Through the Bookstore Window

by Bill Petrocelli

  “No, I don’t know!” I would have to have to pry it out of him. “What kind of investigators?”

  “I don’t know, for sure. They wanted to know about you. They had badges that they flashed in front of me.”

  “Were the badges real?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” I was getting exasperated with him. “For God’s sake, you’ve made a whole career out of forging documents, and you don’t know a phony badge when you see one?”

  “Cara mia! What was I supposed to do? Grab the card out of his hand and examine it under a microscope? I just wanted them out of there!”

  I wasn’t going to get anywhere if I got angry with him.

  “Anyway, I don’t think they were legitimate—they spoke Italian like you do. In America they probably think you sound like an Italian, but an Italian can tell the difference. These guys were from over there—you know, that place where you came from.”

  “What did they want?”

  “They had a picture of you. They wanted to know if I knew you.”

  “A picture? When was it taken?” Fear was erupting in my head.

  “It was an old one. You looked the way you did when you showed up on my doorstep all those years ago. You were kind of cute, really.”

  I wasn’t going to get into that. “Could you tell where it was taken?”

  “They didn’t say. But it wasn’t Italy—I know that. You could see the waterfront down at the end of the street, and there was some foreign writing on the shop signs.”

  It was the photo—the one I remembered from Dubrovnik.

  “What else did they say?”

  “Nothing. After telling them that I’d never seen you before, they just left.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “About three weeks ago.”

  “And you’re just calling me now?”

  I could hear the hesitation in his voice. “I didn’t think it was important. The picture was taken so long ago. No one looking at that picture would connect it with who you are now. You’ve gone through such a big change since then.”

  The dead air hung between us for a moment. I knew he was waiting for me to talk. He wanted me to ask him why he changed his mind and decided to call me.

  “Paolo, what happened?”

  He seemed reluctant to answer, and then he switched over to English. I knew what that meant. It would be easier for him to play dumb. “Luca got a call yesterday.”

  That was not good news. Luca Martinelli was my physician during the time I was in Italy. He knew a lot more about me than someone could glean from an old photo taken in Dubrovnik.

  “Was it the same people?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a phone call. He said he didn’t ask them any questions. I don’t know—it’s probably better that he didn’t.”

  “Did he say what they were calling about?”

  “They were asking about someone named ‘Bertani.’”

  That hit like a thud. “Gina Bertani” was the name I used when I first changed my name. It was the name on my entry papers for the US. The “Perini” part came later. The fear that had been gathering in my head threatened to explode.

  “What did Luca tell them?”

  “He said he told them nothing at all. He told me that he acted like he didn’t even know what they were talking about. He said they hung up after that.”

  “Were they looking for a man or a woman?”

  “I don’t know—he didn’t say. He didn’t say much at all.”

  “Paolo, that could be important. They weren’t just looking for ‘someone.’ They were talking Italian, for God’s sake—it was either qualcuno, a man, or qualcuna, a woman.”

  “I don’t know.” He was squirming to get off the phone.

  “Could you find out and let me know?”

  I could hear his face drop. “I’ll try.”

  www

  Sylvia had called me the day before to set up an appointment. She offered to buy lunch, but she didn’t say what she wanted to talk about. As I headed downtown, I wondered if it had anything to do with what Paolo told me in his phone call. It probably didn’t—and even if it did, there wasn’t much she could do about it. Sylvia was the person you wanted on your side if someone served you with a subpoena. But if someone wanted your head served on a platter, she wasn’t any more help than anyone else.

  Her office was in a converted Barbary Coast building just off Montgomery Street. The entrance opened on to a well-manicured alley that sat a comfortable distance between Jackson and Pacific. The whole area oozed a look-at-me Victorian charm that San Franciscans love to display. The bare-brick interior of the waiting room was home to a number of spectacular tinted photos of San Francisco Bay that hovered over the walls with no visible means of support. The nineteenth-century ambiance of the building was interrupted only by a series of modern, crisscrossed metal beams that were firmly anchored to both the ceiling and the floor. Victorian charm was one thing, but everyone in San Francisco knew that the 1906 fire and earthquake had once leveled buildings like this into rubble. The law firm’s name was in brass letters on the wall outside their door: “Crichton, Moss, Harris, & Kaplan”—as in “Sylvia Kaplan,” my old girlfriend.

  Sylvia had come a long way since the days when we shacked up over the bookstore, and she had her files stashed in banker’s boxes in our spare bedroom. It was a good spot for her at the time, because she loved books. She’d sometimes sneak downstairs to grab advance reading copies off the receiving desk to get the jump on other readers. For old time’s sake, I brought along an ARC of a new book that I knew she’d want to read. It was the least I could do, since she offered to buy me lunch around the corner at Cotogna restaurant, where we both lusted after their agnolotti. Still, dining with her made me a little sad. I realized that the passion between us had migrated from the other parts of our bodies and had settled into our digestive tracks.

