Red, White & Dead

by Laura Caldwell

  Each pool was shaped differently, one like a kidney, some perfect circles of differing sizes, a few long rectangles, a couple of squares. Some of the pools were surrounded by shrubs and plants, others lounge chairs.

  Theo stopped outside one pool. He pointed. “Look at that.”

  I glanced across the length of the pool, this one a number four and shaped like an oval. At the end of the pool was a stone throne built out of the smooth rock of the cliff that bordered the gardens. The throne held a woman in a green bathing suit and a yellow cap. Her head was down, eyes closed, shoulders slumped. Behind her, water poured from the side of the cliff as if it were coming from inside Ischia itself. It cascaded from the mountain and onto her shoulders, and she looked as if she were experiencing ecstasy.

  We watched her for another minute as she continued to sit there, in complete silence, her eyes closed. Finally, she threw her shoulders back and yawned as if she’d just experienced the best massage of her life. Then she stood, and another person who’d been waiting outside our view sat down in the throne.

  “Want to try it?” Theo said.

  “Absolutely.”

  We walked to the other side of the pool and sat in orange lounge chairs where there was a small line of bathers waiting for the water throne.

  When it was finally our turn, Theo gestured at it. “You first.”

  I got up and walked across the wet stone floor. I felt almost nervous as I saw that water pouring down. Finally, I slipped onto the throne and sat. Like the first woman we’d seen, I closed my eyes and hunched my shoulders and let the water beat upon me. I let it pound out the questions I had about my father. I let it pound away my desperate hope to see Elena. I let it pummel out of me any thoughts about Sam. I let it strike away the day and anything but that moment until, finally, it was just me. Me on a stone throne, the sun hitting my face through the cascade of water, without any thought of all that had happened the last year.

  Theo went next, grew as blissful as I had. When he got out, he gestured with his head at the pool. “Let’s get in.”

  Instead of looking around and studying faces for Elena, I merely let my toes, then my feet, then my shins, my knees, my thighs slip into the pool until the water was at my waist, then the depth at my chest. At last I ducked my head under and stayed beneath that water, weightless, timeless.

  When I came up to the surface, Theo wasn’t there. Momentarily alarmed, I swung my head around.

  And there he was, at the opposite end of the pool, his arms behind him on the ledge, staring at me, grinning a little as if he were watching his favorite show on television. Somehow he managed to make his black bathing cap look adorable.

  I paddled to him, not hurrying. There seemed nothing to hurry for just then.

  When I reached him, I said, “Are you happy?” I never asked him those kinds of questions.

  “Never more.” He grabbed my arm lightly, pulled me to him and wrapped my legs around his waist, our favorite position. But this time, in the water, he didn’t have to hold me so tight. Loosely, my ankles met behind his back. I let myself float backward in the pool until I was lying there, my back supported by the water, legs around him. I looked up at a blue sky softly dotted with cotton puffs of clouds.

  Theo let me lie there like that. He didn’t do anything, not anything sexy…nothing at all. He simply let me be suspended, and after a few seconds I felt as if I had slipped into a deep sleep. When I sat up, the sun had shifted, angling now onto the beach a hundred or so feet below us. I put my hands on Theo’s arms. He was always muscled. But now, his body was slick and wet. I could feel every tendon, every sinew, every vein, every part and portion of his muscles. And it was as if I could feel, for the first time, every part of Theo. He looked in my eyes, and I knew he was thinking something similar, that he was feeling me, seeing me, in a new way, as well.

  Slowly, his hand traced its way onto my lower back, pulling me gently toward him until I was closer, my arms around him, my legs wrapped tighter.

  Around us, the water moved from the soft jets of the pool, hypnotically lulling us. It shimmied us back and forth, like a mother coddling a child. I bowed my head and leaned on Theo’s shoulder. He squeezed me tighter until there was no space between us physically. And I felt that there was no other kind of space between us, either. I felt one with Theo. The feeling was not only soothing, not only profound, it was sexy as hell.

  I reached my hand down, below his waist, and through his bathing suit took a hold of him. But the feel of him shocked me.

  I sat up straight. “Jeez,” I whispered. “What am I doing?”

  Theo shook his head lazily, then he nodded across the pool. I could see another couple embracing. Because the water was high, you couldn’t tell what, if anything, they were doing underneath the water. A third couple was sitting on the steps at the entrance to the pool. A few individual swimmers dotted the water. Those on the lounge chairs surrounding the pool were all sleeping or reading. But no one seemed to be observing anyone. People kept to themselves, soaking in the healing waters, the healing atmosphere.

  I looked back at Theo. I reached down again, slowly, careful not to show what I was doing, and I took him in my hand.

  He inhaled sharply, his head hanging back a little. “God,” he whispered. “God, God…God.”

  I kept touching him like that. He was completely at my mercy.

  Finally he raised his head. “We have to find somewhere to go.”

  A few minutes later, wrapped in towels, we climbed the steps of the cliff to the highest point of the gardens. There were a few lounge chairs up there, no one around. Theo pointed at a corner, where the rock curved slightly. We tucked our heads around it and saw that there was another throne there, a seat carved into the rock, this one without water and hidden from view.

