by Joseph Grady
“No.”
“So you can’t see the guy who just fell to his death from somewhere in the Palazzo?”
“Holy Shit ... no ...” She gasped and held the phone away from her face. She was now breathing heavily and felt her legs start to give out from under her. So she turned around, gripped the railing, and slowly sank down onto the floor.”
The models all stared at her with wide eyes, and she could hear Brian’s voice yelling from the phone, “Lucy! ... Lucy, are you there? Lucy?”
She put the phone back up to her ear, “Brian, say that again.”
“Are you okay? Are you still up there? I don’t see you anymore.”
“I had to sit down for a sec. The thing you just said, the thing about somebody falling down, say that again.”
“It looks like somebody just jumped to their death from somewhere in the Palazzo, or I don’t know. Andrew fell off the roof too, but he caught onto a fifth floor window.”
“Shit.”
Brian quieted his voice, “Dear God, Lucy, please tell me you’re not involved.”
“Wait ... no ... it might not be him ... what if it’s the murderer? Maybe the murderer fell off.”
“What are you talking about?” Brian had now separated himself from the other residents and was standing by himself near the roof access door speaking quietly.
“Brian, the guy who just fell to his death, I need you to tell me what he was wearing.”
Brian walked over to railing and looked down, “It looks like a black jacket, grey scarf, and black pants.”
“Oh, shit, that’s him. Oh shit. Oh shit, I’m an idiot!” she was shaking her head and sniffling, and could no longer see clearly through the tears in her eyes.
Though they didn’t speak English, the models seemed to understand what was going on. They went to a table and chairs on the top of the tower, and sat down, staring at each other in silence.
“Lucy, what’s going on?” Brian insisted. Lucy’s arms had gone limp, and Brian’s voice was only faintly heard coming out of her phone from somewhere near her hips, “Lucy, are you there? Lucy!”
Brian stayed on the line trying to talk for another minute, but Lucy was now far too distracted and disturbed to pay attention to anything. Her cheeks were drenched, her chin was shaking with every breath, and the hole in her stomach had opened itself up again – a hole that was not just a sense of loss, but a gaping sense of guilt and responsibility.
Finally, after a few minutes that seemed like hours, one of the models asked, “È morto?”148
Lucy could only nod her head.
The model looked frightened, “E allora?”149
That allora was the first thing to bring Lucy back to her senses. What to do? Lucy could only stammer back, “Allora, niente! Allora siamo delle ragazze più sceme del mondo. È morto per colpa nostra ed è morto in vano. Non capisci? Non abbiamo ripreso niente!”150
“Lucy, l’ha voluto fare lui. Non è mica colpa nostra.” The model wagged her finger at Lucy.151
“Va be’, pensate quel che volete,” Lucy responded. “Per adesso ... non so ... per adesso ... non so cosa fare.”152
For now Lucy and the models agreed it was best for them to take down the camera equipment and leave the NAC property. Nobody else at La Repubblica, the models said, knew anything about Cristiano’s project. Whenever the cops asked, the models would say they went into the office like normal at 9:00, and Lucy would say she had been at class all morning. Hopefully nobody would ask around at the NAC for information or security footage. The models went down first, and Lucy followed ten minutes later. She removed her fake press credentials, and didn’t look at the porter when she exited the property. Out on Via del Gianicolo, she just barely glanced to her right, one hundred yards down the street. There was the same sort of crime scene that we had found three weeks earlier. This time, though, she didn’t go near it, but took a left, walked a hundred yards, and then got onto the number 877 which was miraculously passing by. She took another two busses to Sapienza, and spent the rest of the morning sitting in the back of her lectures, trying not to cry – and failing – and drawing cartoons in her notebooks to distract herself.
