To see all chapters, go here. To hear an audio reading, select the play button above.
His words were quiet and soft with no implied menace or threat. “You will pardon me interrupting your ablutions, but privacy is so difficult to come by here.”
I felt threatened anyway so asked, “Should I bother asking where the guard went?”
He declined his head slightly, a small bow to the realities of Capanne. “He was assured I meant you no harm, so only a small bribe was necessary to provide us a few moments alone.”
“OK.” I wrapped my towel around myself and straightened up so I towered over him. “Why don’t we start with why I’m talking to you instead of being knifed by one of the gangster wannabes running around this place? Could give you quite the reputation if somebody made their bones with me.”
He smiled as if this hadn’t escaped him and it pleased him that I knew it. “The men you speak of were aware of your deed before your arrival. Or, at least, the important ones were.”
“However, the death of Verdicchio has caused a power vacuum. There are,” he paused as if searching for the right word, which surprised me. His English was excellent. “Factions. Your fate, as it were, has become a bit of a bargaining chip between them. Each side has promised retributions should another steal the honor of killing you.”
While I chewed on that he continued with, “As to the former, you served in the U.S. army?”
“Marine Corps.”
“Ah. Even better.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that but he continued before I could ask. “There are many of my brethren here who arrived after fleeing the wars in Iraq and Syria. Some of them fought there.”
I was beginning to get the idea, but I just said, “Ah-ha.”
His smile became brittle, barely big enough to see through his beard. “Indeed. Some of them see your arrival here as the Prophet’s providence, an enemy delivered into our hands.”
That made sense, but I found myself stifling a laugh. “So how many different groups in this place want me dead?”
His smile became earnest then, seeming to enjoy that I understood and found a bitter humor in the situation. “It’s hard to say.” His smile fell away. “But if one of my fellows were to injure you it would greatly anger the others. The result would be much bloodshed.”
I nodded. “And you don’t want that?”
He returned my nod. “And I do not want that.”
I suddenly wished that we could sit down and have some tea, face each other and discuss this like men. But such luxuries were a long way off, so I just held my towel in place and asked, “So what are you suggesting?”
Again, my visitor pursed his lips, deliberating on his next words. “If you were to convert it would prevent my fellow supplicants from harming you. ‘But whoever kills a believer intentionally – his recompense is Hell, wherein he will abide eternally, and Allah has become angry with him.’”
“It will also provide you with our protection.” He must have correctly interpreted my skepticism because he continued with, “Your conversion would be seen as a victory for us.”
I couldn’t help but but give another short, bitter laugh at that. My visitor’s eyes narrowed, the closest thing I had seen to anger from him. Not caring if that’s how things went I said, “You know my name. What’s yours?”
“Here? I am called Tariq.” He paused, then went on to say, “Everyone in Capanne knows your name. But they simply refer to you as the American.”
The drainage pipe had the smell of offal coming out of it as if it had been stuffed with the intestines of dead pigs. Light from street level didn’t penetrate far enough for Edward to see what blocked the duct, but the smell certainly provided a clue. Some creature, most likely seeking shelter from the rain, had crawled down in and become stuck, leading to a long, slow death. Edward sighed as he pulled on the heavy Water & Power gloves, wondering how best to avoid getting any mess on his work coveralls. He reached into the pipe slowly, hoping to encounter whatever was producing the smell at a shallow depth.
Those hopes evaporated as he found no resistance all the way up to his shoulder. Stretching out his fingers, he still felt nothing, which produced a sigh from him. Now, he thought, he’d have to disassemble the entire pipe. But as he curled his fingers back and prepared to withdraw something snagged. A barb into his sleeve kept him hooked there, then became a pressure surrounding his wrist. Discomfort became pain which became panic. Unable to get free he felt that force travel up his trapped arm, to his shoulder, forcing itself out of his eyes. There was a crack and pop and an incomprehensible tearing, and then Edward knew where that smell was coming from.
To see all chapters, go here. To hear an audio reading, select the play button above.
Not that I should have been anything but grateful to Sophie regardless of how she secured my release from Capanne prison. A murder by an American on foreign soil was complicated business, only made more so by the fact the victim was a powerful man. Like all powerful men Verdicchio had enemies that were happy to see him go, but none so much that any of them would have been willing to intercede on my behalf. I had, after all, killed an old man. The police reports left out that he had tortured Sophie before my arrival; Verdicchio’s power was such that even after his death it protected him. The American consulate seemed to prefer to pretend that I didn’t exist, so I had spent months in Umbria being shuttled back and forth between the prison’s routine and the indecipherable proceedings of the courthouse.