  Theo sat on it. He started to pull me toward him. Then he stopped, shook his head. With his eyes locked on mine, he reached behind my back and untied my bikini top. I tossed it off. He tugged at the bottoms and pulled them down. Now I was standing naked before him.

  He stood and pulled off my bathing cap. “There,” he said. “I have to see that hair.”

  He slipped off his own bathing suit and cap, his long, soaked hair settling around his face.

  Soon I was on top of him, my head smashed into his wet hair, and then I threw my face back, stretched my neck long so that all I could see was the slick ceiling of the throne, and at that moment it felt as if the two of us were one being and we were somewhere else, in a distant but distinct world that was so delicious, so wonderful, I hoped we would never leave.

  Later, satiated beyond description, we made our way down a stone path.

  “Don’t forget to put your cap back on,” Theo said behind me when we had almost reached the populated area of the gardens.

  I stopped and looked up at him. “Thanks.” I pulled my cap over my head. I could feel the smile on my face.

  When I’d wrestled my hair back into place, we headed down the path. I glanced at the pools below. “Which should we go to now?” I called over my shoulder to Theo. “Or maybe we should sit there.” I pointed to my right, where a small deck overlooked a square pool, a bubbling number six.

  “Sounds good.”

  We began to make our way to the deck, but halfway there, I stopped as something flashed in my eyes. It happened again. Squinting, I realized that it was the sun glinting from the metallic arms of a woman’s sunglasses. I moved a few feet closer, stared harder at the woman. The sunglasses were black, with silver braided arms. The woman took them off then and settled back in her chair, her face to the sun.

  “Elena,” I whispered.

  36

  “Isabel,” she said when I was standing in front of her. Ee-sabel.

  I hadn’t pulled off my cap, and for some reason I felt pleased that she had recognized me.

  Elena wore a rose-colored bikini with geometric shapes on it. She had a toned body and a light tan. Next to her, a lounge chair held a few w
et towels as if someone had just been there.

  She stood and I introduced her to Theo. They shook hands, and then Theo pointed at a chair across the deck, about twenty feet away. “I’ll be over there.”

  Elena sat on her lounge chair, her feet on the stone floor, and patted the space next to her. I sat.

  She slipped her sunglasses back on. “What are you doing here, Isabel? Isn’t it your birthday?”

  I nodded.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, smiling fondly.

  “Thanks. So, I spoke to your assistant. She mentioned you might be here. And we were looking to get out of Rome.”

  “We?” She looked at Theo, then back at me. “A beautiful man. Who is he to you?”

  I explained that we’d dated a short time. I told her about Maggie coming over to visit me and meeting Bernard, how I’d then invited Theo. It sounded like a real vacation, and I liked that. I didn’t want to make Elena cautious, not just yet.

  “Isabel,” she said. “Why are you here, really?” She shook her head a little. She sounded faintly annoyed.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions.”

  Something niggled at my mind.

  I just want to ask you a few questions. It was exactly what I used to say when I was a trial lawyer, in a courtroom, in front of a witness I was about to cross-examine.

  And right then, although I was sitting on a canvas chair on a Mediterranean island, I decided to interrogate my aunt.

  I remembered in a rush the training in law school and all the times I’d stood in front of witnesses. Some of them were expert witnesses, some lay-most of them reluctant witnesses who didn’t want to talk to me. My trial teacher had always said, Use a witness before you abuse a witness. In other words, get all the concessions you can, be as friendly as you can, before you attack. I realized that was exactly what I needed to do here.

  “Is that okay?” I said. “If I just ask you a few questions?”

  She gave a brief nod.

  I felt the calm that comes over a trial lawyer when they know exactly what they’re going to ask and how they’re going to ask it-a series of questions, general at first, then more specific. Never asking the ultimate question (which in this case was, “Is my father alive?”) but hopefully drawing so close to the issue that the witness has to admit it because there seems no other conclusion at which to arrive.

  I turned so that I was facing her, but I backed up a little on the chair to give her some room-Never physically intimidate a witness too fast-and I put a congenial expression on my face. “I just want to understand our family. Where I come from.”

  Elena nodded.

  “Okay, so let me start at the beginning. Your mother, Oriana, was from a Camorra family, right?”

  “Yes.” But she glanced around. “Please. Keep your voice down.”

  I glanced around with her. The deck we were on was raised, and there was no one else on it except Theo, who was out of earshot. Still, I lowered my tone. “And Kelvin, your father, was ultimately killed by two men who were in the Camorra, is that right?”

  She nodded.

  “And the men who were in the Camorra, who killed Kelvin, they were never brought to justice, correct?”

  “They were not,” she said stiffly.

  Time to switch to a different topic. “My father was a psychologist.”

  Silence.

  “Is that correct?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And he worked as a police profiler.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He worked for the Detroit police.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “He worked on Mob cases, right?”

  “Yes, Isabel.” She was growing a little weary now. Any witness being cross-examined gets to that point-where they are simply tired of it. That was fine. I knew exactly where to go from there.

