by April Smith
“Can’t tell you.”
“What do you mean, you can’t tell me?”
“The Italian police got ahold of him. We were in position in the hide site, back up in the woods off the turnoff. At first light an unmarked car shows up, two plainclothes detectives get out. They busted through the iron fence and went on down the road that leads to the campsite. We figured our job was done. They were onto our man.”
“They got there fast. I’m impressed. It was one in the morning by the time I spoke to the FBI legat in Rome. He must have gotten right to the Commissario. How did they get through the fence?”
“Bolt cutters.”
I nod approvingly. “They came prepared. Did they take Falassi into custody?”
“Must have, because there’s only one way in and one way out.”
“You didn’t stay to make sure? You didn’t wait until you saw them bring him out in handcuffs and put him in the car?”
“Why risk getting made? By then it was full daylight.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. No, ma’am.” He takes my hand and kneads my knuckles, an overly bright expression in his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“You were supposed to stake out the witness.”
“Babe, we did. We were there all night. You said we’d have to turn the evidence over to the Italian cops eventually. They were on it, so we took the opportunity to jack it out of there.”
I relent. “Okay.” My fingers yield in his. “Well, we had a hell of a morning.” I detail the confrontation between Nicosa and the Commissario. “He was about to arrest Nicosa for murder right there.”
“On what evidence?”
“Blood rivalry?”
“That ain’t gonna fly.”
“I guess the police are counting on what they find,” I say. “In the vat.”
My voice falters at the memory, and then it is as if I am right back on the platform, staring down at the unbearable pink human stew. Sterling feels it and his grip tightens. He pulls me toward his chest, a disquieting tremble in his arms. We cling together, my silent tears staining his shirt, but somehow it isn’t me he’s holding on to; his face is turned away, as if he’s listening to something I can’t hear.
“God have mercy,” he whispers.
We step apart. I brush at my eyes. “Until proven otherwise, we have to keep going. We need to talk to that girl, Zabrina. See what she knows about Giovanni’s drug contacts.”
“Screw that,” Sterling says. “It’s not about Zabrina, it’s the fact that nobody in your family knows what the other one’s up to. Time to clue them in.”
“Meaning what?”
“Where is Giovanni?”
“In church with his dad.” I indicate the chapel on the property.
“Perfect.”
I hurry after him. “Shouldn’t we wait until he’s stronger?”
“If he can go to school with his friends, he can answer a goddamn question.”
The doors to the small abbey church are open. Peering inside is like looking at the world through a candle flame. The interior is suffused with a sensuous orange glow, warming the walls of pockmarked stone, laying a gloss over a floor of centuries-old aqua tile. Above the altar there is nothing but a simple wooden crucifix. Cecilia’s touch is evident: the pews have been replaced by chairs slipcovered in peach damask and tied in back with bows, like dresses on rows of obedient churchwomen.
When we step inside, Nicosa and Giovanni are receiving communion from the Oca priest with the wire-rimmed glasses and dark hair. Otherwise the small space is empty. Afterward, the priest gathers father and son together and speaks earnestly. I wait uncomfortably, listening to the murmur of their voices, looking around and trying to spot the hand of the dead saint, but they must have it under lock and key. Growing up in Long Beach, California, I lived not far from a Catholic school, and once my friend Arlene and I dared to rap the golden knocker on the looming black-painted convent door. A nun opened it, with a stale white face and swirling batlike robes. Floating in the darkness high above was a round stained-glass window like the eye of God. Now, as then, I have the urge to flee. I tug at Sterling’s belt, and we remove ourselves to a bench outside.
They emerge all together, Giovanni still leaning on a crutch, texting on his cell phone even before they are through the door. When everyone’s hands have been solemnly shaken and the priest has gone, we come forward.
Nicosa eyes us warily. By now he knows we are not usually the bearers of good news.
I try to soften it. “Was it good to talk to the priest?”
“Where else can we turn? People are whispering about the awful thing in the woods. Giovanni keeps getting text messages and calls. Is that your mom in there? Disgusting.”
Giovanni jerks his head away as Nicosa touches the boy on the chin.
