The Devil's Own Crayons Page 4

  In D.C., bosses from the Office of International Operations had passed her around. The interviews had started out with probing about her transfers within the agency, particular attention paid to why she’d left Washington. The queries took an interesting turn, going from “Could you work with someone who espoused a particular religious belief?” to “Been keeping up with your Italian?”

  The one they repeatedly asked was whether she’d have problems hitting the road for an extended period. Time and again, Rossi answered: “Tell me when I leave.”

  Her own questions about the specifics of the assignment were met by another question, one designed to shut her up: “Do you want it or not?”

  Whatever it was, if it was about the job, she wanted it badly. Work was her life. At thirty-seven, Rossi was twice divorced and had no desire to see if the third time could be a charm. Her parents were dead. She had no children, no siblings, few friends. Everything was rented, from her condo to her furniture. An existence with no strings attached, no commitment to anyone but herself.

  Headquarters didn’t give her a chance to go back to L.A. for goodbyes, and she didn’t care. From Washington, Rossi had flown directly to Rome.

  Now she stood on an Italian curb, apprehensive because she didn’t know where she was going, but at the same time excited by the mystery of it all. She hoped she was prepared for it, or at least dressed right for it. Compared to the European women standing around her, with their designer luggage and stiletto heels, Rossi felt like a schoolmarm on spring break.

  She was a tall, top-heavy redhead with a narrow waist and generous hips that refused to shrink with dieting and television exercise gadgets. When she was in Rome during her college years, amorous men had literally chased her down the street. Nearly twenty years later, she got a few stares while waiting for her ride, but suspected it was for her long, fiery hair. It couldn’t be for her outfit of no-name flats, black slacks and cream blouse buttoned up to her throat.

  A woman clicked by in a stylish low-cut silk blouse and Rossi reached up to undo her own top button. Had second thoughts and dropped her hand down.

  Two guys from the bureau’s Legal Attaché Office – Legats in FBI parlance - picked her up. They sported similar charcoal suits, glaring white shirts and eraser head haircuts. Todd Borden, who had hair almost as red as her own, wore a blue tie. Robert Klauss, an older guy with gray stubble on his head, had gotten radical with a teal tie. Their black Audi demonstrated that even in a foreign land, bureau personnel drove vehicles that screamed U.S. Federal Agent On Board!

  During the ride, she tried to pump them for information.

  “Didn’t they tell you what it was about?” asked Borden, the driver.

  Klauss turned around and questioned her as if she were a suspect rather than a colleague. “Who did you see at headquarters? What did they ask you?”

  When she recounted a couple of the more bizarre questions, the pair in the front seat exchanged glances. Borden reached forward and turned on the radio. Taking the hint, Rossi stopped talking and stared out the window.

  Traffic was heavy and she was glad she wasn’t behind the wheel, especially once they got into the thick of the city. If Rossi remembered anything from her college days, it was the crazy drivers. None of them stayed in their own lanes. People piloting scooters wove through traffic without slowing and pedestrians blithely stepped in front of cars. Many of the streets - already too narrow to accommodate anything wider than an economy-class chariot – were clogged on both sides with parked cars, delivery vans and rows of scooters.

  She expected to accompany Borden and Klauss to the bureau’s Legat Office at the American Embassy, but Rossi soon realized they were nowhere near that ritzy neighborhood. As they bumped along, she searched for the name of the street. They were on Via Candia. They hung a right and stopped in front of a hotel on Via Tunisi.

  Without saying a word, the two men got out and went to the back of the car to pop open the trunk. Rossi figured they were irked because she’d gotten an assignment that they’d been trying to land. She opened the back passenger door, got out and waited on the sidewalk. Across the street were fortress-like walls and stairs with signs directing visitors to the Musei Vaticani.

  The Vatican Museum.

  “What am I doing in Vatican City?” she asked as the men took her luggage out of the trunk and deposited the bags on the sidewalk.

