by Joseph Grady
A ten-yard long outdoor covered area led from the triangular roof access door, through a gamut of lounge chairs, patio furniture, and potted plants, towards what appeared to be a completely undecorated one story structure, built right on top of Palazzo Mortimer. In the previous two weeks, Brian, Lucy, and Andrew – Andrew was an architecture student – had volunteered to build the wooden roof over the patio furniture so that they could walk from their front door to the roof access point without getting wet in the rain.
“This is the old servants’ quarters,” said Lucy, “where we live.”
“And you pay rent to the princess for this space?”
“No.”
“It’s free?”
“Kind of.”
“So you work for her, then?”
“We volunteer for two hours a day.”
“I see.”
And that was the end of his line of questioning about their irregular housing situation. With just a few words, Lucy had implicitly become a tax evasion informant, and Speziale tacitly acknowledged to her that such matters were outside of the scope of his investigation.
For those unfamiliar with the rule of law in Italy, here is a brief explanation of the meaning behind this exchange: sometime in the mid 2000’s, someone forgot to bribe the property tax inspector, who thereupon noted, for the first time, that there was a ten bedroom building that had never been included before in his assessment. Given the awkward location on the roof, the space was unusable as a retirement home residency, but changing the zoning to normal residential would have been a tax nightmare. So they decided to make it available as free housing to poor grad students, which, with enough bureaucratic red tape involved, could eventually provide a backhanded tax loophole, the legitimacy of which was entirely questionable, depending on whether or not any possible auditor was well compensated.
Having the students work as employees would have been a payroll nightmare. What’s more, if the students had an income, they would no longer be poor, thus rendering their tax loophole null. So the students were asked to volunteer for two hours each day, chatting with the residents. This, in turn, became a huge unexpected benefit for the retirement and nursing home community, as resident morale went way up. Italians – and I guess all people, really, but especially Italians – need someone to talk to in order to feel normal. Some residents, who would usually only get monthly visits, at best, now had constant company. It turned out to be a huge benefit for the students too. There was always more than enough food at all the meals, and as long as you sat next to a resident at lunch or dinner, it counted as part of your volunteer hours. Free food.
Out on the terrace, Luca’s phone buzzed, and he looked at a text message. “Thank you, Lucy, for your explanation. I have need to return downstairs.”
They shook hands, and Luca departed.
Once the ranking officer disappeared from sight down the roof access door, the other cop became a tourist, pulling out his phone and snapping pictures. He stepped to the railing to admire the view – one of the best from the whole Janiculum hill. You had St. Peter’s Square and basilica to your left, and all of the center of Rome directly below your feet in front of you. As of 2015, standard Italian police were not yet equipped with selfie sticks, so Lucy was required to snap photos of him smiling in front of the Roman skyline.
“Ma che figata ’sto posto dove abitate, no?” he said with a big grin on his face.23
“Sì, sì, è proprio bello.”24
He pointed out and identified all of the monuments and hills of Rome from their bird’s eye angle: the pantheon, the coliseum, the Altare della patria, the Vatican, Santa Sabina, and in the distance you could just make out the roofs of St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major.
Eventually the officer got back to work, “Allora, i documenti.”25
She used the same key that was still in her hands to open the door to the old servants’ quarters: one long hallway, white tiles, white walls, bright white fluorescent lighting, and ten white doors. Nonetheless, it was home. From the end of the hallway a portrait of the old prince from the seventies – and in his seventies – smiled down at them with a flock of seagulls haircut and a baby blue leisure suit.
Lucy’s door was the third on the left and was closed, the door across from it, though, for the first time in a year, stood open. All the furniture from that room was scattered in the hallway. As they came inside, a strong stench of bleach became more and more overwhelming, culminating at a point in the room across from Lucy’s.
