Blue Bear_or the Impossibility of Anonymity

by Joseph Grady

  “Would you say she’s dangerous?” asked Lucy.

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t look too dangerous. It’s been more than a week, and nobody else is dead yet.” He took a swig from his caramel macchiato. “We know she was involved, but does that mean she’s the dangerous one?”

  “Well —”

  “And why?” Interrupted Brian. “Is it normal for South African furniture companies to hire young blonde girls as international hitmen?”

  “The police obviously thought it was a woman. That’s got to mean something. Maybe we shouldn’t ask if she’s dangerous. She definitely is. But is she dangerous to us. She wouldn’t get rid of anyone else, yet, would she? She needs to find out about the bank account, or the keys.”

  “But wait,” said Brian. “Why didn’t the cops immediately suspect her instead of you? They knew Eugenio was importing furniture from South Africa, right?”

  “Well, I know why they thought it was me. There were all the fingerprints and the jacket,” said Lucy. “But Natasha’s got a Russian passport. The cops don’t even realize yet that she’s South African. Her real name’s even, like, Natálya Nikoláevna, or something sinister like that. I’m surprised she told us that she’s South African. She tries hard to come across as cute and naïve, but you’re right, she’s definitely dangerous.”

  “This is weird.”

  “Very weird.”

  “What do we do next?” he asked. “How are we going to keep an eye on Natasha? Or should we just try to stay out of it?”

  “Oh, we’ll definitely keep an eye on her,” said Lucy. “I have an idea, though. Do you have any idea where we could get some fake I.D.s and lots of fake government documents?”

  “Lucy, we were just at the Greg.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IL BAGNO TURCHESE E IL RIPOSO

  They headed back to Piazza della Pilotta — Brian proudly carrying his grande caramel macchiato with the logo turned outwards — and went up the steps to the Greg. They waited for the bell to ring, and Scott was one of the first to come charging out of the lecture hall.

  “Why did they have to schedule three straight hours of this guy?” he moaned at them. “Three straight hours of Johannine Lit. It’s like dragging dead horses through the mud. This class is literally the same thing as dragging dead horses through the mud.”

  “Scott,” Lucy raised her eyebrows, “do you know what the word ‘literally’ means?”

  “Yes. Literally. There are dead horses and mud in that room.”

  “Why do you guys even go to that class?” asked Lucy. “I thought you guys had that whole note taking system that you were telling me about.”

  “Yeah, there is the notes system, so I don’t actually have to pay attention.” Whenever Scott was tired his Wisconsin accent got even thicker. “But two things have happened to me this year. One: the American seminary faculty is going to vote on whether or not to ordain me, and two: we’ve got snitches.”

  “Snitches?”

  “Yeah, there’s these other uptight seminarians who rat us out to the College formators or the faculty if we skip class.”

  “Wait. Wasn’t Judas a snitch?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Hey, Scott,” Brian interrupted their exchange, “did you see if Yvette’s here today?”

  “Yeah, I think I saw her in there.” He pointed back at the lecture hall.

  Lucy kept flirting with Scott while Brian hid behind one of the pillars of the colonnade surrounding the atrium, until the Johannine literature professor departed the lecture hall. The number of students had significantly dwindled over three hours of the professor’s voice droning on at the same pitch, but there remained a small faithful remnant from each national group.

  While it is true that the different national and linguistic groups tended not to interact much with each other, like with all rules, there are exceptions. Yvette was one of them. She was a short, slightly chubby, radiant young African laywoman from Burundi. She moved with ease from group to group, smiling and striking up conversation in a delightful mix of French and Italian with anyone who wouldn’t run away from her smile. Brian waved at her, and she came down, beaming.

