West 47th (48 page)

“Make any excuse and get your ass out of there.”

“I was just winding things up.”

“We'll pick you up. We're leaving this minute. Be down in front.”

“Ask her about Saturday night,” Visconti suggested. However she'd already clicked off.

It was at that moment, while still standing close by Visconti's desk, that Mitch noticed it. Lopped over the gold and ebony pen of Visconti's DuPont desk set.

Pavéd rubies, diamonds, emeralds.

Riccio's one-of-a-kind Italian flag ring.

Mitch had last seen it in the equipment barn on dead Riccio's finger. Seeing it here now triggered off a series of realities for Mitch. What had actually occurred three days ago up in Kinder-hook.

Starting with the informer, Caselli. He had let Visconti know in advance what Riccio intended to do and when.

Visconti recognized the opportunity.

He dispatched some of his crew.

They followed along, hung back, kept from sight while they observed every move made by Riccio and his have-arounds. They got their chance when Riccio and Fratino went out to the equipment barn in search of Maddie.

It wasn't Maddie who shot Riccio and Fratino. She thought she had. It seemed she had.

Those precisely placed head shots were the work of Visconti's shooters. Fired simultaneously with Maddie's rapid barrage so they hadn't been distinguished.

How accommodating for Visconti. Slick, the way he'd used the circumstances, used Mitch and Maddie.

Then, there was the overnight cleanup.

Visconti's have-arounds had seen to that, gathered up all five bodies and given them to the river. It was essential that the bodies not be found because of the kind of bodies they were. Too much would have been made of it. By all means avoid that. The people who got answered to wouldn't have wanted that.

Mitch was tempted to let Visconti know he wasn't so clever by telling him how clever he was. He could color that single remark with slight implication, not elaborate on it, just let it hang while his eyes said it all.

Visconti would then suspect that Mitch had undone the twist. It would worry Visconti, build up in him. The satisfaction would be short-lived but the apprehension would persist, Mitch warned himself. It wasn't worth it.

Visconti put on his suit jacket, made sure of his tie, shot his cuffs.

Mitch assumed he was getting ready to depart for the sit. He should hurry his own departure or Visconti would be going down with him. Maddie would be waiting at the curb in the Lexus. It would be difficult to avoid an introduction. Saturday night would be mentioned and Maddie, aware of what Visconti was, would likely accept.

Deliverance. A phone call for Visconti. Important business that required his immediate attention. He got right into it, entirely into it. He was finished with Mitch, merely bade him goodbye with a perfunctory gesture.

Out on Fifth Mitch found Maddie and the Lexus weren't waiting as he'd expected. At that hour both the avenue and its sidewalks were all rush and clog. Maddie was probably up the avenue somewhere caught in it. Mitch disregarded the New York exasperations he caused as he cut across the pedestrian flow to reach the curb.

While waiting there, protected against jostle by a perilously piled city waste receptacle, he thought how fortunate it was that he'd spotted Riccio's ring. Otherwise he might have remained fooled forever. Anyway, he'd come out ahead. There'd be no violent confrontation with Visconti. That was the main thing. And it would hardly hurt to have people thinking he was now batting twenty-five extra large in the independent league.

Mitch was right about the Kinderhook episode. Except for one thing.

Riccio's body hadn't been sent downstream with the others. Rather, it had been dumped into the trunk of one of the black Lincoln Town Cars and transported to the Scalise Funeral Home on 188th Street in the Bronx.

Even before the body arrived at Scalise's the death certificate had been filled out and officially signed. The stated cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage. Sort of true.

And right away a couple of guys showed up on behalf of the people who got answered to. They checked out the hole in Riccio's head, stuck their little fingers into it, heard how it had gotten there and concluded that yes, Riccio had brought it on himself.

Within an hour Riccio was embalmed. The hole in his head was plugged with putty and cosmetically concealed, and he was in other ways made to look better than he had alive.

Visconti's generosity was admired. He insisted on choosing and paying for the casket. It was bronze but not waterproof.

This very night for respects Riccio would be on display from the waist up.

Surrounded by several hundred white lilies.

