His Name Is John

by Dorien Grey

  I don’t want Marie to see that photo.

  She won’t have to see it. The DNA test will prove you’re John Collina.

  I hope so. But…I feel something’s wrong.

  What do you mean?

  I don’t know. But I feel it.

  Don’t worry. DNA doesn’t lie.

  No, but it doesn’t always tell the truth, either.

  What is that supposed to mean?

  I don’t know, but something’s wrong.

  * * *

  There were times, Elliott thought as he had his coffee Tuesday morning, that John’s tendency to be cryptic could be really frustrating. He had no idea what John had been referring to, but knew whatever it was would make itself clear eventually, and determined not to waste any time worrying about it—which he nevertheless found easier said than done.

  He was eager to have his crew go through the four-flat so that, barring any unforeseen problems, he could get into escrow. Ted, Sam and Arnie had been keeping fairly busy with their own projects and minor upkeep on Elliott’s other buildings, but Elliott himself wouldn’t be happy until they could get in and get to work. Once they had gone through the building carefully and had a better idea of just what they’d be doing, he could at least begin the detail work: finalizing the sketches, deciding on the materials, fixtures, appliances they’d need, making the rounds of the various hardware depots. It all took a lot of time, and he loved it.

  Despite his impatience to get back to work, he realized that things were going very well in his life, although there were some major unresolved issues. He wasn’t quite sure where he and Steve might be headed, but he was comfortable for the moment with just going where the currents would take him. And he had no idea what would become of John once his identity was definitely established. He assumed that once all the issues that had kept John from moving on to wherever it was spirits go had been resolved, he would…well, move on.

  Still, Elliott was again a little surprised to realize that, in some strange way, he’d miss having John around. They’d been friends once, when John was alive, and he couldn’t help but feel that friendship still spanned their two worlds. That they had found one another after so many years—let alone how, and why—raised thoughts far more profound than he had the ability or desire to pursue.

  Once again, this reverie was interrupted by the telephone. John was instantly with him.

  “Elliott, it’s Brad. I don’t know exactly how to tell you this, but we’re back to square one…again.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, but he was afraid he knew.

  “I mean that I just got the DNA report back on Al Collina. It doesn’t match our John Doe.”

  “But it has to!” Elliott heard himself saying, realizing even as he said it how stupid it sounded. “Al and Johnny had different mothers, but the same father. Surely that would show.”

  “It would if they were related. But they’re not. Face it, Elliott, I don’t know who our John Doe is, but he’s not a Collina.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Sorry, Elliott,” Brad continued. “I know how strongly you feel about this, but DNA doesn’t lie. Al Collina is sticking to his story that his brother died in Africa eight years ago. He claims he’d never seen the guy in the photo before in his life, but I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I can throw him. I’m going to take the photo over to show it to Sister Marie. We’ll see what she has to say. Maybe that will give us an idea of where to look next.”

  Elliott felt a surge of what he interpreted as sorrow and frustration. He knew John didn’t want his sister to see him dead, but there was no choice.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me know what she says, will you?”

  “You know I will,” Brad said, patiently. “Later.”

  Elliott managed a “good-bye” and hung up.

  Going to the kitchen for another cup of coffee, he tried to make some sense of what Brad had just told him. He wandered into the guest bedroom and opened the closet, taking down a box of memorabilia from his childhood. Rummaging through it, he found the framed photo of himself with Johnny leaning against one another, grinning, his arm over Johnny’s shoulder. Carrying it into the den, he got the manila envelope with John’s post-mortem photo and compared the two. There was no denying a strong resemblance, though he still couldn’t be positive.

  Looking again at the photo of the two of them, he remembered how he had been struck by how much Johnny resembled the picture he had once seen of a teenage Vittorio. There was no doubt in his mind that Johnny was Vittorio’s son. He couldn’t comprehend how Al’s DNA couldn’t match John’s.

