Authors: Lynne Connolly
Then there was the shit back home to clear up.
The hotel phone rang and he crossed the room to answer it, catching a whiff of Lina’s perfume as he passed the rumpled sheets. A pang of longing gripped him, and need—need for what, he wasn’t sure. Sex, yeah, he could fuck her until she’d drained him, but more, something else. To hold her, to make sure she was okay. And it went bone deep. Far too deep.
“Yeah?” he barked into the receiver.
“Mistaire Brantlee?” The guy had an atrocious accent, but at least he spoke English.
“Yes.”
“Thees ees the cor-on-er.” He said every syllable carefully, as if he’d looked it up. He probably had. “I am ready to release your brother Byron for trans-por-tation as we agreed, but I wanted to speak to you. Something about my examination was a little strange. I have put it in the report, but there is not enough for us to detain the body.”
What the fuck?
“Explain, please.”
The careful but incorrect pronunciation continued. Jon had to concentrate to understand every word. “Your brother had taken a kind of heroin I have never seen before. You know most heroin, when it reaches the streets, it is not pure?” He pronounced the last word so badly it took Jon a moment or two to process it.
“Yes, I know that.”
“This was. I can find no trace of anything else. I cannot be sure but I am including a description in the report. I am saying he died of an overdose, which he did, but Mr. Brantley—How close were you to your brother?”
“Not very.” He didn’t want anything the coroner was about to say clouded by sentiment. He wanted it straight.
“Very well. You knew he was an addict?”
“Yes, I did. Where would he get uncut heroin from?” Alarmed now, he needed this information.
The authorities would do their best to smooth this over. The death of an American citizen from Italian drugs, especially from such a prominent family, could prove awkward for them. They’d try to get the unfortunate body out of the country and into someone else’s jurisdiction. By the time he saw Byron again, his brother would be in a jar and any evidence destroyed. He needed to know if he should stop the cremation.
“It is possible that someone wanted your brother dead. But he was an addict and it is almost impossible to prove anything in court. He bought the drug and he injected it, not knowing it was pure. It would be hard to prove otherwise. However, I thought I should tell you.”
“Can we arrange to have his body transported as it is, without cremation?” Maybe he could get someone in New York to reexamine the body, to try to find something to go on.
A pause. “I am sorry, sir, but it is already too late. His body went to the crematorium this afternoon.” A pause. “And anything I have said in this conversation I will not support if I am called to court. Except that he died of an overdose of the drug he had been addicted to for years.”
“Of course.” He could understand, with gangs as violent as the ones here, why the coroner would not wish any involvement.
As far as he knew, heroin didn’t hit the streets pure. It was always, always, cut with something else. Giving an addict pure heroin wasn’t an accident.
It was murder.
Jon traveled back to the States with his mind caught in a rat trap. He went around and around but could find no answer. Two questions obsessed him.
How had Byron known where to go to find Lina? Jon didn’t believe his brother had accidentally gone to the same place as Lina. He’d gone there deliberately. Maybe he’d asked the nuns, or tricked them into revealing Lina’s whereabouts, or maybe he’d only gone because he needed money to feed his habit. Nonaddicts were the best source, because they had things left to sell.
Or maybe someone had sent him.
And then to contact his murderer before he’d left the station—someone waiting for him, or an accident? Were they waiting for Byron, or was he collateral? No, that kind of coincidence didn’t convince him. Shit, he couldn’t find anything out in midair, couldn’t even jot his suspicions down in case someone found them.
Paranoid much?
Where did that leave Lina? Was someone trying to find her, or just using her to get to Byron, to flush him out into the open?
He couldn’t leave this alone. But he had to leave Lina where she was until he could get her away. Not because of her reason, or not just because of that. He’d inadvertently brought trouble to her because of his stupid boasts to be a knockoff merchant. He owed her. He’d have her tailed for a while, if his investigator could find someone to do it discreetly. Just in case anyone showed too much interest in her.
He opened his eyes when someone fiddled with his lap blanket and stared straight up into soft, brown Asian eyes. The flight attendant smiled. “Is there anything I can get you, sir?”
“No. No thanks.”
“Just press the buzzer, sir. I’d be only too pleased to—serve you.”
Before that last remark and before he’d hooked up with Lina, he’d have been tempted. But her last comment struck him as too blatant, and anyway, she didn’t stir anything inside him.
