White Shotgun (34 page)

“Thanks for trusting me,” Giovanni replies sardonically, hopping out of the kitchen on his crutch.

The front door heaves shut. Nicosa smiles briefly with something like gratitude. He believes that now he is in control: his wife has been kidnapped for ransom, a common crime he has the power to resolve, as long as we heed the kidnappers’ warning and do not involve the police—and his rival, the chief.

“He accuses me of an act against God, against my
wife
?” Nicosa says of the Commissario as we ascend in the elevator. “He threatens to
arrest
me? Why? To prove Torre is great? I should have strangled him right there!” He points dramatically to the courtyard, a tiny puzzle piece below. “The police are lower than swine. They will never—never—come into this house.”

I have to agree that right now it is better to leave them out of it. A kidnapping is unpredictable enough without an overlay of byzantine grudges and backstabbing disloyalties. I’d much rather deal with normal criminals. As the darkened floors of Renaissance art slip by, I tick off the tasks ahead: install phone taps to record and monitor calls. Establish communication with the kidnappers. Assign roles of negotiator and coach. Sterling has already been dispatched to Chris for the necessary equipment.

Trickier is Nicosa’s insistence that we also do not inform Dennis Rizzio in Rome that contact has been made with the alleged kidnappers. He believes the situation is too porous. If they get a whiff of the authorities, they will kill her. I am not willing to take that risk. This is no time to get all bollixed up in Bureau procedure. When we have something solid, I will inform my boss.

We arrive at the top of the tower. Nicosa hops off the elevator, strutting around like a rooster in his airborne office, while I wonder what crazy arrogance had convinced me that we could pull this off on our own—and at what risk to my career at the Bureau?

The real command post in Los Angeles, created for response to terrorist attacks and natural disasters, is stocked with food and water. Okay, got that. There are dozens of TV monitors and laptops, to say nothing of hundreds of agents. I angle the flat-screen so it faces the empty leather couches, and make sure Nicosa’s computer is online. Nice. Just like home. As for a timeline to keep track of unfolding events, instead of the familiar, low-tech roll of brown paper usually tacked across the wall, I lay pieces of printer pages edge to edge and secure them with cellophane tape, leaning back with a sigh. It’s amazing what you can make out of desperation and a few ordinary household items.

The intercom buzzes and Sofri appears minutes later, carrying a small duffel. He gives Nicosa a strong embrace, patting him on the back.

“Did they call again?” Sofri asks.

“Not yet.”

“Right now they’re playing cat and mouse,” I say.

“I have the money.” Sofri takes off his blazer. Folding the sleeves precisely as a haberdasher, he lays it across the back of a chair. “What do we do,
topolina
?”

“We have to wait,” Nicosa interrupts, before I can answer. “Exactly what I said in the beginning.”

The intercom buzzes. They both jump.

It is Sterling.

When the glass elevator surfaces, it is filled with the alarming shape of a man dressed for war. Sterling, wearing boots, camos, and the black dragon T-shirt, brings soldierly weightiness into the room—the real possibility of someone getting killed. He shoulders the rucksack while carrying a sniper bag in one hand, a scuffed suitcase made of yellow plastic in the other. Nicosa and Sofri step away. This is not their movie.

“How are you all doin’ today?” Sterling asks, setting the equipment down.

“Adesso non lo so.”
Sofri chuckles.
Now I don’t know
. “I think I felt better before you arrived.”

On the other hand, I am feeling decidedly happier, now that Sterling’s here. His presence conveys confidence in the mission. We’re going to do this together. My mood of caution starts to lift, replaced by the adrenaline rush of engagement and the pleasure of knowing what needs to be done and finally getting down to it.

“This’ll be good.” I’m clearing space on the desk for the yellow suitcase.

“What is in there? A bomb?”

“An electroshock machine,” Sofri quips. “In case we get a heart attack.”

Sterling opens the case to reveal a mini switchboard with molded foam compartments for headsets and a tape recorder.

“It’s to monitor the phone,” he explains. “From now on, nobody talks to the kidnappers unless Ana or I am listening.”

“Nicoli will be the primary contact,” I say. “You’re the one who speaks to the bad guys. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes.”

“We are going to insist they let you talk to Cecilia. Before any negotiation, before anything, you say, ‘I want to hear her voice.’ ”

He snorts derisively. “You know how it is in the coffee business? Liars and thieves! The growers and the shippers and the kids who steal from the cash register. You don’t think someone who deals with these people every day is not capable of saying, ‘Let me talk to my wife’?”

I explain gently that sometimes it isn’t words you hear. “Sometimes there are only screams. They could torture her to get to you.”

Nicosa scratches at his head.

“I can do it,” Sofri volunteers.

“You?” says Nicosa. “You’re the one who will need the electroshock machine. No. It’s me.”

Sterling resumes: “Ana is the negotiator. She sits right next to you and tells you what to say.”

“Buona fortuna,”
murmurs Sofri.

“I’m writing you notes. You’re repeating exactly what I write. Sofri, can you simultaneously translate, so we can hear you in our headphones?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Sofri’s listening in and translating. Nicosa’s talking. Sterling’s providing tactical support for how to recover the victim.”

Sofri pats his forehead with a silk handkerchief.
“Mio Dio!”

“Any other questions?”

“How long will this take?”

“No way to know,” Sterling says. “Could be hours, could be days.”

Nicosa’s cell phone rings. We look up expectantly, but he waves us off—it’s Giovanni, reporting that he has arrived at the rectory of Padre Filippo.

“You see? He is a good boy,” Nicosa says, opening the refrigerator to a row of glistening wine bottles. “How about a drink?”

