Extreme Denial Part 31

"The last thing I want to do is go out there. But I'm running out of time. Maybe I've already run out of time. I don't know where else to go except straight to the source of the problem."

Esperanza hesitated. "Good luck."

"Beth needs it more than me."

"But what if ..."

"They've already killed her?"

"Yes."

"Then what happens to me doesn't matter."

A minute later, during which Decker hoped that Esperanza had time to hail a cab, he stepped into the darkening rain and turned right, walking toward the Flatiron Building. Worried about what McKittrick might be doing to Beth, Decker couldn't help being reminded of the similar rain that had fallen the night McKittrick shot his father in Rome.

He reached the Flatiron Building five minutes ahead of schedule and stood in the shelter of another doorway, holding the yellow roses in plain view. His emotions were complicated: various levels of doubt, fear, and apprehension. But only the doubt applied to himself. The rest were directed elsewhere: fear for Beth, apprehension about what might already have happened to her. But most of all, he felt seized with determination. It was the first time he had ever engaged in a mission in which the mission truly meant more to him than his own life.

He recalled something Beth had told him two nights earlier, Fiesta Friday, after they had left the film producer's party and driven back to Decker's house-their last moment of normalcy, it seemed at the time, although Decker now realized that nothing about their relations.h.i.+p had been normal. Moonlight through his bedroom windows had gleamed on them while they made love, making their bodies resemble ivory- the bittersweet memory made him feel hollow. Afterward, as they lay next to each other, side by side, Decker's arms around her, his chest against her back, his groin against her hips, his knees against hers, legs bent, in a spoon position, she had lapsed into so long a silence that he thought she had fallen asleep. He remembered inhaling the fragrance of her hair. When she spoke, her hesitant voice had been so soft that he barely heard it.

"When I was a little girl," she murmured, "my mother and father had terrible fights."

She lapsed into silence again.

Decker waited.

"I never knew what the fights were about," Beth continued softly, not without tension. "I still don't. Infidelity. Money problems. Drinking. Whatever. Every night, they screamed at each other. Sometimes it was worse than just screaming. They threw things. They hit each other. The fights were especially horrible on holidays-Thanksgiving, Christmas. My mother would prepare a big meal. Then, just before dinner, something would happen to make them start yelling at each other again. My father would storm out of the house. My mother and I would eat dinner alone, and all the while she would tell me what a rotten b.a.s.t.a.r.d he was."

More silence. Decker knew enough not to prompt her, sensing that whatever she wanted to say was so private, she had to reveal it at her own pace.

"When the fights got worse than I could bear, I begged my parents to stop. I pushed at my father, trying to get him to stop hitting my mother. All that did was make him turn against me," Beth finally said. "I still have a mental image of my father's fist coming at me. I was afraid he would kill me. This happened at night. I ran into my bedroom and tried to figure out where to hide. The shouts in the living room got louder. I stuffed my pillows, one in front of the other, under my bed covers to make it seem as if I was sleeping there. I must have seen that trick on television or something. Then I crawled under the bed, and that's where I slept, hoping I was protected from my father if he came in to stab me. I slept that way every night after that."

Beth's shoulders heaved slightly, in a way that made Decker think she was sobbing. "Was your childhood like that?" she asked.

"No. My father was a career soldier. He was rigid, very much into discipline and control. But he was never violent with me."

"Lucky." In the darkness, Beth wiped at her eyes. "I used to read stories about knights and fair ladies, King Arthur, that sort of thing. I kept dreaming that I was in those stories, that I had a knight to protect me. Even as a kid, I was good at drawing. I used to make sketches of what I thought the knight would look like." Covers rustling, Beth turned to him, her face now in moonlight, tears glinting on her cheeks. "If I could draw that knight again, he'd look like you. You make me feel safe. I don't need to sleep under the bed anymore."

Two hours later, the hit team had broken into the house.

7.

Rain gusting at Decker's face brought him out of his memory. Racked with emotion, he studied the traffic that sped through puddles past the Flatiron Building. Conflicting questions tortured him. Had the story Beth told him been true, or had she been setting her hook deeper, lying to elicit more sympathy from him, programming him to protect her regardless of the threat? It came down to what he had been brooding about since yesterday, when he had learned that she had deceived him about her background. Did she love him, or had she been using him? He had to know. He had to find her and learn the truth, although if the truth wasn't what he wanted to hear, he didn't know what he would do, for the fact was, he loved her completely.

