“It’s Oca, the Goose,” I answer wearily. “I like the colors.” We wait. Mountain ranges are formed and destroyed. There is no wind. The claws of the sun flash out from its striking place behind the clouds. I distract myself by observing the paramedic station. Every few minutes someone with heatstroke is brought in on a stretcher. Now there seems to be an asthma attack. I feel like I’ve known our boring neighbors all my life: an American family — Dave and Heather Bunyon, two kids, and a grandma playing cards — and the Japanese family with a fat toddler in a striped shirt who looks dazed with heat. Pairs of lovers are the only ones who seem to be having a good time.
Chuck offers his copy of the International Herald Tribune. We have already had the stranger-on-a-train conversation — that weird intimacy that springs up on a long journey, which this afternoon promises to be. He asks where I am staying, and I tell him about the abbey and the reliquary of the sainted hand. He knows the property well; he shot a wedding there, before Nicosa bought it, when it was briefly a hotel. He has lived in Milan eight years, and this is the second Palio he has covered for AP. He staked out this spot because it is at San Martino, the most hazardous curve in the track, where jockeys are thrown and horses crash. Padding has been placed against the walls. The pads look homemade and thin.
“How can those work?” I wonder.
“They don’t. They want to see blood. Italy is a brutal society.” He points to the paper. “See that?” “What happened?”
“The Rome police found a girl who was murdered. African immigrant, sixteen years old. The lips of her vagina were sewn together.” “Why?”
“She was a prostitute. Turf war,” the photographer explains. “Albanians and the Italian mafias, fighting over the sex trade.” I remember the willowy African woman wearing nothing but a bikini in the cornfield near the bus station. And the white man getting out of the car. No doubt she answered to the same type of criminal sociopaths who are holding Cecilia.
Seeing my reaction, Chuck says, “What’s the matter? Do you find the word vagina embarrassing? Some women say it’s a turn-on.” “What?”
His cell phone rings. I try to move away, but it is impossible. People who had claimed a space with blankets on the brick are now forced to stand. The Japanese toddler is picked up and placed over his father’s shoulder. The Bunyons pack up the card game and squeeze into a nervous cluster. My abdomen is being pushed up against the rail, as the remaining space is squeezed out by the pressure of spectators continuing to push inside. People are literally hanging from the palazzos on overloaded balconies and stone outcrops. When everyone is finally jammed together it will be impossible to even turn around. A bunch of humanity the size of a small city — upright as asparagus, packed together, and tied with a bow — for anyone intent on doing harm.
Chuck jumps up on the milk crate, swinging an enormous telephoto lens over my head. I duck as the motor drive fires.
Stepping down, he grins, very pleased with himself.
“I just got a tip worth five grand. My buddy called me to say there’s a famous actor in the VIP lounge.” “Where?”
“Up there, in the temporary police headquarters.” He points toward the palazzo to our left. We can see figures in the windows.
“Take a look,” the photographer offers, holding up the viewfinder.
I see the actor and the Commissario. Clear as day.
“I can introduce you later,” Chuck whispers moistly in my ear.
“Good-bye, Chuck.”
“Did I offend you?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll never find a better spot!” he warns, cursing after me in Italian. Associated Press, my ass. I should have recognized a lowlife paparazzo.
The folks nearby are thrilled to step aside in order to suck up my space, not so the walls of anxious onlookers. Head down, shoulder in, there’s nothing for it but to charge, holding my position by the black and white flag of Istrice, the Porcupine, flying from the VIP palazzo.
The commanding officer of the military police is a hunk in his sixties, with broad shoulders and a thick gray mustache standing out against dark skin; with medals on his chest and on his beret, he looks like he just invaded Greece. He flicks me off like a fly, and none of the grim carabinieri, whose cold eyes sweep the crowd, pay attention to my garbled entreaties in Italian, so I sneak inside by following in the slipstream of a French TV crew, through heavy brass doors to a cavernous lobby bustling with cops and members of the press. We go up the staircase, where I recognize the light blue uniforms of Inspector Martini’s provincial police, who have taken over an apartment on the second story.
Paintings are still on the walls and vases on the mantel, but folding tables and chairs have replaced the furniture along with a minefield of wires supporting laptops. Everyone’s wearing ID tags and radios. I feel like the old guy in the park with his fingers curled around the chain link, watching the hot high school pitcher, longing to get back in the game that used to be his.
I’d better make a move before someone throws me out. The lumpy-bodied, melon-headed officer I met when Giovanni was in the hospital is sitting at a nearby terminal.
“Ciao,” I say heartily, like we’re old friends. He looks puzzled until I give the universal password: “CSI!” He breaks into a grin with those twisted teeth. “CSI!” “Dov’è Inspector Martini?” I ask, but before he can answer, she’s right there: a Madonna in a tight blue uniform with a white gun belt, cradling a carton of cigarettes.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
I take her aside and lower my voice.
“I have to see the Commissario.” “You can’t. The race is about to start.” “I need his help. My sister is still missing. There’s been no note. No demands. What you said last night is true. She’s been taken. I know Cecilia was once a special friend of the police—” Inspector Martini doesn’t flinch. Oh, God, is she sleeping with him, too?
“I’m hoping the Commissario will start an investigation—” A polished wooden door opens and the Commissario steps out of an adjoining room, along with two senior commanders with creased faces and crisp suits. The slender chief of police has flat brown eyes and hollow cheeks, like a cipher. Inspector Martini grabs my wrist and hauls me into his line of sight, talking rapidly in Italian. He shakes my hand and his long soft fingers linger. The five of us keep walking past the computer tables, aiming for the door. Inspector Martini has ten seconds to tell him my story, before they are faced with a coliseum’s worth of spectators pumped to the gills at the most dangerous horse race in the world. Does it register with him who was taken? That it’s Cecilia Nicosa?
He utters five words, like the crack of a whip, affirming what Martini has told him: “You are from the FBI?” “Yes, but that is not why I’m here. She’s my sister. They almost killed my nephew. The FBI’s hands are tied. The only one who can find her is you.” “It seems the Nicosas are a marked family.” From beneath the fixed hooded eyes comes a piercing stare. He gives me his card. “I promise we will do everything possible to locate Signora Nicosa,” he says, and the entourage, including Martini, disappears through the door.
By the start of the race, I have inched and squeezed back through the spectators to almost where I was. Now points of sunlight crown the roofs of the palazzos, a moment that must be significant to the Sienese celestial calendar, because a heightened alertness has come over the multitude, the way a flock of birds will settle down, the body language of one individual passed to the next. When the corona of the sun spikes at a certain angle, sixty thousand bodies become absolutely still in the golden bowl of the Campo.