The Suicide King

by Kristi Belcamino

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Okay. I understand.” I didn’t really, but it didn’t matter.

  “Can I have your name?”

  I hung up.

  I checked the map. Looked like I was taking a road trip.

  I left a message for Mrs. Marino telling her I’d be by the hospital tonight and to please call me if Matt’s condition changed. Then I rented a car and headed south.

  I was in Pizzo within the hour.

  Rounding a corner at the top of the mountain, I nearly swerved off the road while taking in the spectacular turquoise sea below. Like most of the cities along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, Pizzo was a city of terra cotta-roofed buildings clinging to the side of a cliff above the water. A thin strip of white beach dotted with colorful umbrellas lay far below.

  The town square, Piazza della Repubblica, wasn’t far from the beach on a rare stretch of flat terrain. I parked a few streets away and made my way through the square packed with people, tents, and café tables. At one end, a band played what sounded like The Rolling Stones with Italian lyrics.

  Giant glass vats of strawberries were everywhere. As I walked by, people proffered cups of strawberry gelato, strawberry cake, and tiny strawberries dotted with sugar.

  Any signs of the two men who’d hung here the day before were long gone. I stopped a young boy walking by.

  “Can you show me where the men hung yesterday?”

  He was a sharp kid. His face scrunched up. “Did you know them?” he asked. “Is that why you are sad?”

  “No.”

  He seemed satisfied with that answer and led me over to a statue in one corner of the square topped by a bust of a haughty looking dude. The pillar said, “Umberto 1, Pizzo MCMII.”

  “Here?” I asked.

  He nodded. The stones around the statue looked damp, as if they had been recently washed, but there was no sign of blood.

  “Who’s the dude?”

  “King Umberto.” He said it as if I were an idiot, which maybe I was. There was some significance to the bodies being left right here. I knew it. Just then, the man at the booth where the boy had been working whistled. The boy scowled but leaned over and kissed my hand. He held on to it for a mo and looked up at me, his eyes soft.

  “I must go, my queen,” he said and raced off.

  I stood staring at him. Why had he called me his queen? I chalked it up to the Italian flirtatious nature. But still, it disturbed me to be called “queen” when I was hunting the Queen of Spades. I considered chasing after him and asking what he meant, but I saw that the man had sent him on some errand, and he was scurrying up a back stairway.

  The bakery was two doors away. I decided to Google King Umberto to see if there was some significance to the bodies being strung up near him.

  My phone screen was hard to read in the sun, so I stepped into a dark doorway and scrolled through the tiny text. Not much. Looked like the king was loathed for being an authoritarian and was ultimately killed by anarchists after a few failed attempts. But as I read on, my eyes widened. His assassin was an Italian-American living in New Jersey who came overseas specifically to murder the king.

  Where the local attempts had failed, Gaetano Bresci succeeded, shooting the king to death on July 29 of 1900.

  It made sense that the Queen of Spades—who was in her own way an anarchist—would leave the bodies at the feet of the king’s bust as a message to La Cosa Nostra.

  I headed toward the bakery and pushed the door open. A woman in her late thirties, her red hair pushed back by sunglasses, was sitting behind the counter reading a book. She wore all white and a giant, thick white apron.

  “I’m looking for Donny?” I hoped she spoke English.

  “I am she.” She arched a perfectly manicured eyebrow. I wondered if she was used to people assuming she was a male.

  “May I help you?”

  “Do you have a second?”

  Donny stood and came out from behind the counter. She brushed off her hands on her apron and untied it in the back.

  “I was just going to take a break.” She smiled. I declined to point out that reading an Umberto Eco paperback behind the counter might be considered “taking a break” in most places. Donny disappeared through a back doorway for a few minutes and then came back with tea and a plate of small cookies.

  We were halfway into our tea when I finally brought up the murders.

  Her eyes met mine over her tea cup. “I thought that was why you were here.”

  “Why?”