Before getting on the bus back home, she had to find a sharp rock and put it into her hand, so she could spend the next half an hour squeezing it while listening to rap music. Walking up the Janiculum hill, she inserted a few small pebbles into her already uncomfortable business shoes. By the time she walked up to the crime scene, she was perfectly in character and perfectly in control of herself. I was at the front door waiting for her. By that point, there were just a few bits of yellow tape and a small group of police standing around chatting.
Lucy stood by the crime scene tape and stared down the cops. They all got nervous and spoke very quickly to each other in hushed voices, shooting furtive glances back at her. But nobody dared look straight at her, and nobody moved to speak with her. Lucy could just barely hear the word “strega”,153 repeated a few times between the cops. They fought with each other for a while until one of them finally pulled rank. A shy young officer had been chosen for the unlucky job. He broke off from the group, took out a note pad, and approached Lucy, mostly looking at the ground. Lucy decided to play along. She stared right back at him, and convinced herself that she was the terrifying creature the poor young man believed her to be.
“Scusi signorina ... eh ... Lei ... eh...” the poor officer mumbled, “Lei per caso abita qui?”154
“Sì.” Lucy snapped back at him, and the officer almost whimpered.155
“Come si chiama?”156
“Lucy Fox.”157
“Va bene, signorina Fox, La devo fare un paio di domande.”158
“Avanti.”159
The interview was incredibly brief. Lucy proffered her alibi – school – which he was more than happy to believe. She said she did not know anyone named Cristiano, and then firmly insisted that she would like to go upstairs. He immediately accommodated her demand and let her go, breathing a sigh of relief when she was a few steps away. The other officers folded their arms, stood up straight and looked at her through the corner of their eyes as she passed through the door. Lucy remained in character – confident and smug – until she closed the small elevator gate behind her and the box started to rise. She put her back against the wall and slid down to the floor, ripping her shoes off once she was seated, and leaving the pebbles on the ground. She threw the sharp rock that she had held in her hand onto the opposite wall. She pulled out her phone and edited her contacts. They were now back down to two.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IL PIANO
She spent a while sitting alone on the elevator floor — quite a long while — waiting patiently for her cheeks to dry. By the time she arrived up on the terrace, her gaze was blank. She thought she had gotten it all out of her, but the sight of Brian and Andrew seated at the table in front of a bottle of whiskey was enough to make her break down again. Cristiano was dead, Andrew had almost lost his life, and it was her fault.
Before she could object, Andrew had already gotten up, and pulled her into his arms.
“No, Andrew, you don’t understand.”
“Lucy you’re safe now with us. Nothing can happen. I’m okay too. We’re all alive and safe. It’s okay now.”
“It’s just that… it’s just that…”
“It’s okay now. Nothing can happen to you now.”
“It’s just that —”
“You’re safe, Lucy,” he interrupted. “You don’t need to worry.”
She saw no way to explain the real situation to him. How do you tell someone you were almost responsible for his death? Are you even obliged to tell him? She would need a lot more time on the rug before she could come close to figuring that one out. At least Andrew had survived and she could hold onto that. She wrapped her arms around him, leaned her ear onto his, and squeezed hard, holding him tight against her, glad to feel something human, something she had not messed up entirely. The longer
she held on, the easier it became to ignore that pit of guilt in her stomach.
Andrew, Brian, and Lucy spent the rest of the afternoon drinking straight from the bottle and going over the day’s events. That morning, Andrew had walked out onto the terrace, saw Cristiano sitting there, and started chatting. At a certain point in the conversation, Andrew stood by the railing — the edge of which came up just above his knees — and pointed out the Castelli region in the distance. He heard a door slam, and feet approach from behind, which he thought must have been Cristiano. Before he knew it, he was shoved over the railing, and hit the window sill one floor below with his feet. He slipped off the sill, but just barely managed to grab onto the curtains with his hands through the open window. For about a minute, he said, he heard a struggle and hurried conversation above him before Cristiano came flying down too. But instead of hitting the sill, he fell all five floors to the ground. After a brief struggle with the curtains, Andrew was finally able to pull himself up, and get his gut onto the sill and slide into the apartment.
