Scratched

by JJ Partridge

  After lunch, I continued to make calls. First, to Arnie. Before I got the chance to explain the reason for my call, he breathily, said, “Algy, I spoke to my mother! Don’t worry! You walk with the prophets. Zelda is getting new clothes, they’ll be driven up to Providence for the wedding in an Escalade …!”

  I told Arnie what I wanted him to do. Several times, he interrupted with, “I don’t get it,” which I ignored.

  A few minutes later, he returned my call. “I called Joe Tucci. He wasn’t enthusiastic, said that family is, you know … connected?”

  “And?”

  “I promised nobody would know he snitched. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Says Maria Ruggieri lived on the Giambazzi family compound where she took care of Luigi Giambazzi’s mother until the old lady passed, then was a nurse for his kids, and then grandkids, some of whom still live there. No visiting hours, only a couple of family members at the Mass and internment, ‘No surprise,’ he said, ‘because the Giambazzis are notoriously cheap,’ which is something he shouldn’t say to too many people. I asked him about funeral cards. Said because there wasn’t going to be a wake, he doesn’t know if he made them up or not. But anybody could download a copy from the catalogue of any funeral home supplier.”

  After I contacted Amica Insurance to report the loss of the Mini, I called Marcie at home who overcame her curiosity about an unplanned trip to Italy to agree to make any necessary postponements in the office. The Provost, no surprise, was in his office in College Hall for a few hours of Sunday work without interruption. He quickly concurred with our trip and agreed to call the New York representative office of the remitting bank to set up a meeting. As for Brunotti, the Provost’s only regret was that he would not be confronting il Direttore himself.

  As to the continuing Columbus Day saga,—I hadn’t given it any thought since last night—he said that in the intermittent rain of Saturday, Sonny Russo was at Carter Stadium before the Princeton game, leading a drenched chorus of a dozen or so in shouting ‘one, two, three, four, Chris forever, as before.’ “Poetic,” he said.

  Lastly, I called my brother who was in his firm’s luxury box at Meadowlands watching a promising Giants team play the Colts. Banco di San Paolo, he said, was headquartered in Siena, had a lineage going back to the Renaissance. He warned that Italian bankers were fanatics about client privacy. He would, however, speak to the partner in charge of the firm’s European banking operations who had a long-standing relationship with the Italian Ministry of Finance.

  Then, he asked, “Was Nadie upset at your trip?”

  I confessed I hadn’t told her yet.

  He sighed, “Are you sure you are ready for married life?”

  Time to make that call.

  I reached a happy and loquacious Nadie on her cell phone at a late lunch at a noisy restaurant. She left her friends at their table to talk to me, but the background din followed.

  “Let me tell you about the Bunker!” And she described a cavernous dance club with high brick barrel ceilings, a crowd that was more disco than hip-hop, a female DJ that blew her away, and hundreds of half-naked strangers body bumping. “It’s a wonder I can still hear,” she laughed. “I could feel the music coming up through the floor!” She paused and spoke louder through the background clamor. “Yikes, it’s already after two. Did Ida get the loan? Something’s up. She is taking Zelda shopping tomorrow. A mother-of-the-bride dress, a chauffeured limo to drive them to Providence. Zelda’s thrilled …”

  I heard Nadie called back to the table. “Hold on,” she said and there was some chatter and the giggle I usually heard only after a second glass of wine.

  “Nick has found a lender,” I said. “They’ll be saved, assuming they don’t screw it up.”

  “Wonderful! Oh, Algy, thank you. Thank Nick. If you ever hear me complain about access to money, shut me up …”

  Fat chance of that but I appreciated the thought. I then told her of Father Pietro’s invitation for a Vatican tour. She was surprised and delighted.

  On a roll, I laid out the necessity of my quick trip to Rome, and I bombed! Her voice was strained in outrage, only her friends’ presence at the table keep her from exploding: “How could you even think of being of away during the week of our wedding? Is Danby insisting?”

  “An emergency, otherwise I would never go. The one-on-one with Brunotti has to be now. I can’t tell you why but it’s very serious. So is the bank meeting.” As to Benno coming along, and the side trip to Bari and beyond, I decided these were confusing and unnecessary details.

