by John Domini
“Well, it’s not that simple, Mrs. Lulucita.”
“Jay, you remember, he even bragged about it. He told us, the public relations officer has access to the facilities for—”
“It’s not that simple. These are official documentation, watermarked and notarized. You can’t simply run them off.”
Barbara heard Jay sighing, struggling the same as she, unable to fathom how he’d failed to notice the giveaways. His wife had told him often enough about the Lieutenant Major’s sheaf of “authorizations,” coming out of his bag each time the family arrived at another tourist site. The Attaché meantime acknowledged that, “in keeping with his position,” Kahlberg had already been issued a notary stamp. The template for the new I.D., in the same way, would’ve been a simple enough business for an officer who wore two hats, or was it five? “All he needed was a single key and a four-digit combination.” The Lieutenant Major could pick up the template when he needed, and no one in the Organization would be the wiser.
“But the stock, the paper,” Roebuck went on, “well. That was another matter. It wasn’t as if the man could simply open a cabinet, thank you and goodbye. All the investigation has turned up so far is, the officer somehow got his hands on something like a ream. With that, he could run off the counterfeits as they were needed.”
“You’re saying, he didn’t keep a stash around?” Barbara kept her tone conversational. “He waited till, till someone asked, and then he printed off—?”
“Well, I’m not ‘saying.’ We don’t have all the facts, Mrs. Lulucita. I can only tell you what the evidence suggests.”
Jay raised his chin. “At the museum, he had the bag with him.”
“Yes. He’d come prepared to make a deal, it would appear. But as your wife will recall, the papers were left lying on the dock.”
Barb remembered: paper that rustled more noisily than the hair on the corpse.
Jay stuck to the subject, pointing out that Kahlberg “always had an angle,” and he wouldn’t have left home with his entire stash in his bag. “Bag like that, hey. Easy pickings.” Instead the liaison man had probably set aside a number of the counterfeits, somewhere safe, all signed and ready to go. “Like guys who keep four or five hundred in the sock drawer.”
Roebuck shook her head. “It’s not my place to speculate.”
“But, I mean. Chances are. There’s more of them out there somewhere.”
Barbara returned to her recollections of the crooked soldier-boy at work. He’d met his contacts right under her nose, and more often than not, that very evening the mother had told Jay all about it. She’d wondered aloud, in particular, about the men who’d looked over the so-called authorizations. Some of Kahlberg’s inspectors had hardly looked official, and she’d never understood why they’d always needed a gunman standing by (in plainclothes, but a gunman, anyone could see). Then yesterday there’d been that Umberto. He hadn’t been Silky’s buyer, Barb would guess, but rather the middleman, the gofer. Either way, it was one more reason you couldn’t trust the “museum guide” as a witness. Besides, the killers hadn’t been in the business; they’d ignored Umberto once he was down and they’d left the fake I.D.—for just one of which 500 Euros would be a bargain rate—scattered across the loading dock. All this came to Barbara so quickly, so transparently, here in the Consulate. Here a long way from her bed up in the Vomero, or her walks around the ancient centro.
“Now, I must reiterate,” Roebuck was saying. “I must make it quite perfectly clear, this man operated on his own. Entirely autonomous.”
“Autonomous, hey.” Jay broke into a smirk. “I think I like what they call them in the movies, a rogue agent.”
“I’m quite serious, Mr. Lulucita. It’s as you said, this man always had an angle.”
So many angles that Barb began to wish she could get another look at the coded message on the computer screen, now facing away. She thought of Saint Joan of Arc. Joan had died in a fire. But so had a lot of others, and the mother knew what it would look like if she spun the computer and studied the website again. Meanwhile Jay was conceding the Attaché’s point—Silky had run a one-man shop. His documents business had nothing to do with NATO, the UN, or the Consulate.
“Well. Thank you for saying so at last. And for my part, let me once more offer the sincerest apology, from everyone in our community…”
“It’s okay, Roebuck. I mean, nobody’s perfect. Barb and me, you heard about our ups and downs, here. We’re not saints.”
