The Reunion (25 page)
Dunlevy drove the car across the courtyard and over the grass, parking it as close as he could to the back wall of the Watch Hill Motor Court. He slammed the door and ran toward the back of the property. When he reached the six-foot stone wall, he didn't gingerly climb it the way he had two nights earlier. Instead, he attacked it, throwing himself upward and landing midway. From his quarried rock perch, he grabbed the top stones and pulled himself up the rest of the way.
As the agent reached the bushes, he tugged his weapon from its holster and flipped off the safety. He eased along the lanai, quietly jiggling three sets of French doors before finding one unlocked.
He entered through the den. “Put your weapon down now!” Dunlevy demanded, his own pistol pointed directly at Beverly.
Both women turned to the booming male voice.
“Place it on the coffee table!” he ordered at the top of his lungs.
Beverly dropped the pistol onto the table, letting out a gasp of mock relief as she sank into the overstuffed chair. “Thank goodness, the FBI,” she said sarcastically. “You can drag your little friend off to jail now, where she belongs.”
Dunlevy stood in the kitchen, ignoring the woman. His gun was still drawn. “You got an e-mail from Gerhard Reussel earlier tonight, Carolyn. He did recognize the woman in the photograph, but not Mary Vocatura.”
She looked confused. “Who else
is
there?”
His eyes moved back and forth between the women. “Reussel remembered the woman standing behind Mary in the photograph.” He turned to the older woman. “I think it's your mother, Beverly, Evelyn Caccione.”
Beverly sat up and leaned forward. “You think you're so smart, sending your hit woman into our home. Your career is over! You and your friend here are both going to jail!”
Dunlevy rubbed his chin. “The press was making a big deal over the reunion. I bet it was hard to watch Professor Hudson on all those programs, but I'm sure you caught every one. You weren't about to let the family that raised and cared for you be ruined by something your mother did sixty years ago, were you, Beverly?”
“You're a lunatic!” she screamed. “Get out of this house now!”
Dunlevy's angry gaze penetrated her soul. “What really puzzles me is how you even knew. You must have been only three or four at the time your mother was sneaking off to the beach to deliver the plutonium and those submarine plans.”
“Five,” Beverly managed, her eyes welling with tears. “She'd get me out of bed in the middle of the night to go down to the water with her. She was afraid I'd wake up when she was gone and wake up the rest of the house.”
Carolyn, totally bewildered, stared at the beaten woman. “How could anything your mother did sixty years ago matter now?” She turned to Dunlevy. “The Vocaturas have to be in on it. It was Mary's husband who worked in the submarine plant.”
Dunlevy shook his head. “I doubt it. Anthony Vocatura was an engineer. He worked on schematics and probably brought them home at night. Evelyn worked her way into the Vocatura family and she probably had other contacts at the plant too.” He shrugged. “We'll never know for sure, but my guess is that he didn't cooperate with Evelyn. Still, it would have been embarrassing for a senatorial candidate to learn that his grandfather, even unwittingly, supplied the enemy with the tools to make a nuclear bomb.”
Amazed, Carolyn stared directly at Beverly. “Why would you go to such lengths to protect an employer?”
There were no more tears; her eyes were distant now. “Manny and Vincent are my nephews. I helped raise them after their parents died. I'd do anything for those boys.”
“Nephews?” Dunlevy was flabbergasted. He dropped his gun into his lap. “You're a blood relation?”
“Anthony Vocatura was my father.” Beverly buried her face in her hands.
Carolyn felt pity for the woman. “Did Mrs. Vocatura know?” she asked.
Beverly began to weep loudly. “Every time she looked at me, I'm sure she could see a part of her husband. I was a constant reminder of his infidelity, but she loved me anyway. I was a little girl when my mother died. Mrs. Vocatura cared for me like one of her own children. She didn't know about the spying. I just couldn't let my mother hurt this family any more.”
