Smoke and Mirrors (6 page)

Spacious and airy, wide windows framed the sea with thick, bench-like sills topped by heads of lavender and other thickly grown herbs. Pausing to inhale their heavenly bouquet, I shook my head in wonder.
An alias is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

Gleaming commercial grade appliances stood on tiled flooring that might have been tread upon by Caesar. Huge battered pine tables lay thick with a multitude of fresh fruit and vegetables. Cheeses hung from the walls in rope baskets that also held wines with labels unheard of outside five star restaurants.

Tea?
I should have been making a nine-course dinner. Yet, the water was boiled, and so I rummaged through the huge dressers that made up cabinetry, and nearly kissed the fresh box of Fortnum and Mason’s Royal Blend. I procured a Deruta cup that might have fit with Giovanni’s cigar holder, and added cream to its steaming surface.

Then I carried it to the portico and drank with my toes hanging over the precipice. It marveled me that no railing had been placed at the veranda’s edge considering there was a two-hundred-foot drop to the thrashing Mare Tirreno. I wondered if Brad had considered jumping when he returned after his friends’ deaths.

I know I had tried it. Had walked alone at night where I knew I shouldn’t, half hoping another rapist would give it a go while I was actually awake so I could kill him or be killed, ending my misery.

The morbid thought brought to mind that moment two-and-a-half years ago, when I had come conscious in my London flat
. Had I fallen asleep in the middle of the day?
Every muscle in my body had felt bludgeoned.
Was it Wednesday, ten mile run day?
A glance at my watch had negated that notion. Willing myself upright, I had swung my lead-like legs over the side of my bed and tried to make sense of my confusion.

Work
. That had been my last coherent memory. I had finished up an ungodly set of rounds and walked outside into the early morning light with an older colleague.

After a few minutes of idle chatter, I had left him and walked home. The short way, through the long alley that ran between the buildings on Crisp Road. Key in the padlock that led to the small, enclosed garden behind my flat. Gate closed.
Locked?
I recalled bending down to pat the tomcat that had adopted me two years before. But he had hissed
. Hissed?
He hadn’t done that since my date with Billy Whatshisname…doesn’t like men.

Men?
No one else used my garden.

And then the scent had returned. I carried the cling of it on my shirt. The overpowering odor of cologne.
Had someone been behind me?

I had spent a month trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Depression. Crying jags. Unnatural terror. A hatred of certain scents. Particularly the scent of cologne. It still bothers me.

The sea crashed below, indifferent to my melancholy memories.

I shook my head with resolve. It was over and done with. My rapist, that smug doctor that I’d walked out the door with, was in prison. Victory, that. My trap had worked, and I thought back to the hotel room in which my quest for reprisal had finally played out.

It was fashionable, beautiful and classy – just what he liked. I knew only too well from covert trips to his home. He liked the finer things, including call girls with gorgeous bodies and excellent manners. Professional success had given him the luxury to afford a Grade A listed home, semi-royalty for a wife and the means to dabble in his less acceptable desires. But prostitutes were whores no matter how expensive or beautiful. They didn’t complain when he chloroformed and raped them. After all, he left money and never went to the same girl twice.

And so, having hidden cameras in the various rooms in which he chose to conduct his dalliances, I had amassed evidence that would have gotten his license suspended, given his wife a divorce with a huge alimony and flushed his social status down the loo.

But I wanted to choke the life out of him with my bare hands or pay someone to
rape
him. A huge ex-con to cuff him to the wall and take him without mercy. And where once I contemplated being a part of a long-term relationship, the assault had pushed me in the opposite direction. I wasn’t about to cross men off my list, but they’d never get through the armor I’d forged for myself. Not even De Torres.

The sound of voices interrupted my thoughts, and I glanced at my watch, surprised to find nearly two hours had passed. Scrambling up from my undignified position, I donned my sandals and reentered the villa. The maid shrieked when she saw me, dropping her net-like bag and leaving strawberries to travel the pristine floor. The driver, less immune to my terrifying presence, scolded her and stooped alongside me to pick up the scattered fruit.

She finally spoke when the driver left.
What was wrong with her Signore?

I placed my teacup in the camouflaged dishwasher. “I can’t discuss my patient with you.”