  “Brian! Perché non mi hai salutato oggi?” Yvette’s speech patterns were as close to laughing and singing as you could get while still speaking.84

  “Perché sono cattivo. E perché dovevo fuggire da quest’ultima lezione. Tu ci sei rimasta?”85

  “Oh, mon Dieu, son rimasta, e mi sento stanca morta! Quando verrà le Signeur? Dimmi, quando?”86

  “Senti, Yvette, ti volevo chiedere una cosa. Possiamo parlare un attimo?”87

  “Certo, dimmi!”88

  Brian took Yvette out into the atrium where they spoke to each other in hushed voices. Lucy observed from a distance, while safely tucked into Scott’s circle of friends to stay sheltered from unwanted threats of phony agenda driven conversations. After a few minutes, Brian waved her over and introduced Lucy to Yvette. She placed Lucy in front of a whitewashed wall and took her picture with a cellphone, then repeated the same process with Brian, laughing the whole time to herself, but instructing them not to smile.

  Brian stayed for the fourth hour of class, and Lucy walked back up to the Janiculum hill. Gambetti was in the porter’s office, but surprisingly, he did not look up at Lucy. He was wearing a brand new expensive looking suit, and was busy scratching away at a pile of lottery tickets. The resident TV lounge was just around the corner from the lobby. Signora Virginia Pironi, the ringleader of the mean girls, was standing at the doorway, eyeing Gambetti. She gave Lucy a head nod, signaling for her to come over.

  Virginia handed her a large glass of lemonade with a straw and asked her, “Hai visto quello là?”89

  “Sì. È strano. Non mi ha salutato. Lo fa sempre.”90

  “Oggi, sì, mi sembra un po’ diverso. Anzi, molto. Secondo me, in qualche modo è riuscito a pigliare qualche soldo da qualcuno.”91

  “Perché lo dici?” asked Lucy.92

  “Non lo so per sicuro, ma secondo me, guarda, è un tipo molto impulsivo, no?”93

  “D’accordo.”94

  “Oggi è arrivato al lavoro con un abito nuovo, e non fa nient’altro che andare al bar ogni venti minuti e tornare qui con un mazzo di gratta e vinci. Un tipo così impulsivo non agisce in quel modo se non ha appena acchiappato per fortuna un paio di soldi inaspettati.”95

  “Strano.”96

  “Certo. Dobbiamo tenerlo sott’occhio.”97

  Martina, who was on the couch with two other ladies watching the T.V., turned around and yelled, “Oh! Zitte! Cerchiamo di guardare Don Matteo!”98

  Over the summer, the mean girls had set out to watch the entire first nine seasons of Don Matteo — an Italian TV show on Rai1 about a crime-fighting priest in Spoleto — before the release of the tenth season coming up in January. By October they had only reached the beginning of season three, and had recently gotten much more serious about catching up. Virginia made a rude gesture at Martina, and returned to the couch, squeezing in between Martina and… Lucy only then realized that one of the people on the couch was not a mean girl, but Natasha, in a grey peacoat and a pink scarf, playing with mittens in her lap. Lucy’s fist clenched, and then she remembered she was a detective. Time to play it cool. Natasha is my friend. But how on earth was she already so tight with the mean girls? And it looked like she was even getting resident volunteer hours by just sitting there watching TV. That’s absolutely brilliant.

  Natasha looked up and saw Lucy. She got up, and walked up close, “Hey, can we talk?”

  “Sure. You want to head upstairs?”

  “No!” Natasha responded suddenly and forcefully, grabbing onto Lucy’s arm. She looked around to see if anyone had seen her yell.

  All three mean girls had turned around to stare at them.

  “Niente, scusate,” said Lucy to the old ladies, then turned to Natasha, “Come here.” They went to a love seat in the back, Lucy sat down, and Natasha squeezed in right nex
t to her. Lucy pretended it didn’t bother her.

  Natasha still looked jumpy.

  “Look, the mean girls have Don Matteo cranked as loud as it can go. Nobody can hear us back here, alright?”

  “Alright.” Natasha kept scanning the room. “Lucy, have you been upstairs this morning?”

  “Not since I left for class. What’s up? Is there another note?”

  “No, nothing like that. I mean, yes, something has happened.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I just came in — like — half an hour ago and went upstairs to my room and…” she gulped, struggling to say the next words “…and it looks like… it looks like somebody’s just broken into my room and has rummaged through all of my things.” She paused and breathed easier, like a weight had just been lifted from her.

