John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

“Are you saying, the actual stuff? The stock, the, the bond?”

“Look at it. Think about it. Kahlberg, I mean, this is what the guy needed .”

Barbara settled a hand on her husband’s shoulder, thumbing the strap of his undershirt as she began to understand. Why, Jaybird. Look what we found. Roebuck couldn’t find them, not even with the F-16s just a touch of a button away. But now all the facts were in, they were here on a desk belonging to Barbara’s priest, and while they added up to nothing you’d call good news, they were easy enough to understand. Another folder came open, onscreen, and a dead man popped up with a grin.

Jay looked pained, dripping sweat as he fingered the paper — like the last guy who must’ve handled the stuff There were smudges across the bond’s watermark and wrinkles in several sheets, and this damage must’ve been done by the first day’s scippatori , the two Cesare had been hiding. The NATO liaison would’ve kept his materials pristine. This was his I.D. stock, the most valuable stuff in his over-the-shoulder bag. The clandestini, on the other hand, had been strictly smash-&-grab.

“Kahlberg,” Jay repeated. “Hey, he was already in the shop. The print facility.”

“He told us,” Barbara said. “He bragged about his access.”

“The forms, the logo, he didn’t need that. The NATO logo, the UN, forget about it. Hey. If that guy kept forms around, the whole forms, ready for signature?”

Jay’s eyes grew large, and Barb was already nodding. Everybody had it wrong, both in the offices of the Consulate and in the dens of the Camorra. Everybody was trying to find where Kahlberg had hidden his forms. But a stash like that, lying around waiting for someone to fill in the blanks, would’ve constituted too much of a tangle for the Silk-Man. One more thing to worry about. Rather, whenever he had five minutes alone in the printing facility, he could dummy up an I.D. template.

“This is about the paper,” Barbara said.

“Plus one of the hitters was queer.”

Puzzled, she met her husband’s eyes a moment, then suffered a chill she couldn’t place. She turned to the priest, but he still looked useless, sprawling like an injured crow in a box. Or was the rectory the box, too small for its complications?

“Outside, Owl, hey? You told me. One of our guys swung to the left.”

Barb found no clue to her husband’s thinking in his look, but once again she couldn’t face him for long.

“See, Silky, I mean. He knew what he needed. Time we got to Naples, he knew.”

Her hand came away from Jay’s shoulder, in a zero-G drift. Barbara found her purse, then through the skin of the purse the vertebra of her rosary.

“That guy. Lord of the Underworld. Any angle he could play—”

“Holy Mary,” Barbara said, “Mother of God.”

The Jaybird’s stare offered little comfort. What she mostly detected was willpower, a determination not unlike what she’d picked up in his expression in their bedroom, during these recent nights when she’d been too dry for loving.

“You’re saying,” she said “this is about Kahlberg, what he needed. And by the time we got to Naples, he had it all worked out.”

“Barb, it’s got to be. He had the plan, he had the guys. The right guys, a couple of poor sad creeps, plus one who Silky could really do a number on—”

“All by the time we got to Naples.”

He eyes fell again on the I.D. bond, flesh-colored: flesh once dead but now erupting in fresh sweat and goose-bumps. If she could’ve said more she would’ve agreed with Jay, it had to be . Only one explanation had room for all the folders now open onscreen, and this was that the late Lieutenant Major Player had known the Lulucitas were coming downtown with all the documents required for a family overseas. He’d arranged for the necessary sort of emergency, the kind that would allow him into the high-security cabinet where they kept the watermark bond for the Earthquake I.D. He’d set it up: Americans down, white folks, executive class, and he’d selected the timeframe and street corner — plus the right sort of accomplices.

“One of those guys anyway.” Jay kept his voice low, not wanting to interrupt a prayer. “Kahlberg, I mean. He had one of them wrapped around his finger.”

Now came the sound of the wheels beneath Cesare’s chair. The old man toed closer, first eyeing the papers, then looking up to Barb. How long had he had these things? His destitute guests must’ve brought him this veiny ragstock the way a cat would bring its owner a dead mouse. But that was about as far as she could take her thinking, otherwise tripped up by mounting anger. In her mind’s eye Barbara pictured the Lieutenant Major during his lone moment of sincerity, back in the museum. He must’ve worn the same honest sneer the night he’d shown these million-dollar blanks to his nigger-bitch scippatoro .

“Signora,” Cesare said, “I was bound by the Church, by the Order, don’t you—”

“The church?” she snapped. “You mean, like a sanctuary? A home?”

Jay spread his hands and motioned as if pressing down the air.

“Are you saying,” she went on, “this is a home, here? A place where a person can count on hearing the truth?”

When her husband touched her, Barbara jerked away so hard that the back of her head slammed against a bookshelf.

“Oh, pleas-s-se.” Hissing, wincing, she lifted a hand to her head. “Jay, you’re just as bad.”

“Owl Girl. Hey. Me and you, we were both part of—”

“Oh, don’t, don’t! Are you saying, that first day, it wasn’t all about you and him and the itinerary? Or are you just stupid, Jay? Are you so stupid, you’ve forgotten about the itinerary? That pervert knew exactly where we were going.”

On a bookshelf over one shoulder, on the side where her head hurt, a clock and Bible blurred into figures. They looked the terra-cotta imposters of a Neapolitan crèche, a shepherd and a Moorish king. It was yet another first encounter with the city, the instant version, to go with yet another abortive spell of echolalia:… hey, all I ever did… how else was I going to get around …

“You did what he told you!” she barked. “You went where he told you!”

Then there was the priest, him who had care of her soul. Cesare had laid a long middle finger over puckered lips — and wasn’t that an obscene revision of the crucifix? A depravity, like his endless talk about doing something for the helpless and the clandestine? Mother of God, these men in charge.

“No more,” Barbara said. “No more of this ever. I was right in the first place.”

These men were all the same, their startled heads cocking in synch.

“I’m saying, I want a divorce .”

“Owl Girl, I mean. Not again, babe. We’ve been there.”

“Been there, where? A house full of lies? I had no idea!”

The priest dropped his hand to the chair-arm, readying himself to stand.

“Don’t bother, Cesare. Father. When I think of all the yadda-yadda I had to sit through, that meandering Dublin yadda-yadda. It’s over, Fa-ther. The End.”

Jay tried for her waist and she wound up whacking her head again.

“Don’t,” she groaned, “don’t. What are you going to say, we’ll work on this? We’ll rebuild trust? Listen, from now on, there’s nothing to rebuild, ever. You, all you men , you’re gone, so far as I’m concerned. You’re history.”

“Owl,” Jay said. “Think about it. I mean, the day you’ve had.”

“This isn’t about today.” She found the door. “It’s about forever !”

She turned and bolted. The dash down the long sanctuary felt wonderful, the blood singing in her ears as she plunged into the big room’s cool. She couldn’t hear whatever was behind her. Anyway after the first few strides all that mattered was the goal ahead, where she was going — the kids. The kids needed the truth. They had to learn about her and Jay, about Silky and his paper chase, about Cesare and the night visitors. Even the older boys and Romy, the others had to hear about that as well, another working piece in the whole truth. And Barbara was the one to lay all the pieces out, because at last she’d come to see how to live in the truth. Before she’d gotten halfway through the church she understood where safety began, perfect safety and freedom from any confusion whatsoever. It was squatters’ rights, simple as that. Just hunker down and refuse to budge.