Headlights piercing the rain, a gray Oldsmobile veered out of traffic and stopped at the curb in front of him. The car's back door opened and one of Giordano's soldiers got out, indicating with a stiff motion of his head that he wanted Decker to get in the car. Muscles compacting, determination strengthening, Decker approached him, holding a bunch of roses with each hand.

"That's right." The man, who had a large chest, broad shoulders, and a suit that was too tight, smirked. "You keep your hands around those flowers while I search you."

"On the street? With that police car coming?"

"Get in the car."

Calculating, Decker saw that there were two men in the front and another man in the back. As he got in, feeling the first man coming after him, pressing against him, he kept the matchbox-sized transmitter along with the stems of the flowers in the palm of his right hand. As the driver pulled away from the curb, tires splas.h.i.+ng, the man in the pa.s.senger seat aimed a pistol at Decker. The two men in back searched him.

"He's clean."

"What about those flowers?"

The men pulled the roses from Decker's clenched hands, so preoccupied that they didn't notice the small transmitter he continued to conceal in his cupped right palm.

"Whatever you want with the boss, it better be good," one of the men said. "I've never seen Nick this p.i.s.sed off."

"Hey, what stinks in here?" another man asked.

"It's them flowers. They smell like a cheap funeral."

"Maybe this guy's funeral." The man on Decker's left chuckled as he rolled down the window and tossed out the battered roses.

8.

Throughout the drive, Decker didn't speak. For their part, the men ignored him. As they talked among themselves about football, women, and casinos on Indian reservations-safe topics, nothing that would incriminate them-Decker kept wondering if Esperanza had managed to follow in a cab, if the transmitter and the receiver were working, if the driver would notice he was being tailed. He kept telling himself that he had to have faith.

The time was just after 8:00 P.M. The rain had thickened, dusk becoming night. Headlights piercing the downpour, the driver took several streets at random as an evasion tactic, then proceeded north on the crowded Henry Hudson Parkway, eventually turning west onto the George Was.h.i.+ngton Bridge. On the New Jersey side, he headed north again, this time on the Palisades Parkway. An hour after picking up Decker, he turned left into the sleepy town of Alpine.

The men in the car sat tensely straighter as the driver went through the almost nonexistent downtown area, then steered to the right, took several more turns, and at last came to a quiet, thickly treed, tastefully but brightly lit section of large houses on half-acre lots. High fences made from wrought iron topped with spikes separated the lots. The car pulled into a driveway and stopped before an imposing metal gate, where the driver leaned out into the rain and spoke into an intercom. "It's Rudy. We've got him."

The gate parted to the right and left, providing a gap through which the driver proceeded. Glancing back through the rain-beaded rear window, Decker saw the gate close as soon as the Oldsmobile had cleared it. He didn't see any headlights of a taxi that might be following. The car went along a curved driveway and stopped before a brick three-story home with numerous gables and chimneys. After the low, round-edged, flat-roofed adobe houses that Decker was used to, the mansion seemed surreal. Arc lights illuminated the grounds. Decker noted that the trees were a distance from the house and that all the shrubs were low. Any invader who managed to get past what Decker a.s.sumed were state-of-the-art intrusion detectors along the fence wouldn't have any cover as he tried to reach the house.

"Show time," the man on Decker's left said. He opened his door, got out, and waited for Decker. "Move it. Don't keep him waiting."

Decker didn't say a word when his arm was grabbed. In fact, he welcomed the gesture. It gave him an excuse to pretend to trip as he was tugged through the rain toward the wide stone steps that led into the house. Falling near a bush, he slipped the small homing device under it, then let the man pull him to his feet and into the house. His heart seemed surrounded by ice.

The first thing he noticed was an armed guard in a corner of the s.p.a.cious marble-floored foyer. The second thing he noticed was a pit bull behind the guard. After that, he barely had time to look for other possible exits as he was hurried along an oak-paneled hallway, through double doors, and into a thickly carpeted study.

The wall opposite Decker had leather-bound books. The wall to the right had framed family pictures. The wall to the left had gla.s.s cabinets, in each of which were vases. The center of the room was dominated by a wide antique desk, behind which a compact man of about seventy, wearing an expensive dark blue suit, exhaled cigar smoke and squinted at Decker. The man had severely pinched features, dominated by a cleft chin and a furrow down each cheek. His deep tan emphasized his short but thick white hair.

Sitting in front of the desk, turning to look at Decker, was a man in his thirties, but the contrast involved more than age. The younger man wore trendy clothes that seemed garish compared with the elderly man's conservative suit. The younger man wore conspicuous jewelry, whereas the older man had none to be seen. The younger man looked less fit than the older man, his body slightly puffy, as if lately he had given up exercise in favor of drinking.

