by Jessie Keane
‘The voices of sailors lost at sea,’ said Jonathan, watching them wheel. ‘You believe that?’
Lucco didn’t. Dead was dead. No need to get all poetic about it.
‘This was a good idea of yours,’ said Lucco. ‘A bit of relaxation, and no prying ears to try to listen in while we talk. Fucking FBI, they’re all over this goddamned city like a rash.’
Gianni was stepping down from the helmsman’s seat and Lucco saw him take a pistol out from the locker under the wheel. Lucco’s mouth dropped open.
‘Gianni?’ he said, as his old friend Gianni Ecco took aim at his head.
Lucco turned away, yelling ‘No, wait!’
The first shot took him high up in the shoulder. Blood sprayed and Lucco let out an ear-piercing scream. The shot spun him around and he slumped back against the plastic-covered padded seats, gazing up at Gianni – his friend, for fuck’s sake! – and then at Jonathan, who was smiling down at him in what looked like satisfaction.
‘Wait,’ he said again, feeling the strength going from his legs as shock set in.
‘Wait for what, you little pisser? You want to take any more bites out of my family?’ demanded Jonathan, spitting angrily at Lucco’s face.
‘But I . . . it wasn’t my fault . . .’
‘You were responsible for my brother’s safety. You said it yourself. You know, my mother don’t look so hot in black, Lucco. I wonder how your sweet young wife will look in it, arsehole?’
‘Wait,’ said Lucco, his voice fading as blood loss drained his strength away.
‘Wait for what?’ asked Jonathan. He nodded to Gianni.
Gianni stepped forward and aimed again.
Desperately, Lucco scrambled up and hurled himself off the back of the boat and into the sea.
‘Shit!’ yelled Jonathan, throwing himself against the rail and staring down at the churning waters.
Lucco’s dark head bobbed up. Gianni took aim, but Jonathan caught his arm, snatched the gun from his hand.
Gianni looked at Jonathan’s set, stony face and shrugged.
‘What the hell, Jono? We’re miles out, there’s no shipping here to speak of. He’s weak already. Let the son of a bitch drown.’
Jonathan shook his head. Lucco was staring up at them, pleading, gasping in salt water and air in equal measures, struggling for life. But all Jonathan could see was his mother’s suffering, stricken face when she realized that both her son and the man she loved were dead.
He slapped the gun back in Gianni’s hand and ran to the wheel, throwing the engine hard astern. The powerful motors roared and they heard Lucco’s choking scream as he was sucked beneath the boat to hit the propellers.
There was a hard, shocking judder that shook the vessel from stem to stern. Jonathan had to snatch at a seat as he almost fell with the impact. Then he stopped the engines and ran back to where Gianni stood, peering into the water.
‘Can you see him?’ Jonathan demanded.
‘No.’ Gianni’s sharp eyes were scanning the waters at the back of the boat. All was calm now. Lucco was gone.
‘Look!’ said Jonathan, pointing to the port side.
Lucco was there. He was floating face down in the water, with a red umbilical cord of intestine snaking through the water and connecting him to the underside of the boat. Blood seeped from his body. He was dead.
‘Propeller ripped his guts out,’ said Gianni, crossing himself.
Jonathan, grim-faced, went to get the boat hook. ‘Let’s haul him in.’
Gianni said nothing. He got out the ropes, the tarpaulin sheet and the concrete blocks that would carry Lucco Barolli to the seabed and keep him there.
Much later that same day, Sophie Thomson was sitting in the bar at the Plaza Hotel. She was drawing many admiring glances as she sat there sipping the dregs of a dry martini with her incredibly long legs twining around her bar stool and her blonde hair piled loosely up on her head to accentuate the willowy perfection of her swanlike neck.
Where was he?
She glanced at her watch for the tenth time.
Lucco was never late, or at least not as late as this. He should have been here at seven and now it was gone eight. She felt humiliated. Nobody stood her up, not even Lucco fucking Barolli. She was sick of this. Come to that, she was more than a little sick of him.
‘Get you another?’ asked the bartender as she put the empty glass down.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t think so, thanks.’
