She was finally ready to travel.
TWENTY-FOUR
Lt. Rizzo parked his car in the entrance area to Le Grand Hotel on the via Vittorio Emanuelle. He brushed away the doorman, flashing his police credentials. For a moment, the career cop stood in front of the hotel and took in the grandeur of the place.
Le Grand Hotel was more luxurious than any other in Rome. Not even the Excelsior or the Eden could match its excesses. Its only drawback was the gritty Stazione Termini nearby, the Roman railway station, a bustling intersection of business people, excited travelers, pickpockets, creeps, hookers, and weirdoes. But once inside Le Grand Hotel, all thoughts of trains and of the people at the station vanished.
The lobby was resplendent with sparkling Murano glass chandeliers, white columns, marble busts, and grinning cherubs, a lavish but tasteful explosion of French and Italian styles in muted gold and pastels. Rizzo had been in a few of the bedrooms over the years, on official business and otherwise, and remembered them being recently restored in what the hotel called the “Barocco” style, a mongrel blend of baroque and rococo.
Everywhere one stepped there were plush carpeted floors. Everywhere one glanced, antiques and artwork. Everywhere one turned, a different hand-painted fresco showing a Roman scene. The place had come a long way since 1890 when it first opened, and its luxurious pitch had included a private bath and two electric lights in every room.
Rizzo sighed as he waited for his contact, Signor Virgil Bruni, in the lobby. To stay in a place like this for more than an hour, Rizzo reflected, a man had to be really rich. No, not really rich, filthy rich. Royalty rich. American movie star rich. Internet rich. Russian gangster rich. Even the local mafia guys would gasp at the prices here. What was it? Five hundred Euros a night for a room by the elevator? Eight hundred American dollars. Ouch!
Rizzo’s connection was the hotel’s day manager, an old friend. As he continued to wait, Rizzo surveyed the clientele, the men in designer suits, the jeweled, bronzed women in their two-thousand-Euro suits with their daring miniskirts, their beautiful skin and perfect figures, and their long sleek legs. Outside, the sports cars and Benzes of Rome’s international set glided past Rizzo’s dented Fiat.
Wealth, privilege, beauty, sin, and sex came so easily to these people, Rizzo mused. And what had they ever done to deserve it? Many of the men had been born into it. Others had stolen it. A few had been fortunate and earned it. Then the women had latched onto it. What was it that some French writer had written a century ago? Behind every great fortune there is a crime?
Rizzo’s old man had been in an America POW camp in Sicily, then been a worker in a Fiat brake plant in the north. It had always been Lt. Rizzo’s plan to rise above his police job and join these people who frequented this hotel, to live a life of expensive meals, good clothes, and beautiful women.
He had done his job diligently over the years, but his final goals had been elusive. The system had shut him out. Lieutenants in the homicide brigades of Europe were not welcome in these social climes. They were, in fact, often a nuisance. Rizzo felt as if these people had intentionally excluded him from their cozy well-heeled little clubs. So he hated these people who surrounded him this morning. He hated them with a passion. He would have loved nothing more than to bring a few more of them back down to earth before he retired.
Rizzo settled in at one of the small tables in the lobby. He eyed the whole scene before him, but mostly he eyed a trio of women who were sitting at a nearby table having morning tea. Wealthy Arabs in expensive suits, he guessed. Or maybe Iranians. Who could tell the difference these days?
Rizzo listened to them. They were speaking English. On the table in front of him was a ceramic ashtray with the hotel’s logo. He picked it up and examined it. Clean, sturdy, and new.
No one was looking. He slipped it into his coat pocket. It would be perfect for a cigar at home. At least he would have a souvenir of this trip to the hotel. In fact, he now owned a piece of the joint.
A well-modulated voice came from over his shoulder. “Gian Antonio?” it asked.
Rizzo turned and looked. It was Virgil Bruni, his contact, and no, Rizzo hadn’t been caught palming the ashtray. Or if he had been, his friend was going to let it slide.
Bruni was a small man, modest and unassuming, with a ring of close-cropped dark hair around the shiny dome of his bald head. Bruni’s eyes gleamed with pleasure upon seeing his old chum. It had been two years, maybe three. He approached graciously and extended a hand.
“Hello, Virgil,” Rizzo said softly. He stood.
Virgil. Named for a classic Roman poet and contemporary of Christ, Bruni had become a manager of breakfasts, banquets, bidets, and bathtubs. And he had done quite well at it, judging by his Armani suit.
Bruni slid into the other seat at the small table. Rizzo sat again.
“I wanted to alert you to something,” Bruni said after the opening pleasantries and summoning coffee for both of them. He spoke in subdued tones below the other conversations in the lobby. “About ten days ago, we had two guests here. Americans, I believe. They checked in, went out one night, and no one has seen them since.”
“They skipped out on the bill?” Rizzo asked.
“No, no. They deposited cash when they checked in. Ten thousand dollars American, seven thousand Euros. Not unusual for our clients. But the amount suggests that they planned a longer stay. They did in fact have a reservation for twelve days.”
“Did they cause trouble of some sort?”
“Not for us. Maybe for themselves.”
“It’s wonderful to see you, Virgil,” Rizzo said, “but would you mind coming to the point?”
Two demitasses arrived.
“Sometimes guests register and only use the hotel during the day,”Bruni continued, “as you know. They find more interesting accommodations at night. This couple just went out and disappeared. I have the details.”
The couple had arrived the fourth of January, Bruni explained, a Sunday. The security cameras in the hotel had images of them until the seventh, a Wednesday.
“Their room was undisturbed between Thursday the eighth and Wednesday the fourteenth,” Bruni recalled. “Our cleaning staff is instructed to keep track of such things.”
Rizzo was thinking furiously, trying to leap ahead of Bruni to see where this was going. Until he made that leap, however, the coffee was excellent and up to the hotel’s high standards. Bruni sipped with his pinky aloft.
“We naturally keep passport records,” Bruni said. “Records and numbers. We photocopy the personal pages of the passports. We don’t tell guests. But we do it for our security.”
“Of course,” said Rizzo, who felt the world would be a safer place if more people spied on each other.
Bruni reached to a business-sized envelope from his inside suit pocket.
“Take a look. You may keep this. See if it means anything to you,” Bruni suggested. Bruni then presented copies of the passport pages, including photographs.
Names: Peter Glick and Edythe Osuna. They had checked in as man and wife, despite the different names on the passports. It was not the hotel’s policy to question such matters.
Rizzo looked at the information carefully. “The names are unfamiliar to me,” Rizzo said.
“I see,” Bruni said.
“Should they be familiar?” Rizzo asked.
“When the couple had been gone for six days,” Bruni said, “we alerted the American embassy. At first there was no interest. A young assistant counsel said to call back in a week. But just to be sure, I left the names of the people and the passport numbers. In case some other report came in, an accident or something.”