The Big Hit

by Jamie Bennett

  No one answered at Domenico’s house, but I had his daughter Monica’s cell number. He answered that himself and I was so relieved to hear his voice that I almost passed out. “What happened?” I yelled into the phone. “Where are you?”

  “I’m fine, Daisy. I’m just fine. Monica flew in from Minneapolis.”

  He sounded very, very relaxed but his voice was very weak. “Domenico, are you on something? Why did Monica come?”

  “I had a little incident yesterday in the attic and I had to call for the ambulance. I’m fine, it was not a heart attack as I thought.”

  “Domenico!” I clapped my hand over my mouth.

  “They’re doing some procedures but I will be all better soon.” He said something in Italian to his daughter. “I go home tomorrow.”

  “I’m coming right now.” I grabbed my purse.

  “No! Because it’s more important than ever that you find it. The police called me yesterday and met me at the college.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Enrico Visconti is claiming that the portrait is stolen property.”

  “That’s ridiculous. A painting purchased more than a century ago in a foreign country is stolen property? That doesn’t make any sense!” I paused. “Is that why you had a heart attack? Because you got worked up from that?”

  “It was not a heart attack, and I’m fine. It’s harassment, Visconti’s way of trying to make us capitulate and let him get at the collection. But we will not be swayed! We keep going! A goccia a goccia, si scava la roccia, giusto?” He kept going for a while, but not in English. “But Daisy, my daughter is not going to let me back to work for a while, so I need you. Can you find it for me? Can you get the Pisanello?”

  He sounded so loopy, and his voice was so faint, that I would have promised him anything. “Of course. I’ll find it. I won’t leave until I do!”

  “Brava, Daisy! I knew I could depend on you.”

  “You just get better, Domenico, and I’ll fix everything here,” I told him, my voice breaking. He was still talking vaguely when the call ended.

  Ok. Ok, well, I could do this. That Enrico Visconti and his lawyers, and everyone else he bent to his will—they could go F themselves, because Domenico and I were not going to capitulate! A goccia, and all that. I dried my tears, called Knox and Tatum to let them know the situation, dried my tears again, and got to work.

  “Lunch,” Knox told me a few hours later when I let him in. He looked at my face, then brushed my nose and cheek with his fingertips. “You are one dirty girl, Daisy McKenzie.”

  “Yep,” I sighed. I had found a lot of dirt, but not anything like a Renaissance portrait. “Thanks for the sandwich. Was lifting ok this morning?” He didn’t answer right away, and just kept spreading out our lunch on the crowded table. “Knox? Talking?” I prompted.

  “I’m having a little shoulder trouble again. The trainer thinks it might be related to me holding my girlfriend against the wall to—”

  “I knew I should have stayed on top!” I exploded. “But how could he tell…oh. You’re kidding.”

  He was smiling at me. “Yeah. It’s a little sore, and I have to go in to get an MRI on it. They don’t want to take any chances.”

  “Knox! That sounds serious. Everyone is going to the hospital.” I had talked to Monica, Domenico’s daughter, and she said he really was going to be fine. She had also mentioned that the boy-reporter, Austin DeJong, had been trying to get in to see her dad with his Channel 67 crew, but that it was also fine, and she was handling it.

  But I was not fine about any of it, or with Knox being hurt, either. I plopped on his lap.

  “It’s ok,” Knox told me. “I’ve played with worse. I can tell it’s nothing serious, but they have to pay attention because I’m so old.”

  “You’re not, either.”

  “In football years, I’m ancient, and I feel like it,” he sighed, and buried his face in my hair. “Your face is dirty, but you still smell so good. Find anything today?”

  “I mean, I’ve found a lot. An Old Master portrait? No. And I’m so angry at Enrico Visconti for hurting Domenico…”

  “Are we going to have to get some boiling oil?”

  “I think so.”

  He laughed and kissed me. The kissing turned serious. “I came up here to feed you and here I am with my hand up your shirt,” he commented after a while.

  I moved my shoulders so that my breast rubbed against his palm. “Can you leave it there while we eat?”

