Arcadia Burns

THE CONTESSA


SHE FELT UNEASY as she went down the driveway, a mile through plantations and light woodland. She had chosen a black BMW cross-country vehicle, not her father’s Maserati, so she stepped on the gas harder than usual on the uneven gravel drive. Dust clouds rose behind her, obscuring her view in the mirror. She kept looking out for wild dogs among the trees, but she couldn’t see any, and there were certainly no humans in sight. The howling had come from higher up. They might be on the mountain or the nearby hills behind the palazzo.

She’d had the guards down on the road reinforced. Four men were keeping an eye on the surroundings there. A dozen more were patrolling the slopes. Her aunt used to have just as many stationed there; Rosa was relying on the fact that Florinda must have known what was necessary to keep the property secure.

Soon she was racing northward, passing Piazza Armerina and Valguarnera, and at Enna turning onto the A19 toward the east coast. Several times she thought she saw pursuers behind her, but as soon as she had convinced herself that she was being shadowed, the suspicious vehicles disappeared along a side road or turned off into a picnic area.

Two hours later, around noon, she finally drove up the winding road to Taormina. The sky on the cliff tops above the town was overcast. Uniformed police officers at barriers were turning tourists in rental cars away from the historic city center, but Rosa had a special permit obtained by Trevini years ago for the Alcantara family.

She parked the BMW right outside the entrance to the Grand Hotel Jonio. As she got out, she took her bag off the passenger seat. It contained only one item.

She was wearing a black fabric coat, slim pants, and leather boots. Her blond hair fell loose over her shoulders, fluttering in the brisk wind blowing up to the cliffs on the steep coast. In spite of the mild weather, there was a chill to the gusts off the wide expanses of the Ionian Sea.

Two of Trevini’s bodyguards, in bespoke suits, were sitting in comfortable armchairs in the hotel lobby. Seeing Rosa, one of them spoke into a microphone in the bracelet on his wrist. Same as during her last visit, there were no other guests around. Maybe Trevini had rented the entire hotel for himself.

She turned to the man at the reception desk. From a distance he looked like any ordinary reception clerk. His expensive jacket bulged under his left armpit, just enough to be noticeable to anyone keeping an eye out for a shoulder holster. Rosa was sure that he had other weapons hidden under the counter in front of him.

The two men in armchairs never took their eyes off her. One of them rose to his feet and strolled between Rosa and the exit.

In a calm voice, she asked to see the attorney, and she watched the reception clerk pick up a receiver and speak quietly into it. She guessed who was at the other end of the line, and was not surprised to be told that at the moment Trevini was in an important meeting. Contessa di Santis would enjoy keeping her waiting.

She leaned as far over the counter as she could, hoping the man on the other side wouldn’t notice that she had to stand on tiptoe to do so.

“This place,” she said, “is financed by my money. I’ll give you one minute to make sure that the avvocato sees me at once.”

“I know who you are, signorina, and I’m very sorry that—”

She wasn’t listening to him anymore. Turning around, she went over to an opaque glass double door. Beyond it lay the lounge leading out to the terrace.

“Signorina Alcantara,” the man called after her, “I really must ask you to wait until the avvocato sends for you.”

The bodyguards began to move.

She pushed the lounge doors open with both hands. On the other side, she was expected.

“Contessa di Santis,” she said, with an icy smile, as she paused in the entrance.

“Signorina Alcantara.” The avvocato’s assistant glanced past Rosa at the bodyguards and gestured to them. The two men immediately withdrew. The contessa stopped directly in front of Rosa, and lowered her voice. “We should talk.”

“I’m not talking to anyone but Trevini himself—”

“Please,” replied di Santis, unmoved, “follow me.”

With a glance out of the corner of her eye, Rosa made sure that the clasp of her purse was open. She didn’t usually have much time for handbags, and until recently hadn’t even owned one. But now she was glad to have it with her.

Cristina di Santis went ahead, not out onto the terrace but through a side door and into the former ballroom of the grand hotel. She walked quickly across the room, too, her high heels clicking on the parquet flooring. She was wearing a short, snug dress, dark red like her lipstick, and her hair was just as perfect as it had been the day Rosa had met her for the first time. A signet ring, presumably that of her clan, was her only jewelry. A discreet touch of perfume wafted behind her.

“Are you bringing me to Trevini?” asked Rosa suspiciously, as the contessa led her into a narrow stairway.

Di Santis nodded without looking at her. Rosa thought of Valerie’s dungeon in the hotel basement, and stopped. She took the contessa’s upper arm and made her turn to face her. “What’s this all about?”

“Just a moment more. Please be patient.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’ll understand in a minute.”

“I didn’t come here to—”

“I know why you came here, Signorina Alcantara, and I am doing all I can to help you. I am on your side.” With that, she shook Rosa’s hand off her arm and led her through another door into a corridor paved with white tiles.

