Playing Dead

by Jessie Keane

  And right now, right here, maybe he really did . . . although Rocco was growing tired of Frances and finding him clingy.

  They took lunch together in the diner on Lexington and Third next day, and Rocco was, for once, a little careless. They sat in the window, smiled and laughed and joked a lot. They looked like what they were – lovers. Rocco knew he’d have to end it soon, but for now, what the hell? It was just fun.

  Meanwhile, Saul Jury, the private detective hired by Cara, watched them, and took photographs, and sealed both their fates.

  Chapter 15

  1971

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ said Fredo. There was sweat beading along his upper lip, although the air conditioning in the car was on full blast to counter the humid summer heat of New York.

  Cara looked at him coldly. They were sitting in the front of the car watching customers going in and out of the diner. It was evening, and Rocco had told Cara that he was playing poker with friends, and she’d thought, Ha! You’re certainly poking something, my friend.

  They had followed him twice before. Fuelled as she was by her need for revenge, still Cara was sick of this. She felt humiliated beyond belief that her husband should do such a thing. Oh, she knew their once passionate marriage had quickly dissolved into mere tolerance on both sides as she discovered that Rocco was pure Jello at the core: vain and stupid and with an almost girlish appreciation of all things beautiful. Maybe that was why he’d married her. Cara knew the value of her own looks; after all, hadn’t she used them to get her own way ever since she’d learned to bat her eyelashes? And she’d used her beauty to ensnare Fredo, because she wanted – needed – his help with this.

  But shit, she hated it so much. Following Rocco and persuading Fredo to do what had to be done had stretched her almost to the limit. Fredo had quickly realized that she needed him for the first time ever, and he had sensed an opportunity.

  ‘I want more,’ he had said when they’d first followed Rocco and she’d explained to him what was to be done.

  ‘More?’ Cara had stared at him. What was the idiot talking about? Did he want money now?

  But Fredo was nodding, smirking. ‘I want sex now. Full sex. Before I do it.’

  ‘That wasn’t the deal,’ said Cara.

  But Fredo – and this was the Fredo she thought she knew; the one who had followed her around like a puppy-dog since childhood; the one whose chain she yanked on a regular basis – only shrugged and smiled.

  ‘Hey, it’s nothing to me if the bastard cheats on you. But it is to you, and I’m willing to help you, so what’s in it for me?’

  ‘I told you.

  When it’s done . . .’ ‘When it’s done you’ll say thank you very much, Fredo, and get lost,’ he said.

  Which was precisely what she had been intending to do. And if Fredo by some chance got named by anyone, and incurred any heat over this from her father, she was going to look all wide-eyed and innocent and say, No, Papa, what, me? No, Fredo must have realized how much Rocco had upset me, and decided to do this on his own. You know how he’s always adored me, the silly thing. I had nothing to do with it.

  And who would Constantine believe? Her, or Fredo? She knew the answer to that one.

  ‘How can you think that?’ she demanded, feigning a hurt expression.

  Fredo looked at her and he didn’t seem like an adoring boy any more.

  ‘I know you, Cara, remember? This is Fredo you’re talking to, not some stranger who’ll be taken in. So I want sex first, not after. When we get back tonight, I want it. Or the deal’s off.’

  So what could she do? After the first time they’d followed Rocco, seen him there in the diner with what was obviously his male lover, discussed what they could do, Fredo drove them back to the Montauk estate in her father’s car, drove it into the garage, then got out and locked the garage doors.

  ‘In the back,’ he said to her, and Cara wondered how it had happened that Fredo, of all people, was ordering her about like this.

  Still, she knew she had to comply if she was to get him to help. It was semi-dark in the back of the car, and quiet but for the ticking of the engine as it cooled down. Fredo got in the back too and closed the door. He was up close to her – Jesus, he was trying to kiss her. Cara turned her head away.