  “It’s my pleasure,” he told me, but that just wasn’t the case—it was definitely mine. After we ate, and made out more, and ate more, Knox helped me by clearing up the mess of packing materials that I had strewn across the floor. “I thought Domenico wanted you to look at the papers and the letters,” he commented, brushing off his hands.

  “I felt like swinging the hammer,” I explained. “I’ll look at the papers next.”

  “See you at the condo later?” He kissed me again, and his hand went back to my breast, fingers teasing.

  “Yes.” I sighed in pleasure. “But I’ll be there late. Solomon is going to cover for me at the library so that I can stay here.”

  “Not too late,” he reminded me. “Leave while there are people around, ok?” I kissed him again and told him good luck and to call me when he got news about his shoulder, and I went back to work. This time I focused on the archives, all the papers that Herbert Whitaker had stuffed away in his basement.

  It was such a mess. I tried to organize by date, and then by country. The papers were so old and had been stored so badly that many of them broke and disintegrated when I unfolded or flattened them out, and I sneezed so many times that my stomach got sore. France and Germany, 1890s. I sorted and dug more. The next layer seemed to be Italy, early 20th century. Papers from a sale in Naples, a menu from a restaurant in Rome, a stereograph card showing the Fontana di Nettuno in Bologna, crap from Florence, Venice…and here was a hotel bill, from Milan.

  Milan, where the Visconti family had ruled centuries ago. My heart beat a little harder for a moment, but I knew that it was probably just more junk. Nevertheless, I carefully picked up the bill and the layer of papers underneath it to spread out on the floor. First, I went through a series of receipts, with amounts listed but no information about what had been purchased, if was art or groceries. I blew out a frustrated breath, then sneezed again. Then I picked up a yellowed envelope that split when I tried to open it, the papers inside slipping out. I carefully unfolded them and started typing on my phone to translate the Italian.

  Oh Herbert, the sly dog. This was from a woman discussing…oh, wow. That was an unusual way to describe that particular act. I kept going and my mouth dropped open. There was nothing in this letter about art, nothing about anything except for truly dirty sex. Filthy. I re-read the words on the little screen of my phone and paused for a moment, considering. If Knox’s shoulder was ok, maybe we could try that, I thought. Oh, God, that would be something. I gathered the pages and fanned my embarrassed face, and a small, folded paper fell out of the old envelope. It was yellowed newsprint, a piece torn from a larger article. I typed in the words for a translation, then stared at my phone. Oh, my God.

  It rang and my hand jerked. “Knox? You’ll never believe this, listen—”

  “Where are you?” he interrupted me. “Where are you right now?”

  I looked around, my gaze falling on the windows. I could see stars through them—how had it gotten so late? “I’m in the attic. I lost track of time, I’m sorry. I’ll go right now. Is your shoulder ok?”

  “Fine,” he answered briefly. “The appointment took hours, and they didn’t find anything.”

  “I’ll rub it for you. I’m going to bring what I found.” I was putting the small piece of newspaper into an envelope as I spoke, and walking through the door.

  “Don’t go by yourself. When I came home and you weren’t there, I started driving to the college. I’ll come get you.” He paused. “Is tha
t the sound of you keying in the alarm?”

  “I’m already in the hallway. I’ll meet you downstairs,” I told him, and I heard the sigh through the phone. “I’ll be fine,” I protested. “Listen to this! I found a little clipping from an old newspaper, maybe a newspaper in Milan. Like from the turn of the twentieth century! It says—” I broke off.

  “What? What does it say?”

  “Hold on,” I said, very quietly. I turned to look back down the long hallway, my eyes searching the darkness. “Hello?” I called.

  “What’s happening?” Knox demanded. “Who’s there?”

