“Must be especially tough on you now that she’s gone.” Pursing his lips. “Of course, you can always head immediately back to your base hospital in Germany. We would take care of working out your safe transport.” He looks away. “It would be the prudent thing to do, don’t you agree?”
Just the sound of him stating the reality of it all in quite that manner and tone is enough to send my insides on a nosedive south.
. . . The concrete room. Seated in a chair. Rubbing my wrists as though . . . as though I’d been strapped in. A man seated before me. Impossible to make out his face. “Tell me what you remember about . . . the torture,” he says.
I shudder. Fuck. Torture. I’ve never been captured. Never been a POW. What damned torture?
“Are you all right, Captain?” Graham says.
I nod, rub my forehead with my thumb and index finger.
“I’m okay,” I say, a wave of nausea passing through me. “I’ve been getting headaches.”
“Must be the stress. You really should go back to Frankfurt. I can arrange it for you.”
“I’m not leaving!” I bark. “Not until I find Grace. Don’t you get it?”
He bites down on his lip, issues me a slow nod. He gets it, all right, but he doesn’t like it either.
“Can you help me find her, Mr. Graham? And can you promise me you won’t talk to the army about what’s happening? Carbone has already spilled enough about the situation. He fill you in on that too?”
Another nod. More biting down on the lip.
He turns to peer out the window onto the canal. “I understand your frustration in the matter, Captain. But it’s really a police issue now. Even if you had come to me first I would have sent you here. Should your fiancée become detained by the police for any reason, or should she be officially reported missing, then the embassy will do everything in its power to cooperate with local authorities and Interpol. But until that time, her disappearance is still a local police matter.” He turns to me.
“I’m not leaving,” I say.
“Perhaps it’s best you go back to your studio, get some rest. There’s nothing more that can be done here.”
I stand. “The detective believes she ran off on her own. Some people witnessed us arguing in a caffè yesterday afternoon, and that’s what he bases his assumption on. But I don’t believe Grace has left me. She would never do that.”
But then, I never imagined she’d fuck Andrew, either.
“Yes, that would be a difficult pill to swallow. Especially in your condition.” The smile once more paints his face. “It’s been a long day, Captain. Is there anything I can do for you while you wait and see what transpires over the course of the next forty-eight hours? Can we give you a lift back to your place?”
I slide my hands down the length of my face, breathe in. “No thank you. I have my eyesight back for now. I’ll see myself home.”
Graham nods, goes for the stairs. But before descending them, he turns to me once more. “Captain,” he says, his brow scrunched with concern. “Please don’t do anything foolish. The police will do everything in their power to see that Grace is located. The best thing for you is to go home and get some rest. Should Grace go officially missing, you’ll need all the rest you can get.”
“I will,” I tell him. But it’s a lie and he knows it.
Chapter 23
By the time I make my way back downstairs into the main reception area, the precinct has been reduced to a nighttime skeleton crew. Venice has never been known as a beehive for major crimes like kidnapping, rape, and murder. In the detective’s office situated at the end of the open square room, two men are standing, talking. I see parts of their torsos through the opaque glass panel embedded into the wooden door.
Detective Carbone and Dave Graham from the US Embassy.
Talking isn’t the right word. They seem to be arguing, the detective waving his hands up and down, as if to stress his point. I can only wonder if they’re arguing about me. About Grace. Maybe they’re arguing over where to go for a drink and dinner. Maybe they’re not even arguing.
I know the detective expects me to return to his office so he can once more assume the responsibility of escorting a part-time blind man back to his hotel. But I’m not blind right now. I can see. Seeing means I’m not helpless. It means I can do something. I can attack the problem. I can try to find Grace.
The front doors to the precinct are directly before me.
I turn away from the detective’s office, descend the small flight of stairs, and head out into the night.
