The Disappearance of Grace

by Vincent Zandri

  His. Feet.

  Feet that no longer resemble human feet, but more like something belonging to a crushed insect. The feet steal my breath away and within a matter of days, will steal my vision away along with it.

  I exhale and say, “Like I’ve already said, I ordered an airstrike on a village. A Tajik village. A Taliban holdout. I ordered an airstrike and it killed people.”

  “People die in war, Captain. What made this different from any other airstrike?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”

  “But if the bombing stole your eyesight, perhaps you should talk about it.”

  I shake my head.

  “I am not at liberty to discuss military affairs with the press. And you are not my shrink.”

  “Captain, your wife is missing. It’s possible you are being monitored by Interpol war crimes division. The police seem to be uncooperative and you are all alone to find out the truth in a foreign country with eyes that are no longer reliable. I wish you would speak to me.”

  I close my eyes and lie down on the bed.

  “Please just let me rest for a moment,” I say suddenly feeling a wash of exhaustion rinse over me, from head to toe. “It’s possible my sight will return if only I can sleep for a few minutes.”

  Soon I feel a blanket being draped over me.

  I hear the words, “Rest, Captain. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  I want to tell her thank you. But before I can get the words out, I am already drifting off to sleep.

  * * *

  In the dream I’m riding in the back of a personnel carrier. Other than the soldier at the wheel, I’m alone. We’re moving over rocky ground inside the valley between the hills. Easy targets for the bands of Taliban that hide inside the rocky outcroppings like hornets in their nests.

  Raining down on us are bullets.7.62 mm rounds pinging off the metal sides of this bullet magnet. Mounted on a swivel post directly above me is the 50 cal. machine gun. I should be manning that gun, returning the fire, holding back the hornets. But I don’t want to stick my head out of that hole. I know that if I reveal my head, I’ll lose it. My brains will cover this carrier like blackberry jam on toast.

  Soon the dream shifts and it’s nighttime…

  We’re climbing a hill until we stop at a gate that’s guarded by a cow. I place my hand on the shoulder of the driver, ask him why he’s stopping. When he turns to me, I see that he is not a part of my company. He is the man I saw in Piazza San Marco only moments prior to Grace’s disappearance. The man with the dark complexion, and the closely cropped beard. He’s wearing sunglasses that mask his eyes.

  He does not answer my question about stopping. Instead, he looks into my face and whispers, “I See…I See…I See…”

  “What do you see?” I beg of him.

  That’s when he removes his sunglasses to reveal two gouged out eye sockets that are as black as tar pits and just as deep.

  I back away and find myself suddenly on the ground.

  Coming from behind me, the sound of a jet fighter. It’s racing towards me from out of the near distance, its thunderous roar reverberating against the mountains like God’s wrath. The headlights from the carrier shine on the stone village before me. They shine on the cow that is still roped to the gate even though it’s been shot dead by one of my men, its wounds plagued by white frothy puss and swarms of flies.

  The lights shine on something else too.

  Two people running towards me from the direction of the village.

  A big person and a little person.

  The closer they come I can see that it’s the little boy whom I met inside the village only the day before he died. The second, bigger person is my Grace. They are running towards me, their arms wide open as if expecting me to take them in my own arms. Embrace them. Save them.

  But that fighter plane is closing in. Fast.

  The fighter plane is overhead. It’s a Warthog and it’s diving.

  “Go back!” I scream. “Get down!”

  But my voice is entirely drowned out by the scream of the nosedive and the release of two rockets that slam against the earth and explode in a fireball of hell and destruction at the feet of the little boy l. At the feet of my fiancée…

  Chapter 57

  WHEN I WAKE UP I am shivering. I open my eyes, and although I am not entirely blinded, my vision is blurry at best. I am breathing. Hard. My heart pounds inside my chest, my pulse throbs against my temples. There is a dull pain behind my eyeballs as if someone were somehow pressing their thumbs against them, only from the inside out.

  It takes me a moment to realize that the journalist is holding my hand, tightly.

  “You were having a terrible nightmare,” she says from where she sits beside me on the couch. “You screamed ‘Get down’ and ‘Go back.’”

  Pulling my hand away from hers, I yank off the blanket and sit up, my head aching from the war I just waged inside my brain. My head, ringing like a bell. My brow moist with sweat.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Thirty minutes,” she reveals. “Perhaps a few minutes more.”

  I try and rub the life back into my face with my ice cold palms. Try and rub some sight back into my eyes. Try to rub out the soreness. But the world around me is still blurry and nondescript. I know my sight is returning again. But I have no idea how long the process can take. A few more seconds. Or hours. It’s entirely up to God. Or is it?

  “Tell me, Captain,” Betti presses. “What happened in Afghanistan after you bombed the village?”

  I turn to her, try to look into her eyes.

  “Not now,” I say.

  She exhales.

  “I understand. But you must tell me when you can. If you can.”

  “Why? What does any of it have to do with Grace’s disappearance?”

  “It could have nothing to do with her but then, it could have everything. You just have to trust me. My instincts.”

