Mozzarella Most Murderous

by Fairbanks, Nancy

  I walked backward to the car, thinking he could wake up any minute, unless he was going to die. Oh dear, would tying his shoelaces together with malicious intent constitute murder? Or self-defense? Did they have a self-defense plea in Italy? I opened the trunk, pulled it toward me, and peered in—and what did I see? Besides the clutter of our shopping trip, a tire iron. Perfect. I wouldn’t have to ruin my platter. I almost fell into the trunk trying to retrieve the tire iron. What kind of a car was this anyway? Convertibles were supposed to have bucket seats. This one had bench seats. Convertibles were often twoseaters. This car seated six if you didn’t mind being squished together. And the luggage area worked more like an old-fashioned rumble seat. While I was hanging over the edge, my legs dangling, I expected Hank to come up behind me, shove me inside, and lock me up. To avoid that, I kept a tight grip on the keys.

  Then I rushed nervously back to my prisoner and tried various methods for levering him at least halfway over. Just working the tire iron under him and pulling up on the free end didn’t work at all. My second idea was to put a round rock in the middle of the iron, work the iron under him, and push the rock closer and closer to his body. Then finally I pushed on the free end of the iron. His body lifted a bit in the center. I sat down sideways on the iron beyond the rock, and Hank lifted a few inches more. I think I may have broken one of his ribs in the effort.

  Keeping my weight in place, I bent forward and spotted the butt of the gun. Although I thought I could reach it and still keep the lever in place, I didn’t want to get my fingerprints on the gun and perhaps smear his. As the rod holding Hank’s weight pressed painfully against my thighs, I pondered the problem. There was nothing for it. I took off my sun hat and pulled my knit shirt over my head. Then I covered my hand with the shirt and dragged it through the dust toward Hank’s body and the gun just showing beneath it. And it was such a pretty shirt, too, with bluey-purple irises and green leaves embroidered on it.

  I was leaning to the side, sliding my hand and wrist under Hank, when my weight evidently lifted enough from the iron to allow Hank’s weight to snap his end of the rod down. I fell off, the rod rolled off the rock, and I was trapped with my hand, still clutching the gun butt, and part of my forearm under the unconscious body. I was lucky my arm hadn’t broken in the accident. Gritting my teeth, holding the gun fast, I finally wormed my arm out from under him. Then I sat and trembled for a while as I massaged my gun hand and arm. When I had recovered enough to remember that Bianca might be coming with help, and me in my bra and nothing else above the waist, I put the gun down and pulled the tire iron out from under Hank’s body. That was even harder than getting my arm out. I had to rest on my hands and knees, panting.

  That’s when I heard voices coming down the trail. Panic! I shoved the tire iron under a rock, grabbed the gun, jumped up, and slipped it into my waistband. Then I pulled the filthy shirt over my head and smoothed the back over the bulge made by the gun, all the while trying to look unflustered while Bianca and three men edged by the car and walked into the clearing.

  “Bianca,” I cried, plucking up my sun hat and plopping it onto my head, “I’ve been so worried about you. Are you all right?” Then before she could answer, I added, “And I’m even more worried about your husband. He hasn’t come to.”

  She tried to look frightened and tearful, rather than relieved, eyed my shirt with a puzzled glance, and introduced me to the three Italians who had agreed to help. Evidently, once they got a look at the man they were expected to get into the car, they decided that it would be wiser to use one of their cell phones to call an ambulance. Bianca promptly burst into tears and floods of Italian, not to mention wild gestures, many of which included her stomach.

  I guess they decided not to argue with a hysterical, pregnant woman, who, for all I knew, had terrified them by threatening to go into labor. The poor fellows had a terrible time getting him to the car, and even more trouble lifting him over the side and stuffing him into the back seat. Then there was another long discussion. I think, from what little Bianca translated, that they offered to follow us to the hospital, while she insisted that they had already been so helpful that she wouldn’t dream of asking them to go out of their way. She finally got rid of them by shaking their hands, kissing their cheeks, and motioning for me to do the same, both of us weeping and thanking them for their kindness in two languages.