Dunlevy didn't know which way to turn. Both women deserved to be hauled off and booked, but he was too drained to move. He leaned toward Carolyn and shot her a menacing look. “You have a lot of explaining to do too, you know.”
Before Carolyn could respond, Beverly leaped from her chair with cat-like quickness and grabbed the gun from the coffee table.
“No!” Carolyn cried. “God, no!”
Beverly's eyes were closed and her facial muscles tightly clenched. The barrel of the pistol was lodged squarely in her mouth.
“Don't!” Dunlevy shouted.
As he leaped to his feet, Beverly gingerly squeezed the trigger, splattering blood and pieces of her brain in a wide pattern all over the white wall.
The next morning the
Providence Journal
proclaimed Manny Vocatura the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate by a modest eight percent of the electorate. His election to “the club” come November was now almost a foregone conclusion. In the last paragraph, the reporter did mention the victory was marred by the suicide of a long-time member of the Vocatura household staff. An unnamed campaign worker was quoted as saying Beverly Caccione had become despondent after a long battle with an undisclosed illness.
Dunlevy folded the paper and tucked it under his arm as he opened the car door for Carolyn and Kenny.
“Where's Franklin?” she asked as she buckled the child into his new seat.
“Ass-deep in paperwork, I expect,” he replied. “He caught a shuttle to DC about six this morning.”
His sense of familiarity was a comfort. Carolyn squeezed his hand tightly as she eased into the back seat, still painfully stiff from the car accident.
He squeezed back. “You two okay back there?”
Discomfort was evident on her face, yet she forced a smile. “We're fine,” Carolyn replied.
Dunlevy navigated the bumper-to-bumper traffic along I-95 in silence for the first thirty minutes of the trip, occasionally stealing a peek at Carolyn and Kenny in the rear view mirror. The past twelve hours had been the most difficult of his life. The negotiations with Senator DaSilva had been arduous. In the end, the senator agreed to publicly applaud Dunlevy's efforts for taking a mad-dog killer off the streets. In return, the agent would hint to the press there was insufficient evidence to proceed any further with the case. Privately, it would be dropped. Even if the Vocatura brothers had conspired with Beverly, which he doubted, it was now a moot point.
As much as he hated the arrangement with DaSilva, it was the only deal that would both protect Carolyn and save his career. He had taken great pains to make sure her name stayed out of the fray. Beverly's secret died with her. Dunlevy could never expose her connection to DeMichael or identify her as the mastermind of the plot without revealing Carolyn's involvement. As far as anyone knew, it was a case of suicide, no more, no less. But maybe the most grueling conclusion Dunlevy had reached in the past twelve hours was a personal one. A future with Carolyn and Kenny would be difficult. Long-distance relationships rarely worked. He didn't know if he had that kind of stamina anymore.
As they passed the sign announcing the airport exit five miles ahead, Dunlevy felt a warm, gentle hand squeeze his shoulder. “I owe you a lot.”
Dunlevy turned his head for an instant, nervously shifting his eyes between Carolyn and Kenny. “You don't owe me anything. You and Kenny are in one piece, and I'm grateful for that. There would have been nothing to gain by prosecuting you.”
“Is it really over? They can't trace anything back to me?”
He shook his head. “No one suspects foul play. It's a suicide. I wiped the house clean.”
“What about the phone call? They record all those 911 calls.”
He shrugged. “So what? You didn't give a name. You were just a neighbor out walking the dog along Bay Street. You heard a gunshot and called the police from the pay phone outside the Narragansett Inn. There's nothing suspicious about that. The Westerly police knew I had set up shop in Watch Hill. Me being first at the scene didn't raise any eyebrows. Hell, my hotel room was at the bottom of the hill right below the house. It would have been strange if I wasn't the first one to get there.”
Dunlevy pulled into the ten-minute loading zone at terminal C, directly in front of the Delta curbside check-in station. He popped the trunk and handed the skycap their luggage, stopping once to check his breast pocket for the two coach-class tickets. He slipped the man a five and instructed him to check them all the way to Oklahoma City.