  “I promise you, I’ll try. But not now.”

  I get up, fumble for my cell phone. I find it, but I still can’t read it.

  “Do you know if anyone has called?”

  “It’s been silent,” she reveals, her tone apologetic.

  “What time is it?”

  “A little past noon.”

  “Are you busy right now?”

  “Do I look it?”

  “I’d like you to accompany me to San Marco,” I say. “You will be my seeing-eye dog for a while. Together, we’ll find out one important truth.”

  “What truth, Captain?”

  “If, Giovanni, the man who has been helping me, is in fact my enemy.”

  Chapter 58

  ALESSANDRA WRAPS HER RIGHT arm around my left arm, as if we were lovers contemplatively strolling along the banks of the Grand Canal instead of a half-blind soldier with a big post-traumatic stress problem and a curious journalist trying to negotiate the two flights of marble stairs to the bottom without tripping. We exit the front door of the building, proceed past the empty bookshop window, and make our way past the feeder canal towards the Grand Canal where we take the No. 1 boat along the busy, winding canal to San Marco.

  Alessandra’s arm still wrapped around mine, we make our way through the crowd to the café. Past the tour groups and the tour guides waving bright flags high above their heads so no one gets disconnected or, worse, lost. Past the flocks of pigeons and past the brass band that strikes up a dramatic song that bounces off the stone floor and stone walls of the square and the cathedral.

  By the time we come to the café situated along the basin, most of my eyesight has returned. Raising my head to a vanilla sky of clear blue accented with fluffy white marshmallow clouds, I then lower my eyes to gaze upon the table where I last laid blind eyes upon my Grace. The table is now occupied with a family. Mom, dad, and two teenagers on vacation. But to me the table still screams of emptiness. It’s all I can do to hold back tears. But I’m not sure if I’d be crying for myself or for Gra
ce.

  “Let’s go inside,” suggests Alessandra.

  “I wish we didn’t have to,” I say, and together we head for the doors.

  “But before we go in,” I say, just outside the glass and wood doors. “I want to see what the man from Interpol looks like.”

  “Your eyes have recovered fully?” she asks, her black hair blowing off her shoulders in the slight breeze coming off the basin.

  “They have,” I tell her.

  For the first time since we left my apartment, she releases my arm. She reaches into her bag and produces the folded sheet of standard copy stock. Unfolding it, she hands it to me.

  I go to look. But something stops me. I want to look at the face of this man. But I don’t want to look either. If it’s Giovanni, then I know for certain that Grace and I have become mixed up in something we cannot entirely comprehend. Something to do with the war and, like Alessandra has suggested, maybe even the events that took place in that hilltop village in Tajik country. But if the man is not Giovanni, it doesn’t change the fact that Grace is missing and that the police don’t seem to be aiding me in her recovery.

  I look at the face of the man. Look at his face. For almost a full minute.

  “Is it him?” Alessandra begs.

  My stomach muscles constrict painfully. My mouth goes dry.

  The man in the photo has brown eyes and thick black hair. He is clean shaven, his face round and smooth and pleasantly inviting. Lips not too thick, not too thin, his thick brows protecting his eyes with an expression of permanent curiosity and even kindness.

  “Yes,” I swallow. “I believe it is.”

  I hand her back the paper and open the door to the café as if reentering a war zone.

  Chapter 59

  THE CAFE INTERIOR IS as busy as the exterior. Waiters of all shapes and sizes dressed in black and wearing long white aprons dart around the tables like hungry starlings around a couple dozen nests. We stand in the doorway, my now-seeing eyes searching the gold trimmed and gilded mirrored interior for Giovanni. But he doesn’t seem to be working right at this moment.

  “Do you see him?” Alessandra poses.

  “Not yet,” I say. “He could be in the back office. He took me back there on two separate occasions.”

  “You’re sure the man in the photo is the man who works here?”

  “I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” I explain. “Much of the time I am blind. But I think it’s him.”

  Soon a waiter greets us at the door. He’s an older man sporting a thick mustache and a large gut that makes his apron bulge out and away from his legs like a tent. Since he speaks no English, Alessandra becomes my translator. He speaks something and the reporter translates.

  “If we wish to be seated,” Alessandra translates. “There is a wait of one half hour.”

  I peer at the waiter, his face deadpan and tired.

  “We don’t want to sit,” I say, waiting for Alessandra’s translation. “We’re looking for someone who works here.”

  She tells the waiter what I said, he responds with a question.

  “He wants to know who you are.”

  “My wife was abducted from this place just a few days ago. I’m her husband.”

  She translates. Afterwards, the waiter’s eyes peer into my own. Unblinking.

  “How can I help you?” asks the waiter via the reporter.

  “A man who works here helped me out. His name is Giovanni. I would like to speak with him.”

  The heavyset waiter starts shaking his head. He speaks.

  “He is very sorry,” says Alessandra. “But he has no Giovanni in his employ at the moment. Are you sure you weren’t mistaking him for someone else?”

