When Shadows Come

by Vincent Zandri

  “Close the door behind you,” Grace says as she begins descending the steps to the first floor.

  My hand on the brass knob, I feel the blood coursing rapidly through my veins. This isn’t raw nerves so much as my gut speaking to me, telling me to be vigilant, to keep my guard up.

  I close the door. Hard. And the building begins to spin.

  Click . . . My shoulder slams against the concrete floor . . . a steel door slams closed behind me . . .

  Panicked, I reach out for the railing, hold on to it with both hands.

  “Nick, what’s wrong?” Gracie calls up to me from down below.

  Jesus, get it together, Captain. Shut off your goddamned brain.

  I peel my left hand away from the rail, begin feeling my way down the stairs, like I’m the blind man descending into hell. But what I’m beginning to realize is this: the hell is in my mind.

  “Be careful,” Grace reminds me.

  “Grace, cut it out!” I bark, my voice echoing in the stairwell.

  I stop my descent.

  Silence ensues. Weighted and dreadful.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Those phone calls . . . They’re getting to me.”

  “Just . . . take your time,” she says.

  “I will,” I say, now once again feeling my way down each step, my hand securely on the rail.

  Chapter 11

  The waiter is formally attired in a white shirt, black trousers, and matching jacket, a clean white towel draped over his forearm. Or so Grace tells me. He escorts us to a table that overlooks the San Marco Basin and the small islands set in the near distance. Torcello and Murano among them.

  Torcello.

  Where Papa Hemingway fell in love with a beautiful Italian countess by the name of Adriana. He was not much older than I am now, and still licking his wounds from World War II, where he reported from the front lines in the dreadful, deadly Hürtgen Forest. She was nineteen and ravishing, and her family fortune was dwindling. Hemingway fell head over heels for her and even asked her to marry him, though he was already married at the time. She said no, of course. He worshipped her anyway and spent many lonely days and nights in Venice writing a novel in which their love became more real than if it had truly happened, but for which he was badly maligned by the New York critics who suggested he’d become a poor parody of himself. Plagued by severe memory loss resulting from a series of electroconvulsive shock therapy sessions, he would eventually shoot himself in the head with his prized Italian side-by-side twelve-gauge shotgun. The Italian countess would later hang herself from the rafters in her apartment overlooking the Grand Canal.

  The wind picks up off the basin.

  It seems to seep right through my leather coat into flesh, skin, and bone. I try to hold my face up to the sun while the waiter takes our orders. Grace orders a single glass of vino rosso along with a pancetta and cheese panino. I forgo the Valpolicella and order a Moretti beer and a simple spaghetti pomodoro.

  We sit in the calm of the early afternoon, the sounds of the boat and vaporetto traffic coming and going filling my ears. People surround us on all sides. Tourists who have come to San Marco for the first time and who’ve become mesmerized. The stone square, the cathedral, the bell tower, the many shops and high-end eateries that occupy the wide, square-shaped perimeter. The pigeons. The people. Always throngs of people coming and going amidst a chorus of bells, bellowing voices, live music emerging from trumpets, violins, and guitars, and an energetic buzz that seems to radiate up from underneath all that stone and sea-soaked soil.

  It’s late November.

  Here’s what I know about Venice: in just a week or two, the rains will fall even harder and more frequently and this square will be underwater. The ever-sinking Venice floods easily now. The only way to traverse the square will be over hastily constructed plank walkways. Many of the tourists will stay away and the live music will be silenced. But somehow, that’s when Venice will come alive more than ever. When the stone is bathed in water.

  The waiter brings our drinks and food.

  With the aroma of the hot spaghetti filling my senses, I dig in and spoon up a mouthful. I wash the hot, tangy, sauce-covered pasta down with a swallow of beer.

  “Whoa, slow down, Captain.” Grace giggles. “Eating, smiling, making love to me. What’s next? Writing something? Maybe even opening up about the past?”

