Jessie Keane: Stay Dead

Because you think he’s having an affair, don’t you? You don’t think he’s doing business at all, you think he’s doing some tart.

It was true that Max had been cold, distant to her before he left. That had worried her. Usually, if Max had something to say to you, he’d say it to your face, get it off his chest. Not this time, though. This felt different . And now she wasn’t sleeping well, and she was having these fucking dreams. Somehow they made her feel almost that she was the unfaithful one. The one who cheated. The very thought made her frown, made a shaft of uneasiness pierce her gut, hard. She had lost Max once, but found him again, and she was so lucky to have done that, so incredibly lucky to have him back in her life after all they had been through. She knew it. She didn’t want to lose him again.

But these dreams .

They were so vivid, so colourful, so convincing in their reality, that when she was asleep she was actually there , once again. In her dreams she was once again Annie Carter-Barolli, a Mafia queen, cosseted and powerful, married to a man whose word was life and death, whose name struck fear in everyone on the streets of New York.

Sighing restlessly, Annie glanced at the alarm clock. Two in the morning, and she was wide awake. There was no chance she’d get back to sleep. She never did, not after one of the dreams. They churned her up, made her think: What the hell is this, have I got a problem here?

Do I need to see a shrink or something?

Around the time of the Montauk explosion, way back in the seventies, she knew she’d had some sort of a breakdown. Was her mind slipping out of her control again, was that what this was all about?

But everything was good now. She and Max were OK. Weren’t they? Her daughter Layla and Constantine’s son Alberto were cruising the Caribbean islands, touching base rarely, but they were fine. Layla contacted Annie and Max whenever she could, even sometimes arrived unannounced on the doorstep, much to their delight.

Yeah, everything’s fine , Annie told herself. But there was that niggling sense of trouble looming she couldn’t deny. The dreams. This feeling of something bubbling away under the surface, sending up noxious dirty little plops now and again to her brain – something bad. Max had been so cold to her recently, looking away from her, leaving her without a kiss, without even a single civil word.

Yeah, you need a shrink , she told herself, almost laughing at such self-indulgent weakness. She was Annie Carter, she was rock-solid, a strong and single-minded woman. So why was she letting her imagination run riot? Yes, she had secrets – guilty secrets. And… maybe now he had one too.

Shut up, you silly cow , she told herself, lying back down, flicking off the light.

He’s at it and you know it , said the voice in her brain. He’s screwing around. He’s tired of you. And maybe that’s what you deserve because you’ve been keeping secrets from him , bad secrets, and maybe he’s found out .

That was when the phone started to ring in the living room.

Sicily, June 1994

Max Carter was fed up to the back teeth when he flew into Catania. He left his two travelling companions at the airport with a promise that he’d be in touch soon, and picked up his hire car. In a sour mood, he then took the coastal road to Syracuse. He checked into the Grand Hotel Villa Politi, and waited. He waited for over a week, eating fine Sicilian food and drinking a little Strega – not too much, he didn’t want to risk getting pissed and losing focus – and still the woman was dicking him around.

Bloody women.

She was capricious, imperious, but he was used to that in women – he was married to Annie Carter, for God’s sake. But this woman was proving even more difficult than Annie. It didn’t surprise him, given the way the two women had clashed in the past over who was the queen bee. It was a game Annie would always win at, hands down.

First the woman said they would meet in the Politi’s lounge. And she didn’t show up. One of her lackeys phoned, said she was indisposed, so sorry. Then the venue was rearranged to Taormina, a picturesque town set high on Monte Tauro. They would meet for lunch at the Belmond, overlooking the twin bays below. Come alone, they said.

Max drove there – alone, as agreed – and waited. Another phone call to cancel. She didn’t want to meet there after all, she’d changed her mind. She would prefer to see him somewhere away from prying eyes. Her lackey suggested a place not far outside Syracuse, could he do that?

Max gritted his teeth, punched the wall, and said yes, that would be fine. It would have to be.

His senses were alert now. Something was wrong with all this. The woman was dancing around him like a ballerina, and he was wondering why. Maybe she had changed her mind about what she’d said when she’d spoken to Gary Tooley on the phone. Maybe she regretted her actions. Maybe she’d been drunk or drugged at the time and in the clear light of day she’d sobered up, come down off cloud nine and reconsidered.

Having spoken those words, though, the deed was done. The secret was out. Perhaps she wanted to put it back in its box. And the way to do it? By now he thought he knew the way she might choose. Whatever was going on with her, he meant to find out the truth – and meeting face to face was his best chance of doing that, even if without his back-up he risked ending up dead. If only the devious bitch would actually turn up one of these days.

In his hotel room on the morning of this new meeting, he got up, showered, called the hotel where his men were staying and told them what was going on.

‘You need us up there?’ asked the one who picked up.

‘No,’ said Max. ‘But be ready. I’ll call. Looks like this is it, finally.’

He dressed in a cool white linen shirt, cream cords, brown loafers; then he slipped on his gold ring with the lapis lazuli square set into it, added a Rolex and a couple of other items and looked in the mirror, running a hand through his thick, black and slightly too long hair to tame it into shape. He could almost pass for a Sicilian himself; his old mum Queenie had always called him her ‘little Italian’. He was powerfully built and tanned, with a piratical hook of a nose and deep, dark navy-blue eyes.

The heat was climbing and the sun was pouring molten lava down upon his bare head as he walked out into a perfect Sicilian day and got into his car. Max hated hats. He liked the sun in his eyes and the wind at his back. He started the engine and drove up the dusty track to the agreed meeting-place, passing tiny small-windowed white villas, uniform rows of vines, olive groves. Potato-shaped peasant women dressed in black were sitting outside their doors, lemon trees overhanging the walls of their houses, skinny dogs wandering free in the street.

He wound down the window and let the hot air blow through, thinking of Annie, who would probably be asleep right now in their villa up near Prospect on Barbados. It was a peaceful place, set above a thin crescent of white sandy beach, away from the luxury hotel complexes and shaded with palms and manchineel trees. They both loved it there. But this was more important. This would have to be addressed before it drove him stark staring mad.

The suspicions .

Had his wife betrayed him?

Everything had been fine until the woman called the Blue Parrot club in London and talked to Gary Tooley. Gary had relayed the news to him. Max hadn’t asked for any of this. But he had it. And ever since Gary had passed on the woman’s words, he’d been having sleepless nights, tormented days. He thought that it couldn’t be true, could not be possible. But… what if it was ?