Sophie stood up, gathered up her bag, and left.
Chapter 92
Over a week after the opening night of Annie’s, Annie was invited over to Alberto’s place on the Upper East Side for dinner at eight. Drinks at seven thirty.
‘And bring your security too. Mark Carson, wasn’t that his name?’ Alberto said over the phone.
‘It was. It is.’
‘How is he?’
‘Better. Thanks, we’ll be there.’
‘Look forward to it, Stepmom.’
Alberto’s apartment wasn’t as palatial as Constantine’s had been, but it was still a million-dollar place set in the heart of Manhattan. They were greeted by servants who took their coats, gave them drinks. Heavies were hanging around both inside and outside the apartment. There was an air of business going on in the background, even while this was clearly a social occasion.
Aunt Gina was there, skulking in a corner beside the fire. Saying nothing to Annie except a terse greeting.
Nothing new there.
Daniella was there too, dashing over to Annie when she came in. She looked radiant, truly lovely. She was wearing a full-length tomato-red shift dress that suited her colouring beautifully. Her wayward dark hair was scooped up in a topknot. She looked ravishing.
‘Hi! How are you?’ she said, hugging Annie then Max, being careful of his arm. ‘Is it painful? I heard all about what happened.’
‘It’s fine.’
Annie glanced around. Not that she cared, but if the creep was oiling his way around here somewhere, she’d like to be forewarned . . . ‘I don’t see Lucco. Is he here?’
‘No, he’s off somewhere doing something, who knows? You’ve got a drink? Come and try some of these little appetizers . . .’
‘Mr Barolli will see you now,’ one of the heavies whispered in Annie’s ear ten minutes later. ‘If you will both follow me . . .?’
Annie exchanged a look with Max. He still had his arm in a sling, but it was healing well and there were no complications. He raised his eyebrows at her and followed.
The heavy took them to a door, knocked on it, then opened it. Annie and Max passed inside.
‘Stepmom!’ Alberto rose from behind the desk, a smile lighting his face as he saw her there. Annie saw two more hard-eyed watchers were in there with him, just leaning against the wall, looking at his guests, not at him.
Alberto hugged Annie.
‘Did you see Daniella out there?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, we did,’ said Annie. ‘What’s Lucco up to? She says he’s not around at the moment.’
‘Who knows?’ Alberto sat back down with a shrug. ‘He’ll come back when he’s ready, I suppose. If he wants to.’ His face clouded then. ‘For the funeral, maybe.’
Cara’s funeral, Annie thought. So easily, it could have been her own instead.
‘Well, of course he’ll want to be there,’ said Annie. She looked into her stepson’s suddenly hard blue eyes and paused. ‘That is, if he’s welcome.’
She thought again of what Alberto had said to her when they met at the hospital. This can’t go on. Aunt Gina’s right.
‘And there’s Daniella,’ said Annie.
‘Ah yeah. So there is.’
She was still staring into Alberto’s eyes. Now she was remembering other things. How she and Max both believed he was in love with his sister-in-law, and hated Lucco’s treatment of Daniella. And how all the Barolli clan had known about Enrico Mancini’s bad heart, and that it had been Alberto who’d made the call t
o the Mancini family about Rocco, precipitating Enrico’s fatal heart attack and landing Lucco even more squarely in the shit than he already was. Lucco had tried to have her killed. Soon, she felt sure, Lucco would have been gunning for Alberto too.
‘You can always take over, for the moment,’ she said, her eyes holding Alberto’s.
‘So I can,’ said Alberto, and gestured for them both to sit down.
He moved around the desk and sat down too.
‘I wanted to talk to you about the will,’ said Alberto.
‘The . . .?’ Annie looked at him in confusion.
‘Papa’s will. If you are happy to discuss this in front of Mark . . .?’
‘Perfectly happy,’ said Annie, puzzled. What the hell was there to discuss? All that was done and dusted.
