Root (33 page)

Only three.

I had been such an idiot the night before,
going door to door with only the vaguest idea of Karla’s
whereabouts. Narrowed down to three addresses, finding her should
be a cinch. I guess I should be glad she had a Germanic
father.

I looked up the location of each address on
the indexed, foldout maps in the back of the directory. The first
one—Allesandro Raeth—I could rule one immediately. He lived way the
heck out of town near this big, round lake called Lago di
Bracciano. There was no way a person living there could stroll to
the Vatican to attend a mass. It must have been a half an hour
train ride at least.

On my second swing, I hit it the ball out of
the park.

Raeth, Edmund e Hanna

00192 Roma (RM)

Via Dei Gracchi,

1806 39738988

That place was practically on the doorstep of
Vatican City and just a few streets beyond the neighborhoods I had
checked out the night before. Maybe I wasn’t such a dummy after
all.

It was maybe two blocks from the Vatican
Museum, six or seven from St. Peter’s Square. I just sat there with
my finger on the map, trying to keep my heart from galloping off
without me.

I copied the address down on a piece of scrap
paper I fished out of a waste basket and sketched a rough
map.

I went ahead and did my due diligence,
checking out Raeth number three—some guy named Gunther. He lived
near a place called Re di Roma, a neighborhood east of the city
center and nowhere near the Vatican. He could be disregarded for
now.

There was a telephone mounted on the wall in
the kitchen. “Anybody mind if I made a local call?” I said to no
one in particular.

“
If it is in Roma, it is okay,” said
the guy at the stove, who was boiling water in two giant pots while
two young women cut homemade pasta on the kitchen table.

I dialed the number and a creaky old man
answered. “Pronto?”

“
Um … hi. Is uh … Karla
home?”

“
Mi scusi?”

“
Do you … speak English?”

“
Non capisco. Mi
Diaspace.”

“
Anybody in your house speak
English?”

“
Ask them ‘Quelcuno parla inglese?’”
suggested one of the pasta cutters.

“
H
ai chiamato il numero sbagliato!” said the
old guy. The line clicked off before I could repeat what the others
told me to say.

“
He
hung up,” I said.

“
We
can call back and speak for you,” said the cook.

“
That’s okay. I’m thinking maybe I should go there in
person.”

I
looked around at all
these nonchalant faces, everyone acting like there was
nothing odd at all about some American kid who wasn’t even part of
their protest making himself at home in their headquarters. This
was such a different world. I couldn’t imagine this ever happening
in Ft. Pierce.

I
left
the apartment, and trotted down the
stairs out into the alley leading to the Piazza. The crowd around
the encampment had grown even larger. There were more police as
well.

I looked around for Angelica. I just wanted to
thank her before moving on. People were carrying around Styrofoam
cups with some kind of thick soup with rice in it. Whatever it was,
it smelled wonderful. I gravitated towards the queue where they
were dishing it out.

Two muscular guys wearing sport coats over
tight T-shirts came out of nowhere and grabbed my arms. They
steered me away from the encampment, towards a narrow alley thick
with trash cans.

“
What the fuck? Let go of
me!”

One of the guys pulled the passport out of the
inside pocket of my hoodie.

“
È
lui.
”

I snatched my passport back. “Who the fuck are
you?” They pinned my arms behind my back and twisted, yanking me
towards the alley.

One of the Black Bloc guys saw what
was going on and sprang into action, ripping the banner from his
pole. Wielding it like a bat, he came after my accosters, shouting:
“P
oliziotti
in borghese!”

A
whole
gaggle
of his buddies, men and women came swarming off a low wall where
they had been loitering. They all wore black, some with bandannas
and knit caps covering their faces, a couple with those ‘V for
Vendetta’ masks.

The guy with the
pole ran down blocked the alley and the others swooped in and
surrounded us.

One of
the guys who
had me reached into his jacket. A tire iron came swinging
around and smashed his wrist. He roared with pain and collapsed to
his knees. A gun clattered against the cobbles. A girl shrieked and
kicked it under a dumpster. A booted foot caught the gun man in the
ear and knocked him flat.

Strong, gloved
hands helped peel me from the other guy’s grip. Red-faced and
bug-eyed, he fought like a demon, spitting and clawing, letting
loose a string of the raunchiest expletives Italy had to offer, I’m
sure.

A
crowd of police came charging over, pulling on their vests and riot
helmets as they ran.
The Black Bloc-ers shoved my attackers against some trash
bins and formed up into a line, bracing themselves for the
assault.

I
squirmed away and sprinted across the Piazza, dodging
through the confused crowd, some people fleeing, others coming to
watch or join in the action. I caught a glimpse of Angelica
emerging from a tent, craning her neck to see what the commotion
was about.

“
Thank
you!” I shouted, though she was probably too far away to hear
me.

***

With quick, long strides, I made my way
towards the river like a soldier on a forced march, headed for
victory. I kept peeking over my shoulder for those two assholes who
had tried to nab me, but there was no sign of them. I couldn’t
believe the lengths those jerks from Cleveland were going to make
their point.

I followed the crude map I had drawn, tacking
up one block and down the next until I spotted the metal street
sign in black and white, tacked onto the corner of a brick
building. The Via dei Gracchi was a narrow, tree-lined canyon of a
street that ran through a bunch of seven story apartment buildings.
Pizza shops, cafes and little boutiques inhabited the ground
floor.

Number 18 was accessed through a pair of huge,
brown doors, half again my height, with brass knobs oddly placed
smack in their middle. This was no tenement building by any means,
but a far cry from the upscale digs I had encountered closer to the
river.