  “You’re not in Vatican City,” Borden responded with a smirk. “It’s on the other side of the wall. Jeeze, Red. Didn’t you read your Frommer’s?”

  Red. She hated that nickname. He had a lot of nerve using it on her, considering his matchstick top. “You didn’t answer my question. What am I doing here?”

  The driver got back inside the car while his colleague retrieved something from the trunk. Klauss handed her a sealed legal-size manila envelope. “This should help.”

  She took the envelope and looked over at the hotel, four stories tall and painted pink. “My home for a while, I take it.”

  “I’ve put people up there before,” he said. “It’s nice.”

  “Is there a gym?”

  Klauss shook his head with disgust. “You’re in the Eternal City and you want to hide in the basement with a treadmill?”

  “Run,” she said. “I want to run in the basement with a treadmill.”

  He went back to the car and slammed down the trunk. “I heard about you, Red.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What did you hear?”

  “That you were...” His voice trailed off as he searched for the right word.

  “A bitch?” she offered.

  “Intense,” he said.

  “We’re all intense,” she shot back.

  “Do yourself a favor, Red. Relax. Go for a walk.” Klauss nodded toward the pink building. “Go up on the roof. They’ve got a bar and a view. Have a drink.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “Have two or three.” He got in the car and slammed the door.

  Watching the Audi pull away, she felt guilty. She’d been in their position herself, watching some interloper from another office get shuffled ahead of her. She tucked the envelope under her arm. “Sorry, guys.”

  A young woman in a maroon suit materialized at her elbow and reached for the bags. Rossi grabbed the suitcases first and started up the stairs. “I can handle it.”

  The woman jogged ahead of her guest and opened the doors.

  Rossi was embarrassed. She’d been in the country for less than an hour, and was already playing the ugly American. “Grazie,” she said to the young woman as she stepped through the door.

  “Prego,” the young woman said after her, and followed Rossi inside.

  The lobby was small and sparkling clean, with tile floors of rose and white squares. “You have a reservation, signora?” asked the young man behind the front desk.

  She assumed she did, under her own name. “Si. Samantha Rossi.”

  He scrolled down his computer screen. “Yes. Here we are. A standard room for one. Top floor.”

  “Benissimo,” she said with a smile.

  He handed her a key and reached under the desk. Produced a folder. “The gentleman who made the reservations wanted you to have these.”

  She opened the file and saw a walking map and drink coupons for the rooftop bar. Nice, she thought.

  The standard room was the size of a closet, jammed with a full-sized bed and a handful of other furniture. Rossi dropped her bags on the mattress, punched on the remote and got an Italian news station. She kept it on for background noise. Sitting down at the simple wooden desk, she unsealed and opened the envelope.

  Inside were a photograph and a single sheet of paper. According to the brief memo, the man in the picture was going to meet her tomorrow morning at a restaurant down the street, and accompany her to a meeting place in Vatican City. She wasn’t to ask her escort anything about the assignment. No one would reach her before the meeting, and she wasn’t to communicate with anyone from the bureau
unless it was an emergency. In that case, her contact was Logan Camp, a Section Chief in the Office of International Operations. While she had her arrival day to herself to do as she pleased, she was advised to stay in the city.

  Holding up the color eight-by-ten, she studied the headshot of the guy she was meeting tomorrow. An older man with wispy white hair, pronounced jowls, a wide nose and faded gray eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses. Bushy white brows met in a V over his spectacles, and a port-wine birthmark spilled from the top of his scalp onto the right side of his forehead. What really caught her attention, however, was the notched collar of his shirt: Her contact was a priest.

  “Interesting.” She tucked the photo and meager instructions back inside the envelope.

  Rossi showered in a hunched position – the goofy European stall was about four feet tall – and changed into her jeans to explore the hotel.

  With eight or nine rooms per floor, the place was small. The main level had a lounge with painted murals on the walls. On the lower level was a compact workout facility with treadmills and stationary bikes. Supervising the space was a life-size statue, a reproduction of that Greek athlete winding back to throw a discus. Leave it to the Italians to class up a hotel gym. The roof - open for breakfast in the morning and drinks in the afternoon and evening – had a view of the Vatican Museum entrance.

