Red, White & Dead

by Laura Caldwell

  Elena threw a glance over her shoulder at me. Her expression seemed to say, Hurry or I’ll change my mind.

  At a corner of the Trevi’s piazza, I followed Elena to the right, into a narrow, jaggedly shaped street. A bookstore was on a corner. Elena turned left in front of it, then right, then left, weaving away from the fountain, the sounds of its crowds and splashing water receding quickly.

  Suddenly, Elena stopped at a wood door. Many of the doors in Rome are works of art-some are tiny, others three stories tall and arched at the top. They might be made of hammered metal or studded with iron posts or boasting handles the size of a globe and shaped like a lion’s head. Some were painted faded red, others a vibrant green. They might be trimmed with marble or decorated with brass finishings. But this door was boring in contrast to the usual lot. It was the same size as the doors at home, rectangular, nondescript-made of wood that was clearly thick and solid, with fist-sized circles carved at the four corners.

  Elena reached up and pressed the top right circle. The seemingly solid wood depressed, then just as quickly regained its shape, so that nothing about the door appeared different.

  There was a clicking sound. Elena looked over her shoulder, past me, her eyes darting up and down the street, then she pressed the door with the flat of her hand and it swung inward.

  She gestured at me to follow her. We stepped into a foyer, cold and dark, made of white marble with streaks of gray. The only light in the small space came from two iron sconces high on either side wall. There was nothing else in the foyer-not a piece of art on the walls, not a chair or a hall table. Elena took a few steps toward the other end. I did the same and stood behind her. It was so quiet that I began to notice the pulse in my ears, the beat of my heart. Both sounded like drums, thudding slowly, then faster and louder, faster and louder.

  I watched as Elena reached out and touched the marble wall, sliding aside what was apparently a small panel. A keypad was behind it. She punched in a few numbers and then letters with an elegant finger, not bothering to hide them from me. The letters I recognized-V-I-C-T-O-R-I-A.

  “My mother’s name,” I said.

  Elena nodded.

  “And what were the numbers?”

  “ 0618.”

  I thought about it for a second. “June 18. The day they got married.”

  Elena nodded. “It changes frequently, but yes, that’s correct.” She slid the panel shut.

  I noticed, right then, that I was trembling a little. I tried to calm myself, tried not to think any thoughts at all, because, if I did, they would only be a battalion of warring questions-What am I doing? Where are we going? Where is my father?

  But the questions broke through anyway, muddling my mind, the whole experience reeling with the surreal.

  I looked at Elena. Her mouth was grim, her eyes worried. She seemed to see me studying her, and she gave me a smile that broke the tension in her face. But then just as quick it was gone.

  A whirring sound, and suddenly the back wall of the foyer began to move. It was a pocket door of sorts, I realized. I stared in awe at the space behind it. Would my father be standing there? What would he look like? Would I want to hug him? Or would I want to slug him for disappearing on us? Or would it be something else altogether-would I feel nothing upon seeing a man who was, after all, just a stranger now?

  43

  But there was no one there. Beyond the marble foyer was a metal gangplank that spanned a vast subterranean space of light brown crumbling brick. A few sconces illuminated the place, casting circles of golden light around them and eerie shadows below.

  Elena gestured. “These are archeological ruins of the ancient aqueducts. We find them whenever we dig in this city.”

  Who, I wondered, was the “we” she was referring to? The government? She and my father?

  Before I could ask, Elena made her way across the gangplank, then down a set of metal stairs. When we reached the bottom, there was another gangplank, which Elena crossed immediately. I followed her but she was moving fast again, and I couldn’t keep up with her. The anticipation and the uneven gangway made me feel off-kilter and shaky.

  I began to feel paranoid. “Elena, where are we going?” I was following my aunt to…where? She’d said she would take me to my father, but what did that mean?

  “He keeps an office here,” she said. “When he first left the United States, he needed to hide himself, but he still wanted to continue his mission, to work to shut down the Camorra.”

