Blue Bear_or the Impossibility of Anonymity

by Joseph Grady

  “You could just call the cops,” I said.

  “That ship’s sailed a long time ago.”

  “Well, what are you thinking?”

  “Walk with me.”

  She took me to the basement, and into one of the old servants’ rooms, full of antique furniture. In the corner there was a large safe with a broken lock. It was packed with antique guns.

  “You’ve never seen any ammo down here, have you?” she asked me.

  “No.”

  “Well, what can you tell me about one of these?”

  She handed me a wooden bow, and picked up five arrows from the floor of the safe. I helped her string the bow, and taught her the basics. She’d always refused to learn before. Now she regretted it. We also found an orange feather in the room, which she tucked into her hair behind her right ear.

  We crept up the narrow servants’ staircase, all the way to the roof access point, making as little noise as possible. On the top step outside the door, she took her phone out of her armband. One minute to go. She took a seat on the step and breathed in deep, extending her right hand out in front of her face. It was trembling. She closed her eyes and sat up straight, breathing softly through her nose until her hand became steady as a rock. She hit the play button on her phone’s recorder and set it on the top step. She knocked one of the arrows onto the bowstring, got to her feet, and put some tension on the bow, holding the arrow downwards. Using her foot, she slowly pushed the door ajar. And it creaked. No! She had no choice but to kick the door wide open immediately.

  Both of the large leather jacketed thugs were standing on the terrace, this time with no ski masks. Natasha, Brian, and Andrew sat behind them, gagged and duct taped onto the patio furniture. The thugs stared at Lucy, just fifteen feet away from them, with confusion on their faces.

  Before either of the men had a chance to react, one of them almost fell backwards, and looked down, still confused, at an arrow which had just lodged itself into his gut. Her aim was great, but unfortunately, Lucy did not have a great reload time. When the second arrow went flying, the other thug had already become a moving target. It pierced the shoulder of his jacket, but missed any flesh. Arrow number three did find its way onto the bowstring, but not before the thug’s fist found its way onto Lucy’s face.

  When she came to, she was also duct taped to a chair next to the others. Her mouth was taped shut. Her head was throbbing, and her right cheek would soon have a good bruise. The guy with the arrow in his stomach was lying down on a deck chair across from her. His accomplice had already cut away the jacket and t-shirt, revealing a round gut with an arrow sticking straight in the air. His upper chest was also covered in long strips of gauze, which corresponded to a few long bear claw wounds. They were trying to put gauze and rubbing alcohol around the base of the arrow wound. It hadn’t gone deep, and his belly was large enough that the arrow posed little serious threat to his long term well being.

  Lucy looked at the others seated next to her. Natasha, to her right, was exhausted and frightened. She tried to give Natasha an encouraging look. Andrew was anxious and fidgety. Lucy scowled and shook her head at him. Brian looked both upset and somehow also guilty. Lucy raised her shoulders and eyebrows at him.

  “Avaja, t’arrusbigghiasti?” the uninjured man asked Lucy, leaving his accomplice to treat his own wounds. “Sei pronta a parlare?”181

  Lucy nodded her head.182

  The man took out a gun – Natasha’s gun – and placed it on Brian’s forehead. He planted his feet right in front of Lucy and towered over her. “Non t’hai a gridare o nuddu. Se c’hai a farlo, spariamo a chistu inciu a capa. U capisti?”183

  Lucy nodded. He ripped the tape from her mouth.184

  “Dunque. M’hai a dire i numeri del conto del banco,” he said again.185

  “And I was trying to tell you last night that there is no bank account,” said Lucy. “There’s just a bag full of money.”

  The man looked over his shoulder at his shirtless accomplice, and again at Lucy.

  “Oh come on,” she said. “Don’t act like you don’t speak English. You sure as hell can’t speak Italian. You must’ve grown up in Australia. Your mom, Virginia, certainly uses all kinds of Australian expressions when she speaks English. Last week she used the word bludgers. I mean, really, who says bludgers?”

