Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

“Quite right.”

“And you could send him on errands posing as you.”

“From time to time I did that, yes.”

“Last September, he went to the Derby Ball in your place.”

“He did.”

“And it got him killed.”

“Yes.”

“What was he there for?”

“I’d prefer not to get into that.”

“I was there, too,” I said, “covering the event for the Dispatch .”

“Were you now.”

“I was. I saw him there, cozying up to the governor. Of course, I thought it was you. The governor probably thought so, too.”

“Perhaps he did.”

“Conducting some business for you with the governor, was he?”

“That’s not a subject I am prepared to discuss.”

“Does it bother you that you put a target on Dante Puglisi’s back?”

“More than you know.”

“Of course it bothers him,” Vanessa broke in. “Dante wasn’t just an employee. He was like family.” She swiped at her eyes-maybe wiping away a tear, maybe just making a show of it.

“Yes, he was,” Sal said. He reached for one of the decanters, poured three inches of whiskey into a tumbler, and drank it straight down. “Please help yourselves,” he said. “The Scotch is Bowmore, a seventeen-year-old single-malt. The bourbon is sixteen-year-old A. H. Hirsch Reserve.”

No one did. Sal poured himself another.

“Dante knew the risks,” Sal said. “He volunteered for the job, and I paid him well for it, but that doesn’t make us feel any better. I miss him every single day.”

“The body looked enough like you to fool the state police,” I said.

“Apparently so.”

“So you decided to play dead.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Surely the reason is obvious.”

“You didn’t want the killers to know they hit the wrong guy.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think the Mob was behind this?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had any trouble with them in years.”

“But they have long memories,” I said.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Anyone else who might want you dead?”

“I’ve made some enemies over the years.”

“Families and boyfriends of porn actors?”

“A few of them, yes.”

“Rivals in the porn business?”

“Perhaps.”

“The Sword of God?”

“They’re a dangerous bunch of lunatics, and they’ve made it clear that they disapprove of us,” Sal said.

“The Sword of God hates everybody,” Vanessa broke in. “Gays, Jews, blacks, liberals, moderates, feminists, abortion doctors, Obama, the media, the government. They scare the hell out of me.”

“With so many enemies out there, why resurface now, Sal?”

“Something came up that required my attention.”

“What would that be?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Can you tell me where you’ve been for the last three months?”

“Here and there,” he said.

“That’s a little vague.”

“I prefer to keep it that way.”

“Got a hideout you don’t want anyone knowing about?”

“Something like that.”

“The state police asked the navy for help in identifying the body and got stonewalled,” I said. “You have something to do with that?”

Sal looked at Yolanda, and she shook her head.

“Still got some old pals working in the Pentagon, do you?”

Sal didn’t answer.

“I assume your family knew you were alive,” I said.

Sal glanced at Yolanda again. “We are not prepared to discuss that subject,” she said.

I turned back to Sal. “Obviously your wife and daughter knew you had a double. You said he lived here.”

“Yes,” Sal said.

“Yet your wife positively identified his body as you,” I said.

“Anita Maniella is an older woman,” Yolanda said. “She was distraught and confused.” I was surprised by how different she sounded. Her lawyer voice was nothing like her “I don’t date white guys” voice. You might think she’d never met me before.

“Mrs. Maniella is only sixty-two,” I said. “This is the story you’re going to stick with?”

“That is our position, yes,” Yolanda said.

“Oh, boy,” I said. “Captain Parisi is gonna love this. Have you talked to him yet?”

“Not yet, no,” Yolanda said.

“Figured you’d try the story out on me first?”

No reply.

“Well, if that was your plan,” I said, “I can tell you right now there are a lot of holes in it.”

Vanessa rose from her chair, walked to the hearth, and added a log to the fire. Then we all went to the wall of windows and looked out at the dark, still lake.

“The roads must be treacherous,” Sal said. “You and Yolanda are welcome to dine with us and spend the night. We have plenty of room.”

Being a pornographer’s overnight guest wasn’t on my bucket list, but it was better than the alternative.

We ate by candlelight, Sal’s wife, Anita, joining us at a carved antique table that could have seated twice our number. Two uniformed servants piled slabs of roast beef, grilled vegetables, and mountains of mashed potatoes onto expensive-looking china plates. Classical music, something with a lot of strings, played softly from hidden speakers. Sal pulled the corks on three bottles of Pétrus, a pricey red wine whose virtues were wasted on me.

The conversation veered from the Patriots’ playoff prospects, which we agreed were not good, to the Red Sox’s signing of pitcher John Lackey, which we all deplored. I waited for Yolanda to soften up a little and throw in something about the Cubs or the Bears, but apparently she was still on the clock. After the servants cleared away our plates and returned with hot coffee and generous wedges of apple pie, Anita turned the conversation to President Obama’s proposal to reform the banking industry.

“What he should do is restore the wall between investment banks and retail banks,” she said. “Institutions that trade in derivatives, equity securities, fixed-income instruments, and foreign exchange should not be allowed to accept savings deposits.”

I didn’t understand much of that, but she didn’t sound confused to me.

I stared at her, wondering how many plastic surgeons it took to keep a woman looking that good into her sixties. Then I stared some more, wondering what kind of a woman would marry a pornographer. She caught me looking and smiled.

“Go ahead and ask,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

“Does it bother you?” I asked. “The way your husband makes his money?”

“And my daughter, too,” she said. “Don’t forget Vanessa.”

“Her too,” I said.

She laced her fingers under her chin and studied me over the top of them. “You’ve never been a woman, have you, Mr. Mulligan?”

I thought it might be a trick question, so I went with a politician’s answer: “Not that I can recall.”

“Being a woman is all about choices. Long ago, I made the choice to support my husband’s passion. Sal’s passion is not pornography. It’s not being surrounded by the naked women on his payroll. Sal’s passion is making money and using it to buy his family nice things. I trust his path. And I like nice things, too.”

“But-”

“Everyone involved in the business-the performers, the customers, even my daughter-is chasing something they’ve dreamed about. Most people just don’t dream as big as Sal.”

Sal chuckled at that. “Let me tell you what I’m dreaming about this week,” he said, and steered the conversation to what I gathered was his favorite topic. Swann Galleries in Manhattan had scheduled a January auction of rare British mystery and spy novels, and he was pretty excited about it. I would have been, too, if the pre-auction estimates didn’t make me choke.