“I understand what you’re trying to tell me, Giovanni,” I say. “It’s possible my logic is broken, but then even a broken clock can be relied on to tell the right time twice a day.”
He nods and smiles, then places a couple of Euros on the counter.
“Your blindness,” he says, laying a hand on my arm,“it might make you more in tune with her thoughts. You try harder to feel what she feels. To see what she sees.”
“My blindness can provide me with a special tool,” I agree. “But I need my eyesight in order to find her.”
“You need both. You need the dark and the light.”
As we exit the coffee bar, I find myself praying for the onset of blindness. But not yet.
Chapter 35
WE WALK ALONG THE cobblestones that line the flat banks of the Grand Canal, until we come to the Ponte Rialto, the white-marbled bridge of stairs that spans its head. Descending down the steps on the opposite side of the bridge, I spot the train station to my left and the pedestrian street that leads deep into the old Jewish district which is now filled with artists, shops, student housing and restaurants. Tourists fill the cobbled passageways along with gelato and fruit venders. As we pass by a small piazza, a group of clowns are performing magic tricks with metal hoops, rope, and long walking sticks. Not much farther up the road from them stands a lone violinist. He’s an old man dressed in a wool jacket and matching trousers. On his head, he wears a black wool skullcap. For shoes, old leather cordovans that now are riddled with holes and held precariously together with strips of filthy gray duct tape. Laid out on the cobbles not far from his ratty shoes is his open violin case. It contains a couple of five Euro notes, a few one Euro coins, and some loose change. As we pass, I pause before him and listen to the sweet sad harmonies of a slowly bowed violin. Fumbling inside my pocket, I find a ten Euro note and drop it into the case. He nods at me, smiles.
We move on in the direction of Santa Lucia.
* * *
We find the church nestled at the far end of a square that’s two sided by feeder canals. Some children are playing in the square, kicking a soccer ball back and forth to one another. Or, what they call a football in this country. It’s going on nine in the morning and sun has risen warm and bright. Raising my face up towards it, I feel the radiating warmth of its rays on my face. I feel it seep in through the thin skin that covers my eyes and into my eyeballs. I’ve been able to see now without interruption for more than three hours. I have no idea how long it’s going to last. Nor do I have a solid reason for visiting this church other than the discovery of the mass card on my apartment floor and my blind intuition. Blind being the key word here.
I follow Giovanni to the front wood doors of the old stone-faced, gothic church. He pulls the door open and we are greeted by a barred ticket window. I pull out another ten Euro note and pay for the both of us. We are handed two entry tickets that are attached to the same card containing the image of Santa Lucia holding her extracted eyes that I found on my apartment floor. When I hand the ticket to the ticket-taker, he tears the card off at the perforated seam and hands it back to me. I stuff the card into my pocket along with the one I found this morning. Then I enter into the church.
* * *
The old stone church smells of incense and, aside from Giovanni and myself, there are no other visitors to be found at this hour of the morning. The pews are empty, as are the small side chapels that flank both sides of the main altar. Placed in the center of the altar is a glass coffin which contains a red-robed body laid out on a bed of silver. It immediately grabs my attention the same way a hot fire can suddenly rob you of your breath.
“What do you wish me to do?” Giovanni whispers, his voice taking on a slight echo despite its soft tone.
“Just stay close to me,” I say. “Keep your eyes open for Grace.”
“But the church, she is empty.”
“Not everything is as it appears, my friend.”
The church comes alive with the sound of our leather soles slapping the hard marble floor. It makes me feel like I’m about to wake the dead.
As a born and bred Roman Catholic who long ago abandoned his church and its rules, I’m not a praying man by any means. I’ve seen too much death and devastation for that and I’ve witnessed too many men and women willingly blow themselves up in the name of a God who promises them paradise and, for the men anyway, dozens of virgins as a reward. But when we come to the altar, I intuitively drop to one knee and make the sign of the cross. It takes me by surprise when Giovanni does the same thing. Standing, we approach the altar and the glass tomb.
She was a small woman. Smaller than small by today’s standards. Santa Lucia can’t occupy more than four and a half feet inside the glass coffin in which she is laid out, her more-than-five-hundred-year-old body somehow nearly perfectly preserved or mummified, as if touched by God the moment her heart stopped beating. In the place of her gouged-out eyes are a pair of fake glass eyes. They are strikingly blue/green just like Grace’s, and peering at them through the glass coffin, I find myself growing dizzy and out of balance.
Is this why I was drawn to this place in my sleep?
To witness this old saint’s fake eyes?
Eyes that look back at me from the dead?
Eyes that look like Grace’s?
For a brief moment, I feel like I might lose consciousness. Sensing my fall, Giovanni grabs hold of me.
“Are you all right, Captain?” he begs.
I nod. At the same time, I feel my vision begin to fade in and out of focus. I know that I will soon lose my ability to see altogether. But not yet. I must make a check on the entire church before that happens. It’s exactly how I explain it to Giovanni.
* * *
We search the church and find no sign of Grace.