A little later they were entering the hotel swimming pool area, an impressive, domed chamber with a huge wall of windows looking out over the sea. Tiles the color of turquoise and terra-cotta dominated the room.

Broad flights of steps on all four sides led down to the spacious pool. It was about nine feet deep in the middle. The water must have been drained away long ago; it didn’t even smell damp anymore.

Trevini’s wheelchair lay, toppled over, in the dry pool. The avvocato himself was crouching several feet away from it at the foot of one of the flights of steps. He must have crawled over to it on his belly. Now he was sitting there, exhausted, half propped on the bottom step, his useless legs twisted. His elegant suit was crumpled, his sparse gray hair drenched with sweat.

Rosa’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the contessa again. “Explain.”

Di Santis didn’t move a muscle. “It’s in your own interests.”

Rosa’s hand slipped into her bag. Her fingers closed around the handle of the staple gun.

“You came to ask him questions,” said di Santis. “This could be your last chance.”

At the bottom of the swimming pool, the old man laboriously raised his head. “Rosa…this is lunacy…”

“What’s going on?” she hissed at the contessa. “Who are you? And what are you up to?”

The young attorney took a deep breath. “I’d hoped to have more time. I would have liked to learn even more from him.”

“He trusted you.”

“It was more difficult than I’d expected. He is a stubborn old man, but after a while he warmed to me. The time came when he couldn’t wait to pour his heart out to me day after day.”

Down in the pool below, Trevini moved. “She knows everything, Rosa. About your family, about Costanza…Kill her, before she sells her knowledge to the enemies of the Alcantaras.”

“Looks like you did that already, Trevini,” Rosa replied coldly.

“Once again,” the contessa told Rosa, “I am not your enemy.”

The handle of the staple gun was slowly warming up in Rosa’s hand. “Those men out there in the lobby—”

“Are being well paid for preferring me to their former employer.”

“She’s out of her mind!” Trevini screamed.

Rosa looked at the contessa. “I don’t think so.”

“Think of it as a kind of job application,” said di Santis, in the composed way that Rosa both disliked and admired. “When all this is over, you’re going to need a new legal adviser, Signorina Alcantara. Someone in a position to carry on with the avvocato’s business in a way that suits you.”

“So that’s what you’re after?” asked Rosa, astonished. “You want to succeed him as legal adviser?”

Di Santis shook her head, amused. “First and foremost it’s a case of reparations. Revenge would be a crude way to put it.”

“Revenge for what?”

“My family was once a highly respected Cosa Nostra clan. Landed property, factories, all kinds of business firms—the di Santis clan had more than enough of all that. My grandfather was one of the most powerful capi in the west of the island. Until he made the mistake of quarreling with the Corleonese bosses.”

Rosa knew about that. The capos from the small town of Corleone had waged bloody war in the eighties against anyone who disputed their claim to dominance of the Sicilian Mafia. Massacres and bombs had assassinated whole families. For years no one could do anything against the will of the Corleonese, and it was generally known that the di Santis family had been among those on their hit list. Only the contessa and a handful of her relations had survived. Since then, it was said, the remaining members of the clan had retired from the Mafia business.

“For years no one knew for sure who had handed my family over to them.” Cristina di Santis walked over to the edge of the top step. For the first time her smooth, serene facial expression changed. The glance she cast at the helpless Trevini was one of deep contempt. “The avvocato has worked for your clan for decades, Signorina Alcantara, and very conscientiously, too. That didn’t stop him from running his own businesses on the side, and during the course of it, unfortunately, my father and brother got in his way. He started the rumor that my family was secretly scheming against the Corleone Mafia: He forged documents, he bribed two state prosecutors—and from then on it all gathered speed. He had only to lean back and wait until the murderers from Corleone had wiped out a large part of our family at a wedding party. Men, women, almost a dozen children. I was a small child at the time; I’d been left at home with my nursemaid, that’s the only reason I survived. My mother was shot—eleven bullets were later found in her body. My elder brother was burned to death when he and several others were herded into the restaurant kitchen, drenched in gasoline, and set on fire. Only a few escaped, including my father, but he was never the same man. For years I had to listen to his whining, hear him justifying his cowardice. When I was finally old enough, I went to northern Italy. But all that time, at university and later, I knew I would go back and find out who was responsible for the extermination of the di Santis family. In the end it wasn’t even difficult to find Trevini’s name. But it was hard to get him to confide in me. For three years I’ve been licking his boots, disowning my family, until at last he came out with parts of the truth. I sold myself to him. And now it’s finally payback time.”

“Why now?” asked Rosa. “Why today in particular?”

“Because otherwise you’d have done it, Signorina Alcantara. Because after all you’ve seen on that video, I suspect you, too, have a number of questions to ask the avvocato. And because there’s someone else who will very soon be demanding satisfaction.”