  Sylvia learned her legal skills in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office. And after watching her in action, I realized no one was better at getting a defendant acquitted than a former prosecutor. After a couple of her questionable clients walked out of the courtroom as free men—none too deservedly, in my opinion—she caught the eye of Richard Crichton, who was the go-to guy for every white-collar criminal in town. If you hired Crichton, Moss, Harris, & Kaplan, just about everyone assumed you were guilty—everyone, that is, except the juries. He managed to get most of his well-heeled clients acquitted. Crichton was the face of the firm, but someone else had to do the day-to-day courtroom grind. That job had been passed down from Crichton to Moss to Harris and, now, to my best friend.

  Life was good for Sylvia, and I was pleased for her. When I was in a generous mood, I had to give credit to Margo. Sylvia had become more focused in her work since the two of them had gotten back together. They were now starting a family. That was a boundary I had to respect. Their plan, apparently, was for Margo to get pregnant first and then Sylvia would do the same the year after. They wanted their two children to be just a year apart. Margo—ever the child psychologist—thought that would be the best age gap. I had a wonderful vision of Sylvia, when it was her turn to conceive, standing in full-bellied pregnancy in front of a jury, spieling out a heartfelt plea. Margo and Sylvia had worked out an arrangement with a couple of gay men they knew so that each man would end up being either a father or an uncle to the two children. The day when Sylvia told me about their plan, Margo hovered in the kitchen, probably thinking I was going to say something insensitive. But that wasn’t at all how I felt. I admired them for doing what they were doing. I almost offered to contribute to the process, but I knew that wouldn’t have gone over very well.

  When I got to her office, Sylvia had a large file sitting on her desk. She seemed anxious to get to it. Normally, we would spend a little time chitchatting w
ith Cristina Brown, Sylvia’s legal intern. Cristina was Miriam’s niece, and she had spent time working at Hayes Street Books when she was going to college. She usually wanted to know the latest tales from the bookstore. For my part, I often asked her why she wanted to be a famous lawyer and pass up the fabulous wealth she could make as a bookseller, but frankly we’d both gotten tired of my attempts at humor. But there was no time for any of that today. Whatever she had on her mind, Sylvia wanted to get to it immediately.

  She pushed the file halfway across the desk, but then she stopped, apparently unsure that she really wanted to give it to me. As I sat there with an empty, outstretched hand, I suddenly realized what it must be—it was something I had asked her to help me with months ago. She hadn’t said anything up until now, but she must have found out something important.

  “Gina, I’m going to give you this, but you have to promise you won’t do anything impulsive once you see what we’ve found.”

  I promised—and I think I even believed my promise when I said it. But I would have stood on my head at that point to see what was in that file.

  “You’ve found Jelena?” It came out as a question, but I was already sure of the answer.

  “We’re pretty sure the information we have is correct.”

  “Only pretty sure?”

  Sylvia frowned. She was starting to realize that she couldn’t get by with ambiguous phrasing—not on this subject.

  “Okay, we’re as sure as we can be without DNA evidence, and there’s no practical way to get that.”

  “Where is she?”

  Sylvia gave a little hand motion that meant that I should slow down for a moment.

  “Let’s get something straight. I know how emotional this for you. In all the months I lived with you, I learned that much, okay?”

  I couldn’t argue with her.

  “We’ve found her, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything we can do about it.” She looked at me, waiting to see if that would sink in. “We need to decide right now what we can—and cannot—do with this information. Sweetheart, do you understand what I trying to say?”

  I didn’t, but I said I did.

  “We paid an investigative firm a lot of money to put together this report, and I think they did a hell of a job. There’s a lot of stuff in here that makes unpleasant reading, and I’m not sure you’ll want to read all of it. They didn’t have much to work with at first. They took the information you gave us about her disappearance—the date, the place, and everything else—and they worked it from there. They checked the records of every international adoption agency until they had a match. But it wasn’t easy. They knew she was only a few months old at the time, and they only had some general idea of her likely features based on her genetics and the description you gave them. That wasn’t much to go on.

  “And let me say one other thing. They pulled in a lot favors—and we pulled in a lot favors—while they were getting this together. We have to be careful not to cause any problems for that firm with their informants or with their other clients. There are some things we can use and other things we have to keep in the background. Also, our firm picked up the tab for this, so I think we need to be cognizant of that fact.”

  Sylvia could see the look on my face as she went through that explanation, and she knew it wasn’t having much impact. Finally, she leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling.

  “Why did I even bother with that? I knew it wouldn’t make any difference to you.”

  “Can I just see what’s in the file?

  Sylvia shrugged and handed it to me.

  I thumbed through the pages, skimming a lot of the background information, until a line on page twelve jumped out at me.

  “It’s says that she was ‘found abandoned outside the village.’ That’s not true. She was kidnapped.”

  “I knew that phrase would probably upset you. But if you look at the end of the report and read what they say about their sources, you’ll see that they weren’t trying to investigate the details of what happened. They were focused on finding the right child. They just used the language of what their informants gave them without arguing about it. You’ll find that in a few places.”

