Everybody Knows

by Karen Dodd

  “He’s family. He can get a court order to request Lydia’s telephone records. If the police won’t provide them, her mobile phone company would have to.”

  Given Giorgio’s distrust of Gozo’s authorities, Nico wasn’t at all hopeful he would be willing to help. But hearing him coming in the back door, he promised Testa he’d talk to him, and then hung up.

  Giorgio pointed a meaty hand to Nico’s empty glass. “Another?”

  “No, thank you. It’s getting late and I should go.” Nico looked at the man behind the bar and tried to gauge how best to approach him. “Giorgio, would you have any idea who Lydia might have received a text message from before she ran off . . . ?” Mere minutes before a car intercepted her and ran her off the road to her death.

  Was it Nico’s imagination or did Giorgio’s expression flinch ever so slightly? The big man looked away and, as if by reflex, reached for his trusty rag and wiped down the counter he’d just cleaned. This was his “tell.” His nervous tic. “Giorgio?”

  Outside, Caesar barked. Furiously. Then he stopped mid-bark, punctuated by a yelp. In one swift movement, Giorgio reached for something under the counter. “Stay here,” he ordered as he came around from behind the bar, gun in hand.

  “Giorgio, wait! Don’t open the door.”

  But it was too late. Before Nico could stop him, the big man had crossed the floor, unlatched the dead bolt on the door, and pulled up a solid iron bar. They both squinted into the blinding sunlight.

  Giorgio saw the blood on the cement step before Nico did.

  “Caesar!” he cried. Instinctively, Nico reached out to grab him by the belt, then leaned back with all his weight to keep him from darting out the door.

  “My Caesar!”

  “Giorgio!” Nico shouted at him. “They must have run away when he was shot, but poor Caesar’s injury means someone is after us. If you go outside, they’ll pick you off in seconds.” He looked around. “Is there another way out of here besides the back door?” The solid iron gate would hold off whoever was outside, but not for long. And their guard dog had run off.

  The man’s face crumpled. Rooted to the spot, he stood there, staring blankly at Nico.

  “Giorgio, do this for Lydia. Please.”

  In that split second, Giorgio’s expression turned from shock to grim determination. Nico held his breath as he watched him close the door, then take one lumbering step toward him. He seemed ready to collapse, and Nico reached out to steady him. As if to remind him of their predicament, he asked again if there was another way out.

  In answer, he made for the area behind the bar. Nico followed, propelled by fear and adrenaline. He nearly ran smack into Giorgio when, past the end of the bar, he stopped dead and leaned over. Nico thought he was going to be sick from the shock of his dog being shot, but instead, he reached down and grabbed a metal ring that sat flush with the floor. He tugged on it and up came a trapdoor. He turned and pushed Nico down a set of wooden stairs, then followed him in and heaved the door closed behind him.

  The area was so dimly lit that Nico went down each step, feeling his way along the cold stone wall. Any minute, he expected to tumble down the rest of the stairs and split his head wide open.

  “You have two more steps to go.” Judging from the distance of Giorgio’s voice, Nico assumed he was behind him, still at the top of the stairs. Then he heard a rattle of chains and a distinct click of a padlock being locked. “We need to hurry,” Giorgio hissed. “The chain will hold forever, but the old wooden floor won’t.”

  “Shit, Lydia’s envelope!” Nico had taken a photo on his phone and sent it to Testa. But even so, he didn’t want it found by whoever was after them. “I left it on the—”

  “I have it. I’ll hide it along the way. Now go!”

  Nico sighed with relief that the man’s instinct for survival had kicked in. “Which way?” He heard the panic in his own voice.

  “To your left.”

  Somewhere between the top of the stairs and the bottom, Giorgio had acquired a flashlight, and he shone it past Nico, illuminating a long passageway that had been bored through solid rock. Above them, they heard a thud and then the sound of something repeatedly hacking through wood.

  “Run!” Giorgio shouted. “Watch your head and don’t stop till you get to the end.”

