The Suicide King

by Kristi Belcamino

  As I stood there, stunned, a flash of movement on the street below drew my attention.

  A woman with long, flowing hair dressed in skintight black pants and a long sleeve shirt stepped out of a dark alcove across the street. As she did, a gunmetal gray car pulled up, skidding to a stop. She jerked the door open, jumped inside, and the car accelerated away before she had even shut the door.

  It all happened in an instant. But the images were imprinted on my memory.

  Heart pounding with terror, I was finally able to move. I spun and ran into the hotel. From the top of the staircase on the second floor, I could see people on the first floor running and screaming, covered in blood. Others were carrying bleeding people. Somewhere in the chaos below me were the people I loved most.

  Bobby. Dante. Matt. Mrs. Marino.

  22

  From the shop, Eva could hear the rumble of motorcycles coming from the street in front of the business. The sound abruptly came to a halt. Seconds later, she heard gunshots and screams. She raced through the store, forced to leap over display shelving the man had knocked to the floor in an attempt to slow her down. She emerged on the sidewalk at the same time the four motorcyclists were hopping back on their bikes and squealing away. Eva glanced both directions. A car was heading her way. She stepped in front of it, and it skidded to a stop. Yanking open the passenger side door, she led with her gun.

  “Drive! Now!” she said in Italian as she jumped in.

  The older man punched the gas. He stared straight ahead as if he was afraid Eva would shoot him for looking at her.

  “Follow those motorcycles,” Eva said in Italian.

  His chin was trembling. “Please don’t shoot.”

  Eva put the gun on her lap. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I just didn’t have time to explain.”

  When they got to the end of the street where it came to a T at a small hillside, the man looked over at her. “Where to?”

  Eva looked both ways, to the right and to the left. There were no signs of any motorcycles. They’d lost them.

  “Porca miseria!” Eva said. “Please take me down the alley to the right. My car is there.”

  When they grew closer, Eva saw her car, but the white car was gone.

  She handed the man a one-hundred euro note and patted his knee. “Thank you for your help.”

  The sound of sirens was growing closer, so Eva didn’t wait around to see if her niece had been murdered. Instead, she fled in her vehicle to a spot high above the village and looked down at the scene with a feeling of dread. The small village below was lit up with flashing red and blue lights. Ambulances and police cars pulled up in front of the hotel. She had retrieved some binoculars from her tool box and watched as they brought the injured out on stretchers and loaded them into the ambulances.

  Two black hearses pulled onto the street. Eva felt a surge of anger and anxiety. All that bloodshed because of her. Because somebody wanted to punish her.

  23

  Stepping into the courtyard, my mind couldn’t process what I saw. Bodies on the ground. Some people crouched over them. Mrs. Marino shrieking, holding her head and wailing in an unintelligible lamentation. My eyes pivoted down. She stood over someone on the ground. Someone with fair hair covered in blood. Matt. In an instant, I registered that the man kneeling by Matt’s prone body was Dante. Stunned, I scanned the bodies, panic rising like a tidal wave in my throat. Over by the bar … facedown. A familiar silky auburn head. Gray silk shirt now dark with blood.

  Time distorted. Voices undulated. Then all noise stopped. I could no longer hear. My vision blurred. I blinked, not taking my eyes off the pale cheek now resting on the cobblestones.

  I stared, willing him to move. Straining my eyes to see his body move with a breath taken and a breath exhaled.

  Movemovemove. Please move, Bobby. Please move. Please move. Please move. Please move.

  After staring at him for a million years, I willed myself toward him. He could still be alive. He could still be alive. He could still be alive. But as I drew closer, his features came into focus. His mouth open with a slight trail of blood coming from it. His eyes staring at nothing.