“There is evil, but I want him to know there is also grace. There is hope. What did you think of what Padre Filippo said?”
Giovanni shrugs, and goes back to the screen.
“What did the Padre talk about?” Sterling asks.
Nicosa swipes at the cell phone. “Giovanni! Are you listening? Forget those people; they’re only trying to make you feel bad.”
“No, they’re not. They’re trying to help, and yes, I am listening.”
“Answer him. What did Padre Filippo say?”
Giovanni recites in mocking singsong: “He talks about the Gospel of Luke. He tells us the parable of the shepherd who lost his sheep—as if I haven’t heard it a million times—that the shepherd will go looking for ‘the one’ even if he has to leave ‘the ninety-nine.’ ”
“What was his point?” Nicosa prods impatiently.
“That God will look for us if we’re lost. Like right now, Mama is lost, but God will find her. And we are supposed to pray the rosary. It makes no sense.”
Nicosa rolls his eyes.
The phone in the house is ringing. Giovanni volunteers to answer, but Nicosa tells him to let it go. He is sick of gossipy contrada members and newspaper reporters begging for news of the kidnapping.
Sterling says, “Giovanni, we have to talk.”
“I can’t,” says the boy. “I am meeting my friends.”
The ringing inside the house stops.
“It’s important.”
“Your friends can wait. What is it?” asks Nicosa.
“There’s a grocery bag in Cecilia’s trunk,” I say. “Would you mind getting it?”
Nicosa looks at Sterling and me, and there is acceptance in his eyes. We have peered into the simmering, pink pit of hell and now have reached the Day of Reckoning, the end of lies. He walks back toward her car as we three sit on a bench beneath the pines in an eddy of coolness and shade, watching Nicosa go to the green Alfa Romeo, disable the alarm, and open the trunk.
“What’s he doing with my mother’s car?” Giovanni asks.
I don’t answer. Let him worry. Nicosa returns with the half-wrapped painting and the small bag of cocaine inside the grocery sack. He squeezes onto the bench and asks his son what he knows about this.
“What is it?”
“A painting by your English friend, Muriel Barrett. She left it for you at the Walkabout Pub.”
Giovanni’s eyes shift toward the canvas and away. “She did? Why?”
Nicosa looks at me. “You tell him.”
“She had to make an emergency trip to London,” I say flatly.
“This was inside the painting.” Nicosa shows him the bag of cocaine.
The boy does not respond.
“What about it, kid?” Sterling asks.
“Non lo so.”
“She left it for you.”
“It has nothing to do with me. I don’t know where that came from.”
“I was there when Muriel Barrett gave it to the bartender,” I say evenly. “She was all dressed up on her way to London. She gets out of the taxi and comes into the pub carrying this package. She makes a point of it, of delivering this before she
leaves the country. Do you know what I’m saying? She says to Chris, ‘It’s a painting for Giovanni.’ I say I’ll give it to you. She’s not happy, but the cab is waiting.”
“She left you holding a bag of shit,” Sterling tells the boy. “Any guesses why?”
Giovanni shrugs—an unconscious, on-the-spot admission of guilt.
“Here’s what I think,” Sterling says. “You, your mom, your dad—you don’t know it, but you’re all fighting the same enemy. Everything goes back to the mafias. That’s why Ana and I think this”—he shakes the bag—“connects to why your mom disappeared.”
Giovanni is jolted awake, cheeks red as a four-year-old’s. “Where is Mama? What happened to her?”
“We can find your mom, if you tell us the truth.”
“I thought you didn’t know where she is.”
“We have an idea. We need your help. Do you want to find your mom?”
“Okay. It’s mine,” the boy admits. “The shit is mine.”
Nicosa runs his fingers over his eyes, picks up the tears that have gathered there, and seems to rub them into his face.
“Thank you,” he says hoarsely. “Now you kill me. You put the nail right here.”
Giovanni ignores the display. “You should talk. You are the biggest hypocrite,” he murmurs. “Why should I tell the truth when all you do is lie?”
“I am the liar?” Nicosa cries. “You are the one we paid for to go to a psychiatrist and a drug counselor, who said you were clean.”
