Santiago angrily threw the Phillips-head screwdriver he’d used to dismantle the dish antenna to the ground. “How dare you come ask me such a thing? ¿No es suficiente el caos que has causado?” He pointed at the dismantled computer. “¡Mira! My office has been destroyed. It’s how I made my living! And now I have la policía en mi casa!”
“You always knew this could happen, Santiago. But try to understand that it’s going to be better for everyone if they don’t catch her. Better for you, too.”
Santiago turned his attention back to the equipment. “There’s no way.”
“If there’s no way, then why are you putting your computers into backpacks? Where are you planning to take them?”
“That has nothing to do with you.”
Dante forced Santiago to turn and look at him. “You can’t let them catch her.”
“Dante. If I show her how to get out of here, she’ll tell all her cop buddies! And I’ll have to find another place. ¿Entiendes?”
“I promise you she won’t tell anyone anything,” said Dante, knowing it was a lie. Colomba was intractable when it came to certain things.
Santiago was about to retort when Colomba shouted, “The helicopter! Get under cover!”
Dante looked up over the roofs. A shaft of light was dropping out of the sky toward the street and moving toward the apartment building, accompanied by a swelling noise of rotors. In the give-and-take of the discussion, he hadn’t even noticed.
Colomba came sprinting over.
“Is it going to land up here?” Santiago asked her, clearly worried.
“No, it’s going to continue to circle overhead, mainly to make sure no one gets away in the dark. But if they see us they’ll tell the cops to come straight up here.”
Tattoo-Hands pointed to the lower shed roof, on the far side of the roof from where they were. “Over there!”
The shed roof, about ten feet long, sheltered in its overhang a dozen or so rectangular planters full of dirt, from which not so much as a green sprout was growing. It had been an experimental home-grown marijuana plantation, which Jorge had undertaken a few months earlier. The reason for the dismal results might have had something to do with the fact that the canopy was made of corrugated metal, instead of translucent plastic like most others. Tattoo-Hands and Santiago hastily grabbed their backpacks and made for it at a dead run, with the others hard on their heels. They crouched down around the planters as the shaft of light raked over the roof and the sound of chopper blades grew deafening.
Dante couldn’t believe that this was actually happening, and to judge from Colomba’s expression she was thinking the same thing.
“Santiago!” Dante shouted to make himself heard above the racket. “You have to make up your mind! Tell us how to get out of here!”
“Is there a way?” Colomba asked. “How?”
Santiago said nothing, and Dante, at the risk of being spotted by the helicopter, scooted over and crouched down in front of him. “Santiago. You understand what CC and I are doing.”
“I don’t care.”
“If you really didn’t care, you wouldn’t have helped us. I haven’t paid you enough for the risks you’ve been taking. You know who we’re hunting, you know what he does to children. And I know you. We may not be in agreement on a lot of things, but we are on one: you don’t touch kids.”
“Los niños son bendecidos por Dios,” said Santiago, against his will.
“If they catch CC, no one will free the children who’ve been taken. The way they took me. You know my story. Children the age of your littlest sister. And they’ll grow up like animals in a cage.”
“And the lady cop can find them?” Santiago replied mistrustfully.
“Yes. I know she can do it. And I’ll help her.”
“And the chico in the video, too?”
“Yes, him, too. And if we can do it, it’s going to be in part thanks to you.”
“Don’t waste your time listening to them,” said Jorge. “They’d say anything to get their asses out of here.”
Santiago glared at him. “I know this man,” he said, pointing at Dante. “He’s not a liar.”
“What about the lady cop?” asked Tattoo-Hands.
“The lady cop isn’t a cop anymore. She’s someone who’s on the run. Y no me gusta enviar a la gente a la cárcel.”
“Well, how do you get out of here?” asked Dante.
“Through the basements,” said Santiago. “They’re all connected. Our building, the next one over, and the one after that.”
“The police have surrounded the whole neighborhood,” Dante objected.
“But not the park,” Santiago pointed out, gesturing in the direction of the Giardini dei Tre Laghi, a public if somewhat decrepit park not far away. “There’s a way to get there from the third building.”
“If we reach the park, will we be far enough away from your colleagues?” Dante asked Colomba.
“If we move fast, maybe,” she replied. “But once we get there, we’re going to need a car.”
“Can you take care of it, Santiago?” asked Dante.
“¿No crees que estás exagerando?” Jorge broke in. “Now you want us to get a car for your girlfriend?”
“I didn’t ask anyone for anything,” said Colomba.
“I did,” said Dante. “It doesn’t do us any good to make it to the park and then get caught. And they’d figure out how we got there in a second.”
Santiago heaved a deep sigh, then looked over at Tattoo-Hands. “Call Enrico and tell him to leave a clean car at the bend in the road, keys in the ignition.”
“You’re certainly giving her the full service, this whore,” said Jorge, infuriated. “I don’t understand.”
“Which is why I’m the boss,” Santiago shot back. “¿Tiene usted algun problema conmigo?” he asked ferociously. “Do we have a problem?”
“No,” Jorge hastened to reply.
