"Good lord," Hank said. "That's extortion!"
"You think?" Gino said.
"I didn't have twenty thousand dollars, so I called Gino for help," Dottie said. "He's wonderful. We're getting married."
I thought I heard a soft harumph from Lake.
"He told me I should just head for Italy."
"That's all there is," she said. "Gino said he'd look after it. I'm sorry to bring you into this, honey," she added, turning to him. "But neither of us did anything wrong, so I think we should just tell everybody what happened."
"What's to tell? I arranged to have the guy paid what he wanted, and that's the last I've heard of him, Mauro said.
"Gino!" Dottie said.
"Okay, okay. The deal was that Leclerc would get the twenty thousand bucks only if he delivered the hydria to Italy. I figured we might as well try to get something out of this fiasco. I arranged to have him paid ten thousand in France, with the second ten to be given to him once the hydria was safe in Italy and turn over to one of us."
"And was it?" Lucca said.
"Yes," he said. "Leclerc told me that Lara had it."
"And did you?" Lucca said.
"Yes," I said. "For awhile, anyway. Leclerc put it in my car in Nice."
"He gave it to you? Why would he want to do something like that?" Hank said.
"So Lara would get it across the border, of course," Lake said. "Leclerc may have been a bottom feeder, but he wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to risk getting stopped at the border with it. If Lara got caught, then he still had his ten thousand."
"I expect that's essentially correct," I said. "I did get it into Italy, so he called Gino and told him I had it, and once that was confirmed, Leclerc had twenty thousand. Not bad for a day's work."
"That man is a disgrace to our profession," Mondragon said. "An absolute brigand."
"I guess we know what happened after that," Hank said. "We tried to retrieve it, failed, and then it ended up in the carabinieri station."
"There were a few more 'incidents,' shall we say, in between," I said.
"The thing I can't figure out," Palladini said, interrupting me, "is why all those phone calls to the carabinieri? Was that Leclerc being cute?"
"I think, given the reports I've read, and if that body at the Tanella really is Leclerc, that he was dead at the time some of the calls were made," Lucca said.
"I believe that brings us to my second list," I said. "The lion, or what I called the anti-Lake group."
"I can hardly wait," Lake said. "Sorry to interrupt," he added.
"The lion head of the chimera wasn't nearly as keen on seeing that the hydria was returned to an Italian museum as some of the rest of you were."
"What were they keen on?" Palladini said.
"Discrediting Crawford Lake."
"I'm thinking of suing," Lake said.
"Be careful what you say, all of you," Palladini warned. "Remember, I'm a lawyer."
"I'm not afraid of saying what I think," Mariani said. "I don't intimidate that easily. You put me out of business, Lake, and not in an ethical way, either. Your business practices stink."
"I couldn't agree more," Gino Mauro said.
"Nonsense," Lake said. "Both of you. To carry the chimera metaphor a step further, your roar is a toothless one. You, Mariani, are a blowhard who knows what everything costs but the value of nothing. You paid too much for the Etruscan Aplu, and you paid too much for everything else. If I hadn't come along to take over your company, someone else would have.
"As for you Mr. Mauro, you've been too busy enjoying the trappings of wealth, or at least what you see to be the trappings. While you were spending time with your countless girlfriends, making promises you had no intention of keeping, your customers were leaving in droves."
"Did he say countless girlfriends?" Dottie said, looking at Gino.
"I regret to tell you, madame," Lake said, looking at Dottie, "That your boyfriend is still with his wife. And you, Rosati? Are you going to join in?"
"I'm not wild about you, Lake," Rosati said. "But when it comes right down to it, I don't much care, and I have absolutely no knowledge of what you call this lion plot."
"I think we are forgetting there are more important issues at stake here," Gianni Veri said. "Like freedom of the press. I am not afraid to speak out against censorship. I lost my job because I dared to print something negative about you, Lake. You had me fired. I was on the fast track to editor, and you ruined my career. As far as I'm concerned, your continued success is a slap in the face to freedom of speech everywhere."
"You lost your job at the newspaper," Lake responded, "not because you wrote about me. I have something written about me almost every day, and I assure you, I take little, if any, notice. No, you lost your job because, as you have just irrefutably demonstrated by being a part of this group, you have complete contempt for the truth. I had nothing to do with your dismissal, but I heartily endorsed it when it happened."
"And what are you going to say to me, Crawford?" Anna said.
"Careful, Anna," Eugenia said.
"I will not be careful," she said. "I accuse Crawford Lake of killing—murdering—my nephew, Anastasios Karagiannis. Taso was supposed to marry Crawford's sister, Brandy, but he died in a terrible car crash just before the wedding. Some people think Lake tampered with the brakes on Taso's car. I'm one of them. So sue me. I would relish the chance to have my say publicly."
Lake sighed deeply. "Of all those here, Anna, you are the only one with a legitimate reason for hating me. But I have to tell you, whether you believe me or not, that I did not kill your nephew Taso, at least not in the way you think. I rather liked the young man. What I did do was tell him something I believed he needed to know about the woman he was about to marry and her family. If he chose to drink himself into oblivion when he heard it, and then either accidentally or willfully drive his car off the road, then that is something I have to live with."
"I don't believe you," Anna said.
Lake turned to me. "I think you know what it is I felt I had to tell Taso. Was I right to tell him when my sister absolutely refused to do so?"
I thought of life above the tomb, the sun shimmering on Orvieto, the clouds scuttling across the sky, the feel of the warm air on my face. And then I thought of Brandy Lake trapped in her upstairs room in the big old house in the Aran Islands, Maire's fears of the prejudice Brandy would encounter if anyone knew of her disease, of Crawford Lake unable to enjoy the fruits of his obviously brilliant mind and business acumen.
"Yes, you were," I said.
"What did he tell him?" Anna demanded.
"I believe I threatened you last time we met," Lake said before I could reply. "I regret that very much. I suppose so far from much human contact, I have become rather eccentric and suspicious of everyone. This is not something about myself that I like. I hope that you will hold what you know about me and my family confidential, but if you do not, if you have some reason, perhaps to help your friend, that you feel you must reveal it, then nothing will happen to you, I promise."
"So far no one here has done anything that would make me feel I wanted to share secrets with them," I said.
A slight smile crept across his face. "No, perhaps not. But you seem to be up to the challenge. Now, how was the toothless lion proposing to hurt me?"
"I was supposed to be caught red-handed with the hydria," I said. "Once the word got back here that I had the hydria, someone had what they thought was a brilliant idea. Getting the hydria for the Societa would be nice. Getting you, Mr. Lake, would be even better. I was supposed to be apprehended with the hydria, at which point I was expected to tell the police that Crawford Lake had asked me to get it for him. That would be all it would take."