by TG Wolff
The gunman waved us out. He pushed the banker ahead of us. Carlo kept his body between me and the robber as we were marched to the lobby. I pressed three fingers to his back. My count of bad guys. He nodded once. One in the vault, one behind us, one in the lobby.
Sirens poured in and the tension in the bank stretched to the point we could walk on it. Larry, the lobby bank robber, shouted in Italian. The people knelt. They were still visible from the waist up to the collecting police and gawkers.
I wondered what his game was. He was better covered with the people standing. With them kneeling, he was open to a sniper.
Curly, the vault bank robber, stepped into the hallway and yelled. Larry responded by grabbing a man by his hair, pulling him to his feet, and shoving him to the vault.
And so Moe was left alone with Carlo, me, and the banker.
Hello, opportunity? Please, come in.
I grabbed the banker’s arm, praying she caught on quickly. “It’s time?” Damn I wish I spoke Italian. “Carlo! It’s time.” I put my hand on her surprisingly hard stomach. Then someone in there kicked me. “Holy shit!”
The banker picked up her cue. “È ora. Mio bambino. Dios. Dios.”
Carlo snapped his gaze to my hand, his eyes wide. “È ora?” He turned to Moe. ”È ora.”
“No.” Moe stopped on a dime, shook his head. “No.”
The banker sagged against me, wailing with mock (sweet Jesus I hoped she was faking) labor pains. “Si. Il bambino. È ora,” she panted between words.
This rattled Moe. He looked to his partners, his attention away from us. Carlo brought up the fist wrapped around the gun and planted it on Moe’s temple. It took two blows, but Moe went down.
The banker stood on her own two feet and looked down with contempt. A short strain of venomous words that I translated as “fuck you, asshole” was followed with spit that landed in the asshole’s ear.
The civilians shuffled anxiously, not sure what to do. Carlo dragged Moe out of the main aisle. Another employee stepped out of line and opened the maintenance room door.
“Loro stanno arrivando.” A woman hissed.
“They’re coming,” Carlo said softly to me then issued an order to our conspirator.
“Mio bambino,” the banker wailed, her arms wrapped under her extended belly.
Carlo waved his hands like a conductor. Immediately, all the people began shouting about the baby.
More police arrived.
Larry and Curly hurried from the vault as sound rose to the point of deafening. Displeased with the chaos, Curly stalked to us, his gun raised to the ceiling as he barked orders no one could hear.
I stumbled into Curly. At the same time, Carlo grabbed Larry by the sides of his black jacket. We both immobilized the gun hands and then went to the man. I hit Curly where it hurts. Some say it’s cliché for a woman to go for a man’s balls, but I say work smarter, not harder. Achilles had his heel. Curly had his balls.
Well, I had Curly’s balls.
Carlo started with a head butt to the nose. The cartilage folded, spewing blood like a popped water balloon. Larry instinctively covered his nose, Carlo went for the gun. Larry recovered and used his fists. Carlo gave more than he got so Larry ended on the floor, but you see how much faster my approach was? And, I didn’t end up with a bloodied lip.
The relieved crowd applauded. Carlo bowed.
So, it was happily-ever-after time. Except for one thing. Talking to a bunch of cops was not on my to-do list.
I cleared my throat to get Carlo’s attention and tugged on the banker’s sleeve. “We need to go. Now. Ask her if there is a back way out.”
“I speak English, little bit. Come.” The banker led us back to the little room first, snatching a draw string bag along the way. The woman was brilliant. I held, Carlo poured. We emptied the box into the bag without a thought for delicacy, leaving the carcass on the table. “Fast now. This goes to the old basement. Against the wall is a door into the store next door. It is dark.”
Carlo pulled out his smart phone and turned it into a flashlight. “Grazie.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Congratulations on the baby.”
The banker smiled, her hand going to her little honey. “Grazie. Be safe.”