  “Are you sure, are you absolutely sure, you’ll be back on Thursday?”

  “Home not later than Thursday night! I promise!”

  She swallowed hard in reluctant acceptance.

  “Why not pack a few things and stay at my mother’s while I’m gone. It’s wedding central. You’re always there these days. And she would love it.”

  “Not a terrible idea,” she replied with some reluctance. “Anything else you want to tell me.”

  What was left of my secrets? The Mini and Jocelyn.

  I couldn’t dissemble as to the absence of the Mini but I could avoid Jocelyn. “Something not good and I was going to tell you. A truck broadsided the Mini late last night while it was parked in front of the garage. Hit and run. I should have put it in the garage but I forgot to do it. Had to be towed away. A total loss.”

  “Hit and run? Awful!” and she proceeded to loudly tell her friends who offered support. What was she going to use for a car before the wedding and if needed? I said she should rent one.

  “When will you call me?”

  “I land in Rome at seven or so on Monday morning. Six hours ahead of Providence. Not sure when I can call, but depend on it.”

  “I am depending on you.”

  Like me, depending on Tuttle and Benno to put a lid on my battle with Zito.

  42 Monday

  WE LEFT LOGAN INTERNATIONAL on Alitalia business class. Airborne, we turned away from the sunset that had transformed the city’s skyscrapers into columns of gold. I asked Benno as to his Italian. “Rusty,” he said “but I’ll get along.” That made two of us. Benno, surprisingly to me, enjoyed a half bottle of Barolo with dinner, and by nine o’clock had converted his seat into a recliner, and fell asleep immediately. I was too keyed up to sleep and read more of The Leopard and watched the varied offerings of a pop-up video screen, finally getting no more than an hour’s rest before awakened for espresso, choice of breakfast rolls, and hot towels.

  We landed at Terminal 3 of Rome’s Fiumicino Airport in a crimson dawn. Our dazzlingly beautiful hostess, nameplate Rosetta, escorted first and business class passengers off the plane, down a corridor toward two lines of groggy arrivals at Immigration kiosks designated for non-EU arrivals where carabinari and fussy, uniformed inspectors checked passports. Customs inspection was without delay and with our carry-ons and valises in hand, we were soon in a crowded reception area where a young man in white shirt, green tie, and black trousers, wavy black hair and ready smile, held a sign bearing my name.

  “Signori,” he hailed us and introduced himself as Enzo Morabito, our host in Rome, and hefted our carry-ons. “Please, this way,” and we followed him outside to a dark blue Lancia sedan. The uniformed driver snapped to, carry-ons were stored, and we were driven with a fanfare of horn blowing to the airport’s Terminal 11 for domestic travel to catch our flight to Bari. I informed Enzo that unless we called him, we planned to return to Rome tonight on the last flight, and meanwhile, he was to deliver the carry-ons to the Grand Hotel de la Minerve in the Piazza della Rotundo. “Of course, Signor.”

  The first hiccup.

  Terminal 11 was a madhouse. Loud speakers blared incoherently. Tired travelers stood in uncomplaining lines, machine pistol toting guards brusquely approached anyone with dark skin, flights seemed to change gates irrespective of what it might say on the flickering monitors. We checked in, were wanded, found our gate after being
bounced from another, washed up and shaved in an unpleasant men’s room, and boarded a cramped commuter aircraft for the hour’s flight. While waiting for take-off, I read a few pages on Bari and Basilicata that I downloaded and printed before leaving Providence.

  Bari, the capital of Puglia, indeed, all of the Boot, was terra incognita to me. The city’s official website, clearly designed for tourists, featured romantic images of Greek ruins, centuries old castles, cliffs falling into the sea, happy diners and sun worshipers in elegant surroundings. Its inhabitants were described as ‘resilient,’ with a heritage that included the Greeks, Normans, Saracens, French, Spaniards, and Arabs. Bari’s restaurants were ‘quaint’ and ‘charming’ featuring Mediterranean and Adriatic cuisine; its harbor was a busy hub for Adriatic commerce and passenger travel to Greece and the Aegean.