Chapter 24
Out on the cobbled walk, I spot the Route 1 Vaporetto as it’s about to depart the bobbing dockside stop. I pay my seven euros at the window and hop on just as it’s pulling away, squeezing in amongst annoyed tourists and evening commuters. I do my best to balance myself in the never-ending chop of the Grand Canal while the boat heads deeper into the old city.
At the stop for Piazza San Marco I get off, crossing over the short but precarious steel-plated gangplank along with half the boat’s passengers. I follow the crowd through several passages and over two or three narrow pedestrian bridges that span thin feeder canals until I come to a large building set on a foundation of arches and pillars.
I make my way through the open arch and enter into the piazza.
This is the first time since the late 1980s that I have actually focused functioning eyes on the ancient cathedral, its lamp-lit Asian-inspired stone exterior, tall arches, and minarets. In the time since I arrived in Venice with Grace, I’ve walked on the hard cobblestones of Piazza San Marco, but never actually seen them. I’ve felt and rubbed up against the hordes of tourists, but I’ve never set functioning eyes upon them.
I don’t waste any time. I have no idea how long the seeing is going to last. If I lose my sight here, I will have no way of getting home in the dark through the maze of alleys and walkways.
I head directly for the cathedral and the caffè located to its right alongside the basin. As always, the place is full. Every single one of the two dozen or so tables is occupied with patrons eating and drinking under the electric lights and the heat from the tall, gas-powered braziers set in between the tables.
I have no idea what I’m looking for.
The truth is that I’m living a fantasy. I half expect Grace to still be seated at the table we occupied this afternoon. I expect to see her face ignite with a relieved smile when she sees me. For her to stand up, hold out her open arms to me.
“Where have you been, baby?” she’ll say, as if I were the one who went missing. “I was worried sick.”
But she’s not sitting at that table.
Another couple is sitting there instead. A young, well-dressed couple. Americans. They sound like they’re from New York City. Probably enjoying their honeymoon.
I move on past the tables, scanning the cobbles as if Grace might have left something behind for me to find later on. Something that would tell me I’m not crazy in thinking she was abducted by a man in a long brown overcoat. I scan the ground, but I see nothing. Only cigarette butts, paper wrappers, bits of food that have fallen from the tables, and the pigeons who brave the stomping feet of caffè patrons in order to snatch them up.
When I raise my head, he’s standing at the far end of the outdoor caffè.
He’s positioned himself under a black wrought-iron lamp, bathed in an inverted arc of white lamplight. He’s not wearing his sunglasses, so he stares at me with eyes that are glossy black, even from a distance of thirty feet. My breathing goes shallow and my temples begin to pound. I move toward him. But the moment I start walking, he takes a step back and disappears into the darkness, like he was never there in the first place.
I run.
Run in the direction of the lamp. When an oblivious caffè patron pushes out his chair, I crash into it, sending him and me onto the pavement.
The man lies quietly on the ground while I roll onto my knees, peering in the direction of the lamp. The
overcoat man is nowhere to be found now. The scattering of people who were sharing the table with the man I ran into are trying to help him back up onto his feet. They are speaking German or Swiss; I can’t really tell. They shoot me angry looks.
My eyes are beginning to lose their focus.
Sight fades in and out like it’s controlled not by my brain but by a pair of batteries rapidly losing their juice. I’ve caught the attention of the entire caffè now. Or so it seems. It’s late and they’re drunk. Some of the patrons have gotten up from their tables and are approaching me. Someone takes a picture of me, the flash blinding me further.
My vision is entirely black when I feel a pair of strong arms attempt to lift me up off the cobbles and drag me away.
Chapter 25
“Please,” he says, “just try to walk without running into something or scaring someone else away.”
I know the voice.
It’s the waiter who helped me earlier this afternoon. Once more he’s leading me through what I assume is the dining room of the quiet caffè to the back, where the office is. He sets me down in a chair and gets me a drink of sherry, which he puts in front of me, placing my right hand around the stem. As if I need him to do this for me.
“Drink,” he insists. “It will calm you.”
I give the alcohol time to settle in before saying anything.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Giovanni,” he answers. “Why did you come back here?”