  Andrew’s eyes pealed open. The three of them — the two big thugs and Andrew — all spent a while giving each other knowing looks.

  “You were about to say something about a bag of money,” the large man continued his questioning with a thick Australian accent.

  “Shouldn’t Andrew be asking the questions? He’s the only one who’s committed murder for it, and it’s not even his inheritance. You two, on the other hand, could walk away right now without any charges. Think about it.”

  “Andrew’s got nothing to do with it,” he answered. “I never met him ’til today.”

  “If he’s got nothing to do with it, then don’t you think it’s kind of strange that he killed Eugenio?”

  The thug looked over at Andrew. “I told you, Andrew. I told you you’re a pathetic idiot. I told you you’d get caught. There’s a difference between roughing someone up and killing ’em.”

  He ripped the tape off Andrew’s mouth.

  “She can’t prove anything.”

  “You’re the same height as me,” said Lucy. “The police measured me against the person on the security cameras wearing my rain jacket. I’m the same height, the same measure as the murderer. You’re the only resident who’s the same height as me.”

  “Like I said, she can’t prove anything.”

  “That afternoon,” Lucy turned to talk to all three Australians, “you were all at the Palazzo waiting for Eugenio to come. You knew he was going to come see his mom on the sly, and you somehow knew she was going to give him money. Money that you two,” she nodded at the large ones, “thought would belong to your inheritance. So you emptied the Palazzo of the student residents — me running, fake jobs for Brian, Fr. Damien at the library, etc — to make sure we wouldn’t get in the way.”

  “She still hasn’t proven anything,” said Andrew. “It’s just a stupid girl coming up with crazy ideas.”

  “But your half brother, Eugenio, came to the Palazzo earlier than you expected, and by the time you three arrived, he had already made off with the money. He stashed it in a storage locker, and almost got away until you two thugs caught up with him in the park, but Eugenio had already crossed paths with me in the park. He must have seen me when he first visited Virginia, and recognized me. He ditched the keys with me, knowing that if you guys caught him, you would take them. You could never catch him on foot in the park, though, so you called your cousin Andrew back at the Palazzo, and told him to help find Eugenio using the scooter. When Andrew got the call he was still up at the Palazzo, but he didn’t want to go out immediately to track somebody down in the rain. So he grabbed the first rain jacket he could find, and the first weapon he could think of, the nail gun in the storage room.”

  “What a waste of time,” said Andrew. “This story is so far fetched.”

  “If Eugenio had stayed in the park, he probably could have lost you three for good. In the meantime, though, Natasha showed up at the Palazzo. He received a call from her when he was talking to me, and told her he was coming to the Palazzo to get her to safety. He managed to run back to the the building, but Andrew caught up to him in the lobby — still wearing my rain gear. They chatted, trying to come to an agreement. Andrew demanded the bank account numbers, and Eugenio said he’d already given them to a student resident. But before Andrew could get any more information, he lost control of himself and shot Eugenio in the head with the nail gun.”

  “Right,” said Andrew. “And if you don’t shut your mouth, maybe I’ll lose control again. You may have everything right, but you’ll never prove any of that to the police.”

  “Your fingerprints were never identified on the gun because you’re al
ready a citizen. You didn’t get scanned when you entered the country. You’ve never had your fingerprints taken here. I’m sure if they run your prints they’ll come up all over that nail gun.”

  “Prints aren’t enough. You’ve demonstrated that.”

  “You parked the motorino by the door, so when you got away, you filled the lobby with smoke. You really should have let me look at that muffler. A little duct tape and a hammer could fix that.”

  “Still not enough,” said Andrew.

  “You threw away the rain gear on Via dei Corridori and hurried back to the Palazzo in shorts and a t-shirt without putting your helmet on. You always wear your helmet… but that day you were too distracted with the hood on my rain gear to remember to put it on. I remember when you pulled up in the scooter at the Palazzo next to me and Brian. You still didn’t have your helmet on.”