The temperature dropped two degrees for each step down. The scent of raw earth, lingering decay, and dark mold put my remaining senses on alert. The beam of crisp LED light bounced off odds and ends stored and forgotten. Desks and chairs. Framed portraits. Banker’s boxes. It was difficult to see the walls around the crap. Thick, white columns rose in contrast to the dark earth. The vault had to be overhead, the floor reinforced for its weight. There was activity above us now. The muffled sound of boots beating on a wooden floor said the police had entered the building. The stooges would be in custody. Soon, they would be searching for us. The normal people, elated because there will be a tomorrow, will rat us out. Even the banker may have to give us up. That was all right. She did her part.
“Here.” Carlo turned the knob and put his shoulder to the door. “It’s locked.”
“Of course, it is. It opens into a bank. Let me see.”
“I can do it.” Carlo blocked me out. Somebody was sensitive.
“I’m good with locks.” I bodied him up, just for fun.
He didn’t move. “I cut my teeth picking locks. Ha.” The lock sprang open. He put this shoulder to the door again, but it only opened a half inch.
“Do you want me—”
“No.” Carlo went Italian ninja on the door, ripping the latch mounting from the antique door frame. “Let’s go.”
The other side of the door was filled with more crap, just different. “Help me with the table. We’ll block the door.” We couldn’t relock it, but we could stall anyone thinking to follow us.
The steps opened into a small hallway. We had barely closed the basement door when a woman stepped out from an office. She spoke in a chastising flow of words. Carlo held up his hands apologetically, then took my wrist and pulled me into the store filled with an array of hats, purses, belts, and scarves. We hastily selected a hat for Carlo and wrapped my hair in a scarf. The large store bag concealed the one we carried. We slipped onto the street, glancing casually at the commotion. A stretcher was being brought out the door. We turned in the opposite direction and walked away, just like any other shoppers.
A voice raised and then raised louder.
Carlo grabbed my elbow and pulled me around a corner. “Move. Fast.”
We turned one corner, then another. He liberated a set of keys from a young Roman, and we raced away on a Vespa—OJ Simpson style. What’s a Vespa? It’s the little sister of a Harley, a prissy little thing keeping your knees together and whining when you wanted it to go anywhere.
The Vespa wasn’t as much a getaway vehicle as camouflage. There were hundreds of them zipping in and around cars on the streets of Rome. Like antelope on the Savanna, the scooters teased, dared larger (but still small) cars to take a nibble.
My sense of direction in Rome is limited to up and down, pizza and cappuccino, but even that came into question as Carlo took us over the cobbled streets. Pedestrians, dogs, pedestrians with dogs jumped out of our path, cursing us with gestures that translated across languages.
The wee-wah of sirens closed in on the wheeeeeee of the motor. “They’re getting close.”
Carlo nodded then cut around a steep dropping right. The scooter slalomed down a street no bigger than an alley as Carlo pulled his phone from a pocket. He gave an order, pushing the pedal to the metal. The Vespa hummed with the vigor of a hundred enraged bees as we charged down the dead-end street.
One hundred meters (it’s the metric system, suck it up), graffiti blurred.
Fifty meters. Doors and windows were hidden behind corrugated metal.
Twenty-five meters. The Vespa didn’t balk. I dug my fingers into Carlo’s hips, ready to dump us on the street. It wouldn’t be pre
tty. The cobbles would take skin, possibly break bones, but I’d take my chances over blunt force trauma.
Ahead, metal painted black with a white skull and crossbones announced the end of the line.
“Stop, Carlo.” I reached around his torso for the hand brakes.
Carlo pinned my arms and laughed, his voice echoing as darkness consumed us.
Welcome to the Dark Side, We Have Cookies
On a rooftop terrace, among potted lemon trees and flowering vines, we sorted through the twenty pounds liberated from the bank box. Carlo drew the jewelry aside. The watches had familiar names, like Rolex and Shinola. The rings and necklaces tended toward big and chunky. I’d give you ten-to-one those gems weren’t paste. “I know a man who deals in jewelry. He pays top euro,” Carlo said.
I salvaged a dagger from his collection. “I’m keeping this.” Well-balanced, made for a woman’s hand, the tarnished silver handle emphasized the color and texture of the embedded jewels. A wicked blade was hidden beneath the scabbard. The craftsmanship of the knife rivaled some I’d seen in collections. This was nobody’s toy.