  My legs gave way and I collapsed onto the ground a few feet away from him. My hearing returned with a far-away keening sound piercing the strange silence in my head. Splayed on the ground, I lifted my head and looked again into Bobby’s eyes. They were vacant. No matter what I did. He was no longer there. I crawled over to him, scratching at the ground with my nails to gain traction and pull my body toward him, my legs dragging behind me. Once I reached him, I curled up against him, pressing myself to him, burying my face in his silky hair. I held my hands to my ears, willing the awful high-pitched howling to stop.

  Then, when I closed my mouth, it did.

  My mouth found his ear, the soft lobe now wet with my tears. I pressed my lips against it and whispered.

  “I love you, Bobby.”

  Pressed against Bobby’s body, I had no idea how much time had passed before an army of emergency workers stormed the courtyard, rushing from body to body. I couldn’t see them because my face was pressed into Bobby’s jaw, but I heard their footsteps and shouting. And people yelling.

  “Over here. We need help.”

  “We need a doctor!”

  I startled when I felt fingers on my neck checking for my pulse. I jerked away, eyes wide. A young man in a white jumpsuit jumped away from me.

  “Scusi,” he said, his eyes wide.

  Gently, another woman pulled me up into a sitting position. But I kept my back pressed up against Bobby as the young man checked him. They’d placed a white sheet over the woman who had been talking about her mother earlier. I noticed the female EMT staring at me. I met her eyes and shook my head sadly.

  The look she gave me in return cracked my heart apart. The tiny sliver of hope that had been holding my mind together snapped. Grasping my arm lightly, the woman tugged at me to stand, saying something in Italian I didn’t understand. I fought back.

  “No.” I shook off her arm. She didn’t need to speak English to know what I meant.

  She instantly let go. I wasn’t going to leave Bobby’s side. She said something in Italian and pointed at the bodice of my dress, miming that I needed help. I looked down. It was covered in blood. I looked at Bobby and back at her and she nodded.

  I grabbed Bobby’s hand, clutching it as a lifeline. The woman and young man exchanged a look. Then I was alone. The two kneeled by another woman, this one alive. Streaks of black ran down her face. She tried to brush the emergency workers away, but they insisted on treating her.

  Shifting, I searched for Dante’s black head. He was crouched by Matt’s body, his face distorted, his mouth crumpled. When he noticed me, he looked at Bobby. I shook my head so slowly it felt like it took an eternity. I saw that Dante was holding onto Matt’s hand. Matt’s fingers were closed around Dante’s hand. He was still alive.

  A racket at the door was followed by people carting gurneys into the courtyard. I never took my eyes off Dante. Within seconds, Matt was loaded onto one of the gurneys.

  I lay back down, curling my body around Bobby until a man in a dark suit took me in his arms and set me off to the side. I’d lost the ability to fight. My limbs were weak, useless. I watched in horror as the man spread a sheet over Bobby. But then my ability to move returned, and I leaned over and yanked the sheet back off of him. I wadded it up in a ball and hurled it into the nearby fountain. When the man in the suit tried to approach again, I crossed my arms and glared, standing spread eagle in front of Bobby. He would have to get past me.

  I stood on guard for what felt like a century until a police officer came and tried to make me move. I shoved him so hard he fell back onto the ground. He looked at me wide-eyed and left, but was back within seconds with reinforcements. It took four police officers to carry me out of the courtyard. I kicked and spit and scratched at them, craning my neck to catch one last glimpse of Bobby before they put the she
et back over him and dragged me outside.

  24

  Looking down on the streets lit with blue and red emergency lights, Eva dialed Francesca and filled her in. Eva talked while still holding the binoculars to her eyes with one hand.

  “Mama mia,” the older woman said, clucking. “I am so sorry. I have no sources in that region. I don’t know how to find out who was killed.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” Eva said, hanging up when she saw several police officers take off running into the front of the hotel.

  Eva reached for her car keys, but a few seconds later, she saw the officers emerge from the hotel holding a young woman with dark hair by her arms. She was kicking and scratching and fighting them. The girl wasn’t handcuffed, and they weren’t trying too hard to subdue her. Not a suspect. Eva zoomed in as much as she could, but she was too far away to make out the young woman’s features.

