by Joseph Grady
“Absolutely. Don’t you watch the news?”
“Not that much.”
“If it can be suggested that there’s sex involved somehow,” he raised his eyebrows, “this will be a total media frenzy. There will not be an Italian or American who doesn’t know your name. Think of recent Americans getting accused in Perugia. People love this stuff.”
Lucy rested her elbows on the table, no longer noticing the cold. Some last bit of tension in her finally broke, and her right hand, without permission from any other part of her, automatically reached for the pack of Lucky Strikes on the table. Unable to think — completely disconnected from the well rehearsed motions that had once been habitual — she was a mere observer of her own hand as Cristiano placed a flame in front of her face, as her chest filled up deeply, and as sweet smoothing smoke hastened in and out of her throat.
“But nothing is certain yet,” said Cristiano. “Maybe nothing else will happen. Maybe the case will be forgotten by next week. Maybe we’ll forget that we ever had this conversation.”
“Really? Do you think that’s likely?”
“I don’t think it will happen. But anything’s possible. What’s important, for you, Ms. Fox, is to make sure that when your story does get out, it gets out on your terms.”
“Just call me Lucy.” She pulled another hard drag on her cigarette, a cigarette that she was still not smoking actively, but passively. It was happening to her.
“Okay, Lucy.”
“And you want to be the one who breaks the story on my terms?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you think I’m innocent?”
“I don’t care.”
“I care what you think.”
“Listen, I don’t know.”
“Come on, be honest. You said we’re off the record.”
“Alright. Just based on the evidence, it looks pretty bad for you. There’s probably not enough to convict you, but since we’re being honest, I would say it looks like you did it. But, like I said, I don’t care if you did. From the stories I cover, it seems like a good amount of murder victims probably had it coming, anyways. Having met you, I’m willing to believe that the person you killed probably wasn’t entirely innocent, either. Look, Lucy, I don’t know who Eugenio was or what he did to you, but that’s not what I’m interested in talking about.”
“So you want to get to know me, even though you think I’m probably a murderer?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You’ve been in this country long enough to understand how things work. Hell, things work the same in America. I’m not here to help you because I think you’re a charity case, or because I’m just a nice guy. And you can tell that I’m not some uptight puritan — like most of you Americans — and judging from my first impression of you, you don’t seem to be one either. You’ve got a past. I’ve got a past. Va bene. Everybody’s done things that they regret. For the present time, though, I’ve got to carry on and do my work, and you’ve got to get along with your life. Unfortunately for you, my present work involves talking about other peoples’ past. And in order for me to do that work in the present, I’ve got to make friends with people who have a much more colorful past. People in your situation. And I make friends with them by helping them, by allowing them to talk about their past with someone who will give them a fair hearing. Let’s not pretend that journalism isn’t a business.”
“And what do I get out of it if we do work together?”
“A professional newspaper that’s going to treat you with respect. Go talk to the tabloids. See what happens.”
“That’s not enough. I want time.”
“Honey, you don’t have time. The best thing that you’ve got going for you at this point is the fact that you’re having this conversation with me, instead of some cheap tabloid writer.”
“I could offer you more.”
“You don’t have what I want. I don’t take money. In my line of work I can see where bribery ends.” He looked over at his photographers, and back at Lucy. “And don’t get me wrong, you’re quite pretty, but I’m already a very satisfied man.”
“God, that’s not what I meant.” She took a final long pull on the end of her cigarette, reached for another, and lit it off the cherry of the first. “I’d agree to an interview — a long extended interview. A book deal, even, if this story is really as fascinating as you claim it is. And right now I could give you some documents.” She threw one of the packets of paper from Dr. Mikulaštik on the table. Cristiano reached over to pick it up, but Lucy put her hands on top of it. “You’ll find a few interesting things in this envelope. I’m sorry to let you down, but you’ll find proof of my innocence and a watertight alibi. But you’ll also find a great story about police incompetence and brutality, if you’re interested. There’s a recording and a two-hundred page transcript of my interrogation with the police last night.
