The Scarlet Thread (17 page)

“Don't say that,” Steven asked him. “Don't break my heart, Papa. Don't threaten me. You have Piero. He can run things for you as well as I can now. He has boys to follow on.”

“Leave the family,” his father went on, disregarding him. “Leave the Falconis and our old traditions? Our old ways? Live like a stranger among strangers, because of this woman and this boy? Ah, I won't curse you, my son, because you're out of your head! You've gone mad! But I curse them instead!” He got up, knocking his chair over, and stormed into the house.

Steven's mother said, “He won't change his mind. I know him. He won't change. You can't do this, you can't break his heart. He needs you,
caro
. He's getting old.”

“He's strong like a lion,” Steven answered. “And you know it, Mama. He could run the Falconis without Piero or me, if he had to. Don't cry anymore. Go in to him. He always needs you when he's upset. Calm him down. I'll talk to him again when he's calm.”

She got up and went inside.

Piero lit a cigarette. He offered one to Steven.

“Ma's right,” he said after a pause. “He won't give permission. He won't risk a fight with Aldo Fabrizzi, and if you leave that bitch, there'll be trouble for all of us. I've been thinking, Steven.” He inhaled and blew out noisily into the warm air. He was a very physical man, who ate and drank loudly and moved roughly, knocking into things if they were in his way. He had a naturally violent temperament. “I've been thinking. There's a guy in Westchester. He runs a business. He has drivers who do contracts now and again—not piecemen: they specialize in cars. They'll guarantee to run anything off a fuckin' road and finish it off with fire. How about that for solving the problem? No Clara, no problem. I can arrange it.”

He tipped up the Chianti bottle. It was empty. He looked inquiringly at Steven, his head a little to one side. “How about it?”

“No! No, Piero!” Steven put a hand on his brother's shoulder and pressed hard for emphasis. “No,” he repeated. “You hear me? I mean it. Don't even
think
like that, you understand?”

“Okay. No need to break my neck. If you say so, that's it. It's more than she'd give you. Remember that time someone took a shot at you at the intersection? I wondered about that bitch as soon as I heard.”

“Nobody touches Clara,” Steven repeated. “We've never put contracts on our women. Just stop and think where that would end, for Christ's sake.”

Our women. Piero couldn't argue with that. The syndicate murdered as many women as men, but the wives and daughters of the families were safe.

“Okay,” he said. “Forget it. Pa's stopped shouting. Ma's getting to him. I'll go get another bottle. I'm thirsty. You?”

Steven said yes, for something to say.
He's my brother and we've loved each other since we were children. We're not alike and we've nothing in common outside of the family and the business. But we're fond of each other all the same. I've got to remember that and not remember that he offered to have his sister-in-law murdered
. He went into the house, brushing past Piero as he came out with more Chianti. There was silence inside. He went to his father's sitting room and knocked on the door. His mother came out, closing it behind her. She stood with her back to it. Her voice was very low.

“He won't see you,” she said. “He says to go away and think about it. Come back when you've seen sense.”

“I won't see sense, Mama.”

“O merciful Madonna—what are we to do? Listen to him, Stefano. He loves you. You're his pride, you know that! Think about it. For my sake.”

“I've never lied to you, have I?” he asked her. “No. Well, I won't lie now. I won't change my mind. He won't change his. I'll come again, Mama, just to say goodbye. I love you.” He held her against him and comforted her, as so often she had done to him when he was a child. “One day I'll bring my son to see you,” he whispered. “I promise you. Now go inside and give my father my respects and say I'll come again in a few days. No more than that, eh?”

“No more,” she promised. “And I'll go on trying,
caro
. I'll go on pleading with him.”

“Stop Piero from finishing the bottle out there,” he told her gently. “You don't want him going home drunk. You know how mad it makes Lucia.”

He let himself out the front door. His car was waiting. As always, he was ushered quickly into the back and driven off. He looked back to the house where he had grown up, and then he resolutely turned away.

He thought suddenly,
When this is done, I'll be able to walk places like other men
. But it didn't ease the pain of that parting with his father. Only time would do that.