  “No one. It’s nothing.” I returned my attention to the phone. “Um, the newspaper said that sometime in the eighteenth century, the Visconti family gave money to construct a chapel to honor their ancestors in a new church outside of the city.” I paused for effect, like Domenico. “They donated a Pisanello portrait! The reason it was in the newspaper was because the painting had just been stolen, Knox, taken from the church and was gone. I’m sure it’s our Pisanello! Herbert Whitaker saved the newspaper because he had purchased the stolen art. I wonder what else he had—what else we now have at the college that was boosted from its original owners. We have to find the Pisanello and return it.” I pressed the button for the elevator and it lit up briefly, then went out. “Great.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, it’s just the elevator is acting up.” I jumped back to the topic at the forefront of my mind. “The thing is, with all the research that Enrico Visconti has done about the painting, he must have known that it was stolen. He’s been looking into this for years, maybe decades. But it certainly wasn’t in all the stuff he sent to Domenico, all those faxes on the curly paper!” I jammed my finger into the button again and it flickered on, then off. “It’s why his history, his documentation of its whereabouts, never made sense to me. He was hiding that the painting belongs to the church. That big jerk—” There it was, a faint noise close by. A few clicks, and something like breathing? I was just scaring myself. “Hello?” I called, a little louder.

  “What’s going on? Is there someone up there with you?” Knox demanded.

  “No, it’s nothing,” I assured him. I pressed the button for the elevator for the third time but the damn thing didn’t light up at all, and I couldn’t hear it moving. “Crap! The elevator is broken.”

  “Daisy, why are you whispering? Go back into the attic. Wait for me there.”

  “No, it’s ok,” I said. I wasn’t going to tell him about what I had heard in the darkness behind me. There was no way I was going to walk back toward it. “I’ll take the stairs.”

  I walked quickly and pulled open the heavy door. The lights in the stairwell were dim and flickering, as always, but that had never bothered me quite as much as it did at this very moment.

  “I’m four minutes away,” Knox was telling me. “I’m coming as fast as I can.”

  “Knox, I’m fine,” I said. “Don’t drive fast.” Not if it meant the police would come after him. I moved quickly down the steps.

  “I’ll be there—” The phone beeped, the call dropped.

  And the door to the stairwell banged closed again, and I heard footsteps on the landing above me.

  Crap! I pounded down as fast as I could go and burst out into the dark building lobby. There was no one, no security, no other students. I hit the door to the outside with all my body weight and when it didn’t move, I yanked at it ineffectually for a long moment before I remembered I had to unlatch it to get out, just as the stairwell flew open again behind me with its distinct creak and someone yelled at me to stop.

  I didn’t even look—I ran across the empty quad, past the shuttered Campus Canteen in a full-out sprint. I heard car tires squeal in the distance, just barely heard it over the rasp of my breath and my sandals slapping on the concrete pathway. I was almost to the parking lot. Almost. Almost.

  “Daisy!”

  I flung myself at Knox as he screeched to a stop and leapt out of his truck. “There was someone following me. There was someone in the hall outside the attics, in the dark!” I panted.

  “You’re fine now. I have you.” He lifted me off the ground, holding me to his chest. “God damn it! We’re getting you an attack dog and a bodyguard. Daisy—who the fuck is that?” He stared into the darkness then put me down, right into the truck. “Lock the doors!” And then he started to race across the parking lot, and the man who had been walking toward us froze, yelped, and ran as fast as he could in the other direction as Knox yelled that he was going to tear his fucking head off and bore down on him.

  Oh no. “Knox! Stop!” I jumped out of the car and started to run after them. “Knox! That’s Austin DeJong! Channel 67! Stop! Don’t hurt him!”

  I pounded through the empty parking lot after the two men, one shrieking, the other gaining speed like a human freight train. I heard the reporter wail, “I just had some questions for her! About the painting! Don’t hurt me!” They disappeared into the woods and I wasn’t going to be able to catch them. I stopped at the edge of the asphalt and took a lungful of air, and then I screamed as loudly as I could. I kept going, screaming and screaming, until Knox barreled back through the trees and into me, nearly taking me off my feet.

  “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” He had picked me up and was kind of shaking me, then he held me so tightly that I could barely breathe.