In the end, I feel thoroughly exhausted and consumed with grief, as if I came to this place only to realize that Grace is already dead. I sit myself inside the final row of pews, close my eyes, and feel the onset of dread. When I open my eyes again, I feel a single wet tear fall down my cheek and I see something through the haze of rapidly diminishing eyesight.
I see a man wearing a long brown overcoat.
Chapter 36
HE’S STANDING AT THE altar directly before the glass coffin.
The man in the brown overcoat.
The man who took my Grace.
He’s staring directly at me, those black eyes reflecting the firelight from the candles. At first I think I might be seeing things. Maybe I fell asleep and now I’m conjuring up his image in a dream. A vivid dream. But I know this is not a dream when Giovanni gently elbows me.
“There is our man,” he says aloud.
Standing, he jumps over the pew, and takes off after the overcoat man.
Chapter 37
I SLIP OUT OF the pew and follow on Giovanni’s heels, the both of us sprinting the length of the aisle towards the altar.
“Stop!” I shout, the demand sounding entirely inadequate.
It takes only about a second and a half for us to reach the altar. But when we get there, the overcoat man has vanished.
Giovanni turns to me.
“Behind the coffin!” I bark.
Coming from behind me, the shouts of the church guards. They are yelling at us to stay where we are. They’re running towards us, blaring voices and stomping boots reverberating against the stone walls of this ancient church. Giovanni disappears behind the glass coffin. I follow.
We both eye one another like, Where did he go?
Until I see the sacristy door behind Giovanni.
“Go there!” I say, making for the solid wood-paneled door.
I open the door and Giovanni and I both slip inside. Closing it, I grab hold of a chair that’s leaning up against the wall and shove the chair back under the closer. Just in time. The guards converge on the door. They attempt to plow through it by shoving their shoulders into the panel. But the door and the chair are holding.
The sacristy is like a pantry for dozens of robes and cassocks. The shelves store gold challises, incense burners, crucifix staffs, and wine bottles. It’s long and narrow and leads to an exterior door.
The door is open.
Without having to utter another word, Giovanni and I sprint for the open door and head out into the salty Venetian air.
Chapter 38
WE STAND ON THE narrow walkway.
Directly before us is a feeder canal, its water calm and undisturbed. To our right, nothing but empty cobblestone-covered walkway. The view is the same when peering over our left shoulders.
“Do you believe we really saw the man in the brown overcoat, Captain?” Giovanni whispers after a time.
“We saw him,” I answer, my heart just beginning to dislodge itself from inside my throat. “We saw him and he got away.”
“How did he know to find us here?”
“I’m not looking for him. But he’s most definitely got his eye on me. Had his eye on me and Grace since we arrived a week ago…. There’s something else that bothers me too.”
“What is it?”
“The card with Santa Lucia that I found on the floor of my apartment this morning. I believe I found it because the overcoat man put it there himself.”
“Mamma mia, Captain, he was in your home? Last night? I thought you put it there in your sleep.”
I look into his big brown eyes.
“He was here waiting for us, Giovanni. Don’t you believe he led us here?”
But Giovanni doesn’t have time to answer. Making their way towards us on foot, in the direction of the church entrance, are three uniformed police officers being led by Detective Carbone.
“Stay where you are!” the detective shouts. “You are under arrest!”
Chapter 39
“WHAT MAKES YOU THINK you would find your fiancée inside the church of Santa Lucia?” poses the detective.
“This morning I found a mass card on the floor of my apartment. It has the face of Santa Lucia painted on it, and it comes from that church where you unjustly arrested my friend and me.”
“Might I view this mass card you speak of?”
I pull two identical mass cards from out of my shirt pocket, hand him the one I found on my floor this morning. He glances down at it, sets it aside. “I will hang onto this for now. Perhaps have it tested for prints.”
“Knock yourself out,” I say.
“Your friend has been released pending further questioning. He’s been escorted back to his café in San Marco.”
“Kind of you, Detective. Why haven’t I been afforded the same courtesy? I am a guest in your country.”
“Indeed you are, Captain Angel, which makes what I’m about to tell you all the more sensitive.”
“Detective, I hope you are about to tell me you have developed a solid lead on the whereabouts of my fiancée.”
The detective stands, comes around his desk, pulls out his cigarettes and lights one with his silver lighter. Staring out the window onto the Grand Canal, he smokes. Contemplatively.
“This morning, Captain,” he says after a time while staring into his reflection, “you could see me. Yet you chose to fake your blindness.”
My eyes leave his backside and refocus on his desktop. Grace’s waterlogged passport sits on top of it. A voice inside me screams, Grab the passport and make a run for it. But I know that would be like committing suicide.
I shift my eyes back on him.
“I’m not sure why I did it, Detective,” I confess. “It’s the truth. I panicked. I was afraid you might think I’ve been faking it all along.”
“Your strategy has had the opposite effect. Indeed it makes me believe that perhaps you have been faking it. Taken together with the argument you had with Grace the afternoon before she disappeared, plus your severe post-traumatic stress disorder and your prolonged exposure to combat, we have reason to believe that the proper course of action is to detain you under police custody for the time being.”
