The morning sun shone brightly. Italians buzzed past on mopeds. Others chatted at tables shaded by hunter green umbrellas at the half dozen trattorias that lined the square. Delivery drivers gunned their trucks as they waited for room to park. It was, all in all, the very vision of chaotic Italian charm. It should have put me in a wonderful mood, instilled me with that sense of worldly calm that takes over when I’m dispatched to various corners of the globe. Instead, looking down from my perch, a small part of me saw Elizabeth, at the good times we had here that were no more, at the finality that she had come to represent, at the gloom in her wake.
I left the doors open so the soothing street symphony could fill my room as I jumped into a cool, refreshing shower. I toweled off and changed into fresh clothes. At various points over my once-bright career, I had confronted corrupt governors and lying presidents. I had coaxed deep secrets from killer mobsters and untrusting militiamen. I had been the target of fists and bullets. But never before had I felt so helpless—frightened even—over a meeting with a potential source. Actually, scratch that. It wasn’t the meeting that I was so afraid of. It was the pulsing likelihood that the meeting wouldn’t take place, that she had been snatched or killed, all because I provided her with recommendations on where to stay rather than how to stay alive.
Years ago, breaking into the business, I once had a fat old city editor—a guy with ink in his veins—who told me that some stories involve an endless series of worst-case reporting scenarios. If it can go wrong, it will. In those cases, he said you’re no longer the lion, but the trainer, trying to beat back circumstances with a whip while you protect yourself with a turned over chair. That’s how I felt now, only the whip was lost and the chair was broken and I was left with my own questionable wiles to fend for myself and those who needed me.
I checked the clock beside the bed and saw it was 9:50 A.M. I walked out of the room, down the wide stairs and into the plaza. Very rarely do you ever say this, but the unfolding circumstances of the next ten or fifteen minutes could determine how I viewed my entire worth.
Chapter Nineteen
T he first thing you notice about the Hotel Raphael is that you barely notice it at all. It sits demurely on a classically crooked Roman side street a minute or two from the haunting glory of Piazza Navona, a blocky building drenched in cascading green vines, as if it’s incognito, in hiding, much like the woman I was hoping—praying, really—that I was about to meet.
I stepped into the kind of garishly opulent lobby that hoteliers simply don’t design anymore for reasons that are quasi-obvious, yet this one portrayed itself with a timeless pride. There were extravagantly cut sofas with fringe, and curved buffet tables, and gilded mirrors everywhere the eye could settle. The ceilings were high, the rugs a deep maroon, the mood one of refined disorder, much like the city itself. I looked about the space nervously and purposefully, searching for Maggie or anyone who looked like they might want to kill her—or me, for that matter. I didn’t necessarily see any killers, though I did note something of a theme. Everyone was dressed in black, the men and the women—black suits, black turtlenecks, black shirts, black ties, black belts. Black seemed to be the new black, as my fashion-conscious friends in Milan might say.
I found my way to the elevators—what the locals, I believe, quaintly call lifts, though maybe I’m confusing European Union members. I pressed the button for the Bramante Rooftop Terrace. Just as the double doors were sliding shut, a forty-something man dressed in, well, black, jumped onto the elevator, gave me an up and down look, and said in an accent more reminiscent of Rome, N.Y., than Rome, Italy, “Buongiorno.”
“Good morning,” I replied, trying to smoke out his nationality. He didn’t reply, nor, more importantly, did he press a button for a different floor. The plot thickens. Maybe.
We stood in opposite corners of the elevator, he and I, like boxers awaiting the starting bell for another round. At least that’s how I saw it, but admittedly, I was exhausted to the point of being nearly delusional, not to mention as tense as a tuning fork. I kept looking up at the floor numbers slowly gliding by on the old-fashioned dial built into the elevator wall. Out of the corner of my tired eye, I could see my fellow passenger looking—staring, actually—directly at me.