He watched her walk away, her tiny ass confined in a neat, black pencil skirt and thought of Lina’s lovely curves. It wasn’t that he preferred his women slim; it was that he preferred
her
.
Not that she wanted him. It still stung, the way she walked away after they’d shared the hottest sex he could ever remember, leaving him hungry, panting for more. Perhaps that was it. She’d left him hungry.
He must have dozed because when he opened his eyes the light had changed and the captain was speaking, asking them to fasten their seat belts. A fourteen-hour flight wasn’t too bad in first class, but he didn’t envy the cattle-class passengers. That was one option he’d never had the urge to try. Although six thousand dollars was a big premium. His brother’s fare had cost a lot more, and he’d anticipated having to grease a few palms to get the formalities dealt with quickly. But at the end, he hadn’t even needed to offer. They wanted him out of the country, and fast. If the gangs had become involved, that didn’t entirely surprise him.
He gazed out the window, watching the plane land, with a smoothness only big airplanes managed. He’d take the return flight as soon as he could and this time he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Her last threat, to disappear, had been only too real. He’d bet she had a small rainy day fund put away, enough for transport and new ID if she needed it.
He couldn’t let that happen. Wouldn’t.
After collecting his jacket and the plastic urn containing what was left of Byron, Jon left the plane. He blinked in the bright sunshine pouring in through the plate-glass windows, then went into the artificial atmosphere of the airport.
Jon had a weak spot for airports, places of uncertainty, nearly-there oases between one existence and the next. He had the chance to get some work done where people couldn’t get hold of him easily, if he switched off his phone and claimed he’d just forgotten. Not today, though. He couldn’t wait to leave.
Customs was relatively smooth. It was worth paying the first-class fare for that, at least. He collected his suitcase and headed for the VIP lounge, while he waited for them to bring yet more documents for him to sign.
His last journey with his brother. He remembered times from their youth, when he and Byron had just been ordinary kids, playing in the park or the backyard of their New York brownstone. The brownstone now formed the offices of the company he ran, while his mother lived in a swish penthouse, but he’d loved that house, and so had Byron. That was the reason they’d never sold it, although those buildings fetched small fortunes these days.
He placed Byron next to him and leaned back. He was alone here, most of the passengers hurrying to get on with their lives. A woman in a pink jacket on a large flat-screen TV silently mouthed the news and he reached for the remote. At least he could understand what they said here.
Getting off a plane made him feel as if he’d temporarily left civilization, and now he returned to the fold. The broadcaster went through the same-old, same-old political arguments, financial news. He paid attention to that, mentally making note of the way the market was swinging. They’d had some bad times in the retail trade, but with his core business solid, his company had weathered the storm. He’d cut the lines a little, taking sharp note of stock levels. Now things were picking up once more and he was considering a new venture, a development from his company’s core business. He’d bought a couple of companies at the market’s nadir, if this wasn’t a double-dip market. He had slightly different plans for them. It felt good to get back to work, to get back to what passed as normal.
The financial news ended and the broadcaster announced the world news. The British Prime Minister was visiting Pakistan, the state dinners and formal meetings no doubt cover for more serious dealings. Another bomb had gone off in one of the world’s trouble spots.
Then the broadcaster blithely shattered his world. “And in Naples, Italy, gang activity appears to have started again after a period of relative peace.” A picture of a shattered building flashed on the screen, the green wall next to it so familiar his throat tightened. He fought to suck in a breath. “A small café away from the tourist areas was firebombed yesterday in renewed gang warfare. The police believe the café was a center of illegal activity. It may signal a return to the bad old days when judges and high-ranking police officials were murdered if they got in the way of the gangs that infest that part of Italy.”
There was nothing left of the upper level of the café, the empty windows open to the sky, drapes that he knew so well flapping in the light breeze. Anyone inside that apartment when the bomb went off wouldn’t have stood a chance.
He stopped listening, his mind racing, although he knew exactly what he had to do. And fast.
His mother waited at the barrier, with Alice, a girl he’d escorted to a few parties last month. The old girl had found him another potential match. She wanted an heir, but the right heir, and Alice Landon’s pedigree was impeccable.
They stood a little apart, flanked by men who couldn’t look more like bodyguards if they tried. Dark suits, sunglasses, narrow ties, which Jon would bet were clip-ons—too much. His mind preoccupied with the devastating news he’d just received, they looked like travesties of the real thing to him.