  “I read the papers. You were part of the group of Americans in the Hotel Rizzoli shooting.”

  It was not a question. I swallowed the lump lodged in my throat and nodded.

  “My boyfriend.”

  She placed her hand on my mine. “I am sorry.”

  “I saw a woman there. On the street outside. She had long dark hair and wore all black, formfitting clothes…” I trailed off. The way she became still told me I didn’t need to say more.

  “Did you see her face?”

  “No, only from behind.”

  She took a sip of her tea before speaking again. Carefully, she set it down, arranging it so it lined up perfectly with the colorful square of tile on the table.

  “You think it is the Queen of Spades?”

  “Yes.” I searched her eyes. There was no reaction.

  “Why did you ask if I saw her face?” I said.

  “Nobody knows exactly what she looks like. She appeared here in Calabria a few years ago. Out of nowhere. But she was instantly connected. She had faithful followers like that.” She snapped her fingers, the red nail polish a crimson blur. “She is mysterious but deadly.”

  “I think she killed my boyfriend.”

  She placed her chin on her hand and stared into my eyes. “Why?”

  I opened my mouth, speechless. I had no motive. But she was there, and she ran off before the police arrived. Not the actions of the innocent.

  “Why do I think that or why did she kill him?”

  “The Queen of Spades doesn’t kill innocent people.” The same arched eyebrow. This time it pissed me off.

  “My boyfriend never hurt a soul in his life.”

  “But La Cosa Nostra,” she said, jutting her chin toward the square where the bodies were found. “That is right up their alley.”

  “Killing those young men?”

  She laughed loudly, throwing her head back as she did.

  “No,” she said once she was done. “That was the Queen of Spades. She killed them because they were La Cosa Nostra. I meant the Hotel Rizzoli. That sounds like La Cosa Nostra.”

  She met my eyes, not looking away. It made me uncomfortable, but I was determined not to look away.

  “Why couldn’t it be both? Her and them?”

  “They are her sworn enemies.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” The woman looked over my shoulder, her forehead creasing. “I mean obviously because the La Cosa Nostra…-well,” she shrugged, “they are criminals, but other than that? I don’t know.”

  I thought about that. It was what the newspaper had said. The Queen of Spades had declared war on the other Mafiosi.

  “But the motorcyclists could have been working for her. She might have been overseeing them from the shadows, making sure the job was done.”

  The woman tilted her head. “If it was her hit—if she had been the one who ordered the murders—do you think she would be within one hundred miles of there? No. There is a reason she has never been seen or caught.”

  “She didn’t know I was out on the balcony and saw her.”

  “The Queen of Spades would never take that risk.”

  “Maybe she made her first mistake.” I said, staring until she looked away.

  She stood. “I must go check the dough now.”

  As I pulled around the block, I passed the alley behind the bakery and glanced down it. Donny stood outside smoking and talking animatedly on a cell phone, hands w
aving around.

  Have to go check the dough, my ass.

  33

  “Gia was here.”

  It was Francesca, standing in Eva’s office.

  “What?”

  “In the town square. Donny called. Gia thinks you were behind the slayings at the Hotel Rizzoli.”

  Eva closed her eyes for a brief second.

  “But Donny told her differently. Said you don’t kill innocents. That you killed the motorcyclists because they were La Cosa Nostra and behind the hotel murders.”

  “Do we know where she is now?” Eva asked.

  “I’ll find her,” Francesca said.

  After Eva had returned from Alex’s, she’d gathered the other women and told them about Chiara. Then she assigned a group to work on arrangements for a funeral mass.

  “We are her family. We will honor her as such,” Eva had said.

  Then Eva had tried to immerse herself in hard physical training. She didn’t want to admit to herself that she was staying so active so she didn’t have to think. So she didn’t have time to mourn. She’d mourn later. That was her way.