I began those days sitting on cold rocks then moved to standing in front of jurists who spoke in tongues I didn’t understand, asking questions I wasn’t meant to answer. I just stood there, waiting for someone to point me in the direction I was meant to go next. After I became accustom to the routine, though, it just added an interlude where I could enjoy a car ride with some Italian sunshine and watch the golden hills of Umbria go by.
Capanne wasn’t so bad, either. Yes, the prison was an ancient cold, stone box, and there were cockroaches, but not so many as to be too bold. They at least had the decency to scatter when a light was turned on. The same couldn’t be said for my fellow inmates. Starved for sunlight they gravitated toward any illumination. Which I suppose explained the number of them that reconciled with their old religions, be that Catholicism or Islam. I didn’t.
Through those court proceedings and the inevitable corruption around them how I had ended up in Capanne began to leak back to the other prisoners. It resonated in a change of how I was viewed, a change I could feel even through barriers of language and culture.
Capanne was filled with would-be gangsters, bona fide mafioso, smugglers, small-time thieves and big time crazies, each marked with some kind of ritual tattoo, makeshift jewelry, or taqiyah. I kept waiting for one of Verdicchio’s buddies to send someone with a shiv my way, but days turned into weeks and it never happened. One day I learned why.
I was drying myself off after a shower when a man stepped around the corner and into the room’s doorway. I always faced the exit as being naked placed anyone in a vulnerable spot and I was expecting someone to eventually show up and take advantage of that. But the man who stepped in didn’t look like anything I expected. He was short, swarthy, with a trimmed beard of dark curls, wearing one of the wool caps the muslim prisoners seemed to preferred. Closer examination showed he was younger than first inspection might have estimated.
I read no hostility in him. His hands were clasped in front of him. Certain that he had my attention he said, “As-salamu alaykum.”
To see all chapters, go here. To hear an audio reading, select the play button above.
I stared at the oncoming lights. “I’ve been fine Atwell. How are you?”
“I’m an American in France. Does it get any better?” He made it sound like he owned the place.
Given the treatment I sometimes received as an expatriate in France I wasn’t sure I agreed, but I didn’t want to prolong our conversation. So I replied, “I suppose not.”
I could feel Atwell trying to gauge my temperature. His efforts at being subtle equalled his attempts at conversation. He abandoned both with, “So I heard it was an interesting evening at the casino.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t see a reason mention the Corsican’s voyous or the fact that Mitnick was likely the one who sicced them on me. It didn’t make any sense to me, so I didn’t want to explain it to Atwell.
Atwell’s impatience hardened his words. Exiting the motorway towards the city’s interior he said, “Tell me about it.”
I knew that this was the reason Atwell had shown, so I laid out the bare bones. “Marek Mitnick was gambling at the casino this evening. I became aware of his presence around 11:00 p.m. At 11:30 Carlu Sartre arrived and proceeded to threaten Mitnick with a pistol, physically assaulting him and evicting him from the premises.”
I detached from the conversation with, “I suspect they may have been in the midst of a dispute.”
I felt Atwell’s impatience slowly roasting into anger over my dry listlessness. He pulled into an alley, streetlights blocked by the segmented columns of two neo-classic buildings. “Police?”
“No. Casino staff kept it under control. Smartphones are on lockdown on the premise so there were no calls out or digital evidence.”
“And you didn’t think I needed to know about this?”
“You seem to have heard about it all on your own.”
“Both Sartre and Mitnick work for us.” ‘Us’ meaning ‘U.S.’ meaning government. The idea that men that powerful were pawns of whatever obscure anti-terrorist department Atwell was a part of struck me as unlikely. I said so.
“Believe it,” he replied. “There’s a lot of shipping that comes through this part of the world. And they tell us if anything is coming our way that we need to know about.”
“In exchange you let them operate without interference from law enforcement. I wouldn’t call that ‘working for you.’”
“That sounds kind of like what me and you got going on. You saying you don’t work for me?” Atwell very much resembled Jasper in that moment.
Thinking about how I got here and Atwell’s cheap manipulation, I felt my fingers flex. Instead of wrapping them around his throat I replied, “I don’t see a W-2 with my name on it.”
It was Atwell’s turn to grin. “You’re a funny guy.”
“Yeah, that’s what all my co-workers say. ‘That American, he’s a funny guy.’ I mean, I think it’s hilarious that you let guys like Sartre and Mitnick get away with bloody murder just in case they might be able to tell you something.” In controlling my anger I couldn’t help but let my disapproval slip out.