  “You mean somebody searched all your stuff? When was this? Did you see anybody?”

  “I don’t know what happened. I just opened the door to my room, and there were all of my things all over the place. So I screamed and slammed the door and ran downstairs. I’ve just been here camping out with the mean ladies watching Don Matteo.”

  “The mean girls.” Lucy thought out loud. “So… somebody searched your room. But why? How is that possible?”

  This was unexpected. Why would somebody involved in a murder fake a search of her own room?

  “I don’t know. Maybe it has to do with that bizarre letter.”

  “You said you didn’t go into your room?”

  “No, I’ve been down here.”

  “And you’re sure the door was locked when you left this morning?”

  “Dead certain.”

  “Has anyone else come down since you’ve been here?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve just been curled up on the couch between Elena and Martina, staring at the telly.”

  “Let’s go have a look upstairs.”

  “What if he’s still up there?”

  “How loud did you scream?”

  “Very.”

  “He’s not up there.”

  They left the TV lounge, went behind the staircase and called the antique elevator. The carriage, though, was already in descent with a passenger, Fr. Damien. He stopped, bowed and said to them with inquisitive eyes, “Much screaming this morning and banging of door. Everything is okay?”

  Lucy and Natasha looked at each other. No, everything was not okay, but how do you explain?

  “It’s fine,” Lucy answered. “Thank you, Father.”

  They traded places with him and got on the elevator. He walked down to the Greg and the girls went up to the servants’ quarters.

  While Lucy’s room was usually a constant flux of items heaped on top of each other in uninterrupted movement, Natasha’s was normally a static display of rigid and immaculate simplicity. Beige veneer rocking chair, white desk, white sheets tucked mercilessly tight on top of an iron bed frame, white carbon fiber desk with a white plastic chair, logical bookshelf — only four books — and not a speck of dust on the exposed tiles or the perpetually bare surfaces. From day to day, it seemed that nothing ever moved from one spot to the next. Was it a bedroom or an experiment in avant garde minimalism? Hard to say.

  Natasha put her back to her closed door, her hand on the nob, and turned to Lucy. “I was thinking we mightn’t tell the whole world about what’s taken place here today.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Are you quite certain it’s safe to be up here?”

  Lucy shrugged her shoulders, “Is it safe to be anywhere in this building?”

  Natasha opened the door, and Lucy couldn’t believe it was Natasha’s room. She glanced up and down the hall to make sure they were at the correct room. It was the right door. All the drawers had been removed, and all their contents dumped on the floor. All of her clothes — mostly cold weather gear — were strewn about on the ground with the pockets turned outwards. The mattress was propped against the wall, the sheets in the sink. Her books were on the floor with the spines rent open. Natasha went up to the pile, picked out one with a blank leather cover, and held it close to her.

  “Well,” Lucy pretended to be generous, “Do we want to start cleaning up now or do you want to call the police?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think there’s need to involve the authorities. I’ll just have a glance through these things to make sure nothing’s been stolen. I don’t imagine I own much worth taking.”

  “It doesn’t look like they took much, if anything,” said Lucy. “Is all your underwear here? Maybe somebody’s got a weird fetish.”

  “Or is it linked to what’s been going on lately?” asked Natasha.

  Lucy’s mouth hung open. Natasha looked back with anxiety.

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy finally.

  “Me neither.”

  “Well, where do we start?”

  “No, no, no, don’t worry about cleaning. I’ve got it.”

  “It’s really no problem. I can help.”

  “No, really, I’ve got it.”

  Lucy changed her approach. “I’ve been out all day, so I’m going to go shower, and make sure I’m real clean. Then we’ll both sort through everything and bleach this place like none other.”

  She didn’t wait for a response, but backed out of the room before Natasha could say anything else, returning fifteen minutes later with a clean white handkerchief over her hair pulled into a bun, and with the whitest socks she could find. There was a box of surgical gloves on the desk. Lucy helped herself to a pair.