“I’m interested.”
“You say the best thing going for me right now is the fact that I’m talking to you. If you’re serious about my story being such great material, it sounds like just the opposite: the best thing going for you right now is the fact that you’re talking to me.”
Cristiano smiled in admiration, and leaned back to consider. He lit another cigarette. “You say you just want time?”
“As much time as you can get me, yes. And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know Detective Luca Speziale?”
“I cover homicides in Rome. Do I know Luca Speziale? We see each other on a weekly basis.”
“There’s more than enough information in that recording to prove his incompetence and brutality. Get him fired.”
“If that’s true, this is Christmas come early. I would love to see that man fired.”
“Can you do it without breaking the story?”
“The department owes me a long list of favors already. It would be my pleasure to call one in. It would be a very simple call to the station chief, letting him know that I have the transcript, but that I would prefer not to release it on the condition of Luca’s quiet disappearance from the force. If you want, we can have him boxing up his office by this afternoon. Of course, you have to promise not to release the transcript to anyone else but La Repubblica, nor speak with any other journalist before me.”
“It’s a deal then.”
“Oh, and one more thing.” Cristiano waved his hand at her outfit. “We are going to need to get some decent photos of you for when the story eventually breaks.”
“Fine.”
They stood up and shook hands. Cristiano got in his black Fiat500 and drove off. The photographers, meanwhile, took Lucy up to her room. As they walked through the front gate, Gambetti was unlocking the main door. For the first time ever, he was completely speechless. Once upstairs, the models dressed her, washed and brushed her hair, covered her in makeup, and told her she didn’t know how to walk. She was forced to spend the next hour strutting around the neighborhood in high heels, pretending to do ordinary things — drinking espresso, buying a newspaper, trying on shoes — while the three sirens took candid paparazzi photos of her from afar.
When they were finished, she bought a pack of cigarettes and slugged her way back up to her room, exhausted. Opening the door to the servants’ quarters, the portrait of the old prince greeted her with his ever-present smile. A different pain hit her stomach. This would be her last full day living at the Palazzo. She tried to smile back at him, but her eyes just watered up.
She removed piles and piles of things from on top of her luggage, which had sat untouched in my storage room for three years. Back in her room, she surveyed the mess in a whole new light. Having departed America in haste, she had arrived in Rome with just a carry-on and a half full suitcase. It’s amazing the amount of stuff one person can acquire in just a few years, without even purchasing most of it. She didn’t feel like departing Italy carrying any more baggage than what she had brought from America, so thus began the long a
nd agonizing process of choosing what to bring to America and what to leave behind. A post-it note went up on the outside of her door: “Sick with the plague. Go away!”
So of course, a little after twelve, Brian knocked on the door three times. After the third, Lucy yelled, “Go away!” and Brian came on in.
She was seated cross legged on the floor in front of the open suitcase, deciding between a nice cashmere sweater, abandoned by some long gone aristocrat, or her favorite 2010 Austrian calendar mug. Brian closed the door behind him and sat down at her desk chair, surveying the chaos.
“That bad, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s that bad.”
“When do you head out?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“For what it’s worth, I think I’m the only one who knows.”
“Don’t tell them I’m going. I want to go unnoticed.”
“No, I mean I’m the only who knows you were arrested.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, surprisingly enough,” said Brian. “I think I was the only one who saw you getting arrested and put into the cop car, even though you were making all that noise.”
“Not even the staff?”
“It’s possible. I don’t know. But if you think about it, the distance from the elevator to the entrance is almost nothing, and if Gambetti wasn’t in the porter’s office — as he usually isn’t — it’s actually pretty easy to get in and out of here unnoticed. People don’t go to the lobby unless they’re leaving, and there wasn’t a shift change when you got hauled away. Sure, I guess there’ll be security footage, but nobody ever watches that stuff unless they’re actually looking for something. After they drove off with you, I went upstairs and tried to ask all the cops what was going on, and they acted like you didn’t exist. Nobody would say anything to me.”