  They trudged back to the road, and Bianca leaned weakly against the car. I looked into the back seat to see how Hank was doing, his upper body flat on the seat, his head oozing blood onto the upholstery of the seat back, and his legs bent awkwardly to fit into what little space was left. He was still unconscious.

  “I found a tire iron,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

  “And the gun.” I carefully covered my hand with my shirttail and fished it from the waistband of my slacks, thinking, belatedly, that it could have gone off and killed me while those men were trying to be more helpful than we wanted or needed.

  “Great,” she said. “Then you can sit in front with me. If he wakes up you can reach back and hit him with the tire iron or shoot him with the gun. I don’t think you’ll be able to get in with him once we’ve moved the front seat back far enough that I can get both me and my stomach behind the wheel.”

  That certainly proved to be the case. Once we were in, another problem developed. The seat was so far back that Bianca couldn’t reach the pedals. “You don’t think you could learn to stick shift, do you?” she asked hopefully.

  I shook my head. I’d tried on a car of Jason’s before we were married, and it had been a disaster—literally. I did something terrible to the ignition after putting it into the wrong gear and backing into a tree. Or was it the gears that I destroyed?

  What we finally worked out was bizarre, to say the least. Bianca sat sideways so her left foot could reach the clutch pedal. I sat in the middle with one leg on the far side of the gearshift so I could work the gas and brake pedals. Since I was sure we’d be killed before we made it back to Sorrento, I now wished fervently that we hadn’t chased the three men off. Then, on top of all our other problems, we couldn’t get the top up. If Hank awakened and I had to hit him or shoot him, presuming I got turned around in time to do it, I’d have to attack in full view of anyone on the road.

  We scraped both sides of the car backing out between towering rocks, were almost smashed by an oncoming car while trying to get across the road into the lane to Sorrento, ground the gears shifting from reverse to first, shouted at each other, both panic stricken, and then began the long, slow, terrifying drive home. Bianca had to shift, steer, and ease the clutch in and out. I was the gas-and brake-pedal person. I did not press hard on the gas and had trouble reaching the brake. A lot of people honked at us and passed us in dangerous fashion before we ever got off the reasonably empty road and onto the coast road.

  41

  Prisoner in Route—Driver in Distress

  Bianca

  We weren’t doing too badly once we got on the coast road. I shifted gears as seldom as possible, which was hard on the car, but who cared? It was only Hank’s rental car, that scoundrel. I should have been wary of all that charm in an American. Eventually everyone behind us risked their lives to pass, and we ended up behind a tour bus. It wasn’t one of those that stopped at every path down the cliff to a small hotel. If it had been, I’d have had a nervous breakdown. I was hoping it would go straight back to Sorrento, clearing the way on the sharp curves with us behind it.

  The worst problem for a while was the exhaust that blew in our faces. Carolyn was coughing, and I was trying not to because I didn’t want to stir up the baby. He evidently liked my position, body turned partially to the right, left leg stretched out to reach the clutch, foot tucked away from Carolyn’s share of the pedals. The baby had gone off to sleep as soon as we got moving, whereas, while I was waiting at the edge of the road for a car to flag down, he’d been giving me boisterous kicks. My back felt as if it were broken and my
poor stomach was bruised on the inside by the time the Good Samaritans came along and stopped.

  They were pretty surprised when I stood up, and they saw the monster tummy. I suppose they thought they were coming to the aid of a pretty young thing, not a super fat mother-to-be. But what could they do? Drive off and leave a pregnant woman on the road? No way. They were Italians, and I’m adept at playing the mother card. After three pregnancies, I should be. Maybe I should get my tubes tied, since Lorenzo and I didn’t seem to be able to practice birth control successfully, although I blame Giulia for the last slip-up. How many Hail Marys would I have to say to make up for a tubal ligation? Maybe they’d kick me right out of the church.

  Then our situation changed abruptly. That was no baby kick! That was a contraction! “Carolyn, get ready to speed up. I’m going to pass the first chance I get.”

