The driver turned on the radio. They listened together to the lament of some young singer, crooning about his lost love, and the plaintive accompaniment.
“Dimmi di riprovare, ma non di rinunciare,” he sang. “…solo nel perdono cambia un uomo.”Tell me to try again, to never surrender…only in forgiveness does a man change.
They heard the clanging jingle of a commercial next and Valerio was about to ask the driver if he would change the station, when he saw a shadow at the base of the tall metal door, and the slight figure of Gaetano Mancusi stepped out.
He looked even more like a scarecrow now than he had in the cell, so small against the high walls. He wasn’t wearing a coat, just that ugly brown sweater, and he clutched a black plastic bag in his left hand.
Valerio patted the driver’s seat-back twice, said, “I’ll be right back,” and stepped out.
He waved at Gaetano. The boy looked at him.
Valerio began to make his way across the street.
He’d only taken a few steps when a dark blue sedan screeched into the road before him, engine revving. He saw the shapes of three men in the car, the angular outlines of the weapons, the hot red sparks as the machine guns sprayed bullets. Gaetano’s body danced and juddered as the bullets crashed into him, and he fell down down down, towards the hard concrete. Gaetano Mancusi, son of Ines Mancusi, eighteen years old, was dead before he hit the pavement.
Twelve
The day was chilly, air heavy and damp. Pale sunlight filtered through the canyons of buildings, brushing the aged and crumbling edifices, flaked plaster, rust stains, and graffiti, glinting on the chrome of motorbikes and battered car paint. The cobblestones were uneven and hard. Slippery. Bad for running. But Nikki found her footing and raced, dodging traffic and crowds, breathing in diesel fumes, the odors of grease, coffee, fish, and baked bread. She pounded down narrow alleyways and side streets, past vendors with their racks of clothes; piles of oranges and persimmons and tomatoes and artichokes and peppers; ice-packed Styrofoam boxes overflowing with glistening tentacles, fins, and scales; stacks of purses and plastic toys; grocers and cafés and shoe stores and ateliers and pharmacists.
It was her day off and a rare opportunity to catch up on sleep. But Nikki had spent a restless night, then awakened with the feeling she’d lost something important.
—
Adriano had been in her dreams. His voice, his laugh. Throughout the night, she’d hunted through a maze of shifting streets, sure he was waiting just around the next corner. But it wasn’t her brother she found—it was Durant Cole. The NCIS agent had such a strange sad smile, and she’d shouted, needing to tell him something. But he vanished into a mass of people, and the crowd dragged her along into Chiesa del Gesù Nuovo, where Claire Sexton’s bloody form lay outstretched beneath the altar.
Nikki hadn’t felt Adriano clearly for years. He’d faded so completely that in her waking life, she could never quite recall his face. But running into Sandro yesterday seemed to unlock a door inside, and she remembered the two men swaggering down the street together,talking and laughing. She’d been only nine years old when her brother graduated the Carabinieri Officers’ College where he and Sandro had become friends, and to her, they had seemed like gods. Adriano had never ignored her—she was always his little buddy. But she’d wanted more than his affectionate indulgence. She’d ached to be part of that exclusive conversation—the laughter of the gods.
In memories, as in dreams, Adriano was always and forever just out of reach.
In that labyrinth of sleep, Adriano had vanished, and she’d found Durant Cole instead. Why? There was no connective tissue between them. Adriano had died sixteen years ago, in the seconds before she could reach him. Durant…well, Durant was different. In the cold of that cave, she’d grappled, fought against an impossible, terrible reality.
That was the difficult thing about remembering Durant. Her mind couldn’t reconcile those last desperate moments of terror and pain with the warm feelings he’d evoked. She hadn’t seen him clearly, never suspected the duality of his nature, and even now couldn’t understand the darkness in him well enough to condemn him to it.
—
In her dream, there had also been Claire. Sweet face and shy smile. Soft voice:I reckon I’ve never properly grown up myself, you know?
Are you going to find the people who hurt her?Audrey had asked.
Yes, Nikki had said.I’ll find them.
In the daylight she felt the helplessness of that promise. She was just another person with no insight, no authority, no access, no power to do anything.
—
She picked up the pace, sprinting down one block and then another until her lungs burned, until sweat poured down her face. Blood pounded in her ears, and her legs weakened.
At last, in a narrow alleyway, she slowed and stopped, bending to take in air.
—
Her phone rang.
Aunt Izzy.
“Is this a bad time?” Izzy asked.
“I always have time for you,” said Nikki, realizing it was true. She was homesick for her aunt in a way she’d never let herself feel for her own mother.
