The Lie (5 page)

Only a comparatively small number of people were at the grave site. Paulie stood with them beneath a blue, summer sky and
watched the springtime of his life being lowered into the earth.

Father Angelo, doing his prescribed job, recited an appropriate prayer for the dead, and Paulie silently repeated some of
the words after him. He guessed it was about as good a prayer as any and better than most.

Nevertheless, it embarrassed him, because he did not really believe a word he was saying and his parents deserved better.

He glanced about the open grave at those who had come to share these final moments with him, and wondered what
they
really believed. Most of the faces he saw were familiar, but some were not. He saw the fragile looks in their eyes and understood
that behind them lay as little true belief as his own, and that in its place was a kind of panic.

He noticed a slender, dark-haired woman looking toward him. Her gaze gave him the sense that he was briefly illuminated.

Her eyes were a pale gray-green. He knew he had never seen her before: he was certain he would not have forgotten. Yet he
could be wrong, because she did seem to know him. Or she must have known his mother or father. Why else would she be here?

He stood very still, with the priest’s voice no more than a soft sigh on the summer air, and let her eyes light his face.

Visitors came into his parents’ house that afternoon and evening to pay their respects. Most of them had known Paulie since
he was a boy; they embraced him and wept. The women brought food to keep him from starving in his grief, and the men did their
best to get him drunk.

The last of them left at about nine o’clock.

Moments later Lieutenant Spadero appeared at the door, a hard-faced man with a cynical expression who had probably been waiting
outside until Paulie was alone.

“Sorry to break in on you tonight,” he said, “but I’m leaving town and I just need a few minutes.”

Paulie showed him in, surprised by the small human touch of an apology. In the living room, Spadero stood unmoving until Paulie
offered him a place to sit.

“My sincere sympathy for your loss.” The lieutenant of
carabinieri
spoke formally, as if this were their first meeting. “How sad to have them both taken from you at once. And like
that
.”

Paulie nodded.

“I’m not always uncivilized,” said Spadero. “Only when I’m working.”

“Anything new?” asked Paulie.

“Not a thing. Unless you know something you’re holding back, I’m naked in the shithouse on this one.”

“Why would I hold anything back?”

“Because you’re their son.”

“Meaning?”

“You might have some macho notion of getting their killer yourself.”

“You think I’m that crazy?”

Lieutenant Spadero reached for an open bottle of Chianti, poured some into a glass, and swallowed it in a single gulp. “Let’s
cut the bull, Paulie. I know all about your poppa. Who he was, what he did, and for whom. I’d have to be an idiot not to believe
he hasn’t passed some of that on to you.”

“I’m an artist, Lieutenant.”

“So was your poppa. But that was never enough for him, and I don’t think it’s going to be enough for you.”

“Is that what you came to tell me?”

“What I came to tell you is that I need your help. I’ve got no fingerprints, no bloodstains, no witnesses, no gun, no motive.
All I know is that it was a professional hit by a single killer who entered your parents’ bedroom while they were asleep,
woke them up, and was probably talking to them at gunpoint when your mother started shooting.”

“How do you know they were talking? And that it was my mother who shot first?”

“If the killer just wanted them dead, he’d have shot them while they were asleep. So either he wanted information or the pleasure
of letting your parents know who he was before he killed them, which would mean it was personal. Maybe even a payback for
a hit your father might have done.”

Spadero poured himself some more Chianti.

“As for your mother shooting first,” he said. “Well, she was hit twice in the face. So she wasn’t about to get off her own
three shots by firing second. Also, her first shot was through the bed sheet.”

Paulie breathed deeply, but he still felt stifled.

“You were close to your father,” said the lieutenant. “Didn’t he ever mention possible problems, enemies, people he might
have been worried about?”

“Not to me.”

Lieutenant Spadero sat weighing Paulie’s answer.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “Because unless you can come
up with something you suddenly remember… or we get lucky with an informer… I can’t see much hope for us here.”

