by Joseph Grady
That afternoon I was sniffing around the spot where Cristiano had landed, not far from the main entrance, when Lucy came outside with her running clothes on.
“Do you have your pepper spray?” I asked her.
She glared back at me, the same way she used to glare at her parents when she’d be forced to put on a suit.
“I’m just saying.”
She looked around to see if anyone was nearby, then held up her right hand and showed me the pepper spray. “I’ve been thinking about getting bear spray instead.” She put it in her pocket, and started stretching.
“That’s not funny. Bear spray is not something to joke about. And don’t leave it in your pocket! A warrior should have his weapon ready at all times when in a place of danger.”
“His weapon?”
“Whatever. You may have disabled the gun for a while, but that doesn’t change the fact that two grown men broke into the Palazzo and threw two grown men off the roof. It’s not safe for you here anymore. You can’t just go walking around like you normally would under different circumstances.”
“It had to be Natasha.” Lucy thought out loud.
“What do you mean?”
“Think about the timing. Andrew said there was over a minute between both people being thrown off, and that the bad guys were only here for three minutes. It would be impossible for them to go up, wait a minute, and then come down. The two big guys threw over Cristiano and bolted straight back down. But somebody else must have surprised Andrew. Andrew said he heard a person approach from behind, thinking it was just Cristiano — singular. One person. It had to be Natasha. Who else would have advised her thug friends in the Subaru? Those guys had to have been tipped off by someone on the inside. You don’t just randomly show up somewhere in ski masks to kill somebody unexpectedly unless there’s someone to tell you what to do.”
“But why would Cristiano just sit there for a minute waiting for the thugs to arrive after Natasha pushed over Andrew?” I asked. “He would have yelled or something in the meantime.
“She had the gun!” said Lucy. “She must have used the gun. She pushes Andrew over with the sheer force of surprise, and then keeps Cristiano at bay with the gun until the Subaru guys arrive. We already know she used the gun once on Eugenio. Obviously these two random strong guys who keep showing up in odd places weren’t the ones who killed Eugenio. Those guys are nowhere near my size. That one was definitely Natasha. She used the gun to kill Eugenio and she’d be stupid not to have the gun pulled on Cristiano.”
“This sounds very complex,” I said.
“Life is complex,” she came back.
“Remember Ockham’s razor?”
“Oh screw Ockham!” she yelled.
“You’re right, I’m not a huge Ockham fan either,” I said. “Ockham can go —”
“I’m definitely right,” she interrupted. “And maybe we could use it to our advantage.” Lucy stopped stretching, and saw a plan forming in the air in front of her. “Do you think Natasha’s the type to double check the ammunition before rushing off to kill someone?”
“Would you?”
“Probably not, I mean, at least if I were in a hurry, probably not. Natasha kept it loaded right by her bed. Sure, it was locked in the drawer, but it was still loaded. If we could get her to rush in, grab the gun, and come to confront one of us, all the while thinking that she’s carrying a loaded gun ...”
“I think I see where you’re going with this.”
“We’d have to do it, like, within the next day or two, though, before she notices the ammo box is full of marbles.”
“True,” I said, “but don’t you think that would be rushing things?”
“Well, you’re the one who’s uncomfortable about my safety all of the sudden. Why not rush things?”
“I mean, how sure are we about Natasha?”
“Who else could it have been? It has to be her.”
“Let’s go back to basics, Lucy. What do we know about motive? She was Eugenio’s lover at one point, but then all of the sudden she shows up in Rome and decides to kill him, why?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lucy put on her sarcastic voice, “maybe because he was married! He was keeping her as a girlfriend on the side, down in South Africa. Then one day, she reads that stupid fairy tale — what’s it called again? — Under the Tuscan Sun and decides to surprise him by moving to Italy without his knowing about it. She shows up, finds out he’s married, and that’s the end of that.”
“But that has nothing to do with what we knew before this morning. You still have to explain the threat letter about inheritance, and the keys. What’s that all about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have to know. Maybe that’s all just a red herring. Something Natasha planted so she could throw us off.”
