by Molly Greene
“Beats me. You were awake when they brought you through the place. Your call.”
“I think they shoved me in through a door in that end of the building.” Luca pointed.
“Then let’s head for the other side. Keep your eyes peeled for a way out to the roof. From what little I could see from below the complex, the pitch of the roofline isn’t real steep. Maybe if we can get onto it, we can find a way down.”
The pair began the journey on their hands and knees, scrabbling over ducting and bundled electric wires. The light was dim to nonexistent, but Gen had noticed when they first climbed up that the fiberglass insulation shoved into each of the joist bays was dotted with little black pellets.
Rats. The thought made her cringe.
They edged along from one joist to the next like two ants trying to navigate a football field strewn with trash. It was hot, and it was dark. Her nerves were raw before they’d covered fifty feet.
They hadn’t gone much farther when Luca stopped, then beckoned for her to crawl up beside him. He was crouched over a square of metal grating that was like an open window to the room below. Once upon a time, an arm of the cylindrical heating duct had covered it, but some workman had detached it from the grate and failed to hook it up again.
“Check it out,” he whispered.
Gen moved closer and peered over the edge.
They were about twelve feet above the milieu strewn about the room below. It took a minute to realize what she was seeing, but she got the picture soon enough.
There were crates and cardboard boxes of every size and shape stacked throughout the space. The open ones contained cups and plates and statues and clay vessels and implements she couldn’t name, all still semi-shrouded in the newspaper they’d been packed in. Many of the pots were in pieces, and a few had what seemed to be clumps of soil clinging to their sides.
The place was so stuffed with artifacts it looked like the bowels of a museum.
A fan whirred somewhere off to the right. A man sat at a long picnic-style table in the same direction, hunched over and working. He was balding, and his scalp was shiny under the overhead fluorescents. A tabletop task light focused its beam on several plates in front of him. He seemed to be packing them up.
From what Gen could see, it appeared there was no one else in residence. She could just make out a stretch of the second-story windows, which were dingy and coated with grime. Appalling work conditions. The guy should complain. Then again, maybe he was getting paid enough that a greasy window or two couldn’t upset him.
She sat back on her heels and studied Luca’s face across from her, illuminated by the lights from below. She speculated about what was going on downstairs, and bet big money the room was filled with illegal artifacts, and that this building was a clearing house, set up to receive the loot and ship it on.
And the Carabinieri were part of it, maybe even running the show.
She wondered how much Vitelli knew.
The kid hooked a thumb over his shoulder, interrupting her thoughts. He was saying it was time to get on with it, and she couldn’t agree more.
They resumed their scramble in the dark.
That is, of course, until Luca fell through the ceiling.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The kid had just stood up to scramble around some kind of skylight when the material beneath him gave way. It happened like a magician’s stage trick. One second he was standing there, nearly upright, and the next he took a step and a hatch door opened and Luca dropped through. Only it wasn’t a hatch door, it was drywall or acoustical ceiling or something like that, and it crumbled beneath his feet.
He hung there for a second looking stunned; she could see his expression in the light shooting up through the hole. For a minute his arms were hooked around the joists on each side of the bay, but then, without a word, he just let go and disappeared.
By the time Gen reached out to try and grab him, he was gone. She heard a thud and raced as fast as her hands and knees would take her to the abyss he’d vanished into, then peered down.
He was on his back on the floor below, looking up.
“Are you all right?” she hissed.
He nodded.
“Are you sure?”
He stood up and shrugged one shoulder in a circle, then kneaded it with the opposite hand. “Pulled a muscle,” he whispered. “I’ll live.” He looked around the room. “I think it’s some kind of apartment.”
Gen held on tight to the studs and levered herself down through the torn gypsum board as far as she dared. It was a bedroom. The floor was carpeted. There was a mattress and box spring with a utilitarian spread in one corner, but not much else.
She was trying to decide whether to join him or tell him to hike himself back up through the exit wound he’d made in the ceiling when the door opened. She jammed her body backward and tried to hide, knowing even as she did how useless that would be.
It was too late. They were busted.
Then she caught sight of Luca rushing forward with his arms out and heard the glad in his voice as he said, “Grandma!” And then she heard a woman shush him.
Apparently they’d established the whereabouts of the absent Mrs. Vitelli.
Gen dropped her head back into the room. A small gray-haired lady was embracing the much taller boy and patting his back. She appeared to be alone.
So far, anyway.
“Grandma, are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
“Mrs. Vitelli,” Gen whispered. “Is anyone with you?”
Mrs. V glanced up when she heard Gen’s voice and answered clearly, “No to both questions, my dears.”
She looked remarkably unperturbed, considering Luca had obviously crashed through the ceiling and a woman she didn’t know was now speaking to her from the hole he’d made to get there.
Her face was pale, though, and dark circles cut a swath beneath her eyes. Gen could see that the hand she’d rested on Luca’s arm was trembling.
They were excellent liars, these Vitellis. Good acting swam in the gene pool. They possessed some kind of European stoicism, even though she’d always heard Italians were an emotional bunch. So much for that ethnic generality. And enough conjecture about which characteristics ran in the family.