After he passed through the barrier, he walked right up to his mother before she gave him any sign of recognition. She wore red, with a hat that kind of framed her face. Her face, previously prematurely lined, now smoothed out by some chemical or other and maybe a facelift, still reminded him of the woman who’d always spared time from her busy social scene to spend at least an hour a day with her sons. So he forced a smile and she forced one back. A quiver of perfectly lipsticked mouth, anyway.
Alice flung herself at him. He had no choice but to hug her. “Oh I’m so sorry, Jon, what a way to discover what happened to Byron! You should have sent for me. I would have come, I swear I would. All alone in that awful place. Did you know a bomb went off there yesterday? I didn’t rest until I heard you were safely on the plane.”
He gently put her aside and bent to brush his lips against his mother’s perfumed, powdered cheek. “I brought him home to you, Mother.”
One of the guards took the bag he’d put the urn in. Despite the agitation turning his brain to mush, he felt a pang when he relinquished the ashes. “Look after those. I want them guarded night and day.”
“You got it,” one of the men rumbled.
He glanced around and caught sight of the ticket areas. Grabbing the handle of his suitcase, he prepared to give her news she wouldn’t be happy about, ready to make up a facile lie. At the last moment, he decided against it. “I have to go back.”
She gasped. “Now?”
“Right now.” He glanced at her. “I know who owned the café that was bombed and I have to deal with it. Don’t tell a soul, clear? Just say I’m not available.”
Alice clutched his arm and he spared her a glance. “Look after my mother. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Twenty hours later, Jon passed a weary hand over his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Now he knew why they called it cattle class. Exhaustion didn’t begin to describe the way he felt. The flight to Boston was comfortable enough in what they called premier class, which turned out to be cattle class with a little more legroom and a plastic flute of champagne on takeoff, but the transatlantic leg couldn’t accommodate him in first at such short notice. A soccer team had booked most of the seats, together with their wives, girlfriends, managers, coaches and God knew who else.
The plane from Paris to Naples was hell on the wing, outdated, tiny and packed with people heading for the coast. The stories of the bomb in Naples hadn’t deterred them in the least.
Just as he’d managed to drift into an uncomfortable doze, a child had cried, or someone had wanted to climb past him to get to the restroom. He needed the sleep because God knew what waited for him at the other end of this journey. He tried hard to keep his mind off the sight burned into his brain, but the charred and shattered building had burst into his consciousness. He recalled it in painful detail.
The window of her tiny apartment was completely gone, the café little more than a blackened hole in the ground. He managed to catch the news. Since his French was better than his Neapolitan, he’d picked up more from the reports at de Gaulle airport, where he’d grabbed a quick meal he was now regretting before his connecting flight.
He never wanted to see this outfit again. His suit was crumpled beyond salvation and his shirt worse. The minute he landed he was going to the police, the American Embassy or consulate, or whatever the fuck he could find and stir that hornet’s nest until he found out what was going on.
And what had happened to her. Them. No, her. He didn’t kid himself. If he could be sure she was safe he’d have paid someone else to investigate and kept his distance, as she’d asked him to. Right now he didn’t care that he was endangering his own safety. Just that she was safe.
At last they landed and after an interminable wait, he got through customs. The official raised a brow when he saw the dates on his passport, but didn’t say anything. Jon allowed them to poke him, and run the metal stick all around him, outwardly passive, inwardly fuming, frantic to get away and get to the authorities.
He grabbed a cab and went straight to the Romeo, but had a different room this time, for which he felt profoundly grateful. He took the quickest shower ever, passed a razor over his stubbled face and changed into something a little less soiled, something he hadn’t spent the best part of two days in. He tossed the clothes into a corner of the room and examined his appearance. He couldn’t attract anyone’s attention like this and he knew the value of appearances.
He’d always hated shopping, but necessity meant he had to. He leaped into another cab and got the driver to take him to the area with the highest concentration of men’s clothes shops. Couples sauntered, window-shopping, and people got in and out of cars. Just like an ordinary day. How could they, when tragedy lay on their doorstep?
Not a suit. He only wore tailor-made, his legs too long for ordinary off-the-rack suits, but in the first shop he entered he found a couple of pairs of khakis and casual shirts. It wasn’t until he’d passed over his gold card and got a black carrier bag in return that he realized he’d entered one of the stores that he owned, the Italian branch of the chain of casual wear stores that formed the core of the family business.