  Then what? Nico wondered as he held on to his aching side and sped through the tunnel, ducking at overhead rocks that threatened to remove a layer of his scalp. They heard voices, then the sound of feet lumbering down the stairs they’d just descended. Shit! Their pursuers had made it inside.

  “In a few meters you’ll see daylight. Head toward it,” Giorgio called, this time more quietly. Or was it that the big man had lagged farther behind? Nico couldn’t tell.

  As Giorgio had said, up ahead was an enormous circle of daylight. Nico’s lungs felt ready to burst, but he raced toward it. Then into a corrugated metal tube. Still running at full speed, he heard the sounds of gunshot behind him. Jesus, had they gotten Giorgio?

  “Can you swim?” he heard a voice coming up behind him.

  Why? Nico wondered. When the ground went out from under him, he got his answer. He was high above the small marina he’d noticed when he sat with Lydia and Gabriela on the bench behind the bar. And now he was on his way into the crystalline water below.

  He entered the water feetfirst, like a torpedo. The pain from his cracked ribs was agonizing, and he panicked that he was going to black out under water. It seemed forever before he hit bottom, and then he kicked upward with everything he had. He shot out of the water like a champagne cork. Coughing and spluttering, he silently thanked God for all the years he’d disobeyed his mother and gone cliff diving off Capo Vaticano. Otherwise, fear might have caused his heart to stop dead before he had plunged into the sea.

  Frantically, he looked around for Giorgio. Given his enormous size, Nico feared the man might have sunk like a stone. He called his name multiple times, hoping that whoever had been chasing them couldn’t hear from above.

  “Over here,” he heard.

  Nico swiveled his head as he continued to tread water, but saw nothing.

  “Beside the dock,” came an urgent whisper.

  Nico scanned the long dock to which several boats were tied. His eyes darted back and forth, trying to make out where the voice was coming from.

  “Between the blue hull and the white one, near the far end.”

  Then Nico saw it—a slight movement. Suddenly, several shots hit the water close enough to Nico that he dove back under and made a beeline for where he’d seen Giorgio. Their pursuers must have seen him too. The clear water was both a boon and a curse. He could clearly make out Giorgio’s legs treading water. That meant whoever was shooting at them could too.

  When he bumped up against Giorgio, Nico surfaced and stared into the big man’s face. “We need to dive under this dock,” he whispered to Nico. “My boat is on the other side.”

  They both ducked as another bullet pinged off something metal.

  “I’ll go first so I can start the engine. Swim to the far side of the boat, facing away from the dock. There’s a metal ladder hanging down.”

  The next shot broke the surface of the water not three meters from them.

  “Now!” Giorgio shouted, before disappearing beneath the surface.

  As instructed, Nico followed. He hadn’t dived deep enough and felt something tear through his shirt and scrape his back as he swam under the dock. When he saw the near side of a hull and Giorgio ahead of him, he swam to the far side and waited until Giorgio had climbed up the ladder.

  He was already at the wheel when Nico pulled himself on deck. “Stay low and slip the lines off!” he yelled.

  Crawling across the boat, Nico let off the stern line, then the bowline. Giorgio gunned the powerful V-8 twin engines. The boat shot forward as though from a canon. Nico sprawled onto the deck and clung to a cleat for dear life as they crashed through the waves like a buzz saw gone wild.


  They rounded the breakwater and were out to sea before Nico felt the boat’s speed slow. When Giorgio waved him back to the helm, he pried his hands from the cleat and gingerly made his way aft.

  “You OK?” Giorgio asked when Nico jumped into the cockpit.

  “Yeah, just,” he said, trying to ignore the searing pain in his side. “What the hell do you feed this thing? It feels more like a rocket ship than a cruiser.”

  Giorgio laughed and looked out to sea.

  Nico reached a hand over his shoulder where his shirt had ripped. “Check my back, will you? I scraped it under the dock.”

  “It’s nothing serious. A few scratches. Not deep. You might want to get a tetanus shot though, just in case.”

  Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that, Nico grumbled to himself. If I live long enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  About ten kilometers out, Giorgio expertly piloted the boat to a serene azure cove, after which he cut the engine and they drifted through one of the many protective arches. Nico suspected they were very near the famous Blue Lagoon on the western coast of Comino Island.

  He watched Giorgio go up to the bow and throw out an anchor. Large though he was, the agility with which he moved told Nico he was an experienced boatman. He jumped back into the cockpit and opened a locker from which he extracted two cans of beer. After tossing one to Nico, he pulled off the metal tab and, in one long drink, emptied its contents. He reached for another.

  “Got this locker refrigerated,” he said, winking at Nico.

  The cold liquid hit the spot. Nico finished it in a few swallows and accepted another. “Do you have any idea who those people were back there?” Who clearly wanted them dead.

  Giorgio put down his beer, as if to say something. There were tears in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry about Caesar, Giorgio, but don’t give up hope. There wasn’t much blood. He probably ran away and hid.”

  Giorgio picked up his beer. “I know it’s crazy, he’s just a dog, but he’s my buddy.”

  Nico thought of little Gabriela—Lydia’s beloved dog—safe with the owners of the hotel. He couldn’t bear the thought of what might have happened if he’d brought her with him. “Not crazy at all.”

  A ray of warm sunshine penetrated a hole in the top of the stone archway. For a time, they both sat in silence as the boat swung in languid circles. Nico stood and felt his pocket for his cell phone. Miraculously, it was still there, but it would do them little good after its time in the water. The same could be said for his glasses, which were smashed and twisted beyond repair. He watched Giorgio do the same, but after patting all his pockets he came up empty.

  “Do you have a VHF radio?” Nico asked.

  Giorgio shook his head. “Never saw the need. I grew up on these waters. I could navigate them blind.”

  Nico knew from the bereaved look on the big man’s face that he was thinking of going back to find Caesar. “We need to go to the police. It’s not safe for you to go back to the bar.”

  The big man’s answer was to take another draw on his beer.

  “Giorgio, why didn’t you claim Lydia’s dog after she was killed?”

  “Gabriela? The police told me she died with Lydia in the crash.” He stared at Nico. “She’s alive?” He shook his head. “Those bastards.”

  Nico thought back to the police interrogation following Lydia’s murder. Suspicious of the Gozo police even then, he had told them he’d be returning to Tropea immediately. But he had given the animal shelter his contact information in case someone came looking for Gabriela. That was the missing link he couldn’t put his finger on when Panetta had asked who else had known where Nico was. Had whoever attacked and nearly killed him in the alley, gone looking for Lydia Rapa’s dog and found out where he was staying?

  In a heartbeat, Nico nixed the idea of going to the Gozo police with the list. “Fire up the engine, Giorgio. We need a plan.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Well, we definitely can’t go back to your bar. Whoever was after us seemed intent on making sure we didn’t make it out of there alive.”

  “So what other suggestions do you have?” Giorgio asked, making no move to turn on the ignition.

  Aware they were running out of options and time, Nico ran through the alternatives in his head. If they docked at the busy Mġarr Harbor, it would only be a matter of time before someone spotted them. Either the police or the bad guys—possibly one and the same—would close in on them faster than vultures to a rotting carcass.

  “How far is the Blue Lagoon from here?” he asked.

  “Not far, but it’s full of tourists at this time of year. It would be a nightmare.”

  “Exactly! We could blend in with the crowds. It would give us some cover for a while.”

  Giorgio looked skeptical. “Right, and then what? We don’t have a working mobile phone between us. Basically, we’re screwed.”

  Don’t bail on me now, big man. “Maybe we could get a cheap throwaway phone there,” Nico said. “Giorgio, we’re sitting ducks out here. We have to do something.”

  * * *

  Nico sat in the cockpit, barely registering the exquisite scenery as they sped toward the lagoon. With Mifsud hanging on by a thread in the hospital, Nico racked his brain for who they could contact once they arrived at their destination. He couldn’t contact Panetta the corrupt SOB. As he sat there ruminating on what to do, the boat veered suddenly, nearly throwing Nico across the cockpit. What the hell?