The big surprise of the night was the arrival of Tommy Cortlandt.

The CIA director was standing in the Walterses’ living room no more than an hour after Lieutenant Spadero had walked out of
it, his arms clutching Paulie in a powerful embrace. There were tears in Cortlandt’s eyes.

“You came,” Paulie said. As always, he used English when he was with the director.

“How could I not? I was at a NATO meeting in Brussels when I heard the news.” Cortlandt looked at Paulie. “Sorry I wasn’t
at the funeral, but it would have been stupid. I’d only have been recognized by the press, which wouldn’t have done either
of us any good.”

He drifted about the room, touching things. Then he sat down, a controlled man with cool eyes that seemed to invite a challenge.

“You all right?” he said.

Paulie shrugged. “I’m still half in shock.”

“Who found them?”

“I did. I’d stopped in on my way home from Serbia.” “What did the police come up with?” asked Cortlandt. “Nothing,” said Paulie,
briefly describing the lieutenant’s last visit.

“Was the lieutenant right?” asked Cortlandt. “
Were
you holding anything back?”

“Yeah. But it wasn’t that much. Only my father’s wall safe.”

“What was in it?”

“Mostly personal and legal stuff. Except for a couple of pictures. Blowups of a man and woman blazing away with a pair of
Schmeissers. They meant nothing to me, but I was hoping you might know something.”

“Let me take a look.”

Paulie went upstairs to the safe and took out the manila envelope. When he returned to the living room, his heart was racing.

He handed Tommy Cortlandt the two enlarged photographs. Then he just concentrated on watching his face.

“For what it’s worth,” said Cortlandt, “I do recognize these two people, but they’ve been dead for almost twenty years.”

“Who were they?”

“A couple of world-class terrorists. Angelo and Patty Falanga.”

“What did they have to do with my father?”

“More than they would have liked. He killed them both.”

“Together?”

“Yes. Seconds after these pictures were taken.”

“What made him save them? The pictures.”

“I have no idea. I never knew he had them.”

“These were the only pictures in the safe,” Paulie said. “They’re the only pictures of that kind I’ve ever seen in this house.
Wouldn’t you say they had to have had some very special importance to my father?”

“Obviously.”

Paulie blinked, suddenly feeling slow and tired.

“I see where you’re heading,” said Cortlandt. “But your father shot the Falangas almost twenty years ago. Why would anyone
wait that long for retribution?”

“I don’t know. Unless the guy just found out who killed them. How many people do you think actually knew my father was involved?”

“I can’t answer that with any accuracy.”

“Were you Dad’s chief of station back then? Did you give him the assignment to get the Falangas?”

“Yes. To both questions.”

“Something like this would have to be on a top secret, need-to-know basis?”

Cortlandt nodded.

“What kind of backup did my dad have? Or was he handling it alone?”

The director took a long moment. “He had two men going in with him. They were both killed in the final action.”

“Can you think of anyone else who might have known he was the killer?”

“After eighteen years? At best, I’d have to dig back, check our data base, and get lucky.”

“Would you please do me that favor?”

Cortlandt was silent.

“It’s important to me,” said the artist.

“You’re really stretching on this one, Paulie.”

“I know. But what else have I got?”

Paulie was no stranger to threat, mystery, and violent death. He had been just past his eighth birthday when one of his mother’s
youthful, premarital involvements came near to ending her life as well as his. The only reason he was alive today was that
he himself had drawn a hidden gun and shot their intended killer.

Now he was nearly twenty-seven years old. He had stopped pretending a long time ago that the darker sides of life were unknown
to him, or that he loved most of what he had witnessed. Lieutenant Spadero had caught it very quickly. He was his father’s
son, and his father had passed on a key part of his inheritance: the knowledge that life held more grimness and cruelty than
one could ever find reason for or understand.

His father had been an American of Sicilian lineage who was born and had lived the first half of his life as Vittorio Battaglia,
which means “victory battle.”

