The Third Figure Read Free

Mr. Drake. I’ve just got to know who killed him. It—it’s all I care about. It’s all I think about, anymore. When it first happened, I thought I didn’t care. I even thought I was glad, when I first heard about it. I—I started laughing, and I couldn’t stop. Then I realized that I was really crying. I thought I’d got my revenge, but I was wrong. And now I can’t think about anything but finding out who killed him. Maybe it’s something bad I’m doing. The priest says it is. But I …”
    She stared down at her handbag, blinking rapidly. “Please help me, Mr. Drake. I can’t go to the police, and I can’t go to a private detective, except the crooked ones. When I read about you, I just—just thought you were the only one who could help me. I guess maybe I’m superstitious. When I was a little girl, I used to think I could see things, like you do. I used to think I could see the Virgin, and I used to talk to her. I was even examined once by four priests, like they used to examine saints. So when I heard about you, I …” Her voice trailed off. As she sat with head bowed, fiddling fretfully with the clasp of her handbag, the image of the vindictive peasant woman faded, along with that of the humble cleaning woman. She was simply a grieving middle-aged housewife, sitting forlornly on my sofa.
    I looked at the small pile of bills on the coffee table—a thousand dollars, for taking a trip to Los Angeles. I would be a thousand dollars richer, just for talking with Frankie Russo—and for obeying his instructions not to help Mrs. Vennezio find her husband’s murderer. It was, I realized, a cynical calculation. Yet, almost beyond doubt, that’s the way it would happen.
    And, besides the money, there was the professional advantage of actually contacting a member of the Mafia elite. Few crime reporters ever got the opportunity.
    There seemed little risk, yet it was difficult to be sure. I’d been a crime reporter for five years, and I knew the vast power organized crime could wield. True, most reporters had a certain immunity, as did most police officers. But private investigators weren’t always so lucky. As for clairvoyants …
    I sighed and lit a cigarette. There could be no harm in hearing her story.
    “Tell me about it, Mrs. Vennezio. Tell me everything that happened.”
    She raised her head.
    “You’ll do it, then?” She didn’t smile, nor did her voice betray any emotion.
    “I might. Tell me, though, what happened. Start with your husband’s relationship with this woman.”
    She drew a deep breath, then took the purse from her lap and placed it on the couch beside her. She clasped her hands and gazed off across the room. Something in her slow, wooden speech and tightly clasped hands reminded me of the confessional. This was how she must sound to her priest, I was thinking.
    “It all started almost two and a half years ago,” she was saying. “Dom hired this—this woman away from someone else. She was working for one of the real estate companies that Dom used. Dom was very interested in real estate. He was always buying and selling houses and apartment houses. So then, one day, he told me that he was going to start his own real estate business. He said it’d make him a lot of money if he had his own real estate office.”
    “This was his own private business,” I interrupted. “It had nothing to do with the Syndicate.”
    “That’s right, just his own. But really, see, it was all a—a front, to get this woman to work for him. I heard later that he offered her twice the salary she was getting.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Faith Hanson.” She pronounced it with difficulty.
    “Did she have a husband?”
    “Her husband drank, I think.”
    “Children?”
    She nodded. “She has a boy. A teen-ager.”
    “Was she actually a real estate broker?”
    “No. She was just a secretary. Dom hired a broker, too. And before they were done, they had three or four salesmen working, too. It