  Unless, of course, he realized in a thunderbolt of thought, unless it was Al who wasn’t a Collina! Vittorio had adopted Marie; perhaps Al was also adopted!

  But from what little he knew of Vittorio, he found that idea hard to imagine: Vittorio was a stereotypically old-country macho Sicilian. He might be willing to adopt the daughter of one of his close friends—by his code, Marie was, technically family, and it would be totally in character for him to take on familial responsibility. But to adopt another man’s son unless he already had one of his own? And a nonrelative? After being married only a couple of years? It was all but inconceivable that Vittorio’s macho pride would allow him to even consider it.

  And obviously it wasn’t a matter that he wasn’t able to have children—Johnny was born four years after Vittorio married Sophia.

  Shaking his head, he finished his coffee and headed for the shower.

  * * *

  The walk-through of the Elmdale building and going for coffee afterwards with his crew took most of the afternoon. All agreed that the project would be relatively simple, but that the improvements would increase the building’s value substantially, and Elliott said he’d call the owners and go into escrow as soon as possible. They had only been waiting for the sale to be official before finalizing their condo purchase. Again, he would be able to offer the remaining tenants the option to move into one of his other buildings rather than merely handing them eviction notices, which he always hated to do.

  As usual, while he was able to keep busy with work details, John seemed content to remain on the far periphery of his mind; but once in his car on the way home, he could feel John’s sense of anticipation—mixed, he realized, with his own—of Brad’s report of his meeting with Marie Collina—Sister Marie.

  On his way from the parking garage to his condo his cell phone rang and he hastily removed it from his pocket.

  “Elliott,” he said. He almost never answered either of his phones with “hello.”

  “I’m just on my way home from St. Agnes,” Brad announced. “I met with Sister Marie right after school.”

  “And?”

  “After being devastated by the idea that her brother John might not have died eight years ago in Africa, you mean? Yeah, she was pretty sure that Doe’s photo is him.”

  “Only pretty sure?”

  “Well, with the bruising and the fact that she hadn’t seen him in nearly nine years and that she’d never known him to wear any kind of beard or really short hair—as I said, she took it really hard.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “We’ll do a check on birth certificates,” he said. “Since Sister Marie was adopted, there’s an outside chance that maybe she wasn’t the only one. We should be able to tell when we see the birth certificates.”

  Rather than going through the lobby and trying to talk on the elevator on his way to his unit, Elliott walked outside to stand beneath the building’s canopy. He told Brad about John’s physical resemblance to Vittorio, and his belief that Vittorio Collina would not have adopted a son at that particular point in his life.

  “So something has to be wrong somewhere,” he added.

  “Yeah,” Brad agreed. “But obviously one of them was not Vittorio’s son. Let’s see what the birth certificates tell us.”

  * * *

  Marie knows.

  Know what?

 
The truth. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she knows.

  What truth?

  She’s too good.

  Too good? I don’t understand.

  She refuses to see the bad in people.

  Are you talking about Al?

  He is not a good person.

  She knows something about Al?

  Yes.

  Something about Al and you?

  No. About him and…

  Even in sleep, Elliott was more than mildly frustrated by feeling he was constantly playing Twenty Questions with John, and had to drag information from him.

  That’s not fair. I tell you what I can. There’s just so much I don’t know yet.

  Oh, great! You’re reading my thoughts!

  I’m not reading them. When you’re asleep, your mind is wide open. Your thoughts are everywhere. They’re hard to avoid. But this is all still so…confusing.

  Yeah, I guess it is. But you say Marie knows something about Al and somebody else. Who?

  About…my father.

  Does she know whether or not Al is your real brother? Whether he’s your father’s son?

  No. I’m sure she doesn’t know that. I never knew that. I still don’t know if that’s true. These things just…come to me, and I tell you when they do. All I know is that she knows something bad, and she’s too good to recognize it.