  34

  Before leaving town, I pulled over to the dirt shoulder overlooking the sea below. The water below didn’t even look real. The turquoise color was brilliant. The sun was low on the horizon, casting an orange and pink glow that was spreading across the skies and the seas. It was like a movie. I’d planned to show Bobby all of this. To give him his first glimpse of southern Italy. To share all this beauty with him. To watch staggering sunsets like this together. To take him to Sicily where my ancestors were from. To make love to him in the warm waters of the Mediterranean. No more.

  All my dreams had been shattered.

  It seemed like a lifetime ago that Bobby and I had talked about visiting Sicily together. I’d wanted him by my side when I finally entered the villa that Turricci had given my mother. It was high time I sold it, washed my hands of something that reeked of his rapist blood money. But I wanted to at least look inside and see if there was any sign that she’d ever been there. Maybe some remnant of her preserved.

  It was not something I was looking forward to doing, but I had taken comfort knowing that Bobby would be by my side. No more.

  Something about being in the old country, where my mother and father had lived, felt both comforting and terrifying. The way people reacted to my mother’s name. Bonadonna. It was with both awe and fear. I didn’t understand.

  There were too many secrets surrounding my parent’s pasts and I didn’t think I had the strength to uncover them. It was all I could do to stay focused on the only thing keeping me alive: my thirst for revenge.

  As I got to the edge of town, the road dead-ended at a T and the sky began to darken. I stared at the signs pointing in opposite directions.

  My phone pinged and I glanced down, expecting, hoping it would be Dante. But when I pressed on it I gasped. It was from Bobby. My heart shot up into my throat. Impossible.

  Keeping my eyes on the road, I took my foot off the gas a little and held the phone up in front of my face, keeping one hand on the steering wheel, watching the road with my peripheral vision. I read the words hearing Bobby’s voice in my ear. He’d sent the text during the wedding. It had been delayed.

  “You look so beautiful tonight. Being at Dante’s wedding makes me think things about us that would probably freak you out. I know imagining a future is tough for you now. Maybe one day it won’t be.”

  Tears dripped down my face. The words on the screen grew fuzzy. I reached and dropped the phone into my bag. That’s why when a big truck came zooming around the corner, the headlights blinding me with my already blurry vision, I panicked, and jerked the wheel toward the mountain. The truck whizzed by and I felt my tiny car wobbling, caught up in the backdraft of the truck. I saw the looming backend of the truck in my rearview mirror as it disappeared around the corner and then in front me, black where my headlights should’ve reflected pavement and then I was freefalling into space.

  The feeling of emptiness and weightlessness only lasted seconds before a bone-shattering impact turned everything black.

  When I opened my eyes, the first thing I thought was that my head was cracked open like an egg. That would be the only explanation for the crushing pain at my skull. I also was dangling by my seat belt, head first facing the sea below. A few branches stuck up, blocking my view out my windshield, seemingly the only thing between me and infinity. My headlights beamed out into space. Gingerly I turned my head. A bush was halfway through my driver’s side window. The passenger side door was open and my bag was gone. I needed my bag. It had my cell phone.

  Reaching down I clicked off my seatbelt.

  The movement caused the car to shift slightly. I held my breath. Nothing happened, but it was clear I needed to get out of the car. And find my phone. The bush blocked my way on the driver’s side. Slowly, carefully, I moved toward the open passenger door. The car wobbled a little but stayed put.

  Once I was in the passenger seat, my feet on the dashboard and my head toward the back seat, the car slid. I gripped the seat back in terror. The car only slid about a foot and lodged on something else. I think the big bush had anchored it.

  I wasn’t taking any chances, though. The area off to my left side was less steep. I leaped, grabbing for a bush, hoping my movement wouldn’t send the car plunging until I was clear. My escape triggered a small avalanche of rocks and dirt. The car grumbled, and moaned again, but stayed put.

