in one corner of the room.
Five or six of them talking, three with their backs to the camera. One of them waved to Valerie and gave her an appreciative wolf whistle. Rosa had never seen him before. Val zoomed in again. Off camera she called, “Hey, Mark!” The others turned to her as well. One of them was looking straight into the camera, smiling.
The picture froze. The sound broke off.
The status bar showed that the file wasn’t finished yet, but the rest of it was occupied by the still of that one face. With that silent, frozen smile.
Trembling, Rosa enlarged the window until the young man’s features consisted of brownish rectangles. Then she minimized it right down again.
She could have spared herself the trouble. She’d recognized Alessandro even before he’d turned around. From the way he moved. From his unruly hair.
Muttering curses, she leaned against the back of the park bench. Above the lid of the laptop, the bronze panther, unmoving, was still staring at her, up on his rock framed by a background of bony branches.
Alessandro had been there. On the night it happened. In that apartment in the Village where Rosa had never been before, and would never be again.
His hair was shorter than today—a boarding-school haircut, he had once called it. The others with him had similar hairstyles.
Damn it, he had been there.
And had never said a single word about it.
VALERIE
IT WAS A TRICK. A lie. Some perverse ruse to make her feel insecure, distract her attention, keep her from messing up any of the Alcantara deals from which Trevini earned his money.
It wasn’t hard to see through his ploy. He wanted to unsettle her so that she’d be easier to manipulate. Most people thought the Mafia shot down anyone who stood in its path with a machine gun. That was nonsense; there were many other ways to get rid of them, and Avvocato Trevini knew them all. A man who had been working for the Cosa Nostra for decades, defending murderers, springing criminals from prison, discrediting public prosecutors—a man who had survived all the changes of leadership intact, and even the bloody street warfare of earlier years, knew what he was doing.
A video clip could be faked. How hard was it to replace one face with another? Trevini must know that she didn’t trust him. That, naturally, she would sooner believe Alessandro. All she had to do was call Alessandro, ask him, and the whole hoax would be exposed.
And yet Trevini had sent her the video.
She took her cell phone out of her bag and dialed Alessandro’s number for the second time that afternoon. The ring seemed louder and shriller this time. Voice mail again.
His smile was still caught on the monitor of the laptop, blurred like a half-forgotten memory. Had she seen him that evening? When Valerie thought a man looked sexy, it was her habit to point him out. Had she pointed him out to Rosa at the party? And more important, had he seen Rosa and failed to tell her later that he recognized her? Why had he kept quiet about it?
He hadn’t been straightforward with her once before: when he’d taken her to Isola Luna so that her presence would interfere with Tano’s plans to murder him. They hadn’t been a couple yet at the time. Did that make a difference?
She decided to send Trevini an email.
You’re fired, she typed. Get out of my life.
She deleted that, and instead wrote: You’ll be hearing from my contract killers. Shitty attorney. Shitty cripple. I hope you miss seeing a shitty staircase in your shitty hotel.
It was almost poetry.
After a moment’s thought, she deleted that, too. Dear Signore Trevini, I am not at home right now. I will be in touch about a date for a discussion in the next few days. Where did you get that video? And you mentioned other material; what kind of material is that? Sincerely, Rosa Alcantara.
PS: I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON YOUR SHITTY LEGAL LIES IN YOUR SHITTY WHEELCHAIR, YOU MISERABLE BASTARD.
She stared at the postscript, then deleted it letter by letter, very slowly. Finally she hit SEND and closed the laptop.
Her cell phone rang at the same moment. She saw Alessandro’s name on the display, waited a few seconds, and then answered.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hi.”
“What are you doing there with that panther?”
Puzzled, she looked around her, and then remembered the voice mail.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked.
He hesitated briefly. “Discussions?” It sounded like a question, as if he couldn’t believe