  When everything had been spread out on the floor, it seemed like a lot, but in the end, Natasha didn’t own much, having just arrived a week before. The leather book had disappeared and Lucy noticed a keyhole on the nightstand drawer. Within an hour they had thoroughly scrubbed everything. Nothing appeared to be broken, and — Natasha claimed — nothing had been stolen. Natasha thanked Lucy profusely and seemed reluctant to let her go, but Lucy finally escaped back to her own room, having convinced Natasha that she would be right across the hallway. Lucy reeked of bleach, was bewildered at Natasha’s behavior, and felt disappointed at not having discovered anything in the room. She regretted her decision to feign generosity.

  She leaned back in her Ikea chair and closed her eyes, looking forward to spending the rest of the afternoon doing nothing. But her eyes flew open:

  “Security cameras. Gambetti.”

  Anybody else would have thought that this was obvious. She covered her face with her hands. Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier? Well. She had thought of it, but those thoughts were so unpleasant that she had never fully permitted them to surface to the light. But now it had surfaced, and there it was. And it was definitely very unpleasant.

  She curled herself up in her chair, already feeling gross about it all, but then she stood straight up, right on one edge of the Moroccan rug, and thought at herself, No, I’ll think this through. I’m a cautious and mature adult. I know my limits. I know I wouldn’t do anything beyond a certain point. I certainly don’t want to do anything beyond a certain point.

  She considered this, wandering over to the other side of the rug, debating with another part of her that was not happy with that reasoning. Reaching the opposite edge, she turned around and thought back at herself, Yeah, you’re a mature adult, which is why you’re not going down that road. That’s just gross. This was true, and she nodded her head in agreement, staying on that side of the rug.

  But something in her had to walk back to the other side of the rug. She thought, What are you talking about? I never said I was going down that road, did I? Come on. Get your head out of the gutter. I just said I want to get close and see how he reacts. You don’t have to be such a prude. You said yourself you’re going to investigate, and that involves some dirty work, right?

  This was mostly true, but something still felt weird. So she walked back to the moralist side of the carpet and thought, Yeah, but still. And this was a hard argument to refute. For some gut reason, that yeah, but
still was completely right. But the longer she stood on the moralist side of the rug, the longer she still didn’t have access to the security footage, and this presented itself as a stiff problem as well.

  She decided to give another hearing to the live-and-let-live side of the rug and thought, Hey, so it’s obvious to both me and you that we’re not going to do anything too gross. Agreed? So why not just go down there and see what happens? Where’s the harm in that? You’ve got nothing to lose.

  Before the moralist side of the rug got a chance to respond, she tore through her clothes and squeezed herself into a short skirt, a tight sleeveless top, and stood by her moccasins, wondering which ones were the most provocative. But another warning came from the moralist side of the rug, which wanted one last word. Come, on Lucy. Don’t exaggerate. If you go downstairs dressed like that, it’ll be too obvious. Just be normal.

  The live-and-let-live side of the rug conceded. She put some normal clothes back on and headed downstairs.

  As a method actor, she had to spend a few minutes in the empty elevator with her eyes closed, breathing deeply and convincing herself that bad things were good things. She forced a cool smirk onto her lips, allowed her live-and-let-live side to undo another button of her blouse, and hit the descend button. Crossing the lobby, her heart sank seeing that Gambetti was still there, sitting behind the counter of the porter’s office. She took a deep breath, put her elbows on the counter and leaned over.

  “Oh, ciao, bella,” he said. His eyes were flicking back and forth between Lucy and his lottery tickets, “Come va?”99

  “Bene. Senti, non c’hai un attimo per chiacchierare?”100

  “Certo, sempre.”101

  She came around the counter through the door to the porter’s office, and perched herself on the desk in front of him, slightly to his right side, on top of his lotto tickets. She put her right foot up on the seat of his office chair, and leaned in close to him.102

  “Tutto a posto, ragazza?”103

  “Ah, sì, più o meno.”104

  “Che c’hai?”105