“I saw him, Giovanni. I saw the man who took my fiancée.”
“What did he look like?”
“He’s a tall man in that same long brown overcoat. This afternoon he was wearing sunglasses. But tonight he was without them. He has black eyes. Striking black eyes, as if there are no irises. No whites. Do you know the man?”
“I see lots of men come and go through this caffè every day. Inside and outside. He could be anyone.”
“You would know him if you saw him. He looks like a dead man who is alive for only one purpose. To steal Grace.”
He pours me another sherry, tells me to drink. “And what is your name?”
I tell him.
“Nick,” he says. “It’s possible I know this man. I recall a man standing around the caffè this morning, this afternoon, and tonight. Never does he sit down to eat or drink. But always just standing. Like he is expecting someone.”
“Like me for instance, Giovanni.”
“Yes, like you, Nick.”
I drink the sherry, set down the empty glass. Looking up into the light, I discover my blindness is no longer absolute. I’m not enveloped in darkness like I am during the blind periods. Instead, I am seeing shapes and the blurry movement of those shapes. It’s as if every time I experience a bout of full eyesight, a little of the temporary blindness disappears.
“I take it you have been talking with the police,” Giovanni goes on. “They have been here off and on all afternoon. And someone from the US Embassy. A well-dressed American who was accompanied by the detective.”
I recall Dave Graham. He never mentioned visiting this caffè. Why would the distinguished diplomat keep that kind of information from me? And why would he come here at all if he was so convinced that Grace’s disappearance was simply a police matter?
The calming effects of the sherry are kicking in enough to slow my beating heart to almost normal levels. Something dawns on me.
“Giovanni,” I say. “Why are you helping me like this? Why not just call the police and be done with me?”
Through a hazy blur I see him fill the sherry glass once more. Only, instead of handing it to me, he drinks it down. Setting the empty glass onto the desk, he exhales.
“Because I found something,” he says. “Something that must be very important to you. But before I show it to you, I suggest another sherry.”
Chapter 26
First I drink another glass of sherry. Then, after setting the empty glass back down onto the desk, Giovanni asks me to hold out my hand. Palm up.
He puts something into my hand.
It’s small and hard. A metal band topped with a stone. An engagement ring. Grace’s engagement band.
My heart skips a beat. “Where did you find it?”
“In between two cobbles near the table where you were having your lunch. But the question, Captain, is why did I find it?”
I grip the ring in my fisted hand. It’s all that I have left of Grace.
“What are you suggesting?”
“If your wife—”
“Fiancée.”
“Si, if your fiancée was taken from you by this man we have both seen, perhaps it is possible she slipped off her ring and . . .”
He hesitates.
“And what?” I say.
“How do you say, release the ring? Or allow the ring to fall?”
“She dropped the ring, you mean.”
“Yes, that’s it. She dropped it, hoping someone would find it and report it missing. It would perhaps be her way of screaming for help. Like she was leaving you a marker. Like someone who is lost in the forest might leave behind a handkerchief or a piece of clothing. Something that tells you she’s become lost and wants to be found.”
I squeeze the ring harder, if that’s possible. In my mind, I see Grace being dragged away while she struggles to free the ring from her finger. I try to ignore any thoughts that suggest she knew she was going to die, and that’s why she left the ring behind. For me to have something to remember her by.
“Of course, there is another possibility,” Giovanni says.
“What is it?”
“If your fiancée was not abducted . . . if she was merely leaving you . . . then perhaps she removed the ring from her finger and dropped it onto the cobblestones before walking away for good. A final, physical act that would represent the end.”
I loosen my grip on the ring while my heart once more nosedives south. But I must admit, as painful as it is to hear what he’s suggesting, he still makes perfect sense. I recall just yesterday afternoon when the ring fell to the cobbles beside our table in a different, quieter piazza not far from the Grand Canal. I recognized the sound of the metal smacking against the stone. That wasn’t the case in San Marco, which is always crowded, always loud, always confusing and distracting. Especially for a blind man.