“Is Vincenzo all right?” Mrs. Vitelli’s voice shook with the question. “I have been worried sick he would do something crazy, and now my grandson falls from the attic.”
Luca walked Mrs. V to the bed and sat down beside her, then wrapped an arm around her and held her tight. “He’s okay. This is Genny Delacourt, Grandma. She’s gonna figure out a way to get you out of here, and everything’s going to be all right.”
Oh, no pressure there.
“What is this place?” Gen asked, wondering where all the bad guys and gals had disappeared to and how she was going to sneak an old lady by them when they finally turned up.
She still thought the best plan would be to get away and get to a phone, and she was pretty certain there wasn’t one in there with Mrs. Vitelli. They’d probably already cleared Luca’s cell out of the Camaro by now, hers was ancient history, and it didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that if there were any other occupants in the complex of buildings that surrounded the one they were in, they were deaf and blind.
To trouble, anyway.
“It is like a house,” she replied. “Above their thieving operation.” When Gen’s eyes went wide, she added, “I am not supposed to know that, but I have ears.”
“Why did they take you?”
It was Mrs. V’s turn to go goggle-eyed; she held up an index finger and jammed another across her lips. “They come.”
Great. Now what should she do? Down into the room or continue the slow skulk across the attic, searching for an unknown or hoped-for exit?
The dye was cast when Mrs. Vitelli waved Gen away, then shoved Luca down on the floor and gestured for him to get under the bed. Gen moved back, but watched as the woman straightened, then raised h
er chin and smoothed the front of her dress.
A knock sounded on the door.
“I am not properly dressed,” she called.
“I’ll give you five minutes,” someone replied. The voice was male, and rough, and uncaring. Gen’s heart clenched at the thought that someone might hurt either of them.
“I will be out before then.” Mrs. Vitelli caught Gen’s eye, then clenched a fist and shook it. She was saying that she was strong, that she’d be all right. Then she spun her index finger and mouthed the words, I will see you later.
Gen nodded, held up her own fist in a show of solidarity, then turned and resumed her crawl. Too bad she didn’t have any idea where she was going.
She shot another prayer out into the ether.
Mack, if you’ve got the radio on, please spin the dial to classical station Genny-really-needs-you.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Gen had been inching through the stifling attic for what seemed like a mile with nothing to show for it but the loss of Luca into the crooks’ lair. What if she’d made the wrong choice, coming up here? What if she’d wasted time?
What if there was no way out at this end, and what if there was no way down from the roof if she did get out, and what if she had to come back in here and ended up dying in this dump, asphyxiated by all the rat poop she’d forced herself to breathe, and touch, and skulk through?
That was a lot of what ifs.
She stopped to catch her breath in the dark, then sat back on her heels. God Almighty, please show me the way out. The right way, she added. Please, the way that isn’t blocked by Italians.
Something scuttled off to the left and she pitched herself the other way, convinced it was a sign that her concerns were valid.
Her hand landed on a grate that was tucked down between the joists, and she could feel a tiny breeze wafting upward. It was some kind of ventilation duct. She dragged her face forward, desperate for a breath of fresh air after the suffocating filth that surrounded her.
The draft cooled her face.
She sucked in a lungful and clung to the screen to regenerate. Her fingers were twined through the metal, and when a muscle spasm made her fist flinch, she sensed that the mesh had moved.
She pulled. The grate came up.
It was larger than she’d expected, and heavier. She struggled under its weight but managed to move it aside, then stuck her head into the duct and tried to grow a little courage while she felt around its walls.
The opening was about two-by-three square, but the inside was at least three feet all around, and it seemed to run parallel to the attic space. Her body would fit. Would it hold her? And even if it did, would it lead her to another dead end? And worst of all, what if there was a long, unexpected drop somewhere up ahead?
And nothing to break her fall.
She thought about it. It seemed to her there was likely to be a long drop no matter which course of action she chose – off the roof, or back down into Mrs. Vitelli’s temporary bedroom. And Gen hated to go backwards.
Grow a spine, girl.
Her heart was about to beat out of her chest but she slithered forward in spite of it, then lowered herself inside. It held her weight. There were no telltale sounds of popping rivets or screws giving way.
So far so good.
She just hoped the box didn’t end up being her coffin.
* * *
The going was easier inside. Although she was crawling on her belly, the slick sheet-metal surface almost helped her glide along. It was noiseless as well, more substantial than her fears had led her to believe, and clean.
So clean, in fact, that she almost felt like things were looking up, but as soon as the thought took shape she tamped it down. No use tempting fate. She was still a long way from home.
When a T-shaped intersection presented itself, she had no idea which way to go. Right or left? Her sense of direction had vanished like Luca through the attic floor, and she didn’t have a coin to toss.
She was about to resort to eenie-meenie-minie-moe when she heard a faint sound coming from down the tube, somewhere to the right.
It was a voice.
She pegged it for Carla’s right away.
