David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

“She would crawl out of her deathbed to work on this if she thought she could help. If you could convince her of that—”

“Possibly.”

He moved over into Wallis’s empty chair and peered into her face. It wasn’t a professional look. This was just him now, trying to be what he once was, trying to test the water. “Do you ever wonder about what-ifs?” he asked. “What would have happened if you’d turned left at the corner instead of turning right?”

“What’s the point?” she asked warily.

“None, I imagine. I just do it anyway. For example, what if you’d said yes to me when I invited you out to lunch yesterday? When all we had here was an ancient corpse? Costa would have talked to that woman and called in whoever else happened to be on duty. We’d have walked back here, got in a car, gone to see Wallis feeling entirely different about everything.”

She didn’t like this conversation. “It would have come your way eventually, Leo. It was on my desk anyway.”

“I know. But maybe we’d have had the chance to put things straight between us before all the crap began to happen. I would have liked that.”

She smoothed down her skirt. “Things are straight, aren’t they? Do I need to spell it out?”

“Not really. After you turned me down I made one more call. When you’d gone. Just to see if anyone knew what meeting you were in. There wasn’t a meeting, was there? There’s someone else.”

Her cheeks flushed. “You checked on me?”

He shrugged. “I’m a cop. What do you expect?”

“Jesus,” she hissed, then stabbed him in the chest with a long, slender finger. “Understand this, Leo. I have a life. It is nothing to do with you. And it never will be. You keep your nose out of my business. You don’t even peek through the door when you’re passing.”

“I guess he’s not a cop, then. Or a lawyer. We’d all know about it.”

“If I were you I’d be focusing on what’s in front of you. Not my personal life. Call the Lupo woman. Apologize and try to get her back here. You need her, Leo.”

He nodded. “I will. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. It was just—”

But she wasn’t listening. Nic Costa was walking down the corridor towards them and, from the look on his face, Leo Falcone realized he wouldn’t be thinking about Rachele D’Amato for a while.

IT WAS SIX FORTY-FIVE. Emilio Neri was wearing a long grey overcoat, feeling content and, with a fat Cohiba smoking between his fingers, reflective. It was cold on the terrace of the house in the Via Giulia but he wanted to watch the last scrap of sunlight die in the smog and haze to the west. This was part of the ritual, an element in the growing rite of passage. Rituals… sixteen years before another one had touched him. He’d been dubious at the time, cynical even. The professor from the university was a nut, just a lonely man looking for some easy company. Neri had gone along with the idea because it suited him and he could see some profit from the photographs. He’d never believed what he heard. He was like the others, just along for the ride and whatever it offered him. Older now, touched by time, he wondered if he’d been wrong. He’d never forgotten what Randolph Kirk had told him. How it was a cycle, one that underpinned the whole of life: the hunting, the courtship. Then the marriage, the consummation. And finally the madness, the frenzy that was, perhaps, the real point of it all, because inside that brief bout of insanity lay some arcane secret about human nature, the simple truth that there was a beast beneath the skin, always was, always would be. When the moment came you had to acknowledge its presence then watch it slink, sated, back into the cage. There was, he now understood, no alternative. Randolph Kirk called it ritual. For Emilio Neri it was human nature, plain and simple. If he’d been smarter all those years before perhaps they could have avoided this mess. Perhaps now he would make better choices.

Neri was not a man to dwell on his regrets. Within the coming frenzy lay an opportunity, the chance to rebuild his life, shape it in his own image. He could throw away the pretence that had consumed him for twenty years. He need never waste his time at the opera again, or sit through interminable meetings for charities he didn’t understand, fighting to stay awake. The money, the power, and the control they gave him over men outside his normal circles had all blinded him to what he truly was. Apart from that brief time sixteen years ago the beast had never been free of the cage, and even then its journey was constrained by circumstances. Now it was time to put things straight, let the world remember him as it should, then flee to a comfortable retirement somewhere on the far side of the Atlantic, someplace where he’d be untouchable.

Bucci and the three soldiers he’d hand-picked now stood on the far side of the terrace, waiting for orders. Neri didn’t know any of them too well. He trusted Bucci’s judgement all the same. The man had too much to gain to get this wrong. This was a night the city would remember. This was a time that would go down in the annals of mob history. A moment when a man of the old guard made his stand, pointed out what belonged to him and how he’d decided to bequeath it.

He recalled some of the crap Vergil Wallis used to spout years before. About history and duty and how this was ingrained into the true Roman soul, how these qualities would always come out, whatever the cost or the risk. Maybe the American wasn’t that stupid after all. Surveying the city like this, for one last time from the home he knew he could never see again, Emilio Neri felt like a man moved by destiny, shaped by what had gone before him, determined now to leave his mark.

He returned to the four men with him on the terrace. “You’re all straight about this? You know what’s got to be done?”

Bucci nodded.

“No doubts?” Neri said. “No more questions? When we leave here, it’s a one-way trip. You don’t get to change your minds. None of us.

“You wake up tomorrow morning and this is a different world. You wake up the day after and you’re talking to Bruno here. He’s your boss and he’ll be a good man. Plus you know what you get from me in the way of gratitude. You’ll be happy guys. Rich guys. You got opportunities. This city’s yours. Understand?”

They were sound men. They wouldn’t let him down.

“You gotta understand this too,” Neri added. “No fuck-ups. We got no room for them. Any one of you fucks up it reflects on everyone else. So everyone else gets to pass judgement on you. That clear?”

“They got that, boss,” Bucci said.

“I hope so,” Neri muttered then sucked on the dying cigar and threw the stub over the railings, watching the red light flare as it fell. “You know when the cops are coming?”

“Soon. Maybe half an hour.”

“And you think we can get out of here clean?”

“Piece of cake,” Bucci said confidently. “We get your car up front really quickly. Franco here bundles inside. Then he’s gone like he’s running for his life. Stupid bastards will be after him straightaway. We got some more cars out back. We just crawl off through the Campo. They’ll never see us.”

Neri stared at him. “You know that? You paid your dues to these bastards?”

“Yeah.”

“See?” Neri said, stabbing a finger at Bucci. “You got a guy here who knows how to handle himself. You look after me. Then he looks after you. That’s how it works. Now you wait for me downstairs. I want to talk to the family. Bruno, you send Mickey up. I want things straight with him.”

They left without saying another word. Neri sat down at the big table. Crumbs from breakfast were still on it. There was a noise at the door then Mickey stumbled in, looking lost, scared.