Blue Bear_or the Impossibility of Anonymity

by Joseph Grady

  Lucy kept digging around in the bag to see if there was anything else. Just piles and piles of cash. Nothing more.

  “Shall we count it?” Natasha finally asked.

  “Well ... it’s gotta be millions at least. I don’t know. Three, maybe four million? These bundles of five hundreds have... who knows... fifty bills in each bundle. This is ridiculous. Who has this much cash? Maybe it’s better if we don’t know an exact number right now.”

  “What are we ever going do with this?”

  “I’m kind of hungry.”

  “No, I mean ... long term ... we can’t just keep three million euros. Wouldn’t somebody notice if one of us deposited such an extraordinary amount of cash into an account?”

  “I don’t know. We can figure that out later. But I would like dinner. And hey, we did win this unit fair and square, didn’t we? Can you go to Google on my phone and type in ‘Rome, very expensive restaurant’?”

  Lucy put a bundle of five hundred euro bills in her bag. Natasha refused to touch anything. They left the rest in the storage unit, and headed out for a very expensive meal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  IL BAGNO TURCHESE E LA CATENA

  After the sixth course and digestivi, very satisfied, they had the restaurant’s concierge call them a cab. They both slouched in the back, without seat belts, cradling their stomachs, and soaking in the experience of newfound privilege.

  “It feels very different this time,” said Lucy.

  “What’s that?”

  “Having money. It feels different this time.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “This time it’s mine ... well ... kind of mine, I guess.”

  “As opposed to?”

  “Y’know, before. Back then, there were always all kinds of strings attached. Do this. Don’t do that. Be responsible. Forget it. Now I can be reckless and it’s just me being reckless. It’s more fun but it’s also, like, less fun.” Lucy sank down farther in her seat and closed her eyes. “I think I like it, though.”

  “Would you say you’re in a particular mood, lately? You know, with everything that’s been going on? It’s not just a matter of having money all of the sudden.”

  “Well there’s that too. I can see what you’re saying,” said Lucy. “But I like to think that every bite of expensive food is just enough to make a corresponding amount of anxiety disappear.”

  “How large was the bill?”

  “€580.00.”

  “Food is one thing, but how much did we pay for the wine pairing?”

  “Something like a hundred each.”

  “For that wine?”

  “For that wine.”

  “Well, if it takes away your stress, that’s fine,” said Natasha. “The wine was quite good. Not exceptional, but quite good. Of course, far too overpriced. Except for maybe the Chardonnay. That Chardonnay was exceptional. I would drink that all night. But don’t they know how risky that Pinot Noir pairing was? How stupid was that? In Italy of all places. Really. An Italian Pinot Noir. Were they joking? If you’re serious about stress relief, the first thing we’re doing with that bag of money is hiring a car, going to Tuscany, and finding out if there’s any decent wine in this country.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why did I leave South Africa, again?”

  “Um…”

  “Wait, no… Don’t answer that. We will not be talking about that.”

  “Good. Tonight we’ve spent way too much on food and wine to talk about anything stressful.”

  “Indeed. Did we pay enough to make your stress go away?”

  Lucy leaned over onto Natasha, “I think so.”

  The car pulled up to the Palazzo. Lucy reached into her bag for her wallet, but was distracted by bright flashes of light from both sides of the car. There were at least ten people crowded around outside the cab, surrounding it with cameras and flashing bulbs. Lucy made the mistake of lowering the window to ask what was going on. As soon as there was enough room, two cameras with hands attached were immediately inserted into the crack in the window and began firing at will inside the car.

  “Ms. Fox! Ms. Fox!”

  “Lucy! Lucy!”

  “Just one question!”

  “Ms. Fox, look over here!”

  “One question, over here!”

  “Ms. Fox, how are you connected to the murders of Eugenio Galli and Cristiano Ludovici?”

  “Ms. Fox, look here!”

  “Lucy! Lucy! Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!”