Be calm, stay rational, I told myself. I tried to picture the young and beautiful Maggie Kane sipping a fresh-squeezed blood-orange juice at a wrought-iron table shaded by a green umbrella from the warm September sun. She’d spill her guts to me, she would. She’d give me answers to questions that I didn’t even know to ask. I’d find out why her sister died, and more importantly, who was to blame. We’d fly back to the United States together. We’d dig to the bottom of the pile of garbage that was now strewn across both of our lives. We’d get stories in the newspaper. We’d force authorities to take action. Maybe I’d never feel vindication. Maybe I’d never escape the blanket of guilt that felt wrapped around every thought in my head. But I’d at least understand what went wrong, and do whatever was in my power to make some of it right.
Unless this clown on the elevator tried to stop me.
The elevator moved as if we were in a hospital or nursing home, which is to say, slowly and arduously, every inch seemingly a mile. Finally, unable to ignore his probing stare, I shifted my look from the wall to his stubbled face and met his gaze head-on. He said, without hesitation or embarrassment, “I know you, don’t I?”
A couple of thoughts raced through my mind. First, that this was a very sophisticated mind-fucking by the people who wanted Maggie Kane either dead or within their control. By staging a faux recognition, they might have believed that they could scare me away, and then lure Maggie out of a public restaurant, perhaps follow her to her room, and dispense with their problem.
Second, maybe he was just making idle small talk before sticking a forearm-length knife into my heart. Maybe he was one of those hired guns you read about who got off on having interaction with the victims he was about to lay waste. My own arms tensed in reaction to this thought, as if being put on alert for the possibility of attack.
Third, hell, maybe he really did recognize me. Years ago, I was shot in a failed assassination attempt on President Clayton Hutchins at Congressional Country Club outside of Washington and my handsome face was splashed all over the network news for day upon endless day. The fame, fortunately, was as fleeting as the wounds. But maybe he was one of those devotees who look worshipfully on the pseudo-celebrity that television laughably bestows. Maybe he actually remembered me.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, polite, my eyes still meeting his.
The elevator arrow moved from five to six. I mean, Neil Armstrong flew to the moon faster than this cube is hoisting me to the Bramante Terrace.
“I’m sure I do,” he said, staring so hard at my face, even squinting, that I almost in some small way felt violated. Not that violation is a bad thing, though here it was.
I shrugged.
He asked, “What’s your name?”
“Jack.”
“Jack who?”
If this guy wasn’t a killer, then he certainly knew how to murder everyday etiquette. I simply shook my head and muttered, “Not important.”
The arrow hit floor number seven. The elevator jerked to a stop. The doors slid slowly open. Everything seemed to be operating at a snail’s pace, except my mind, which was operating at hyper speed. I stepped toward the doors and graciously paused, saying, “After you.” Both my arms gathered subtley in front of me preparing to ward off an attack, though I knew deep inside my head that if one was coming it would have already arrived.
He smiled as he walked out, shaking his head and saying, “You look so darned familiar.”
I stepped off the elevator and, in order to get this clown away from me, knelt down to tie my shoe. Problem was, I was wearing loafers, so I instead pulled the right one off to awkwardly shake out a pebble that wasn’t actually there.
It was then, kneeling down like that, that I
heard the chime on the next elevator and instinctively looked in that direction. The doors, already open, were in the process of sliding shut. Inside the elevator, I spied a patch of short blonde hair on a woman whose face I couldn’t see. It was hair the same length as Maggie Kane’s, the same color as Maggie Kane’s, but I couldn’t tell if it was Maggie Kane. I mean, you put yourself in a room where you fear there are mice, and you see little flashes of motion along the periphery of the floor. It’s known as human nature, even if it doesn’t seem all that natural. I jumped up for a better look, surged toward the doors, then furiously pressed the call button, but the elevator was already on its slow descent. I was fairly sure that I was fairly sure about what I saw, but how was I to know?