“But we can’t get down into the basement,” said Dante. “There are cops all up and down the stairs.”
“We’ll get in through the building across the way. I know how to do it.” Santiago nodded in Jorge and Tattoo-Hands’s direction. “I’ll lead the way for Dante and the lady cop. You two grab las mochilas and bring up the rear.”
While Tattoo-Hands was calling Enrico, Colomba studied the movements of the helicopter. It was describing a large figure eight over the three connected buildings and the adjacent streets. If they took off when it was at the far end of the loop, they could get down off the roof without being seen, but it would probably spot them entering the second building. At that point, their only chance was to run as fast as they could.
“Tell us when to go,” said Santiago, who understood that Colomba was calculating the timing.
The roar of the helicopter subsided, and the roof fell into shadow. “Just another couple of seconds.” Colomba counted in her head. “Now!”
The five of them took off at a dead run, following Santiago’s lead. The first stretch was fairly straightforward. An exterior access ladder led down from the roof to the top of the covered walkway joining the two adjacent buildings. They got down it without mishap; among other things it had round rungs, which were easy to grip. Colomba kept Dante right above her the whole way, so that she knew where he was, and she watched him clamber down the rungs with great agility, while she could use only one hand because of her bag of clothing. Jorge and Tattoo-Hands had the hardest time of it, because they had to take off their backpacks and carry them balanced on their heads to keep from getting caught in the safety cage.
Once they were down on the roof of the walkway, they pressed against the wall until the helicopter had gone overhead; then they ran the length of the walkway to the far end, where a rusty door awaited them; it was a little over a yard high and was covered with obscene graffiti. They could hear the twittering of the cops’ radios and their voices coming from below. The faraway shouts, on the other hand, had ceased, which meant that the officers had mana
ged to clear the front entrance to the building.
The door was fastened with a massive padlock. Santiago unlocked it with a key, then threw open the door. “Here we go.”
Colomba stuck her head in. The darkness was absolute. She asked Dante for his lighter so she could see the interior of the shaft: the guide rails down which the elevator ran were fastened to the walls; fifteen or twenty feet down was the roof of the elevator car. To reach it, she’d have to climb down a ladder much narrower than the one before, and with no safety cage around it. “Does the elevator work?” she asked in low voice to keep from being heard from below. “I don’t want to be turned into a pancake.”
“It’s never worked,” Tattoo-Hands replied. “You climb down to the roof of the elevator car, and you’re already in the basements.”
“I’ll go first,” said Santiago.
He went in, turning as he found the rungs of the ladder, and his head dropped instantly out of sight.
“You’re next, Dante,” said Colomba.
Dante seemed hypnotized by the low door. He stared into the darkness beyond it, his eyes open and his breathing labored: it was a giant ravenous mouth, a dark abyss that wanted to slurp him down. He felt himself being pulled toward it and had to flex every muscle in his body to keep from tumbling into it and being lost.
“Dante, it’s the only way.”
He shook his head, then with effort lifted his eyes to hers. “CC . . . I just can’t do it. I’m sorry. You go.”
“I need you.”
Dante was sweating furiously. “You said that if we’re separated . . .”
“That if they separate us, you can keep going on your own. But I can’t. Without you, there’s no way I can find the Father.”
“To your colleagues, CC, I’m nothing but a witness. They’ll let me go . . . and I’ll join you wherever you are.” He was swallowing his words, he was so upset. “We can invent a code to communicate.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m begging you . . . Colomba . . .”
Colomba looked at Jorge. “Give me your backpacks.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll carry them. Come on.”
It could have been her tone of voice, or else it was the situation, but the two men promptly obeyed. Colomba tossed her bag of clothes into the hole after calling for Santiago to catch it; then she put one backpack on each shoulder. They must have weighed at least thirty pounds each, and she felt tremendously overbalanced and in danger of tipping backward. It would have been a problem if she had been about to go down a flight of stairs.
“What now?” asked Tattoo-Hands.
“Keep an eye on him,” she said, tilting her head in Dante’s direction. “I’ll take the backpacks down and then I’ll come back up, and together we’ll get him down.”
“CC . . . you’d never do such a thing to me,” Dante stammered.
“Sorry,” said Colomba without meeting his eyes. “Come on, or do you want them to catch us up here? Here comes the helicopter!”
Dante tried to bolt, but Tattoo-Hands was behind him immediately, clapping his hand over his mouth before he could scream. Jorge, after glaring furiously at Colomba, hastily grabbed him by the arms. Dante was writhing and jerking uncontrollably, and Colomba felt a pang in her heart. It’s the only way, she kept telling herself. She went down the shaft as fast as she could, praying that she wouldn’t fall and crack her head open. Midway down she did lose her grip, and the only reason she didn’t fall was that she managed to grab one of the grease-smeared elevator rails.
From atop the elevator a yellowish light shone up. It was Santiago with a flashlight. “Where are the others?” he asked her when she’d climbed the whole way down and stood next to him.
“They’re holding Dante. I’m going up to get him now.”