The assistant glanced up at him after she checked his name, her mouth agape. “Call it a flying visit,” he suggested. “And yes, I’m pleased with what I found.” He realized he was. Well laid out, easy to find his size and the colors he preferred, and no line at the cash desk. Yeah, it would do. He handed over a business card and got them to send his purchases to the hotel.
In another store he found more formal clothes, slacks and dress shirts. He’d need those to help him intimidate people. He found a black jacket that toned okay with the gray slacks he’d chosen and kept the outfit on. Time to go, stir a few nests, get some action. Time to find out if she was alive.
Lina flipped the pages of a magazine, stared at pictures of overly made-up, digitally enhanced women wearing clothes that would cost her three months’ wages. Once they’d have fascinated her, which was probably why the hotel staff had brought them for her. But she needed to get out there, get back to her life.
She’d heard the boom from several streets away, after she’d left college and started on the lonely walk home. But she hadn’t connected it with the café, not until she’d heard the shouting and followed the sounds of sirens to the café.
Or what had once been the café. Her world was in there, and it had gone. All she had left was her textbook, about fifty euros and her passport, which she always carried with her. And the clothes she stood in. She’d had a useful sum tucked away in her room. She’d banked on that money to get her from here to Milan, and tide her over until she found a job. All gone now.
People had stood outside the remains of the café staring, some shouting, and she’d joined them in a daze until someone recognized her.
Now she sat on a lumpy bed in a hotel waiting for her life to catch up with her. Since the authorities had assumed the gangs had set the bomb, they’d put them into a kind of witness protection.
They hadn’t let her contact anyone.
Not that I have anyone to contact
, she thought, firmly pushing any thoughts of Jon out of her mind. Except the gang might have come for him.
The gangs who ran Naples were paranoid, always checking for anyone stepping out of line. The punishments were severe, but at least this time nobody had died—they’d all got out in time. On a slow night at the café, the six occupants, including Franco, had escaped with their lives. Two were in the hospital, and would remain there for some time, but they’d live.
Franco and his family were similarly ensconced, but not in Lina’s hotel. They must be frantic. Franco wouldn’t have proper insurance. It was unlikely he could have found any, considering the café was in the middle of gang territory. He had three children, one of them only seven years old, and now no way of making a living.
This hiatus seemed interminable, but it had gone on less than a day. No, slightly more. She hadn’t slept that first night, worrying about the café, Franco, and wishing Jon was with her, to hold her tight and soothe her worries away. Not that she’d feel that again.
So when the door opened and he stood there, she thought she was seeing things. She blinked, blinked again, then, without becoming aware of what she was doing, she was across the room and in his arms.
All the tension of the last couple of days burst like a dam. She shook with delayed shock and burst into uncontrollable weeping. He held her, and stroked her back, murmuring soothing words. Eventually he bent and scooped her up before he crossed the room to sit on the bed and cradle her like a baby.
He could be a figment of her imagination, but she knew him—his cologne, a patch of stubble under his chin that revealed his haste in shaving, the way his chest supported her helpless body. She could no more control her reactions than she could stop breathing. He held her tight, murmured to her until she realized that not all the tears came from her.
Lifting her head, she stared into his eyes, welcomed the stark blue gaze, glossy with tears. “I thought you were dead,” he said. “I didn’t find out about the bomb until I landed at JFK.”
“You came back from the States?” She felt stupid, felt as if her brain were clogged with tears.
“Of course I did.” He reached out and found a damp cloth. She buried her face in his chest, suddenly aware that her minders must have seen everything. The two men and the woman had offered her gruff comfort and kept her company. But they were as much strangers to her now as they had been a day before. He touched her chin, urged her to look at him and tenderly wiped her face, cleaning her tears away. “What did you think I’d do?”
“Send someone, maybe. You have troubles of your own.”
“Byron’s troubles are done. Yours aren’t. What happened?”
She told him in a few terse sentences. “Maybe they didn’t want anyone to die. That makes it seem like a gang thing. Franco hadn’t paid his protection for three months. He lied to me, said everything was fine. Then when you moved in and said you were a knockoff merchant, they must have panicked and thought Franco was moving his loyalties.”
He grunted. “It took a while for them to admit you were even alive, but I persuaded the consul to come with me. Otherwise I’d still be there, fighting to know anything. They’re not talking, the police. I don’t even know if they caught anybody.”
“I doubt it. The Colleghi aren’t that careless.”
One of the minders cleared his throat. “Nobody died because the bomb was placed upstairs.” He spoke standard, ordinary Italian.
