Arcadia Burns

THE WHITE TELEPHONE


ROSA WAS STANDING ON the balcony of the study with its wrought-iron balustrade, looking out over the inner courtyard and the rooftops to the peak of the mountain, when the telephone rang.

It wasn’t the phone on her desk. This one had a ringtone unlike any that she had yet heard in the palazzo.

The muted, almost inaudible sound came from the wall paneling on the west side of the room. It was a genuine ring, very old-fashioned, not a trendy modern tone. She’d never heard it except in old movies and as a ringtone to download on a cell phone. But something told her that there was no cell phone concealed in the wall.

After a minute, during which she groped around more and more frantically for hidden mechanisms, the sound stopped. She cursed quietly, but she didn’t give up. Finally she tried the obvious and, sure enough, found a panel at chest height that could be slid aside with the palm of her hand. It disappeared behind the panel next to it with a faint sound. A secret door came into view lower down on the wall.

Behind it, the phone began to ring again.

The door wasn’t locked. Ducking low, Rosa slipped through it and found herself in a tiny room less than six feet square. It contained a high-backed armchair and a round table, on which an old-fashioned, snow-white telephone stood. It had a round dial and an enormously heavy receiver. The casing of the phone looked like ivory or mother-of-pearl.

She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Good day.”

“Trevini?” She dropped into the chair. “What kind of a phone is this?”

“One so outmoded that Judge Quattrini’s people and everyone else who’d like to listen in have forgotten how to bug it. Officially the cable network we’re using doesn’t exist anymore. But certain persons in, let’s say, high places made sure, when the system was modernized a few decades ago, that parts of it were left in place all over Sicily. The authorities know nothing about it. Or if they do, they would be greatly disappointed if they tried tapping into it with their ultramodern digital stuff.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”

“To find out how much you know about the secrets of the palazzo.” Which told her that there must certainly be others that he wasn’t telling her about. Demonstrating his superiority, the bastard.

“What do you want?”

“I want to help you.”

“Sure you do.”

“No, listen, Rosa. This is something you ought to take seriously.”

She shifted in the uncomfortable chair. Traces of dust were left on her black clothes.

“And I would be glad,” he said, “if, when you hear what I’m calling about, you do not hang up.”

She could have done it there and then. She had a good idea what this was all about. Or whom.

“In all probability,” said Trevini, “it was Alessandro Carnevare who contracted for the murder of his relations in New York.”

A startled lizard scurried over the wall of the secret room and disappeared into a tiny hole in the corner.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he continued. “Can’t the old fool keep quiet for once? How often is he going to try to discredit Alessandro?”

“I wouldn’t have put it that politely.”

“One of the things you pay me for is to tell you unwelcome truths, to your face. And this has nothing to do with my personal dislike of young Carnevare. It’s a fact that instructions for the killings came from Italy. Michele Carnevare himself only just escaped an attempt on his life two days ago, and his people succeeded in following the trail back—to someone who was a leading figure in the transatlantic drug trade for many years. A certain Stelvio Guerrini. Not a name you need to remember, and he hasn’t played a very active role for some time. Anyway, he sent the killers on behalf of a third party. And Guerrini was a close business partner of Baron Massimo Carnevare—Alessandro’s father.”

“That proves nothing at all.” Her own composure surprised her. Was it because she didn’t believe him? Or because she had already guessed it, even though Alessandro had denied it? “Any family in Sicily could have contracted this Guerrini to get rid of Michele.”

“Yes, to be sure. Except no one but Alessandro seems to have any reason to wipe out the whole New York branch of the Carnevares. A single contract killing, yes, that would be possible. But attempted assassination of the entire leadership of the American Carnevares? That amounts to an open declaration of war, and there’s no one who would risk that, not these days. At the moment most of the families have other anxieties to deal with on their own doorsteps. A clan feud carried out across the Atlantic causes more uproar than most can stomach.”

“Do you have any proof of this?”

“Rosa, you and I are not the police. I have no interest in convicting Alessandro Carnevare of a crime. That would be rather foolish, don’t you think?”

The receiver shook slightly as she held it to her ear. She clutched it more firmly.

“But the way it looks, he lied to you if he said he had nothing to do with those deaths. Do you understand? What makes you so sure that he hasn’t done the same before? Or since?” The attorney’s tone of voice was sharper now. “He walks over other people’s corpses, and he’ll always keep secrets from you. You mustn’t trust him. Whatever he says—it could all be lies.”

“Because you happen to have heard a few rumors?”

“In case of doubt—yes. Those murders are a fact. So is the origin of the orders to have them carried out. It all points the same way. And it’s not over yet. First it was Michele’s brother Carmine, then several of his cousins. And since the failed assassination attempt on Michele, two more Carnevares have been killed.” She heard paper rustling at his end of the line. “Now the targets are openly the younger ones. Thomas Carnevare, who couldn’t even speak Italian. He was only twenty. And Mattia Carnevare was—”

“Mattia?”