Chapter 37

They were in the Holland Tunnel. Possibly halfway through. Perseverant white tiles machine-gunning by. Light after light after light and the dirty ass end of an eighteen-wheel monster directly ahead.

“We're in the tunnel,” Maddie said.

“Yeah,” Mitch told her, noticing that her fingers were laced, and she couldn't keep from biting the left side of her lower lip. Since her confinement in the hay baler she'd been susceptible to the
clausties
, as she called them.

Fucking tunnel was enough to undo anyone, Mitch thought. He himself was being made to feel uneasy. He couldn't put out of mind that there was all that water of the Hudson above and perhaps Riccio and his have-arounds, their downstream journey delayed for some reason, were at that moment scuttling along the river bottom overhead.

“We should have taken the bridge,” Maddie remarked.

“The bridge would have been out of the way, Mrs. Laughton,” Billy told her. He was driving, of course. Hurley was up front with him.

“But not so oppressive,” she said.

It would seem that only a sighted person could have claustrophobia, Mitch thought. He chalked it up to Maddie's so-called
spatial reckoning
, her sense of where things were, close or far and all that. “Want to get into my hug?” he offered.

“No, I'm okay,” she said with a modicum of courage. “How far to go?”

“Pretend you're elsewhere.”

“For instance where?”

“Anywhere you like.”

“Help me.”

“How about somewhere in France?”

“Be more specific.”

Several possibilities trekked across his imagination. The one he chose was where he might also like to be, from what he'd read and photographs he'd seen. “On the soft, grassy bank of a canal in Chantilly, north of Paris,” he said as though it was a title.

“It's a sunny day,” Maddie contributed.

“We're being dappled.”

“There are dragonflies.”

“Iridescent.”

“I've my feet in the water. So do you. Is there anyone else around?”

“Just us.”

“You're sure no one is peeking through the bushes.”

“No one within a mile.”

“So we could be wicked if we wanted.”

“Or we could take a nap.”

“After being wicked,” Maddie preferred.

Hurley laughed. He'd been occasionally privy and amused before by their fanciful exchanges. At times, without their knowing it, he made their flights with them. Almost to the point of getting a hard-on.

Finally, no more tunnel. Billy paid the toll and got onto the New Jersey Turnpike Extension. It was the same route they'd taken the time before, past Newark Airport on 78.

By then Maddie was entirely recovered. Her mood bright and swollen with anticipation. “A little more foot, Billy,” she said.

“I'm doing eighty-five Mrs. Laughton.”

“Feels like we're snailing. Give it another ten.”

“They're your tickets,” was Billy's proviso.

“Hurley will fix them,” Maddie promised.

“Which reminds me,” Hurley said. “While you were away I got greased with box seats at the Stadium. It was a great game, went twelve innings and ended with a bases-loaded strikeout.”

Mitch knew of the invitation. It had been one of the messages on the answering machine. He hadn't told Hurley about what had ensued up in Kinderhook. He might someday but for now he was trying to forget it. And as for revealing things, tonight he'd let Maddie know she hadn't killed Riccio and Fratino. Lift that load from her. She hadn't admitted being affected by it but Mitch was sure she was. No matter that they were bad guys and it had been self-defense. As for his own killings, he'd have to live with the change they'd made in him. A facet hardened.

“Dragonflies,” Maddie whispered sibilantly, extending it to nearly a whistle.

She was still on that, Mitch thought. He took her in. She had on a white cotton waffle-knit sweatshirt with
HARLEY-DAVIDSON
lettered large in black on the right sleeve from cuff to shoulder. A very short white wraparound skirt and white suede sandals. He surmised that she'd put on her makeup hurriedly. Her left brow didn't quite match her right and her lipstick had created a slightly lopsided mouth. But beautiful, oh so beautiful, Mitch thought.

After a few silent miles he asked: “You say it just came to you out of the blue?”

“Black,” she corrected. “I was at the kitchen table sorting through beans for a cassoulet. You know, culling out the dry, hard ones, when it was suddenly very obvious.”

“An angel whispered in your ear.”

“Don't poke fun at me.”