  “So what do we know about this…” I flipped back a few pages to make sure I had the right name, “…this ‘God’s Family Foundation’?”

  “That’s the organization that handled the adoption and placed her with a US family.”

  “How do we know they weren’t involved in her kidnapping?”

  “We can’t be absolutely sure of anything, but this is a pretty large organization that handles a lot of international adoptions. In many cases—particularly in a war zone—a lot of things can happen before an agency like that gets involved… Gina, this was Bosnia, for God’s sake. You told me over and over again what things were like there at the time.”

  I thought Sylvia might be trying to convince herself as much as me.

  “Look, read the report, you’ll see that were several people that apparently had her in their custody for a short time before the foundation stepped in. As far as we can tell, there was nothing improper about the adoption itself.”

  The skepticism must have still shown on my face. Her voice dropped a couple of notches.

  “When I read this, I knew you’d have that concern. So I asked our investigators if they would do a little more checking on the foundation. I’ll let you know what they find out, okay?”

  I nodded my thanks.

  “Where is she now?”

  “She was adopted by a married couple who were living in South Carolina at the time. They’ve since moved to Indianapolis. Her family life looks stable. The investigators haven’t done an in-depth examination of her adoptive parents, but there doesn’t seem to be any problem. The father’s name is Allen Wilder, and he’s the pastor at the Church of the Kindly Shepherd. It’s a prominent church in the community.”

  I shrugged, and Sylvia picked up on it.

  “I know, it’s definitely not what you expected, but there it is. Her mother’s name is Susan Wilder. As near as we can tell, she doesn’t have a career of her own but does a lot of work within the church organization. There are apparently no brothers or sisters.

  “And she has a new name, Gina. It’s Alexi—Alexi Wilder.”

  I ran the name through my mind, fighting the feeling that it was somehow intruding upon my memory of Jelena. But as I silently mouthed it a few times, I started to get used to it.

  Neither of us said anything for a few moments, but I could sense Sylvia eyeing me, wondering how I was going to respond to all this.

  “Gina, I got this information for you because I know how much it means to you—how important it was for you to find out what happened.”

  I nodded, quietly mouthing the words, “Thank you.”

  “But I know you, and I know how impulsive you can be.” She waited for me to deny it, but I couldn’t. “Please, promise me you won’t do anything rash.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sitting here, watching the wheels turn in your head, and I don’t know what I can say that you don’t already know. Alexi is now a teenager—or maybe you still want to call her Jelena, that’s fine. But either way, she’s living in a stable family that adopted her years ago in a proper court proceeding. Her life up to now can’t be undone. We can’t go back and reverse anything, and it would be cruel to try.

  “And even if you could, there’s the problem of you.”

  Sylvia caught my attention with that.

  “Gina, I love you, but that will only carry you so far. You’ve got some things to think about. I’m not just talking about your lifestyle. That’s never been an issue in my mind—not in this case or in anything else. But you know as well as I do that you can never know what a judge somewhere might say about that.

  “No, wh
at really worries me is that you’re in the country illegally. Not only that, you’ve told me many times that there are people who would gladly rip you limb from limb if they could find you. Think about that for a minute. I don’t know of anything that you can do that wouldn’t run the risk of some harm coming to you or to Alexi.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t going to argue. If I told her about my recent phone call from Paolo, I knew that she’d probably be even more worried.

  “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

  Indianapolis—2011

  Davey

  This time there were lights.

  It was just a blink, but there were more of them. His mind was racing, trying to catch up with everything happening in front of him. The lights were spread in a small array just across the river, penetrating the dank night air. He could feel them on his skin.

  This time will be different. Things were unfolding in a way that hadn’t happened before. The warning last time was just a couple of sounds that came too late to do any good. This time his senses were alive and engaged. The thought that maybe nothing had changed tried to creep into his head, but he shoved it aside.

  Jimmy was lying inches away just like before—eyes shut, maybe asleep. That hadn’t changed. Jimmy had been reading a love letter from home just minutes earlier. But was that last time or this time? Maybe Jimmy wouldn’t have to know what happened all those other times, because everything was coming together differently.

  His rifle was over by the trees out of reach, but that was last time. Now it was right here, under the sofa cushion, and he had his hands on it. The squad of enemy troops was just a few feet away, and this time he was ready for them. The gun was out from under the cushion and propped up in position, aimed against the brightest of the lights. The trigger was moving back slowly…

  sss

  The pistol hit the floor, bouncing on its handle, while the muzzle spun around in the direction of the couch. Then it lay there quietly—maybe pouting over the fact that it hadn’t been allowed to fire. Davey struggled to get his heart rate under control. The blanket on Robin’s couch was twisted around him, and he was starting to shiver. The remnants of the dream were still tangled up in his mind, and they gave way only slowly as he tried to clear his head. His hand was still shaking. Moments earlier, the weapon had been pointed at the tiny power lights on the toaster oven, coffee maker, and other appliances in Robin’s kitchenette. Those devices were still shining through the darkness—warning lights, as of a few minutes ago, of an advancing Viet Cong patrol.