‘Then let’s cut straight to the chase, shall we?’ Alberto flashed her a smile. ‘My darling stepmom, you were worked over in that will. It was a whitewash and I want to make amends. I want to gift you several things. The Holland Park house is to be yours, and Papa’s penthouse here. Also, the club shares – Papa owned forty-nine per cent, the rest were yours. I want you to have them all, and be sole owner.’
Annie’s mouth had dropped open as he spoke. She stared at him for several moments, then she said: ‘Can you do that? The penthouse was sold . . .’
‘I can do whatever I like,’ he said, smiling. ‘As you so rightly said . . . I’ve taken over.’
‘For the moment,’ she said.
‘Ah yeah. That’s right.’
And it’s going to be a fucking long moment, right? she thought. This ‘moment’ really could last a lifetime.
Again, she wondered what had become of Lucco. Her gut instinct told her he wasn’t coming back. But meanwhile, she had regained her home. Homes, plural. One in London, one in New York. And she had her business, too; full ownership, not partial.
There was a light tap at the door and Daniella slipped inside.
‘Have you told her?’ she asked as she crossed the room.
‘Yeah. I have,’ said Alberto.
Daniella moved around the desk and stood to the right and slightly behind Alberto’s chair. Both Annie and Max did a double-take when she reached down a hand. Alberto grasped it, brought it to his lips in a brief kiss, and held onto it.
Holy shit.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Annie.
‘Just say thanks and then leave it at that,’ said Alberto. ‘You gave Papa a great deal of happiness. You didn’t deserve to be kicked out in the cold like that.’
‘Then . . . thanks,’ she said, breaking into a grin as her eyes met Daniella’s. Now she knew what that radiance meant. This was a girl in love, and it was reciprocated.
‘It’ll all be sorted out with the lawyers. Everything legal and above board. Okay? No funny business. Your ownership will be indisputable.’
They talked on, but for Annie everything after that was a daze. Once again she was a rich woman, and totally independent; she loved it. For the first time since Constantine’s death, she was able to breathe easily, to relax a little. And that was all thanks to Alberto.
‘Well, dinner’s going to be served soon, if you’ll excuse us for a moment . . .?’ said Alberto. ‘I have some more friends waiting to see me before we sit down to eat.’
Annie and Max stood up and went to the door.
‘Oh – and Max . . .?’ Alberto called from behind them.
Max almost turned around. He checked himself in the nick of time.
‘You’re good, you know,’ said Alberto admiringly. ‘Very good.’
Annie turned back and now so did Max. They looked at Alberto. He shrugged apologetically.
‘What can I say? I’ve got a very good – almost photographic – memory. Not something I talk about much, but it’s there. I saw you, Mr Max Carter, at an art exhibition in London in the Sixties. You were involved in a fight. You’re not Mark Carson. I recognized you the moment we met in Holland Park.’
‘You mean you knew and you didn’t say?’ demanded Annie.
‘Hey, you must have had your reasons, Stepmom. Although I was concerned you might have committed bigamy. But I figured it was none of my business, and maybe one day you’d tell me what the hell was going on.’
Annie had to smile then. ‘I didn’t mean to commit bigamy, Alberto. And I will tell you what’s going on,’ she said. ‘Soon, okay?’
‘Clever little bastard,’ said Max under his breath.
As they went out, two men went in. The door was closing behind them . . . but as it did, Annie looked back. She saw one of the men approach Alberto, who greeted him with a hug and a warm smile. Then the man bent and kissed Alberto’s hand.
He was still Constantine’s charming and polite youngest son. But now he would be Constantine’s successor – and, as Annie looked back at him, she thought that he had never in his entire life looked more like his father.
Outside Alberto’s study they walked straight into Aunt Gina. She gave a brief nod, and made as if to pass on. Annie caught her arm. Gina looked down at Annie’s hand, then up at her face.
‘And I suppose you don’t know where Lucco is, either?’ she asked, watching the older woman’s eyes.
Gina shook her head.
‘Constantine used to talk to me about omertà, the Sicilian code of silence,’ said Annie. ‘That’s what’s happening here. Right?’
Gina said nothing.
‘You know what’s happened, so does Alberto. But nothing’s going to be said.’
Gina still said nothing.