  After a few more gangplanks and stairs we came to a thick iron door with a simple round knocker. Elena looked at me, that worried expression taking over her face. I sensed a change in her energy, an anticipation that was suddenly greater than mine. She gave me a little smile and a raise of her eyebrows that seemed to say, Here we go.

  The blood pounded in my ears, taking over my head, so that I felt a sudden intense headache. I was, I realized, holding my breath. I made myself breathe.

  Elena raised her hand toward the knocker on the door.

  And then suddenly, I was overtaken by a force of emotion-dread. A terrifying dread that was so strong, I literally felt as if it would kill me. My throat began to close, a feeling I’d never had before. And then I felt something cool on my forehead. I raised my hand and touched it. Sweat. My face was coated with it. My body temperature had soared. I felt my face flush deeply. God bless it, I thought, then Goddamn it. I knew what was happening-I was suffering a flop sweat attack.

  Occasionally, when I got supernervous, like at the beginning of a trial, I experienced what can only be described as extreme perspiration. This little problem of mine was mortifying. It felt as if someone dropped burning charcoals into my stomach and then threw some gasoline on them. And then a truck full of lumber. The waterworks in my body would kick into gear, and my face would get as red as the fire inside me. The last time it had happened was months before when I was about to go on air as an anchor for Trial TV. The only thing that had stopped it was some emergency Benadryl. I had no Benadryl on me now.

  “I can’t,” I choked out to Aunt Elena before she could knock. “I can’t do this right now. I need some air. Just for a minute.” If I didn’t try and stop it, it would get worse and I didn’t want to meet my father in this state, sweating like a bull and glowing like a lit Christmas tree.

  “Maybe this is too much,” Elena said, a frown on her face.

  “No, no. It’s just that it’s too much for the moment. I just need a few minutes. Can we go up, please? Please?”

  Elena paused, inhaled sharply.

  I didn’t want to lose her, to lose this opportunity. “Just a few minutes,” I said again.

  She gave a terse nod.

  We retraced our steps. When we arrived back at the foyer, the place seemed too tiny, the walls felt as if they were shrinking into themselves. Elena said nothing but led me outside. We walked a few blocks away, and finally I stopped and leaned against a mustard stucco wall, sucking in air, fanning my face with my hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I have this little problem that happens sometimes. But I’m fine. Really. I’m having a hard time making my brain process this. Do you understand?”

  “Certo,” she said. Certainly.

  “Does he know we’re coming?”

  She studied me for a second, then said simply, “Sí.”

  For some reason, that stopped the sweating. “Is he okay with that?”

  A small smile. “Yes, cara. He is more than okay with that.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the stucco wall, my breath coming easier, the color draining from my face. My father knew I was here.

  I took a breath and looked down the street at an ancient stone archway leading to a garden. It could have been thousands of years old. That archway had likely been standing there during wars and strife and the marching past of a hundred generations. Likely it had seen much more overwhelming and even gruesome and troubling sights than a redhead American who was r
ecovering from a flop sweat attack and about to meet her father for the first time in over twenty years.

  Get your act together, Izzy.

  He knew I was coming to meet him. He was okay with that. And right then, I was, too.

  I raised my head and looked at Elena. I bent down and dabbed my forehead with the skirt of my dress, then I threw my shoulders back.

  “You are ready now?” she asked.

  “I am.” And I meant it.

  44

  We retraced our steps until we were down inside the aqueducts, across the gangplanks and outside the door. Elena knocked. Nothing happened. She knocked again. Her eyebrows knitted together. She looked down at her watch, then took hold of the knocker and rapped once more. Still nothing.

  “Should we call someone?” I asked. Like my father?

  She shook her head. “There is no service down here.”

  “Of course. I should have thought of that.”

  Finally, Elena shrugged. “I usually don’t just go in…” she said, her voice trailing off.

