“I’m worried that she was taken.” “You may be right,” he says grimly. “It wouldn’t be surprising. But now is not the time. It is too soon to involve the police; that is not how the system works here. If someone does have my wife, I will handle it.” “How?”
“If it’s ransom, pay the money.” “They haven’t asked for money.” “Whatever it is, I will get her back.” “Really?” I say skeptically.
“I love her. What do you think?” “I think you’re up against a pack of ruthless criminals. Forgive me if I don’t stay for dessert.” Eventually I find my way out of Oca territory, through darkened streets throbbing with laughter behind lighted bamboo walls, arriving at the Walkabout to find it empty. Chris, the Englishman, is actually sitting down and reading a book. He seems surprised to see me.
“Why aren’t you in Oca?” “It was time to go.”
“Another outcast at life’s feast,” he says, automatically drawing a Foster’s. “Frankly, I’d rather be in a civilized pub.” “I’m looking for Cecilia.” “Why? Where is she?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask. She wasn’t at the contrada dinner.” Chris raises his eyebrows with mock concern. “Ooooh,” he says. “Juicy! I’ll bet she and the hubby are having issues again.” “Again?”
“Well, she had that revenge fuck with the Commissario, the old fascist. How could she?” “Cecilia and the Commissario? From Torre?” Is this what Nicosa meant by “Whenever your sister decides it is time to come home”? Does he seriously suspect that at this moment she is having an assignation with his enemy, the chief of police?
“You could have heard your sister and her husband screaming at each other all the way from the abbey. She even went back to wherever it is she came from.” “El Salvador?”
“For a while, yeah. Can’t hardly blame her in a way. All the dirty stuff with the mistress all over the press.” “The one who went white shotgun?” “Best not to say that too loudly,” Chris advises, taking an order from some drunks who have just come in, wearing the colors of Leocorno, the Unicorn, orange and white.
EIGHTEEN
There is nothing to do but stare at the fat man with the gun. Uno graso que repugna puerco, Cecilia thinks hatefully, retreating to the comfort of her native Spanish. She has been reduced to a shivering column of fear, while he is enormous. A brute wearing a U.S. basketball tunic. Deltoids matted with hair. Nothing in his pea brain except what he is going to eat next. The soldiers in El Salvador were the same. Hungry peasants — except this Italian thug is citified, swollen up with bad food and disease. The pistol all but disappears inside his fat mitt.
He loves that pistol. He never lets it go, sticking it with bravdo into the waistband of the ludicrous shiny red shorts, not at all worried about blowing off his balls — just one in a cascade of violent fantasies that obscure Cecilia’s thinking as she watches him chew through a PowerBar while lounging on an old desk chair set in the cavernous basement of the massive apartment building squatting over them.
Stinking water collects in a black lake that seems to go on to infinite darkness, stretching beneath blocks of slum housing called the Little City, somewhere in Calabria. She knows they are in the south because of the incomprehensible dialect they speak, hard for even the Italian-born to understand. Also, she knows that they are far away from the long drive in the ambulance in which she was abducted from Siena, after being chloroformed and carried from the church by the two combinatos like another fainting victim overcome by the heat.
Occasionally little boys will scamper past, eager to perform errands delegated by the guy in charge, whose nickname is “Fat Pasquale”—he’s just as fat as the gunman, but differentiated by a curly head of hair, bracelets, and tattoos. The boys, many under the age of eight, deliver drugs and act as lookouts. A literal underground crime network. They don’t seem to care what Cecilia sees, nor do they restrain her. The first endless block of time is passed on a plastic chair fifteen feet away from the goon in the red shorts, who occasionally tosses a bag of potato chips or a half-used bottle of water her way. She tries to keep her feet up on the chair because of the spiders.
Everyone understands how kidnappings work. They are in the news every day, like soccer scores. The mafias have two objectives: get the money and move on to the next victim. Getting the money is easy. Everybody knows the drill and everybody pays. It is simply a form of human pizzo. But the next one — and the next — are dependent on maintaining a level of intimidation that will encourage immediate payment by terrified relatives, with a detour around the police. So before they return the merchandise, to show that they are serious, they cut off a finger or an ear.
Cecilia spends a lot of time in the basement trying to remember what she knows about otoplasty. She has absurd conversations in her head, instructing the goon, when the time comes, how to cut off her ear. “Please swab three times with alcohol, and leave enough tissue for reconstructive surgery.” It is not easy to build a human ear from scratch, because it is such a complex three-dimensional form. Often cartilage is taken from a rib, but you need to be a craftsman. Luckily, because of the increase in kidnappings, both in Italy and Latin America, there are now world-class specialists in the field of ear replacement.
It is roasting down there, and the steaming bundle of pipes overhead radiates warmth like a heat lamp. Cecilia can feel her scalp start to burn, and tries to communicate that she wishes to move. The goon barks obscenities and warns her not to speak. But while he urinates into the black lake, she inches the chair out from under the heat, feeling such triumph she almost cries. Her heart beats with insane hope. If she can do this, she can fly right out of there and escape.
Then everything changes. Fat Pasquale comes out of the darkness to take her upstairs. She can barely walk after all those hours in the chair, but, carried away by euphoric delusion, she is only too happy to go. She never had any doubt Nicosa would pay quickly and naturally assumes she is being released.
NINETEEN
Palio, Day 4—MONDAY, JULY 2, 3:30 P.M. Another day has passed with the wretched slowness only possible in the heat of summer, in a Mediterranean country where time is measured in centuries. There has been no word from Cecilia in almost forty-eight hours, which, in America, would have already kicked off a missing person report. In Siena, during Palio, it gets you a shrug.
Last night’s fervor at the contrada dinner has given way to a mood of lugubrious devotion as the people of Oca force themselves to put on the brakes for the last religious moment before the race: the blessing of the horse by the priest.
A grim, quiet pool of humanity is gathering in front of Santa Caterina, the contrada church on Fontebranda. Nobody is smiling. The quality of tension matches the overcast skies and the oppressive layer of heat trapped close to the ground. Even the press photographers behave with deference, willing to wait with endless patience for the star of the show.
“Sofri, I have to talk to you.” We have found a spot near the front portal of the church. He looks very much the distinguished elder, wearing a beautifully tailored dark gray suit with a green Oca pocket silk, his long white hair artfully swept back, emphasizing the unapologetically noble nose.