“You have something to tell us, darlin’?”
“I know where Giovanni’s mother is. I saw her.”
THIRTY-FIVE
For fifty euros and a gelato she agrees to come with us, moving out of the range of eyes and ears in the Oca district, staying with the crowds, through the clogged commercial center, past McDonald’s and the post office, to the flat residential neighborhoods as they steadily grow darker, streetlights dimmer and more sparse. The closer we get to the edge of the city, the quicker we pick up the pace, Giovanni keeping up with the crutch.
Explaining that her boyfriend, Yuri, has just moved out, Zabrina nestles seductively between Giovanni and Sterling, filling out the image of the vamp she cultivates — ripped leggings under the miniskirt, big gold-tone earrings, and multiple strands of plastic beads. Her lips are matte red, her eyes rimmed with black, the pupils enlarged. She tramples along in silver heels like some kind of gypsy rock star.
Sterling steers us toward the bus station. The kiosk is closed, but one bus is lighted and idling near a concrete island, exactly where I had landed from Rome. In the distance the wine bar in the Medici fortress where Zabrina and Giovanni met is still lighted and alive. Sterling and I don’t have to speak to confirm the intuition both of us have had since leaving Oca: that we are being followed.
Sterling orders the kids to get on the bus.
Giovanni objects. “You have to buy a ticket.”
“Then buy the tickets.”
“To where?”
“Doesn’t matter where. Just do it, fast.”
And Giovanni does. When we first met, at this spot, he was late. Irresponsible, even spoiled. The difference is that at that time he had still been whole — he could take for granted his mother’s steady presence, that his parents would be the center of his world forever. Picking up his American aunt had been just one of his many important obligations, including a flurry of calls to his customers in the bank of cocaine, the moment we got into the car. He bounded like a retriever then, never out of breath. Now he is willing to take orders, careful not to twist the leg or tweak the arm as he turns from an automated ticket machine. There is no way back to being that uninjured sixteen-year-old.
“Where do we go?” Zabrina asks as we hustle up the groaning steps of the bus.
“Just for a ride,” I assure her.
“Where?”
“Monteriggioni,” Giovanni answers. “Not far.”
“Why?” she asks, showing a suspicious streak that we will have to negotiate.
“Do you have other plans?” Sterling wonders, keeping her moving toward the rear.
She blinks at him with her kohl-rimmed eyes. “What kind of plans?”
Although we are the only passengers, the four of us have squeezed into the very last row, where we can see anyone who comes on board. The doors close and the bus moves out. You can feel the heat of the engine through the seats. Already Zabrina has a crush on Sterling, and it is easy to see why. He is the type of man who looks great even in yellow LED transit lighting, while everyone else appears tubercular. At ten-thirty p.m., on a local bus to nowhere, he is alert and protective, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the darkened countryside — which must appear to a young excitable girl as sexy indifference.
Mind you, if she were an asset we were working through the Bureau, things would be entirely different. We would still be back at the field office, filling out permission forms, and no encounter would have taken place without a remote team recording every word. But here in the back of the bus, there are no rules. We can get information out of Zabrina by any means.
“Why you kidnap me? I think maybe I should be scared.”
“You are free to go, any time.”
“In the nowhere? In the night?” she says haughtily. “What is that?”
“We need for you to tell us exactly where you saw Signora Nicosa,” Sterling says nicely. “And we don’t want anyone else to hear.”
“Oh, sure.”
Giovanni assures her this is true.
“I want a cigarette.”
“You can’t smoke on the bus.”
“Who cares?”
“It will draw attention.”
She stands, swaying with the movement. “I get off.”
“Why are you such a bitch all of a sudden?” Giovanni snaps. “You’re the one who came looking for me.”
Hanging on to a strap, Zabrina bends over in pain. A tremor passes through her body.
“I am scared.” She catches her breath. “I am looking for Giovanni and everyone knows I am—una straniera.”
“A stranger,” Giovanni explains. “When she entered the Oca district and was asking for me, naturally people are suspicious.”
This is a surprise. “I thought he was looking for you.”
“No, no,” says Zabrina. “We don’t really know each other. I search to speak to Giovanni, to tell him where his mother is. Because I hear his name from …”
“Around,” Giovanni interjects, as if we couldn’t guess it was through other druggies in the contrada.
“You went looking for him?”
“That’s a dangerous game so close to Palio,” Sterling drawls. “Is why I scared.”
She fidgets with her earrings. Sterling eases her into a seat and she sits with obvious relief. But the effort to speak English is too hard, and she begs Giovanni to translate.
“I am from Calabria,” she continues emotionally in Italian. “The poorest place in Italy. It is not like the north. The countryside is not like here. There it is very rocky and hard to grow things. The mafias — Camorra and ’Ndrangheta — they are a way of life. No family is untouched, and don’t get me wrong, the women are just as bad. They will be on the cell phone warning their sons what’s going on in the village or if someone has a grudge against them — because they are proud of their sons, they help them climb the ladder. Everyone sees people murdered in the streets, even little children. You can’t get out.
“It sucks for everyone. But if you’re poor, what do you do? My mother used to sew. She made lace and towels and things like that. It brought in a little money. In Calabria, the way to make money is drugs. You sell a little, you do a little. Then you become a courier. My mother was a courier. Yes, of course I am angry. She was a middle-aged woman taking drugs into the United States. I wish she’d been caught because now she is dead — one of those murdered in the street. A guy goes by on a motorbike and poom poom poom, at the market, in front of everyone. There were protests at the funeral and everyone got upset. A mother! It was in the news.
“I know I’m addicted. We’re all addicts — my friends, my old boyfriend, Yuri. We know we’re all going to die. I knew from the time I was born I was going to suffer. I tried to leave and come to a beautiful place like Siena, but it is my fate to suffer, like the women in Calabria. Sometimes they marry you off, and then the husbands leave. My father drove a truck all over Europe. He was never home. My mother raised six children alone. When I saw that lady … Giovanni’s mother … I recognized her. She was the doctor in Siena who said I have to stop taking drugs because already, at this moment, I have hepatitis.”
“You have hepatitis?” Surprised, Giovanni asks in English.
She pats his hand. “Don’t worry, I am fine.” Continuing in Italian, she says, “I went to Calabria to get high. Big deal. If you get there right after a new shipment comes in, the stuff is good, and my cousin, Fat Pasquale, takes care of me. This time, we went there to get high and Yuri almost died. Because that sick freak with the hands like Frankenstein made it too strong. He couldn’t give a shit. You are just a sack of weeds to them. And I saw this poor lady — I am sorry to tell you because she is your sister and Giovanni’s mother — well, she looked very bad.”