  Elena grasped the knocker and turned it to the right. The door clicked and popped open just a little-not enough to see what lay behind it.

  Elena gestured at the door, then nodded at me. “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Go ahead,” I repeated inanely. This was the moment I’d been fantasizing about since that night in Chicago when the man in the garage saved me, when I’d heard those words, You’re okay now, Boo.

  “Okay,” I said, remembering.

  My aunt stepped aside, and I pushed the door. It was made of heavy iron but it glided smoothly.

  Behind the door was an office, a dark, wooden desk in the center, bookshelves along the wall to my left. I scanned them quickly, seeing a hodgepodge collection-psychology texts, books on the Mafia, current thrillers, tall leather tomes that looked like ledgers.

  But there was no one in the room. I was about to turn to Elena when a book caught my eye. I took a few steps and touched the spine. Poems & Prayers for the Very Young, a copy of the book my father used to read to me.

  I closed my eyes, and I could hear his voice: I wake in the morning early; And always, the very first thing; I poke up my head and I sit up in bed; and I sing and I sing and I sing.

  When my father read that book to me in bed-Close your eyes, Boo, and just listen-I understood it. And yet when he was gone, the poem seemed to be about some other girl. I couldn’t imagine that I would want to wake up and sing ever again. For a long time, I didn’t even want to wake up.

  I opened my eyes now. I was about to say something to Elena, but something beyond her caught my attention.

  That’s when I saw the blood.

  45

  On the other side of the room, a red couch was pushed against the wall. Except that one side of the couch had been pulled away, and behind it…I peered closer, took a step closer…

  Elena swung around and gasped.

  He was lying on the floor beside the couch, one arm draped over his face as if he’d raised it to wipe sweat from his brow, just like I had, and had been stopped midges-ture. His face was splotched with blood. He wore a brown linen blazer, cream slacks that were spattered red, and a blue shirt. And in the center of that shirt was a hole, black on the sides, crimson from where blood had recently coursed from another wound.

  I took another step. “Oh my God, someone shot him.”

  “Wait!” Elena moved toward me. Her steps were slow, cautious. When she reached him, she took a hold of the hand that rested near his body. She grasped the wrist, obviously looking for a pulse.

  She stood and a strangled sound came from her. I stared at her, my brain reeling. Her mouth was open, her eyes horrified. A cry escaped her mouth, sounding like a distant note, a long “O” that didn’t stop.

  “Elena!” I said.

  She snapped her head to mine, seemed to realize I was there. She looked at the body again, then her head swiveled around; her eyes careened about the place.

  “Andiamo!” she said. “We must go!”

  She grabbed my arm and propelled me through the office and into the hallway.

  “No, wait,” I said. “We can’t leave him.” I tried to push around her and back into the office, but she gripped my arms and tugged at them.

  “Isabel,” she said, her voice like a slap. “We are going.”

  “What if he’s alive? We have to help him.”

  “He is not alive.” Another strangled sound came from her throat. “We must go. Now. We must run, Isabel.”

  We raced through the aqueducts and over the gangplank, then up the stairs, away from the sight of my father cloaked in blood.

  “This way!” Elena yelled, grabbing my arm again when I tried to run down a gangplank. “That’s the wrong way.”

  I tried to catch my breath. I made sure to stay close behind her.

  Finally we reached the front door, and Elena threw it open, the fading sunlight of Rome sneaking inside the marble foyer.

  She drew me outside and down a block before she turned to me. “You’ve got to leave me.”

  “What happened down there? Who did that to him?”

  Elena shook her head fast, so fast that her perfect chestnut hair ruffled, and she squeezed her bown eyes closed. “You must get away from me. I bring nothing but tragedy. You must leave before something happens to you.”

  And with that, Elena turned and ran.