Inside her own room, she opened the curtains, which had been drawn shut, casting orange light on the whole interior of the room. His polished shoes and ironed pants strolled in uninvited, and Lucy could feel the officer’s condescending gaze on the back of her neck. How old are you? Didn’t you ever learn to clean up after yourself? The room was arranged with inordinate piles of things and furniture surrounding a red Moroccan rug.
And of course, just when she needed it, Lucy could not find her wallet. She dug through everything she owned, and the officer eventually gave her some space by looking only at the walls and what was on them: Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Caravaggio’s Judith beheading Holofernes, Vermeer’s Girl with Pearl Earring. One wall was covered in photos of famous Italians eating spaghetti, and another with a massive print of the Denver skyline. A small portrait of the prince reigned from above the sink and mirror.
Her wallet was not in her jacket, which was crumpled up on her unmade orange bed sheets. Nor was it in her school bag, left on the antique leather footstool. It was not on the desk, which had always served more as a place to pile things than as a desk, nor was it near the 19th century stained glass lamp, nor was it anywhere in the antique wardrobe with inlaid Chinese soldiers. It was not in the small Christmas tree — left out since the previous December — nor was it anywhere in her laundry basket
The officer heard movement in the room across the hallway, and abandoned Lucy to examine all her dirty clothes without an audience. In frustration, she gave up, stood in the middle of the room, and covered her eyes. Come on, Lucy, think! Think! What was I doing before I went running? Bits and pieces of conversation distracted her from the hallway, so she covered her ears as well. You were wanting to take a nap, but couldn’t fall asleep, so then you started reading and then… that’s right! She went straight over to one of the large piles of books surrounding her orange Ikea easy chair, picked up García Márquez’s Cent’anni di solitudine, and removed the objects she had been using as a bookmark – a U.S. Passport and an Italian visa card.
Her triumphant exit from her bedroom interrupted an exchange between the cop and a gorgeous blond haired blue-eyed girl that had been going nowhere. Rome is not particularly cold in October, but the girl was wearing a turtleneck, jeans, leather boots, and a down vest. She held herself in such a way that said: I have spectacular posture, I’m a much better person than you, and I’m very cold right now.
Lucy didn’t like her.
“Ciao… um… I’m sorry, I don’t speak Italian yet. Are you the person who lives across the hall from my room here?” the blonde girl asked Lucy. She had an English accent, or rather, her accent sounded mostly like an English accent, but some of the vowels came out slightly different, and a few of the r’s were almost rolled.
Lucy nodded.
“Oh, thank God. They said you might be American, but you speak Italian. Do you speak Italian too?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. I definitely haven’t understood anything that this officer is trying to explain. God, my Italian is downright dreadful. It sounded like he said there’s been a murder just downstairs. But that can’t be right.”
“No, that’s right. Somebody was just killed an hour ago in the lobby.”
“Holy shit,” she whispered. Her eyebrows went up, and she shuffled back aimlessly, knocking into a mop and bucket that she had left on the threshold of her bedroom.
“Signorine,” said the cop, “Vi dà fastidio se vi interrompo un attim
o?”26
“Oh, sì, sì, ci scusi, signore,” responded Lucy.27
“Oh, thank God, you really do speak Italian,” said the new girl.28
The officer turned to Lucy and said, “La dica, per favore, che voglio suo nome, cognome e documenti?”29
“He wants your first name, last name and I.D.,” translated Lucy.
“First name, Natálya Nikoláevna,” said the girl, “last name, Abramova.” She produced a Russian passport and an Italian visa card.
Lucy translated the same line of questions that she had received outside on the sidewalk. Natálya hadn’t heard or seen anything. The officer thumbed through the Russian passport and halfheartedly attempted to copy some of the Cyrillic script to his notes, but gave up halfway through the word Natálya and scratched it out.
He then turned and took the U.S. Passport from Lucy – who was feeling indignant at the pretty girl for having cut her in line.