“There’s security cameras here?”
“We’re in Italy. There’s security cameras everywhere.”
“How ’bout that.”
“Yeah, you lucked out running into me.”
“Why did you call my dad?”
“I don’t know. I guess it just seemed like the thing to do. I’ve never had a friend get arrested.”
“But how did you get ahold of him?”
“I never actually got ahold of him directly. I remember you mentioned his name and where he works, so I called corporate headquarters to see if I could get his contact information. It took forever to get in touch with a real person, though. None of the phone tree options were ‘press seven if an employee’s daughter has just been arrested while abroad.’”
“So you never talked to him?”
“Once I got to a real person who believed my story, I just got sent from secretary to secretary until they finally connected me to your Dad’s staff. Those guys sure as hell move quick. The crazy thing, though, was that it almost seemed like they already had some sort of policy in place for what to do when the CFO’s daughter gets arrested. They already had a list of questions prepared for me. And then, maybe, like just two hours after, I went out for a walk, and I got kidnapped by a black limo stuffed full of Italian lawyers.”
“Two hours. That’s a long time. If I’d been arrested in America, I bet it would have been just half an hour. Maybe fifteen minutes.”
“You never told me your Dad was CFO of Initech.”
“Does it matter?”
“That’s a Fortune500 company.”
“So what?”
“You live in housing for poor grad students.”
“Just ’cause my dad’s rich doesn’t mean I am.”
“Well… no… I’m not saying… whatever… it’s fine. I’m happy you’re here. Just. Nevermind. But why did you tell me last year that he’s just a ‘middle management grunt’ at Initech?”
“Because he’s right in the middle between the stockholders and the rest of the company.”
“Lucy, that’s not what middle management means.”
“I know. Whatever. Brian, I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
“Do you want to talk about why the cops think it was you?”
“You know it wasn’t me, Brian.”
“I know.”
“Here. You’ve got some reading.” She passed him his packet of information from the lawyers. “I’ll just call you sometime next week from America and explain everything else, okay?”
“So you’re definitely going back to America, then?”
“Yep.”
“Damn, that sucks.”
“I know. Well, no, I mean. It should be great to get out of friggen’ Italy for a while, and back into a normal country. It just really sucks to…” she stopped, unable to put her finger on it. She looked at Brian, and back at her bags, and fought to speak over the lump that had just showed up uninvited in the back of her throat. “It just really sucks to… I don’t know… you know… it sucks to — ”
Brian stood up chuckling. “Good God, you better not start getting all sentimental on me your last day here. I’d think a lot less of you for it.” He moved to the door. “Anyways, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know what you want to do your last night in Rome.”
She kept her door locked that night, and didn’t respond when Brian knocked. At a little past two in the morning, she came to the storage room and woke me up.
I looked up from the floor. “Can’t sleep?”
She shook her head.
“Lucy, you haven’t slept in two days, have you?”
Another head shake.
I followed her back to her room, and lay on the red rug on the floor. She curled up next to me, using my arm as a pillow. Half an hour later her breathing deepened, and she finally got some rest.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PICCHIATO IN FACCIA
She rolled over in bed. Sunlight was already peaking through the orange curtains. Sunlight? What the… what time was it? She reached over for the alarm clock and swore at the two hours that had already gone by from when she had planned on leaving the Palazzo. With her heart pounding, she jumped out of bed, and got ready as quickly as possible. She’d be cutting it close at the airport in Switzerland. She wheeled her suitcase into the hallway, careful to keep her back towards the smiling portrait of the old prince — there would be no tears on the way out.