Atwell switched gears into pedantic. “Let me ask you something. If you were given the chance to go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would you do it?”
I hoped my expression communicated how stupid a question I thought that was. “If I could time travel, I’d probably just buy some of his art.”
Not surprisingly, this only confused Atwell. “What?”
“He wanted to be an artist. If someone had supported that ambition he probably would have lived his life out in Vienna hocking postcards.”
That there might be a solution to his question other than the one he possessed only deepened Atwell’s confusion. He shook it off and got to the conclusion he wanted. “The point is, sometimes you need to do bad things to get good results.”
I had seen that kind of logic get manipulated by desert nomads as ignorant as any redneck and I had seen the piles of corpses that resulted. But rather than try to explain that I replied, “Or you could just mollify his ambitions a bit and prevent him from turning into a monster.”
“Mollify? Fancy words like that, no wonder you think you’re so smart.”
“I had a lot of time to read in Capanne.”
“And unless you want to go back you’ll help me figure out what the beef is between Mitnick and Sartre. I can’t have them fighting each other right now.”
Tired of trying to be subtle, I reach for the obvious conclusion. “If Mitnick’s Russian mob –“
“Belarusian.”
That was the first useful thing Atwell said in the conversation and it gave me pause. After a moment I continued, “If he’s not Corsican and Sartre treated him like that, it means he thinks Mitnick is moving in on this territory.” I stared out the windshield. “There. Mystery solved.” A part of me wondered if Mitnick knew about my reporting to Atwell and my relationship with Sartre. It might explain why he had pointed the voyous in my direction.
Atwell’s growing impatience translated into a jackal’s grin. “If that’s the case, I want details so we can make this go away.”
“You’re such good friends with these guys, why don’t you ask them?”
“Because I’m telling you.”
I faced Atwell to let him know I was taking him seriously. “OK.” Satisfied, Atwell gestured towards the passenger door, letting me know I was dismissed.
As I moved to exit the car, Atwell added something as if it were meant to be an afterthought. “Sophie has been around asking questions. Any idea what that’s about?”
“None.” My tone was flat enough that I doubted he could detect the lie.
But he might have, ‘cause he chose to bait me with, “Well, she’s been sucking cock down at ANTS.” Still turned away from him I could feel more than see his smile. “I thought you might want to know about that.”
Before Europe, before Sophie, when Cheryl was alive and we had medical bills to pay, I had worked for a man named Castardi, doing collections and learning an entirely different kind of violence than the Marine Corp had taught me. That experience, its most intense moments often held in spaces like this one, allowed me to do some quick and angry math in the dark, narrow alley. At this time of night, in this part of town, chances were good no one had seen me in the car with Atwell. In the contained space of the Citroen I could kill him without too much noise and disappear. Anyone who did see me probably wouldn’t be the type to go to the cops.
Either way, though, without Atwell, I’d be a fugitive, and Sophie could end up on her own. So instead of murdering the opportunistic weasel I just said, “Now who’s a funny guy?”
Atwell guffawed and banged on the steering wheel. “I just love fucking with you.”
Feeling the first light of the coming day begin to glow around the city I smiled and told him, “Glad to be of service.” Then I stepped out and closed the car door.
Watching the sedan trundle down the alley I wondered about how Sophie had become acquainted with Atwell. And even though I tried to keep my mind away from it I wondered how she had convinced him to spring me from prison. On a rational level I knew that these questions were what his comment was designed to provoke. The fact that I was letting it work only made me angrier.
Before Jesus became the Christ, he was just Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter who people thought it slightly odd hadn’t gotten married by the time he was in this thirties. So it probably raised a few eyebrows when he and his mother attended a wedding and Jesus brought twelve men with him. The additional guests may have been one of the reasons that the family hosting the ceremony didn’t have enough wine on hand. The primary social beverage of the day, this made for tremendous embarrassment, as providing a sufficient amount was an important obligation. Plus, who likes to be at a dry wedding?
Mary, being a kind and empathetic woman, didn’t want to see the hosts embarrassed or the guests angered. She also knew the reason her Son hadn’t married yet. With that in mind she implored him to help the bride and groom. To which Jesus replied, “Woman, it is not yet my time.”
Ignoring this rather haughty reply, Mary spoke not another word to her Son, but told the servants to do whatever Jesus instructed. And despite his previous rebuff of Mary, Jesus told the servants to fill six stone jars with water, which he dutifully turned into wine.
What’s the moral of the story? Even the Son of God does what his mother tells him to do.