They flew to Washington the next morning. The boy sat between them, full of enthusiasm, plying Steven with questions. Steven had bought a book on the history of the capital and pointed out the chapters he should read.

Angela and Charlie were booked into a small hotel in Georgetown; expensive and exclusive. Angela couldn't stop Steven from heaping every luxury upon them. He had booked himself into a downtown hotel as a precaution. The senator he had invited to Les Ambassadeurs was not his only contact in Washington.

Over dinner in the Georgetown hotel that night, Angela turned to them both. “Why don't you two go sightseeing? I'd love to do some shopping tomorrow morning. We could meet for lunch.”

Steven understood. She wanted him to be alone with his son, to draw them closer together. The pretense that he was offering her a job couldn't go on once they left America.

“Well, if that's all right with you, sir.” He turned eagerly to Steven.

“I guess so. We'll start with the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial. If your mother would like, we can all see the White House in the afternoon.”

“I'd love that,” Angela said.

Charlie went up ahead of them. He wanted to watch television in his room. They sat in the lounge and drank coffee, and under the table Steven held her hand.

“Was it true about the shopping?”

“Well, partly true. I thought it would be nice for you to go off together.”

“You won't let me buy you anything? Some new dresses, a coat for the winter?”

“A mink coat?” she teased him. “No, thank you, darling. Charlie's not that naive. We've got to do everything right till the time comes. Oh, I wish it were tomorrow—I wish we could get on a plane and fly straight home, the three of us. How long will it take, Steven?”

“Aren't you happy?” he asked. “Is it so hard to stay with me?”

“I'm uneasy,” she confessed. “I keep thinking it's all so wonderful, being with you, seeing you and our son getting to know each other, and at the back of my mind there's this feeling that it won't last, that something will happen to stop it.”

“I shouldn't have told you about my father,” he admitted. “That's what's made you worry. You mustn't, Angela. You've got to trust me. I can hurry things up from now on. Another week—is that too long?”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Of course it isn't. But I'll have to stop putting David Wickham off. He must have time to look for someone else. I wish you'd let me take the job till we get settled.”

“No job,” he insisted. “I take care of you and my son. When we leave, you go home, put Charlie in school, and then join me wherever. You'll have plenty to do, sweetheart. Don't worry about that. It's late. Can I come up with you?”

He was playing with her hand, stroking her fingers, moving the rings to and fro.

“If you promise to go on doing that,” she murmured, and got up.

Piero's wife, Lucia, was playing with the baby when the telephone rang. Her husband was lounging on the sofa with his feet up, reading the sports section of the newspaper.

“Answer it, honey,” he mumbled.

She balanced the baby on her hip and went to pick up the receiver. She called out to him, “It's for you!”

“Shit,” he exclaimed. “Who is it?”

“He didn't say. Just says he wants to speak with you.”

“Okay, okay. I'm coming,” Piero grumbled. He threw the papers on the floor, heaved himself up and took the telephone from her. He bent and smacked a kiss on the baby's cheek. She chuckled. “Yeah,” he said into the phone. “It's Piero.”

A voice said, “This is Louis from Les A. I've been trying to reach Don Stefano, but he's out of town.”

Piero came alert. He waved Lucia and the baby away. “So?”

Louis's voice was low. “Some guy's been asking questions about him,” he said. “He slipped the girl on the desk a twenty, and she told me.”

“What sort of guy? What the fuck was he asking?”

“Who was with him when he came to dinner here. One specific date; I remember your brother
was
here that night. This guy kept asking about a woman. He's an agency legman. I thought Don Stefano ought to know.”

“Yeah,” Piero said slowly. “Yeah, thanks. Did your girl tell him anything? Did she take the twenty?”

“Sure she did. Said she'd seen your brother, but there was no woman with him. So the guy goes to Eddie at the bar and tries the same line. Eddie takes a twenty and a phone number. He gives it to me. I guess you want it.”

“I want it,” Piero answered. He wrote down the number and stuffed the scrap of paper back in his pocket. “Thanks, Louis. We owe you. I'll tell my brother.” He hung up and stood chewing on the pencil for a moment. A private detective asking about Steven and a woman. Only one person would pay for that. He took out the paper and dialed the number.

