A Thousand Tombs

by Molly Greene

  “Talk.”

  “They took my grandma. They told Grandpa they were going to keep her until he gave them the coins. He didn’t tell me what happened at first, he thought he could handle it by himself. He wanted me out of it. When he found out Mack was a cop, he said it was the best place for me and that I should stay put.”

  “Your Grandpa?” Oh. My. God. She’d been blind. Gen wondered how she could call herself an investigator. Vitelli was Luca’s grandfather.

  “Yeah. I couldn’t tell you, I just couldn’t. He didn’t think these people would try anything while I was with Mack, because they wouldn’t want the police more involved than they already are. I kept asking to talk to Grandma and he made excuses, but I could tell he was worried. Yesterday I threatened to come out there, and he finally told me the truth.”

  Damn.

  The whole scenario began to wash over her like someone had finally drawn her a picture. Mrs. Vitelli had been taken in exchange for the coins. Luca was protecting Vitelli, as Mack suspected, because the old man was his granddad. What he was saying made perfect sense; better late than never.

  “So why did you follow them?” She hitched a thumb in Carla and Luciano’s direction.

  Luca’s words were tumbling out now. “I knew she must have something to do with it because I’ve seen her watching Mack’s. Twice I saw her, during the daytime while Mack was at work. I hid behind the curtains, haven’t gone outside or anything, so I don’t think she knew I was there. Today she came again. I know where Mack kept the keys, so I took the car and followed her here. I need to find Grandma before they hurt her.”

  Now what?

  “Luca, I’m not going to ask a lot of questions. It’ll all come out soon enough.” She took out her cell. “But you made a mistake, not confiding in Mack. This whole thing could have been over by now. You and your grandma could have been home in North Beach.”

  “Grandpa’s smart, Genny. He asked me to trust him, and I do. So I did what he asked.”

  Gen shook her head and kicked at a discarded candy wrapper sliding by on the tarmac. She needed to put some distance between herself and the boy, so she walked to the edge of the wall again and peeked around, just in time to see Rudy Giampaolino walk out the same door that Carla and Giovanni had recently exited. He sauntered toward the couple.

  Okay, so that wasn’t a stunner. The Carabinieri were corrupt. They must be playing both sides, the age-old story of cops gone bad. Vitelli had been calling Italy to check on them. He knew, or he suspected. And Giampaolino was working for the Italian cops.

  How could she be so ignorant?

  She scooted out of sight and leaned against the wall, then thumbed in Mack’s number and held the phone to her ear. It rang four times and went to voice mail.

  She’d just opened her mouth to leave a message when Rudy reached around the corner and grabbed her cell, then threw it down on the asphalt. He smashed it to pieces with his heel.

  Luca slammed open the driver’s side door of the Camaro and yelled for her to get in the car. He ground the starter once, twice, trying to get the engine to turn, but it defied him. Gen launched herself off the wall and scrabbled for the handle on the passenger door, but Rudy grabbed her hair and began to reel her in.

  Luca was still grinding the starter, unable to get the engine to turn. He gave up and darted out, watching with horror as she struggled to keep Giampaolino’s free hand from circling her waist.

  “Run!” she screamed. “Call Mack!”

  And without a backward glance he was gone, rabbitting across the parking lot. His fists were clenched and his legs pumped like pistons, just like that night outside Tosca.

  “Gio, get the boy,” Rudy bellowed.

  But Gen didn’t have time to worry about Luca.

  Her attention was focused on Rudy.

  Giampaolino was trying to wind her hair around his hand to get a better grip. She thought of Rick, and pivoted to the right as much as she could, then jabbed her elbow repeatedly up and back, making contact with his face until she heard a good crack and figured she’d broken his nose.

  He cursed and let go. The minute he released her she lunged away. But the big man was fast; he grabbed her arm and snaked a hand out to encircle her waist again and drag her back.

  She raised a foot, kicked fiercely, and caught his knee. Rudy cried out, accompanied by a growl of pain. She kicked again. He cried out again, screaming in enraged Italian, but didn’t let her go.

  Gen changed tactics and bent back the index finger of the hand clutching her belly. He slammed a fist into the back of her head and she nearly fainted, but she took the punishing blow and didn’t stop until she heard his finger break.

  He wrenched his hands away and began to sob, and she knifed her elbow back into his throat, and again, and one last time, just because she could. Then she ran as if a pack of hounds was on her tail.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Looking back, Gen knew she could have gotten away if she’d just paid closer attention. She was sprinting like a track star in the opposite direction from where Luca was headed, just in case Luciano was still after the kid.

  And she thought she was home free, coming out to the street-side of the building and with her car in sight, when she rounded the corner and Carla made her hesitate with just a few words.

  Well, and a gun.

  “Stop, or your boyfriend is dead,” she said.

  Who did she mean, Mack or Luca?

  Regardless, no way did she believe the woman, and no way was she going to hang around to find out what she meant. And no way was Gen worried about someone getting away with firing a gun at her in broad daylight, even though – aside from the crooked cops and Giampaolino – she hadn’t seen a single soul anywhere, despite the smattering of cars.

