Smoke, page 17
“He didn’t mean what he said. We’ve all lost someone we love.”
Smoke cuddled her against him. “I’m sorry, Eleonora.”
She grasped his fingers and pressed them to her lips. “Darling boy. No need to apologize.”
“May I ask what he said?”
“He said he was glad Angi and Daan were dead. So that I might experience what he and Jameson went through with Giulia’s death last year.”
“Oh, I see.”
A police siren reverberated along the street below, a blue and white patrol car bumping from the cobbles up onto the foreshore walkway. It came to a standstill in front of the parkland’s antique carousel and two cops exited, their lapel radios squawking. Capitano Cioni gripped Smoke’s elbow and gave him a nod. It was time to leave.
Smoke pondered Eleonora’s words and the scene on the terrace as they descended to the basement parking. They were less than halfway down when he turned to Cioni. “Was Jameson part of the Palazzo counsel in Firenze? Could he have originated the retirements of Angi and Daan, of Gabrielle and me before his own?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Smoke sat with Cioni and Moretti amid the Gilded Age opulence of the New York Palace Hotel courtyard, antithesis to the majestic marble folly of St Patrick’s Cathedral across the avenue.
“The family seems unaware of Aloïs’ and Mathéo’s deaths,” Smoke said. “But Rafaella certainly realized I’m directly involved with Jameson’s retirement. And probably the Stuyvesants’.”
“Rafaella knows about the twins,” Moretti said. “She’s smart enough to keep quiet and let it play out. And she’ll do nothing to implicate you further than you already are.” The bruising on his neck had reduced to a dull shadow, the skin again tight along the edge of his jaw.
“Two of my men have already escorted their bodies back to Firenze,” Cioni said. “The Palazzo will announce to the family when they see fit.”
The remark caught Smoke and Moretti off guard. “How will they explain the twins’ manner of death?” Moretti asked.
Cioni sipped his espresso before answering. “It won’t be the truth. The truth is less than palatable. Less than ordinary. They’ll choose something aligned to the decadence of their lifestyle. Perhaps a drug overdose on one of their yachts in Portofino. The Palazzo will likely also ensure the medico legale investigation and official statement suggests their bankruptcy, that they lived beyond their means, with no evidence to the true value of...” He glanced at Moretti and raised an eyebrow. “... Their trust funds.”
Smoke leaned back in his chair, lifting its front legs from the flagstones, and balancing a piccolo of dark roast at his knee.
“Does that mean I’m no longer wanted for their deaths?”
“No,” Cioni said. “You’re still very much the sole target of the local police investigation for all seven deaths. Lucy is monitoring her channels and can confirm. There are also recommendations for the case to be escalated to the federal level due to the Laurents’ involvement.” He hesitated. “That automatically brings the death penalty into the conversation. If caught, a conviction could incur decades of appeals just to keep you alive in prison. The situation is noisy and proving hard to contain.”
Smoke rotated the piccolo in his hand. “Lucy said the House would swap out the seminal evidence with corrupted specimens from overseas.”
Cioni tilted his head from side to side, as if weighing the options. “It’s doubtful they’d recheck until requested during an active trial. Again, that could take months or years. Justice is exceedingly slow in this country. Especially if they already have someone behind bars who might have done it.”
“Shit,” Smoke muttered beneath his breath. He drained the last of his coffee. “I honestly don’t believe I left cum at any of the kill sites, other than during that fiasco at The Hotel. But even so, how could they tie it to my identity when, per the House, I’m not in any official public DNA system?”
“That’s a question for Lucy,” Cioni said.
“What do you mean?”
“You need to ask Lucy. She should advise you.”
“Andrea. I don’t trust her. I need to hear it from you.”
Cioni held his gaze for several moments before turning to Moretti. “Leave us, per favore.” Simone left without questioning the capitano’s request.
“The House and Palazzo Pitti continually sweep all criminal DNA databases, CODIS, et cetera, for profiles matching any of our operatives. The sweep corrupts the files in real time before they are available to judicial investigations.”
