When Shadows Come

by Vincent Zandri

When the boat arrives, I hear an English-speaking, Italian-accented, bullhorn-amplified voice insisting everyone clear the area. Then I hear the pounding of jackboots on the cobbles.

  “Mamma mia!” comes a voice I vaguely recognize. One of the uniformed police who escorted me to my apartment a few hours earlier. The first cop. The one with the better English. “Call the detective,” he adds. “Tell him he is about to have company.”

  A short boat ride later I am once more sitting in front of Carbone as he lights another cigarette.

  “Tell me, Captain Angel,” he says, exhaling a stream of what I imagine to be blue smoke. “What exactly were you trying to prove by going out on your own without the use of your eyes?”

  “My fiancée is missing. Unlike you, I was trying to find her.”

  “All you would have accomplished is drowning yourself. I don’t need another one of those.”

  “I would have been doing something.”

  He smokes for a minute. Then I hear him stand up.

  “Captain Angel, how long have you been a soldier? Please remind me, if you would.”

  “I don’t understand the relevance. Grace is gone. We need to find her.”

  “Entertain me, please.”

  I swallow a breath. “Twenty-plus years. Off and on. I’m a reservist now. After the Persian Gulf, I went stateside and was assigned to the Tenth Mountain Division at Fort Drum in upstate New York.”

  “What did you do there? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  I do my best to peer into his eyes, without being able to see his eyes. “I do mind. But if you must know, I beat the shit out of new recruits.”

  He laughs. “You were, how do you call it, a hard-ass?”

  “I also pushed a lot of paper.”

  “Maybe you were waiting for a good war to come along to free you from the boredom.”

  “What I can tell you is I left the army in early 2000 and became a reservist. I met the woman who was to become my wife by chance at a bar in upstate New York. We got married after only a few months. But a year later, she drowned. September 11th, 2001, arrived shortly thereafter and . . . well, you know.”

  “Your plans were somewhat shattered with the death of your wife?”

  “Plans and outcome don’t always share the same intent.”

  “And why was your wife’s death ruled a suicide?”

  The pressure in my head goes from dull ache to sharp pain. “What the fuck, Detective? I thought we already covered this.”

  “I’m just trying to get a clearer picture of the past.”

  “Because after all, it has everything to do with my missing fiancée. Why aren’t we talking about that?” My temperature rises. My pulse soars. He’s antagonizing me while an ugly black spider spins silken possibilities inside his head. “Has there been any word out on the street about Grace? Has anyone spotted her?”

  “I’m afraid not. But our eyes are wide open.” He smokes a little more. “Were you ever wounded physically in combat?”

  I pat my left shoulder. “Knife wound. Aside from that, not a scratch.”

  “How did you get that? Which campaign?”

  When I attempt to recall where, I see only a gray-black blur. Like a television that has lost its picture, the image is there all right. It’s just irretrievable. For now.

  “Again, I don’t see the damn relevance in your questions.”

  “You don’t see anything. Which is why you are sitting here.”

  “That supposed to be funny?”

  “No, it is not. My apologies to you if you thought it was. But truth is, we have not spotted anyone who fits the precise description of your fiancée, nor a man with a long brown overcoat and a closely cropped black beard or the black eyes.”

  “What about the phone calls? They must mean something, especially calls to an apartment used often by military personnel. What if the asshole we’re looking for thought he was harassing someone who’d stayed here before us? Maybe even as early as last week? Maybe another soldier?”

  “I’ve already told you, we traced the phone call that came to your apartment landline. The call was placed from a cell phone that was pickpocketed. There’s nothing more we can do with that.”

  “You can search the location of the phone with GPS.”

  He laughs. “Yes, we can do that if we are in Hollywood. Which we most definitely are not. Although the famous Woody Allen owns a penthouse apartment on the Grand Canal not far from here. His movies are very funny.”

  I let that comment sit for minute. Then, “Why are you asking me if I’ve been injured in combat?”