“We don’t advise it, sir,” Sterling says, expressionless.

Nicosa glowers. “Nobody made you
capo.
” But he closes the door.

By four in the afternoon, when the sun has probed each window on its way around the tower, we have turned on the TV and ended up watching
Die Hard
dubbed into Italian. Not really watching it, just someplace to put your eyeballs. There have been five other calls to the household throughout the day, all noted on the timeline, none relevant. The level of anxiety in the room is holding steady at 80 percent. The level of violence on the plasma screen is downright quaint. It is comforting to watch actors destroy large amounts of phony glass. I wonder what it means to die, hard.

As much as I want to reclaim Sterling, even the slightest touch would be against the professional code of conduct we have tacitly agreed to follow as long as we are working the case. We make sure to sit apart; all of us are sprawled on the couches and leather chairs, with the paradoxical sense of a family held together by the suspension of time, like waiting for a baby to be born, or Thanksgiving dinner to be served.

Yet even across the room I feel it when Sterling’s body stiffens. He jumps up, grabs the gun bag, and unzips a compartment that holds a Walther PPK/S 9mm and a cleaning kit. Sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the TV, he fieldstrips the gun, removing the magazine and the front of the trigger guard.

Sofri and Nicosa watch, fascinated.

“What does a private security company do?” Sofri wonders.

“Whatever the customer wants. Bodyguard. Protect assets. Fight a war.”

“Have you ever been hired on a kidnapping?”

Sterling works a soft brass brush over the residue on the outside of the barrel. “All the time.”

“How do they usually end?”

“It all depends on patience, sir. Patience and negotiation. Mind if I have one of those?”

Sterling reaches for a bowl of chocolates.

“Sure, of course,” says Nicosa, handing it over. “Can I get you something else? You didn’t care for my food?”

“It looked great, but I’m not much hungry these days.”

“He just came back from a mission,” I explain. “Still adjusting to the concept of lunch.”

“Really?” says Sofri, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Can you tell us what the mission was?”

“All I can say is, I quit.”

This is news to me. Anything he says would be news.

“Was it difficult?” Sofri asks.

Sterling doesn’t answer. He’s reassembling the Walther, pulling the slide back onto the barrel and checking the alignment.

Sofri and Nicosa watch every move.

“On this mission,” Sofri continues, “was it too much fighting, people getting killed?”

“Is that why I quit, you mean?”

Sofri nods. “If I may ask.”

Sterling finishes off with gun oil and a cloth. “We quit because they wouldn’t give us holiday pay.”

“Holiday pay?”

“That’s right. Promised, wouldn’t deliver, so we walked.”

Nicosa laughs. “It’s the same in every business!”

But I know that’s not all. That’s not why he showed up in my bedroom in the middle of the night, looking like a refugee, looking like something happened that was powerful enough to permanently take away his appetite.

The phone rings.

Everyone scurries into position. Sofri stumbles over a wire. We put on headphones and move to the desk, where four chairs are waiting. Sterling checks the tape recorder and gives the nod. Nicosa hits the phone.

“Prègo.”

The conversation takes place in Italian, with Sofri softly speaking English into our ears.

“Who are you?”

“We have your wife.”

“I want to hear her voice,” says Nicosa.

“Not possible.”

“Why not? If she’s alive, put her on the phone.”

“We want the money.”

“I have the money. But first I hear her speak.”

“We want two million euros.”

“I have it, believe me.”

I write him a note. He hesitates, but I urge him on.

“Tell me where to meet,” he reads.

They hang up. Nicosa rips off the headphones and kicks away from the desk.

“Could you get a trace?” I ask Sterling.

“Disposable cell phone.”

“Don’t worry,” I tell Nicosa. “You did great.”

“This is not going to work,” he says angrily. “You, telling me what to say—they know something is wrong. It doesn’t sound right.”

Sofri intercedes. “You see, first you must talk to the right person. In Italy, the boss never speaks for himself. He is always one or two steps behind the one who is speaking”—which is exactly what Dennis Rizzio told me.

I nod. “I’m sure that with his connections, Nicoli could speak to whomever he pleases. Do you want to make a call?”

Nicosa shakes his head. “You must wait for the courtesy of
their
call.”

We agree that next time Nicosa will ask for the boss, as well as insist that he hear Cecilia’s voice. He jerks the refrigerator open and defiantly pours a long shot of vodka.

Night passes in fits and starts. Some hours go quickly; sometimes the clock doesn’t move. The TV stays on until Nicosa falls asleep on the couch with his mouth open, and then Sofri clicks it off and settles in one of the corn chip chairs, tipping it up like a recliner. The lights are low. Sounds are not lost way up here; crickets and the rustling of treetops blow in with the cold air. Sitting on the floor in an arc of moonlight, Sterling is fieldstripping and cleaning the Walther for the third or fourth time.

I settle beside him. “You’re not eating, and you’re not sleeping.”

He doesn’t answer.

“That’s a very clean weapon. Cleanest I’ve ever seen.”

He raises a warning finger. “Don’t nag.”

I watch him cleaning the gun. Meticulous. Obsessive.

“I’ve been there. That’s all.”

I went through it after the shooting incident—uncontrollable thoughts and some really bad insomnia. Like a vicious case of poison oak, it won’t go away, and everything you do to calm it only makes it worse. Especially touching it.

Sterling’s face is tight with concentration as his fingers rub the soft cloth back and forth. It seems as though he isn’t going to answer, but then—

“Nobody knows what I see through those sights.”

I put my arm around his shoulders. Massage the rigid muscles of his neck.