I shoot up from my chair.
“A man in a long brown overcoat took Grace. He’s been calling my apartment. He’s been tracking us all week long. It’s quite possible he left a card with the image of Santa Lucia on it on my floor while I was asleep. I saw him inside the church this morning. He’s following me, Detective. He’s baiting me. Playing with me.”
I’m shouting, without trying to shout.
The detective turns, stares me down.
“Allow me to better explain, Captain,” he says, coming back to his desk, sitting down on the edge of it, one foot planted firmly on the floor, and the other hanging off the edge. “You are not being arrested…yet. But you are under suspicion in the disappearance of your fiancée.”
“You have no right.”
“Please sit, Captain, and calm down. It’s not as bad as it may seem.”
“How much worse could it get?”
“When I say you are under suspicion, it simply means you have not been eliminated as a suspect. You have no alibi and you’ve already been caught fabricating your blindness. Taken together with the heated argument you had with Grace only hours prior to her disappearance, we find we simply cannot rule you out as a suspect.”
“My blindness is real and it’s temporary. My US military record reflects the truth.”
“Indeed it does. But that does not take away from the charade you carried on this morning.”
“I’m trying to protect Grace from any further harm.”
“You are only managing to cause her further harm by interrupting my investigation into her disappearance.” Holding out his hand. “Now if you don’t mind, your passport, please.”
“I want to speak with Mr. Graham at the embassy.”
“He’s been alerted and he’s aware of our decision. He can’t help you, Captain.”
“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we, Detective?”
“You’re free to contact him at your convenience.” Gesturing over his shoulder towards his desktop. “By all means, use my phone.”
I decide not to give him the satisfaction. Reaching into the interior pocket of my leather coat, I retrieve my passport, hand it over to him. What the hell choice do I have?
“As usual, Captain, I am happy to provide you with a lift back to your apartment.”
I stand.
“No grazie, Detective. I’d rather walk. For now, I can see.”
I go for the door.
“But what if you should go blind in the meantime?” he asks, some sarcasm sprinkled in his tone. “I would feel terrible unleashing you onto Venice without the benefit of your eyes. As you are already sorely aware, this city can be a confusing place even with perfect vision.”
In my mind, I’m picturing the overcoat man leaving a picture of Santa Lucia on my apartment floor while I’m asleep on the couch. Maybe he was the one who arranged the plates, bowls, knives, forks and boxes to resemble the water city of Venice. Maybe he somehow baited me up onto the roof of my building on the early morning before he was to kidnap Grace. Maybes. Possibilities. Or perhaps, just wild assumptions on my part.
“Nor is it without its dangers,” I say.
“Never a truer word has been spoken, Captain. We’ll be in touch.”
“Find my Grace, Detective.”
“It will be our distinct pleasure. Believe me.”
I leave his office, praying that my eyesight stays with me long enough to make it back home.
Chapter 40
TURNS OUT I BARELY make it back before the lights start going out on my brain. I’m seeing only through a blur of distorted shapes and lights by the time I make the stairs back up to my apartment. Unlocking the door, I step inside, feel my way to the harvest table, then feel my way to the couch and sit down.
I barely feel the blow to the back of my head before I’m face down on the floor.
Unconscious.
Chapter 41
THE ELDERS GET UP from off their knees now that the prayers for t
he dead are over.
As they begin to approach us, my men instinctively pull back the bolts on their weapons. Lock and load.
The elders have piercing blue eyes that look like precious stones trapped inside chiseled granite busts. The women remain down on their knees wailing at the site of their loved ones, but the men seem not to notice. Their expressions are not angry but certainly not happy either. They are simply matter of fact as they approach me, not the least bit affected by the weapons being pointed at them.
With one eye focused on the elders and the other on the boy lying impossibly still on the gravelly earth, I feel the tension building in my men.
“Captain,” one of my corporals speaks up. “You wanna explain this situation to us?”
“SNAFU,” I say.
“Got that right,” says the corporal. “Situation Normal...All Fucked Up.”
He shoulders his weapon, plants a bead.
“Not yet,” I say.
Chapter 42
WHEN I WAKE I am lying on the bed, face up.
It’s dark out, the time on my watch barely five o’clock in the morning. An hour before the dawn. I’ve been asleep for more than ten hours. As usual when I wake up these days, I can see. Perfectly. Clearly. Without the need for eyeglasses, which I have never needed. Not even for reading, even after turning forty.
I reach around to the back of my head and feel for a lump, or an abrasion, or a cut. Something to indicate that I was hit over the head when I came back home by someone who’d been waiting for me. The overcoat man maybe. No, scratch that. For certain, the overcoat man.
I feel the back of my head.
There’s a lump that rises from out of the back of my lower head above the spine. It’s a bruise and tender to the touch. I pull back my fingers and examine them for blood. There’s no blood, but someone definitely hit me with something. A sap maybe.
My head throbs.
Whoever hit me was waiting for me inside my apartment.
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