The Third Woman. Mark Burnell
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for the sound inside over the sounds outside; a distant dustcart, an alarm, two Cubans arguing on the pavement beneath his window.
The more he listened the louder the silence became. Until it was broken by a second clunk. Definitely inside.
He got out of bed and pulled on a grey towelling robe he’d stolen from a hotel in Turin. He wasn’t going to confront anyone in a pair of navy boxer shorts and a string vest. In the drawer of his bedside table was a Ruger P-85. Evelyn, his wife, had never let him keep a gun in the house. He’d bought the weapon three months after she’d died. Unable to endure the prospect of a life without her, he’d intended to use it on himself. At the last moment – safety-catch off, forefinger squeezing – he’d hesitated.
That had been fourteen years ago. The gun had never been fired. But on four previous occasions he’d been ready to shoot, two of them in the last twelve months. Both times, the intruders had vanished by the time he’d reached the pizza parlour downstairs. Both times, there’d been broken glass on the floor and no cash in the till.
Angelo’s on West 122nd Street in Harlem. Nothing fancy. Just good pizza and cheap prices. Part of a chain of seven Angelo’s restaurants in Harlem and the higher reaches of the Upper West Side and Upper East Side. Michael Cabrini, John’s younger brother, owned the business, employing his wife, two sons and a handful of nephews. As he was fond of saying, ‘Franchises ain’t worth shit unless you got someone you can trust running them. That means you, John. You and the boys. No outsiders.’ Which was why the empire had halted at seven; his brother had run out of employable sons and nephews.
Cabrini tip-toed down the stairs and through the kitchen. He paused in the shadow of the doorway that led into the restaurant, his eyes gradually growing accustomed to the gloom.
The man was making no attempt to hide. He was sitting at a table in the centre of the room. In front of him, on the red check tablecloth, was a cup and saucer.
‘Hope you don’t mind. Made myself an espresso.’
Pale-skinned, the remains of black hair greying at the temples, bald on top, in his fifties, he was wearing a navy-blue overcoat over a suit. Even in the half-light Cabrini could see how polished the tips of his black shoes were. He approved. Beside the cup and saucer was a felt hat.
‘I’m surprised you know how.’
A thin bloodless smile. ‘My wife bought a smaller version of that machine at vast expense. Naturally, she never used it. Personally, I can’t stand to see waste so I made the effort to learn myself. Now I use it every day.’ He raised the cup, took a sip, then added: ‘I’m sure we’d both be happier if you stopped pointing that gun at me.’
Cabrini laid it on the zinc counter. ‘How’d you get in?’
‘Far too easily. To your knowledge, have we met?’
‘No.’
‘But you know who I am.’
‘I have an idea.’
Gordon Wiley. A man whose instincts were more at home in Washington DC than in New York.
Wiley said, ‘Mr Ellroy is in Europe. I spoke to him earlier.’
‘What are we looking at?’
‘Salvage.’
‘What kind of assistance are we going to get?’
‘One hundred percent.’
‘What’s the damage?’
‘Who’s the damage? That’s the question. She’s a German named Reuter. Petra Reuter. I’d never heard of her until an hour ago. And now I wish I could turn back the clock. It’s a hell of a mess over there.’
‘What about Mr Ellroy?’
‘He’s staying. Which is why he wants his favourite anchor running the show.’
Wiley collected his hat. There was a black Lincoln waiting for him outside the door in front of a dilapidated white Datsun. Cabrini watched it leave through the first fall of the snow and felt relief rather than anxiety; no more pizzas. For a day or two, at least. And in a year or so, no more pizzas ever again.
It was quarter-to-seven when he phoned his brother. ‘Michael?’
‘Christ, John, you know what the time is?’
‘I’ve got to go away.’
There was a long pause. ‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘Always. You know that.’
‘How long?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You okay?’
‘I’m good. You gonna take care of things?’
‘Sure, sure. I’ll get Stevie to look after your place.’
The youngest nephew. The next in line, if the Angelo’s empire ever expanded to eight. After the call Cabrini went upstairs.
Salvage.
Well, he was the expert. Had been for twenty years. It was never pretty but then again it wasn’t a beauty pageant. Besides, he hadn’t had a failure yet. That was all that mattered.
He replaced the Ruger P-85 in the drawer of the bedside table. In the bathroom, he shaved. Most days, he didn’t bother. Serving behind the counter he preferred to be unshaven, sallow, dreary. Invisible to his customers. A fifty-five-year-old man dispensing pizzas; hardly one of life’s successes.
Beneath the weak light falling from the naked bulb was a lean man. The slight stoop and shuffle that his customers saw made him weak. But when he stood upright and walked with purpose, he appeared as he was: fiercely fit. He watched the welcome transformation in the mirror as he combed his hair and dabbed some Christian Dior aftershave on each cheek.
He returned to the bedroom, half-resurrected. Cabrini had always favoured fine clothes but almost everything he wore came from discount stores. In the back of the cupboard, however, was a tailored suit by Huntsman of London. Five years old, a masterpiece in fabric, Cabrini knew it would last the rest of his life. He laid it on the bed, then selected a pair of Lobb shoes and a black silk polo-neck that had been specially made for him by Clive Ishiguro.
His salvage uniform. He was the leader, he set the tone. It felt good to be able to shed the shoddy disguise from time to time.
When the farm overlooking Orvieto was ready, he would move to Italy and never return, content to comfort himself over the permanently painful loss of Evelyn by surrounding himself with beautiful things. A garden, porcelain, paintings, clothes, music.
The rusting white Datsun was twenty-one years old. Cabrini and Evelyn had bought it together. It was the only car he’d ever owned. He’d never wanted another. From Harlem to Brooklyn, he peeled off the Long Island Expressway and circled beneath it to the waterfront and a stretch of warehouses that were still awaiting development.
Cabrini came to the loading bay of the third warehouse: R.L. Gallagher Inc. Noiselessly, a large gate lifted. Cabrini drove to the back of the docking area, parked and then stepped into the waiting cargo lift. On the fourth floor, he crossed a vast storage area that was deserted, except for two matt black cabins on steel struts. The large sets of wheels which were now six inches clear of the floor were only just visible in the draughty darkness. Up a flight of aluminium steps was a sealed door. Beside the door, mounted on the wall, was a matt grey panel. He placed his face in front of it and said, ‘Cabrini, John, place of birth, Cleveland, Ohio.’
Cabrini had been born in New York but that didn’t matter. The biometric plate analysed voice timbre, the pattern of blood vessels in the retina, and traces of breath composition, a process that currently took between two and five seconds.
When the door parted with a hiss, John Cabrini stepped into a sanitized