  “Giorgio, what are you doing?” Nico’s eyes scanned the surrounding sea. Had he spotted someone in pursuit?

  “Hang on,” Giorgio called over his shoulder as he shoved the throttles forward. “I have an idea.” They were going so fast Nico prayed the cruiser wouldn’t burst open at the seams.

  In the distance, a church spire came into view on top of the cliffs. As they got closer to land, Nico could make out what looked like a small village clustered below it. The boat slowed as they approached a dock on high pilings with a marquee mounted above it. A restaurant. Are you kidding? As hungry as he was, this was hardly the time to think of dining out. He was about to complain when their speed dropped to a few knots. They coasted past the dock, then crawled slowly along the rocky coastline. Rubbing his bruised ribs, Nico joined Giorgio at the helm. He was squinting toward the rocks, apparently searching for something.

  “Look for a large rock painted white, with two little red ones beside it. Behind them there’s an opening.”

  Nico’s eyes scoured the shoreline, but all the rocks blended together in a solid line of gray. He couldn’t see any opening.

  “There it is.” Giorgio pointed.

  Sure enough, as they got closer, Nico saw the three rocks. “Where are we?” His question, mixed with the lapping water, echoed around the cave they’d entered.

  “I’m going to bring her in as slow as I can, but there’s a bit of a swell so prepare to push off the rocks.”

  Bring her in where? Nico wondered as he moved to the starboard side. There was nowhere to go but into a solid-rock dead-end. When the bow had almost nosed the wall ahead of them, Giorgio reached out with a boathook in one hand and pushed the boat back while turning the wheel hard with the other.

  “OK, prepare to fend off,” he instructed Nico.

  Sure enough, they were alongside a low platform made of ancient-looking bricks, crudely fashioned into a landing. Nico slid his hands along the slippery arch above it and pushed the boat back as best he could. Giorgio cut the engine and leaped over to Nico’s side and handed him the boathook. While Nico held them off against the swell, Giorgio retrieved a couple of bumpers from under one of the boat’s seats and expertly dropped them into place. “Good job,” he said.

  Nico gazed around the cave. “Where are we?”

  “In part of an old air-raid shelter. It’s slippery, so be careful.” With a flashlight in one hand, Giorgio held out his other arm and signaled for Nico to jump off the boat. When Nico grasped it, it
was like hanging on to a solid iron post.

  “Follow me.”

  “Where?”

  For the first time since they’d left the bar, the big man smiled. “First, to get something to eat. Then, hopefully, a way out of here.”

  * * *

  After threading their way through arches that in spots were so narrow Nico seriously wondered if Giorgio might get stuck, they duck-waddled through a series of dank passages. Like the bunker he’d raced through beneath the bar, he kept a close eye out for the ragged spikes that hung from the ceiling. Were they stalagmites or stalactites? He tried to remember back to his middle school geography. Whichever they were, they looked capable of puncturing his skull like it was a soft-boiled egg.

  Nico was wondering how far underground they were when up ahead he saw lightbulbs surrounded by wire cages. Electricity? It looked like nothing in here had been touched in centuries. Giorgio turned off the flashlight, and it took a few seconds for Nico’s eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw they were at the bottom of a set of stone steps, at the top of which was a rough-hewn wooden door recessed into the wall. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and watched as a hunched-over Giorgio banged one of his meaty fists against the door. Nothing. Again, he rose his fist to the door, but this time it was as if he was hammering out Morse code. In a rhythmic beat, he alternated between his fist and the open heel of his hand.

  Breaking through the quiet, they heard the grating sound of metal moving on the other side, and the door swung open. The smell that emanated from the illuminated doorway was enough to make Nico’s mouth water. The man on the inside shouted something in a language Nico didn’t understand and threw his arms around Giorgio. Even from his position at the bottom of the stairs, he could see, over Giorgio’s shoulder, the tears rolling down the stranger’s face.

  “Sami,” Giorgio said. “I need your help.”

  “Come in, come in!” Their host waved them both in. “Anything, my friend. But first, you have to eat.”

  * * *