  Fredo pulled back, uttered a low curse. Suddenly his hands were on her, pushing her skirt up and reaching under, scratching her, bruising her, grabbing her pants and pulling them down, and off. Quickly he got between her legs and then with a groan he unzipped himself. Cara looked away, trying not to feel even his breath on her, but she felt the big hot tip of his penis parting her flesh, felt the hard jolt as he drove it all the way into her cringing body, was pummelled by every manic thrust of it as he had her.

  He was finished very quickly. He moaned as he came, and lay there for a moment against her. Then he withdrew, zipped up, flopped back onto the seat beside her. Cara sat there, feeling his disgusting wetness on her thighs. She was trembling, sore, aware that she’d just been raped and that she had brought it entirely on herself.

  ‘Now,’ said Fredo imperiously when he’d got his breath back. ‘Get your tits out. I want to touch them.’

  Shivering and nearly crying, Cara unbuttoned her blouse, unfastened her bra. When she was naked to the waist, Fredo fell upon her, pinching and pulling at the tender flesh of her breasts until he was too aroused to stop. Then he raped her all over again.

  The second time they trailed Rocco and finally agreed how the thing would be done, this pattern repeated itself. Fredo drove them home, locked them in the garage, and had Cara forcibly in the back of the car.

  Now, it was time for him to keep his part of the bargain. And he was saying: I’m not sure about this.

  After all that she had done, all that she had let him do, he wasn’t sure?

  She had to breathe deeply to keep her voice from shaking, so ferocious was her hatred of him at that moment.

  ‘You’re not sure? What do you mean?’ she asked, and she was surprised to hear her own voice emerging from her body with that cool, calm sound to it. Inside, she was raging. She wanted to kill him, she was so angry.

  Fredo was silent for a moment. He had the upper hand and he knew it. She would never want her father to know she planned anything like this. Rocco was a Mancini. The word had got around among the boys; they had overheard a shouting-match between Cara and her father, with Cara threatening all sorts. Constantine had said the Mancinis were not to be touched. And okay she wasn’t touching them, but it was a moot point. She would still be doing Rocco harm, if only indirectly.

  ‘I’m not sure you love me,’ said Fredo, and turned his head and grinned at her. ‘Joking,’ he said.

  Cara had to look away or she was afraid she was going to throw up all over the bastard.

  ‘Look,’ she said, swallowing hard. ‘You know what you’ve got to do, yes?’

  ‘I know,’ said Fredo.

  Cara glanced at her watch. ‘They should be out soon.’

  And then it would be over, she thought.

  But, she wondered, would it? She felt she had descended straight to hell to wreak her revenge on Rocco. Maybe the price had been too dear. Maybe not. Only time would tell. Now all she wanted, all she was here for, was to be absolutely sure that what she needed Fredo to do, was done.

  ‘There’s Rocco,’ said Fredo.

  They watched silently as Rocco came out of the diner and walked quickly away down the block.

  Minutes passed. Fredo casually laid a hand on Cara’s thigh. She let it stay there, but only by an extreme act of will. God, he disgusted her.

  ‘There he is,’ said Fredo, and left the car.

  Frances Ducane was walking back to his car, thinking happily about the coming weekend. Under the pretext of a golfing break with the boys, Rocco and he were going to take off alone to a cabin in the Rockies. Frances loved Rocco and he wanted more time with him, but he understood that Rocco’s witch of a wife came with the money, a
nd the money was what they enjoyed, so she had to be tolerated.

  Cow, thought Frances in disgust. Swanky Upper East Side Princess with her nose in the air, busy spending Daddy’s money. And he knew from Rocco there was plenty of it. Why else had Rocco married her? For love? Frances didn’t think so.

  ‘Hey – faggot,’ said a voice behind him.

  Frances felt a shudder of fear jolt up his spine to the top of his head. He half turned and then felt the first stinging lash of the blade as it struck the edge of his mouth. Blood splattered out and gushed down over his clothes. Frances screamed with pain. He staggered back, half running, desperate to get away, and Fredo came after him, shoving him back against a building wall, slashing in with the knife that glinted in his hand.

  ‘No!’ Frances wailed, hardly able to speak now, raising his hands to protect himself.