“But the keys? You’re saying she planted the keys too? That’s extremely unlikely.”
“Look, Blue Bear, I don’t know!” she yelled gesturing at me with her hands. Two people who were walking by on the sidewalk gave Lucy a strange look. She turned her head, and put one hand up to her ear as though she were talking into a cell phone. “You’re the one who was telling me to live the tension, embrace the mystery. Maybe I don’t have it all spelled out, but at this point, we definitely know enough to act on what we’ve got. We’ve got a gun. We’ve got an opportunity. We’ve got a motive. What else do you want?”
I shrugged my shoulders. Lucy started her phone’s GPS timer on her left armband and hesitated, looking up and down the street. She picked a direction and ran up Via del Gianicolo, at a much quicker pace than her normal starting speed, maybe eight minutes per mile.
Lucy tended to do most of her thinking while running. She didn’t like listening to music or the radio while exercising, so there’s really not much else to do except think. She can be a somewhat difficult read. Sometimes she’s an open book. Sometimes she’s not. But over the years, I’ve learned that observing her gait is one of the only surefire ways to know exactly what kind of mood she is in. If there’s a slight bounce in her step, I can expect a jovial Lucy. If she’s dragging her feet, she’ll be tired, cranky, and won’t want to talk.
That afternoon, judging by her starting pace, and her lack of direction, I could tell something about the content of her mood and thought. She was clearly angry with me, not the sort of mild anger she gets when I annoy her, but the more gnawing anger that she gets when she knows I’m right, but doesn’t want to admit it. She was probably going to spend the next hour convincing herself that I was wrong, and she was right. I’ve heard her say the most bizarre and irrational things at the end of her runs, but with deep conviction and certainty. It’s amazing how people are capable of self-deception.
While she tends to run faster when she’s angry, she’ll run longer distances when she has something on her mind that she needs to ponder, or when she feels a great responsibility to get something done. Americans are weird. When something is wrong, they’ll get to work on anything and everything, regardless of its relationship to the problem at hand. Any kind of work, even exercise, for some strange reason, is cathartic to them. Lucy is a great example of this. Whenever final exams come along, she’ll go on long slow runs, not because she feels the need for exercise, but because running clears her conscience of the need to study. I do the best I can to appeal to the one eighth Cree in her. It’s down deep in there, and comes out just faintly every once in a while, but it takes some effort on my part.
As she took off up the hill, I saw in her gait a mixture of all of those three things at once: anger, something on her mind, and a deep feeling of responsibility to get something done. A perfect storm. I went upstairs to take a nap in my storage room, not expecting to see her come back for a couple of hours.
And she didn’t. She set a personal record from the front door of Palazzo Mortimer to the gate of the Doria Pamphili park, and then went all seven miles around the circumference of the old estate. Leaving the open space, she didn’t return home
, but flew down the Janiculum, a mile and a half towards Porta Portese, and got onto the bike path that runs alongside the Tiber river, which she took four miles upstream until Piazza del Popolo. Under normal circumstances, she’s perfectly capable of going thirteen miles without feeling very tired, but given her lack of sleep, the previous afternoon’s whiskey, two weeks of heavy tobacco use, and her exceptionally quick pace beforehand, once she hit the switchbacks leading up the hill to Villa Borghese – another spacious park in Rome, slightly more frou-frou European than Doria Phamphili – her legs finally protested. Her pace slowed considerably and her breathing became labored. When she finally summited the hill and entered the park, she kept a sloppy form and a slow pace for a mile and a half. She looked like a local.
The footsteps of a quick group of runners approached her from behind. Middle aged Roman men love running in groups. The first to pass her, surprisingly, was a characteristically young American – with bright red hair and terrible form. Then two more Americans, and then, a pair of shoes approached rapidly from behind, very close to her. She tensed up and adopted a defensive position, clamping her fist firmly around her pepper spray. Someone’s right hand shoved her left shoulder. Immediately, she came to a halt, and swung as much of her weight as possible into her left elbow making contact with somebody’s firm abs.
