Page 53 of A Week Away
After I hung up, I paid my bill, adding a large tip for sitting at the table for so long. Then went out to the car and drove to Top Dog Collections. When I walked in, Claudia was sitting at the desk. She had earphones in her ears listening to a Discman as she typed. From the sound leaking out I think it was Luther Vandross. As soon as she saw me, her eyes widened and she shook her head a little.
Pulling out one of the earphones, she said, “Good afternoon, how can I help you, sir?”
“I’m here to see Ms. Di Stefano.”
Claudia stood, smoothed her skirt, which had wrinkled around the hips, and led me over to Joanne’s office. “Gentleman here to see you,” she said before getting out of my way.
Joanne took one look at me, and said, “Come in and shut the door.” As soon as I had, she hissed, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
The office was just as it had been the day before, except there was an expensive purse on the credenza and the purple leather coat on a coatrack. She hadn’t lied when she said she wanted to wear it more often. Probably one of the few truthful things she’d said to me.
I sat down casually. “So this is the deal I have with your son. If I find out who killed his dad then I get to keep using his identity.”
“Why would he make a deal like that?”
“He says he’s going to kill that person when I find them.”
After a moment of silence, she said, “That doesn’t work for me.”
“No, I don’t imagine it would.”
And that was as close as we came to acknowledging the fact that she’d killed her husband. Normally, I’d be a lot more interested in seeing a killer get what they deserve, particularly in a situation like this one where I couldn’t see that the real Dom Reilly deserved what he got. The problem was, I didn’t want to see Cass in prison for killing his mother. Or anyone else for that matter.
“I have a solution. I did some research and there was a guy named Vito Giancarlo who admitted to placing a bomb in someone’s car around 1984. He flipped on the people who ordered the hit. He wasn’t in prison long before he got knifed with a sharpened toothbrush. So he’s dead.”
“I might have heard something about that. Vito was a friend of a friend. So what?”
“Last night you said someone told you Dominick was killed accidentally but you wouldn’t say by who. Tell the kid you made a couple of calls and found out it was Vito. That Vito killed his dad. And that’ll be the end of it.”
“And you get to go home and keep being Dominick Reilly.”
“Exactly.”
“What do I get out of it?”
“Uh… your son doesn’t murder you and you stay out of prison. That should be enough.”
“Except it’s not.” She pushed away from the desk and crossed her legs, then continued, “Cass tells me you went to see Suzie Reilly. That house belonged to her parents. They left it to SuzieandDominick. That means half the house belongs to you; technically. I want you to sign it over to me.”
“Suzie knows I’m not her brother.”
“And you’re leaving town and never coming back. We’ll do it all via the mail.”
“Still, I don’t think I can stand up to that level of scrutiny. You know how fragile a fake identity can be.”
“You don’t need to worry about it. Tony will handle the details.”
“Tony?”
“Short for Anton. Mr. Cray. My boss.”
There was no way I was going to go along with this. For one thing, it was mean. For another, I didn’t think it would work.
“I keep hearing it was your cousin Luca who killed your husband. And that you asked him to.”
“Who says that? I’ll kill them!”
“You might want to remove murder from your repertoire. It’s not working out well.”