It was like her brain had been stamped with an image of the bimbo since the Taser went off, and she wasn’t going to ditch it until she’d manifested Miss Salvatore the same way the Camaro had appeared.
She wanted payback. For trying to tempt Mack, and for the Taser, and for the woman’s overall self-righteous, “you are doodoo-under-my-shoe” attitude.
Maybe now was the time.
Gen snaked toward the sound and slithered along, then stopped and listened, then glided farther, then halted with one hand cupped to her ear.
Carla’s voice had grown louder.
The conversation seemed to be one-sided; she was talking on a phone. Gen followed the voice into an offshoot of the duct, where another grate opened into a room at the top of the wall. She slipped along the conduit until she was close enough to see a bit of the floor and far enough away that she wouldn’t be discovered if the speaker looked up.
“We are slowly moving the operation.”
Carla was holding a land line receiver to her ear. She was seated at a battered desk that was facing the door, which put her back to Gen.
The room was set up as a scroungy sort of office. Double-wide filing cabinets lined the space, and paperwork littered the tops of everything in sight.
Gen scooted forward just a touch and looked down. There was a seedy-looking couch shoved against the wall below her.
Perfect.
“You know what a big job this is?” Carla’s tone had turned whiny. “It’s not going to happen overnight. Giovanni is out renting trucks and looking for drivers who know how to keep their mouths shut.”
Gen’s ears perked up at the news. Luciano was offsite; one fewer to worry about. But who was Carla talking to?
“I understand,” she said, bored now. “You’ve made it clear from the beginning that your sister is not to be hurt or made uncomfortable.”
Sister? One of the bad guys was Mrs. Vitelli’s sibling? Oh boy.
Carla sighed. “Hold on, I am going to put you on the speaker phone. I am supposed to be shredding documents and I need to get back to my task.” She punched a button on the base of the phone and returned the receiver to the cradle.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
It was a man, speaking with an Italian inflection. No surprise there. But which Italian was it?
Carla picked up a handful of paperwork, then leaned over and fed it into a machine on the floor beside her. The teeth of the shredder caught and whirred metallically until its meal was history.
“But we have three to worry about now,” Carla continued. “We could count on the Vitellis to stay silent, but that is over. The woman will talk as soon as they are free. That means we arrange for her to have an accident and use it to keep the others quiet, or we are through in San Francisco.”
“So we will move somewhere else,” the man replied. “It will be safer for us all in the long run.”
Gen knew that voice.
“If Vitelli had known I was involved,” the speaker continued, “He would not have called this down on his head.”
It was Angelo, the man from the athletic club.
Gen would swear to it on a stack of Bibles.
Carla was silent for a beat. She finally replied with an air of dismissal in her tone, clearly finished with the conversation. “I must go. The burden of the cleanup falls to me.” She straightened from the shredder. “Goodbye.”
She thumbed off the phone, rose from her seat, and was through the door in less than five counts. Gen could hear her footsteps receding. A door somewhere nearby opened and closed.
She moved forward and fiddled with the grate. Like its twin in the attic above it moved easily, this one out into the room. It was hinged at the top. She slid face-first from the shaft and dropped onto the co
uch below.
Two strides brought her to the desk. She searched beneath the piles of invoices for something she could use as a weapon. Nothing but pens and notepads and more paperwork. She widened the search, running her eyes across the file cabinets.
There. An old-fashioned ashtray, carved from a hunk of stone. In three more strides she’d palmed it and was behind the door.
Mack had told her once that criminals who weren’t professional bad guys often talked too much. They’d hold a weapon on someone and yammer on about how smart they were and what they were going to do to their quarry, or what scum the rube was, or why they were right and the world owed them. They ran their mouths to prove they had the power.
Whereas the pros, Mack said, just pulled the trigger. They knew that every second spent jawing was a second the victim could use to figure out how to get the upper hand. Pros were never arrogant enough to think the tables couldn’t turn, and that they might end up in jail – or dead – instead of the person in their sights.
Only an amateur took their sweet time.
So the minute Carla was back and far enough into the room to get off a shot, Gen brought the ashtray down on the skank’s head and it was lights out. She never knew what hit her, which made Gen feel a little remorse. She would have liked to have seen the shock on Carla’s face when she realized that Gen Delacourt was about to lower the boom.
Oh well.
As soon as Carla hit the ground, Gen went through the desk drawers looking for something to bind her hands and came up with a roll of clear strapping tape. Not as tough as duct tape, but it would have to do. She borrowed a chapter from their own book and dragged the unconscious woman into a chair, then managed to hold her in place long enough to truss her securely to it.
The last pieces of tape went across her mouth. Gen took some satisfaction from the knowledge that it would hurt like hell when they were ripped off.
Her back was to the door, and she was so intent on her task that by the time she realized someone was in the hall outside, it was too late.
She grabbed for the phone and pulled it off the desk, jabbing in 9-1-1 as she threw her body against the door. Her shoulder smacked into the wood and she tried to wedge it closed, but a couple of hands and the toe of somebody’s Italian leather loafer were already firmly in the way.