  But she knew. That was her niece. Alive.

  They stuffed the young woman in the back of a squad car. At that moment, two men dressed in white rolled out a stretcher covered with a white sheet and slid it into the back of a hearse. Then another two orderlies came out with another body. Four total. And at least ten more people were loaded into ambulances.

  Then once the hearses drove away, the police car carrying Gia left, heading in the same direction.

  All of this could have been avoided.

  This was all AnnaMarie’s fault.

  25

  “Take me to the hospital.” I was in the back of a small police car. The two officers in the front exchanged looks. “Now!” I screamed, spittle flying, landing on the plastic barrier between us.

  They’d locked me in. One of the officers had handed me a gray sweatshirt. At first, I’d ignored it, but then grudgingly pulled it on over my thin dress.

  When the man in the black suit pushed a gurney with a black shrouded figure out to a hearse, I’d pounded on the windows with my fists until they were bloody and screamed until I was hoarse. But then, the same man came out with three other bodies. They fit four bodies in two hearses. I didn’t know which one was Bobby’s and this seemed unbearable. I clawed at the door handles and kicked at the seats in front of me, screaming and crying until the two hearses had left and I was exhausted, huddled in the corner. I glared at the officers in the front seat. They had studiously ignored me the entire time.

  Now I leaned forward and repeated my demand.

  “Take. Me. To. The. Hospital. Ospedale! Ospedale! Now!”

  To my surprise, the ignition turned over and we drove away.

  At the hospital, the officer in the passenger seat got out and opened my door as if he were a fucking valet. I was too drained to do anything but glare at him as I hopped out and raced through the hospital doors.

  “Americano! Americano!” I shouted as I raced in. The nurses and doctors barely gave me a glance. I pounded my fists on the counter. “Dov'è l'americano?”

  The nurse rolled her eyes at me and I nearly punched her, but she typed on her keyboard and said some number I didn’t understand. When she saw my face, she acted exasperated but held up her fingers. Two. And pointed up.

  Second floor. I raced to the elevators but then saw a stairway and tore up that instead. When I entered the hall, Mrs. Marino was standing there, clutching her handbag with both hands, eyes red from weeping. Her Herringbone suit jacket still looked pristine. I fell into her arms.

  “Gia!” She sobbed into my neck. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, mia cara.”

  I want to die. But I didn’t say it out loud. In less than seventy-two hours, the man I loved had been murdered and I’d watched two women die looking at me. And now, another close friend might die, too.

  We headed for a small alcove with couches and chairs. Mrs. Marino patted my arm and my back. “Matt’s hurt really badly,” she said. “He’s in surgery right now.”

  We collapsed on a couch, hugging. I closed my eyes, my body and mind numb until I heard Dante’s voice and opened my eyes. My best friend’s face was slack, yellow, horrified. Matt was in recovery. They didn’t know if he would make it.

  “Gia, they don’t know,” he said woodenly. “They said I should probably stay close in case he took a turn for the worst.” He finally sobbed saying the last part. “Oh, my God.”

  I stood and hugged him. Then we all sat back down.

  “Who did this?” His voice was hollow. “That guy. That man in D.C. last week who was upset over Matt’s proposed health care plan? He said he hoped Matt rotted in hell. Do you think he did this? But I saw more than one person?”

  He sounded like a little boy who was confused.

  My mouth was so dry I didn’t know if I could form words, but I swallowed and told him what I had seen from the balcony.

  The bikers. The woman in black. They had done this.

  Mrs. Marino had been sitting quietly the whole time, but then she spoke, spiting the words out. “They were Italian. I couldn’t hear them, but they said something and it was Italian.”

  “But why?” I said. “Why would they kill Bobby or Matt? Why, Dante? Why?”

  Dante shook his head. His eyes looked haunted. “It had to be over the health care plan. It had to be that.”