  “Who cares. The cops’ll never agree with any of this. You may be one hundred percent right, but it doesn’t matter. I forgot my helmet. Big deal.”

  “And it seems that these two Australians, who tried to kill me last night, agree with me that you killed Eugenio —”

  “To be clear,” the wounded man with the arrow interrupted. “We weren’t going to kill you straight away. You’d be surprised at how long it takes to really strangle someone. You’re sure lucky that animal showed up.”

  “These guys killed Cristiano, though,” said Andrew. “We know that.”

  “No we didn’t” they responded in unison.

  “Yeah, that’s another thing,” Lucy said to Andrew. “Just look at that footage. Your cousins never could have made it upstairs in time. They heard the screams as you threw Cristiano over the railing. Cristiano hung on to you, and you almost shared his fate, but you grabbed onto the curtain. These two guys only made it up the elevator and headed straight back down when they got scared hearing you yell.”

  “Now, to get back to the point,” the large non-wounded Australian said. “My cousin’s stupidity and recklessness aside, you were about to tell us about a big bag of money.”

  He bent over Andrew with a knife and freed him from the duct tape.

  “Cousin?” said Lucy. “Andrew’s your cousin? This is all making a little more sense.”

  “Whatever,” the thug said. “I didn’t ask you about my family. I asked you about a big bag of money!”

  “A big bag of cash from Virginia’s mafia family that belonged to Eugenio, not you,” said Lucy. “And it definitely never belonged to Andrew. Does your mother, Virginia, know that you two are here? We could solve a whole lot if we just went downstairs and had a civilized chat about your recent behavior. But you probably wouldn’t want to do that… you might lose all the inheritance if she were to hear how you treated Eugenio and Cristiano.”

  “Don’t act like you understand what’s going on in my family!” yelled Andrew. “There’s far too much blackmail that we could use on Auntie Virginia for that to ever happen. I warned you to stay out of this!”

  Andrew walked over to Lucy, looked down at her and slapped her on the face, knocking her head to the side. Hard. Brian yelled as much as he could through the tape on his mouth and rocked his chair back and forth. Lucy slowly moved her head back. It was throbbing even harder now, and she felt a salty taste in her mouth. Blood. The large non-wounded cousin took Andrew by the shoulders and moved him a few feet from Lucy.

  “If you ever want to see Brian and Natasha alive again,” said the larger Australian. “You better get us that big bag of money right now. That’s mob cash that never belonged to that halfbreed Eugenio, and it sure as hell doesn’t belong to you.”

  Lucy sighed. “Like I said, it’s in a storage unit a mile from here.”

  “Give us the keys and the locker number.”

  “The keys are in the golf bag in the storage room. I don’t remember what number unit it’s in.”

  “Give me the gun,” Andrew told his cousin.

  “You got us into this mess,” said the cousin. “Don’t make it worse.”

  “I can make this alright in the end,” said Andrew. “Lucy knows how to keep quiet, right?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “Good. Lucy and I are going to get the money. If we’re not back here in half an hour, go ahead and off one of her friends, alright? Preferably Brian first. Or, whatever. Flip a coin or something.”

  Andrew held onto the gun in his jacket pocket, and walked Lucy downstairs, out the building. They stood next to his motorino.

  “Don’t try anything stupid,” said Andrew. “I will shoot you without a second thought.”

  “I would have already done something stupid if other people’s lives weren’t on the line.”

  “Just get on the bike.”

  She swung her leg over the back seat.

  “No, how is this going to work?” Andrew thought out loud. “I can’t have you in the back seat. Scoot forward. It’d be too easy for you to get away.”

  Lucy was given the keys and told she’d be driving. He quickly explained the braking and acceleration. She put on his helmet, turned on the motorino, and lurched out into traffic. She shuddered feeling Andrew’s left hand gripping hard onto her belly button, and the barrel of the pistol digging into her back.

  They picked up the bag of money, put it into the motorino and headed back to the Palazzo.

