Peroni raised a crooked, bloodied eyebrow. “Is that so?”
EMILIO NERI SAT at the head of the old table, smoking a Cohiba, ignoring his son, toying with the black gun he’d owned for years, used so many times it was like another limb. Thick grey cigar fumes curled their way up into the darkness, swirling on some unseen current. He watched Vergil Wallis walk in. The American was carrying a leather bag on one outstretched arm and had the other high up in the air.
Neri looked him up and down and said, “You met the guys outside?”
“Yeah. What’s his name? Bucci?”
Neri hated this man. He had no business knowing the names of his lieutenants. “He’s a good guy. I trust him. All the same—”
He waved the gun at Wallis. “Put the bag on the table. Take the coat off. Throw it on the floor. Then stand upright, keep your arms out. Fuck around and I just shoot you now.”
Wallis carefully eased the coat off, let it fall, then held his breath as Neri got up and walked round him, patting in all the right places, making sure.
“You can sit,” the old man said finally, indicating a seat at the table with the gun. Then he went back to the other side and resumed his place next to Mickey. “Show me the cash. Don’t reach inside or anything. Just turn it upside down and let me see.”
Wallis took the bottom of the bag and upsided the thing. Banknotes, big denominations, tucked into wads straight from the till, fell onto the table.
Neri gave it a derisory stare. “So this dumb shit of a son of mine’s willing to cause all this anguish for this. What an idiot. I’d have given him more as spending money if he’d asked.”
“Perhaps,” Wallis wondered, “that was the point. He got tired of asking. He wanted a little independence.”
Neri laughed and cast a brief glance at Mickey. “That worked, huh?” Then he looked at the pictures plastering the room. “What is it you think this is buying you, Vergil? That kid Mickey has stashed somewhere? Don’t ask me about it. I don’t know no details and I don’t want to. He was just playing freelance there. That kind of thing’s beneath me, but I guess you know that.”
Wallis frowned. “I got asked to come. I came.”
“You want justice or something?”
“Or something.”
“OK.”
Neri reached into his pocket, took out a knife, flicked open the blade and placed it on the table. He motioned to Mickey with the gun. “I’m a fair man. I’m going to let you take him. I got to be honest with you, I nearly did the same myself sixteen years ago. I mean, you got a nice party going, you’re thinking everyone’s having a good time. Then what happens? Your dumb kid comes in all doped up to the eyeballs, hysterical and weeping, saying look, look, look. Here’s my girlfriend, dead as they come, throat cut from ear to ear. And I watch him twitching away like that and I think, let’s make it two. Because this worthless piece of shit surely deserves it after what he’s done. I don’t know about you but I was never into beating up women. I’d kill them if it was necessary. But not out of anger or some weird doped-up pleasure. Also…” Neri took a last puff of the cigar then threw it on the floor, “… it spoiled a damn good evening. Had to cover up stuff to make sure you wouldn’t hear of it for one thing. Not that I remember the details, to be honest with you. Got to admit I was a little out of things myself.”
He looked for some sign of emotion on Wallis’s face. The American sat impassive, with his hands palm down on the table.
“We were all out of it,” Neri continued. “It was a lapse of concentration. Dangerous. But, hell, it was a good party anyway. From what I recall I banged three different girls. Adele being the best, which is why we ended up getting hitched in the end. But three! All in one night. Something else.”
He leaned forward, grinning. “What about you, Vergil? Tell me. Man to man. How many you’d bang, huh?”
SHE HOLDS HIS HEAD. Her tongue, chattering, chattering, soaks his cheek in desperate saliva.
What do you see? she says.
Costa’s peering down the blackness, half visible as a corridor in front of him, trying to fight the confusion in his mind, trying to think of some way out.
You know what I see, he says.
Miranda takes his head in her hands, forces him to look into her bright eyes. No, Nic. Not what you know already. When you look into the corner. What do you see?
In his imagination, formed by her suggestions, he sees her for sure now. A huddled shape, wretched with fear and shame, hiding in the darkness, thinking itself safe.
What’s she thinking? Miranda asks.
Tell me.
Her voice starts to break. She sees, she knows, she never has the guts to tell.
In the waking dream the figure sobs, bites her hand, trying to stifle the noise.
Who is she, Nic? Who?
“YOU DON’T WANT TO SAY. Well, I guess it could be boasting.”
Wallis leaned back in his chair looking bored, saying nothing.
“Maybe you don’t remember, huh? It’s a long time ago. Which was what puzzled me, you see. When all this shit started happening. When we got to know that body was this stepdaughter of yours. I mean, a stepdaughter. Not like she’s your own flesh and blood, is it? You don’t have any of your own flesh and blood, do you? Problems down there or something?”
Wallis nodded at Mickey. “You think I’m jealous?”
Neri laughed and took the point. “Over this piece of shit? Nah. Who would be? But I know Mickey. He’s just a weak, stupid kid, same as he was then. And all this crap got me wondering. Got me trying to remember, which is hard after all this time. And you know one thing I remember?”
Wallis peered at his nails.
“Vergil, Vergil. This is important. This is the fate of your stepdaughter I’m talking about.”
“What do you remember, Emilio?” Wallis snapped.
“Two things now I come to think about it. Once Mickey started blubbing on about how he’d got the stupid kid pregnant I didn’t even ask why he’d cut her throat. And one other. She just didn’t get the game we were supposed to be playing. You said she’d get turned on by that jerk from the university. That we’d all be having fun. And we did, all except her. She didn’t want to fuck with anyone but Mickey. I asked, all nice and polite. Toni Martelli did too. And it was all just those flashing eyelashes, and lemme get you another drink, and then what do you know, she’s off with Mickey again. Maybe it wasn’t her kind of party. Maybe she was like that because—I got to be blunt here—it wasn’t the first time for her, like it was for the rest. And that, if you recall, was one of the rules that university guy you found for us laid down. He said bad things would happen otherwise. Maybe he was right. Where did you find him by the way? The cops seem to think he was something to do with me. As if—”
Wallis turned his head, listening, trying to work out if there was anyone else present in the pitch-black corridors. “I move in wider circles, Emilio.”
“Oh yeah. You’re educated. I forgot. Anyway, what does it matter? I promised you could have Mickey. I don’t break promises. You can do what you like. But the knife only.”
He slid the blade across the table. Wallis’s hand closed on it in an expert, practised grip. Mickey Neri, blind to the game, hung his head and sobbed behind the gag. “You can do him like he did the girl, Vergil, only—”
Neri hesitated. “Let’s give the kid a chance to talk first. Only fair—”
Watching the seated man opposite very carefully, he got up and tore the tape from Mickey Neri’s eyes in one rough sweep then did the same for his mouth. Mickey screamed from the pain, looked across the table at Vergil Wallis holding the knife and the noise died in his mouth.