John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

She took the man in, his black and gray itself a penance, on a hot afternoon. Nettie had taught Barbara a thing or two about Cesare’s order; she’d taken vows with the Maryknoll Sisters before coming out of the closet. The brotherhood was one of the most orthodox. You weren’t supposed to find a Dominican carrying condoms. On top of that he had the Dublin schooling, Jesuit, steel-trap.

“Listen,” she said evenly, “here’s the news. Kahlberg’s not content with spreading nasty rumors, anymore. He wants me to put my foot down.”

The priest’s narrowing eyes revealed a new set of crow’s feet.

“That was today, I’m saying. Mr. Lieutenant Major Mojo gave me an order. ‘Tell that boy the little whore has got to go.’”

This morning’s visit had been to the ruins under San Lorenzo Maggiore, one of the foremost downtown churches, with at least five layers of edifice on the same spot: Postwar on Baroque on Gothic on Roman on Greek. The liaison man had used the word “palimpsest,” dropping his Southern accent in order to enunciate precisely, then pausing to eyeball Chris. But the second-oldest had wanted to see the place, and Barbara too. It was jam-packed yet vaulted stone like that, temple on church mounting far over her head, that tended to exercise her God-muscle.

“But,” she said now, “this morning Romy told us there’s neater stuff right across the piazza. Napoli Sotterraneo , there.”

“Neater stuff? The Sotterraneo’s been closed since the quake, Mrs. Lulucita. Closed for good reason.”

“Yeah, but can you imagine how it sounded to my kids? All these caverns and cisterns and tiny passageways. Romy said it’s like Indiana Jones down there.”

“Please. The figure who comes to my mind is Dante.”

“Well, Father, give or take an obscenity or two, that’s just what Kahlberg said.”

At some point her gaze had shifted to the po-mo altar. The red flecks of stone or ceramic recalled the NATO man’s aggravated face. “The only people who’d been down there lately, he kept saying — well I believe he called them lowlife scum.” Shouting and gesticulating, Kahlberg had let his jacket fly open. He hadn’t cared if anyone saw his shoulder holster. Barbara, even after he’d punched the remote to open the van doors, could only sit and stare for a minute or so. She took in his carrying on, strange as it seems, with a distinct touch of envy. She could’ve used a tantrum herself

“He said that the girl was scum too,” she went on, turning again to the priest, “scum lowlife and a born crook. And a menace, he said. The man put his finger in her face and screamed that she was trying to lure us into a, a compromising situation.”

The liaison had fallen into Orgspeak, the final elastic binder on his self-control. Barbara had to wonder what would’ve happened if there hadn’t been an audience. Various non-combatants had gathered at the bottom of San Lorenzo’s steps, jogging up behind the NATO van (a smaller model, a Fiat, for the trip into the old downtown). The usual needy ten or a dozen, with their medallions — but if there hadn’t been so many witnesses, would the family have seen some gunplay?

“You know,” she added after a moment, “it’s strange that Jay should wind up working with a guy like that. Because Jay’s your basic open book. I’m saying, when the Jaybird’s upset, he might not come up with the right words, but you always know pretty much how he’s feeling.”

The priest went on frowning.

“But don’t you see, our friend from NATO, he’s just the opposite, he’s got a ton of talk but zero information. Don’t you see he’s been a spook, for two weeks now? I’m saying, that girl, this morning, she got the closest I’ve ever seen anybody get to the naked truth about Officer Kahlberg. And all she did was, she surprised him.”

The girl had popped up beside the liaison man before he’d finished handing over the day’s papers. “The rest of us were still in the van. Chris makes some crack to JJ, ‘where’s your girlfriend?’ And then like that, there she is, right there next to our NATO mojo. Can you believe she jumped right in there between the guys who have to check Silky’s papers? That gypsy, she must’ve known one of those two Italians is there for protection. One of ‘em’s got to have a gun, you know? But she jumps right in.”

“Are you suggesting, do you mean…” The old man’s eyebrows, white and fluttering, might’ve been another variety of Naples tassel. “Was this espionage again, Mrs. Lulucita? The girl was trying to catch the officer off guard, so that she might discover something?”

Now there was a question. The morning’s uproar, for Barbara, had concerned other sorts of secrets, the personalities in play. Now the old Jesuit had to wait while she tugged at an armpit. Finally: “I can say this, the two Italians there, the ones that had to check our authorization, they didn’t like the girl either.”

The Italians might’ve come here from the Office of Antiquities, but they lost control as badly as the Lieutenant Major. Angrily they’d shoved her away, and for a moment Romy had somebody’s hand at her throat. A minute or so later, after Silky had popped the van doors — he’d wanted the family to know what he thought of the girl — the Neapolitans were still shouting at her in dialect, threats or obscenities or both.

“I’m telling you, Father, Cesare, I thought we were going to see gunplay.”

Eventually the bureaucrat on the scene, along with his security man, had disappeared back into San Lorenzo. Before they had, however, they’d scowled blackly down the steps at the folks waiting for Paul. Now that Barbara thought about it, she might even have seen the American officer restrain the two. This had happened earlier, just after Romy had taken the men by surprise. Barb might’ve seen Kahlberg slap an extended arm across his cohorts.

Her chosen priest, meanwhile, took care to raise a different possibility. Kahlberg and his fellow-officials might’ve had reason to keep the gypsy at a distance. “If the girl is indeed some sort of crook, they had good reason. Since the terremoto , don’t you know, there’s been no hotter contraband than stolen or forged papers.”

“I realize that, Cesare. Don’t you think that’s what Kahlberg said?”

Using his position at the top of the stairs to face down John Junior — the boy had leapt from the van — the liaison had loudly reiterated what everyone knew already. The quake had left a lot of people without documents, important documents. And don’t you think , he’d gone on, a known criminal associate like this would love to procure some fresh papers for her friends’? With one hand he’d swept back his fallen hair, and with the other he’d stabbed a finger at the gypsy. Fresh documents, easy to fix? Barbara, for her part, had preferred to look at Romy. Once she’d recovered from getting flung across the church fronting, the gypsy had sneered and stiffened her back like the Goddess of War. On your knees, puny NATO Man.

“I know what I saw,” Barbara told the priest. “And if that girl was trying to catch Silky at something, she did it.”

On top of that, Romy had seemed determined to rub it in. The first time the Lieutenant Major paused for breath, the girl had cut off any retort from JJ’s with a sweeping gesture, almost the pose of a model, tossing her head and extending one arm. She pointed across the piazza to the boarded-up entrance of Napoli Sotterraneo . When she spoke, she addressed the youngest on the scene, the twins, all the while acting as if Kahlberg weren’t standing within reach of her frail throat. Oh, there’s a place you girls really want to see . Romy dropped her warrior look, too; she put on a wide smile. Napoli Sotterraneo, totally neat stuff, not another dumb old church. Like, all these caves and secret passageways .