  “When we get to the Palazzo,” yelled Andrew into her ear, Lucy’s stray hair whipping in his face, “I want you to keep going and drive up to the NAC, and park inside there.”

  The gate to the NAC property was just opening as they pulled up, because a bicyclist was exiting. They parked, and the porter came charging out of his office, walking across the parking lot and glaring at them, asking who they were, “Ma chi siete?”

  At that same time, a Volkswagen full of three elderly Cardinals pulled up and parked directly between the porter and the motorino. By the time the porter figured out what to do with the Cardinals and turned around to find Lucy and Andrew, they were already inside the building.

  “Am I allowed to ask what we’re doing here?” said Lucy in the elevator, the gun still fixed on her.

  “I need to find out why you kept looking at the top of the NAC. It looked like there was somebody standing up there, and you kept looking up there at that new tower with hopeful eyes. There will be no witnesses.”

  Lucy swallowed. They exited the elevator and then the building, walking out onto the rooftop and then up to the tower, first a steel grated staircase to reach the tower’s highest level, and another steel spiral staircase to the viewing area. A 360° degree panoramic of central Rome surrounded them at their feet, nine stories down.

  “I see people and movement, but can one of you explains what’s going on down there?” Luca Speziale was standing by the railing – which came up just above his knees – holding a camera pointed down towards the terrace of Palazzo Mortimer.

  “Give me that camera,” Andrew told him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Give me the camera,” Andrew took the gun out of his pocket and pointed it at Luca. “Set it there on the table and walk away.”

  Andrew collected the camera from the table, still keeping the gun trained on Speziale. He told Lucy to go stand by Luca, then picked up Luca’s camera, held it high in the air and sent it hurtling to the ground as fast as possible. The lens shattered. He kicked it to the side.

  Andrew threw a roll of duct tape to Luca, “Now tape her to the chair.”

  “Again?” said Lucy. “Is this necessary? We destroyed the evidence. Let’s go.”

  “Shut up.”

  After a bit of work, Lucy and Luca were both duct taped to chairs. Again.

  “Andrew, we need to get back to the Palazzo in five minutes so they don’t kill Brian and Natasha,” said Lucy. “Or at least call them or something and tell them we’re on our way.”

  Lucy received yet another blow on the face. She and Luca both got tape on their mouths. Again.

  “You really think we’re go
ing to risk leaving you and your friends alive? My cousins might be dumb enough for that. But I’m not.”

  Andrew got out his phone and called his cousin. “Bad news .... yeah, she got away. She’s got the money too. We seriously can’t risk leaving anyone alive. Just kill Brian and Natasha right now. I’m serious. Like right now. Good. Then straight away, come up to the top of the tower at the building across and down the street. Yeah, that’s me waving at you. Good. See you in ten minutes.”

  Andrew pulled up a chair and sat in front of Lucy. She had remained uncharacteristically calm from the moment she shot the first arrow up until that point. Now she was no longer calm. To say the least. Her chest heaved up and down, continually filling up with air, and never fully exhaling. Her face was soon drenched with tears, mixed with the blood that had been trickling from her nose after the latest blow to the face.

  “You’ve got less than ten minutes to make peace with your maker,” Andrew told her. He removed the feather from her ear, and brushed her hair out of her eyes. He caressed her ears and then massaged her neck. She shivered and her shoulders just grew more tense, the more he massaged. “It’s really too bad about you having to get mixed up in all of this. We could have been friends. Who knows. You’re pretty. We could have been even more. I know we had a rough patch that one day when you got violent with me, but I tried as hard as I could to be nice to you after that. You probably think now that I was faking. I wasn’t. Damnit Lucy, we could have been something. We were so close to being something. Holding my hand in the rest stop. Leaving your head snuggled up to mine the whole way back to Rome. But you’re just too stupid to understand how things work. Too stupid to understand what’s good for you. I told you to stay out of it. I really tried to keep you safe, because I cared about you. It’s a shame. It’s really a shame.”

  He took his hand off her neck, and got up to stand by the railing of the terrace, squinting down towards the palazzo.