“So then who pushed you over?” said Brian. “That’s what I don’t get.”
“Well, they’re saying that Gambetti is already selling the surveillance recordings,” said Andrew.
“Yeah?” said Lucy. “Is he telling anybody what’s in them or just selling them?”
“Well,” said Andrew. “I chatted with someone in the laundry department who talked to someone in the kitchen who says she talked to Gambetti.”
“Sounds reliable,” said Brian.
“Well what did they say?”
“It’s pretty weird,” said Andrew. “All they know is that this guy, Cristiano, just waltzes on in, and then half an hour later these two massive guys wearing ski masks park their Subaru Impreza in front of the door, and then run through the lobby to the staff elevator.”
“Bizarre,” said Lucy. She started buttoning and unbuttoning her suit jacket.
“I can’t believe they haven’t improved security since the first murder,” said Brian.
“Three minutes after they arrive,” continued Andrew, “the big guys from the Subaru run back through the lobby, get in the car and take off before anyone even notices Cristiano’s body is there.”
“Did they get the plates?” asked Brian.
“Three minutes,” said Lucy. “Damn that’s quick.”
“They taped over their license plates,” said Andrew. “They’re professionals, these guys.”
The three of them went over the story again and again. Brian kept eyeing Lucy, seeing if she would tell her side of the story, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain to Andrew why he had almost died. At one point, Natasha came walking across the terrace. They all fell silent, and Lucy had to hold onto the armrests of her chair to keep herself from getting up and pummeling her. Natasha looked hurried, and did not stop to chat as normal, but went straight to her room.
“What are you all dressed up for?” Andrew asked Lucy when Natasha left. “I don’t remember having ever seen you in fancy clothes like that.”
“Oh… I… I… we had this famous author come make an official visit to the literature faculty,” she lied, pulling on the end of her skirt. “And a group of us were responsible for showing him around. He didn’t speak Italian, so you can guess who got volunteered to be the tour guide around campus.”
“You’d make a great tour guide, I’m sure,” said Brian. “But don’t you have to go to class every once in a while to know the campus well enough to give tours?”
“Lucy goes to class,” said Andrew. “I’ve even taken her myself. Anyways, you look fantastic.”
For just a half a second, Lucy felt at ease in her business attire.
“Did this famous guy tip his tour guide well?” asked Brian.
“No. Not at all.”
“The bastard. You deserve it,” Andrew passed her the bottle. “Maybe this’ll make up for it.”
“This’ll do.” She took a final swig, and retreated to the servants’ quarters.
The next morning, Tuesday, Lucy stayed in her room — skipping class — until she heard everyone else depart for school. Then the two of us got straight to work.
“Alright, Lucy, so you’ve got the lever in. There you go. Okay, yeah. That’s right. Now twist it just slightly and keep some tension on the pins.”
“Okay.”
“Now insert the pick.”
“Alright.”
“Do you feel the first pin?”
“Wait a sec ... no ... okay ... wait ... yeah, there it is.”
“Alright, now count how many pins there are.”
“Okay, there’s one ... um ... wait ... No, that’s the spot in between ... so then ... yeah, there’s two ... three ... four ... and that’s it. There’s just four.”
“Okay, go back to pin number one.”
“Got it.”
“Do you still have tension on the lever?”
“Yep.”
“Now see if you can get number one to click.”
“Alright ... let me see ... um ... nope. It keeps dropping.”
“Okay, try pin number two.”
Lucy squinted hard at the door, and struggled until her face lit up with a smile. “It clicked.”
“Great! Now go back to one. Keep the tension on the lever.”
“Yes! There’s click number two!”
“Now try the third pin.”
“Got it!”
“And four ... nice and easy. Nice and easy ... this one’s the hardest ... just like we practiced.”
“Holy shit, we’re in!”