  “Don’t press your luck, Gracie. Just don’t start asking me to identify engagement rings.”

  She laughs genuinely and I listen to the sounds of her taking a bite out of her sandwich. But then she falls quiet again. Too quiet, as if she’s stopped breathing altogether.

  “There’s someone staring at us again,” she says under her breath.

  The tickle on the back of my neck . . . The click in my brain that signals and awakens my senses . . . My right hand reaching for a sidearm that isn’t there . . .

  “Man or woman?” I say, trying to position my gaze directly across the table at her, but making out nothing more than her silhouette framed against the brightness of the sun. Later on, when the sun goes down, the image of her will be entirely black. Like the blackness of the Afghan Tajik country when the fires are put out, the lights extinguished, and you lie unmoving on your back and you feel the beating of your heart and you pray for morning.

  “Man,” she whispers.

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Jesus, it’s him again. The man in the overcoat who was staring at us yesterday.”

  I put my fork down on my plate. “You sure?”

  “He’s wearing sunglasses this time. But it’s him.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “I’m afraid, Nick.”

  “Slow down, take a breath, tell me what he looks like. I just want to be sure it’s him. The same man.”

  I hear her inhale, exhale. “He’s thin. A little taller than you. He’s got a dark complexion.”

  “Black?”

  “No. More like Asian or Middle Eastern. It’s the same man, Nick. He’s wearing sunglasses and that same dark, brownish overcoat and a scarf. His hair is black and cut close to his scalp. His beard is trimmed.” I hear her take a quick, nervous sip of her wine. “He keeps staring at us. At me. Just like yesterday, Nick.”

  “How do you know he’s staring at you? It could be something behind you. We’re in Venice. Lots going on behind you. Lots to see.”

  She’s stirring in her chair. Agitated.

  “Because I can feel him. His eyes . . . I feel his eyes.”

  Just like I felt them yesterday and feel them again right now . . .

  I wipe my mouth clean with the cloth napkin, and then I do something entirely silly. I turn around in my chair to get a look at the man. When will I ever stop doing that?

  “What are you doing?” Grace asks, the anxiety in her voice growing more intense with each passing second.

  “Trying to get a look at him.”

  “You’re joking, Nick.”

  I turn back, try to focus on her without the use of my eyes. “You think?”

  We sit silent.

  Once more I am helpless and impotent.

  “Sorry,” she says after a time. “But this man is at the same caffè we’re at two days in a row? This is really starting to creep me out, babe. Really scaring me now.”

  My pulse begins to race. Two steady drumbeats against my temples. I find myself wanting to swallow, but my mouth has gone dry. What I wouldn’t give for a little vision right now. I take a sip of beer, thinking it will help calm distressed nerves.

  “He’s coming toward us, Nick. I don’t like it.”

  A second distinct click in my head. Heart pounds against my sternum. Blood speeds through the veins. Battleground conditions.

  “Are you sure?” I’m trying not to raise my voice, but it’s next to impossible.

  “He’s looking right at me. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his overcoat. And he’s coming.”

  I feel and hear her pushi
ng away from the table. That’s when the smell sweeps over me. A rich, organic, incense-like smell.

  Then comes the sound of Grace standing. Abruptly standing. I hear her metal chair push out. Hear the sound of her boot heels on the cobbles. Hear the chair legs scraping against the stone. Hear the clink of her wineglass wobbling, tipping.

  “Grace, for God’s sake, be careful,” I say. But my entire being is filled with confusion and fear.

  She doesn’t respond. I hear no sound at all other than the boats on the basin and the constant murmur of the thousands of tourists that fill this ancient square.

  “Grace,” I say. “Grace. Stop it. This isn’t funny. Grace.”

  The smell of incense is gone.

  I make out gulls flying over the tables, birds shooting in from the basin to pick up scraps of food and then, like thieves in the night, shooting back out over the water. I hear and feel the sound-wave-driven music reverberating against the stone cathedral.