“Ah, bello,” said the officer, “tu sei di Colorado? Mio fratello una volta è andato lì a vedere il Grand Canyon! Bello, no?”30
“Non lo so. Io non son mai andata.”31
“Caspita. Io c’ho una zia che abita a San Francisco. Una volta mi piacerebbe un sacco andare a trovarla. Forse andrei anche a Denver, non lo so. È Bello? Denver è attacata a California, no? Cosa? Cento chilomentri da San Francisco, no?”32
“Più o meno.”33
“Va be’,” said the cop with a note of finality in his voice, seeing that Lucy was not interested in chitchat, “Vi Saluto. Se sentite qualcosa, vi mettete subito in comunicazione con la polizia.”34
“Certo.”35
“E vi raccomando. Rimanete qui sopra e non scendete per almeno un paio di ore.”36
“Ok.”37
He turned on his heels and walked straight down the hallway. Lucy stood rooted on the spot, digging her fingernails into her palms, until the cop left the servants’ quarters. She stared at the closed door, sensing her whole body slowly deflate. But as the rest of her relaxed, her shorts felt heavy. The weight of the dead man’s keys in her running shorts hung heavy on her waist. Without saying a word to the new girl, she returned to her room, locked the door, hid the keys, and melted into her easy chair.
CHAPTER FOUR
L'INCULTURAZIONE FALLITA DEL CAFFÈ
Lucy finally crawled out of her room the next day at eleven in a bathrobe and sandals and crept down the hall towards the dorm room style bathroom, the first door on the left when entering the servants’ quarters. She stopped at the door and closed her eyes, greeted again by the strong stench of bleach. The floor and shower tiles were sparkling clean — smug and happy, having recently been granted parole after a twenty year sentence of soap scum. After dressing, she went to the kitchenette – the last room on the right, next to the smiling prince – and wondered why the light had been left on. She hit the switch, and the lights turned on. Wait. No. The lights had not been on at all. The kitchen tiles were just a shade brighter than she’d ever seen them before.
Her daily allotted two stale cups stared back at her, lurking at the bottom of the American coffee machine. The green warning light had already switched itself off three hours ago. It was cold, and tasted like burning. She swallowed, cringed, set her cup down on the counter and frowned at it. To make a new pot or suffer though this cup? Yesterday’s events came to mind. Well – shit – I deserve it.
“Oh! Caught red handed!”
Lucy jumped and almost dropped the coffee pot as the last of the old batch circled the drain. Brian, of all people, was there to see her wasting precious community coffee.
“Hey,” he said, throwing his backpack on the table and maneuvering his large mid section into the space between the wall bench and the kitchen table, “just so we can keep an accurate budget, could you let me know whether or not you’re going to waste half a pot of coffee every time you sleep in and skip class, or is this just a one time thing?”
“Brian, I’m having a bad day. Now is not the time.”
“Well, I mean, just for budget purposes, could you give me a ballpark figure of how often you’re going to have a bad day this year?”
Lucy didn’t answer. Brian’s watchful foreman eyes supervised her every movement: one filter, the water filled to the very top of the pot, five level scoops – not an ounce more – of the absolute cheapest coffee available in Italy.
“Well,” Lucy hit the ‘brew’ button, turned around, and leaned against the counter, “did you have a good day at school, dear? Were the other kids nice to you?” In Italy, university doesn’t start until the first week of October.
“Yeah, it was alright, I guess. It’s good to be back at Mamma Greg. We had two hours of this new Polish professor who teaches Johannine literature. The poor guy can barely speak Italian. I kid you not, he just read to us for two straight hours from his book. It was brutal. But it’ll be nice having two hours free on Tuesday mornings. But then, at least, we had a great hour of anthropology with this feisty little Italian woman, Professoressa Verace or Tenaccia or something like that. Oh, and Scott says hi.”
Lucy blushed and turned around to watch the coffee drip. “So you saw him at class? They’re all back now?”
“Oh yeah, the NAC guys have been back for a few weeks now.”
“A few weeks! And that ass hasn’t come to see me, yet?”