  Elliott awoke in the morning still thinking of what it was that Marie might know, or how to find out. Shortly after nine, he received a call from his lawyer, telling him that Al’s attorneys had notified him Collina was filing suit for the damage done to Collina’s property as a result of the explosion.

  “Damages? What an asshole!” Elliott exclaimed. “He was tearing the place down anyway!”

  “Yes, but he claims the process was made much more expensive because of the dangers created for the demolition crews by the fire damage. However, he says he may be willing to reconsider the suit if you will sell him the property.”

  “Gee, what a surprise! Tell them to take their offer and shove it.”

  “I figured that would be your response, but had to pass it by you first.”

  “Of course. And thanks. I’m sure you’ll let me know if he follows through on it.”

  “I will, but I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it if I were you.”

  * * *

  Though he talked to Cessy Thursday afternoon, he didn’t hear from Brad until early Friday evening.

  “We checked the birth certificates for both John and Al Collina,” Brad said when he called. “They both show Vittorio Collina as the father. John’s certificate shows Sophia Rose Collina as the mother. But Al’s mother was apparently not the woman Vittorio Collina was married to at the time.”

  “Interesting! Who was she?”

  “The name on the certificate is Celeste Anna Brusco. No idea who she is or was, but there are a couple interesting possibilities. Vittorio was a notorious womanizer—he might very well have gotten one of his mistresses pregnant then took the kid from her. Or maybe his first wife couldn’t have kids and this was Vittorio’s way of getting a son. But just because a man’s name appears on a birth certificate doesn’t guarantee he’s the father. Since one of the boys isn’t Vittorio’s biological son, I can make a pretty sure bet which one that would be.”

  “Al.”

  “Al,” Brad echoed. “From what I know of Sophia Collina, she was a real class act compared to her husband, and I just can’t imagine that she might have played around on him. I think we’ll have another talk with Al to see if we can get anything out of him. Even if we can’t, it’ll be nice to give him something to think about. I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet that Vittorio never knew he might not be Al’s real father. And I’m also going to check with Chet Green, our unofficial gang historian, to see if he might know anything about what Vittorio might have been up to around the time Al was born.”

  * * *

  He’d originally intended to get together with Steve Friday night, but Steve called just after he’d talked to Brad, saying he had to work late to meet a deadline for an important client, so they rescheduled for Saturday. Elliott spent the night just taking it easy. Idly flipping the TV remote just before the ten o’clock news, he saw that San Francisco was on one of the movie channels. It was one of his all-time favorite movies, and even though he’d seen it a dozen times or more, he couldn’t resist watching Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Jeannette MacDonald stumble through the greatest earthquake scenes ever filmed.

  It was just before midnight by the time he went to bed, and he had barely closed his eyes when:

  We’re close.

  Close to what?

  To the end. To having it all come together.

  How do you know?

  I feel it! When I first came to you, I didn’t know anything but my name. It was like having a thousand jigsaw puzzle pieces, all face down, and no picture on the box to be able to compare them to. And then slowly the pieces started to turn over, and fit together. So many pieces. But they’re turning over faster now, and I’m beginning to see whole chunks of the puzzle and pretty soon I know I’ll be able to see it all and I’ll be free. I feel it!

  Do you realize that’s the most you have ever said at one time?

  Yes. I’m more…me…now. I like it.

  Elliott wanted to continue the conversation, but the mind static moved in, and he couldn’t resist it.

  * * *

  Steve called at around ten o’clock Saturday morning to announce that the paintings his folks had sent from California had arrived, and invited Elliott over for dinner to see them and celebrate. Elliott was definitely in a celebrating mood. He sensed from his conversation with John of the night before, that things were indeed beginning to move rapidly to a conclusion. What that conclusion might be, he had no idea, but he tried to convince himself that it wasn’t the destination that mattered so much as the journey.

  He stopped on the way over to Steve’s to pick up a bottle of champagne.