Dunlevy hoisted Kenny from the back seat and bounced him in his arms. He planted a light kiss on his forehead and whispered in his ear, “You gonna fly on the big plane, pal?” A big grin appeared on the boy's face.
Dunlevy returned the smile. “Are you ready to fly up in the clouds?” he asked.
The boy cocked his head and looked at him quizzically before dropping his head on the agent's shoulder and squeezing his neck tightly. At that instant, Dunlevy realized how empty his life was. His eyes welled with tears for the first time since his father's funeral ten years earlier. There was always a case keeping him from taking stock of his lifeâfrom thinking about the wife and child he was now convinced he would never have. Work helped him keep that reality at bay, but Kenny opened the floodgate, allowing all those emotions, everything missing in his life, to spill out with a simple hug.
Ticket in hand, Carolyn planted herself between Dunlevy and his car. She loved the way Kenny looked snuggled on his shoulder. Carolyn stroked his face and raised up on her toes to kiss his mouth.
“Thank you. Thank you for saving us, saving us from them and from me. I have my life back, and you gave it to me.”
He pulled her to him, the child still on his arm. “You're a beautiful woman, and you've got a wonderful little boy. All the rest doesn't matter anymore. Go be happy. It's your turn.” He lowered his head to press his lips to hers. They squeezed each other tightly, and Dunlevy had to force himself to let go. “Your plane's boarding.”
“I could stay,” she hesitantly suggested.
He swallowed hard, his eyes penetrating hers. “For how long?” he asked as he stroked her shoulder. “A year from now you'll look back on this as the worst two weeks of your life. It's a memory you'll spend the rest of your life trying to suppress, and I'm the centerpiece of that memory. Let's give it time. We'll talk on the phone and I promise to come visit in July.”
“You could come with us now,” she said with pleading eyes.
Dunlevy quieted her with a final, hard, and passionate kiss. He placed the boy on the ground, picked up her carry-on, and placed the strap on her shoulder. “Go,” he said. He bent over and brushed his lips across the side of Kenny's face. “Be a good boy for mommy, sport.”
Carolyn took Kenny's hand and walked away without looking back. With her other hand she wiped away tears. She wondered if she would ever see him again. This time, something was different. Carolyn felt none of the usual sadness or angst that haunted her when men came and went from her life. She replayed his words in her head as mother and son walked briskly to the escalator. He was right; maybe it was her turn.
Dunlevy stood at the base of the escalator and watched as they rode up toward the gate. The rumble of his vibrating pager broke his gaze. He cursed under his breath as he ripped it from his belt and held it up to read the message.
THE CAT'S A MATCH, JACKASS. IDA.
He laughed. Sweet, foul-mouthed Ida. Not that the DNA test mattered anymore. Then it struck him. He didn't want to grow old like Ida. He didn't want to replace the emptiness in his life with food, work, or a gruff exterior. He just couldn't do it anymore.
Twenty minutes later, Carolyn, with Kenny on her lap, was strapped into a seat aboard the Delta MD-80. She forced a smile in the direction of the businessman sitting next to them on the aisle, certain that he was dreading the prospect of a two-and-a-half-hour flight next to a baby.
Kenny was munching on saltines, and she had her nose in a fashion magazine when she recognized his strong, authoritative voice.
Dunlevy looked down at his boarding pass. “Sir, would you mind switching seats with me?” he asked the man on the aisle. “We couldn't get three seats together and I'd really like to sit next to my family.”
The businessman was obviously relieved. “Sure, no problem,” he said as he stood to gather his things.
Dunlevy dropped into the seat. Kenny was expressionless, as if he had been expecting him all along. The child extended his hand, offering a cracker. Dunlevy bent to take it in his mouth.
Carolyn was in shock. “What are you doing here?”
His features were relaxed and his heart felt at peace. He reached across the center seat and took her hands, pulling them to his lips. “I just thought to myself, what the hell. I've got a lot of frequent flyer miles.”
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