“Taylor Investigators,” a woman's voice said in a bored tone.

Piero slammed down the phone. He swore under his breath, a long, fierce Sicilian obscenity. Clara was spying on Steven to find out about a woman. It didn't take much to figure out who that woman would turn out to be. Steven had called her Angela. Piero thought on his feet, and when he thought, he didn't waste time before he acted. Steven was out of town. If he was being followed and he was with the woman and his son, then Clara would be told.

He shouted out to Lucia. “Put the kids to bed, will you? Stay out of the way till I call, honey.”

She came close to him. “What is it? Trouble?”

“Trouble for Steven,” he said. “I got to deal with it. Move your sweet ass, sweetheart.”

She made a provocative face at him and jerked her hips. “I'm moving it,” she said. “You just take care, that's all.”

It was all organized within an hour. Piero's trusted henchmen were summoned to the house and given their instructions. Three were to take care of the agency itself, and the others were allocated to the legman on the Falconi assignment.

Piero shouted for his wife when they had gone. He slapped her on the bottom. “You been keeping it warm for me?” he demanded. “The kids asleep?”

“They're asleep.” She smiled at him. “You want to go to bed?”

“What the fuck's wrong with the floor?” he demanded, and heaved her up against him.

Much later, they were eating, when the first of the calls came in. Piero answered, swallowing down his food.

“Okay, okay,” he said, nodding, wiping his hand across his mouth. His brand of vigorous lovemaking always made him hungry. “You tell Gino from me, he's done well. Tell his boys too. Sure.… Yeah.”

Lucia didn't question him. She filled his glass with Chianti and ladled out more lasagna. Additional calls came. The guy who had been asking questions at Les A wouldn't be asking any more. He'd gone through a sixth-story window. All the way down. The agency staff had been worked over before the office was smashed with pickaxes and hammers till it looked like a toothpick factory. The records were piled up in the middle and burned, all but Steven Falconi's. His would be delivered to Piero that night.

After Lucia had gone to bed, he sat up, waiting for the dossier. He flipped through it quickly. He hated reading; it made him impatient. The terms. Written reports to the client. Client. He cursed out loud. Clara Falconi. As he had suspected, she was spying on her husband. He concentrated. Les A. No information there, but during the week subject tailed to an apartment on East Seventieth. Occupants a Mrs. Lawrence and her son. Subject seen with them at the theater, in restaurants, on a boat trip around Manhattan. Piero had begun to sweat. He looked at the last date. Two days before. The reports to Clara were scheduled weekly. This was the first. They had intercepted it just in time.

Piero threw down the folder. There'd be another tail on Steven, wherever he was. But no agency for the tail to report back to. Any professional would get that kind of message. He'd just fade away and count himself lucky. But Clara would pass on the job to someone else. A dead man, a case of arson, and a few people with the shit beaten out of them wouldn't worry Clara.

“He's nuts,” Piero lamented aloud, thinking of his brother and wishing he dared go against him and break the unwritten rule of the family. It would have been simple. A perfect solution. He hated Clara so much he'd have run her off the road himself and enjoyed every minute of it. He imagined the car turning over and ending in a ball of orange flame.… But Steven had said no, and he had never disobeyed Steven in his life.

Piero wasn't greedy for more power or ambitious to be the Don when his father died. He had everything he wanted. The idea of full responsibility didn't appeal to him. He preferred to take orders from the top. He coped with situations like the agency easily enough. Administration at Steven's level would worry him. Dealing with senators, that kind of crap. He put the idea out of his mind. His father was there, the rock on which the Falconi family rested. Piero didn't have to think so far ahead. Just far enough to warn Steven. In the morning. He'd call first thing. After he'd seen the newspapers. He'd given them some headline, he grinned to himself. Like the old days, when he was a kid. And he was confident. Nobody would identify his men, nobody would talk. No one testified against the families and stayed alive. The police would recognize the Falconi signature too, but there was nothing they could prove. And there were officers on the family payroll who would make sure the incident wasn't pursued too closely.