Jeff Carson - Foreign Deceit

“Please,” she beckoned again. “Come in.”

He realized he was just staring dumbly. She looked a lot better than he’d remembered, and she didn’t seem to be trying too hard. Maybe it was her chipper mood and spring in her step. Or the beautiful body, face, hair and eyes.

“Who was that?” He pointed to the stereo and shut the door behind him.

“Oh, it’s a group from New York. Incognito.”

“Okay. Yep.”

She looked skeptical. “Really? You? Country boy from the Colorado mountains?”

“Yeah. I like them actually. I’ve got some of their stuff, but I’ve never heard this CD.”

“It’s their newest. It’s great,” she said. She turned it a little louder. “I would think you listened to country music.”

“I do.”

She laughed, walking to the kitchen. “So what’s happening?” She lifted a pan lid revealing a simmering tomato sauce.

“I was hoping you could give me a ride somewhere tonight.”

“Right now? I’m about to eat. Are you hungry? I have plenty of food.”

He looked at the spread. “No, it can wait until later. And yes, I am hungry.”

They ate pasta and listened to jazz while it rained torrential sideways sheets outside, drumming the dining room window. They mostly swapped stories about John.

He felt energized after the conversations, meal, and the nap from before. “Cristina.” He looked at her with a serious expression.

“Yes? What’s going on?”

“I need to know about these guys who own this pub. The Albastru Pub that John was always going to.”

“Okay.”

“Do you know the guys from home? From before you came here?”

“No, I don’t. Why? Because we are both Romanian?”

Wolf wiped his mouth and looked out the window. The rain was letting up gradually. “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. How about this guy, Ferka Vlad, from the observatory? Did you know him from before?”

“I’ve met him before at the pub once. But it was just the one time. There really are a lot of people from Romania in Italy. But I don’t know many. I know that they are often looked at as criminals here, though. There is a lot of crime in northern Italy, where there is more money — more theft and people’s houses getting robbed. The finger is often pointed at the Romanian.” She shook her head. “There are bad Italians just like there are bad Romanians. But I do know that those guys at the Albastru Pub look bad. I would bet a lot of money they are criminals.”

“So would I.” Wolf looked out the window. She didn’t seem to be lying.

“Why? What’s going on? What have you found out?”

“I’m pretty sure that the owner of that pub and this guy Vlad killed my brother. But they’ve covered all their bases, and I can’t prove it. They’re smart. Or one of them is smart.” He set down his fork. “Or, they’re getting lucky.”

He looked around the kitchen, then got up and walked over to the knife set on the counter. He pulled four smaller knives on the bottom row, then checked the larger blades on the top. “You know my brother doesn’t have a single knife in his apartment other than four butter knives? Didn’t he ever cook?”

She laughed, then stopped, watching him put all but two blades back. He picked them up in one hand and brought them back to the table.

“Wh-what are you doing?”

“I need these.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked. “You have to be careful with those guys from the pub. I’m serious. They are probably killers.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She shook her head with glistening eyes. “What are you going to do?”

“It will come to me.” He picked up the plates and put them in the sink. “They beat my brother over the head and strangled him to death. And they beat Matthew Rosenwald’s head in. Making it look like my brother did the whole thing.”

He fetched the blades from the table and put them back in the wooden housing.

“I’m going to just bring this down to my brother’s apartment, okay? I’m sorry, you’re going to have to get another set. If anything happens, I don’t want anything tied to you. And come to think of it, it really would be better if I could just borrow the scooter tonight.”

Faint ambient light from the city beyond the piazza streamed into his brother’s otherwise pitch dark bedroom. His show of walking around in his underwear, turning off the lights in the entire apartment, as if turning in early, was over.

Now he was dressing quickly. Wearing the darkest clothes he had, without overtly looking like a cat burglar. The two most important things he wore were tucked into his socks — two kitchen knives, the blades loosely covered with folded paper towel sheathes to protect his skin.

His stomach was queasy with nerves. He was paranoid from seeing the Alfa Romeo in the side mirror earlier. But more importantly, he needed to prove something to himself. There was no other way to know for sure how the killers left his brother’s apartment, leaving it locked from the inside.

He patted the knives, twisting his ankles to test the tuck-job, adjusted his socks, and went to the balcony. The piazza was ninety degrees to his right and out of site, on the other side of the A-ridged roof. The roof extended straight out to a distance of at least fifty yards. He could hear the murmur of a bustling Friday night crowd and see bright lights pouring upward against the thick humid air, swirling with insects.

There was no moonlight shining on the ceramic roof. It was dark, difficult to get a sense of the exact angle of pitch. He knew it wasn’t too steep to navigate, no more than thirty degrees, but steep enough to keep his heart rate racing, and wet enough to quicken his pulse even more. If it was a ski slope, it would have been labeled black diamond.

The roof butted right up against the balcony to his lower right. Ceramic tiles could be brittle, and he had no idea how old and brittle these were. He also knew that old ceramic tiles that were wet after a rain storm were probably slick with a thin film of clay.

He looked over the edge to his left, away from the roof to the narrow walking alleyway below. It was far. Three vaulted-ceilinged floors up from the hard cobblestone ground. He stared for a full minute, not seeing a single soul.

He gritted his teeth, gave a sharp exhale, and stepped over the railing. He put his left foot on the roof and gradually placed more and more weight on it while still straddling the balcony. There was a creak. He placed more weight still and tested the traction of his left foot.

Satisfied, he stepped his other foot over, and made the entire transition to the roof, laying forward in a low push up position, on his hands and tip toes.

Wolf’s stomach fluttered as he thought of slipping over the edge, hearing the gradual rush of air becoming deafening right before he hit the ground with an unfathomable pain. Jesus. He shook his head, thought back on his Army Ranger training and how this was nothing, looked up, and crawled.

Small ceramic scrapes and creaks accompanied every movement, though the tiles seemed solid. He shuffled quickly up towards the ridge of the roof that was a straight line of shadow against the bright piazza beyond. He stopped just before the top, not wanting to risk being seen from the other side. He got to the soles of his feet, stooping with his right hand in contact with the tiles, and made his way.

Step by step, foot by foot, the tiles held up beneath him as he crept along carefully keeping focus.

Impatience overwhelmed him. He glanced at his watch and noted the ten full minutes it had already taken him to travel a mere thirty yards.

He stood up with bent knees, arms out for balance. Looking to his right, he couldn’t see the other side of the roof, so no one could see him from below. He began walking at a faster pace toward the dark void that was still twenty yards ahead.