“But?” Smoke asked.
Cioni nudged his chair closer to Smoke and lowered his volume to barely a whisper.
“A junior analyst at the NYPD, who the House should probably hire—or kill—put in a special request to the Department of Defense DNA registry. To determine whether any of the samples in evidence were on that database. Her profiling of the killer, you, suggested professional military with high-level negotiating skills to ensure death without attempts at retaliation.”
“What is that registry?”
Cioni wiped at his mouth, leaving his hand loosely at his lips.
“It’s a US federal database containing DNA sequences for all military personnel. Its primary purpose is to identify the remains of those killed in action. The US government would like to avoid burying soldiers as unknown in their ultimate place of rest.”
“Why would my profile be in there?”
Cioni hesitated again, wetting his lips. “Because you are a US military asset, fratello. Or were, perhaps, only for a short time during the paper shuffle that placed you under the organizational structure of the House. It was an unfortunate shortcoming in the documentation cleanup protocol by that entity.”
Smoke shook his head. “What do you mean? I’m not military. I have no military training.”
“Tommy,” Cioni said, using Smoke’s name for the first time. “Look at yourself. Your physical regimen and its result. Your scholarships to Harvard and Georgetown and the skills you perfected. You’ve garnered the same work ethic, dedication, and instincts you would’ve if you’d attended West Point or L’Accademia Militare di Modena, but without the reliance on working as part of a team. The Palazzo, and by default, the House, needed you to be self reliant. Autonomous in carrying out your duties. You’re an invaluable asset and individual to them in every sense.”
Smoke considered this, working through his thoughts, his life, moving events around to make them make sense. He couldn’t make it make sense. “But I work for the House. Surely that’s a direct reference to the family. The Medici.”
Cioni shook his head. “They are now more a corporate entity than a family. One based on shared affluence and, yes, documented purity of DNA. They were, and are still, instrumental in honing, placing, and compensating you for carrying out their requirements. For keeping their members in check. For neutralizing any threat of revealing their obscene wealth which could destabilize the economic world outside their bubble.
“But you should also know that others at a high level recognize the necessity of maintaining that stability, that secrecy. In the United States, Homeland Security oversees and coordinates any required action. Specifically, a department of the Secret Service under the auspices of the House. The White House.”
Smoke dropped his chair back onto all four legs, incredulous, letting the information sink in, anxiously rotating the empty piccolo on his knee.
Cioni grabbed his hand to hold the glass still. “There is a lot of focus on this situation. From the top down. Not just because of the possible breach of the auth line, but because of who you work for. And despite any uncertainty you might have with Lucy—that I might have with Lucy and the House in general—she is more likely one of the few we can trust. She’s saved your butt more times than you can ever possibly know.”
“The White House,” Smoke echoed. “So, I am one of the good guys.”
“Of course you are, fratello. But good guys can still end up in jail. Can still end up dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The buzzing vibration of his phone awakened Smoke from a fragmented, nightmarish slumber. He was still in the borrowed suit, sprawled across the top of his bed in the New York Palace Hotel. He lifted his face from the pillow to peek out through the open curtains. It was barely nighttime, the spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral silhouetted against the lights of Fifth Avenue immediately behind it, and the pulsing, lurid glow of Times Square to the west.
He fumbled to pick up the phone.
“What the hell is going on?” came Rafaella’s voice.
He yawned and rubbed at his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It’s one thing to promise away my property to a homeless guy, but now you have to clean up.”
“Hey, you said it was okay.” He raked his fingers through his hair, trying to catch up.
“He’s dead, Tommy. Your little project is dead.”
“What?” Smoke was wide awake now, scrambling off the bed.
“The authorities are unaware. Thank God. And based on the details my assistant gave me, it certainly wasn’t natural. Not with that amount of blood. You need to handle it.” She hung up.