“Someone else?” The words were hardly out of Rosa’s mouth before she understood. “It was you! You promised Alessandro the evidence that the Carnevares were innocent of the Hungry Man’s arrest!”

“Unfortunately, events have rather overtaken one another,” replied the contessa. “I would have liked to take my time about it, be more circumspect. However, Trevini insisted on sending you the video. Then I knew it all had to be done very fast.”

Trevini uttered a hoarse crack of laughter. “You talked to Alessandro Carnevare? Cristina, are you out of your mind? There won’t be one stone left to stand on here once—”

Narrowing her eyes, Rosa stared at the old man. “You gave the Hungry Man away all those years ago? And pinned the blame on the Carnevares?”

He snorted quietly but didn’t answer.

Di Santis nodded slowly. “There aren’t many files and documents in this place—his memory really is as phenomenal as he claims. But there is a letter from the state prosecutor’s office, now thirty years old. It promises him immunity from prosecution in return for his cooperation in the arrest of the capo dei capi. At the time he’d just begun working for your grandmother.”

Rosa groaned. “Costanza was involved in this as well?”

Trevini looked up at her again and seemed to be gathering all his powers. “Why do you suppose the Alcantaras were closer than anyone to the new capo dei capi? Why did Salvatore Pantaleone think so much of your family, Rosa? I brokered the deal with Pantaleone at the time. He, Costanza, and I made sure that the Hungry Man would disappear—to be succeeded by Pantaleone. If not for that agreement, the Alcantara possessions would long ago have been swallowed up by one of the larger and more determined clans! You owe what you are today to me and no one else, Rosa. And now show your appreciation and put an end to this farce!”

Fury made Rosa’s voice hoarse. “The Hungry Man is having the Carnevares hunted down, because he thinks they’re the guilty ones!”

“Haven’t you learned anything?” roared Trevini angrily. “Are you seriously going to tell me that you mourn for the New York Carnevares? The same men who had a hand in what happened to you? Or doesn’t their death secretly fill you with satisfaction? Listen to your heart. How do you feel knowing that Michele might fall victim to an assassination attempt? Damn it, Rosa, don’t play the righteous innocent!”

“The Hungry Man has set killers on Alessandro! And now his men are after me as well.”

“I told you to keep away from that Carnevare bastard. If you’d listened to me, everything would be fine.” Trevini gradually seemed to be retrieving his old self-confidence. “It was all planned, down to the very last detail. Who could have expected you to go throwing yourself at a Carnevare, of all people? You can hardly hold me responsible for the consequences.”

The contessa said calmly, “He’s lost, and he knows it. He’d do anything to—”

Rosa didn’t wait for her to finish. With a few bounds she leaped down the tiled steps to the bottom of the drained swimming pool. Trevini raised a protective hand in front of his face as she crouched beside him.

“You’re pathetic, Trevini. If the Hungry Man succeeds, then you’ll have not only the di Santis family on your conscience but the Carnevares and Alcantaras as well. What do you hope to achieve by that, aside from not going under alone?”

Trevini slowly lowered his hand. His fingers were shaking. At close range, she saw that he must be in pain. Had the contessa pushed him down here in his wheelchair? His left leg was twisted more than it had looked from above. Probably broken.

“Everything I’ve done for the last thirty years,” he got out, breathlessly, “was for the good of the Alcantaras. I acted first in Costanza’s name, then in Florinda’s, now in yours.”

“Florinda knew all this?”

“Your aunt had no idea about anything. But you, Rosa, had it in you to revive some of Costanza’s old brilliance. With my help, you could have—”

Rosa placed a finger on his lips, and he fell silent. Then she looked over her shoulder and up at the side of the pool. “Does your job application still stand, contessa?”

“Of course.”

“I assume you’re recording all this.”

Di Santis smiled. “Every word.”

Rosa sighed. “That’s why you brought me here. The document you’ve promised Alessandro isn’t enough for you. You needed Trevini’s confession. Right?”

The young attorney assumed her serene expression again. “I never for a moment doubted that your presence would induce him to talk, Signorina Alcantara.”

“Then you have everything you need?”

“Certainly.”

“You never intended to kill him, did you? For what he did to your family.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary now,” said the contessa, with a small smile.

Rosa turned back to Trevini, whose face had gone even paler. “Good.” And without turning again, she said, “As your new employer, I’d like to ask you to leave us for a moment. The avvocato and I have something to discuss alone.”

“As you wish.” Di Santis turned to go.

“Contessa?”

“Signorina Alcantara?”

“I’m relying on you to see that your microphones and cameras are switched off now.” She laid a hand under the old man’s chin. He was pale as death. “There’s no need for anyone else to watch this.”