I needed no key to get into the glassed-in
foyer where a bank of mailboxes lined one side and buzzers for
every apartment filled a panel across the way. The floor was
littered with adverts and old newspapers. It smelled like onions
and old cigars inside.

The panel with the buzzers was a complete
mess, with names missing, names scrawled out and new ones written
in. Some of the handwriting was hard to decipher, but nothing
looked anywhere close to ‘Raeth.’

I refused to be denied. I would find her even
if I had to camp out on this stoop. I was certain this was the
right place. The phone book couldn’t have been clearer and the
location matched everything I knew about Karla, which admittedly,
was very little.

And then I noticed that of the thirty-odd
buzzers on the panel, only seven were unidentifiable. I had a
fourteen percent chance of pressing the right one at
random.

So I gave it a go, starting with the second
floor, pressing the only unmarked buzzer on that tier, giving it a
good long push. Such an ugly sound it made—something between a
chainsaw and a mosquito.

When nothing happened after a minutes, I
pressed it again. When again there was no response, I moved on to
the next.

This time there came a crackle followed by the
voice of a young woman.

“
Che cazzo vuoi? Chi
sei?”

Even though the little speaker distorted her
words, I could tell she wasn’t Karla.

“
Hi. My name is James. I’m looking
for—”

“
Ottenere scopata! Uscire di casa
mia!”

The big brown doors creaked open behind me,
letting in a blast of street noise and diesel exhaust. A
harried-looking middle-aged woman slipped inside with a little
white dog on a leash, and a cloth bag packed with produce from the
market.

“
What was that? Sorry, I don’t
understand.”

“
Vai via o c
hiamerò la polizia!”

The speaker
clicked off.

“
What
is going on?” said the older woman, juggling her mail. “Why are you
bothering Rosa? Are you one of her boyfriends?”

“
Not
at all. I’m actually looking for this girl named Karla. Her last
name is Raeth. Would you happen to know her.”

The
woman’s eyes got all shifty
. She set her jaw and grinded her teeth. “What do
you want from her?”

The dog leapt up
and planted its paws on my knees, panting. I rubbed its head behind
the ears.

“
Nothing. I’m ... just a friend.”

The woman put
down her groceries and pulled a key from her purse to unlock her
mailbox.

“
How
interesting. Karla is not the sort I would expect would have male
friends. Especially an American.”

“
So,
you know her. She does live here?”

The
woman shrugged.
“Well, she used to.
The father, he
took a new job. Out of the country. He is an engineer, I
believe.”

My heart crashed. “Which …
country?”

“
Can’t say for sure. He is Austrian
by birth, but I can only speculate.”

“
Christ! I can’t believe it.” I
thought I was going to faint with frustration. My reaction worried
the dog, who went cringing behind its master. I wanted to melt away
into nothingness.

“
Perhaps its best for both of you
that you do not find her,” said the woman.

“
Why would you say that? Do you
realize what I’ve gone through to get here?”

“
This man, Edmund—the father—he is
not a good man. He is dangerous. Not good to his daughters. Cruel.
I am so relieved he is no longer my neighbor. But I feel so sad for
those girls … having to deal with him.”

“
What is he? An alcoholic or
something?”

“
Worse,” said the woman. “He is a
fundamentalist—a Lefebvrite from the Society of St. Pius X. And not
only that, even among them he is an extremist. I would not be
surprised that he would start his own sect.”

“
So Karla has a sister? What about
her mom?”

“
Hanna left the family years ago. It
is a crime she couldn’t take the girls with her, but the state
granted him custody. She was … damaged …
psychologically.”

“
You have no idea where they
went?”

“
Who knows? Germany? Argentina? The
world is full of safe harbors for lunatics.”

I took a deep breath and tried to gather my
composure, but there was nothing to gather. I was coming apart as
surely as if I were made of unraveling thread.

I muttered a thank you and stumbled out
through the big, brown doors. My head reeled. I thought I was going
to throw up.

I paused halfway down the steps and stared
into the traffic on the main street just around the corner. The
light turned green and a phalanx trucks and trolleys raced ahead.
It wouldn’t be hard to time it right and dash out there. That mass
of metal would just sweep me a way like a bug under a
broom.

The woman stepped out onto the landing. “Are
you okay?”

Her words yanked me back from a verge. “I’ll …
be fine.”

“
Listen, I take it back. I hope you
do find her. You seem like you care deeply. But you be careful
around that Mr. Raeth. Edmund can be a demon.”

Chapter 30:
Lockdown

I wafted down the streets and sidewalks like a
runaway balloon, with no direction or purpose, guided only by a
fickle wind.

I crossed streets without looking,
ignoring the screeching brakes and bleating horns and yet I
flinched at every stranger who walked too close, at any jogger who
veered in my direction. I didn’t care
if
something bad happened to me, but
it did matter
how
.
I didn’t want to give those jerks in Cleveland the pleasure of
taking me down.

Somehow, I gravitated back towards the
Vatican. I’m not sure why. Heathen that I was, I had no rational
reason for going there, but I kind of, sort of knew the place now.
And so it called to me. That wall and dome were my beacons and I
was a pigeon flying home.

I passed between the encircling columns into
St. Peter’s square and across the flagstone plaza to the central
obelisk. But once I reached the center of the square, I was still
not satisfied. An excruciating unease churned in me—very much like
pain, but without the physical hurting—and it begged for
relief.