Arcadia Burns

VALERIE


IT WAS A TRICK. A lie. Some perverse ruse to make her feel insecure, distract her attention, keep her from messing up any of the Alcantara deals from which Trevini earned his money.

It wasn’t hard to see through his ploy. He wanted to unsettle her so that she’d be easier to manipulate. Most people thought the Mafia shot down anyone who stood in its path with a machine gun. That was nonsense; there were many other ways to get rid of them, and Avvocato Trevini knew them all. A man who had been working for the Cosa Nostra for decades, defending murderers, springing criminals from prison, discrediting public prosecutors—a man who had survived all the changes of leadership intact, and even the bloody street warfare of earlier years, knew what he was doing.

A video clip could be faked. How hard was it to replace one face with another? Trevini must know that she didn’t trust him. That, naturally, she would sooner believe Alessandro. All she had to do was call Alessandro, ask him, and the whole hoax would be exposed.

And yet Trevini had sent her the video.

She took her cell phone out of her bag and dialed Alessandro’s number for the second time that afternoon. The ring seemed louder and shriller this time. Voice mail again.

His smile was still caught on the monitor of the laptop, blurred like a half-forgotten memory. Had she seen him that evening? When Valerie thought a man looked sexy, it was her habit to point him out. Had she pointed him out to Rosa at the party? And more important, had he seen Rosa and failed to tell her later that he recognized her? Why had he kept quiet about it?

He hadn’t been straightforward with her once before: when he’d taken her to Isola Luna so that her presence would interfere with Tano’s plans to murder him. They hadn’t been a couple yet at the time. Did that make a difference?

She decided to send Trevini an email.

You’re fired, she typed. Get out of my life.

She deleted that, and instead wrote: You’ll be hearing from my contract killers. Shitty attorney. Shitty cripple. I hope you miss seeing a shitty staircase in your shitty hotel.

It was almost poetry.

After a moment’s thought, she deleted that, too. Dear Signore Trevini, I am not at home right now. I will be in touch about a date for a discussion in the next few days. Where did you get that video? And you mentioned other material; what kind of material is that? Sincerely, Rosa Alcantara.

PS: I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON YOUR SHITTY LEGAL LIES IN YOUR SHITTY WHEELCHAIR, YOU MISERABLE BASTARD.

She stared at the postscript, then deleted it letter by letter, very slowly. Finally she hit SEND and closed the laptop.

Her cell phone rang at the same moment. She saw Alessandro’s name on the display, waited a few seconds, and then answered.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Hi.”

“What are you doing there with that panther?”

Puzzled, she looked around her, and then remembered the voice mail.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked.

He hesitated briefly. “Discussions?” It sounded like a question, as if he couldn’t believe that she’d forgotten that. “Good to hear your voice.”

She hated herself a little for being unable to pretend better. For not managing to sound, at least for one or two minutes, as if everything were all right. Instead she said, “You were there.”

Another pause. “Where? What do you mean?”

“At that party. A year and a half ago in the Village. You were there.”

“What are you talking about?”

Relieved, she thought: Good. So it was a trick. All lies. He had no idea what she was asking him.

Only she didn’t say that. “I saw you. On a video. You were at the same party as me, on the same damn night.”

His reaction was calm. “When exactly was this?”

“October thirty-first. A Halloween party, but no costumes. Anyone who did come in costume had to strip down to their underwear and run right through the apartment.”

She heard him draw his breath in sharply. “That was the party. Where they…It happened there?”

Suppose he was lying so as not to hurt her? Would she rather it was that way? She wanted to know the truth, never mind how bad or bewildering it was.

“Yes,” she said dully.

“I didn’t know. You never mentioned it.”

“Did you see me there?”

“No.” He almost sounded distressed, something she’d never heard in his voice before. She didn’t like it, and it only confused her even more. “No,” he repeated more firmly. “Of course not.”

“Are you sure?”

“Shit, Rosa…I had no idea! There were so many people around, and we went out to parties like that all the time. I went with friends from boarding school; we used to drive into different parts of the city. Including the Village. Someone always knew someone else, and there was always a party somewhere.”

That sounded plausible. And there was no reason at all to distrust him. She did love him.

Only there was an undertone, a slight hesitation in his voice that made her wonder. Someone always knew someone else.

“Did you know them?” she asked quietly. “The guys who did it?”

Now he understood. “You think I knew about it and never said anything? Never said anything all this time?”

“I don’t know what I think.” She couldn’t even feel her fingers on the cell phone now. The sun was shining over Central Park, but a freezing wind was chasing down East Drive, making ice crystals swirl up in the air and getting under her clothes. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

“You don’t seriously think I’d cover up for someone like that, do you?” He sounded hurt, and she was sorry. “If I knew who the bastard was, I’d personally put a bullet between his eyes.”

She passed her free hand over her face. She still couldn’t think straight. “When I saw you on that video…well, I hadn’t expected that.”

“I wish I was there with you.”