“I wasn't. I'm serious.”

“You don't put credence in anything supernatural and you know it.”

“Don't be so sure.” He leaned over and blew a tiny dark hair from high on her cheek. No doubt from one of her fluffy sable makeup brushes.

“Anyway,” she said, “it occurred to me that the reason no one has been able to come up with those pair of stolen Iranian emeralds was simply because they were never stolen. Had you ever thought that?”

“No,” Mitch fibbed to allow her glory.

“Neither had Hurley,” she said. “Isn't that right, Hurley?”

“Right,” Hurley also fibbed.

“So,” she said, “I immediately stopped fucking with the beans and went into the den to dwell on it, and then I was lying on the floor with my feet elevated, gathering my senses, I mean literally bringing them all together and latching them on to my memory and letting my memory tell me what it knew.”

“And it came to you out of the black.”

“Did it ever! Exactly where those emeralds have been, were, still are.”

An indulgent self-exonerating shrug from Hurley. “I just happened to phone at that moment,” he explained to Mitch. “Maddie told me about it and I invited myself along. I figured at the very least we could have dinner, maybe at some fish place, on the way back.”

Billy raised his eyes a fraction to have Mitch in the rearview mirror. Mitch assumed by now Billy was used to such far-fetches. “You're serious,” Mitch said to Maddie.

“Never been more so.”

“You're claiming you know where the emeralds are?”

“Sure.”

“Well, where are they?”

“I'm not telling.”

“Why not?”

“In case they're not there,” she said straight-faced.

Billy asked the Lexus for another five and put it on cruise control.

They arrived at the Kalali house in Far Hills shortly before sundown. No police tape now. The house was no longer designated a crime scene. The electronic gate to the drive was closed. It couldn't be opened manually.

Billy drove around the area and located the road that ran parallel with the rear wall of the Kalali grounds. At about the same spot where the swifts and Peaches had gone over, Billy angled the car off the road and brought it close up to the wall.

By standing on the hood the top of the wall was easily within reach. Maddie, short skirt no matter, was first to climb up and over. Mitch and Hurley followed. Billy would wait.

They paused for a moment to get their bearings. It wasn't yet dark. Dusk had another half hour or so. The large, white, contemporary house was clearly visible a hundred yards from there.

A light went on in one of the rooms of its north wing. And another. Was someone inside? Certainly not Mrs. Kalali. She was still unconscious in the hospital. Hurley had been checking on her condition daily.

“Some of the interior lights are probably on automatic timers,” Hurley said. That seemed plausible.

They headed for the house.

“I know,” Mitch remarked facetiously, “the emeralds are buried somewhere out here in a mayonnaise jar.”

Maddie didn't let that faze her. “You just wait and see,” she told him smugly.

The landscaped area of the rear grounds had been neglected and so had the swimming pool. The water in the pool appeared somewhat gelatinous and well on its way to a chartreuse shade. The sight of it pulled a grunt out of Mitch. “I sure as hell hope they're not in the pool,” he said.

They went to the door that led in from the garage. It was locked but Hurley quickly picked it open. The alarm pad mounted on the interior wall indicated that the security system wasn't on.

Mitch and Hurley stood aside in the kitchen while Maddie opened and felt around in drawers and cupboards, the microwave and the dishwasher. From what she'd said, from her certainty, they'd expected she would go directly to where she believed the emeralds might be. But now here she was, evidently searching for them. It verified their skepticism; however they wouldn't be inconsiderate, remained silent and let her go at it.

From the kitchen to the living room, the reception hall, the library. Maddie appeared to be at a loss.

Actually, she knew exactly what she was doing. Toying with them and, as well, putting off the chance that she was wrong; that she in her black had gotten carried away and this undertaking would prove to be nothing more than an intuitive error.

She, for her own reasons, needed that not to be so. If she was right about the emeralds it would be a confirmation of her sentiency, a measure of how real and reliable it was. Or, were those extra-ordinary senses only what she believed she had, and it was the strength of her belief that helped her expand, stretch the limits of her functioning? A mere illusory aid; could that be all there was to it?