“I don’t use drugs, but nobody believes me,” Giovanni says. “So I stopped trying to explain.”
“We’re listening,” I say patiently. “This is your chance. Why did Muriel hide cocaine meant for you in a painting?”
“She was holding it for me.”
“So you are selling?” Nicosa says.
“No, Papa. I do not sell; I do not use. I am a bank. I am a businessman, like you.”
Nicosa growls, “Is that right?”
Sterling puts his hand out. “Let him speak.”
“Everybody uses. It’s not even about getting high anymore, it’s just to do your stupid boring job and get through the day. The whole world is making money selling drugs, so why not Muriel, and other old people living on a pension?”
“Mama mia, you take their pension?”
“I make a smart investment for them. If you give me five hundred euros, I will invest it in the next drug lot and double your money in a month. The bank of cocaine,” he adds with authority, “is a much better deal than a regular bank.”
“You are the middleman,” I say.
“Cèrto.”
“Who are your contacts?”
“They come up from the south.”
“ ’Ndrangheta?” Nicosa flinches.
“What about the risk to the person who gives money?” I ask.
“No risk. Their hand is not dirty, and the profit is good. Sometimes the investors are asked to do a small favor, like hold the drugs, that’s all.”
It is now clear why Muriel left town. She knew the attack on Giovanni would lead the police toward mafia activity in Siena, possibly including the local branch of the bank of cocaine. I doubt very much that her partner had a recurrence of cancer. I expect Muriel and Sheila to be on the next plane to the Azores.
“Why did they beat you up, Giovanni?”
He clears his throat. “I am supposed to bring an amount every month, and I was behind. Muriel was my main customer, but she was drinking like a fish. She had no money to invest.”
“You took the hit for her.”
“I promise my customers to keep them out of it.”
“Not only are you in danger of getting killed, but you are helping the mafias!” Nicosa cries. “You are giving them more money to buy more cocaine.”
“That’s the idea, Papa.”
The phone inside the abbey starts to ring again.
Nicosa smashes the canvas across the bench, splintering glass and the wooden frame.
“Bitch! Fucking English bitch!”
“Hypocrite!” Giovanni shouts in return. “I only do exactly what you do! I learned from you!”
“This is not what I do!”
Giovanni screams at me. “Why did you tell him?”
“Because they tried to kill you, for God’s sake! That’s why Muriel split. She was afraid it would come back to her.”
“You are not my aunt! If you were my real aunt, you would be on my side!”
“I am on your side.”
“You’re FBI, that’s all you are!”
“Giovanni—”
“You and him together! Both liars and hypocrites!”
Grimacing with pain, he lopes across the courtyard on the crutch, slamming the kitchen door.
Nicosa is heaving. “That English bitch dragged him into it, you know that.”
“I will make sure Muriel Barrett is picked up in London and interrogated.”
Nicosa drops the wrecked painting at my feet. “Give her this.”
The door opens and Giovanni appears, holding the phone.
“For Signorina Grey!” he sings out contemptuously.
Sterling says, “I need a drink.”
When we get to the kitchen, whoever it was has already hung up. I ask if there’s a way to see who called. Giovanni grabs the receiver and punches two digits. The screen says Proibito.
“What does that mean?”
“ ‘Prohibited.’ You can’t.”
He turns away and opens the refrigerator and just stares into it. I’m thinking it was a blocked call from the American embassy about the recovered evidence from the vat. Nicosa enters the kitchen, turns on the taps, and sticks his head in the sink.
“There’s nothing to eat,” Giovanni observes.
Sterling ferrets out two beers. The phone rings again.
“Probably for me.” I reach for it, but Nicosa, shaking water off his head like a lion, snatches it away.
“Che vuole lei?” he shouts angrily.
He listens. The person on the other end speaks swiftly and ends the call. Nicosa lowers the phone, strangely triumphant.
“You see? This is what I have been waiting for! What I have said all along. She’s alive. These people have Cecilia.”
“Mama is okay?”
“What did they say?” I urge. “Exactly?”