  She rolled the window back up, first closing down on the paparazzi’s wrists, which held on fiercely to the cameras, unable to remove them from the car. Natasha reached across Lucy, rolled the window down a smidge, pushed the cameras out, and rolled the window back up.

  “What do we do?” asked Lucy.

  “I don’t know. Pay the cab and fight our way inside?”

  Lucy gave the driver his money, but didn’t move out of the car. The door opened, Lucy’s fist curled and she turned to see who it was. Andrew was there. He was yelling and pushing off the reporters. He turned around and grabbed Lucy by the wrist, yanking her out of the car, while warding off reporters and photographers with his other arm. Natasha pulled off her scarf and covered most of Lucy’s face. For Lucy, everything between the car and the building was one giant flash of light and sound. She let herself be pulled along by the wrist, unable to navigate herself with all the flashing and yelling. She was soon inside the building, seated on the floor in the hallway behind the porter’s office breathing hard. Some of the reporters continued to call out her name from outside.

  Within a half an hour, a simple search of her name rendered more than fifty results on different tabloid news sites. If you don’t count the photos taken by Cristiano’s harem a month before, more photographs of Lucy had been taken in the minute in front of the Palazzo than in the previous three years combined. All of them were confused snapshots of Lucy from bizarre angles, either curled up in the car or being led from the car to the Palazzo door with Natasha’s scarf on her head.

  After Scott had almost been killed, both Natasha and Lucy were reluctant to sleep in their own rooms, now that they were back at the Palazzo. So they pulled their mattresses to the floor in Andrew’s room. Andrew fell asleep early, but Natasha and Lucy stayed awake, staring at the ceiling until two in the morning. Lucy finally managed to close her eyes, but she kept turning from one side to the other, with no results. Five hundred and eighty euros of food, wine, and stress relief were not enough to make her sleep. Once Natasha’s breathing grew deep and consistent, Lucy slipped out of bed, went to her room, changed into her bathrobe, grabbed a towel and headed downstairs to the negative one level. If anyone had been planning on breaking in and committing murder, they would have done so already, right? I followed her down. She soaked, and I sat in the steam.

  “Did you have a look at the picture we got from the orphanage?” she asked me after half an hour of silence.

  “I did.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s pretty clear,” I said.

  “I just can’t believe we were so stupid. Ginevra wasn’t even a fake name, just short for the name of a mean girl we already know well.”

  She lit a cigarette. I turned up the knob on the steam. For once she didn’t seem to mind. We both breathed deep.

  “I guess it’s time for us to leave the Palazzo, isn’t it?” she said. “How much longer can we stay here before somebody else gets killed? They weren’t kidding. It’s real money. A lot of it. They know who we are and they know where we are. We still know nothing other than who the rich grandma is. And even if we knew who the kids were ... I don’t know ... what is there for us to do? We find out who they are and then what? I can’t do anything. The police won’t do anything. Maybe it’s just best to take the bag of cash and get out of here. Have you ever been to South Africa?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “What’s wrong with Colorado?�
��

  Lucy never had the chance to answer that question. The door slammed open and was swiftly closed behind two very large figures that entered the room. They were wearing black leather jackets and black ski masks. Before Lucy had time to think or react, they had grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back against the side of the tub. One of them had his hand on her mouth, preventing her from screaming, and another held a heavy metal chain around her neck. But scream she did. Muffled, yes, but still an intense life-threatening scream coming out from the bottom of her lungs.

  They were professionals. They were able to do an amazing amount of things in a short amount of time with just four hands. They shoved her face down into the bubbles. They pulled her arms behind her back and tied her hands together, then placed a wooden dowel through her elbows and behind her back. As soon as she came out of the water, her mouth was suddenly full of a bandana, and her scream turned more into a gagging and choking sound. I could do nothing but pace back and forth. Once she could breathe again, through her nose, she made another attempt at screaming, but not just arbitrary noise like before. Through the gag I could just barely tell that she was screaming my name. But there was nothing I could do. So I walked back and forth even more quickly, and uselessly growled at the men. I think my noise didn’t help the situation. Lucy certainly wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t either.