  “Because we have a man who knows the phone number to the landline at your apartment. I have made inquiries to the US Army. The military people who have stayed at the apartment over the course of the past few years check out. They do not fit the description of our kidnapper, should a kidnapper exist at all.” He plants himself behind his desk, stamps out his cigarette. “Also, I spoke with your company psychologist and while he couldn’t comment specifically on your condition, he did tell me that you show signs of having undergone significant trauma. Such as a serious battlefield injury or even a car wreck. He indicated that the severity of your PTSD is often found in prisoners of war.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Detective Carbone, for the last time, I was never injured in combat and I wasn’t a POW.” I start to stand and there comes the click or snap inside my brain and—

  —Bare chested. Camo pants stuffed into combat boots. A sunbaked dirt yard. A razor-wire fence surrounds me. Surrounds him. A man, a little taller than me. Darker complexion—from exposure to the sun or . . . ? The knife in his hand lashes out and I spin—

  “Captain Angel,” he says. “You still with us?”

  When have I ever been inside a prison yard? Engaged in a knife fight? These memories don’t belong to me. It’s like the sleepwalking dreams have wormed into my waking state. Like my subconscious is now FUBAR. You know, fucked up beyond all recognition.

  “Yes,” I answer, my head beginning to pound.

  “There is one thing I am having a great deal of difficulty with.”

  “And that is?”

  “If your fiancée was abducted in broad daylight, directly in front of you and literally hundreds of people, why didn’t anyone see it? How is it that not one single soul took even the slightest notice of something that seems so obvious?”

  My already-pounding head fills with blood, panic, and fire. As if it’s about to explode. “He must have been quick about it. Maybe he’s a professional. A professional kidnapper or killer or soldier trained in close-quarters combat or all of the above who’s been following us. Waiting for the right time to make his move!”

  I’m shouting now. The door opens.

  “Come stai, Detective?”

  “Molto bene,” he responds. “Bene.”

  “Listen,” I say, lowering my voice, “is it possible to get some aspirin? And a glass of water?”

  “But of course.” Carbone gives the order to his aide. The aide comes back with the aspirin and water. I devour both immediately.

  “Please refrain from shouting, Captain. It upsets my support staff.”

  I offer no apologies.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” he goes on. “It’s just that I have a hard time believing there would not have been a struggle . . . a physical resistance. Or, at the very least, a scream.”

  “Doesn’t matter that you don’t believe it. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

  “Like you say, it would take a kidnapper in possession of the skills required of a great assassin or political enemy. Your Grace doesn’t fit the description of an enemy of state. Did she have any enemies?”

  “Of course not,” I insist. But naturally, I have no idea if Grace had any enemies or not. Certainly no one who would go to the lengths necessary to kidnap her.

  “Then I must tell you, Captain Angel, as much as it hurts to hear it, I believe it is more likely than not that your
fiancée left of her own accord. It might be the most reasonable conclusion.”

  I shoot to my feet. “I’ve already told you that’s impossible. Grace would never leave me for anyone. We’re in love.”

  I’m leaning over his desk when the door swings open again.

  “It is the only explanation!” Carbone barks.

  I hear footsteps and suddenly my arms are snatched up in the grasp of not one but two men.

  “Get off of me!”

  But they tighten their grip.

  “I want to speak to someone from my embassy. The American Embassy.”

  “Why? They can do nothing for you.”

  “My fiancée is missing. They damn well will do something. It’s their job to protect Americans in danger in a foreign country.”

  “Captain Angel, please calm down. You are not in danger. I told you before, if Grace left of her own accord, no one, not even your embassy, can do anything about it.”

  I struggle against the arms that hold me. “Call them. Do it. Do it now.”

  I hear the detective pick up the phone, while exhaling a frustrated breath.

  “The American Embassy, per favore,” he speaks. Then, “Let him go, Fredo. Set him down.”