It was a twenty-minute walk to the Hell’s Kitchen studio apartment. Smoke made it in ten. He ran up the stairs. The familiar splayed wallpaper, the assaulting colors, and odors. The door to the studio was closed, the shattered jamb and lock unfixed. He hesitated at the threshold, then pressed his knuckles to the door and slowly nudged it open. He didn’t need another body added to his count. Nervous bile washed the back of his throat. He could smell the sweet metallic stink of wet blood.
He flicked the light switch. The bulb immediately sparked, popped, and died. But the dull ambient glow from the far window was enough to make his heart sink as he stepped inside.
Nate lay stretched naked across the couch, his hair cropped of the matted street dreads, and his skin scrubbed almost raw to remove the Manhattan grime. It looked as if he’d been forcibly stripped, the remnants of clean, new clothes shredded and strewn across the floor. Electrical cords bound his wrists and ankles, still attached to a new toaster and iron. Smoke, horrified, couldn’t look away. Mottled bruising and raw abrasions blemished Nate’s handsome, clean face and torso. His groin, hands, and feet were black with coagulated blood, and the couch was stained dark beneath him.
“Who the hell would even think of doing this?” Smoke said, distracted by the bent and bloody knife and spoon on the coffee table.
They’d stripped several of Nate’s toes of their flesh and nails, the bones crushed and snapped. Likewise, they’d broken four of Nate’s fingers and a thumb, the skin flayed, degloved down to the knuckles, the bones within exposed. His lacerated foreskin appeared to be an afterthought, beyond the more rigorous torture at the extremity of his limbs.
Nate convulsed, sucking in a loud rattling breath, and twisting with an agonizing guttural grunting. He pushed up from the couch, and Smoke caught him before he could fall to the floor, holding him close. Shocked, Smoke fumbled to untangle the cords from Nate’s hands and feet, his anguish and guilt overwhelming as Nate spasmed in his arms. He pulled out his cell and thumbed in 911. The operator asked if there was blood. Yes, there was blood. A lot of blood. The police would accompany the ambulance. But he couldn’t leave.
“Tom. I’m sorry,” Nate moaned.
“Who did this?”
Nate shook his head. He didn’t know. “I’m so sorry.”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”
“They wanted to know where you were but I didn’t know.” Nate held up his hand before his face in disbelief, his cheeks ashen, paling further still.
Despite his momentary lucidness, Smoke sensed Nate’s body was shutting down. And fast. He could only wonder at its ability to exclude the pain of such horrific physical trauma. He tenderly grasped the damaged hand and pulled it to his chest as the sound of sirens approached, echoing.
“So sorry...” Nate murmured. “They made me tell them,”
Smoke felt his own heart skipping its regular beat, perhaps attempting to stop outright in his chest. He could barely bring himself to speak. “What did you say?” he asked gently, already knowing the answer.
Sirens reverberated from the street out in front, the noise resonating through the walls of the building as the medics and authorities kicked open the front door five stories down. Then came the heavy footfall as they climbed the stairs.
Nate shuddered in Smoke’s embrace, tears streaking the bloody smears across his cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Tom. I told them about Theo. That he lived somewhere in Park Slope with his moms.” His eyelids wavered, his eyes rolling back beneath them. The medics and authorities were now halfway up the five-story walk-up, the squark of radios approaching.
Anger welled in Smoke’s gut. Not at Nate, but at himself, and at whoever had done this to his friend, and now knew about the existence of his son. He had to go. He had to go now. Holding Nate’s face gently in his hands, their foreheads touching, his voice was merely a hoarse rasp. “Stay with me, Nate. Stay with me.” Smoke looked from the studio door to the window, his frightened frustration mounting. “Please forgive me, but I’ve got to go,” he said. “The medics will be here any second. Can you hear them on the stairs? Are you okay to be here for just a moment on your own? Just one moment. I promise...”
Nate nodded. “I am very brave.”
“That you are, my beautiful friend.” Smoke pressed his lips to Nate’s wet cheek, tasting the salt of blood and tears, then scrambled across the furniture to the window.