  “I’ll do no such thing,” she said, turning her head from the strained position that allowed her to keep tabs on Hank. “We should stay right behind the bus. Even though we may require respiratory therapy when we get back, at least we have a chance of making it to Sorrento in one piece.”

  “I just had a contraction.”

  “One contraction doesn’t mean anything,” she assured me. “One contraction is false labor, a common, but non-predictive event.”

  “Not this contraction. Take my word for it.” I spotted a gap in the traffic and swung the wheel, yelling, “Give it the gas.” Carolyn screamed, but she didn’t put her foot down. “Damn it, if you leave us out here, we’re dead.” She saw a car down the road hurtling toward us and pressed down on the gas. I got past the bus, just barely, and swung in sharply. The bus driver laid on the horn. The driver coming toward us slammed on the brakes and laid on his horn. Carolyn started to cry. I said, “Stop sniveling and pay attention. And don’t let up on the gas unless I tell you.”

  Finally we approached the turnoff that would take us across the peninsula. “Faster,” I yelled, and swung in front of an oncoming car, across the oncoming lane of the crossroad, and back into my own lane. “Now, don’t take your foot off the gas,” I ordered, a little less stridently. Contraction number two hit. Oh, Holy Mother. That is much too close to the first one. Please, please let the baby lose interest and go back to sleep, I prayed.

  “You have to do everything I tell you to do, and no arguing,” I ordered, having finished my appeal to the Holy Mother. “Carolyn, are you listening? We could end up on the side of the road with me giving birth. Do you know how to deliver a baby?”

  “No,” she admitted in a voice so soft and quavering I could hardly hear her.

  “Then pay attention, and press down on the gas. This is the best chance we’ll have to make some time, even if this is an awful road.”

  She obeyed, and we arrived at the coast road on the other side of the peninsula with only three more contractions. But they really, really did hurt! I was sweating when I swung wide to the right and almost clipped a Mercedes truck. He slewed off the road and back on, and, of course, he honked loudly and repeatedly. Italian drivers think of their horns as another gear or pedal.

  Okay, I’m on the last stretch to Sorrento, I told myself. I’m going to make it to the hotel. Later I wondered why I wanted to get to the hotel. I should have been looking for a hospital. “Keep your foot down on the gas, and take a look at Hank.” We kept moving. In fact, we sped up when she turned her body. I didn’t complain. I passed the car in front of me. Carolyn saw what I was doing and gasped. The driver honked. The woman in the Japanese car on the other side honked, and I pulled back in. All up the coast this side of the peninsula I could see the black clouds building. Why couldn’t this have been the one afternoon it didn’t happen? Then it started to rain. As if we didn’t have enough problems. As if we knew how to get the top up, even if we could stop to do it.

  “I have an umbrella,” said Carolyn. “Should I put it up?”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t think that would work. Another contraction hit. Number—what, five? Six? What was I going to do?

  “Hank’s still unconscious,” said Carolyn, probably trying to cheer me up. “I hope the rain doesn’t bring him around.”

  “Well, don’t bother with the tire iron if he wakes up. Just shoot him. But be careful where you aim. We don’t want a bullet in the gas tank or a tire, just in him. I think—” I gasped as another contraction wrenched my stomach and twisted my spine. “I think the best thing would be to lean over the seat and shoot straight down at his chest or head.”

  “But my foot might come off the gas if I—”

  “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll face that problem if we come to it. Speed up!”

  She pressed down, I swung out, everyone honked, and we made it back into our own lane. Oh, for a wide, wide autostrada, I thought, imagining myself weaving in and out of many, many lanes.

  And there was the sign for Sorrento. We were going to make it. “Let up some on the gas,” I ordered as I headed off the coast road and over the hill that would take us to the hotel. “Brake!” She braked, I shifted and swung in, and we pulled up nose to the entrance doors, having knocked over two large cement pots and torn down a bush in the central garden through which we passed because I couldn’t make a sharp enough turn to catch the actual circular driveway. Then I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the back of the seat.

  “Bianca,” said Carolyn. “We’re here.”

