis outfits by Givenchy and Dolce & Gabbana to high-end Nike and Rossignol pants and athletic bras, much of it still with tags attached. It was almost all women’s attire. It seemed that Cattoretti had a lot of female friends. She had noticed that all the bathrooms in the castle were stuffed with expensive women’s cosmetics, as Cattoretti’s private bath at DayPrinto had been.

Elaine chose a simple pair of yoga pants that fitted loosely, and a top.

When she came out of the changing room, she slowly approached the punching bag. She gazed at it for a moment, breathing hard. In her mind, Gene Lassiter’s sneering face appeared on it. And then Giorgio Cattoretti’s.

Elaine suddenly whirled around and gave the bag a powerful roundhouse kick. Her arms and legs became windmills as she peppered the leather with a combination of kicks and punches—jabs, backfists, crescents, axes, hooks. She felt a sting in the side as her stitches tore, but she didn’t give a damn—all her pent-up frustration was pouring out of her body, and it felt wonderful. At times the bag became Ronald Eskew and Bill Saunders. She pounded the bag mercilessly, until sweat poured into her eyes.

She finally began to tire, the punches and kicks slowing, then coming to a stop. Elaine stood for a moment in front of the bag, panting.

She whirled around and gave the bag one last, mighty roundhouse kick. It flew up so high that it nearly knocked her down on its backswing.

A voice behind her said, “I hope it is not
me
you imagine there!”

Elaine turned around.

Giorgio Cattoretti was standing at the doorway in his Armani suit, watching her.

“I’ve made a decision,” she said.

He looked surprised. “You have?”

“I’ve decided to help you with your project.”

Cattoretti clapped his hands together. “
Magnifico
!” He opened his mouth, hesitated, and then said to himself, “Oh, why not? I was about to offer you a sweetener to help you make up your mind, and it still stands.”

“What ‘sweetener’?”

He motioned to her. “You are the one who carried the data key out of the United States, not Gene Lassiter. You should receive the balance of the payment, not him. Is that not fair? I think it is.”

“How much is the payment?”

“Eight million Euros,” Cattoretti said smoothly.

She swallowed. Eight
million
Euros. It was hard for her to think in such large amounts of money.

“Of course, there is a chance he will come after it,” Cattoretti said.

Let him come
, Elaine thought darkly.

“With eight million Euros,” Cattoretti went on “you can live anywhere in the world—you can simply put the money in a bank account and live off the interest. I can have a completely new identity made for you— a passport, birth certificate, driver’s license—everything. You want a university degree? I can earn you a PhD from Yale, or a masters from Oxford.”

Elaine smiled. “What exactly would I have to do for this eight million Euros?”

“You must help me make my currency as perfect as possible. My god—with your help, we do not even need the data key! We can make my counterfeits so perfect that the Treasury Department will have to develop a whole new set of software updates, which will take them another six months, at least.”

True
, Elaine thought.

“All I ask is for you to help me make my counterfeits good enough to pass through the bank verifying machines again, with the updated software. Do that, and the money is yours.”

Eight million Euros
, she thought headily.

The notion that she could usurp Lassiter’s money had a delicious sense of poetic justice.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

CHAPTER 2.14

Less than an hour later, in Paris, Gene Lassiter hobbled up to a pay phone on the Rue de Rivoli. He glanced up and down the street, then tore the plastic off a new international telephone card. He used it to call a number in Switzerland.

As he waited for an answer, he glanced at his watch. It was now 5:40 pm. The second payment should have arrived.

“Banque Cantonale du Valais,” a woman said, in a French accent.

“Yes, good afternoon. I have an account at your bank and I would like to check the balance, please.”

“One moment.” Lassiter glanced up and down the street again to make sure he wasn’t being observed.

A clerk came on the line and he gave her his account number.

“Your balance is exactly five hundred thousand U.S. dollars.” The clerk paused. “Will there be anything else?”

“Only five hundred thousand? Are you sure? I was expecting a wire this afternoon.”

“Just a moment.” There was a long pause, with clicking sounds in the background. “I’m afraid there were no wires received at all today for this account.”

Lassiter slammed the phone down.
Goddam Russians!
After he had corrected their screw up in Moscow and helped them recover the data key, they thought they still weren’t going to pay him!

There was no way he could support Gypsy on a measly five hundred thousand Euros. He wiped the sweat from his brow and forced himself to calm down.

He glanced up and down the street again, then used the phone card to make another call. This one was to Moscow.

These people had no idea who they were dealing with. They didn’t know that he had planted a GPS device in Elaine Brogan’s suitcase. He’d just checked and now his computer showed the device was at a location east of Milan, Italy. Where he had damn good reason to believe the buyer—and the Giori printing press—were located.

He waited impatiently as the phone rang on the other end.

“
Da
,” a voice said, sounding bored.

“It’s me. I want to know why you haven’t wired the rest of the money. I just called my bank and it’s not there.” Lassiter fought to control his temper.
Be diplomatic,
he thought.
Don’t assume they’re going to screw you
. “Perhaps there’s been some mistake...”

“Mistake?” the voice said calmly. “There has been no mistake.”

“You listen to me, you prick. I know for a fact your buyer has the product—I put it into his goddam hands myself, after you guys screwed it up. I want to know why I haven’t received the second—”

“Your services are no longer necessary.”

Lassiter frowned, not sure he had heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

“Your services are no longer necessary.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means
Do sdvidanya
, sucker.”