"Did you search him?" the elderly man asked the guards who had brought in Decker. The raspy voice sounded like the one Decker had heard on the phone, the man who claimed to be Nick Giordano.

"When we picked him up," a guard said.

"I'm still not satisfied. This guy's clothes are wet. Get him a robe or something."

"Yes, sir."

Giordano a.s.sessed Decker. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"I don't understand."

"Take off your clothes."

"What?"

"You've got a hearing problem? Take off your clothes. I want to make sure you're not wearing a wire. b.u.t.tons, belt buckles, zippers-I don't trust any of them, not when it comes to a guy who used to be a spook."

"Brian McKittrick must have told you a lot about me."

"The son of a b.i.t.c.h," the younger man said.

"Frank," Giordano said in warning. "Shut up until we know he's not wired."

"You're actually serious about my clothes?" Decker asked. Giordano didn't answer, only glared.

"If this is how you get your kicks."

"Hey." The younger man stood angrily. "You think you can come into my father's home and insult him?"

"Frank," Giordano said again.

The young man was poised to slap Decker's face. He stared at his father and backed away.

Decker took off his sport coat.

Giordano nodded. "Good. It's always smart to cooperate."

As Decker took off his s.h.i.+rt, he watched Giordano walk over to the vases in their gla.s.s cabinets.

"Do you know anything about porcelain?" Giordano asked.

The question was so unexpected that Decker shook his head in confusion. "You mean like bone china?" Grim, Decker removed his shoes and socks.

"That's one type of porcelain. It's called bone china because it's made from powdered bones."

Even grimmer, Decker unbuckled, unzipped, and took off his pants. His exposed skin p.r.i.c.kled.

"Everything," Giordano ordered.

Decker slipped off his briefs. His t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es shrank toward his groin. He stood with as much dignity as he could muster, keeping his arms at his sides. "What's next? A cavity search? Do you do it personally?"

The younger man looked furious. "You want one, big mouth?"

"Frank," Giordano again repeated in warning.

A guard came in with a white terry-cloth robe.

"Give it to him." Giordano gestured with his cigar. "Take his clothes to the car."

As the man obeyed, Decker put on the robe. Its hem came down to his knees, its wide sleeves just below his elbows. Tying its belt, he was reminded of the gi he had worn when he learned martial arts.

Giordano picked up a vase that had the shape of a heron, the bird's head upright, its beak open. "Look at how light seems to s.h.i.+ne through it. Listen when I tap it with my finger. It resonates, almost like crystal."

"Fascinating," Decker said unenthusiastically.

"A h.e.l.l of a lot more than you know. These vases are my trophies," Giordano said. "They warn my enemies"- his face became flushed-"not to f.u.c.k with me. Bone china. Powdered bones." Giordano held the bird-shaped vase close to Decker. "Say h.e.l.lo to Luigi. He tried to f.u.c.k with me, so I had his flesh burned off with acid, then his bones ground up and made into this. I put him in my trophy case. Like everyone else who tried to f.u.c.k with me." Giordano hurled the vase toward the room's large fireplace, the porcelain shattering.

"Now Luigi's just garbage!" Giordano said. "And you'll end up just like him if you try to f.u.c.k with me, too. So answer this question very carefully. What do you have to tell me about Diana Scolari?"

9.

The shrill ringing of a phone punctuated the tension in the room.

Giordano and his son exchanged troubled glances.

"Maybe it's McKittrick," Frank said.

"It d.a.m.ned well better be." Giordano picked up the phone. "Talk to me." He frowned. "Who the h.e.l.l-" He stared at Decker. "Who? What makes you think he's-"

"That'll be for me," Decker said. "It's a friend of mine, checking on my welfare." He took the phone from Giordano and spoke into it. "So you found the place all right."

"Almost didn't," Esperanza's somber voice said on the other end. "It was tough staying far enough back so your driver wouldn't see the taxi's headlights. It was also tough finding a phone."

"Where are you?"

"Outside the post office-on what pa.s.ses for the main drag."

"Call back in another five minutes." Decker set the phone on its cradle and turned to Giordano. "Just a precaution."

"You think some guy on the phone is going to save your a.s.s if I think you're out of line?"

"No." Decker shrugged. "But before I died, I'd have the satisfaction of knowing that my friend would get in touch with other friends and you'd soon be joining me."