“This isn’t the place for him.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
Without the backpacks weighing her down, Colomba climbed back up easily. When she got to the door, she tapped lightly to attract their attention. Dante’s head was pushed into the elevator shaft, followed by the upper part of his body. He opened his mouth, as if he were about to yell, but Colomba promptly clapped a hand over it. “Please. Don’t yell. I’ll help you,” she whispered into his ear.
Dante snorted and shook his head.
Colomba continued to hold her hand over his mouth. “You brought me here, and now I’m taking you away from here,” she said. Or at least I’m going to try, she added mentally. She told the two Cuchillos to push and suddenly found Dante’s full weight on her, as he clutched at her spasmodically. She was forced to use both hands, one to hold onto the ladder and the other to hold him, but Dante never shouted. He just panted loudly and refused to look at her. She thought they could make it, unless all four of them fell. Just then the reflection from the helicopter’s spotlight hit them.
They’d been spotted.
13
Reports of the strange activity on the roof of the walkway immediately made their way back to Dispatch, which then forwarded them to the radio of Siena One, as Santini’s squad car was known. The S in Siena stood for CIS. Or “shithead,” as the cops in the Mobile Squad liked to say about the deputy chief of the CIS: they hadn’t much appreciated his interference. When word came in, the revolt had just been put down, and a fair percentage of the district’s inhabitants were under guard in the courtyard or else handcuffed in the armored cars, with cuts and abrasions on their scalps and, here and there, a skull fracture or broken arm. The search parties had made it up to the fourth-floor apartments, but the minute Santini received the message, he deployed his officers to the building next door, leaving only a few to keep an eye on the prisoners and stand sentinel. He now realized that Colomba was escaping from over their heads.
Actually, the fugitives had already reached ground level, and below. Their descent into the elevator shaft had been precipitous, as had their race to the cellars. Colomba kept one arm around Dante’s shoulder to support him and comfort him.
Santiago led the group through an enormous basement room filled with junked equipment, then down an underground corridor that joined the two apartment buildings, and after that through another vast cellar room. They jogged along fast and silent, attentive to every noise. From time to time, the beep and crackle of police radios penetrated the darkness from the street above, and on one occasion they almost ran straight under a grate while a small group of officers went running overhead in the opposite direction: they would certainly have been spotted, but they managed to avoid contact. Over the years, in fact, the basements had turned into a formless agglomeration of rooms where the law of the jungle held sway. Some were piled high with garbage and rubble; others had been enlarged by demolishing partition walls and the annexation of adjoining spaces, transformed variously into dining areas, well-stocked pantries, guest bedrooms, and fortified rooms in which who could say what kinds of merchandise lay concealed.
Colomba even saw a barbecue area set up where two corridors met, with a Peruvian family grilling a chicken under the grating that gave onto the parking area, indifferent to the damp and the din and confusion overhead. At certain points the corridor was blocked by heavy doors or jury-rigged barricades, but Santiago had keys to all the locks, or else he knew how to get around them.
Their flight ended when they reached the door to a storage area, locked with another heavy padlock like the one on the door to the elevator shaft. Santiago unlocked it: the storage area contained a dozen or so beat-up toilets.
“Is this the way to the park?” Colomba asked, baffled.
“Exactamente,” Santiago replied. “But you’ve still got a way to go. And this is going to be the hard part.” He turned his flashlight toward a rack of shelves piled high with paint cans. “Move it,” he ordered.
Jorge and Tattoo-Hands obeyed, revealing a hole in the wall about a yard across. Then they went back to stand guard.
Colomba studied Dante’s reaction,
but he had none; he didn’t seem to understand what was going on around him. Better that way, she decided. Otherwise, all alone with him, she wouldn’t be able to control him. “Did you guys dig the hole?” she asked.
“Two months of hard labor,” Santiago said proudly. He explained that just a few yards away was a drainage tunnel that channeled the rainwater from the park into the sewer main that ran under the apartment building. The Cuchillos had dug a homemade connection tunnel that they used as an emergency exit when the building was searched. When it rained, it sometimes became impassible, as the drainage tunnel filled completely with water. Lately, though, the weather had been dry.
“This is how you got away two years ago when I was chasing you, isn’t it?” asked Colomba.
He laughed. “I was innocent, just like you are.”
Tattoo-Hands came running back in. “Cops on their way. I heard footsteps and walkie-talkies.”
“It’s time to go.” Santiago handed her the flashlight and slapped Dante on the back; once again, Dante didn’t react and remained calm even when Colomba pushed him ahead of her and then climbed in behind him. The tunnel was narrow and tight and reeked of sewage.
Colomba turned around and looked at Santiago. “Thanks,” she said reluctantly.
“Oh, what nice manners the lady cop has.” He laughed as he sealed the hole back up.
The three Cuchillos hurried out and padlocked the door behind them, then split up and fanned out into the basements to hide their backpacks. Midway to the exit, Santiago came face-to-face with Santini and a group of officers and realized he was screwed. They slammed him against the wall and handcuffed him, skipping the usual legal niceties, same as they’d done for everyone else they’d run into underground.
“Where is she?” asked Santini, slapping a photograph of Colomba in front of his nose.
Kill the Father Page 35