Chapter Forty
The window sash slammed open with the force of his shoulder, and he climbed out past it to swing down onto an exposed sewerage pipe below. The torn insulation covering it was slippery under his brogues and he skidded, his balance thrown, and fell several feet before hooking an arm behind more plumbing on the way down. He winced at the rip of muscle in his shoulder, but the force was not enough to dislocate his arm, not enough to make him care about it. He held himself there precariously to catch his breath, willing the pain to subside. The shout of the medics echoed from the studio above into the tight confines of the alleyway.
Then came the high-pitched squeal of a defibrillator.
“Clear!” a medic called.
“Oh, fuck,” Smoke muttered to himself, squeezing his eyes shut. “Come on, buddy. Come on.”
Again, the defibrillator screamed.
“Clear!”
The beat of Smoke’s heart was loud in his head as it thudded against his temples.
“Pulse! Good to go. On my count. One, two, three...”
Smoke lowered himself down the pipework to the next level, where he could secure a handhold on a window frame and jutting brickwork. He half-climbed, half-fell the remaining stories toward the bottom of the alley, finally tumbling onto a heaping mound of trash that defined the space from edge to edge. Cans. Bottles. Boxes. Food scraps. Rats stood on their hind legs, watching him from atop the rotting topography. They were defiant, daring him to approach. Smoke carefully crawled across the soggy, loose trash, skirting the rodents, until he found his footing on the far side of the heap. By the back door of a kitchen stood a chef, the black-and-white houndstooth pattern of his pants more a black-and-greasy-gray. He dragged on a cigarette held between pudgy nicotine-stained fingers as he glanced up at the open window, then at Smoke, before jerking his head toward the kitchen door for Smoke to go through.
Smoke tapped his Bluetooth earbud and hit the speed dial on his phone, at a dead run before he was even halfway through the filthy kitchen. He blurred past stunned patrons amid their pad thai and massaman curry to burst out the restaurant’s front door onto 45th Street. Amongst the traffic. Vehicles honked and spewed fumes. He tried to flag down a taxi, whistling and waving. But in a city with ten thousand yellow cabs, there wasn’t a single one empty on this block. Not one. The phone kept ringing in his ear.
“Come on, Pick up, pick up.”
He turned on his heel and sprinted east, sticking to the blacktop, his hand raised to attract a cab, picking up his pace as he approached Broadway. Car horns continued blaring in his wake.
The phone went to voicemail.
“You’ve reached Dannii, Jenny, and Theo. You’ve got this.”
“Get out of the brownstone. Get out now. Do what we said last summer. Please Dannii. Please, please, please.”
Smoke tapped his earbud. “Fuck!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, exasperation mounting as he curved onto Broadway into the guts of Times Square, straight into traffic. Cars, buses, trucks, occupied cabs, and people jammed the Crossroads of the World. All at a standstill. Mesmerized by the vast wattage rising multiple stories all around them. Witches, and lions, and flying carpets. Brilliant and brash. The heartbeat of Manhattan. There was no way he was going to catch a cab here. No matter how many there were.
He slammed his fist against the hood of a limousine as he crossed in front of it, taking no heed of the driver’s eloquent vernacular or the people he shouldered to get through the crowd. Two cops on horseback surveyed his trek through the milieu of tourists and scraggy cartoon characters but did nothing beyond lifting their radios to their mouths.
The gun-barrel view down Broadway stretched diagonally through the bowels of Manhattan toward Downtown. He dodged the traffic on 42nd as he crossed it without bothering to look. He waved when a cab heading toward him flashed its lights. But the vehicle swerved around him without stopping. He couldn’t depend on them. He increased his speed, running along Broadway’s bike lane, slamming his feet against the tar as he crossed street after street—41st, 40th, and 39th—in quick succession. Red lights, green lights, he didn’t care. He kept running without slowing. He knew he could run to Park Slope in Brooklyn, but also that he’d never get there in time. His mind spun. Emotions bubbled. Then he tapped his Bluetooth earbud three times.
