John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

Lazarus gave a snort, not too encouraging. But he allowed them out of the cell, and in the process he made sure of everyone’s accessories: Jay’s wallet, the mother’s purse, his own telefonino . Out in the larger room, as Barbara came upright, she smiled at the blood-rush. A rush of revival — the same ferocity as she’d rediscovered up in Cesare’s plus, after that last round of talking in the dark, a renewed faith in what she and the Jaybird could accomplish.

She took a moment to reacquaint herself with the high square walls, the herringbone floor. She looked over Fond’s two backups, whaddyacallem, henchmen, subalterns. In any case they’d left one of their number behind, a lookout at the next exit perhaps. Now as she studied these two, she came to think that the white one, the lighter one, had been one of the beggars in the shade of her apartment stoop, this afternoon. Seemed more than possible, a couple of feelers out from under the Shell of Hermit Crab, poking around the Vomero. They’d been tailing the family for a couple of weeks now, hadn’t they? By the time today’s opportunity came up, they’d learned how easy it was to lure away her bodyguard.

She had a clue, as Jay would say. But the Girl Detective wasn’t much help here, not with those two guns in plain view, one raised and tacking slowly between her and Jay, the other jammed in a henchman’s belt. Then there was the equipment Fond carried, a digital videocamera, state-of-the-web.

The camera was the Hermit Crab’s next concern, as soon as it was obvious that the two captives weren’t going to try anything. Fond and his soldiers bent over the technology, grumbling in French, in Italian, in English. Barb picked out enough to understand that the kidnappers hadn’t found the boss waiting for them, when they’d first arrived at the hideout, because he’d never counted on rounding up his own equipment. He’d expected Maddalena to take care of that. But the girlfriend had realized that today’s caper would get her in far worse trouble than leaping a police sawhorse. That business in the piazza a week ago, leaping and pleading with la Mama while somewhere a camera rolled, that had been another step up the media ladder. But when Fond had suggested the woman pose for a scarier picture, a violation of international law, he couldn’t get a callback. The celebrity renegade had been reduced to haggling on the black market.

They think I ’ m rich , Fond may have muttered now. They don’t understand, our movement isn ‘ t about money .

The guy had been sending mixed signals since back in dell’Ovo, when Barb had squeezed his hand. The hand itself, she’d thought then, had meant he would die young. But she knew today’s code better.

Still, when Fond took up the camera and punched it on, his movements so loose and easy you thought of a dancer, the obliterating white of the spot had her turning away. The gun was worse, its barrel a hole in the brightness.

“Ow,” said the Jaybird. “Can’t we wait a minute on that? Can’t we talk first?”

Barb gathered herself and faced around again. She put a hand to her throat, showing the worst of her wounds. “Fond,” she said, “be sure to get the blood in the picture. Everyone needs to see how you’ve hurt us.”

When Jay glanced at her, his look showed more than reflected light.

“Everyone needs to see,” the wife went on.

“That Maddalena, hey,” Jay said. “She knows what people want to see. She’ll put the blood front and center.”

Barb couldn’t suppress another smile. “You understand, Fond? We’re saying, what do you want to tell people, when you put your pictures on the web?”

She was quiet, speaking without an echo. Jay was the better negotiator when it came to the office, or a maneuverer like Roebuck. But Fond was another matter.

“We know you don’t want money.” She hoisted her purse, its leather freshly scuffed. “You, your movement, we understand, you want something better.”

“Barb’s right,” Jay said, a bit too hearty.

“You want to change the world. You want to do that with this video, and with us two, right here, and in the next ten minutes.”

By the time she’d finished, Fond had lowered the camera. He spoke with his black second-in-command, using yet another language, something from the far side of the Mediterranean. Barbara couldn’t let that go, not with the fresh audacity she’d come to. After the first exchange between the clandestini she stepped up to stick a finger in Fond’s face. She ignored the other man’s pistol, at the corner of her eye.

“You talk to us ,” she snapped. “The people you grabbed off the street.”

Fond’s smell remained wildly out of place, a perfume from a five-star hotel.

Jay closed in too, touching her shoulder. “Owl.”

“I said a rosary over this guy. I said a Hail Mary for his soul.”

This tall and mediagenic blade, this hint of la dolce vita —he’d come a long way from stinking up the security ward in dell’Ovo. And that was his problem, Barbara realized. The man was struggling to get fresh bearings, after spending too long in a scented Jacuzzi, with mint tea and crème brioche by the tub. Fond had become a soul-brother to old Cesare, the priest driven mad in the presence of sybaritic Aurora. But today Cesare had gotten his head on straight again.

“Fond, listen. I’m just saying, this kind of strong-arm business was unnecessary.”

“Playground stuff! All it does it cause a lot of hard feeling.”

She turned to her husband.

“Plus,” Jay added, “remember how you found us here. Hey. Our hands were free.”

Turning back: “Fond, you’ve got our attention. Now what are you trying to say?”

“Except first you’ve got to lose the guns. I mean, guns? Forget about it.”

“I can see,” Barb tried, “how you thought we’d never talk to you. I can see how that was for you. You kept showing up on TV, you kept asking. And, nothing.”

“Talking about emotion, Fond. We feel your pain. We can see you were getting desperate. But guns, forget about it. I mean, today, this, what you’re trying to say, it’s not just for you, it’s for all the brothers out there—”

“Assez, assez ,” said Fond.

He set his arms akimbo, calling attention to his rap-star clothing, the plaid boxers bagged over low-slungjeans. He wore his cell phone clipped above his crotch. “Enough, for pity’s sake,” he said.

His eyes were on Barbara. “I want to bring you and your Paul to the Republique du Mali . To the Sahel.”

Once the former hunger striker went into his appeal, the parents confined their responses to a word here or there. Anyway Fond began by telling them things they knew already. He assured Barb and Jay that he hadn’t ordered the kidnapping in order to hurt anybody or “acquire personal gain of any kind.” Rather all he wanted, today, was a brief statement on-camera. In this the parents would agree to bring Paul and the rest of the family down to equatorial Africa, and then the mother would recite the rosary, as she had when Fond could barely hear her or see her, lying in what he’d believed would be his deathbed. Since then the clandestino leader had been unable to shake his faith in her prayers, even as he’d enjoyed five nights in the penthouse at Hotel Parthenope, the guest of the rock star Sting. How could he forget the Hail Mary of Signora Lulucita, shaky but determined? He believed “the sorrows in the homeland” would begin to heal as soon as Barbara’s recitation was put on the web and streamed worldwide.

At least Fond spared them more than a thumbnail description of how bad things had gotten in his part of Mali. The widening drought and the Saharan gang-war were all over the news. Rather he emphasized that, as soon as Barbara appeared on the first screen down at the desert’s edge, her and her “quite awesome prayer,” his home country “will take a turn towards a betterment.”