Roebuck allowed herself a tepid joke: if the Lulucitas hadn’t been saints when they’d arrived in Naples, then dealing with a Tempter like the late Lieutenant Major had made them holy. Certainly.
“Oh, look,” Barbara said. “What matters is, whoever Silky’s connections were, they won’t come after us.”
The older woman nodded firmly, bending over the keyboard. As she logged off and shut down, Roebuck assured her visitors that any criminal interest in their family was now “moot.” It had died with officer Kahlberg.
“You merely served as the front for the officer. The cover story.”
“Not a player, not a target,” Jay said. “I hear that. But, while we’re talking about safety, I mean, also. Three weeks ago somebody tried to kidnap me.”
“Ah, that was a separate matter, Mr. Lulucita.” Kahlberg’s under-the-table operations had taken place at economic levels far above those of the desperate clandestini who’d briefly manhandled Jay.
“But, I mean. Now you offer a guarantee. Everywhere we go, we’re safe.”
Roebuck gave a small smile, then made a remark about “acts of God.” She reminded Barbara and Jay that they lived in a land of earthquakes. “Vesuvius, well. She’s listed as an active volcano.” Her eyes, even behind bifocals, revealed a sharpening glitter. “But Mr. Lulucita, since you bring this business up, I must add. Your near-kidnapping would seem to have justified returning at once to New York. Three weeks ago, just as you say. You had a tailor-made excuse for breaking your contract, and yet you remained in Naples. You and your wife both.”
Barbara didn’t realize she was reaching for her husband, for the elastic under his shirt, till her fingers touched his waistline.
‘You come in here,” the Attaché said, “and you question our motives.”
To see Roebuck lash back was a help, actually. Barbara left off fretting about Romy and JJ, keeping her hand at the Jaybird’s hip while he ignored the other woman’s implication, once more bringing up yesterday’s murder. “That investigation of yours, I mean. You’ve still got a lot of holes.”
“Certainly. We’ve got a thousand questions.”
“And as for the girl, Romy. I’m with Barb on her.” The man was still full of beans. He mentioned that DiPio had given the gypsy a clean bill of health.
“Jay,” Barbara said.
“But Silky, I mean. Anybody know anything about his sex life? Something for the autopsy, you ask me.”
He’d even broken into a grin. But when faced his wife, she could see the playfulness drain from him. He fell silent, staring, until the woman across the table repeated what she’d said about a thousand questions.
Chapter Nine
They had a bigger crew these days, with Jay’s mother. They had more on their hands than ever, really. Not that they didn’t go through another spell of cocooning, sticking close to home throughout most of the first four or five days after Mom and Pop came home from downtown. Immediately after the meeting, Jay and Barbara had themselves a long walk along the waterfront, a long walk and a talk, trailed at a crawl by a black sedan with Consular plates. But after that everyone tended to hole up in thir ten rooms above the Vomero, sorting out new responsibilities and shoving around the heavy furniture. The apartment could feel as if the Lulucitas had moved into the van they used to share with Kahlberg. But with that guy out of the picture, and with Roebuck keeping hands off, they were no longer at a tourist’s distance, staring one day at a four-poster bed draped in silk brocade, the next at a pair
of household gods with oversized clay erections. Rather Barbara and the others got their hands dirty, working with more durable ore, creating a presentation with unmistakable message: This Is A Family. Their renewed commitment played a part in every decision, whether it was Jay accepting a new position at DiPio’s downtown clinic or the two girls agreeing to share their room with Grandma.
Aurora would’ve set herself up in a hotel, ordinarily. A suite was more her style. But the new security team argued that their job would be a good deal easier if the old playgirl stayed home with the others. Then too, when it came to getting constructive—to getting rid of the wheelchair and pulling out the hammer—the primary banger was the grandmother. She loomed at the edge of everything, a brassy laugh in the next room or a painted face over somebody’s shoulder. Not that Barbara was talking to her. After the Consulate she gave her mother-in-law a wide berth, or wide as the place allowed. As for the jagged edges inside, Barbara couldn’t do anything about those.
First thing, back from the meeting Tuesday at two, she and Jay went to the kids.