“You know him?”

“How did he die?”

“The body was burnt. Not much more is known about it. Found in a pile of garbage in Crown Heights. That’s a part of—”

“Brooklyn,” she whispered.

“Of course. You know your way around there.”

“Mattia wasn’t murdered by any contract killer,” she said. “That was done by Michele himself.”

Trevini said nothing for a moment. Maybe he expected an explanation. She wasn’t going to give him one. Had Mattia been murdered that night? Had he managed to escape the others at the boathouse, only to be killed later?

“What do you know about it?” asked the attorney.

“Only that Mattia Carnevare’s death has nothing to do with Alessandro. It was a punitive operation within the family.”

Trevini muttered something angrily to himself. Then he said, “Did you tell Alessandro Carnevare about the furs?”

“No.”

“I can only pray that you’re telling the truth. That boy is obsessed with revenge—first for his mother’s death, then for what Michele Carnevare did to you. Who knows what would happen if he knew that the skins of his family were lined up on coat hangers in your cellar.”

Rosa stared at the blank wall. She would have liked to get to her feet and prowl around the room, but the damn Stone Age phone had too short a cord for that.

“Stay out of this,” she said, and was horrified to hear the tremor in her voice. “Alessandro is my business. Nothing to do with anyone else.”

“I’m afraid you delude yourself. There’s more at stake here than the question of who you’re necking with.”

She wasn’t letting him destroy her relationship with Alessandro. No one could do that.

“It’s about the family,” he said. “The inheritance that you accepted. Your father’s legacy. That ought to matter to you.”

“My father’s not in his grave.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I opened his casket. There’s nothing but bricks inside.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

“No good advice?” she asked after a while.

“I’m considering it. And that you ought to be putting your mind to more important matters than—”

“Than the fact that my father’s f*cking casket is empty?” she shouted. Whether she liked it or not, she couldn’t help going on in the same furious tone. “You can drop the tone of superiority, Trevini! And your warnings and predictions and all that garbage, too. We have a deal. If I need your paternal advice, I’ll call and ask for it. Meanwhile, you can stop snooping around about Alessandro.”

He stayed calm, which infuriated her even more. Pure calculation, of course. She could sense it even over the phone. “Just as you like, Rosa.”

“And I want you to let Valerie go free.”

“Have you thought about that carefully?”

“We don’t need her anymore.”

“Don’t forget what she did to you.”

“That’s my business, okay?”

He seemed to bring his mouth closer to the receiver, because now he was whispering, although his voice was no quieter. “You don’t remember that night, I believe?”

“You’ve seen the police files, haven’t you?”

“I know a great deal more than just those files.”

“What do you mean?”

He cleared his throat. “Remember the video I sent you?” He paused, as if he actually expected an answer to that. “There’s also a second one. When we picked up your friend, she had another cell phone with her. She’d obviously stolen it from Michele Carnevare before setting off for Europe. And there was a video on that phone, too.”

For a moment Rosa could hardly breathe.

“I wanted to spare you this,” he said. “Believe me, I really did.”

“Are you saying that…that he filmed it?”

“I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know which was worse: that a video of her rape existed, or that Trevini had watched it. Cold flowed through her body at breakneck speed.

She managed to speak only by concentrating very hard. It sounded as if someone else were talking for her, like a ventriloquist with a dummy. “Send it here,” she said. Getting the words out took half an eternity. “I want to see it.”

“Why would you wish to subject yourself to that?”

“To find out what you saw.”

“This is not about our differences of opinion, Rosa. I don’t think it would be good for you to—”

“Send me that cell phone. Actually, send them both.”

“If you insist.” He seemed to want to give her a chance to change her mind. When she didn’t, he said, “And what am I to do with the girl?”

“She can go.” Rosa’s vocal cords threatened to freeze up, but in a way that she didn’t understand, she managed to keep the transformation under control. “I don’t want to see Val ever again. Put her in a taxi to the airport. And you’d better book her on a flight to Rome, or New York, or wherever she wants.”

“I’ll see to it that she disappears.”

“No one’s to touch a hair on her head. I am not giving orders to have her killed.”

“I understand perfectly.” His own voice sounded mechanical now.

“Give her some money, enough to last her a week or two, and charge it to me.”

“I really hope she’ll appreciate that.”

“Just as long as she’s gone.”

“And you think that will soothe your conscience?”

“You don’t understand. I’m not talking about my conscience.”

“No?”

“If I watch that video,” she said quietly, “it could change my mind.”

“You want to protect her? From yourself, Rosa?” He laughed quietly. “It’s your sense of responsibility, then. You don’t want to have to make a decision that you’d regret later.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t regret it at all. Maybe I’d suddenly realize that I like making those decisions.” The power over life and death. The power wielded by her ancestors.

“Until now, I thought you were only running away from yourself,” he said gently. “But in reality you’re running away from the ghost of Costanza.”

She said nothing until, at long last, he hung up.