  She pulled her keys from her pocket and blew by Carla at about forty miles an hour. At least that’s what it felt like.

  Until her knees buckled.

  Her mind was fuddled as she went down, trying to figure out why she’d lost control of her legs. Had she tripped on something? Did Carla fire the gun in spite of the risk?

  Just before the lights went out, she understood.

  The bitch had a Taser, and Gen had just taken about twelve hundred volts.

  * * *

  The air was musty when Gen came to, and the room was dark. Not pitch black, but too dim to make anything out. A feeble square of light flickered a bowling alley’s length away, plus smaller pinpoints illuminating bits of nothingness high above. Not a thing seemed familiar.

  She raised a hand to the knot on her scalp where Rudy had punched her and scowled when she realized her hands were bound, then winced at the pain when she touched the goose egg.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Mack was going to kill her for leaving the stun gun in the car, that’s for sure.

  When was she going to learn?

  She rallied at the image of Mack chewing her out; something to look forward to. She held that thought and edged onto one elbow, then sat up as slow as her aching muscles would allow and crossed her legs beneath her, happy to find that at least her ankles weren’t tied.

  Giampaolino had pummeled her pretty good. Then she remembered what she’d managed to do to him, and that brought on a grin. Maybe the sight of Rudy, bruised and hopefully bloodied, would temper Mack’s irritation.

  She sat for a moment, head bent, willing herself to recover, wondering where she was and whether or not Luca was still free. She clenched her eyes hard and sent out a prayer that he’d had his cell phone in his pocket, then that he’d had a chance to use it and was talking with Mack right now, and lastly, that Mack was on the way, leading a horde of cops to liberate her.

  Please God, keep them both safe.

  And then she remembered how angry she’d been with the kid just before the whole day blew up.

  No sense going back there. She could blame the boy all she wanted, but this wasn’t his fault. It was hers. Mack had warned her a million times if she was going t
o work in this business, she had to be vigilant. To be on the lookout for trouble at all times, and to sally forth strapped – that meant wearing a gun in cop lingo – into the day. And night.

  She hadn’t gotten the hang of it yet, had she?

  She hung her head there in the dark and her throat swelled, threatening tears. Gen Delacourt did not cry in public, but right now she was alone and no one would know.

  Except Gen Delacourt. She’d know.

  And she also knew crying wouldn’t help. She pulled in a breath and put a lid on the self-pity. It was time to rely on her wits, however diminished or incompetent they might be.

  She shifted her legs beneath her, used her bound hands for balance, and rose to her feet. Her head pounded out the sound track to Jaws and she almost lost her lunch, but bent at the waist in time to avert it. When the worst of the booming had passed she moved forward, hands stretched out and feet shuffling, to keep from tripping or smacking into a wall.

  Toward the light at the end of the tunnel.

  It seemed as if it took an hour to reach it, and when she did it wasn’t much help. It was a door. The brightness she’d seen was seeping around the jamb. She found the knob and rattled it. Locked. She felt the edges in the darkness, not sure just what she was looking for.

  She backtracked to the right along the wall, feeling for furniture or implements or – wouldn’t that be great good luck? – a hammer or an axe that could break the sucker down.

  That’s right, Gen. Humor will help. Think of this as something to write about in your memoir, just another adventure you barreled into and out the other side unscathed. She continued to slide her hands along the wall, but the room appeared to be empty of anything but her sorry self.

  And that was when she remembered Rick again, and, finally, used her fingers to explore what was binding her hands. Better late than never, she supposed, and spat out a “Yes!” when she discovered it was, indeed, a plastic tie, and she could feel the locking mechanism.

  But her palms were already facing, so there was no extra room to maneuver. She put her back to the wall and slid into a squat and tried to manipulate one hand free. That was when she heard footsteps.

  Sneaking. Stealthy.

  In a flash she was pressed hard against the wall behind the door, where she would be hidden as it swung into the room. And swing it did, slowly, creeping open an inch at a time.

  Someone breathed on the other side, and she could tell from the sound that whoever stood there was taller than her. Oh shoot, not Rudy. Please God, not Rudy. He’d be mad enough that she didn’t want to consider what he might be willing to do if he got his hands on her again.

  She shrank into a crouch, making herself the smallest target possible, and held her breath. But with the flick of a switch the room lit up like an airport runway, and it must be clear to anyone standing in the threshold that whoever rattled the knob was now behind the open door.

  The hinges creaked. She heard her captor take two steps forward into the room, and she closed her eyes against the brightness and the moment she would be revealed. Bound. Defenseless. No weapon but her mind, which clearly wasn’t all that dangerous.

  That’s when she heard a sharp intake of air. Her lids flew open, and she went from resigned to depressed in the space of a breath.

  It was Luca, and his hands were also bound.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Gen straightened, narrowing her eyes against the influx of light. “Crap. I’ve been sitting in here hoping you got away.” His expression had also deteriorated at sight of her, and she knew why. The only good news about this development was that she wasn’t in imminent danger of getting pounded by the Italian Stallion.