The line went dead.

“Hello?” he said, clicking the hook a few times. “Hello?”

Lassiter flagged down a taxi, went back to his hotel, and made plans to catch the first flight out from Paris to Milan.

He was going to get his money, even if he had to pry it free from the buyer’s cold, dead fingers.

CHAPTER 2.15

Elaine was in Cattoretti’s bedroom, dressed in the Versace gown, just about to clip the Chopard necklace around her neck.

Luigi appeared at the door. “Excuse me, Ms. Brogan, but Gene Lassiter was caught trying to climb over the fortification wall.”

“
Grazie
, Luigi,” she said elegantly.

She slowly turned from the mirror and then was floating down the wide, marble staircase. Gene Lassiter was at the bottom of the steps in the Great Hall, standing between two of Cattoretti’s men, his arms firmly in their grip. As she descended, he stared up at Elaine, his mouth agape.

She floated to a stop three steps from the bottom, peering down her nose at him.

“On your knees,” she said coldly.

“Elaine, I’m sorry, I never meant to—”

The two men forced Lassiter down, his cane dropping from his shaking hand and rattling against the stone floor.

“Your gun,” she said to Giorgio Cattoretti, who had materialized by her side. She took the cool weapon into her hand and pointed it at Lassiter’s forehead.

“Please have mercy on a stupid old man!” Lassiter cried. “I am a fool, an imbecile! I should never have—”

“Did you really believe that you could take advantage of
me
?” Elaine said. She cocked the gun. “Nobody messes with a Brogan.”

Cattoretti clapped his hands together, watching her with delight.

“Please,” Lassiter begged, a filament of spittle dangling from his lower lip. “You can have the money! Take it! Take it all! I am nothing, a powerless nonentity, unfit to be in your presence.” Lassiter was trembling so badly that his kneecaps beat out a tattoo on the floor. “The reason I used you was because I was so madly in love with you. I was excruciatingly jealous of Nick! I know that a shriveled up, pathetic excuse for a human being like me could never hope to so much as kiss the ground you walk on. Please show mercy on a disgusting, selfish old man!”

Elaine enjoyed his groveling for a long, luscious moment. She finally let her finger off the trigger. Handing the pistol back to Cattoretti, she said, “He’s not worth wasting a bullet on. Shall we have dinner, darling?”

Elaine rolled over onto her stomach, so that Mario could work her upper back. It was a delicious fantasy, almost as delicious as the handsome young Italian’s fingers felt kneading her aching muscles.

As Mario began massaging her shoulders, she pressed the REWIND button in her mind and watched her fantasy again, this time with even more satisfying dialogue.

* * *

Elaine showered and dressed, then came downstairs for dinner at 5:30. The opera started at 8:00, so they were dining early. The long mahogany table in the Great Hall was arranged only for two, one place setting on the near end, and the other immediately to its right.

Giorgio Cattoretti was decked out in an Armani tux, his hair slicked back, his bleached teeth gleaming. If it wasn’t for the scar that ran along his jaw, Elaine thought that he would have been too good looking.

“You look ravishing,” he told Elaine, pulling the latter chair out for her. She was wearing the Versace gown and Chopard necklace, and she had pinned up her hair with a diamond-studded barrette Cattoretti had given her from the vault. As she sat down at the table, she felt the warmth of his breath on her shoulder.

Tony sashayed into the dining room, wearing a formal black suit. He grinned at Elaine, his dimples showing. “
Signora
! You look stunning in-a that Versace!
Belissima
!”

“Thank you.”

He draped a white napkin over one arm and began pouring wine. “I hope-a your appetite come back now.”

Cattoretti gave Elaine a concerned glance. “You have not been well?”

“Of course she has not been well!” Tony said. “She ate-a breakfast at DayPrinto.” He nodded to her. “Don’t-a worry,
signora
. My cookin’ will get-a your system back to normal. I made some
gnocchi
with truffle that gonna melt inna your mouth,
porchetta
, some
vincisgrassi
, and
spiedini
...not that heavy Northern saucy slop that
dilettante
serves...

“Tony,” Cattoretti warned, as he poured the second glass of wine.

Tony indignantly left the room. Cattoretti looked a bit embarrassed. “Those types make the best cooks, but they are very difficult to manage.”

“I think he’s wonderful,” Elaine said.

Cattoretti merely grunted.

Elaine looked around the spectacular room. Covering nearly one entire wall was a faded tapestry depicting several robed figures sitting in a garden. Hanging on the adjacent wall, in a heavy, gilded frame, was a large portrait of a hooknose man with long black hair parted down the middle, painted in a Renaissance style. There was something vain in the man’s expression. He had a cruel-looking mouth.

“That is Galeazzo Sforza,” Cattoretti said, “the man who built this castle. Back in the Fourteenth Century, he was also Duke of Milan once. He constructed this as a summer retreat.”

“Quaint little place,” Elaine said.

Cattoretti smiled. “Sforza had a reputation for extravagance, and also for being wicked and tyrannical. He took hundreds of lovers. When he tired of them, he passed them on to his court. He made many enemies as well. It is said that he nailed one of his betrayers to his own coffin, still alive. There is another story of a poacher—on this very property, in fact—who he forced to swallow an entire hare, fur and all.”

Elaine sensed a trace of admiration in Cattoretti’s tone.

“In his day, the dungeon was always filled to capacity,” Cattoretti went on. “Did Tony show it to you?”