  But I doubted that. Not with what I had seen.

  26

  Eva shook with fury as she dialed AnnaMarie’s number.

  “If you don’t give me the name of the man who went rogue, I will not rest until I have come to your house and slit Don Pedro’s throat. I will cut off his dick and ram it down your throat until you choke to death. Then I will string your children up in the trees and fillet their bodies like mackerel before I burn your house to the ground.”

  AnnaMarie made a tsking sound. “So vulgar. And uncouth. If you hope to shock me into action with your crude threats, you have underestimated me. Do you think that I was not exposed to worse than this as a girl? This only makes you look weak and desperate, Eva. I’m going to hang up now. Why don’t you call back and try again?”

  The line disconnected.

  Eva sat in shocked silence. And, even though she hated to admit it, humiliation.

  AnnaMarie was right. Her vulgarity and lack of composure was unseemly. She’d lost it.

  Calling back would be the ultimate humiliation, though.

  She had to prove she was not weak and desperate.

  Instead of calling AnnaMarie back, she dialed Francesca.

  “Who do you have at the cave in Sicily?”

  “An old friend from my days as a Mafioso wife.”

  “I need something done. Within the hour. Something so big that it will make an impact around the Mafioso world. But it is dangerous. If your man is seen, he will be hunted down and tortured in the worst way. And, here’s the catch, he needs access to a rocket launcher.”

  Eva held her breath waiting for an answer to her outlandish suggestion.

  “It can be done.”

  Eva exhaled loudly. She knew that Francesca had a military connection, but she’d never asked her to call on it before. But this was war.

  “What are you aiming for? Don Pedro?”

  “In a way, yes,” Eva said. “I want him to blow up Don Pedro’s mansion.”

  “I will call you back.”

  Eva paced the top of the cliff, glaring into the darkness. Below, the emergency vehicles in front of the hotel were leaving one by one.

  Francesca called back as the last police car pulled out.

  “It is arranged. In sixty minutes, there will be two attacks. One will take out the guard shack and gate. The second will be to the house itself. I’m only telling you this to let you know the first blast might provide enough warning for Don Pedro and his family to escape.”

  Eva thought about what Francesca was saying and then said. “That is perfect.”

  As soon as she hung up, Eva set her timer on her phone.

  She climbed into her car and sat, thinking about the day’s events. The man in the white car… Was he AnnaMarie’s man? The o
ne who had taken Chiara? She closed her eyes trying to recall his features. But all she could remember was that he was handsome, had dark, slicked back hair, and wore dark sunglasses.

  When her alarm went off, Eva dialed AnnaMarie’s number. God help the woman if she let the call go to voicemail. But AnnaMarie picked up. “I didn’t think you were going to call back,” she said lightly.

  “You have exactly five minutes to get your children out of your home and into the swimming pool.”

  Eva hung up.

  There. She’d done what she could. She would never cold-bloodedly kill children.

  When she’d used the bathroom near the front door, she’d seen an open bedroom doorway that contained twin bunkbeds off the hall. The room was toward the back of the house and had a sliding glass door that led down to the pool. If AnnaMarie ran from anywhere in the house, she would be able to scoop up the sleeping children and throw them in the pool in time to escape the blast that would annihilate the house. It was not her fault if AnnaMarie delayed.

  Even though she’d reassured herself that she’d done what she could, Eva felt as if she were going to vomit while she watched the clock ticking and counted the minutes until the attack. After time was up, she paced while clutching her phone waiting for it to ring.

  Finally, it did.

  She didn’t speak as she clicked to answer.

  “You are a dead woman.”

  “If you don’t tell me the rogue member’s name, I will not spare your children next time.”

  “You touch my children, and I will rip your fucking head off. I will tear you limb from limb. I will feed you to the sharks and have Don Pedro rape every one of your precious soldiers before I pluck their eyes out while they are alive.”