“Not a good idea talking about something like this on the phone. I know.”

“No. I…I’m so sorry, Rosa. What can I say? I didn’t know.”

“You can’t help that.”

“I’ll get on a flight for New York. Tomorrow morning.”

“No, don’t be silly; I’ll cope. You can’t help me anyway. I’m too much of a coward even to speak to my mother. And now this…” She rubbed her knees together to warm them. “I just have to get over it and then everything will be okay.”

“No, it won’t,” he said firmly. “You don’t sound okay.”

“Let’s just call each other again later.”

“Don’t hang up now. Or I’ll fly out tonight.” With the Carnevares’ private jet on call, that wasn’t such an outlandish idea.

“Oh, really, Alessandro…don’t do that.” She had to pull herself together. It was a bad sign if the video could knock her off balance like this. It meant that Trevini was right about her. “I’ll manage here on my own. Maybe I ought to just drop that business about my father and TABULA.” They both knew she wouldn’t. Not after her promise to Zoe when her sister was dying. “It’s odd to be back here. New York is…kind of different.”

“Of course it’s odd. You’re different now yourself.”

“Once I wouldn’t have lost control like this.”

“You haven’t lost control. You’re annoyed. Of course.” He cleared his throat, and she imagined him rubbing his nose as he sometimes did when he was thinking. “Who sent you this video?”

“Trevini.”

“The bastard.”

“He says—” she began, but she swallowed the rest of the sentence: He says he has further material in his possession. More evidence? Of what? “He didn’t tell me where he got it. But you can bet he will.”

“He’s the same as the others. They all hate that we—”

“I can ignore the others. But not Trevini. He’s the only one who knows absolutely everything about the way the Alcantaras earn their money.”

“He doesn’t like an eighteen-year-old girl having the authority to give him orders.”

“You can’t really blame him.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“He wants me to go and see him.”

“Maybe you’d better not.”

“He can’t do anything to me. It would be stupid of him to. My managers don’t trust him—none of them like him knowing so much. If he tried murdering me, he wouldn’t survive very long himself. The rest of them think I’m naive and out of my depth, but they believe that sooner or later they’ll be able to guide me in a direction that suits them. Trevini could never be capo; no one would accept him. Thirty or forty years of working for the Alcantaras still doesn’t make him one of us.”

“All the same, don’t go to see him. He’s planning something. Why else would he have sent you the video?”

She was beginning to calm down. “Does the name Cristina di Santis mean anything to you? Contessa di Santis?”

“Who’s she?”

“Trevini’s new colleague, he says. He wants me to meet her. It may not be important.”

“With the jet, I could be with you in ten hours.”

“No, you have to make sure your own people aren’t about to stab you in the back. I can deal with Trevini. And my mother, too.”

His long silence showed that he wasn’t convinced. “Who filmed this video?”

“A friend of mine…at least, she was at the time. Valerie Paige. She was the one who dragged me to the party.” She sensed that he was about to say something, but she kept talking. “It wasn’t the first time. She waited tables in a club; she was always getting invited somewhere, and sometimes I went with her.”

“And she filmed me?”

“Not just you. A whole crowd of people who were there. Later on someone froze the picture on your face. I assume that was Trevini’s doing.”

“How does a lawyer stuck in a wheelchair in Sicily come by a cell phone belonging to a New York waitress?”

“FedEx?”

“I mean it, Rosa.”

“I have no idea. And I don’t care. But it’s helped to talk to you about it…and Alessandro? I’m sorry that I…you know what I mean, right?”

“I care about you a lot,” he said gently.

“I care about you too. And I can’t wait to see you again. But not here in New York. I’ll be home in a few days. This is something I have to do on my own.” She hesitated for a moment. “And don’t get any ideas about speaking to Trevini yourself. This is my business. Okay?”

“But it’s just as much—”

“Please, Alessandro. They’ll never take me seriously if as soon as things get tricky I send a Carnevare, of all people, ahead of me. Anyway, you have enough trouble of your own.”

He didn’t contradict her. She wished she could kiss him for that.

“Call me every day, okay?”

“I will.”

They said good-bye. Rosa put her cell phone away and listened to the pleasant echo of his voice in her head. Her conversation with him, and the fact that they were so far apart, drained her even more than her failure to get in touch with her mother. She longed for him, but when she was with him she couldn’t express her feelings the way she wanted. And it didn’t help that he certainly knew how she felt anyway. Yet she was surprised by her own desire to let him see her feelings; that wasn’t like her. So why this sudden need for communication? It was embarrassing. Or at least unusual.

Finally his voice in her head died away. She had silence back, in the middle of the noisiest city in the world. She was briefly tempted to watch the video again. But not here in the park, not in this cold, where she wouldn’t feel it if the other kind of cold began rising in her.

The bronze panther bared his icicle fangs. She didn’t think he looked like Alessandro anymore. As she set off, his moody gaze followed her.

If she wanted to find out how Trevini had come by that video, there was only one person she could ask.