I considered for a fleeting moment climbing on the adjacent elevator and speeding down to the lobby—speeding being a relative term here. But I worried that if I left Maggie waiting too long in the restaurant, either she’d grow worried and leave, or the goon who rode up with me would lure her out. Why, I asked myself, would she have been on that elevator down? Why would she have come, then left at almost precisely our assigned time, and if it was her, surely she would have seen me kneeling down and remained. She wouldn’t have. That’s what I kept telling myself. The glimpse I had was not of Maggie Kane.
By now I was as brittle as frozen glass. I quickly made my way to the maître d’ stand, where an officious gray-haired gentleman—presumably the maître d’ himself—asked in reasonable English, “May I help you?”
“Meeting a friend,” I absently said as I made my way past him and onto the terrace. I stopped and did a quick scan of the crowded tables, but failed to see her. That’s all right, I told myself. She’s in hiding and wouldn’t put herself on prominent display. So I walked—trotted, really—among the tables, like some American madman. Half the place probably thought I was packing heat and was about to take the whole restaurant down. I looked from one table to the next. I searched the far corners. I retraced my steps. There were many women in attendance, Italian women, beautiful women, but I didn’t see a blonde among them. And yes, it occurred to me that she might have dyed her hair, so I was probing the faces of even the brunettes, but nothing. There wasn’t even a woman sitting alone.
By now, the maître d’ had caught up with me on the middle of the terrace and asked with greater urgency in a thicker Roman accent, “Sir, may I help you?”
I stopped now and replied, “I’m looking for an American woman, a young blonde, maybe thirty years old, five feet nine inches or so. Have you seen her?” I have no idea if he actually understood a word I was saying, so I added, “Très magnifique.” Hey, look, you do what you can, and what you can’t, you just raise your voice.
He nodded his head furiously, as if I had just ordered the spring lamb. He gave me a little underhand beckoning wave with his hand and led me to an empty table in the far corner of the terrace with an amazing view down upon the medieval buildings of ancient Rome. Upon the table, there was a quarter-filled glass of blood-orange juice, and a half-drunk cup of café au lait.
“There was such a woman as you describe sitting right here,” he said, nodding at a cushioned wrought-iron chair that was pushed away from the table, as if whoever was in it had left in a rush.
So I was right, that was her in the elevator. “How long ago did she leave?” I asked.
He simply shrugged. “I did not see a woman depart,” he said. He gazed across the table and added, “She has not yet paid the bill.”
I didn’t want to tell him that he had just been stiffed, especially given the outrageous prices that Roman hotels charge for virtually anything. Poor Maggie was probably already into breakfast to the tune of 67 million lire, roughly the equivalent of $19, and that’s before she was served anything that required the use of a fork. These places are Peter Martin’s biggest nightmare.
I asked, “The woman’s room?” But what I was thinking was that at that very moment, Maggie Kane was inexplicably fleeing through the lobby of the hotel, but from what, from whom, I had precisely no idea. Why would she have come here and then failed to wait? Had she seen something? Did she get a menacing sense from someone? Had she been followed? Had I?
I was trying to be low-key, but people were watching. The kind maître d’ had called over a female in civilian clothes, black of course, and, speaking in his native tongue asked that she check the woman’s room for my friend. At least that’s what I imagined he had told her. More likely he warned her about this stupid American with the fashion sense of a trained ape and told her to lay fresh newspapers along the floor in case I wasn’t properly trained.
As she made off to either check the bathroom or call authorities on me, I looked about the restaurant again, this time for anyone who might look like they wanted Maggie Kane dead. At this point, everyone did. Either Italy had turned into a terribly unfriendly country, or I had long ago burned through my last sane thought.
The woman reappeared a moment later with a shrug of her shoulders and put her hands up in the air in the international sign of failure. Such a gesture could have aptly described my current life. I quickly turned and headed for the exits. On my way, I saw my elevator mate sitting alone at a table near the entrance, looking at me while he apparently spoke into the cuff of his black shirt. This rather alarming observation prompted me to break into a full-out run, and when I did, I heard chairs scrape against the hard floor. I heard footsteps behind me. I bolted past the maître d’ stand, past the elevators and toward a red sign that proclaimed, Exit.