“Good God, woman!” Scott was doubled over clutching his stomach with one hand, and shielding his face from Lucy’s right hand, which was threatening him with the unused bottle of pepper spray.
“Oh ...” Lucy was breathing hard, “hey ...”
Another seminarian and something blonde ran by. Scott and Lucy stood there breathing, hunched over, looking and sweating at each other, until Scott said, “Well ... y’wanna... go... uh... catch up with the group?”
“Sure.”
The group was moving fast, so they had to keep a steady pace to catch up to the other seminarians. When they got near, Lucy thought she recognized the blonde thing that had gone by.
“Scott ...” she breathed, “Is that ...”
“Natasha...” He quickened the pace. “Yeah.”
It was a cool and crisp October afternoon, but for working out, everyone was comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt. Natasha, however, was wearing leggings, a heavy windbreaker and a headband. The group ran past a Roman family on the side of the path. The middle-aged father was standing there expressionless with his arms crossed. The mother, however, was making strange faces with her lips and doing a bizarre stretch. Their teenage daughter looked embarrassed. Her face turned to an expression of horror when the group of seminarians started to laugh at her mother. Scott turned to Lucy with a big grin on his face, but she only felt embarrassed for the poor young girl. She wanted to say something to Scott, but couldn’t find enough air for a full sentence, so instead she just glared.
Natasha caught sight of Lucy out of the corner of her eye. She had been cruising along with a bounce in her step and chatting away with one of Scott’s friends. She turned around, started running backwards and yelled “Oh, Lucy, I thought that was you!” Natasha’s face became very encouraging, and she said one of the most insulting things that Lucy had heard in a long time. “Keep it up, you’re doing great!”
If Lucy wasn’t already angry, now she was livid. But she smiled back and waved at Natasha. (Like I said, Americans are weird.) So Lucy decided she’d have to keep pace. And she did for another four miles around Villa Borghese. On mile five, however, her legs, her lungs, and the previous day’s whiskey refused to cooperate. She fell back about twenty yards behind the rest of the group. That is, until she saw that Scott and Natasha were talking to each other at the back of the group. They both laughed at something, and smiled at each other, and Lucy all of the sudden found a new source of energy in her legs. She started to bridge the gap, but before she knew what had happened or why it had happened, her left foot was caught in a pothole and her whole sweaty body was aching and sprawled out on the dirty ground next to the path. She instinctively pushed herself up, and tried to keep running, but her shaking legs refused to go any faster than a walking pace. Her lower lip trembled and her eyes felt damp. Scott and Natasha had stopped thirty yards away, and were looking back at Lucy and breathing hard with their hands on their wastes.
“Are you alright?”
“Just go!” Lucy yelled at them, “I’m done!” she yelled. She looked down and kept quietly repeating to herself while digging her fingernails into her hands, “Don’t cry in front of Scott. Don’t cry in front of Scott. Don’t cry in front of Scott.”
“Are you sure?” Natasha asked.
“Just go!”
Scott and Natasha turned around and took off. Lucy walked in small circles around a tree for a minute. She wiped off a couple of tears from her cheeks that she hadn’t managed to suppress, and then collapsed onto a park bench to send a WhatsApp message.
Brian, what are you doing? I really need your help to plan some things tonight.
Hey Lucy. Sorry. Cant make it 2nite. i have 2 work. i have really good news tho.
“Whatever,” Lucy said to herself standing back up. “This ends tomorrow.”
She took public transportation back home. The metro and the bus were crowded. Normally Italian men are all too happy to have an excuse to stand or sit right next to Lucy. That afternoon, however, she found that she had more than enough personal space. There’s at least one advantage to being covered in dirt and sweat.
Walking up the Janiculum hill, she spotted a large familiar figure coming down the hill towards her. He was not dressed for clowning though, but was wearing dress shoes, a white collared shirt, and khaki pants.