  “And at the time my father died, he was working on the case of the Rizzato Brothers, is that right?”

  A pause. Then, “That’s right.”

  “The Rizzato Brothers were Camorra.”

  She glanced over my shoulder as if she were looking for someone. “That is what I’ve heard.”

  I followed her gaze. We were still alone on the deck. “You’re not sure?”

  “No, I suppose that is correct.”

  I heard my trial professor-Always get an exact answer to your question.

  Elena shifted slightly on the chair and adjusted her silver sunglasses.

  “Elena,” I said, “would you mind removing your sunglasses?”

  Though I’d said it kindly, it was a rather forceful request from a niece to an aunt, but my aunt complied. Her eyes, brown and flecked with green, were sad, and a little confused. I hated that confusion, and yet it was exactly what I needed to see.

  “So, I’ll ask again. The Rizzato Brothers were known to be members of the Camorra, right?”

  “Yes, Isabel. Why all these questions?” Another glance over my shoulder.

  “Just give me a few more minutes. I’m trying to figure out something.”

  She bowed her head a little as if to say, Continue.

  “Thank you. Now, the Brothers Rizzato, who were Camorra-they were from Ischia, correct?”

  “I suppose I have heard that.”

  “You’ve heard that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. And Ischia is outside of Naples, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.

  “And Naples is the home of the Camorra, right?”

  Elena nodded, and in that instant, I felt as if I were back in the courtroom. I could see myself standing at a distance from the witness, then moving closer.

  “And last night in Naples,” I said as I scooted forward on the lounge chair, leaning a little toward Elena. “I was chased by two men with guns.”

  She shook her head quickly, her eyes blinking. “Is that true? Did that happen?”

  “It happened. In Naples. And do you know, Elena, that the day before I was at the antimafia office in Rome, asking about the Camorra?”

  “I did not know.” Her eyes were alarmed.

  “And at the antimafia office, I asked about my father. I also mentioned the fact that he was working on a Camorra case when he was killed.”

  Elena dropped her head in her hands. When she looked back up at me, her eyes were in agony. “Is that true?”

  “It’s true. What is also true is that your family, this family-” I pointed to my chest “-has believed their father to be dead for all these years. It is true that I-” once again I pointed to myself “-will not stop asking about him. I will not stop asking questions. I will never, never stop. So let me ask you a simple question now-Isn’t it, true, Elena, that you do not want your family to be in torment?”

  “No,” she said. “Of course, I do not.”

  “And you do not want your family to be in danger, do you?”

  “No. I do not.”

  “And you do not want your family to live like this anymore, do you?”

  Elena began to cry, or rather, a single tear slipped from her right eye. She acted as if it hadn’t happened. She didn’t move to brush it away.

  “I was thinking about something this morning,” I said. “You didn’t go to his funeral.”

  She didn’t reply. And right then I decided to deviate from cross-examination rules and go for it. “You didn’t attend the funeral, because you knew it wasn’t true. You knew he wasn’t dead. Isn’t that right?”

  She didn’t reply right away. But she did respond-she nodded.

  37

  Americani. You could tell even from this distance.

  He stopped for a moment and watched them. No matter what their looks, their personalities, their age, they all had a certain coltish quality that was easy to spot. Particularly for an Italian, someone forever jaded, whose ancestors had seen so much more than any americano could even imagine.

  He wondered who they were. Strange that she seemed to know them, and yet he had no knowledge of
these people. He moved closer, staying low behind a surrounding circle of shrubs, until he could hear their conversation but was still hidden from view.

  One of them, a woman with pale skin, was questioning her, asking about family members, it sounded like.

  But then she began asking about the System, talking as if she knew something about it, which was strange since most americani knew nothing of the Camorra. That used to bother the System. Now they realized that this lack of knowledge could actually help them. They could operate covertly, until the americani would look around one day and realize not only who the Camorra were, but that they were a strong force, part of the American fabric.

  So, this was strange, this americana speaking to her, her words coming forth quicker.

  He listened, and then he listened some more. When the questions began to get more precise, and the answers continued to stay in the affirmative, he started to frown. Possibilities formed in his mind and were discarded until it began to dawn on him exactly of whom they were speaking.

  He got a feeling he didn’t like at all, a feeling that he had been duped, and by one of his own. Someone he’d thought of as part of himself. He clenched his fists as he listened to the rest.

  Then he heard the americana say, You didn’t attend the funeral because you knew it wasn’t true. You knew he wasn’t dead. He strained in anticipation to hear the response. At first there wasn’t one, but eventually they began to talk and he heard the words, I will take you to him.

  His mind seethed, a fire lit up every portion of his brain and at the same time ignited and destroyed what was left in his heart for her. Unbelievable that he had fallen for this. Unbelievable that she had known all this time. That she had lied to him. To him. He had spared her. He had pleaded her cause when others in the System wanted to destroy her. He was the reason she was living right now, that she was who she was.

  Not for long…

  But no. He caught himself. Retribution and brute force was the old way of the System. It had worked for a long, long while, but now it was backfiring, causing uproar and strengthening the government forces that wanted to eliminate them.