She made a noise of displeasure, grabbed the day’s catch and shook its lifeless fin at me. “Signore has many worries. Despite what you might think, he doesn’t often drink like today. Only, he lost a friend in a motorcycle accident which nearly took his life as well.”

So he
had
told her a version of the truth, albeit a mightily skewed one. “Did he tell you how it happened?”

The fish hit the sink with a smack. “Sì.” She sounded triumphant–the mother who knows where her child has been even when the neighbor’s mother does not. “Signore likes to race: boats, cars, motorcycles.” She made the sign of the cross. “He needs an outlet for himself; works too hard, he does. Anyway, mine is not to tell him how to spend his precious little free time. While he was away on his last trip to the mainland, he entered a bike race with his friend Giles. Only Giles,” she said, her voice lowered, “hit some gravel and his bike crashed into Signore’s. Unfortunately for Signore, his best friend did not live. And, well, you have seen the injuries he sustained.”

Back to preparing the fish, she continued. “His hands, Dottoressa, they are most terrible. White and smooth, he said the metal parts of his bike burned them. I told him he should put butter on them, like I always told my boys, but he refused.” She seemed mortally offended that her medicinal knowledge had not been considered. “He did at last let me call il Dottore.” Her knife now pointed at my chest. “Not you, of course,
il Dottore vero
.”

“I see. Well, I’ll do my best to mend him, but I have no doubt your miraculous cuisine will do him the most good.”

Suddenly dismissive of my inadequacies, she continued with, “I prepare him foods my own husband, Dio benedica all’anima sua,” she made the sign of the cross again, “loved dearly. Simple they are, but proper Sardinian cooking like my mother taught me and her mother taught her.”

I smiled, backing toward the door as she continued, now revisiting the fact she had no daughters or granddaughters to which she could pass on traditions.

“He’s a lucky man. I’ll leave you to your magic while I check on him.”

I don’t think she knew I left.

I climbed the huge spiral staircase slowly, my hand touching the silken rail, my thumb vibrating off the banisters as I dragged it along under my fingers. When I got to the top, I looked to my right and left. The upstairs, like the floor below it, had a huge square hole in its middle, where both sun and rain were allowed to enter the inner atrium unheeded. A similarly shaped hallway ran around the interior, opening to rooms that lay at the exterior of each of the square’s four long sides. There were about eight doors that might have belonged to De Torres’s bedroom.

Guessing he would choose a sea view, I was left with only two alternatives. Right moved above the room with the piano. Left above the terraced garden and swimming pool. I moved right.

The heavily burnished door with its Moroccan motif and lustrous hardware was ajar. Knocking softly, I waited. When no answer came, I pushed it open. Not a sound did it make on its massive hinges.

The same could not be said for me. Soft though it was, I gasped. For the rooms below were nothing to this. The ceiling might as well have been the sky, so high was its vaulted surface. And where the floors below were earth tones, this was ice-like mosaic of the bluest hued marbles I’d ever seen. The room ended in a massive balcony that spanned the distance of three enormous arches, mirroring those of the doorway lintels. Curtains of gauzy linen hung to either side of the apertures, fanning into the room with each waft of salty air. And in the very center, there squatted a huge four-poster, carved, I gathered, by the same hand that had done the doors and the wardrobe set against the wall closest me.

The bed was ebony, each column beginning as the tail of a dolphin which, stretching upward to the height of ten feet or so, balanced the tip or end of Poseidon’s trident on its nose. The tridents acted as massive curtain rods, each strung with silver and blue silk that flashed and shimmered in the exotic light.

To my left, there was an inlaid tub complete with a washbasin and a secluded antechamber that I guessed held the king’s throne. But of the king, there was not a sight to be had, so I crossed through on silent feet.

I made the middle of the three arches when I finally saw all 6’ 2” of him, passed out on what could only be described as my idea of a flying carpet.

Thick and detailed, the carpet ran the length of the balcony, fooling the eye with its Book of Kells-like creatures. He was still dressed in jeans, but other than that, he was as God intended. He was cool to the touch and the skin around his nails and lips wasn’t chalky. “Leave it to you to have a bed like that and be sleeping out here.”

