John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

Barbara wanted to ask about the virus, she thought it’d been wiped out in a recent World Health initiative, but then Fond gave an order. Another word Barb didn’t know, but plainly an order, echoing round the stony cube. The darker henchman had been expecting it; in the next moment he stepped past his commander and turned his gun butt-end out. He handed the weapon to Jay — handed it over, a sleek gray Italic of a pistol, the kind of iron Silky Kahlberg might’ve carried. Barbara’s husband, too, looked as if he’d known what would happen. He hardly missed a beat in taking the thing, his movement so smooth that his kidnapper’s caramel-colored hand remained extended, empty, long enough for the Jaybird to put his own into it for a confirming shake.

The lanky radical over Barbara meantime had more to say about dying. Fond declared that he was willing to risk a lot worse than standing in the crosshairs of some Marine with an infrared scope. Barb didn’t catch it all, nor what Jay was telling the sidekick, either. She noticed her husband’s tone, reassuring, even fatherly. It sent a pang of remorse through her, since even today she hadn’t quite believed in his pitch. To her, for years now, Jay had always come across as a bit of a con, wheedling, angling. She had to get over that, but just now Barbara couldn’t catch everything he said, not with all this elation ruffling up, so intense it made her drop the purse. She seemed to forget to breathe; the air burst from her heavy chest with half a laugh, half a shout. Hey there, Mr. Paul — what do say to these healing hands? Her husband had one gun, and now the Albanian or whatever, the whiter Shell, was about to offer the mother his. The man was slower about it than the African, taking more time than he needed to yank the pistol from under his belt. He needed to double-check the order, looking up at Fond narrowly. Anyway Barbara wasn’t ready to take the thing. If she couldn’t manage her heart and lungs, how could know what to do with her hands? She tried smiling at the guy, and she hoped she had a finger raised.

She still hadn’t touched the weapon when the two scippatori rushed in, and one of them had a gun too, the nose up and pointed at Fond.

If she’d thought for a moment that these two were anything other than the scippatori from their first morning in town, if it so much as crossed her mind that they were cops or Camorra, Barbara couldn’t remember. It seemed as if at once she’d put together the clues, if you could call them clues. She’d picked out the blue bandanna before the two scrawny creatures came entirely into the light. She’d seen the unmatched skin, one brown and the other butter. She’d noticed the eyeliner and gloss that one was wearing, the darker one, and the sashay in his approach. He was the one with the gun, and that too branded them as the original scippatori . The queer would’ve been the one to work with the late liaison man, and Silky would’ve loved to teach his boys about guns.

Quickly she was on her feet. “Don’t,” she said, her arms coming up with hands open, one extended towards Jay and the other towards the two men who’d split his head. “Don’t, no shooting. Non sparate .”

Back in Brooklyn, she remembered, she’d never thought that gunplay sounded like a truck backfiring.

“Everything’s all right,” she said. “Tutt ’ a posto .” The scippatoro was pointing his pistol at Fond, the lighter-skinned soldier was pointing his back, and Jay shifted his from one to the other. “I’m saying, we’re all safe. Non sparate, nessuno .”

In Brooklyn, as a girl, she’d learned her Italian. She’d learned to recognize a revolver like the one this queen was carrying, a.38, the kind they issued the police.

“Nobody shoot,” she said. “Nobody, it’s safe.”

As a girl she’d wondered how it felt, pointing a gun and then hesitating. You saw it often enough in the movies, they took aim and then — they hesitated.

“Sans blague ,” murmured Fond. “Quentin Tarantino, sans blague .”

“Shut up, Fond.” The American Boss. “Hey. Trying to save your life here.”

“It’s all good, all safe, listen, tutto sicuro .” Barb’s legs and arms were tingling, she’d been down on the floor so long. “Don’t shoot, nobody shoot.”

“We shoot or we don’t shoot,” said the darker scippatoro, “it is as you desire. Miracolosa, santissima , it is only as you want.”

Barbara risked a look at Jay. Had he understood? Her husband appeared to be working on the translation, the connection, frowning and up on one knee. He kept his automatic leveled on Fond’s man.

“Mama santissima , our entire life, its is as you desire.”

The Jaybird eased up onto his feet, giving a groan that may have been an act, a pretense of normalcy, as if he were getting out of the living-room sofa. Once he was standing again, once he could be sure that all the nearby bullets remained in their chambers, he looked to Barbara. “Owl Girl, these guys, are they who I think they are?”

“Our soul,” said the queen with the gun, “is in your hands. Tell us as you desire.”

“Buddy boy,” Jay said. “I mean. Why don’t you tell us something?”

“Papa santissima, Mama santissima . Restore our souls.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” His voice gone gravelly, his gun now trained on the scippatoro, Barb’s husband swiftly confirmed with her who these two were. “Hey, who else? Got the Monsters’ Ball down here.” He mentioned the Vomero church — it sounded like a distant constellation — then turned again to the painted wisp before him. “Except, hey, asshole.” Jay scowled, his bruises stretching like the skin of spoiled fruit. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced .”

The Shell member closest to Barbara, the one from the Balkans, shifted position. That got her attention, even as Jay went into a one-of-a-kind tantrum, his body stock-still while he said things like, “you fucking fuck, I mean, fuck you!” His gun hand never wavered so much as half an inch, and the weapon was pointed at the gut rather than the heart or head. After a moment Barbara extended one of her own hands in front of the next-nearest pistol, the white kidnapper’s. She found she could curl her palm over the open end of the barrel. When the man looked to his moon-scarred commander, Barb did the same, and once more she put a stern finger in Fond’s hairless face. She still had the nerve she’d discovered earlier; coolly she thought through how this must look to him. The former film major would grasp easily enough that the new arrivals weren’t cops, nor mobsters either, and it was likewise obvious they had some history with the Lulucitas. Now the tarty scippatoro, his gel-curls dropping as he dipped his head, was telling Jay that he and his “fellow sinner” would do whatever it took to “resurrect our soul.”

At this the other one spoke up. “We sin against the miracolosi , only the miracolosi wash us clean.”

“Give me a break. You came in here ready to kill somebody.” The Jaybird looked pointedly at the.38, still trained on Fond’s henchman. Otherwise however the husband remained motionless, a manner of speaking that Barbara wouldn’t have believed he was capable of “Same as when you jumped up and popped old Silky.”

The darker sciapptoro raised his overgrown head, perplexed.

“You two shot the NATO man.” Jay moved at last, raising a hand to indicate the late Lieutenant Major’s long hair. “You caught him by surprise in the Museo Nazionale and, bang bang, goodbye.”

The farther of the two, lighter-skinned and unarmed, was the one to groan agreement. He admitted to the shooting and then went into a whispering prayer, his head down. The one with the gun, however, must’ve come here knowing the news was out. He played it tough, baring his teeth at Fond and his soldiers.