“Those guys have been pretty busy with conferences or something. I’m sure he’ll come visit now that real classes have started and he doesn’t have to work.” Brian put his elbows on the table and rubbed his eyes. “Maybe I will want some of that coffee you’re making. Oh, and yes, the other kids were nice to me.”
“I don’t know, Brian. It looks like you already drank two cups this morning. I don’t think it’s in the budget.”
“Hey!” Brian sat up and yelled – half pointing at himself, half thumping his chest – “I’m the coffee Tsar here! I will make the decisions.”
“Well, I’ve got some bad news for you about the coffee Tsar thing,” said Lucy.
“What’s that?”
“We’ve got a real Russian in the servants’ quarters now. No more Tsar jokes.”
“Russian? The new girl? She told me she’s South African.”
“Really?” said Lucy. “That would explain why she spoke English. But I saw her Russian passport when the police came up here.”
“We’ll find out soon enough, I guess,” said Brian. He changed his tone of voice, leaned in towards the center of the table and asked, “So, do you want to talk about why you were freaking out yesterday?”
Lucy looked at the door, back at Brian, and back at the door. She pulled out the chair straight across from Brian and sat down, leaning in towards him, “Do you remember the guy I was telling you about? The guy in the park?”
“Yeah, the creeper who gave you the keys?”
“Yeah, him,” she gulped and continued, leaning further into the table with an even quieter voice, “He’s the guy who got killed here yesterday.”
Brian rubbed his forehead and remained quiet. Lucy’s breath had quickened, and Brian tried to put it all together at once. “But how on earth would you know that? They haven’t released a name yet, have they? And you told me you don’t know who that guy was, right? And he was in the park, what would he be doing at the Palazzo?”
“The track pants and the shoes sticking out from under the tarp, they were the same. Why do you think I was freaking out?”
“I don’t know. You saw a dead body. Some people freak out at that kind of stuff. But come on. Shoes and track pants are pretty common. We can’t know it’s the same guy.”
“The exact same shoes, and the exact same pants on the guy who said he was from Palazzo Mortimer? It’s the same guy.”
“But what about the keys?”
“I put ’em in the storage room.”
“Really? The cops didn’t want ’em?”
Lucy leaned back in her chair and didn’t answer.
“Are you kidding me? You didn’
t tell the cops?”
“What do you think I was talking about when I kept saying, ‘This is not my problem’? This is not my problem!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Look, if some totally random person gives you keys and then shows up dead on your front porch, that is not your fault. What do you do? You let the cops cart off the body, and get on with your life. Or… like… I don’t know… If you open your front door, and there’s a flaming bag of shit there, what do you do? Put it out with your boots? Hell no! You close the door, go to bed, and let that sucker burn.”
Brian paused to contemplate that final image. “Yeah, but no matter what, you’ve still got shit on your doorstep. Sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with it.”
Lucy shrugged her shoulders. Brian shook his head. Both of them straightened up, hearing footsteps approaching towards them from down the hallway. The new blonde girl stood in the door frame.
Lucy was comfortable in jeans, a polo – collar popped, of course – moccasins, and her leather headband. Brian was in khakis and a button up, and looked less than comfortable, still sweating from having walked up the Janiculum. (That is, he’s not always dressed as a clown. Whenever he would be getting ready for a job, Lucy would make fun of him because, despite his short hair and receding hairline, he still put on a rubber bald cap.) The new girl, though – wearing tight jeans, leather boots, a jacket, a light scarf and a headband – looked cold and pale, but with rosy cheeks. She kept her hands tucked into her jacket sleeves.
The gurgling sound that the coffee machine makes when finishing a pot finally interrupted the short tense pause created by the new girls’ interruption of a serious conversation. The blonde sensed something was odd, but plowed ahead anyways, with the nicest tone possible. “Oh, you’re making coffee? I’d absolutely love a cup if you’re making a full pot.”
“Oh yeah, definitely,” said Brian. “It’s Natasha, right?”