  Fredo waded in, slicing fingers and palms indiscriminately. Two digits spun off into the gutter, blood spurting, and when Frances lowered his hands to stare at them in horror, Fredo came in close again and slashed the other side of Frances’s mouth wide open.

  Frances fell to his knees, groaning. The crimson slashes on either side of his mouth looked like a clown’s painted-on smile: grotesque.

  Fredo knelt down too, grabbed a handful of hair and yanked Frances’s head back.

  ‘That’s a present from Rocco and Cara Mancini, you little shit. Now back off,’ he hissed. Then he wiped the knife on the front of Frances’s once-pristine shirt and left the man there, blubbering and bleeding.

  Fredo slipped the knife back in his pocket and made his way back to the car. He got in.

  ‘Well?’ said Cara. ‘Did you . . .?’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’

  ‘Show me the knife.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Fredo. He’d already wiped it clean, what the hell, didn’t she trust him?

  But there were traces of blood still on the blade. Cara sat back, satisfied. ‘And it went okay?’ she asked.

  Fredo slipped the knife into his pocket and grinned at her. ‘It went fine,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home and fuck.’

  Chapter 16

  When Annie left the massive master suite with its sprawling ocean view, she walked straight into Cara.

  Annie groaned inwardly. Her relationship with her step-daughter had never got off the ground. She had tried hard to befriend Cara, but she found her snobbish, vain and unlovable. She spoke to Annie hardly at all, and Annie thought that was just fine, if that was the way Cara wanted it.

  But today, something about Cara seemed different. She looked . . . well, Annie wasn’t exactly sure how Cara looked. Usually, Constantine’s daughter exuded an icy poise that left no room for even an attempt at civility. But today, Cara looked shattered. She looked as though someone had just given her a scare that had rocked her world. She looked sick.

  ‘Cara?’ Annie caught her arm as Cara was about to pass right by her without a word. ‘Are you all right?’

  Cara’s eyes met hers and in that instant before her guard went up, Annie saw something there; something bruised, something covert and uncertain. But then the shutters were in place again and Cara just stared at Annie coldly.

  ‘Like you care,’ she said, and looked pointedly at Annie’s hand resting on her arm.

  Annie removed it. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.’

  But Cara was right: Annie’s words were a lie. There was just something about Cara’s own personal fuck-you demeanour and the swanky pea-brained friends she hung around with that put Annie’s back up.

  ‘I told you. I’m fine.’

  Yeah, and I’m the Queen of Sheba, thought Annie. But fuck it. Did she really want to know what petty concerns went on in the life of someone so vacuous, spiteful and vain?

  Answer: no.

  Cara hurried on by. Annie heard her go into the bathroom at the head of the stairs, slamming the door behind her – and then she heard retching.

  Annie paused there on the stairs, frowning. Maybe Cara was pregnant? But Annie sort of doubted that. So maybe Rocco had upset her . . . but then, Rocco was so mild, so practically invisible as a personality, that Annie couldn’t imagine him upsetting anyone, far less his notoriously difficult wife.

  In the downstairs hall, Annie found Nico sitting patiently on guard outside Constantine’s study.

  ‘Is he free?’ Annie asked him.

  Nico rose to his feet and gave her a smiling half-bow. ‘For you, yeah – he’s free.’ He turned and tapped at the door.

  ‘Come!’ came from inside the study.

  He looked up as she came in. She stood there leaning against the door. He pushed himself back from the desk and stared at her.

  ‘Mrs Barolli,’ he said, his eyes playing with hers.

  ‘Mr Barolli,’ Annie greeted him.

  ‘And to what do I owe this unexpected honour?’ Constantine made a ‘so come here’ gesture with his hand.

  Annie went over to the desk.

  ‘Closer,’ said Constantine.

  Annie stepped nearer.

  ‘Not close enough,’ said Constantine.

  Annie went around the desk, sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck. ‘Close enough now?’ she asked.

  ‘Barely,’ he complained, nuzzling her neck with his lips. ‘Something bothering you?’

  ‘Not really.’ Annie thought briefly of Cara’s face, but then it was gone, forgotten.

