Playing Dead. Jessie Keane

cuddled close to her father, fawned over him; and maybe, to be fair, he had fawned over her too – rather too much, in fact. Annie Carter had come as an unwelcome shock to Cara, but maybe it was partly his fault that she was so hostile to Annie.

      Now she thought . . . what? That he was going to solve her problematical marriage with a magical wave of his hand? He had warned her against Rocco before she rushed into wedlock with the boy. A few background checks had quickly shown that Rocco was lazy, feckless and inclined to fuck around. He’d warned her of this. But Cara, so used to getting her own way, had been obdurate. She wanted to marry Rocco; no one else would do.

      Now she was coming to him for help. He had many, many problems – the Cantuzzi family was trying to muscle in on some of his businesses, and they were going to have to learn the hard way that this was unacceptable behaviour. Always there were concerns.

      He was the protector of many Italian families in New York, shielding them from the worst excesses of the American legal system by employing many useful people in the judiciary and the Police Department.

      The Barolli organization had a system of payoffs in place, and a large ‘sheet’ or list of officials on a monthly wage, so no friends of the Barollis would ever face the trauma of prosecution.

      The whole operation was unbelievably slick; Constantine had over many years made it so, and now it was an empire with him at its head and many layers of power beneath him. His sons had, of course, followed him into the business; Lucco and Alberto were caporegimes, or captains, and everyone beneath them was a soldier. He had his legal counsellor, or consigliere. It was a smooth, well-oiled system. He gave his orders to Lucco and Alberto, and those orders filtered down and were carried out; rarely did Constantine have to issue a direct order to anyone.

      But such a complex business didn’t run itself. There were always problems to be resolved. Added to that, he had a gorgeous pregnant wife, and no time to spare for rescuing a silly situation that should never have arisen in the first place.

      ‘He’s insulted me. He deserves to die for it,’ said Cara.

      Constantine sat back in his chair and stared at her.

      ‘The Mancini family are old friends to us,’ he pointed out. ‘Rocco is their youngest boy and he’s been spoiled. He wasn’t a good choice for you. As I told you, when you decided to marry him.’

      ‘I want you to do something to him, Papa,’ said Cara, sobbing now, nearly incoherent with rage. ‘I want you to hurt him. Break his legs. Do something.’

      Constantine shook his head slowly as he looked at her. ‘You’re missing the point here. I told you. The Mancinis are friends of ours. We have reciprocal arrangements going all over town, all over the country. And you expect me to wound, maybe kill their youngest boy?’

      ‘If you love me, you’ll do it,’ hurled Cara.

      Constantine leaned forward. His blue eyes held hers in a hard, laser-like gaze.

      ‘You know I love you. That isn’t in question here. What is in question is your choice of husband and what’s to be done about him if he’s looking elsewhere for his enjoyment.’

      Cara jumped to her feet, overturning the chair. ‘Well you are obviously going to do nothing,’ she spat out.

      Constantine sighed and leaned back. ‘I’ll talk to his father. Maybe between us we can come to some sort of arrangement.’

      ‘So you think all this is my fault?’ shouted Cara.

      ‘You made a bad marriage.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens.’

      ‘You don’t understand anything,’ she complained. ‘You’re too wrapped up in your new little cosy domestic setup. You don’t care about the fact that your daughter is being humiliated, that all my friends will laugh at me.’

      Constantine rose to his feet in one swift movement. The look on his face shut her up in an instant. She’d gone too far; she knew it.

      ‘I understand this. My domestic arrangements are my business,’ he said coldly. ‘And if your friends laugh, then d’you really think they’re friends at all? And I also understand that only a fool shits on his own doorstep. Do you? The Mancinis are good people and I will not be damaging their youngest son to gratify your injured pride.’

      Trembling, Cara nodded. She brushed angrily at her tears and glared at him. Why couldn’t he see that she had every right to be affronted? But she knew she’d hit a nerve; he was so totally absorbed with that English whore and her brat that he was neglecting his own family, his true family.

      She felt that no one was on her side now, that everyone was more appreciated, more valued, than she was. Lucco was getting married to a girl of his father’s choosing and so he was, for once, very much in favour. Alberto was always in favour – that went without saying. And now – and this was the worst thing of all – the English bitch was going to present Constantine with a brand-new child. And as for Cara . . . well, she used to be the apple of her father’s eye. And then along had come Annie Carter, and all that had changed overnight.

      God, how she hated that bitch.

      And right now, how she hated him, her father.

      Whatever he said, she was going to get her revenge on Rocco, one way or another. If her father refused to punish the bastard, she would. She was going to find a way to do it. She thought of Rocco and his fag lover, and vowed that Frances Ducane was going to pay for this. She wasn’t Constantine Barolli’s daughter for nothing.

      Chapter 12

      1960

      ‘What you need, my boy, is an arsenal,’ Rick Ducane told his son over and over again.

      Frances was thirteen when it first occurred to him that his father was . . . well, more than a little screwy. He missed his mother. He couldn’t talk to his father about anything.

      When they’d come back to England, Rick had become a bitter recluse. He’d bought a house called Whereys, an old red-brick Victorian pile with a big cluster of barley-twist chimney pots soaring high above its gabled roof. It was impossible to heat – Frances always felt cold there – and it was deep in the Kent countryside, miles from anywhere. Secretly, to himself, Frances called the house Where-The-Fuck, Kent.

      He could still remember that wild night when his mother had been drunk, reeling, strange men drinking on the sofa, cavorting naked with her in and out of the bedrooms in the house; and then the next thing, Dad was home and there were police and ambulance men and press swarming over the place like ants.

      That was the last time he ever saw his mother. Now, all he had in the world was dear old Dad, and Frances strongly suspected that Dad was Looney Tunes. Had a screw loose. Was barking mad.

      That worried him.

      And this thing his dad had about weaponry. He’d built up a vast collection of arms. A bayonet knife that – he never tired of telling Frances – he’d taken off a dead Nazi during the war.

      ‘Rigor mortis had set in,’ said Rick. ‘Had to break the bastard’s fingers to get it off him.’

      Nice, thought Frances.

      There was also a Prussian officer’s dress sword. And guns, he was a maniac for guns.

      ‘People will try to hurt you in life, people will pull you down,’ he told Frances.

      Yeah, you got that right, thought Frances. No one could ever hurt him as his dad did, mocking his efforts at amateur dramatics, saying he didn’t have ‘the ear’ when he attempted accents, telling him that stardom was a false mistress and would always break your heart, grudgingly listening to Frances’s readings of Shakespeare’s soliloquies and then telling him that his diction was poor, that he didn’t ‘enunciate’ or ‘project’ enough.

      Oh, Frances knew he could never be the