A soft breath parted his bruised lip. I was considering where they had just been, when it dawned on me that I’d left my bag downstairs. I guessed correctly that his diligent housekeeper would find it and bring it to the ‘Dottoressa idiota’ with due haste. Sure enough, she entered the room a moment later, only to find me mixing several of De Torres’s aspirin with water. I put a finger to my lips as she looked from his prone figure to me.

“He’s fine, just sleeping.” I glanced at my bag. “You can leave it on the bed, thank you.”

Nodding, she set the bag down and backed out of the room, leaving the door open, just in case.

•   •   •

Brad’s eyes opened to the calming light of the moon. He sat up, cursing his knack for falling asleep in odd places, and yawned. A frown creased his brow as he tried to reconstruct the afternoon. And in the space of that fuzzy moment, Sammy and Nigel’s crushing loss was, once again, upon him.

He’d been as distraught as he’d ever remembered, and even the piano, with her soothing harmonies, had only pained his burned hands. La cameriera had seen this and brought him the whisky. Unfortunately, from the vise-like grip of his head, he’d drained the better part of it. A further assessment of his breath indicated he’d also smoked one of his prized Cuban cigars.

Cursing again, he crossed the balcony, aiming for a toothbrush and a better attitude.

Pausing to glance at himself in a nearby mirror, he shook his head in disgust.
Giovanni
wasn’t up to par. Not by a long shot. Bloodshot eyes, four days of thick stubble and a pair rumpled Versace jeans wouldn’t exactly ruin his reputation as a drug dealer, but it certainly didn’t fit with De Torres’s reputation for emotional detachment and an impeccable appearance.

That had been Alasdair’s idea. Brilliant, bloody Alasdair, Brad’s SIS Handler. His Director in the Field. His lifeline, and more often than not, his Cobbler.

“
How else are you going to pass off being a drug dealer who doesn’t take drugs or chain smoke?” his wiry, fifty-something DIF had asked. “And you won’t mind me adding ADD to De Torres’s legend, considering it’ll be a hell of a lot easier than you trying to sit still.”

Brad’s dark eyes scanned the mirror. His hair, a generous gift from his Italian grandmother, was more unkempt than usual. Walking to the sink, he drenched his hands and swept calloused fingers through the thick, wavy mass. Rivulets of water raced down his neck, and he lunged for the toilet.

He was refastening his jeans when it dawned on him that something else had happened. The movements of his fingers on his fly were incongruously familiar.

Padding out of the bathroom, he noticed the water next to a note that read; Drink this.

Who the fuck am I supposed to be, Alice in bloody Wonderland?
He headed in the direction of answers.

His cameriera was in the kitchen, humming as she kneaded a mound of dough. “I did not hear you. Forgive me. Your dinner has been ready for hours. Only, she told me not to wake you. I don’t know why I listened,
she’s
not il Dottore.”

Confusion and brimming anger stirred within him. “Who’s not il Dottore?”

The maid crossed her chest. “Per amor di Dio! You mean you cannot remember anything? I knew it was bad to have her treat you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Signora, who the hell are you talking about?”

From behind him, he heard a distinctly familiar voice. “Me.”

He turned to view the heart-stopping countenance so familiar in his dreams and nightmares: a brilliant mane of ebony hair, wide sharp cheekbones, and a Mediterranean complexion beneath those sparkling, emerald-like eyes.

What the hell was Ms. Brothers doing in his kitchen wearing a white sundress that hugged her curves like Mario Fucking Andretti?

She picked up a glass of water from where she’d been sitting and came closer. He could smell her. That oddly addictive blend of disinfectant, saltwater and gardenia.
Christ, I should remember this.
It was the main reason he rarely drank as De Torres. A dangerous fucking business it was when you couldn’t remember what you’d done. Particularly if you’d done it with someone as unforgettable as Ms. Brothers.

“You sent for Mancini, but he’s away just now. Unfortunately for you, I’m his replacement.” She folded the drink into his hand. A spark, not unlike high voltage, arced where they momentarily touched.

The haze began to lift. She had come and changed the plaster on his wounds. “I remember,” he said, leaving off the word ‘not a hell of a lot’ and adding, “Please, allow me to express my thanks with dinner?”