Annie knew that she was right. She couldn’t shake the feeling that it was Aunt Gina who had been pulling strings here. She remembered Aunt Gina whispering on the stairs at Holland Park with Alberto. Aunt Gina had decided – she was sure of it – that Lucco’s destabilizing influence had to end. No doubt about it, the women of the Barolli family were every bit as dangerous as the men. Cara had spent her time plotting over real and imagined hurts, and Gina . . . well, who knew?
‘You won’t even tell me what’s been going on? Not even me, a member of the family?’
Aunt Gina’s lip curled slightly. Annie knew that Gina had never accepted her for one minute as a family member. To Gina, she would always be an incomer, an outsider. Gina had never liked her; and – to be fair – she had never liked Gina, either.
‘We both loved Constantine,’ said Annie.
Gina gently pulled her arm away from Annie’s grasp. Their eyes locked.
Finally, Gina said: ‘You’re right. We did. And for that at least I wish you good luck, Annie Carter,’ she said, and moved on.
‘It’s Carter-Barolli,’ said Annie faintly, but Gina was already gone, into the study where Alberto was taking on his father’s mantle of power.
Chapter 93
Next day, Annie and Max left Layla with Gerda at the hotel and went to St John’s Cemetery in Queens. Annie placed a large bouquet of red roses on Constantine’s hugely elaborate grave and stood there for long moments, thinking about the man she’d loved, married and lost.
There was a cold easterly wind blowing today, ripping the leaves from the trees. Autumn had arrived and soon it would be winter. Annie stuffed her hands into the pockets of her black cashmere coat and shivered at the thought of Constantine lying alone beneath the cold earth.
Soon there would be another family funeral, another grave alongside this one when Cara was laid to rest; Rocco, however, was home in New Jersey, being buried by his own family there. Even in death, Cara and Rocco were apart. Constantine had been so right about that; they should never have been together in the first place.
‘So what now?’ said Max when she’d been standing there in silence for a while.
Annie looked around at him. She was Annie Carter-Barolli, Madam, gang boss, Mafia queen. Once she had stood hard-eyed and stared out at the world, living by her own motto of ‘dig deep and stand alone’. Once she had never cried, never weakened. But she felt real tears in her eyes now an
d a hard lump in her throat as she stood there beside Constantine’s grave. She had to blink hard to focus on Max’s face.
‘What?’ she asked blankly.
‘Where do we go from here?’ asked Max.
‘Well, I . . . you’re going back to London?’ And you’re going to take Layla with you, I know it. She wiped irritably at her face as a tear spilled over.
‘So . . . are you planning to stay here?’ he asked.
Annie looked at him. Max Carter. She’d loved him just about forever, and had been through hell for it. Now he was pussy-footing around, playing mind games with her. She walked a few paces away from the grave, feeling the anger building up in her gut, feeling the exasperation, the sheer powerlessness of this situation.
She was in love with this man. But he was going to hurt her. That much was certain.
‘Look.’ Suddenly she turned and walked back to him, stood there, confronted him. ‘For fuck’s sake! This is doing my head in. Why are you dragging this out? You said you were going to take Layla away from me: why haven’t you done it yet?’
‘What?’ Max’s face was inscrutable.
‘You heard!’
Max stuck his hand in the pocket of his overcoat and stared at her.
‘When am I going to snatch Layla?’ he said. ‘Hey – I wasn’t the one who booked tickets on a night flight to California.’
‘I did that because I had to,’ Annie burst out, flinging her arms wide in exasperation. ‘I couldn’t go on with it, wondering and waiting and thinking, he’s going to take her, any minute now I’ll turn round and neither of them will be there and what the fuck will I do then? I had to do something.’
‘Yeah, you’ve always been good at doing something,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Usually the wrong thing.’
Annie squared up to him. ‘Oh really? Like what?’ she demanded.
‘Where do I start?’ He turned away as if in deep thought, then spun back towards her. ‘Oh yeah. I know. Marrying Constantine and making a bigamist of yourself when you still had a husband, how about that?’
‘Are you ever going to let that go? For the love of God, I believed you were dead!’