  “I was hoping the same thing about you,” he replied.

  Yeah, she’d figured.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” he asked.

  “We’ll think of something. Like, please tell me you have your cell phone.”

  He shook his head. “It’s in the Camaro.” He gave her a look that only a seventeen-year-old could conjure, then turned his back and walked out.

  Which left her standing in the corner alone, studying the place. Her instincts had been right; it was like a bowling alley, long but not wide, with an old-fashioned narrow-slatted oak floor and small windows high in the wall. The building must be old, built before the codes required windows on the ground floor big enough for an occupant to climb out in case of fire. Either that, or they’d simply been walled over, or this was a basement.

  And, as she’d expected, the place was as empty as a high school classroom on a Saturday morning. That is, except for a few random wood chips and wisps of newspaper drifting across the floor.

  “Luca?”

  “What.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Inside one of the buildings we wish we were still outside of.”

  She found him in the next room. It was a duplicate of the former but not as large. A single door led to who-knows-where, and Luca was slumped beside it with his back to the wall and his head on his knees.

  “They must have thrown you in there before they brought me in,” he said. “I didn’t know until you rattled the knob.”

  “You must have given them a pretty good chase, then.”

  “Not good enough.” He sounded disgusted. “I came around a corner and some guy was waiting for me with a gun. I should have yelled for help, but I didn’t.”

  She heard the frustration in his voice and did her best to throw him a bone. “Look, I work as a private detective, right? But my stun gun, which I’m supposed to have with me at all times, is in my car.”

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and came up empty-handed. “Forget that. Since they’ve relieved me of my keys, they probably have another weapon in their arsenal now. Great.”

  It was her turn to be disgusted. “Okay, that’s it,” she said. “Let’s lose these zip ties.”

  That got his attention. “I’ve been trying to, but I can’t,” he said.

  “I know the secret,” Gen replied. “A big brawny man taught me how.” She hunched over and searched the floor for just the right fragment of wood, then picked it up and went to sit beside him.

  “We’re lucky on two counts.” She went to work on his zip tie. “Number one, they tied our hands in front of us. Two, and I can’t imagine why, but they didn’t bind our legs. Dealing with that would have taken longer. I suppose the hand thing was just meant to discourage us. Clearly they don’t expect much out of you and me. Let’s prove them wrong.”

  She worked the end of the stout little sliver into the locking mechanism. When she tried to lift the plastic, the tip of the wood broke off and she tossed it away. But Luca had gotten the idea by then, and he jumped to his feet and began another search. Within seconds they each had a sturdier shard and were face-to-face and ready to try again.

  It took several attempts, but Gen soon had him loose. Then it was her turn, and in minutes she was pulling off the tie and shaking her hands out.

  Luca had already turned to study the door.

  “I’ll assume it’s locked,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  She moved forward and put her ear to the jamb. Not a sound. She took a step back and tugged on one of the hinge pins. It moved easily, so she worked it up and out. The other two were more difficult, but she and Luca managed to pull them.

  Taking the door off proved to be more of a challenge.

  But eventually they did it, tearing the lock from the jamb in the process. The open doorway revealed a staircase that ascended about twenty treads to a landing and another closed door. Gen started up, and Luca followed. When she gained the top, she grasped the knob and turned it as slowly as she was able.

  This one was not locked.

  She opened the door a smidge and shoved her eye to the crack. It was a utility closet, lined with stand-alone shelving that a mediocre carpenter had knocked together using two-by-twos and cheap plywood. They housed a mish-mas
h of paper towels and cleaning supplies. The room was illuminated by a weak, naked overhead bulb.

  The best part? The place was empty of humans.

  Still wary of Rudy’s fists, she slid the door open but protected her body with its bulk and checked behind it. “Nobody here,” she said, then walked in with Luca close on her heels.

  The area was about eight feet square, and the shelving left little space for the two of them. Gen crept to the door on the other side and listened. She could hear the buzz of some kind of machinery.

  A sander, maybe, or even a vacuum cleaner.

  “Somebody’s out there,” she said.

  “Yeah, I can hear it.”

  Gen glanced back at Luca. He was staring at the ceiling. She followed his eyes up and saw an access door, undoubtedly to the attic. That meant spiders and dust and – worse – rodents.

  She made a face. “Ugh. I know what you’re thinking.”

  He pulled the Windex and paper towels from a set of shelves and piled it all on the next one over, cautiously moved the empty unit beneath the metal ring of the inset door, then clambered onto the top shelf and grasped the ring. It didn’t budge. He yanked harder. Again, no movement. So he lay flat and pulled with two hands.

  “It’s painted shut,” he said.

  And just then, the door gave a massive squeak and shuddered downward.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The door revealed one of those attic access units that unfolded into its own set of stairs as it descended to the floor.

  The stairway to heaven, only not.

  They had the shelving back in place and the treads down and were up and on their knees in the musty, dreadful crawl space so quickly Gen had little time to contemplate what might be waiting in the dark.

  “We have to move,” she said. “As soon as somebody sees the stairs, they’ll know where we went.”

  “Which way?” Luca asked.