  “You can’t kill him, it’s just that reporter! He was just trying to get his story.” I pushed at his chest until he loosened his grip. “He wasn’t going to hurt me.”

  “You don’t know that! What if he did something to you?” Knox yelled. “What if something happened to you, Daisy?” His eyes were huge and his body clenched.

  “Hey!” I reached up to his face. “That scared the ever-living hell out of me, too. Austin DeJong is an absolute idiot for eavesdropping and hiding, right? But I’m fine. Knox, I worry just as much, I get so worried that sometimes I can hardly get out bed.” I patted his cheeks. “But I’m fine,” I repeated. “Despite what my mind is telling me, I know that. You can believe it, too.”

  He inhaled and exhaled, slowly calming. “If someone hurt you, Daisy…” His jaw tightened under my hands.

  “I know how you feel. Remember how you play football and I sit and watch you? I can barely take it. It’s because I, and you, and we—it’s because—”

  “Yeah.” Knox nodded. “That’s exactly why. The minute you screamed at me in the basement, I knew. I tried to ignore it, and pretend it wasn’t there in front of my face, but it knocked the wind out of me and put me on my ass.”

  “That sounds terrible!”

  “Nope.” His voice dropped. “It was the biggest hit I ever took and the best thing that ever could have happened. I’m not going to be able to live without you.”

  “I knew when you howled like a wolf in the restaurant. I knew,” I told him.

  He wiped away my tears, and I did for him, too. “I love you, bunny.” He bent and put his lips to mine.

  “Uh, excuse me, can I just ask a few, quick questions? Did I hear you say that the Pizza, I mean, the Pisanello painting is stolen? From a church in Italy? Will you return it? Marguerite?” Austin DeJong had crept back and now hovered a little too close. Knox’s hand shot out, grabbed a handful of his shirt, and hauled him even closer.

  “If you don’t leave Daisy alone, I’ll make you sorry.”

  “Mr. Lynch, I’ve been a fan—”

  “Did you hear what I said? Leave her alone.”

  The reporter’s face turned red. Knox was holding him off the ground. “Austin, after Domenico Amico and I figure this out this mess, we’ll call you and give you the story,” I told him. “As long as you stop pestering us and doing things like hiding in the dark. And stop reporting stupid stuff that isn’t true.”

  Austin DeJong nodded, but it might just have been that Knox shook him and made his head wobble.

  “Get out of here,” Knox told him, and that
was the last we saw that night of Austin DeJong.

  Knox looked down at me. “Daisy.”

  “Knox.”

  “This is it, isn’t it? This is everything.”

  I nodded. It was.

  Epilogue

  “Let’s welcome back to the show the biggest guest we’ve ever had—in terms of size.” The audience laughed. “Seriously, here he is once again, Knox Lynch!”

  Knox came out from behind the red curtain. He held up a hand to the audience and walked with his silent, controlled steps toward the desk where the host stood, clapping. They had put out a larger chair, which looked like it would hold up better than the one from his first visit to Late Night with Tagarela. And this time, Knox didn’t stare straight ahead with a kind of death glare. He shook hands with the host, who smiled up at him.

  “It’s great to have you back on our show!” Marcus Tagarela said as they both sat down.

  “Thank you.”

  “So, the first time you stopped by, things did not go as we had planned.”

  “No, it was pretty bad,” Knox agreed. “I think I made you wet your pants. Not my intention.”

  The studio audience laughed. With him, this time, and not at him.

  “You did, and I had really liked that suit, but I digress,” Tagarela answered. “I wanted to let everyone know that afterwards, you called me to say that you were sorry for the way things had gone. And I really appreciated that.” He reached across the desk and they shook hands again. “Thanks for coming back.”

  “I’m glad to be here.”

  That wasn’t true, and I knew it. Knox had been dreading this, but had finally given in and agreed to their invitation. Because it was a good idea to do things that made you afraid, I reminded him, to show yourself that you could. That was why I was sitting out in the audience in this cold studio, surrounded by strangers, and I had also told the producers that they could put me on TV if they wanted to.