White Shotgun (24 page)

We stand on opposite sides of the car. The roof is so low even I can look over it.

“They blew us off!” I go on. “First of all, the Commissario is not in Florence, he’s ducking us, and second, why did you run out of there?”

“The meeting was over,” Dennis says. “Do you want me to drive?”

“No!”

I have unlocked the car, but you can’t touch anything inside. We leave the doors open to let it air out. I have a pounding headache, and the wound in my hand is on fire. The pills are in my bag, but I don’t want to take one in front of Dennis. Three thousand miles away from Bureau headquarters, the rules are the same:
Never show weakness
.

“It’s how it works,” he says, as we each remove our suit jackets. “You’ve worked undercover; you’ve dealt with intrigue and deception. Well, in Italy you’ll get your master’s degree. Nothing is what you think it is, or are trained to perceive from an American analog. You think you have the point of view, but you end up a hundred and eighty degrees wrong. What people are saying is decided by a person behind them. Martini was the eyes and ears for the chief. When she opened up about the investigation, that was the give.” He snaps his fingers. “They’re on it.”

“A six-year-old could come up with a better plan.”

We get in the car.

“This morning’s exercise had nothing to do with finding Cecilia. We propose a meeting. The purpose is to get their cooperation. They agree. But it’s not the Commissario telling us what he thinks about finding Cecilia. It’s to see
if he wants to sit down for a meeting
. It’s high school politics.”

“We don’t have time for this. Seventy-two hours, Dennis. That’s the cutoff point, when the trail goes cold.”

“You can’t apply your normal experience over here. We just have to let it unwind. Are we going to make the train?”

“Yes, we will make the train.”

We are cruising downhill. It’s a lot easier, with all the traffic heading the other way. I want to unload the headache and everything else I’ve been keeping inside.

“Dennis, I have to tell you something. Cecilia and the Commissario had an affair. Apparently in retaliation for Nicosa’s fucking around.”

“Did she tell you this?”

“Town gossip.”

Dennis squints through the Ray-Bans. “What’s the source?”

“An expat British bartender. Does that change the picture?”

“The picture is the picture. She’s still gone.”

We pull up at the station with two minutes to spare. Dennis gets out of the car and lifts his briefcase.

“I believe the threat to you is real. Two to one the bad guys know you’re Bureau, which makes you valuable. You’d be a major chip.”

“Nicosa knows I’m Bureau.”

“He made you?” Dennis asks.

“He didn’t make me.”

“Then how did he find out?”

“Cecilia told him. They were having a fight about Giovanni, and she let it drop.”

Dennis stares at me through the aviator glasses. His entire face is red.

“Do you think the man who attacked you in the Campo
might
have been hired by your brother-in-law because you are FBI, and he would rather you didn’t find out what he’s up to?” Dennis says.

“I don’t know! How could I know?”

“Do you think you can continue in your present role?”

“Yes, I do. We play it openly, that’s all. I’m inside the house. I can still be valuable.”

“Turn around and drive to the abbey. Take all precautions with Nicosa. Do not leave again until I call you. Got it?”

He slams the door. The train is coming.

As soon as Dennis is gone I swallow two pain pills with water from a bottle that has been in the car an hour and is therefore hot enough to brew tea, and call Mike Donnato in Los Angeles. After one ring I remember it is three in the morning in Los Angeles, but he has already picked up.

“I’m sorry, Mike. Go back to sleep.”

“What’s up?”

“Are you awake?”

“Just tell me.”

“My sister disappeared. Vanished out of a church when she was standing right behind me. No leads, no witnesses, and I don’t believe she left of her own volition.”

“What’s her psychological state?”

“Not depressed, suicidal, or crazy. Busy. Coping, like anybody else. She’s been having problems with her husband, but her son just got out of the hospital and she adores him—she’d never just take off.”

“Why was your nephew in the hospital?”

“He was knifed and beaten over a drug deal. He denies he’s been using, but we know he’s in possession of cocaine.”

“Could Cecilia’s disappearance be related?”

“Here everything seems to be related. Scorpions in a bottle. The north is fighting an incursion from ’Ndrangheta—the Calabrian mafia—from the south. The Bureau believes my brother-in-law is lined up with the bad guys. The question is whether he would do harm to his own wife.”

“Sounds more like a kidnap for ransom.”

“But there’s been no demand for ransom. And there’s a complication: I recently learned from the legat, Dennis Rizzio, that my sister’s been paying protection money to keep her clinics open. If she somehow messed up with the clans, forget it.”

“How can I help?”

“I’m just so frustrated, Mike! The Italian police are responding, but slowly, and Rizzio goes along with their game.”

“He’s got a larger agenda.”

“Exactly.”

“Screw these people,” Mike Donnato says. “You and I can find her faster than they can, even from Los Angeles. Let’s do what we do. Start from square one. Make a timeline of her activities, find out who her enemies are—you know the drill. Anything you need, call me, and I’ll throw the resources of the Bureau behind it, officially or otherwise.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep you posted. Tell Rochelle I’m sorry to wake up the boys.”

He snorts. “Not a problem. They’re teenagers. It’s three in the morning, they’re not home, and we don’t have a clue where they are. Situation normal.”

• ••

I follow Muriel’s truck route back to the abbey. At first there is nobody on the country road. It is lunchtime in the clusters of working-class apartments, and everyone is behind the beaded curtains of their open doors, eating
nonna’s
rice soup with bitter greens.