  The men shove me back into the chair. “Now please behave, Captain. Or you will be speaking to your embassy official from a jail cell in Venice.” He laughs. “Of course, that would be quite the story to tell your grandchildren one day.”

  Chapter 21

  But I am not tossed into a jail cell. Rather I am escorted to a small waiting area upstairs where I am afforded a view of the Grand Canal that would easily cost five hundred euros per night if this were a hotel. Or so a young woman tells me as she escorts me up the stairs. It’s a damned shame I can’t see it. Staring out onto the canal with the never-ending boat traffic moving up and down its narrow man-made banks would help the time pass faster, maybe take my mind off Grace’s disappearance even for a moment or two. Instead I sit on the leather couch situated up against the far wall, and close my eyes.

  Despite the aspirin, my head still aches. Pulse remains elevated. Grace is gone and along with her, my sanity. I try to remember her lying right beside me in the studio apartment over the bookshop, as if the overcoat man never invaded our life in the first place. As if we were still alone in Venice to heal.

  For a brief but wonderful moment, I create a fantasy of what I want for Grace and myself. I can see it perfectly. From where my head is propped on a stack of down pillows, I survey the entire studio. The kitchenette that makes up the far wall. The leather couch and the long harvest table. Grace’s easel to the right by the always-open French doors. Grace lies beside me on her right side. She’s fast asleep, her naked body curled into a question mark of loveliness. She has become so much a part of me now that I ache at the thought of ever being separated from her again. I only want what she wants. I want to promise her that I will never go back to the wars again.

  For a while, I daydream with my eyes closed, until sleep overtakes me.

  I am no longer lying beside Grace inside our studio. I am no longer at peace. I am sitting at a table at an outdoor caffè in Piazza San Marco. It is noon with a warm sun shining on my face on an otherwise cold day. To my left is the wide-open basin, and the supply barges and boats that bob in its never-ending chaotic wake. To my right are the hordes of tourists who compete with the thousands of pigeons fighting over their tiny slice of real estate outside the stone steps leading up to the cathedral.

  Across from me, I see Grace as plainly as I see the black-suited waiter approaching our table. He’s carrying something on a tray. Something we’ve ordered for lunch. He sets the tray down onto one of those aluminum foldout tray stands. On the tray is a severed head. Grace’s head, her long black hair waterlogged and draping her face like a veil, a pool of blood collecting on the place below her cleanly sliced neck.

  I shift my eyes to where she is seated across from me. Her headless torso occupies the chair. But she is not dead. She raises her hands, calmly crossing her arms, like she is simply soaking up the view. When I shift my gaze back to her head, her eyes open and she shoots me a smile.

  “I see,” she whispers.

  Chapter 22

  Startled awake.

  I open my eyes. What had been nothing but a gray-brown blur interrupted only by the rays of the sun and, later on, the manufactured light radiating from your average longer-lasting lightbulb, is now gradually replaced with vision.

  Real vision.

  There’s a connection here. Sleep and sight. Sight and sleep. And dreaming, too. I’m not ignorant to the medical possibilities, the physiological reasoning. The more I rest, the more I heal. But I can’t exactly rest while Grace is out there somewhere.

  Christ almighty, maybe I should have stayed in America like the army wanted. If I’d stayed put, Grace would not be missing in action and none of this nightmare would be happening.

  I look up to see a man standing in the center of the small room.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Captain Angel,” he says. “You seemed to be caught up in a dream.”

  My thoughts shift to Grace’s severed head. It was only a dream, I try to convince myself. But it’s like pretending the knife I’m plunging through my chest into my heart isn’t real either.

  I sit up straight, face the man.

  He’s younger than me. Taller, thinner. Dressed in a finely tailored navy-blue suit, white shirt, and gray silk tie. His gray hair is slicked back with something that Grace would refer to as “product,” and he is clean shaven, as though immune to five o’clock shadow, even when it’s more than three hours past that time. A diplomat to the core, blessed with an assignment any federal government worker with warm blood in his veins would die for.