“ ‘We have your wife.’ ”
“Did they put her on the phone?” demands Sterling.
“No.”
“Who are they?” Giovanni asks.
“Don’t worry!” cries Nicosa, in a delirium. “They will call again.”
“What do they want?”
“Two million euros.”
Giovanni is wide-eyed. “Do we have that much money, Papa?”
Nicosa laughs exuberantly, drumming the boy’s shoulders. “You see? Listen to the priest! God went looking. Your mother is alive!”
THIRTY
Just after dark, Zabrina and Yuri pass beneath the stone arch in the center of a dying coastal town in the province of Calabria—another set of stoplights in miles of unfinished shopping centers and buildings. Between getting lost, and pit stops due to stomach cramps, it has taken longer than they planned—almost nine hours on the motorbike—but by maintaining on Valium and caffeine, they keep pushing through the sweltering urban sprawl. The green hills of Tuscany don’t even exist.
By the time they enter the narrow streets of the husk that is left of the old town center, Zabrina has collapsed against Yuri’s back, crying softly from excruciating aches in her bones. She’s crashing and can’t hold on anymore. All he can do is shrug her off and keep going. He has the shakes too, and it’s hard to follow her mumbled instructions to the massive public housing project called la piccola città, Little City. Because ’Ndrangheta is demanding higher fees for its contract to collect the garbage, household waste has been left in mountainous piles that block the streets, forcing them to keep making unexpected turns, getting more and more lost. Eve
ning traffic comes to a standstill. Frustrated commuters are simply locking their cars, leaving them in the middle of the street, and going home. While they are stopped in a traffic jam, some skinny little jerk tries to rip Zabrina’s bag right off the rack, but Yuri hits the gas, hops the curb, and drives thirty kilometers per hour on the sidewalk.
They find the road into the hills. When the anonymous concrete roofs of the housing project rise like a multistoried fortress, Zabrina remembers the crack house is in the middle sector, second floor, the corner apartment way at the end. The Little City is as spread out as a good-sized American shopping mall, over a thousand units in all. The sectors are connected by courtyards within courtyards, odd bridges and narrow walkways. Projecting from every wall is a slovenly jumble of tiny balconies, satellite dishes, networks of exposed electrical cables. The temperature is a hundred and eight degrees. There is not a breath of air, as if the entire community is being smothered under glass. Only the smallest children are wound up enough to play in this heat, kicking soccer balls in their underpants, or splashing in rubber pools while unemployed onlookers smoke cigarettes and soak their feet.
Neither the colliding tracks of blaring pop music nor the jarring reek of marijuana and roasting fish has any effect on the ragged, glassy-eyed junkies lounging on the peeling stairs below the corner apartment.
Fat Pasquale, Zabrina’s cousin, is sitting on a chair, feet up on a cooler, listening to an iPod.
“Who’s this guy?” he says by way of greeting, jerking a thumb at Yuri.
They are speaking in the dialect specific to Calabria.
“He’s my boyfriend,” Zabrina answers.
“You vouch for him?”
“I vouch for him.”
Fat Pasquale opens the screen door. The kitchen is even hotter. The middle-aged woman with the black hair, now wearing an apron, sweat running down her temples, chops tomatoes at the sink.
“Maria Luisa gets a bigger allowance than me,” she is saying.
“I know.”
“Her husband was unlucky, that’s all. He got in the way of a bullet. But my Peppino is a capo, who is in jail today because he is protecting all of you.”
“I know.”
The Puppet, wearing white trousers, a lizard belt, and an expensive linen shirt, is sitting at the kitchen table, legs crossed, relaxed. Before him is an array of bags of white powder, a digital scale, vials, and small spatulas used for paint, neatly lined up on butcher paper laid over the oilcloth. Disregarding the woman and her complaints, he gives instructions to his bodyguard, who is mixing the cut. That same guy was here last time; Zabrina recognizes the jade disk around his neck. She avoids looking at the boss’s strange black wooden fingers, staring instead at the pattern of tulip tiles on the wall. One tulip up. One tulip down. The pain in her abdomen is unbearable.