  “He must work here,” I say. “He was waiting on some tables here just the other night when I came back here. He found a ring that belonged to my fiancée, and he took me into the back room.” Raising up my right arm, I point to a door located all the way in the back of the café. I’ve never actually laid seeing eyes upon the door before, but I’m sure that must be it.

  Alessandra reaches back into her bag, produces the paper. She unfolds it and shows the waiter the image of the man printed upon it. She shows it to the waiter and speaks something in Italian.

  “I told him that this is the man we are looking for,” she says to me, waving the photo. “I told him he claims to be employed here.”

  The waiter continues to shake his head and speaks again.

  She turns to me.

  “He says he is the owner of this café and he can assure us that the man in the photograph does not work for him. Nor has he ever worked for him.”

  The café owner turns, makes a sweeping gesture with his thick left arm, and says something else.

  Alessandra nods and then shakes her head, disbelievingly.

  “He says to take a look around, Nick. All the waiters he employs are currently on the floor. All of them. And something else too. He claims that there is no back office attached to this establishment. That the back door simply leads to an alley where they keep the trash receptacle.”

  My throat goes dry. I try to swallow. But I can’t seem to work up the moisture. I step away from Alessandra and the café owner, make my way quickly across the floor, past the tables to the back door. With all eyes on me, I open the door onto a dark alley. Set on the narrow cobblestoned alleyway is a blue dumpster. It smells of rotting food. I feel lightheaded and a bit dizzy. Before I close the door, a brown rat pokes its head out from under the plastic dumpster cover. The rat jumps down to the cobbles, and scurries away. I close the door and head back across the floor to the front of the café.

  “The owner says he is sorry about your fiancée, Nick,” offers Alessandra. “But if there is nothing else, he must get back to work.”

  I take one more look at that back door. I recall being led into a room where I was seated and given several shots of sherry.

  Alessandra and I turn and leave the café.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, as soon as we’re through the door. “Is it possible you have the wrong café?”

  I take a step back and take in the long building, and all the doors and windows that belong to it.

  “I suppose it’s very possible I was led through another doorway instead of this one,” I say. “I was blind, after all.”

  She nods because it’s the only valid explanation. Unless, that is, I’m entirely crazy and delusional.

  “Nick,” Alessandra says, taking hold of my forearm. “Are you okay?”

  My eyes lock once more on the table where I last saw and spoke with my fiancée. Where a strange man in an overcoat approached us and possibly…quite possibly…stole my Grace.

  “Let’s go back to the police,” I say.

  “Let’s go now,” Alessandra says, pulling on my arm.

  Chapter 60

  IT TAKES US NEARLY an hour to get to the Venice police station. We walk over cobbles, through narrow alleys, over stone bridges, ride water taxis, all in a desperate search for a truth surrounded by beauty, history and water.

  Always the water.

  Inside the old police building, we are escorted to a waiting area by a uniformed officer and politely offered coffee. Betti and I decline. A few minutes later, Detective Carbone enters into the room. He’s smoking a cigarette and trying to smile while he offers me his hand.

  “I see that you are seeing again,” he says in his warm, if not gentle voice. “You must be delighted.”

  “Positively chipper,” I say. “How are you coming with the investigation into the whereabouts of my wife?”

  He smokes. Listens. Exhales. Blue smoke.

  Switching his gaze from me to Alessandra, he says. “And we have not had the pleasure of meeting.”

  She holds out her hand. Tells him her name. Her occupation. Who she works for.

  He smokes.

  “I read your small report on the web,” he says. “I understand you spoke with one of my officers on the phone.”


  “They did not tell me much, Detective,” Alessandra points out. “Only that you believe it’s possible Grace left of her own accord.” She looks up at me with her deep brown eyes. “Captain Angel begs to differ.”

  More smoking.

  “Captain Angel,” he says through a haze of secondhand smoke, “we have yet to find the true reason behind your fiancée’s disappearance.”

  “There was a man,” I say. “He has been following us. He went after her in San Marco. He abducted her. She pulled off her engagement ring and left it behind for me to find it.”

  “Where is that ring?” he poses.

  I dig it out of my pocket, hold it up to his face with my index finger and thumb, the square cut diamond shimmering in the overhead light.

  “May I?” he asks, holding out his free hand.

  I set the ring in the palm of his hand.

  “Perhaps I should have this tested for prints.”

  “We already did,” Alessandra interjects.

  Detective Carbone’s face takes on a noticeably red patina behind the salt-and- pepper beard.

  “That might be construed as obstruction,” he whispers loudly.

  “Obstruction of what exactly?” the journalist presses. “Sounds like your investigation is going nowhere.”

  Nodding, the neatly dressed detective smokes the last of his cigarette. When he’s done, he simply drops the spent butt to the tile floor and stamps it out with the tip of his brown leather cordovan.

  “I could demand to withhold this ring,” he says to my face. “Instead, I will leave it up to you, Captain.”

  My return gaze says it all. I open up my right hand and he places the ring back on my palm. I shove the ring into my right pants pocket.