  He drags over a chair, holds out his hand.

  “Dave Graham. US Embassy. How can I be of service?”

  I take the hand in mine, amazed I can actually see it and feel it. I grip it tightly. Like a soldier should.

  Releasing my hand, I stare down at my palm. He’s no longer holding my hand, but I still feel his grip. When Graham grows a big smile, I get that feeling like I’ve been here before. A déjà vu.

  “We’ve met before?” I say.

  “But that would be impossible,” he says, his face beaming. “However, guess how many Dave Grahams there are in the Manhattan directory alone?”

  I can see that he is an expert at smiling, no matter his mood.

  “So how do you like Venice so far, Captain?”

  Is he fucking kidding me?

  “It would be a hell of a lot better if my fiancée hadn’t disappeared this afternoon.”

  His smile dissolves. It’s another good trick he’s acquired: the ability to shift his moods in a half second.

  “I understand there was some trouble at the caffè near the cathedral in San Marco earlier today.”

  I lean forward, to add emphasis to what I’m about to tell him.

  “Look, Mr. Graham,” I say. “My fiancée was abducted by a man wearing a long brown overcoat. He has short black hair and a black beard. He was wearing sunglasses and staring us down. He knows the phone number to our apartment, so I’m thinking, maybe he’s a soldier. A US soldier.”

  “Or perhaps someone who very much dislikes US soldiers.”

  “Maybe. But whatever he is, he approached our table and then, just like that, Grace was gone, which tells me he bears the skills of a highly trained combat soldier. Someone familiar with the art of extraction.”

  “The art of extraction,” he repeats. “How interesting.”

  “I have reason to believe this same man has been following us for some time and placing calls to my apartment. He whispers ‘I see’ into the phone before he hangs up.”

  Graham bites down on his bottom lip, nods.

  “I’ve been briefed by Detective Carbone, so I am fully aware of what he says to you on the phone.” He pauses. “I understand you are just back from the Afghan war. You�
�ve also done numerous tours in Iraq. Must have been hard out there in the field, engaged in combat again and again. Most difficult.”

  “Yeah, it was hard. But I had a job to do and I did it. No questions asked. I’m a good soldier. I’m a patriot. My country called me again and again and I heeded the call again and again. Now my fiancée is gone.”

  Clasping his hands together, Graham nods once more, and peers down at the tops of his polished leather lace-ups.

  “I further understand, Captain Angel, that you’ve had your share of trouble with PTSD and you are here in Venice to recuperate.”

  “The brass would rather I recuperate in the States. But let’s just say, I’m not the Federal Veterans Administration Hospital type. Essentially I defied an order, which I now regret.”

  “So you came to Venice of your own accord.” A question.

  “I pulled some strings, called in a few favors. Like I said, I was ordered to the States, but some orders you can blow off.”

  His brow scrunches. “I should think a move like that might irritate the higher-ups, Captain. Maybe even get your rank busted.”

  “Are you a military man, Mr. Graham?”

  “Never mind,” he says.

  “Truth is,” I go on, “I think the army is more afraid I’ll turn my back on the red, white, and blue. And to be honest, I don’t give a rat’s ass about rank, since I may never go back to the army again. Right now . . . right this very minute . . . I want my fiancée returned, understand?”

  There’s that big public relations smile again. Graham is like a lamp you can turn on and off.

  He says, “How are those eyes of yours? You’ve been suffering from temporary bouts of blindness, I’m told. How have you been dealing with that?”

  I’m staring at him standing inside the room. A few feet behind him is the picture window with that amazing view of the Grand Canal I was informed about earlier. I could also stand up and get a look at it, but I’d rather focus on him while I have the chance.

  “Grace has been my eyes while I’ve been here. She helps me. She guides me. Christ, man, we’ve had our problems, but the woman loves me and I love her, and I’m going to get her back with or without you, with or without the Venice cops, with or without my eyes.”