  Steve, too, was in a celebratory mood, and from the smells coming from the kitchen, had apparently spent a lot of effort on preparing dinner. The table was set for two, with fresh flowers in a crystal bowl in the center.

  “Too much?” Steve asked as he returned from putting the champagne on ice and saw Elliott taking it all in.

  Elliott grinned. “Not at all! I’m just impressed that you went to all the trouble.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who brought the champagne.”

  He had also noticed three or four large flat cartons of varying sizes leaning against the wall on one side of the door.

  “Let’s get a drink first, then we’ll do the unveiling. What would you like?”

  “Bourbon-Seven’s fine.”

  He followed Steve back into the kitchen where the champagne was cooling in a burled-wood ice bucket. They small-talked while Steve fixed their drinks, made a quick check of the oven then led him back to the living room.

  “I figured I’d wait till you got here to open them up,” Steve said, setting his drink on a bookcase beside the cartons and retrieving a utility knife from his pocket. Getting down on one knee, he carefully slit the tape sealing the first carton. He cautiously reached in and removed the first bubble-wrapped painting from between layers of protective cardboard.

  “Ah,” he said holding the picture by the edges of the frame so Elliott could see it: “Manny! I don’t do many portraits, but I always liked this one.”

  The picture was a head-and-bare-shoulders study of a handsome young man, his head turned slightly to one side, looking out of the frame. There was something almost beatific in his calm expression.

  “We’d just found out he was positive,” Steve said, and for a moment his own face reflected a sadness that touched Elliott. As if catching himself, Steve’s normal expression returned.

  “It’s beautiful,” Elliott said. “He looks a lot like you.”

  Steve smiled. “Thanks, but Manny’s the good-looking one in the family.”<
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  He carefully replaced the bubble-wrap and slid the picture back into the carton, moving it in front of the bookcase.

  There were six in all—three landscapes, a still life of a rocking chair in front of a partially opened door, a full-length portrait of a smiling young girl, arms raised toward a brightly colored beach ball partly out of the frame above her head, and Manny’s.

  “You’re not going to sell Manny’s portrait, are you?” he asked.

  “I don’t really want to,” Steve replied. “Hell, I don’t want to part with any of them—it’s like selling a kid. But I did a similar one of him and gave it to him, so this is kind of a spare and any money I make as a result of the gallery showing will be going into a special fund for…in case Manny ever needs it.”

  Touched by Steve’s obvious love for his brother, but not wanting to pursue that particular line of conversation further, Elliott changed the subject.

  “I don’t mean to be nosy,” he said as Steve put the last of the paintings back into its container and the two men moved to the sofa to finish their drinks, “but who sets the price on the paintings, the artist or the gallery?”

  Steve shrugged. “It’s sort of a collaboration. I told the gallery what I’d like to get for each one, and they thought I could get a lot more. So we mostly went with their recommendations.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll do very well. You’ve got real talent.”

  Steve grinned. “You wouldn’t be slightly prejudiced, would you?”

  Elliott returned the grin. “Of course I would. But I’m serious—I really envy you!”

  Finishing his drink, Steve reached over and laid a hand on Elliott’s thigh. “And on that note,” he said, “I think we should see about dinner.”

  * * *

  Maybe Cessy was right, he thought as he pulled into the garage late Sunday night from Steve’s. Maybe he should seriously consider settling down, and being with Steve certainly didn’t discourage that idea. But not just yet. Neither he nor, from what he could gather, Steve was in any hurry.

  He always remembered what a friend had told him some time before: “The sooner they say ‘I love you,’ the sooner they forget your name.” He didn’t want to forget Steve’s name, or Steve to forget his, and they really hadn’t known one another long enough to know for sure if what he was sure they were mutually experiencing might not just be, as the song said, “too hot not to cool down.” Hot, he readily admitted, it certainly was. But he realized, too, that beneath the testosterone, he really liked the guy.