Carlo turned over a banded stack of euros and there it was—a small, red, leather book.
I wanted it, oh I wanted it, but Hugo would have written in Italian. First thing I’m going to do when I get home is fucking sign up for Rosetta Stone and learn Italian.
“Can you find Gavriil?” I hung over his shoulder, willing the words to rearrange themselves into something I would understand.
He thumbed through the pages, then stopped abruptly. His index finger with the gnawed off nail pointed to an entry. “He was to be paid fourteen thousand euros. Four up front, ten after. We only found two in the car.”
“What is that there? A name?”
Carlo frowned and called his buddy over. He showed him the scribble.
The mechanic who had opened the graffiti-covered roll-door to avert our premature death studied the entry. “Cristanemo,”
Yeah, it didn’t do anything for me either. “Who is Cristanemo? Is there a last name?”
“It is not a who,” the mechanic said. “It is a what. A flower.”
I fell heavy in my chair. Was it really too much to ask for a blackmailer and killer to just write out the name of his client? What was the need for all this cloak-and-dagger shit? All I needed was a name. Joe Blow. Eric Campbell. Buford Winston. Just give me a name and I’ll get on with my life…and his death.
My phone signaled a text. Ian Black was returning my call. A few swipes of the screen and voilà. “What do you know about flowers?”
“A guy buys them when he fucks up. Is that what you called about?” Twenty minutes later, he was singing a different tune. “What is this, Diamond? A honey-do list?”
“Just get it done, Ian. Her name is Valentina Rossifiori. R-o-s-s-i-f-i-o-r-i.”
“That’s a mouthful. What date do you want on this marriage certificate?”
I picked a date a year before Hugo died, making Valentina “a respectable” woman. The concept was ridiculous, as if a piece of paper could define a woman. Valentina had made herself respectable working her butt off to create a life out of an atrocity.
But appearances mattered. It was my mother’s credo and bile coated my tongue when I thought it, but she was right. Society, like Mommy dearest, put appearance above substance.
With a swipe of Ian’s magic pen, the scales tipped to balanced. A single mother in any country would never have it easy, but I took some pleasure helping her show what real strength was.
“Put me on speaker,” Ian said. “I need to talk to Carlo.”
Carlo had faded to the corner of the small courtyard talking animatedly to his buddy the mechanic.
“Carlo?” I waved him over. “Ian wants to talk to you.”
Carlo jogged fluidly across the open space to lean in close to the phone. “Ciao, uncle.”
“Uncle?” The classically handsome Carlo had as much in common with the very ordinary Ian as the statue of David had with Play-Doh. “You’ve been keeping secrets, Ian.”
Carlo grinned, and I saw it. The family resemblance was in the smart-ass smirk. “He also failed to mention I would be working with the queen of diamonds.”
Ian huffed like a horse, dismissing both of us.
I knew how to get to Ian Black. “If you can’t set the girl up, just say so. I’ll turn the page in my little black book—”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t do it. Jesus, Diamond. Stand down. Carlo, we’re going to need some help getting this marriage certificate filed. Does that priest in Scaperia still owe you a favor?”
“Si. Send me the documents. I will take care of it.”
“Now for the money.” I laid out how the cash would be split. Ian and Carlo were compensated for their troubles. Carlo kept the jewels as a bonus. “I need an account set up for Dixon, seed it with ten thousand. Carlo, you’ll take care of Valentina?”
“Consider it done.”
“Get her hooked up with Mama Franzetti. She’ll spoil the hell out of the little girl and tell Valentina to get the roof fixed.”
Carlo nodded. “Sooner or later, Hugo has to be discovered. It would help with the social benefits.”
For a fraction of a second, I almost regretted spray painting Hugo with bullets. Almost. “Take care of it yourself. I’ll kick in an extra ten k. I need to get home.”
I lost a day. How? Well, it went something like this….“Struck by lightning. Seriously?”
