“How’d they find out?”
“They put a detective on you.”
“A private de—?”
“NYPD. Tin. Somebody we own. They already knew about you and me, I don’t know how they found out.”
“Billy,” she said at once.
“Maybe,” he said, and nodded. “They think you’re an informer. A rat. And informers have to be taught a lesson. So nobody else will even think of informing.”
“Informers have to be killed, is that what you mean?”
“Yes,” he said. “Informers have to be killed.”
“Even well-connected informers?” she asked.
“Especially well-connected ones,” he said.
“I’m not talking about my husband. Not that connection.”
He turned to look at her, puzzled.
“I’m talking about you,” she said.
Trucks were speeding by on either side of them.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“You asked me to marry you,” she said.
A huge eight-wheeler rushed past on their left, raising dust, scaring them both.
“Did you mean it?” she asked.
“I meant it,” he said.
“Then, yes,” she said.
She came out of the bathroom naked, her bag slung over her shoulder. She carried the bag to the dresser near the four-poster bed, and went to him at once.
There was for her — as there was whenever she was with him — the same sense of urgency and need. She went into his arms like a wanton, immediately abandoning herself to the same passion she’d known from the very first time they’d made love. Even knowing who he was and what he represented, she was nonetheless helplessly, hopelessly enamored. He was her love, and she loved him still.
The inn was on the edge of a narrow river with a small waterfall. Swans glided on the still, pondlike expanse of water before the falls, just under their second-story window. As they lay naked in embrace on the four-poster bed, they could hear the tumbling water below.
He was brimming with questions, bursting with plans, bubbling with excitement, babbling as steadily as the rippling river outside. When, would she tell her husband, how soon could she get the divorce? Would he consent to it? Could she move out meantime? What about her daughter?
Ah yes, what about my daughter? she thought.
“I know she likes me,” he said, “but...”
“She adores you,” Sarah said.
“But this is different, this is a divorce, this would be a new father coming into the picture...”
“It’ll be difficult, I know.”
“I’ll take good care of her, Sarah.”
“I know you will.”
“And you too. No one will ever harm you while I’m around.”
“I know,” she said.
“You’ll have to meet everybody,” he said. “Well, not everybody, just the people who matter. Actually, it gets down to two people who have to know, Bobby Triani and Petey Bardo, they’re second and third in command — I make it sound like an army, but it isn’t that at all.”
“Do you need their approval?” she asked. “Is that it? To marry me?”
“No, hell no, I don’t need anybody’s approval to do anything. This is like a courtesy, Sarah, a way of showing respect for the people you work with. When I told you I was in the investment business, I wasn’t lying, that’s what we are in a sense, investors looking to make a profit, the same as any other investors. Bobby is immediately under me in the organization, and Petey comes after him. Everything funnels through us, the profits, and we decide how they’ll be distributed, which percentage goes to which person, whatever position he may hold in the organization...”
And now, perhaps because hiding the truth about himself had become an intolerable burden over all these months, now the truth that had been dammed within him burst free, rushing over the dam and through the dam, destroying the dam itself and the silence it had forced, words tumbling free in a torrent as swift as the running river outside. And as he spoke she thought she’d never loved him so much as she did now, when he was telling her the truth about himself at last, revealing himself completely at last, trusting her, revealing all at last.
“... mostly a cash business, so most of our distributions are in cash. In fact, one of our big problems is getting rid of money. I don’t mean throwing it in the streets, I mean giving it respectability, do you understand what I’m saying? I guess you realize the reason my place was bugged isn’t because what I do is legal. You asked me if I was involved in anything criminal, and I told you no, because in my mind a criminal is somebody who kills somebody else or who sticks up somebody else or who hurts somebody else in a serious way, none of which things I’ve ever personally done. I suppose in your husband’s eyes — and maybe in yours, too, for all I know, I don’t know — doing things like making it easy for people to gamble or to borrow money or to indulge in pleasures they seek of their own accord, these things may seem criminal to him, which would mean that anybody involved in these things would automatically become someone involved in so-called criminal activity. But my father and my uncle and me, too — I have to admit I feel the same way — think of this activity as providing services that people want and need. Petey, Bobby, we all feel the same way. Sal the Barber, these are all people you’ll meet someday, Ralphie Carbonaio, he’s the Carter in Carter-Goldsmith Investments, Carmine Orafo, he’s the Goldsmith, it actually means that in Italian, Orafo, all of them, we’re all in this business together to provide services which, by the way, in different times of history and in different places all around the world, would have been considered legal.
“You won’t have to worry about the business, my mother never worried about it, still doesn’t, you’ll be meeting her, too, so she can give you her Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, huh? I’m not expecting a problem with her, she’ll fall in love with you the minute she sees you, why wouldn’t she? I have to tell you, though, it isn’t going to be easy, expecting these guys to open their hearts to someone who’s got a history like yours, your marriage I’m talking about. There’s what you might call a natural animosity there. It’s a matter of mindset, Sarah. Guys who are used to believing that loan-sharking isn’t such a terrible thing, these guys aren’t going to understand why I would want to marry a woman whose ex thinks otherwise. Sal the Barber, for example, who’s the man who gave me that ring, remember? The black ring? The one your jeweler said was stolen? He’s a decent, hardworking man, you’ll see when you meet him, though he sounds like a roughneck — well, look at the beautiful ring he came up with. That’s not the kind of thing someone without sensitivity could find beautiful, is it? Sal didn’t know it was stolen, either, by the way. The guy who passed it to him is sorry he ever did, believe me — if he can still be sorry about anything, which I promise you he can’t.
“So there might at first be Hey, what’s Andrew doing, bringing this woman around, what kind of craziness is this? But you’ll get to know them, they’ll get to know you, and before you know it, everything’ll be fine. Especially since later this month they’re all going to come into a lot of money, everybody all the way down the line, when this new venture of ours goes into operation. Everybody’s going to be very happy, believe me, when the profits begin rolling in and we start distributing those profits all the way down the line. All these people are going to be looking very affectionately on anything I do. I don’t think any of them are going to find fault with you in any way, I promise you. I think each and every one of them will show you the proper respect.”