But the sound of frying, the greasy smell of Mexican breakfast, and one familiar booming voice all hit her from behind, coming from the kitchen. She hadn’t heard that voice since it had left Rome for summer break at the end of June, and she’d spent the better part of July and even August imagining and idealizing the person attached to that voice, again and again and again, until she’d grown bored of it. Stupid fantasies. She was already late, but she found that her legs were carrying her one last time down the hallway to the kitchen.
He threw his hands in the air and yelled in his thick Wisconsin accent, “Scott’s here!”
He left his hands in the air — one gripping a spatula, the other a pepper shaker — until Lucy came into the kitchen and gave him the Italian/Mexican greeting of two kisses, one on each cheek. She’d spent hours over the summer wondering what this moment would be like, knowing she’d be flustered and coy upon seeing him back in Italy. The odd thing was, though, that she wasn’t. Her imagination, running free, had grown disconnected from reality, such that reality was so different from what she’d imagined that she couldn’t swoon freely — reality was different, but much more pleasant and satisfying.
“So you did miss me?” he joked.
Lucy just smiled.
“You want some eggs?”
“I’m good thanks.” Ever since she knew she’d have to leave the Palazzo she could hardly eat.
“Good ’cause I’m not making enough for three,” said Scott, nodding at Natasha, who was seated in front of an empty plate.
Three? Lucy only then realized that Natasha was even there. Finally she felt something. She had not expected it to be a pang of jealous rage, but it was something.
“G
ood morning, Lucy,” said Natasha.
“Oh, hey,” she responded, without removing her eyes from Scott.
“Wait a second, Lucy,” said Scott. “Did the guy who founded L.L. Bean die at the Palazzo recently? Or is this really happening? Are you finally going to leave Rome for a day?”
“You mean Leon Leonwood Bean?” she asked.
“What?”
“The guy who founded L.L. Bean — Leon Leonwood Bean? He died in Florida in ’67.”
Lucy looked down at herself, embarrassed. She was wearing a carry-on back pack, something you’d want on a mountain expedition more than an airplane. Growing up, she was always required to use a rolling carry-on suitcase and to wear business formal whenever they went to the airport, which always left her uncomfortable and ill prepared. Anything can happen on an airplane and you have to be ready at all times. Now, as an adult, free to make her own decisions about proper attire for international flights, she sported hiking boots, jeans, and a white thermal long sleeve shirt beneath a plaid chamois button up. Tight french braids were held back by her leather headband, a handkerchief and aviators. On every flight there’s always one or two people dressed like this. Very few of them are actually going camping. The rest, like Lucy, just get really intense about flying. Of course, the essential thing about Scott’s comment was not the fact that he made fun of her clothes, but the fact that he commented on her appearance at all. He noticed! He looked at what I was wearing! He was looking at me! She finally started to get flustered.
“No… Scott… I’m just gonna… just gonna… y’know, I have to go across town to get some things from some people.”
“So it’s true what Brian said? You spent the whole summer without leaving Rome?”
She looked down at her boots and turned redder, “yeah.”
“Good God!” he yelled. “You must be the most boring person I know! That sounds miserable.”
“The plants out on the terrace don’t water themselves. And somebody’s got to talk to all the old people here.”
Scott Valentino was Brian’s best friend and classmate at the Gregorian University. He lived just down the block from Palazzo Mortimer at the North American College, a massive seminary — where young men train to become priests — that sat adjacent to the hospital. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays he would usually come up to the servants’ quarters in Palazzo Mortimer to eat breakfast on his way to class, because those were the days the college cafeteria didn’t serve eggs. “I gotta get ripped. How’m I gonna get ripped without protein in the morning?” His parents were migrant workers from Mexico, but he was born — literally — and grew up on a dairy farm outside Green Bay. He had olive skin, spoke a very sophisticated form of Spanish, but in English he had a loud booming voice and a thick Wisconsin accent. He wore a black clerical shirt, black pants, a black jacket, and black Air Force Ones.