  So much for official Bari. Other sites were less complimentary, describing a feudal, hard-faced population inured to poverty, a people living in labyrinthine, odorous alleys that coiled around the harbor in endless curves, and a climate that was often too hot or a windy cool, and suffering the sins of seaports worldwide. In 1943, the Luftwaffe managed a surprise air raid on Bari and blew up Allied ships in the harbor loaded with mustard gases, creating a Hades on earth for the civilian population, killing or forever mutilating thousands. Recently, destitute Albanians from across the Adriatic had flooded the city and became tough competition for low-wage jobs and in the drug and smuggling trades. As for food, one local delicacy stood out, braciole di asino, a roll of donkey meat in ragout and quail!

  As to Basilicata, it was described as “remote and wild,” a “shattered lunarscape,” sparsely populated by a tough as nails, marginalized people culturally more attune to Sicily than mainland Italy. Named after Basilican monks fleeing from Byzantine lands invaded by Arabic and Turkish armies, its barren landscape of mountains and valleys kept change at bay. Much of the interior region lacked modern highways; one was as likely to see flocks of sheep as a Fiat or a county bus on its lonely tracks. No tourism to speak of because Greek ruins, medieval abbeys, and Norman castles had been long ago plundered. Altogether, a dour place, poor and unattractive.

  Seemed about right considering our mission.

  It was drizzling as our plane took off, Benno cramped in a seat behind me, and we headed south through squalls and dark clouds with occasional severe turbulence. I was relieved to see the clouds break as we approached Bari, its semi-circle harbor an angry gray of ruffled waves with wharves sticking out into the harbor like spikes. A scratchy intercom voice, which I assumed reminded us of seat belts fastened for landing, turned out, according to Benno, to be announcing that Bari’s airport was closed due to thunderstorms. We were going to circle until it was cleared.

  Clouds, streaked black and gray, thickened, and a violent, wind-driven rain buffeted the plane as its twin prop engines whined in a fight for altitude. In the seat in front of me, a frightened young girl began to wail, not listening to her mother’s cross aisle soothing or demands, and then abruptly, my stomach falling, we dove through the clouds. I braced myself, fearing the worst. The child screamed right through a bump on landing, then through several more, eliciting audible complaints from passengers, which got only louder at the snail speed of taxiing to the terminal. We were a rancorous group that slowly filed out of the plane onto a metal platform, descended its shaky stairs to the tarmac, and faced a nondescript, khaki-colored terminal building that complemented the patchy gray and green, rain-filled sky.

  Benno was pale around the eyes but said nothing as black cordons funneled us into a waiting area, frequently signed with Benvenuti a Bari and tourist posters of beaches and rustic villages in Puglia and the Gargano Peninsula. As our fellow travelers headed toward exits, only a squat man in his fifties, with a shock of black hair, in a black shirt, black trousers held up by suspenders, and black shoes, remained. Benno said, tentatively, “Gianmarco?” and took a step forward.

  “Bacigalupi?” the man replied and pressed Benno to his barrel chest, all the while eyeing me over Benno’s shoulder. His facial features too were large for the size of his corny face, enormous ear lobes separated from his skull, his frown was forbidding; his visage was, in a word, scary.

  I was introduced by Benno and since I was not family, I merited only a handshake and suspicious black eyes as he spoke sternly to Benno in a dialect I didn’t understand, his throaty voice like a retreating wave on a gravel beach. Benno listened, frowned, asked questions which needed repeating, and Gianmarco often shook his head in emphatic no’s.

  Second hiccup.

  For some reason, probably a problem with language, I was not expected. Arrangements had been made in Basilicata only for the arrival of Benno who was family. Gianmarco explained to Benno with frequent head shakes at me that my presence would either not be helpful or require a further negotiation. Benno asked Gianmarco what would happen if I simply showed up. Benno translated his reply; in such a situation, Gianmarco could not be responsible.

  Although very disappointed, I was confident in Benno’s investigatory prowess and agreed that if Gianmarco was not successful in obtaining permission for me to accompany them, I would return to Rome while they proceeded to meet the cousin. Benno informed Gianmarco whose face opened in a full-lipped smile as he snapped his fingers above his head.