Imagine having to live up to a name like that.

Still, his father had earned a reputation as the top Mafia enforcer in New York. No women and children, thank you. He had
run off with his only assigned female target, changed their names and appearances, and settled down to new lives in Positano.

Like father, like son.

How naturally Paulie had fallen into it. Some bloodspell had to be there. First, of course, he was an artist, having done
his early suckling on his father’s own talent. Then he followed his father once more by going undercover for Tommy Cortlandt
and the Company. Always partly lost in his own private kaleidoscope of death, he could never quite forget the man he had shot
when he was eight.

K
ATE
D
INNESON DROVE SLOWLY
past the house where Peter and Peggy Walters had lived and died, and where their son was still in temporary residence. Three
cars were parked in front but she knew they all belonged there.

When the road ended in a cul-de-sac, Kate drove back and parked beside the other cars. She sat there for a while, gazing off
at the early sun sparkling on the sea.

Carrying a briefcase, she climbed through the rock garden to the house and rang the bell.

A moment later Paulie Walters opened the door and looked at her. He remembered her eyes lighting his face across his parents’
open graves and remembered being touched. What he did not remember was that she was this beautiful.

“Good morning,” she said in classic Roman Italian. “My name is Kate Dinneson. We’ve never met but I knew your mother and father.
Please accept my heartfelt condolence. If this is a bad time…”

“No, no. Please come in.”

Paulie led her into his father’s studio, where an entire wall was floor-to-ceiling glass and the light was steady and clear.
She was younger than he had thought, with a softness to her flesh and a vulnerability that time had not yet been able to cover.

Paulie seated her with as much care as he would have given to posing a model. He placed her with the light coming in at a
good angle, flooding her hair and shoulders and
spilling down over her breasts, which were small, high, and elegantly formed.

When he was satisfied by what he saw, he backed into a facing chair, sat down, and waited.

“I’ve been in this room before,” she said. “It’s probably my all-time favorite.”

“Mine too.”

Kate sat very straight, hands folded primly in her lap. “Did your mother and father ever mention my name?”

“No.”

“It’s hard to know where to begin,” Kate said. “Unless I just say I’m a writer and start from there.”

“What do you write?”

“Feature stories. Mostly for the Continental News Service. I was just getting into one with your parents when this terrible
tragedy happened.”

Paulie showed surprise. “You mean you were writing an article about my mother and father?”

“Yes.”

“They were actually going along with the idea?”

“If they weren’t, I wouldn’t have been doing it.”

Kate opened her briefcase, took out a clutch of handwritten notes and typed pages, and handed them to Paulie along with her
press credentials.

“I know it wasn’t their usual style,” she said. “But if you’ll just glance through some of this, you’ll see how much they
were into the whole idea.”

Paulie barely looked at the material. “And now?” he said.

“Now I think it’s doubly important to get it done. I was wondering how you might feel about helping me.”

Paulie said nothing.

“I know what an awful time this must be for you,” Kate told him. “Yet this could be the moment for an involvement that can
keep your parents alive for you. Who would be better qualified? Who would know more about them than you?”

Paulie fought to calm himself. He had to remain composed. He had to show this beautiful young writer with the incredible eyes
that she was acting wisely in seeking his help.

“I saw you at the cemetery,” Paulie said. “I wondered who you were.”

“Well, now you know.”

“Do you look at everyone the way you looked at me over my parents’ graves?”

“How did I look at you?”

“I could never describe it. But I know it touched me when I very much needed to be touched.”

“Then I guess you’re going to help me,” Kate Dinneson finally said.

K
LAUS
L
OGEFELD KNOCKED
on the door of a well-cared-for house in a suburb of Berlin and waited for the old man who lived there alone to answer.

The sun was not yet up. He felt chilled from having walked the half dozen or so blocks from where he had parked his car.

The door opened and the old man stared at him. At six-fifteen in the morning he was already shaved, combed, and standing erect
and resplendent in his gray security guard’s uniform.