  “Grace,” I repeat, louder now. “Grace. Grace . . . Grace!”

  Nothing.

  It’s like she’s gone. Vanished. But how can she be gone? She was just sitting here with me. She was sitting directly across from me, eating a sandwich and drinking wine. She was talking with me.

  The waiter approaches. “The signora is not liking her food?”

  I reach out across the table. To the place where she was sitting. She is definitely not there.

  “Is there a toilet close by?” I ask. “Did you see my fiancée leave the table and go to the toilet?”

  The waiter pauses for a moment. “I am sorry. But I did not. I was inside the caffè.”

  “Then maybe somebody else saw her. Maybe you can ask them.”

  “Signor, there are many tables in this caffè and they are filled with people. And there are many people who walk among the tables. No one seems to be concerned about anything. Sometimes there are so many people here, it is easy to get lost. Perhaps she did go to the toilet, and she got lost among the people. I will come back in a moment and make sure all is well.”

  The waiter leaves, his footsteps fading against the slate.

  I sit and stare at nothing. My heart is pounding so fast I think it will cease at any moment. What I have in place of vision is a blank wall of blurry adrenaline-fueled illumination no longer filled with the silhouette of Grace.

  I push out my chair. Stand. My legs knock into the table and my glass of beer spills. I cup my hands around my mouth.

  “Grace!” I shout. “Grace! Grace!”

  The people surrounding me slip into quiet alarm as I scream over them.

  The waiter comes running back over.

  “Please, please,” he says, taking me by the arm. “Please come with me.”

  He leads me through the throng of tables and people. He is my sight now that Grace has disappeared.

  “She’s gone, isn’t she? Did you check the toilets?” I beg.

  “We checked the toilets. They are empty. I am sorry. I am sure there is a reason . . . a, how you say . . . explanation.”

  “A man took her away,” I shout. “How could no one have seen it?”

  “You’re frightening the patrons, signor. Please just come with me and we will try to find her.”

  I reach out for the people sitting at a table beside me. I know they must be looking at me, gawking. Maybe they’re as frightened as I am.

  I reach out, grab at nothing. But when I reach out again, I feel an arm. A man’s arm.

  “Did you see my fiancée leave?” I plead.

  The man yanks his arm away. He speaks something in a language I do not recognize. It is most definitely not Italian.

  “Anyone,” I say. “Did anyone see the woman who was sitting across from me leave the table? Did she leave with a man who wears an overcoat and sunglasses? Somebody speak to me. In English. Somebody.”

  But all I get are confused, murmured voices, as if the people who were sitting so close to Grace never noticed her vanishing into thin air.

  The waiter puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “Please, signor,” he repeats, “the patrons seem to know nothing. It will be better if we discuss this somewhere else.”

  I slap his hand away from my shoulder.

  “Grace is gone,” I say. “Don’t you fucking understand me? My Grace is gone.”

  Chapter 12

  By the sounds and feel of it, I’m led through a dining room into a small room located in the very back of the caffè. The wooden door is closed behind me, and I am offered a chair. After I give him permission to look through the many photos I have of Grace stored on my mobile phone, the waiter pours me a snifter of brandy, tells me to drink it.

  “It will make you feel, how you say, all the better,” he insists in somewhat broken but surprisingly good English.

  I do it.

  In the meantime, with the waiter’s help, I speed-dial Grace’s cell phone. While he checks for her in the area surrounding the exterior portion of the caffè, I press the phone to my ear. I get only the voice mail. After leaving five messages begging her to call me, I’m connected with an automated recording telling me her mailbox is full. I imagine that the man who took her away from me has tossed her phone into the Grand Canal.

  When the waiter returns, I know what he’s about to tell me before he says it. I don’t need eyesight to see his ashen face. I hear the sad sluggishness of his gait and the defeated shuffling of the soles on his leather shoes on the wooden floorboards.

  “Perhaps the time is here to call the police,” he whispers.

  My heart plummets.

