Four seconds left.
One.
Run, Rio!
Two.
Too slow!
Three.
The stump hole! She dives, heedless, headfirst and the whole world blows up.
20
RAINY SCHULTERMAN—SALERNO AND POSITANO, ITALY
Rainy freezes.
“Let me have a gun so I can shoot this bitch in the mouth.”
Tomaso tilts his head and looks at her quizzically.
Cisco says, “As long as she’s alive, she’s a risk!”
“If you kill me, the deal is off,” Rainy says, though her voice is like the rustling of dry leaves. Her mouth is bone dry.
“The deal.” Cisco snorts. “I’m here, I’m safe, that’s all that matters.”
But Tomaso flicks a sidelong look at him, a look full of distaste. “You don’t think her people back in New York are going to take it out on Don Vito? On your own father, Cisco? They can tell the Nigras where you are, and for two hundred dollars US they can put a hit out on you. Not to mention busting every bar, flophouse, whorehouse, and gambling joint Don Vito controls.”
Tomaso’s English is too good, despite the accent, too slang to have been learned from books. He’s been to America.
Rainy breathes.
“This is business, not personal bullshit,” Tomaso scolds Cisco. “You make a deal, you keep the deal. Otherwise there’s no business, capisce?”
Cisco is furious, furious and afraid. Rainy turns a cold stare on him and says, “Best if we all keep our mouths shut. Right, Cisco?”
It is not a subtle threat,
and Cisco hears it. So does Tomaso, who raises a curious eyebrow but does not ask any questions. He says, “We’re having breakfast. Come upstairs, have some coffee and a cornetto. Don Pietro will decide what happens next.”
He sweeps his arm toward the stairs, and Rainy, followed by Cisco with Tomaso bringing up the rear, climbs a long, steep staircase that opens onto a hallway. The kitchen door is open. An old woman is brewing coffee in a stovetop espresso maker. A younger woman is washing dishes.
Past the kitchen—Rainy nods to the old woman—is the dining room. It’s a pleasant, homey room. There’s a long, mahogany oval of a table decorated with a lace runner. The table is piled generously with croissants—cornetti—and assorted pastries. There are pots of jam, a lump of yellow butter, fine china cups and plates, and expensive silver.
Three men are seated, two obviously muscle, and one, at the head of the table with his back to a window and thus haloed with sunlight, who is much older and unmistakably in charge.
Don Pietro Camporeale has less sinister energy than Vito the Sack. He’s more elderly, for one thing. But what he lacks in physical energy he makes up for in sheer, stolid, graven-image intimidation.
Rainy is tough-minded, skeptical, unimpressed, and confident in her own abilities. But Don Pietro is something she’s never encountered before. He seems to warp the fabric of space, as though he radiates an intense gravity that causes every eye to turn to him, causes every thought to focus on him, has every other person in the room hanging expectantly on his word.
He is polite, even courtly. He speaks no English, so Tomaso translates even though Rainy understands the don’s Italian perfectly well. Don Pietro has a voice that starts out hearty enough but soon grows hoarse, like many old men. He could be sixty, he could be ninety. His expression never changes. He is not startled, fascinated, puzzled, annoyed, happy, sad, or angry. He is a perfect unemotional void projected onto a hound dog’s face.
And yet, his eyes . . . He seldom looks at her, but when he does Rainy knows, by some sub-logical sixth sense, that he is not seeing an American soldier, or a spy, or an ally; he’s seeing an object, a thing, a piece on the chessboard where he is the grand master.
Don Pietro nods at one of his bodyguards, and the man puts down his cup and pulls an envelope from the pocket of his jacket. He slides it across to Rainy.