Lucy turned the lock and opened the door to Natasha’s room, wearing the rubber medical gloves she’d taken from Natasha the day she had helped her clean her room. I followed her in and Lucy closed the door behind us.
“I can’t believe how easy that was!” she was beaming. “Why have I never done that before?”
“Okay, we’ve probably got a lot of time ... but let’s hurry just to be safe.”
I set about sniffing everything. Nothing exceptional. A standard twenty-five year old human female. Lucy took pictures of everything and went through the desk drawers, the wardrobe, and the small number of books on the shelf. She found nothing of interest.
“Blue Bear, there’s a lock on the nightstand drawer.”
“Let me have a look.”
“What do you think?”
“It’s tiny, but I think you can do it. Try the number four pick.”
She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a smaller lever and lock pick. This lock was much more poorly made than the door lock, and much tinier. It was easy to get the pins to click once you could find them, but there was not much room to maneuver the pick in such a small lock. On her third attempt, though, she finally made it. The drawer slid open, and there were only three items inside. A black leather journal. A box of ammunition. A small handgun.
“How the hell did the cops not find this?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I sniffed all the contents of the drawer. “The only person I recognize who has touched all these things is Natasha. Or at least ...” I sniffed again. “Yeah, this gun is very new, and nobody else has touched it recently besides Natasha. It’s also been very well cleaned — inside and outside — quite recently. Let’s have a look at the journal.”
“Is there anything in this room that hasn’t been well cleaned?” Lucy asked.
I sniffed in the air. “No.”
Lucy picked up the book and flipped through the pages. The first half was covered in Natasha’s handwriting, and the rest of the pages were left blank.
“What language is this?” Lucy couldn’t read anything.
“Looks like Afrikaans. Just take some pictures. We’ll translate later.”
Lucy laid the book flat on the nightstand, and took out her camera. Before she could take any pictures, a number of photos fell out of the back cover and onto the ground.
“Well, look what we’ve got here. Old fashioned film and
development. Cute.” Lucy reached down to pick them up, and saw that the only two people featured in all of the photos were Natasha and Eugenio. “Well, aren’t they an adorable couple?” Lucy shook her head at the incredibly cheesy photographs.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s mid twenties and it looks like he’s pushing fifty.”
She shot me a dirty look. I’d forgotten about a certain episode of her past that I was not allowed to mention. One of those unwritten rules.
She turned back to the pictures. “Oh, here they are are at a vineyard. Here’s them at a restaurant. Here’s them making out on top of a mountain. Here’s them on the beach. Wow. it sure looks like Eugenio managed to get a lot of work done on those business trips, doesn’t it? Look at this one. This is great. Even on the beach in South Africa she’s wearing long sleeves and pants, when everyone else is in swim suits.”
“That’s fine. Let’s just move on.”
“Hold on a second.” Lucy put the photos back in the journal, and the journal back into the desk drawer. She picked up the gun, opened the clip, removed all the bullets, and then took all the bullets from the box of ammunition and poured them into her bag. She filled the ammo box with a bag of marbles that she’d found in Natasha’s wardrobe.
A door closed in the hallway. Lucy’s face turned white and her heart rate doubled. She shoved everything back into the nightstand and softly shut it. She went to the desk, picked up the lamp and stood behind the door. Footsteps came down the hallway. They passed by Natasha’s door and went to the end of the hall by the kitchenette.
“Lucy, we’ve got to get out of here. Whenever Natasha gets groceries, she puts them straight into the fridge before going to her room.”
She put the lamp back on the desk, opened the door, jumped out into the hallway. As soon as she turned around a figure came out of the kitchen, and Lucy almost screamed. Fr. Damien shuffled by with a Mountain Dew and a plastic container of fried rice.
“Buon giorno, Lucy.”
“Buon giorno, Padre,”
Fr. Damien returned to his room, Lucy’s shoulders collapsed, and she disappeared into her own room.