  I tried to follow her, but my mind couldn’t catch up with my feet. My mind kept seeing that blood pooling, running in rivulets across the ancient floor. I shook my head to try and dispel the images, but they wouldn’t go away. I stumbled over the cobblestones, falling on one knee. I stood, couldn’t get myself to run. I took a few halting steps in one direction, then another. I had no idea what to do. I had no idea what just happened. In the distance, I heard the splashing of the Trevi.

  Run, Iz. Let’s go!

  Finally, I got my head to connect with my body and I ran in the direction of the noise. At least there would be people there.

  Once I reached the piazza, I stopped at the sight of the huge white fountain, of the water, clean and light blue, splashing almost gaily. It all seemed an insult to my father. I turned and dodged up a small alley, not knowing where I was running. Rome, if you don’t pay attention, will lead you in nothing but circles, and soon I was lost. And yet it seemed fitting, since my search for my father had led me in nothing but a circle. He’d been dead when I started, and he was dead now.

  46

  “Call her again,” Maggie said.

  We sat across from each other on the hotel beds, both of us wide-eyed, our skin white with fear.

  I hit Redial again for Aunt Elena’s number, let it ring, then hung up. I shook my head. “She’s still not answering.”

  I’d finally found via Giulia. By that time, it was night. When I’d gotten to the room, Maggie was curled up against the headboard, talking to Bernard on the phone.

  She was laughing at something, her tiny giggle filling the room. When she saw me, she said, “Oh my gosh, she’s back.” She threw back the covers and knelt on the bed. She was wearing a pale green nightie that made her look like a little girl. “How did it go, Iz?”

  When I didn’t answer, her eyes swept my face. “Call you back,” she said to Bernard.

  Maggie had gotten dressed by now in a pair of cuffed jeans and a T-shirt that read Chicago Fire Department. “This is scary,” she said. “This is awful. Who killed him?”

  “Maybe he shot himself? Is that possible?” I wanted to cry. I felt so bad for the father I didn’t know. “Maybe the Camorra killed him. Maybe they found out he was still alive. Or maybe he had done something so awful he couldn’t live with himself. Maybe he was still with the Camorra, like really with them.”

  “But if he was still Camorra, he would have to be a ruthless guy, so why kill himself?” Maggie stared up at the ceiling, as if willing answers from the heavens. “Unless maybe he knew you were here…”

  “Why w
ould that matter?”

  She looked back at me and seemed to hesitate, as if considering whether to speak. “Well, if he knew you were here, and he knew you learned that he had been in the Camorra, and he was still in it, still a bad guy, and he thought you were going to find out, maybe it gave him an attack of conscience.”

  “So it would be my fault?”

  “I’m not saying that. I’m just throwing out a possibility.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t be irritated at Maggie. I needed the truth now, and only that. “Well, here’s another question-shouldn’t we tell the police?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Because, Iz, it seems like anytime you’ve told someone something, scary stuff happens. I mean, you asked questions at the antimafia office, and next thing you know we’re in Naples getting chased by those guys with guns. You asked Elena questions, and she told you your father was alive, and now he’s…he’s dead.”

  I winced.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry to just say it like that, but I have to be your lawyer here, too, and I just don’t know who you should trust. I don’t know who we should talk to.”

  I looked down at my hands, crossed on my lap. “I have to tell someone. Or I have to do something.” I raised my head again and looked at Maggie.

  Her face was creased in concentration. “Here’s the thing. But what if the cops think you were involved somehow? In Italy, if they suspect you of a crime, they can hold you for up to a year without charging you.”

  “If he killed himself, there’s no crime. So why would they charge me?”

  “What if he didn’t kill himself? What if someone else did, or if they think it wasn’t self-inflicted for some reason? You’re the one who found him. If they suspect you for a second, it’s your word against…I don’t know whose, but it won’t look good.” She shrugged. “Think about that college student who was arrested in Italy. Her roommate was killed, she found the body, and then they charged her with murder. There’s also the issue of this legal system. Aside from stories like that, I don’t know the Italian system. I couldn’t represent you. I wouldn’t even know who to call to do that.”