  ‘The baby?’ said Constantine, anxiously. He glanced down, concerned, at the small neat bump beneath her light lilac shift dress.

  ‘I just wanted to see you.’

  ‘Mrs Barolli, I love you very much,’ he said, and kissed her, and Annie found herself remembering her first pregnancy, when she had been expecting Layla; and Max had been so delighted, just as Constantine was now.

  A sharp pang of sadness and regret struck her heart as she hugged her second husband and whispered her love for him, because once there had been Max, owner of the East End streets around Bow in London; Max Carter, gang lord, lover – and her first husband, her first true romance. And she had loved him too. Oh, so much.

  She shivered, and clung to Constantine.

  Chapter 17

  Rocco got called to the hospital at two in the morning. Cara was asleep beside him when the phone rang. He flicked on the bedside light. She stirred sleepily and looked at him as he spoke into the phone. When he put it down, his face was ashen.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Cara.

  ‘It’s . . .’ Rocco paused, shook himself. His eyes were distant. He looked like a man who had seen a brief glimpse into hell. ‘It’s one of my friends. He left the poker game and he’s been attacked in the street.’

  Now Rocco was throwing back the sheets, getting out of bed, hurrying to pick up his trousers and put them on.

  ‘Is . . . is it bad?’ asked Cara innocently. She knew exactly how bad it was. Here was the reward for all her suffering; here was her revenge. Fredo had slashed up Rocco’s little fag friend . . . before driving her home and then forcing himself on her once again in the garage. She shuddered to think of it.

  She had told Fredo that this would be the last time. And, chillingly, he had laughed and said fuck that, not unless she wanted her father to hear all about what she had made him do to her husband’s fag boyfriend.

  Now she was in a mess and she knew it. She despised Fredo for all that he’d done to her, but worse than that was the fact that she despised her father too, for making her sink to such levels of depravity with his refusal to help.

  Would Fredo really dare tell her father? She didn’t know. And if she told Constantine first, blaming Fredo rather than carrying the blame herself for the attack, would her father believe her? She couldn’t take the risk, because Constantine would be so angry if he discovered she’d wormed her way around his warnings and found another way to get to Rocco.

  ‘This don’t stop until I’m ready,’ Fredo had told her, crudely slapping her on the arse as she emerged once again, shaking and abused, fr
om the back of the car.

  The bastard!

  But the deed was done. And here was the result. Wasn’t it worth it? Yes, she knew it was.

  Now Rocco was fastening his shirt and almost running for the door.

  ‘I hope your friend’s all right . . .’ Cara called after him, but he was gone, slamming the door closed behind him.

  Cara lay down, a catlike smile playing over her pretty features.

  So Rocco Mancini thought he could make a fool of his wife, did he? He was about to discover how horribly he had miscalculated her capabilities.

  Rocco got to the hospital at nearly three a.m. They let him in and Rocco had to hide his shock at the state Frances was in. His face – oh, his beautiful face! – was a mess of stitches and bloody smears and bandages. His mouth had been slashed almost neatly on both sides, widening his lips so that they were hideously elongated. Two of the fingers on his right hand were missing.

  Rocco tried to cover his disgust at the sheer ugliness of Frances’s appearance, but he couldn’t quite conceal it from his wounded lover. He sat down beside Frances and, while Frances sobbed, each sob muffled beneath the wadding and stitches around his mouth, Rocco asked him who had done this to him, who could have done such a thing?

  ‘You’re saying you don’t know?’ said Frances indistinctly. His eyes were red and accusing. ‘It was you, you fucker.’

  Rocco looked aghast. His eyes went to Frances’s face, and he had to look quickly away.

  ‘What? No, I swear—’

  ‘It was a man,’ said Frances. ‘You must have paid him. He said it was from Rocco and Cara Mancini. For the love of God, you only had to say if you wanted to end it. You didn’t have to do this.’

  Rocco sat back in his chair, feeling dizzy from the shock.

  Cara must have instigated this. Cara must have known about their affair. He felt his insides clench with fear. If Cara knew, had she told her father? My God, if the Don knew . . .