John Domini - Earthquake I.D.

Jay remained at Barbara’s back, close enough to make the snatch, as once more he acknowledged that he liked Fond’s idea. “They’re the pros, up there, the newspeople. It comes to spectacle, I mean, that’s what they do.” Jay wasn’t just telling the man what he wanted to hear, either. Also the husband reiterated that a trip to Mali didn’t seem realistic. The problem wasn’t only that the Lulucitas had family issues, he pointed out; on top of that, the authorities might question their security. “Hey, never mind Africa, they might not let us back into New York.”

“But I will say the rosary with you,” added Barbara.

The young man squinted down at her, picking at his low beltline.

“Fond, you know me. You know I’ll have to get those beads out.”

“I know, yes. For this reason, I am making the plan with my lieutenant.”

Barbara remembered: the two Africans murmuring cheek to cheek as the exchange of weapons hung in the balance. “So, I’m saying, it’ll happen the way you want, up in front of the cameras. I’ll say a Hail Mary for you and you people.”

No more playacting , Barbara had told him, and she wasn’t playing now. She could hear the difference when Jay did the talking. She was in love with the big Jaybird, no question — tickled afresh by that love, both in a half a hundred familiar ways and in ways she’d never felt before. Nonetheless she could hear the difference, the long-ingrained dissembling of the salesman. But then Jay had a lot to handle, even without the gun, he had a wife with a goofy smile and feathers in her ribcage. Barb was a mess, to boot, as crumpled and stained as the Jaybird’s bartered I.D. She began to think about the ibuprofen she carried for cramping. She began to think of Cesare, the priest she’d chosen for her work in Naples. Another university man who’d been all over the map, Cesare would’ve proven useful down here.

The least she could do was mention the time. Jay had called it, said Barbara: the longer they stayed in the Sotterraneo , the worse things were likely to be upstairs.

“Think about it,” she said. “Roebuck will call in the hovercraft—” and she broke into a chuckle, though she managed to disguise it as a clearing of the throat. How could she talk so silly? Hovercraft? But Fond massaged his long neck seriously. He said there was something else the Lulucitas needed to know. Whatever else might be up outside the condemned restaurant, in the wine cellar they would find another member of the Shell.

“Perhaps you are remembering, earlier, there is another man with us—”

“I remember,” said Jay.

Fond picked at his cell phone, head down, explaining that he’d posted this man in the restaurant basement as a lookout. “He has a weapon, too,” said the commandante , “but I will reach him.”

He snapped the phone off his belt-loop. “As you go up, there comes the signal.”

Barbara’s impulse to laugh drained away. Jay was the first to respond, looking from Fond to her, thinking aloud about what it would look like when they came out into the wine cellar. “First there’s us coming out,” he said, “second there’s Fond, okay so far. This lookout, hey, he knows us. But do we want anyone else climbing up…?”

“But, ‘anyone else?’ Who else, monsieur ? Truly, you must realize, I will be the only one to return with you to the streets.”

Barb let her gun-hand drop to her side. “Of course.”

“Is this not the significance,” Fond went on, “when you are giving away your documents? These soldiers of mine, these friends of yours, they are free to go.”

“Friends of ours?” Jay put it. “These two? I don’t think so.”

“Of course,” Barbara repeated, “yes. We knew what we were doing, when we gave away our passports.”

Fond showed her a youthful smile, wide-eyed, without the lemon wedges that that she’d found so hard to take in Castel dell’Ovo. As for her husband, when he stood this close she could see how many of his chin-hairs had gone white, a white that had nothing to do with the limestone — but her aging husband too appeared comfortable with the idea.

“Hey,” he told her, “didn’t I just say, we don’t want to go back there?”

The Jaybird must’ve figured out the consequences of handing over the I.D. the same time as the two Africans. “Less we have to squabble about,” he said, “the fewer complications on our way out, the better.”

“I must insist, I alone am returning upstairs.” Fond too sounded offended. “Only in that way is my project enabled.”

Barbara got a look at the others. Neither the scippatori nor the soldiers had failed to grasp the exit strategy. As they jawed over their books, one pointed off towards Germany, another towards the U.S.

“Upstairs, when I am speaking for my brothers and sisters without a roof over their heads, I am knowing that these down here have their mobility.”

Barbara could think of no better way to prove that she was with the man than to squat down and, propping the purse open before her, shake the bullets from her revolver into the bag. She found the barrel release at once. Maybe a cop had shown her once, back in Carroll Gardens, or maybe an uncle in the East Village. Jay uttered a moment’s objection, a garble, a yawp, but he made no move to stop her. She would swear that what she heard was the sound of a man conceding the point — the safest way out was to go unarmed. Perhaps however she only heard the soft thump of the rounds falling into in the bag. They landed against the rosary at the top of her goods. After that the iron was nothing but a paperweight, and a considerably lighter one at that. As Barbara straightened back up she had no trouble tossing the thing off into the darkness. She didn’t have to check the scippatori again, or the Shell members either. Everybody held their peace.

She faced Fond and asked if there were anything else.

Fond turned to his soldiers, still practically at his shoulder, and conferred in a murmur. Barb and Jay couldn’t have heard even if they’d known the language. After a moment, the husband took the opportunity for a private talk of his own. “Owl, I mean, it’s a risk.” His gaze showed off his deepening crow’s feet. “There’s, what, a hundred things? A hundred things could go wrong.”

Jaybird, a thousand. Barbara touched his hip and cast a glance at the scippatori, starting to say that at least The Moll and his friend would be watching their back. But the femme of the two jumped to his feet as soon as she turned his way. He moved with a revived charisma, like Fond, though this clandestino had curls to toss.

“Yes,” declared The Moll. “We go free, so that you are forever safe.”

The thief blinked, long-lashed, pretty. “We go free, all over the world, and we are watching for you. Maybe we are over in New York, and we are watching.”

He summoned up an unlikely smile, at once imp-like and dignified, and broke into song: “Every mo-ove you make, we be wa-atching you.”

Barbara thought of JJ, his one-liners. You learn that from Silky ? Still, the song made the wiry youngster seem more real-world, a pop reference from after 1930s. The Jaybird followed up accordingly, telling The Moll it was time he started watching out for himself. “I mean,” Jay said, and hesitated. Barbara could see his problem, needing to say it without recourse to New York shorthand.

“Jay’s right,” she said. “You and your friend have helped us enough.”

“You’ve helped us enough,” Jay said. “Any bad stuff this family went through, because of you, it’s over now.” He gave the washing-hands gesture. “ Capisce ?”

“You already saved our lives. Today, you saved us.” Barbara recalled the museum, too, but thought better of mentioning it.