  All the common areas were empty. She checked her watch. Lunchtime, which in Italy could last until three in the afternoon.

  On her way out, she followed custom and dropped her room key off at the desk. She asked the clerk about nearby restaurants.

  “What would you like?” he asked.

  She knew she should stick with salads, but she was in Rome. Screw the diet. “Pizza rustica,” she said, referring to the cheap, by-the-slice joints.

  After inhaling a wonderfully greasy triangle of double cheese from a shop down the street, Rossi unfolded the hotel map. Though Vatican City was on her doorstep, she wanted to see other sites first.

  Meandering east from her hotel’s neighborhood, she by-passed Castel Sant’Angelo, a round-walled castle that started out as Emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum and these days served as a museum. The day was too beautiful to spend inside a gloomy tower of ancient bricks.

  She crossed the murky Tiber River, taking the pedestrian bridge, Ponte Sant’Angelo. According to the walking map, pilgrims traveled the arched span during the Middle Ages to reach St. Peter’s Basilica. Later, it was used to display the bodies of executed prisoners. Statues of angels decorated the span, five on each side, with each winged creature carrying an object related to Christ’s passion. Nails. Cross. Whip. Bernini had designed them, a splotch of art history she remembered from her college days. At the base of each sculpture was a line in Latin.

  Rossi took out her cell and raised it to snap a photo of the angel with the cross. As she lowered the phone, she had the distinct feeling someone was watching her. Turning around, she saw tourists strolling down the bridge, taking their own pictures of the statues.

  At the end of the bridge, she hung a couple of lefts and found herself on a claustrophobic, medieval-feeling street lined with high-end antique stores. After spending time window-shopping, she continued threading her way east, stopping to take photos at Piazza Navona, an oblong square filled with lavish fountains.

  Next was the Pantheon, the domed building with the hole in the top and an interior housing the tombs of some of Italy’s most famous sons. Standing inside the cavernous space, she tipped her head back to the oculus. A bright, white light filled the hole and made her feel as if she were standing inside a spaceship, not a 2000-year-old masterpiece of Roman architecture. All around her, other tourists walked in pairs or groups. Two couples stood together at the painter Raphael’s tomb, and Rossi thought about asking one of them to snap her picture. She took out her cell, reconsidered. Put it back in her pocket. How pathetic to have a series of photos of herself, all alone in this romantic city. Or was she alone?

  Once again, she had the sensation that she was being observed. Whipping around, she saw a group of school children.

  Paranoid, she chastised herself.

  By the time Rossi finished her walking tour and returned to the hotel, the jet lag had caught up with her. She got her key from the clerk and inquired about room service.

  He shook his head. “No, signora. I am sorry.”

  “What about on the roof?”

  “Vini. Birra.”

  Vini would be good. She went up to the roof for a glass of Prosecco, using the drink coupons given to her by her colleagues, and nearly nodded off while sitting at the table. She went back down to her room, kicked off her shoes and turned off the lights. Collapsing on the bed fully clothed, she told herself she’d shut her eyes for a couple of minutes. After all, it was early by Italian standards. Many were just sitting down to dinner.

  While she dozed off, a note was slipped under her door.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Back in the states dinner was hours away, but Trey Petit looked forward to it as he muscled the rag mop around. Whatever else was on the table, there was always fresh, hot bread. He could smell it baking while he painted wet circles in the dull linoleum.

  At the far end of the classroom, a lone student sat at a table. The chair was too high for her, and while she scribbled she swung her chubby legs back and forth. Her movement had a simple rhythm to it that he found enjoyable. Right leg up and down. Left leg up and down. Both legs up and down. Repeat. The late afternoon sun sliced across the girl and the gray floor, making both appear to shimmer with silver – at least to someone who’d enjoyed a joint before coming to work.