  Chapter 13

  He introduces himself as Detective Paulo Carbone and he’s a somewhat burly, well-dressed Venetian police official of middle age. Or so I picture him, judging by his excellent English and the smooth, low tone of his voice. Like a pack-a-day smoker now trying to quit and succeeding. When I hear him lighting up with a good old-fashioned Zippo-style flip-top lighter, I’m confident the picture I’ve painted in my head is not entirely inaccurate.

  I’m seated in a wooden chair before his desk inside the Venice Polizia, or the Polizia di Stato, headquarters. I was transported here by a uniformed policeman who, despite grilling several of the caffè patrons, insisted that a crime-scene investigation was not yet in order since it is possible my fiancée simply disappeared of her own accord. A notion that not only fills me with dread, but that makes my already-ailing heart nearly quit on me altogether.

  After the detective orders hard-copy prints of several photographs of Grace from the batch on my phone, he makes note of her vitals: name, age, weight, height, eye, hair, and skin color. He then begins probing into what he defines as “the situation.”

  “We were having lunch at the caffè outside the cathedral in Piazza San Marco. Grace spotted a man staring at us. A middle-aged man with a dark complexion who wore sunglasses. He was thin, a little taller than me. In good physical shape anyway. He had a trim beard and he had on a long brown or brownish overcoat. It’s possible he’s been following us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because we spotted him staring at us at a different caffè not far from here. If only you could have seen his eyes.”

  “You say he wore sunglasses. How could you see his eyes?”

  “I saw his eyes yesterday afternoon, goddammit.” My voice rises. “They’re dark eyes. Like the whites are missing. Or burned away from constant exposure to the sun.”

  “You’ve spotted the man before.”

  “I just told you that, Detective.” Then, “Listen, instead of sitting here doing nothing, don’t you think it would be a good idea to check my apartment? Maybe Grace went back there after she disappeared?”

  “My men have already checked your apartment above the bookshop. She’s not there. No suspicious activity reported around the place.” He smokes a little. “But let’s get back to his eyes. What color eyes did you say he had?” I feel like I’m back on the line. Like I’ve just spent two weeks i
n hostile territory and some West Point hotshot who can’t tell the difference between the caliber on his sidearm and the diameter of his asshole is grilling me over why I didn’t bring him enough scalps to make him look good to command.

  “Black. Or dark brown. Shall I tell you what color they are a third time?”

  He laughs. “Maybe. It’s just that I’m confused. The man you saw today was wearing sunglasses?”

  “That’s correct. But it was raining yesterday.”

  “Yes,” he says, writing something down. “It was raining. And you think the man you saw yesterday and today is the same man and that it is possible this man might have taken your fiancée? Kidnapped her right before your eyes? The eyes of one thousand other people who occupied that area of the caffè and the square?”

  “If you haven’t already noticed, I’m blind.”

  “That contradicts what you stated in the written police report.”

  “Correction,” I say. “I am undergoing a temporary blindness due to—”

  “Due to what, Mr. Angel? Or do you prefer Captain Angel?”

  “Due to the war. In Afghanistan. I’m a soldier, like it says in the report. Or was a soldier. I’m a writer, too. Or would like to be a writer.”

  I feel him nodding, writing something else down.

  “I, too, was a soldier, Captain Angel. I served in the Persian Gulf with the First Draghi and later with NATO.”

  “I’ve been serving on and off, Detective, but I’m not here to trade war stories. I’m here to find my fiancée.”

  He goes silent for a moment while he smokes. “You should know that thus far, no one has reported seeing your fiancée being abducted from the caffè. This would have been a couple of hours ago in the plain light of midday, you understand.”

  “I understand. I was there.”

  “But you could not see anything.”

  I exhale. “Yes, I couldn’t see.”

  “Do you ever experience the eyesight anymore?”

  For a split second I consider revealing my recent sleepwalking incident, but just as quickly think better of it. I don’t want to give him the impression I’m nuts or emotionally disturbed.