The Italian booking assistant with a perfectly made-up face looked put out on my behalf. “These things happen, signora. The plane has to be completely inspected and tested before your flight can leave. Two hours. Maybe more, maybe less. Your connection is the problem.”
God damned me. Again. First Hugo. Now lightning. It’s like she was purposely trying to stop me from solving Gavriil’s murder. Well fuck that.
“Rebook me.”
“Just a moment, signora.” Polished nails clicked across the keyboard. “Roma to Atlanta—no, scusi, is full. Okay, here is another Roma to Venice to Amsterdam to Minneapolis to Baltimore.”
“You don’t have one that goes Rome to Atlanta to London to New York?”
Her plucked brows furrowed. “No, signora. That would not make sense.”
“It makes as much sense as sending me to Minneapolis to get to Baltimore.”
The passion pink lips puckered, ignoring my suggestion. “Your arrival would be twenty-three fifty-five, local time.”
With the six-hour time difference between Rome and Eastern daylight time, I would be getting home twenty-three hours after I left the hotel this morning…and it would still be today.
“If you are willing to do an overnight layover—”
“No. Book me through Minneapolis.”
“Si, signora. It will just take a moment.”
“You betcha.”
By the time the taxi dropped me in front of my building, my ass had rug burn from being dragged through five miles of airport terminals. After endless hours of purified, reconstituted, dehumidified air, my eyelids were sandpaper rubbing over eggshells. I stepped into the glowing light of the entryway and raised an arm for protection from the light, hissing like a vampire from an old black-and-white movie. Inside my apartment, the night was dark, the air refreshingly humid and Five Finger Death Punch beat on the walls. “What the hell?”
Most of this building was occupied by seniors. By choice. The bass thumbing on my frontal lobe belonged to someone who didn’t belong here. I stalked through my apartment. Empty as expected. Slamming the door open in the kitchen, I stalked through the rooms of my office. Nobody, just lots heavy guitar. Where was it coming from?
The loudest noise was in the hallway connecting my apartment and my office. The sound ramped up a few decibels when I opened the rear door. The apartment sharing the back landing—correction: the VACANT apartment sharing the back landing—was lit up like a Christmas tree and thump
ed like a nest of rabbits.
“Where’s my gun. I’m going to shoot the stereo, and then I’m going to shoot the dumbass playing it.” I reversed course, aiming for my kitchen and the “utensils” drawer.
“Diamond!” Andrew Dixon stood on the black-iron porch in bare feet, sweatpants, and a t-shirt that was an homage to the noise beating on my head. A wide, goofy smile filled his face as he bounced from one foot to the other. “You’re home.”
“I am. What are you doing here? I thought you said you found a place.”
“I did. Here.” He pointed to the lit window.
“That’s my place.”
“Well, yeah, but, you know, you weren’t using it and I needed a place, and this was close to your place so, well…yeah.”
The cabin pressure in my head dropped suddenly. “Did it ever occur to you I wanted it empty?”
Long pause. “Why would you want it empty?” Shorter pause. “You want to see what I’ve done?” Dix had those expectant puppy-dog eyes and if he had a tail, it would have been going like a propeller.
Shit. Why couldn’t I be a cat person?
My head dropped in exhaustion. Giving in would get me to bed sooner than arguing. “Fine. Let’s see what you did. Turn the music down. It’s been a long ass day.” The apartments on the short side of the building had a bedroom, kitchen, bath, and an everything-else room. Dix furnished the space with an assortment of furniture. “Where did you get all this? Is that my kitchen chair?”
“I was just borrowin’ it, ’til you got back. Here.” He handed me the chair.
I shook my head and walked on. The living room was set with the computer equipment we had salvaged from his father’s house. Under the front window was a battered desk I’d seen before.
“Did you go back to your dad’s house?”
“Just to get a few things. He was at work and didn’t see me.”
He’d done alright, making a home out of odds and ends. I turned to find him standing in the middle of it, shifting his weight side-to-side as though he was going to get graded on the result. Something in his face reminded me of Valentina and the home she’d carved out for herself. “This is nice, Dix. This is nice.”
