Jessie Keane - Playing Dead

Only, they didn’t. He couldn’t get hold of anyone.

As he was going apeshit trying to figure out what to do, Frances came into the lounge and said, ‘I phoned.’

Rick stopped his anxious pacing and stared at the boy. ‘. . . You what?’

‘The ambulance. I phoned.’

Oh shit.

He could see it all caving in on him. Could see it all hitting the fan.

He phoned the only one he could truly count on. He phoned LaLa.

‘Rick? What the fuck? It’s four o’clock in the morning.’

‘LaLa. You’ve got to help me. Viv’s dead.’

‘She’s what? ’

Rick was standing in the hall. ‘She’s dead,’ he said again. LaLa would help. She would know what to do. ‘Looks like she slipped or something getting in the tub. Cut her head open. Either that or one of her drinking cronies whacked her. Either way, she’s dead.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh? Is that all you can say? LaLa, the woman’s dead . . . Shit a brick . . . ’

The ambulance was pulling up, and the police. Frances opened the door to them.

‘Oh dear. Are the police there?’ asked Lala.

Then the press were crowding into the hallway, flashbulbs were popping in his face.

‘Yeah. And the press. Some bastard must have tipped them off.’

LaLa hung up.

‘LaLa? Hello?’ He redialled, but she didn’t answer. Anyway, the police wanted to talk with him . . .

Within days – hellish long days when the press camped outside, trapping him inside his own home with nobody but Frances for company – the studio heads wrote and very politely told him that he should consider his contract terminated, with immediate effect.

He phoned LaLa, but her secretary said she was in a meeting.

The day after the studio heads dumped him, LaLa dumped him too.

The papers came, and he flinched at the headlines.

‘ Secret wife of dashing movie star Rick Ducane in suicide drama ’, they shrieked.

‘ Mystery death of Mrs Rick Ducane .’

‘ Did he do it? ’ Beneath that one, there was a picture of him standing in his hallway, white-faced with shock, holding up a hand to fend off not only the photographers but also disaster. But he couldn’t stop this.

Vivienne had killed him. Killed his career, killed his life.

The police questioned him endlessly, but his alibi was watertight. They hauled in a couple of her drinking buddies and questioned them, too, but nothing stuck. Finally, they seemed to be satisfied that Viv’s death was nothing but a tragic accident.

Within a month he fled back to England with Frances, and he never acted again.

Chapter 11

1971

Once she had recovered from the shock of it – for Christ’s sake, a man ? – and had stood there for several minutes, staring out with sightless eyes at the sunlit sea and wondering how he would dare do that to her, Cara went quickly to her father’s study. He was busy of course; Nico, his right-hand man was there, standing beside him as he sat at the big walnut desk, and there were other men with him too. Her father was doing business, but there was no business that could be more urgent than this.

Constantine looked surprised at the interruption, but he quickly read her expression and apologized to the three men who were there with him and asked them to wait outside while Cara spoke to him.

‘Nico, can you go too please?’ Cara said, and flung herself down in a chair.

Nico looked at Constantine. He nodded, and Nico quietly left the room.

‘So what’s so important?’ asked Constantine mildly.

Cara flung the brown envelope containing the photos and the reports onto her father’s desk. Constantine looked at his daughter’s face for a long moment, then picked up the envelope and tipped out the contents. Cara watched him as he looked through them, giving each document and each photograph his full attention. Finally, he put the items back in the envelope and pushed it back into the centre of the desk.

‘I’m sorry, Cara,’ he said.

‘Not as sorry as I am, Papa,’ fumed Cara. ‘I knew. I just knew he was up to something.’

‘You used an outsider for this?’

‘I used a private detective. I didn’t want all the family and their friends knowing my business.’

Constantine gazed at her levelly. ‘But now you don’t mind, uh?’

‘Only you, Papa. I only want you to know this. I couldn’t stand to be made to look such an idiot.’ Cara stared at him and her eyes filled with tears. ‘He has insulted me, made a fool of me.’

‘So now you bring this to me. Why?’

‘ Why? ’ wailed Cara, red-faced with temper, the tears flooding over and running down her cheeks. She looked like a large, angry child – which, he thought, was effectively what she was.

Constantine loved his daughter. He loved all his children. But he wasn’t blind to their faults. Since her mother Maria’s death, Cara had taken on the role of only daughter with an almost missionary zeal. She had clung and cuddled close to her father, fawned over him; and maybe, to be fair, he had fawned over her too – rather too much, in fact. Annie Carter had come as an unwelcome shock to Cara, but maybe it was partly his fault that she was so hostile to Annie.

Now she thought . . . what? That he was going to solve her problematical marriage with a magical wave of his hand? He had warned her against Rocco before she rushed into wedlock with the boy. A few background checks had quickly shown that Rocco was lazy, feckless and inclined to fuck around. He’d warned her of this. But Cara, so used to getting her own way, had been obdurate. She wanted to marry Rocco; no one else would do.

Now she was coming to him for help. He had many, many problems – the Cantuzzi family was trying to muscle in on some of his businesses, and they were going to have to learn the hard way that this was unacceptable behaviour. Always there were concerns.

He was the protector of many Italian families in New York, shielding them from the worst excesses of the American legal system by employing many useful people in the judiciary and the Police Department.

The Barolli organization had a system of payoffs in place, and a large ‘sheet’ or list of officials on a monthly wage, so no friends of the Barollis would ever face the trauma of prosecution.

The whole operation was unbelievably slick; Constantine had over many years made it so, and now it was an empire with him at its head and many layers of power beneath him. His sons had, of course, followed him into the business; Lucco and Alberto were caporegimes, or captains, and everyone beneath them was a soldier. He had his legal counsellor, or consigliere. It was a smooth, well-oiled system. He gave his orders to Lucco and Alberto, and those orders filtered down and were carried out; rarely did Constantine have to issue a direct order to anyone.

But such a complex business didn’t run itself. There were always problems to be resolved. Added to that , he had a gorgeous pregnant wife, and no time to spare for rescuing a silly situation that should never have arisen in the first place.

‘He’s insulted me. He deserves to die for it,’ said Cara.

Constantine sat back in his chair and stared at her.

‘The Mancini family are old friends to us,’ he pointed out. ‘Rocco is their youngest boy and he’s been spoiled. He wasn’t a good choice for you. As I told you, when you decided to marry him.’

‘I want you to do something to him, Papa,’ said Cara, sobbing now, nearly incoherent with rage. ‘I want you to hurt him. Break his legs. Do something.’

Constantine shook his head slowly as he looked at her. ‘You’re missing the point here. I told you. The Mancinis are friends of ours. We have reciprocal arrangements going all over town, all over the country. And you expect me to wound, maybe kill their youngest boy?’