I slammed through the heavy door and bounded down the narrow stairs three at a time. If I tripped, I assumed I was dead, and it wouldn’t be from the fall. When I had descended a floor and a half, I heard the door fling open above me, then the sound of voices speaking a foreign language, which I assumed was Italian. Again, you don’t need the investigative skills of a Woodward or a Bernstein when you’ve got me around to provide a reasonably accurate account of events.
This wasn’t the most agile group in pursuit, thank God. If they were Romans, that might help explain it. I mean, they’re a beautiful people, yes, but when’s the last time you heard about the Italian national team sweeping through the Olympics? As I leapt down the stairs, the gap between us seemed to grow bigger, to the point that I could barely hear them speak. My fear was that they had comrades stationed on lower floors who would slam through the doors and deck me. I flinched on every landing, but the coast remained thankfully clear.
Five turned to four, turned to three, turned to two. On the ground level, I paused momentarily, remembering the man speaking into his wrist, calculating who might have been on the other end of the line, and calmly pushed open the door from the stairs into the lobby. If I had thought it through more, I probably would have been more wary than I was, but I didn’t have the luxury of such caution.
Everything here was oddly calm, almost unnaturally normal. My body was the picture of serenity, the waterfall of sweat descending down my forehead aside; my mind, on the other hand, was an utter frenzy. I scanned the few passersby and the lobby lollers, looking for that which I didn’t yet know and couldn’t then see. There was a middle-aged couple checking out of their room at the reception desk. Another older man leaned against the marble concierge desk while a prim woman behind it—presumably the concierge—talked on the phone. People came, people went, and then my eyes settled on a lone figure sitting on a sofa by a potted fern.
It’s that whole flash-of-motion-at-the-fringes-of-the-room syndrome. I suspected Maggie was around, therefore I believed right to the core of my soul that this person in a skirt with the International Herald Tribune shielding her face had to be her. My mind immediately settled on the theory that she had come downstairs, spotted someone sinister outside, so settled calmly on a couch and took refuge behind a newspaper. I’d like to think it wasn’t the first time in life that an innocent was protected by the published word, but these days, I couldn’t be so sure.
I heard voices behind me in the sta
irwell—the exact nudge I needed to go racing toward the Herald Tribune reader. I had a vision of grabbing Maggie by the wrist, leading her quickly to the front door, having the bellman beckon us a cab, and disappearing into the ancient streets of Rome, not to be found again until the true story of Hilary Kane’s death was told on the front page of The Boston Record.
So I bolted across the lobby, narrowly missing a Japanese businessman dragging a hefty piece of rolling luggage. I grabbed the top of the newspaper and said in my firmest, lowest, voice, “Come on.”
She screamed. I mean, she really screamed. The larger problem was, it wasn’t Maggie at all, but some absolutely luscious-looking blonde-haired, blue-eyed German model of a woman. Have I mentioned that she was beautiful?
Anyway, she shouted something at me in a foreign language. Allow me to say, every normal guy’s fantasy is to someday have sexual congress with a German model, preferably on a white sand beach with a horse tied to a nearby tree, though maybe that last part is just me. But anyway, no part of that fantasy involves the woman actually speaking in her jarring native tongue, what with all the hard “acht” sounds that could drive a sex addict to outright celibacy.
I apologized, but on the run. The door from the stairwell burst open. Everyone everywhere was looking toward the three guys who just rammed into the lobby, then at me, then back at them. Over by the entrance, I saw another lone figure sitting on a settee throw a newspaper down on the floor and bolt for the door. Maggie Kane. I was right, dammit. She had been hiding in the lobby. She did, in fact, take refuge behind the written word. I just picked the wrong figure.
Before anyone could say anything, the German model aside, I raced for the door in hot pursuit. The three men hesitated, got their bearings, and set out after me. I charged outside, caught a glimpse of Maggie to my right, rounding a corner to her right, and hightailed it in that direction.
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