The turnoff is ahead when the white van shows up in the rearview mirror. Without hesitation he gets right on my tail. It could be the asshole with the dirty neck and wild hair I backed into, who has recognized the mailbox car or—and now alarms go off—it could be Chuck, the sleazoid photographer from Ohio, miffed because I didn’t respond to his come-on. For an FBI agent, it is not considered paranoid to assume, at any hour of the day or night, that someone is stalking you. The guy knows where the abbey is, having photographed it for a wedding. The last thing he hurled at me in the Campo was a string of curses. The van pulls up alongside and hangs in the opposite lane, playing chicken until another car appears coming toward us, then swerves in front of me at the last minute and takes off, middle finger wagging out the window. No good view of the driver and no license plate.

Nicosa and Giovanni are in the kitchen at either end of the counter, the air between them palpably roiling. Giovanni is in a wheelchair, leg elevated with an ice pack. His hair is unwashed, his sallow face turned toward his cell phone with an expression of deep concentration, as if he’s texting the Rosetta stone. Nicosa’s sleeves are rolled, and his shirt is half opened.

“What’s up?” I say, going for the refrigerator.

“He won’t talk.” Nicosa gestures toward his son with a glass of vodka. There’s a bottle on the counter and an attractive white dish of lemon wedges and olives. Style is the best revenge. “He sits there and doesn’t answer.”

I pour some cold wine. The pills are kicking in, and I’m feeling kindly toward my fellow man.

“Why are you giving your dad a hard time?”

“He’s giving me a hard time,” answers Giovanni.

“What about?”

Giovanni’s eyes rise toward his father. “Ask him.”

“He’s up all night on the computer,” Nicosa says. “And now he decides he’s not going back to school. All he wants is to play video games all day. He’s depressed, which is understandable—”

“He thinks I should be doing homework!” Giovanni cries incredulously.

“You’ll fall behind,” warns Nicosa.

“My father thinks everything is a race. Be first or die.”

I pour more wine. “I might have been followed here.”

Nicosa’s eyes widen. “When?”

“Just now.”

“Followed from where? By who?”

“From the police station, by a thug in a white van.”

I straddle a stool and toss back a few olives.

Nicosa frowns. “What does this mean, that you were followed?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“Did you call the police?”

“I told you. I was just
at
the police station. The Commissario refused to see us. He instructed the inspector to lie and say he was out of town. Maybe he’s the one who sent the guy in the van.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I’m taking pain pills. Knife wounds tend to sting.”

Nicosa puts down his glass. “I think it is best if you go back to the United States.”

“You’ve said that.”

“You make everything worse.”

“I’m trying my best to help. We can help each other, Nicoli, but we can’t be in denial about Cecilia.”

Giovanni looks up. “What are you saying about Mama?”

“Nothing,” says his father.

“Doesn’t he know?”

“Know what?” Giovanni asks.

“Your mother is missing,” Nicosa says at last.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was Palio. You were sick—”

“Where is she?”

“We’re not sure what happened,” I say. “But she disappeared two days ago, during the blessing of the Palio. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”

“No!” says Giovanni angrily. “Papa? What is going on?”

I want to confront my nephew. Right now. I want to thrust the bag of cocaine in his face and ask
him
what’s going on, but he is still too weak.

“Where’s Mama?” he cries.

“See what you have done?” Nicosa demands.

“I’m sorry. I promise we will find your mom.”

I take my wine and leave the kitchen. My eyes are drifting closed. By the time I’ve climbed the endless marble steps to my room, it seems to have become so late in the day that all the reptiles have come out, and the balcony is alive with snakes of sunlight and shadow, whipping across the tile and up the walls, and the only way to escape them is to quickly get inside and climb on board the bed, which is rocking like a raft in the ocean.

I wake up in the middle of the night with the heart-stopping knowledge that there is a man in my room. The shutters are open and cool air is pouring in, along with monochrome brightness that shows the shape of someone near the door. Seconds go by. I don’t move. I still don’t move. Can he see that my eyes are open? Sweat builds under my back. He has the advantage.

A silent contest of wills. He is lifeless. I am frozen. My eyes adjust to the half dark. No weapons. Attack first. Bad hand.
Let him come to you
. Grab his head, break his nose across your knee. I smell him before he gets close. Metal. Dirt. Heavy sweat. The sense of coarse fabric and leather. He steps from the shadows and the stench becomes awful. Excrement, earth, and decomposing bones. In the anti-light his face is stubbled and dark, his eyes colorless. The rucksack drops to the floor. It’s what we call in the Bureau a WTF moment.

“Sterling? Is that you?”

He sits heavily on the bed.

A hoarse whisper. “Hello, cupcake.”

TWENTY-TWO

Sterling unties the bandanna around his head.

“Don’t turn on the light.”

My heart skips. I don’t need light to see that the gorgeous blond hair has been shaved off, and the bare scalp is impacted with dirt. He unfastens the field jacket with trembling fingers. Dried flakes of mud that have been carried who knows how many miles, across how many time zones, scatter over the linen sheets. The smell of recent death is undeniable.

He unfolds a rain poncho, meticulously spreads it on the floor, then empties the contents of the rucksack.

“What are you doing?”

“Better wash this stuff out,” he says slowly, as if in a dream, taking off his shirt and Under Armour.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Heeding the silent message,
Don’t touch me
, I slip off the bed and retrieve a robe from the bathroom. He continues to face away, as if he doesn’t want me to see his body. He used to eat breakfast in the nude, not give it a thought. Has he been wounded, a ladder of sutures up his chest?