Silver Stars (Front Lines 2)

“You’re moving in on a new territory, and the priest is trying to stop you.”

“Exactly. You’re very quick, you know, very quick for a . . .”

“For a woman?”

Tomaso laughs his easy, genial laugh. “I was going to say for an American. No Italian man needs to be schooled on the subtlety of women.” He laughs at some private memory. “But sometimes feminine delicacy may cause women to be slower to reach unpleasant conclusions.”

“What unpleasant conclusion?”

“Come now, we don’t need to be explicit.”

“Kill or be killed,” Rainy says. “That’s the conclusion, isn’t it?”

Tomaso sighs and shakes his head, but it’s not a negative, it’s amusement and disapproval. “I abhor threats.”

“Me too, when they’re directed at me,” Rainy snaps.

Her heart is thudding in her chest. She has difficulty breathing without gasping or sobbing, but her mind is still alert. There is a door in the garden wall. And there is a man armed with a shotgun beside that door, and probably another just

outside on the street. She has a pistol that will be very awkward to draw from beneath her dress with Tomaso beside her. Anyway, a pistol versus at least one and likely two shotguns is not a good bet. Then, too, even if she somehow escapes into the streets, how long before they find her? Minutes? A half hour at best?

Two things are obvious. She can refuse and die right now, if not by Tomaso’s hand then by Cisco’s. Or she can stall for time by agreeing.

Option two seems a much better choice.

First she has to struggle some more, pretend to be appalled, pretend to come slowly to the idea, pretend to talk herself into it. Too-quick agreement will just show she’s planning a double cross.

Tomaso waits patiently—or is it cynically—as she makes a show of convincing herself, complete with expressions of outrage, which do not move Tomaso at all.

In the end she is driven in a beat-up tricycle truck from Salerno by Tomaso and one of his thugs. The passenger compartment is absurdly cramped, so she is squeezed miserably between the beefy driver and the compactly muscular Tomaso.

Despite the impossibility of her position, Rainy is aware that the drive is spectacularly beautiful. The road winds north out of Salerno before turning west along the coast. It is a narrow, even precarious road, which at places lances through small, steep, seaside towns, creeping down streets so tight that at one point Tomaso simply reaches out of the window to grab an orange out of a shop display. He peels it with a pocketknife, cuts a dripping section, and hands it to Rainy.

In other places the road seems to almost hang in midair. There’s usually a low stone wall along the seaward side, but the ground drops away so steeply that she can’t see anything below but the sparkling Mediterranean. A single careless turn and the little tricycle truck will likely plow straight through or over the wall and go tumbling down onto picturesque homes.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Tomaso asks.

There’s no point lying. “The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

This earns her a thoughtful look. “Have you traveled much?”

Rainy hesitates—it is in her nature to reveal as little as possible—but she can’t see the harm and she needs Tomaso’s friendship, if such a thing is even possible. “I’m from New York City. It’s a different sort of beauty, more man-made, larger, grittier, but still beautiful at times.”

“Yes,” he says. “I’ve seen it. But New York is all about the works of man, and here we have the perfect melding of man and nature. The sea, the steep cliffs and hills, the brightly colored homes. And of course the food is better here.”

“The coffee certainly is,” Rainy allows, straining for affability.

They stop at last on the street outside a whitewashed, three-story building. Its door is wide, open, and inviting beneath blue, aquatic-themed tile work. A sign in matching cobalt-glazed letters spells out Hotel Alto Positano.

“A hotel?” Rainy asks. She’s been expecting some dank hideaway in which to be instructed by this charming murderer on the business of assassination.

“Certainly a hotel, and a good one too, I believe. It is run by a friend. I must be honest and tell you that he will not allow you to make telephone calls or mail letters.” This last comes with a regretful shrug. “Here the authorities will not trouble you. You are not an American and certainly not a Jew—though I have no such prejudices, many of the great men of our business are Jews—Dutch Schultz, rest in peace, Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky. But for our purposes you are Irish, a neutral, on a retreat following some unfortunate event.”

“What unfortunate event?”

“You have been living in Rome and your engagement to an Italian man was broken off at the last minute, so you have come to romantic Positano to take your mind off your sadness. And perhaps find some other, more amenable, more marriageable fellow.”

“Like you?”