  The car’s headlights lit the steep ground around the bush. Everything seemed to have fallen to a ledge just below where I was. It was a small flat rock platform the size of a twin bed. It leaned back toward the hillside and was partially covered by a rock I now saw my car was lodged on. I scrambled on all fours, crab walking, still clinging to the bush until I came to the edge of the dirt. There was about a three foot drop to the rock below. I eased myself down until I felt something solid under my feet. I instantly squatted. Heart pounding, I scrabbled so my back was pressed against the mountainside, breathing hard.

  When I finally had the courage to scoot away from the edge, I took in my surroundings. I was about halfway down the cliff—between the road and the sea below. Peering up, I looked for a path that might lead me to the road, but all I saw was my car suspended a few feet above me, the headlights facing down blinding me.

  I’d been saved from tumbling into the sea by a massive bush and a giant boulder that served as a shelf above the rock I was on. The shelf jutted out about two feet. I needed to get under it ASAP because if my car broke loose, it would land on me or take me out with it as it plunged into the sea. The lip of rock was my only possible protection. It might give me a fighting chance. Or it might not. If it broke off with my car, everything would tumble onto the rocky shore below.

  Groaning, I reached for my side. My shirt was wet with blood. I lifted it and saw a gash below my ribs. The cut looked pretty good and blood was coming out, not much, but steadily.

  I held my hand to the cut and it came back red. I looked around. The rock I was on also had caught some debris from my car. There was the book I’d read on the plane, The Branson Beauty. The car’s bumper. A bottle of water. Then I spotted it. My bag. It was hanging on a bush just past the rocky ledge I was on.

  Keeping my eye on the edge of the cliff, I scooted over to the bush. The strap of my bag hung down where I could reach. I tugged, but the bag didn’t budge. The bush was on a small wedge of ground sticking out from the cliff. My efforts sent dirt and pebbles crumbling and skittering off the edge.

  I needed to get closer. I scooted onto a small portion of dirt, leaving the relative safety of the rock behind. I held my breath, hoping the ground could take my weight.

  When nothing happened, I reached over and gave the strap another tug. This time my purse whipped free and landed on me. Again, I leaned back, afraid to even breathe. When the earth didn’t disintegrate under me, I scrambled like a madwoman over onto the rock surface, my feet se
nding small pebbles off the cliff edge tumbling to the rocky shore below. I tucked myself under the small outcropping of rock and put my bag on my lap. I rummaged inside for my phone.

  Thank God it was intact. But first I had to staunch the bleeding from my side. I found a small square bundle wrapped in plastic. It would do just fine. I unpeeled and unfolded the maxi pad and stuck it to my cut and then held it in place by wrapping strips of my T-shirt around my torso.

  The effort exhausted me and sent waves of agony zigzagging through my skull. My head hurt so bad I was dizzy.

  A truck rumbled by on the road above. It was enough to send the car scuttling down the hillside. I ducked under the jutting rock even more, pulling my legs in to my chest. I was jolted as the car struck the rock above my head and then teetered for a moment a few feet away from me before plunging into the sea below.

  My heart was pounding in my throat and I couldn’t breathe. I waited for the rock I was on to dislodge and follow the car. When nothing moved, I scooted to the edge and peered down. The headlights shone for a second and then went out.

  I dialed Dante. He didn’t answer so I called Mrs. Marino.

  I could tell she had picked up the phone, but she didn’t say anything. Then I heard the soft sounds of weeping. Trepidation rippled through me.

  “Mrs. Marino?”

  She sniffled. “Matt’s gone.”

  I leaned back, staring but seeing nothing. Then I realized I hadn’t answered.

  “No.” My voice was so low I didn’t know if she heard me.

  “He died this afternoon.” Mrs. Marino cleared her throat. “Dante is taking it very badly.”

  My words came back. “Oh, my God. Poor Dante. My heart is breaking for him. I need to call him.”

  “He blames you. I’m so sorry, Gia.”

  At first I didn’t understand what she said. But then her words sunk in.

  “What?”

  “Give him some time.”

  “But—”

  “Give him some time and space. He’ll come around.”