“What the hell happened to you?” Brian stopped to ask her.
“Don’t worry about it. I had an intense run.”
“Looks like it.” He took off his backpack and held it in front of him. “Guess who got a job!”
She didn’t answer.
“Oh come on, guess.”
“Andrew?”
“No! Me!”
“You’ve already got a job.”
“No, but a real job.”
“Well, that’s cool I guess.”
“That’s not just cool, that’s great.” He pulled a green apron out of his backpack and smiled.
Lucy just looked back at him.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I like green.”
“No, look closer.”
In the middle of the apron there was a small circular logo: white block letters surrounding a siren. Lucy’s eyes turned to pity, “Oh, God, no.”
“What?”
“You can’t work at that place. This is terrible. You’ve got a great job already.”
“What are you talking about? I loved working at Starbucks in America. Best job I ever had. Plus now I’ll have regular hours.”
“Just because something is enjoyable doesn’t make it right.” And then she remembered another reason he shouldn’t work there, “But Brian, no, you can’t work there! What about Speziale?”
“I thought of that too. Now we’ll have someone to keep an eye on him.”
“No, Brian,” she was begging now. “Whose team are you on? I told you that I need your help tonight.”
Brian got serious too, “I told you what I think of helping you with ... you know ... helping you with – ”
“Brian, I promise, you don’t need to lie or anything. I just need your help. I can’t do this alone. And this is it, Brian. This is gonna be the last thing.”
Brian looked away, “Lucy, just promise me you’re not gonna do anything to put yourself in danger.”
“I won’t if you’re there.”
“Lucy.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Do you promise?”
“Do you promise to skip class and be around tomorrow morning?”
“Sure.”
“Alright, then I promise.”
“You know they’ve got a lot of new security measures at th
e Palazzo, right? Don’t try anything stupid, okay?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve met all the new, like, security guys or whatever they are.”
“Still.”
“And there’s, like, a whole bunch of cameras and two security guards on duty twenty-four seven. Stop worrying. The Palazzo is safe now, Brian. And the murderer ... well … if she can surprise us, she’s dangerous. But she’s not going to surprise us. We’re going to surprise her, and cut her off from her strong friends.”
Brian sighed, “The Palazzo is safer than it used to be, maybe. But you have to be smart too. Just be safe, Lucy.” He looked her square in the eyes, and Lucy looked away, “Look, Lucy, I just don’t want you to get hurt or anything. Or worse.”
“Don’t worry,” she was already walking past him up the Janiculum. “Have fun at work. Say ‘hello’ to Speziale for me.”
“Lucy!” Brian yelled after her, but she kept walking.
“Don’t worry!” she yelled back.
He stood on the hill wondering whether or not he should go to work. He looked at the siren on the apron, at Lucy’s back disappearing up the hill, and back at the apron. He shoved the apron in his backpack and headed down the hill.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IL BAGNO TURCHESE E LA PISTOLA
Lucy herself got to work that evening too. It took her several hours to cut out letters of the newspaper and glue them onto a threat letter. She snuck down to the basement servants’ quarters and prepared a trap in one of the old bedrooms, complete with a place to hide her cell phone to film the whole scene, and handcuffs to detain the murderer once they’d gotten her to confess. It was all set to be used the following morning. She wrote and rewrote her whole plan on a bunch of different pages of paper, connected with a huge system of arrows representing contingencies and back up plans. Brian would receive a copy too, so that they could review it the following morning. It was foolproof.
I raised all of my objections that night over an hour of tense conversation in the Turkish bath. She wouldn’t hear any of it, though, so I left and went to sleep in my storage room. Lucy stayed in the bath, knowing she wasn’t going to sleep. Once I left, she turned on the steam, opened the drain, let the hot water run for a while, added more bubble bath solution, returned the plug to the drain, and turned off the water. She started the whale song CD, and laid her head back on the rim of the tub, closing her eyes and stretching her sore legs to the end of the basin.