  A thin, hatchet-face man, a typecast extra in any prison movie, came forward from his perch against a rail at a coffee bar and without introduction, led us through the terminal out to an adjoining parking lot and into the rear seat of a fairly new, silvery-gray BMW 7000. Gianmarco and the driver settled in front, we in the back, and the car left the airport on a cypress dotted, limited access road into Bari. Gianmarco was voluble in his conversation, Benno’s translation came in fits and pieces to me, and I understood that the village was about an hour and a half by car over the provincial border. First, however, we were invited to pranzo.

  Through rain-spotted windows, I had the perception that I had left Italy and arrived in a third world country. Dreary looking high rise apartment blocks with cage-like balconies and discolored awnings stood like dominoes on end in the horizon. Utility wires sagged on concrete pylons along the highway, orange groves and vineyards looked ill-maintained as did ochre and pinkish houses with shuttered windows and tile roofs sprouting aerials like leafless limbs. Closer to the city, rows of billboards stood in bases of litter, commercial buildings, many with graffiti on their walls and metal security doors, were painted in grime. Activity, if not beauty, picked up as our car left the highway for a traffic congested, palm-tree lined corso that led to Bari’s working harbor filled with freighters, ferries, and small passenger ships. We inched forward in a cacophony of car horns, brake squeals, and unmuffled Vespas; even with the windows closed and the air conditioning on full blast, I smelled day old fish.

  Abruptly, as a weak sun broke through the clouds, we turned into an elegant neighborhood of church domes, stone walls holding the remnants of a fortress, pink and beige Baroque palazzi, fountains, statues, and cobbled streets. Gianmarco pointed here and there with pride and Benno, sometimes, translated.

  Our destination was the Manfredi, a trattoria in the citta vecchia with a dining area that spilled out into a piazza near the Basilica di San Nicola. The trattoria’s ceiling beams were thick and blackened, as though boasting that they had held for centuries. The padrone di casa directed us to a table prepared for our arrival; the staff bowed deferentially to Gianmarco. As aromas of onion and garlic and meat sauce emanated from the kitchen, my stomach grumbled in expectation. Gianmarco, after discussion with our host, ordered a thick chickpeas soup with ribbons of pasta and mushrooms, antipasto, a risotto, filet of monkfish, taralli which is a local bread with a pretzel texture served with a spiced oil, and beef slices rolled in spicy tomato sauce. What, no bracioli di asino? Dessert was a platter of fruit, biscuits, and cream filled tarts. Our camaraderie was enhanced by red and white local wines served from large carafes.

  Benno and hi
s cousin had obviously become amici, their language and demeanors had relaxed, with Benno occasionally sharing tidbits. At one point, after a long, hand waving discourse from Gianmarco, Benno said to me, “Basilicata is ruled by the ‘friends’ so, don’t be surprised by precautions.”

  And then, a revelation: Gianmarco understood and spoke some English, an ability that had been hidden from us until he had a level of confidence that we were not troublemakers. As a bottle of grappa appeared and espresso was served, Gianmarco lit a Marlboro cigarette and took a call on his telefono at the table.

  Third hiccup.

  Gianmarco said that I could accompany them to Gianosa d’Acri and be present for the interview but I would not be permitted to converse directly with the cousin. He then reverted to dialect and said something that straightened Benno’s shoulders which, after a nod, he translated for me.

  “Gianmarco says that if you embarrass him, not only would the interview be over, but you and I will have insulted him. We don’t want that.”

  43

  WE LEFT THE TRATTORIA shortly thereafter. Four gigantic baskets of food and wine wrapped in yellowish plastic had been loaded into the car’s trunk, gifts, I assumed, to those in the chain of protocol; a cooler of bottled water was placed on the floor of the front passenger seat.

  Our seat positions in the BMW changed with Benno riding in front and Gianmarco and me in the spacious rear seat. Gianmarco, now wearing sunglasses, instructed me in a garbled English-Italian, that I must follow his lead in all things, I would not speak unless spoken to, Benno would ask any questions of the cousin through Gianmarco, who would take care of formalities as necessary. It was possible, he said, even after all of this, I might have to remain in the car while the cousin, who was named as Camilla, was interviewed. Such arrangements, Gianmarco said, were not out of disrespect but to protect me.