“I refuse to believe she dropped the relationship and the ring, Giovanni,” I say after a time. “If she dropped it, she did it because she wants to be found. Rescued.”
“But no one saw her being taken. You must accept that as a possibility.”
“I understand it as a possibility. But I don’t believe it as a reality.”
We sit in silence for another few seconds, until Giovanni asks me if he can escort me home. “But first,” he adds, “should we not alert the detective to our discovery of the ring?”
He’s right. We should alert the detective. But then, if the worst has happened and Grace has been abducted, the ring will be confiscated as evidence. I squeeze the ring harder, as if it’s possible to embed it into my skin and flesh. It is all I have left of my love.
Standing, I shove it deep down into my pants pocket. “For now I’ll keep the ring. Until we get to the bottom of what happened to my Grace.”
Giovanni lays his hand on my shoulder and squeezes, and for the second time tonight, I experience a flash of déjà vu.
“You and I, Captain,” he says. “We are more alike than you know.”
“How’s that?”
“I do not always trust the police either.”
Chapter 27
After I explain where I’m staying, Giovanni escorts me home. Not over the water but through the series of back alleys and narrow stone walkways too impossibly connected to describe. He holds my hand the entire way, like I’m a lost child in a hedge maze. Or maybe I’m just a blind mouse. For a man who works as a waiter, his hand is remarkably cold, and hard.
When we come to my building, I fumble for my keys and manage to u
nlock the building’s front door on my own. Giovanni leaves me, but not without handing me a card with his cell number written on it.
“If you need me,” he stresses, “please call me. I am not far away, as you can see.”
As I can see . . .
“Wait,” I say, recalling my mistake in not getting Detective Carbone’s number earlier. “Do me a favor and pop your number in my phone.” Pulling out my cell, I hand it to him. “You don’t need a code to access the dialer. I turned it off a while ago, as soon as I started experiencing the blindness.”
“No problem,” he says. When he’s done, he hands me the phone, then bids me farewell and walks off.
I carefully climb the stairs to the empty apartment over the bookshop, let myself in, find my way to the couch, and collapse onto it. A lonely soldier losing the battle to desperation and grief.
Chapter 28
I’m not sure exactly what time I fall asleep. But when I wake up, the sun is emerging as a red-orange haze over the distant basin. Not only can I see the sun, but I feel the warmth of its rays shining on my face through the open French doors. I’ve slept all night, but not lying down. Fact is, I’m no longer lying on the couch. Instead I’m standing on the terrace that overlooks the feeder canal and the narrow alley that runs perpendicular to it, all the way to the Grand Canal.
I’ve been sleepwalking again.
Sleepwalking and dreaming.
Staring at the sun, I try to dredge up the dream, piece it together as if it were a mirror that’s shattered into a hundred pieces.
I’m sitting in a brightly lit room. It’s a classroom of some kind. Two other men occupy the room with me. There’s a fourth man standing at the head of the room, in front of a screen. Slides being projected on the screen. Images of World War II showing the execution of Jews by Nazi Gestapo, the barrels of their Lugers pressed against the backs of the prisoners’ heads as they kneel before an open mass grave. Images from Vietnam. US Army soldiers lighting a village on fire, children screaming all around them, their skin charred and burned from napalm. Images of Saddam Hussein’s army gassing the Kurdish children, their chubby, white, doll-like, open-eyed faces covered in dust and insects. Images of the two passenger jets crashing into the World Trade Center, the buildings burning from the top down, young men and women standing on window ledges, making the sign of the cross before leaping to their deaths . . . The man at the front of the room is bathed in these images, so that it’s difficult to make out his face. “How do you feel when you view these images, gentlemen?” I’m sitting in between the two men. As if on cue, we glance at one another over our shoulders, then face the front of the room once more. “I don’t feel a thing,” I volunteer. “Not a goddamned thing . . .”
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