  I just kept sitting there, waiting for the next contraction, wondering if I’d have to roll out of the car to let the baby out of me. Could a baby being born get through panties and slacks? Doormen rushed over to us. They made frantic calls upstairs to the lobby. Neither one of us moved. We didn’t even look back at Hank, but he didn’t move either, so that was all right.

  Hotel employees from the lobby rushed off the elevator, followed by the general, Marsocca, Loppi, Lieutenant Flavia Vacci, and Lieutenant Buglione. Word gets around fast, I thought, feeling dazed. Hitting those pots had been jarring, even though we didn’t hit them head on. More like glancing blows. Still—

  The general stuck his face right into mine and shouted, “You did not have permission to leave the hotel.”

  “I’m in labor,” I mumbled.

  “Don’t shout at Bianca,” said Carolyn, rising up on a knee and shaking her finger at him. “We’ve brought the murderer back. He tried to kill us because Bianca found out he was in Sorrento when Paolina died.”

  “You did not have permission—”

  “He killed them both—Paolina and Ruggiero. See. He’s in the back seat.”

  The general looked into the back seat, then looked again. “What did you do to him?”

  “I’m having a baby here,” I said. “I need to lie down. I can’t have a baby sitting up in a convertible, in case you people don’t know that.”

  42

  A Tale to Tell

  Carolyn

  Amid all the hubbub, I suggested to the general that we needed two ambulances. Agent Marsocca made the call on his cell phone and announced that there would be at least a ten-minute wait because all the local ambulances had been called out.

  “I don’t have ten minutes,” gasped Bianca, who was panting through a contraction. “For God’s sake, get me upstairs. I don’t want to deliver down here by the road.”

  The general took charge, ordering his aides to see that Hank was taken to the hospital when the ambulance arrived and guards put on him while he was there. “What happened to him?” the general asked me.

  Meanwhile Lieutenants Buglione and Vacci organized men to carry Bianca to the elevator. I wanted to go with her, but the general wanted an answer, and Bianca couldn’t wait.

  “Well,” I began, embarrassed, “He told us you gave us permission to go to Capri. Then he took us to an overlook for a view of the island, pulled a gun on us, and said we either had to jump off the cliff or lie down on the ground so we couldn’t be seen from the road while he threw us off one by one. I lay down directly in front of him, hoping I cou
ld do something to save us. Bianca argued because lying down on the ground was almost impossible for her, especially on her stomach, and there was the baby to consider—lying down on rocky ground wouldn’t be good for the baby, and so forth. Anyway, she kept him talking, and I—well, I tied his shoelaces together.”

  The general gave me a very peculiar look, which I rather resented. In my position, I doubt that he could have come up with anything better. “It’s not as if I had a weapon or know anything about self-defense,” I said. “I did the best I could under the circumstances.”

  “So it would seem,” said the general. “Please go on. I’m most interested to hear what happened next.”

  Was he being sarcastic? I hardly thought I deserved that attitude. After all, I’d delivered the murderer to him. “Well, as I said, Bianca kept him talking. She asked questions and complained about his planning to kill the baby and all. He said he killed Paolina because he caught her with Ruggiero’s intercom on. She was taking notes, although he didn’t say about what.”

  “He was selling Ruggiero a container in which heroin couldn’t be detected,” said the general. “We got that off my daughter’s tape. Your Hank Girol is Enrico Girolamo. He has Mafia connections in New Jersey, and Ricci was going into a different kind of drug business.”

  “I had it right then!” I exclaimed, quite pleased with myself. He could have congratulated me, but he didn’t. Probably jealous that I’d figured it out without the cleaned-up tape. “And then he killed Ruggiero when you showed up because he didn’t want him—Ruggiero—getting arrested and trying for a plea bargain by getting him involved—him being Hank.” The general was frowning. All those masculine pronouns were no doubt confusing him. Although I’d been careful to identify the antecedents. “Anyway, instead of agreeing to lie down or jump, Bianca started toward him, which was very brave of her, and I rolled out of the way. When he tried to grab her, he fell forward because his feet were tied together. He hit his head on a rock and passed out.”