But once she’d handed out their passports, and once she’d let them see her resting her hand on her husband’s knee, how much more could Barbara reveal? What’d happened down in the Museo Nazionale, the last time she’d try to pull out her internal whipsaw? Anyway, the children had already arrived at the same conclusion as Mom and Pop and Attaché Roebuck. They wanted to stay. JJ and Chris were the first to say so, making arguments the parents had heard before. The oldest boy however kept glancing towards the balcony, where his grandmother was waiting, at Jay’s request. Aurora had shut the double-glass door, something else Jay had asked for, and settled into a lounge chair wearing a two-piece with a knotted bra. One look at that and the daughter-in-law understood what her children must’ve imagined about staying on in Naples. The kids saw this city as Adventureland and MTV, their own version of the Italian Romance. Barb understood, and her anger started banging around her ribcage—but what could she say to her nearly-grown boy? What warning could she give any of these kids about the yearnings of the flesh and their more psychotic manifestations, especially around this corner of the urban world? After all, Barbara herself had just given in to romance. Just like that, she was playing the sappiest makeup ballad in the jukebox.
Eventually JJ and Chris finished their say. They looked to Dora and Syl, and the girls looked to Paul. The older boys too, after a moment: it was all on Paul.
But the middle child agreed. He might’ve been the one who’d actually gotten burnt, while the others were still poking a finger or two into the fire, but he preferred to stay in Naples. Though the way he put it did sound awfully spooky: “There’s, there’s so m-much g-g-going on, we, we couldn’t get o-out even if we w-w-wanted to.”
Jay and Barbara also sat down with the doctor, that first afternoon, but the report on their boy with the healing hands was the same as ever. No abnormalities, no signs of serious dissociation, nothing to indicate he wouldn’t benefit from the sort of everyday interaction he seemed to be asking for. The parents found it almost a relief to turn to their new security team, a squad of Italian carabinieri and Interpol detectives. The Jaybird’s primary concern was that these four men and one woman were all getting a bump in salary for the assignment. “We want guys’re on the ball,” he said. “None of those farm-boys Silky used.” Then there was Barbara’s Padre Superiore. The evening after the meeting at the Consulate, Cesare surprised them with a house call. Aurora, wouldn’t you know it, was the one who met the priest at the door, Aurora in full evening makeup and Balinese head-scarf. Yet in the days that followed, too, the old Jesuit Dominican would work his slow and angular way down the Vomero staircases. During two of the priest’s visits, Jay made confession, in a corner of the kitchen. The husband urged Barbara, as well, to unburden herself to Cesare.
“Get it all out,” the husband said. “Get to where you can start over.”
To hear the Jaybird talk, once he and his Owl Girl finished their talk among the tethered fishing boats on the waterfront, a quiet talk but to the point, their marital woes were history. Ancient history—that very evening he started referring to their trouble as “the thing.” No more than that, and the wife agreed. She did agree. Still Barbara found it necessary to pray, daily, intensely, in the privacy of the utilities closet. She prayed that some middle-aged Mother, some Saint of a certain age, might intercede with her God in order to let her know just what the thing had been about. She begged that she might be shown how keep this thing from afflicting her ever again. Over the rosary she at least enjoyed the blood-rush to an alternative muscle-system, alternative and invisible, and in time she felt strong enough to send another e-mail to Nettie. The following morning, dinnertime in Bridgeport, the two women managed a real-time cyber-chat. Barbara got nothing new out of the exchange, really. Her Sam Center mentor reiterated that it would be best for Paul to stay put while he worked through this developmental stage, and she assured the mother that mood swings in the parents were only to be expected. You might look at the work on marital disorders, she advised, in Rudolph or Bloom.
Nothing new, from her bookworm friend, nothing Barbara felt she should copy to her personal files. Nonetheless the electronic conversation left her feeling better. She made sure to delete the chat (Aurora knew how to check the browser History, of course), but she felt bucked up even by Nettie’s mystical sign-off:
Remember, she wrote, it’s always yourself you’re meeting out there, day after day. We’re always meeting ourselves.