  “Non sbagghio termini cu tia,” one of them told her. “Assittati e lavora, e puoi vivere. Per sfortuna non abbiamo molto tempo per gioccare stasera. Au primo segnu che non ti assitti e lavori, ti uccidiamo subito. U capisti?”168

  Lucy just whimpered.169

  “U capisti?” he yelled, slapping her face from behind. A red mark appeared.170

  Lucy nodded yes. The man’s tone of voice was enough to tell her that they meant business. They were quick and professional. She was no longer dealing with Natasha, stumbling in and innocently waving a gun around.

  “Dunque. M’hai a dire i numeri del conto del banco.” He took the bandana out of her mouth.171

  “There is no bank account.”172

  “C’hai un’opportunità in più pi dicci a verità, oppure ti uccidiamo.”173

  “No really, there’s no account ... there – ”

  Before she could finish answering the question, though, the thick metal chain was back around her neck. This time, however, it was tightened. Hard. Very hard. It was clear they had no intention of leaving her alive. Her eyes widened, and even using all her strength, she was able to make only weak gagging sounds. She kicked the other side of the tub and thrashed her shoulders around, but it did nothing other than splash water over the rim and spread bubbles around. The man tightened the grip and Lucy’s face turned from white to blue. Her chin moved up and down, gaping for air, but not able to take anything in. After a minute – an excruciatingly long minute – her eyes stopped focusing on anything in particular. The movement in her chin became mechanical. The tremble and tension in her shoulders was released. Her whole body grew limp. Her shoulders sank deeper into the water, and her neck rose higher as the man pulled up on the chain. The water surface calmed down.

  By now, I was roaring, and banging on the wall with my paws. It had been hundreds and hundreds of years, since the last time I can remember ever roaring that loudly, completely losing control of myself. It’s hard to explain. I had forgotten my voice could get that loud and deep, and that my mouth could open that wide.

  Every once in a while, it’s true, we can become somewhat visible, even to other groups of people. It’s rare, but it happens. And that night, for the first time in a long time, someone other than Lucy recognized me. When Lucy went limp, something deep down inside me snapped. Something I didn’t even know was there. Certainly, I’ve seen hundreds of people die before, oftentimes even unjustly. On so many of those occasions I was saddened, but able to accept it all. Human nature is human nature, right? But this was different. What exactly was different, I still can’t say, but something deep within me snapped. Lucy went limp and I breathed in deep, with the intention of ruining my vocal chords. I let loose with every bit of strength in my whole four hundred pound body.

  Both of the large men turned and looked straight at me. The one man let go of Lucy’s neck. Her head flopped back onto the edge of the tub. Only a few feet from their faces, the two men were now staring down a humongous blue bear, who had completely lost his mind, roaring at the top of his lungs and spraying them with slobber. I can even remember it as though it were in slow motion. Their faces were blank at first – total and utter confusion. Then they breathed in together. Their jaws dropped simultaneously, and they started yelling. And for the amount of time it takes to empty your lungs after a deep breath, there were just the three of us large animals in that small room, all yelling uncontrollably at each other, while Lucy lay unconscious right below.

  I picked up my right arm, let out my claws, and took a swipe at one of them. He moved back, but my claws made a clean swipe through the leather jacket, cleaving four deep diagonal cuts right in his chest. I stumbled backwards and stared at my paw. They both ran for the door and fumbled with the knob. Once out in the hallways, their legs pumped in seemingly random directions, stumbling down the corridor of the old female servants’ quarters. Having already given myself over to anger and instinct, I chased them out — not quick enough to catch them, but just to scare them off — across the laundry room, up the stairs, through the lobby, into a black Subaru Impreza and away from the Palazzo. They didn’t look back to see if I was following. As soon as I got to the street I snapped out of my fit of rage. I remembered Lucy and ran as fast as I could back to the Turkish bath.

