Darkfall

unrelenting flood, harrying the snow before it.
    Outside the hotel, Rebecca and Jack turned up their coat collars and tucked their chins down and cautiously negotiated the slippery, snow-skinned pavement.
    Just as they reached their car, a stranger stepped up to them. He was tall, dark-complexioned, well-dressed. “Lieutenant Chandler? Lieutenant Dawson? My boss wants to talk to you.”
    “Who’s your boss?” Rebecca asked.
    Instead of answering, the man pointed to a black Mercedes limousine that was parked farther along the hotel driveway. He started toward it, clearly expecting them to follow without further question.
    After a brief hesitation, they actually did follow him, and when they reached the limousine, the heavily tinted rear window slid down. Jack instantly recognized the passenger, and he saw that Rebecca also knew who the man was: Don Gennaro Carramazza, patriarch of the most powerful mafia family in New York.
    The tall man got in the front seat with the chauffeur, and Carramazza, alone in the back, opened his door and motioned for Jack and Rebecca to join him.
    “What do you want?” Rebecca asked, making no move to get into the car.
    “A little conversation,” Carramazza said, with just the vaguest trace of a Sicilian accent. He had a surprisingly cultured voice.
    “So talk,” she said.
    “Not like this. It’s too cold,” Carramazza said. Snow blew past him, into the car. “Let’s be comfortable.”
    “I am comfortable,” she said.
    “Well, I’m not,” Carramazza said. He frowned. “Listen, I have some extremely valuable information for you. I chose to deliver it myself. Me . Doesn’t that tell you how important this is? But I’m not going to talk on the street, in public, for Christ’s sake.”
    Jack said, “Get in, Rebecca.”
    With an expression of distaste, she did as he said.
    Jack got into the car after her. They sat in the two seats that flanked the built-in bar and television set, facing the rear of the limousine, where Carramazza sat facing forward.
    Up front, Rudy touched a switch, and a thick Plexiglas partition rose between that part of the car and the passenger compartment.
    Carramazza picked up an attaché case and put it on his lap but didn’t open it. He regarded Jack and Rebecca with sly contemplation.
    The old man looked like a lizard. His eyes were hooded by heavy, pebbled lids. He was almost entirely bald. His face was wizened and leathery, with sharp features and a wide, thin-lipped mouth. He moved like a lizard, too: very still for long moments, then brief flurries of activity, quick dartings and swivelings of the head.
    Jack wouldn’t have been surprised if a long, forked tongue had flickered out from between Carramazza’s dry lips.
    Carramazza swiveled his head to Rebecca. “There’s no reason to be afraid of me, you know.”
    She looked surprised. “Afraid? But I’m not.”
    “When you were reluctant to get into the car, I thought- ”
    “Oh, that wasn’t fear,” she said icily. “I was worried the dry cleaner might not be able to get the stink out of my clothes.”
    Carramazza’s hard little eyes narrowed.
    Jack groaned inwardly.
    The old man said, “I see no reason why we can’t be civil with one another, especially when it’s in our mutual interest to cooperate.”
    He didn’t sound like a hoodlum. He sounded like a banker.
    “Really?” Rebecca said. “You really see no reason? Please allow me to explain.”
    Jack said, “Uh, Rebecca-”
    She let Carramazza have it: “You’re a thug, a thief, a murderer, a dope peddler, a pimp. Is that explanation enough?”
    “Rebecca-”
    “Don’t worry, Jack. I haven’t insulted him. You can’t insult a pig merely by calling it a pig.”
    “Remember,” Jack said, “he’s lost a nephew and a brother today.”
    “Both of whom were dope peddlers, thugs, and murderers,” she said.
    Carramazza was startled speechless by her ferocity.
    Rebecca glared at him and said, “You don’t seem particularly grief-stricken by the loss of your brother. Does he look grief-stricken to you, Jack?”
    Without a trace of anger or even any excitement in his voice, Carramazza said, “In the fratellanza , Sicilian men don’t weep.”
    Coming from a withered old man, that macho declaration was outrageously foolish.
    Still without apparent animosity, continuing to employ the soothing voice of a banker, Carramazza said, “We do feel , however. And we do take our revenge.”
    Rebecca studied him with