The woman sounded a bit like Paul, that time. But these days Barbara was seeing messages a lot more troublesome. There was the pseudo-Cyrillic on the website, Number One, and then there was the conversation she overheard outside the door to the girls’, while she stood holding the sheets for the room’s new, third bed.
“Do we still think,” Dora was asking, “Mama and Papa are going to divorce?”
Now what would Nettie say about a mother standing breathless outside her children’s door?
“I thought we said we don’t, any more,” Sylvia said. “No, I want the bird.”
“I know what we said. Come on, you know it’s not a bird.”
“Our family is very good. Like, when Paul does a miracle, that shows Jesus is with the family. It reveals the Word of Jesus.”
“Maybe.” After a moment, Dora sighed.
“Dor-ra. I know it’s not a bird. I know we said it’s a singing Siren.”
The other remained quiet so long, Barbara gathered herself to walk in. Then: “That was pretty weird, in the museum.”
“Yeah.” The mother pictured Sylvia frowning, trying out a new complexity. “But, since because Paul wasn’t hurt, that just shows like, Jesus is still there—”
“I wasn’t talking about Paul. What happened with Paul was an adventure, like in the movies. What I was talking about was Mom.”
“Oh, Mom. You mean when she took us in the room.”
“Now that was weird.”
“That was very weird. It was like hide and seek.”
“It was hide and seek and telling stories, but they didn’t go anywhere.”
There was a rap of plastic on linoleum. “Paul saved us. He got us out of there.”
“Right, he did but then since—that means, the people he’s saving, it’s us. We used to think Mama and Papa were getting a divorce.”
“Look. It was weird, but it wasn’t that weird.”
Barbara cleared her throat, shuffled her slippers, oldest tricks in the book. She walked in and at once began tucking both the linens and “the three girls” back into their more crowded arrangement. A little high-energy group activity, as they called it around the Connecticut Children’s Services. Anyway, even CCS couldn’t say for certain whether it was best if Mama talked with the girls about what she’d heard. The guidelines for good parenting were full of that word “boundaries.” Barbara wound up letting Dora and Syl work out their own solutions, in this case. Herself, she heard something e
lse, in the conversation. She realized that if the twins had been talking about divorce, they would’ve been overheard. Even Kahlberg’s drivers had spoken enough English to understand that. Then there’d been the boys, a lot louder than the girls.
Talk in the streets. That night, in bed, Barbara shared her conclusions with the Jaybird, a born-again wife whispering with her recuperating husband. I‘m saying, they got it off the kid-wide-web.
Such was the soundtrack by which Barbara pledged allegiance to her renewed commitment: whispers in bed, the putt-putt of a keyboard, and rosaries beside the washer and dryer. She couldn’t speak of the thing more openly—not with the other woman in the house. Yet the very fact that she and Aurora never exchanged a significant word seemed to make the gaudy seventy-something all the more haunting. Aurora, for instance, turned out to have made it possible for John Junior to duck out of the apartment, Tuesday afternoon while the parents had been down on the Bayfront.
On the spur of the moment, that afternoon, the oldest and second-oldest had taken a jaunt over to Castel Sant’Elmo. Elmo—an Italian corruption of Erasmus, the patron saint of sailors, in honor of whom seafarers had come up with the expression “St. Elmo’s fire.” The stuff wasn’t really fire, rather a kind of static electricity, just as Erasmus wasn’t truly Elmo, or the saint of fire. But the counterfeit had stuck. If an American thought of St. Elmo, he thought of fire, because of Moby Dick or a dumb movie. Or perhaps the American was a bookish teenager fascinated by invisible forces like an electro-magnetic pulse. Chris would make the connection, yes. He’d know where to find the castle, too. Sant’Elmo was a brooding heap almost as old as dell’Ovo and the same dirt-yellow. It stood on the heights of the Lulucitas’ neighborhood, ten minutes’ walk from the apartment.
Nonetheless JJ would never have gotten to the castle, while the parents were out of the house, if his grandmother hadn’t gone to bat for him. Aurora had accompanied the boy down to the piazza, and she’d made sure to keep the policemen she’d spoken with out where the TV cameras could get a clean shot.