  Weird place to work, a convent in the middle of the country. On the outside, it was a regular white farmhouse, except bigger, with three full stories instead of two. Inside was where it got strange. Mostly empty classrooms, every single one with a crucifix on the wall. Commercial kitchen. School cafeteria-type dining room, with long tables and benches instead of chairs. Chapel loaded with pews and more crucifixes. On the second floor, tiny, bare bedrooms that could pass for prison cells. On the third floor, which nobody used anymore, two big rooms where all the kids used to sleep. Boys on one side of the house and girls on the other. He’d gone up there once to clean, and it had given him the willies. All those tiny metal-framed beds with cheese-thin mattresses. A prisoner of war camp for midgets.

  Bizarre as the place was, Petit didn’t entirely despise his job. The nuns paid him well, made him decent meals – always with that hot, fresh bread - and allowed him to sleep in the basement rent-free. The younger sisters probably guessed that he smoked the evil weed, but they let him get away with it.

  He was twenty-four. A little scrawny, truth be told. Scruffy on the days he forgot to shave. Long hair, pulled back from his face in a braid. When he tied a folded bandana around his forehead, he could pass for a young Willie Nelson. If he really wanted one, he could get a date.

  Who was he kidding? Who’d want to get laid in the basement of a convent with a janitor?

  A janitor with seven fingers?

  These were the thoughts that visited him as he dragged the mop around. Stoned as he was, the musings didn’t linger on the date subject, or on any other. That was a good thing. When his ruminations loitered for any length, they inevitably became tangled in one event: The accident itself.

  Stupid. Pointless. Extremely painful.

  As if she’d caught the tail end of his fleeting thoughts, the little girl stopped swinging her legs. “Did it hurt very much, Mister P?”

  “What?”

  “Did it hurt very much when they chopped off your fingers?”

  Petit sighed and continued mopping, working his way toward the child. “I’ll say. It hurt like...heck.”

  “Who did it? Some bad guys?”

  “No bad guys, Missy. Did it to myself.”

  She returned to her leg swinging. “Why did you cut off your fingers, Mister P?”

  He was Mister P because the little gir
ls had trouble pronouncing his last name correctly. It came out Mister Pity, which he hated – it hit a little too close to home - so he’d trained them to use the initial. He called them all Missy. They all three reminded him of that curly-headed Shirley Temple kid his grandpa used to watch on TV, except one of them – the one sitting on her butt in the classroom – was chubbier. Always taking the other girls’ food and toys, Babette was a bully in training. She had so much personality, however, he couldn’t help but like her. Plus not all of it was her fault. Sometimes the other two were cruel to her. Ganged up against her. He could appreciate how it felt to be the underdog. His mop reached the little girl. “Lift, Missy.”

  Babette raised both legs. “Were you mad at them?”

  H swabbed under the table. “Mad at who?”

  “Your fingers. Did you chop off your fingers because you were mad at them?”

  “No, I wasn’t mad. You don’t get mad at your own hand.” He went back to the bucket to dunk and wring. As he swirled the mop toward the blackboard, he noticed her legs were still raised. “You can drop your feet, Missy.”

  She did so, and went back to her swinging. “If you weren’t mad at them, why did you do it?”

  He hated talking about it, even with a little kid. A chain saw in one hand and a beer in the other, he was helping his sister’s husband clear some land. The next thing he remembered was blood on his jacket and all over the snow. Searing pain. Seeing three digits from his left hand – the thumb, index and middle – hunks of raw meat scattered on the white ground. It didn’t even register at first that those things on the snow belong to him, were a part of him. Sickening.

  “Why did you do it?” Babette repeated.

  “It was an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “Saw,” he said. “Sawed them off.”

  “Why did you saw them off?”

  “Didn’t do it on purpose, Missy. That’s why they’re called accidents, for Christ...for goodness sake.”

  “Why did you do it on accident?”

  “Wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. Was aiming for a branch and got my fingers along with it.”