Silence, then an explosive, “What?” from Jon. She translated, confirmed what he thought he’d heard. His growl sounded like some angered beast, deep in his chest, but only she heard and felt the rumble before he suppressed it.
“They wanted you,” she said.
“Or you.” He sounded like the voice of doom. “They don’t get to live.”
“Don’t think that way. They’re all-powerful around here. Either it’s instant death or a lifelong chase. Leave it to the people paid to take the risks.”
He sighed and drew her close. She loved the feeling of being cradled in his arms, but she had to leave them soon. Just not yet. “Then I’ll concentrate on you. Take care of you.” She knew he’d still make his own inquiries. As long as he didn’t put himself on the front line.
“What if you were the target because of the whole knockoff thing?”
“What if they just found it easier to plant the bomb upstairs? They’re obviously not into suicide bombing. They want to get in and out without dying in the process. Going in when you’re at college would be easier. They might not have wanted to kill anyone, just destroy and scare. Do the authorities know anything yet?”
“They wouldn’t say if they did.” She paused. “I don’t know how much English they really speak. Franco is a little better than he let you or me know.”
“Does that mean he’s in league with them?”
She snorted. “Hardly. He worked with the nuns in Rome because they brought him up. He owes them first. The Colleghi would never work with someone like that. They might use him, but they wouldn’t have him in their organization.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.” More than about anything else, now she came to think about it. “He’s in a different safe house with his wife and kids. He has three, seven to eighteen, and he’d do anything for them. Losing the café means losing his livelihood.”
He sighed. “I see. So you want me to rescue them as well?”
She lifted her head. “Would you?”
He dropped a gentle kiss on her lips. “Sure. Think nothing of it. Just call me Santa. Translate for me, will you?” He addressed the security guy and she translated as he spoke. “Can you arrange for me to see someone in authority, quickly? I want to get Ms. Mazzanti and her friends away from here as soon as possible.” When the man looked doubtful he added, “I can save you a lot of money and trouble. I’m willing to pay for their passage to America. It will leave you free to investigate, instead of providing safety for them.”
“What will they do when they get there?” the official asked.
He smiled down at Lina, then turned back to the official. “You forget what I do for a living. I own stores. We can find jobs for them.”
“Work permits, identities?”
“I know people who can make things easier. I’m sure the American authorities would be glad to help. I have the attention of the consul here and my mother sits on several committees with people who can be useful.”
Lina smiled. “Never underestimate the power of the WASP.”
“You said it.”
But that also meant his family’s antipathy to her wouldn’t lessen any when they heard what trouble they’d put him to. Not that she cared, she told herself. She’d been through more than that. But the thought of Channing Brantley and her friends sitting, chatting, only to fall silent when she walked into a room still gave her chills. She could face them down, but she didn’t want to.
She so didn’t want to go back home, but she couldn’t fight it anymore. If she went to Milan, the authorities would follow, perhaps assume she had something to do with the bombing. They wouldn’t leave her alone. And she didn’t have her money. Only a little in the bank. “Why would I go back? There’s nothing for me in New York.”
“There’s me.”
She gave a derisory laugh. “We don’t move in the same circles. You don’t want to fight your people for me.”
“Don’t ever presume you know what I’ll do or won’t do.” His voice changed, turned lethal, like she’d never heard it before. “They’ve taken my brother. They won’t take you.”
“What do you mean, taken your brother?”
He met her gaze, his own so still and clear she froze where she sat. “The coroner thinks someone sold him pure heroin.”
She gasped. As an ex-addict she knew what that meant. “Heroin never, ever gets to the street uncut. Do you mean someone killed him?” Glancing across the room she saw the agent sitting in a hard chair by the door, examining his fingernails. He was trying to give them as much privacy as he could, but his orders must be to stay with them. And like Franco, his English could be better than he’d let on. She kept her voice down. It wasn’t paranoid when they really were after you.
“Probably, but it can’t be traced. Just to make sure, the authorities cremated him. I had a call from the coroner just before they did it, but not in time to stop it. Anyway, it wouldn’t have helped. Finding heroin in an addict’s body is hardly news.”
She grimaced. “Probably a treat for him. He took whatever he could get.”
He closed his eyes and the removal of his attention sent a chill over her skin. Until he opened them again. “I’m so sorry. This whole mess should never have happened to you. You shouldn’t have felt trapped enough to run away.”