  The back of her head was still perched on the side of the tub, but she was now gasping for air, coughing, gagging, dry heaving, and in general, looking miserable. A little color had returned to her face, but not much. Her eyes were clenched shut and tears were streaming down the sides of her face into her hair. She sat up in the tub, still coughing and gasping. She removed the stick from behind her back by pressing it up against the sides of the tub, pushed her arms underneath her legs so that the rope was in front, and held the rope right in the flame of a candle. The knot was very well tied, but somehow they’d managed to leave almost an inch of rope between her hands. The rope dried out and I sat there staring at my right paw, which still had blood on it. Lucy sat there staring at the flame, slowly getting control of her breath, and every once in a while looking back anxiously at the door.

  “I don’t think they’ll be coming back soon,” I said.

  She tried to say something back to me, but just started coughing again. Once the rope was on fire, she used the tub’s faucet to snap it apart. She put on her bathrobe without drying off and hurried out into the hallway, but stopped. Where to go?

  “I don’t think they’ll be upstairs,” I said.

  “Who?” she croaked, and rubbed her throat.

  “The ... uh ... the bad guys with the masks. They probably won’t be upstairs. I mean, it’s probably safe.”

  “No,” she whispered. “No. I’m not going anywhere where Kelly or my shrink will expect me to be. Where would I not be expected to be?”

  She looked up and down the hallway. She was very jumpy, even jittery, understandably so, of course.

  “I can’t stay here. Blue Bear, I can’t stay here. We gotta get out of here.” She turned around a few times.

  “It’s almost four in the morning. Where are we gonna go? Like I said, I don’t think they’ll be back. You might as well just hide out somewhere in the Palazzo.”

  “We gotta go. Where’s my bike.”

  “You haven’t owned a bike in three years...”

  “Where’s my... no... Juanita, I’m sick. ¿No entiendes? ¡Ya dije que estoy enferma! Juanita, pórque no vas a decirlo a Kelly que estoy enferma? Hoy no puedo. I can’t go to school today. I gotta get out of here...”

  She walked up the hall and then back down. It wasn’t entirely clear to me whether or not she even knew where she
was. She stopped and grabbed at the door to the old bedroom right across from the Turkish bath. The light worked. It was full to the brim of random furniture, all labeled and appraised by notes with Gambetti’s handwriting. She climbed around the room, opening cabinets, drawers, and chests. One dresser contained a huge pair of thick red curtains. She threw one of them onto the oldest couch she’d ever sat on, used it as a pillow, and wrapped herself up in the other curtain.

  A few hours later, she woke up, with all of her faculties of reason once more functioning perfectly. Or, well, they’d never really ever been functioning perfectly, but I think it’s clear what I mean. The fluorescent ceiling light was still on, and I was sleeping in front of the door.

  “Blue Bear.”

  I snorted.

  “Blue Bear!”

  I groaned and turned over.

  “Blue Bear, wake up! What happened last night?”

  “What do you remember?” I asked, yawning.

  “I don’t know. Just images. I was in the bath. There were two men, I think. Hands tied behind my back. A metal chain on my neck. Some weird dialect. Lots of pain and noise and squirming. Choking. Waking up in the tub. Breathing, and wanting to hack up a lung. A candle with a flame on my wrists. And now I just woke up in a pile of curtains and a bathrobe.”

  She rubbed her throat. Her voice sounded normal. Her neck still had a red mark, but her facial skin tone was back to how it was before. Her wrists still had the ropes on them. She sat up.

  “Two men broke into the bath last night and tried to kill you,” I said.

  “Right. I remember that part.”

  “They didn’t succeed.”

  “That’s the part that’s a little hazy.”

  “Something happened.”

  “Obviously something happened. What happened?”

  “Something happened that I can’t explain.”

  “What? Did they decide not to kill me?”

  “No they were set to kill you for sure. No, I don’t mean that something happened that I can’t explain to you. I mean something happened that I can’t explain at all.”