Both of them tore through the house, searching every room and closet, while the housekeepers were dispatched to search the barn and smaller outbuildings.
“Maybe one of their friends picked them up for breakfast,” Armando said.
“Elena would have told me of the plan,” Leonora said. “We spoke last night. And have you ever seen them without their phones?”
“Never. Their noses are always in their phones.”
“Dear Lord!” Leonora said, opening the drawer of Jesper’s bedside table. “His billfold is here. He would never go out without it. And look, his watch!”
“All right,” Armando declared. “I don’t need more convincing. I’m calling the Carabinieri.”
Leonora was crying now. “Then call Mickey. You must call Mickey.”
“In Chicago? It’s the middle of the night!”
“You know how he is,” Leonora said. “He has to know immediately.”
3
The two men received VIP treatment at the Reggio di Calabria Airport, clearing customs on board, then deplaning the Gulfstream G550 straight into a Mercedes idling for them on the tarmac. Their time of arrival was approximately twelve hours after Armando Cutrì placed his first call to the United States.
“Ever been here before?” Mikkel Andreason asked Marcus Handler.
“You mean this part? Toe of the boot? No.”
Until an hour before touchdown, Marcus hadn’t been aware they were going directly to the house. No hotel, no shower, no sobering up from the ad libitum Scotch on board. In the aft lavatory, the best he could do was run a comb through his wire-bristle hair, splash water on his haggard face, pop breath mints, and cinch up his necktie. At the best of times, he avoided mirrors. He preferred the delusion that he was his thirty-year-old self, not fifty, although women told him he was still a remarkable specimen. Tonight, was not the best of times. Mickey had caught him in the middle of the night at a casino in East Chicago ahead of a planned day off. Now, everything about Marcus was tinged gray—his skin, his stubble—even the blue in his irises seemed to have drained away.
His boss, however, had the appearance of someone who had just emerged, fresh and crisp, from a walk-in refrigerator. Mickey was the youngest-looking seventy-two Marcus had ever met. His skin was tight and shiny and his eyes were a proper, vivid blue. His full head of silky hair was only a shade or two lighter than his son Jesper’s yellow locks. And he moved with the loose-jointed fluidity of a youngster.
“I never liked it here,” Mickey said. “Especially now.”
“I imagine,” Marcus said, innocently enough.
“Do you? Imagine?” His voice rose in anger. Mickey had been bottling it up, Marcus thought, and now he was going to be on the receiving end. “I didn’t want them to have a house here. The area is crawling with the Mafia.”
“In Calabria, it’s the ’Ndrangheta mostly.” As soon as Marcus issued his correction, he regretted it, because it gave Mickey an excuse to get even angrier.
The louder he got, the stronger his Danish accent. Even when he swore, he sounded refined. “I don’t care what the fuck they’re called! For God’s sake! Jesper put his family and my company at risk. And why? Because he’s pussy-whipped by my daughter-in-law! If her parents need to see my granddaughters, they could damn well spend their summers in Chicago.”
The sea was to their left, invisible in the darkness. Marcus didn’t have a chance to light a cigarette on the tarmac and he was feeling the chemical void.
“What was the name of the policeman we spoke to?” Mickey demanded.
“Lumaga. Major Roberto Lumaga.”
“Lumaga said the house had a security system, but it wasn’t engaged. Did you talk to Jesper about arming his system every night?”
“I don’t believe we had that specific conversation.”
“Lumaga said there were no cameras inside the house or on the grounds. Why not? Lumaga said there was no panic room built into the remodel. Why not?”
“I offered to review his construction plans, but Jesper didn’t take me up on it.”
“You offered. Why didn’t you insist? He’s the company CEO for fuck’s sake!”
“I believe I offered on more than one occasion. He’s my boss. I couldn’t force him.”
“I’m your fucking boss!”
The driver glanced hard into his rearview mirror.
Mickey had hired Marcus, but when he relinquished the CEO title to his son, all of Mickey’s direct reports transferred over. Apparently, to Mickey’s state of mind, this was merely on paper.
“I smell booze on your breath.”
Marcus wheezed a sigh and went for his breath mints. “I assumed we’d be going to our hotel first.”
“You assumed.”
They drove in silence the rest of the way until Marcus asked the driver to let him know when they were about five kilometers from the house.
“About here,” the driver said at a certain point.
Marcus was already working, scanning the dark road for CCTV cameras. A few minutes later, the driver announced that they had arrived. Through the open gates of Villa Shibui, the headlights bounced off white gravel. Apart from the lights of the villa, the grounds were pitch dark.
The house is isolated as hell, Marcus thought. A lot of shit could’ve gone down and neighbors wouldn’t have been any the wiser. Outside the house, he counted eight vehicles, including two marked Carabinieri cars.
Mickey got out first and barged in without knocking. Marcus lagged for a few moments, shining a penlight onto the gravel behind the Mercedes. Coming inside, he saw a veritable cast of thousands—well, not quite. He counted four uniformed officers and six civilians. Mickey was holding himself stiffly as an elegant woman cried and hugged him and said with an Italian
