Red, White and Dead Part 21

Carlo, the concierge I'd spoken to earlier, was still there, and after listening to the men talk, he glanced up at me, and his expression seemed to be saying the same thing as my hollering intuitive voice. Go! Leave!

The men must have caught his look. They jerked their heads over their shoulders and looked right at me. Then one of them raised his arm and pointed through the lobby, right to me.

31.

I grabbed Theo, pulling him by the hand. "Get up," I said to Maggie and Bernard. "We're getting out of here."

"What's wrong?" Maggie hissed as I half pushed them toward the back of the bar, where a white-banistered staircase went up and away. To where I didn't know, except that it was away from those two guys.

I had no idea who they were. I had no idea what made me run from them, other than the yelling in my head and Carlo's fearful expression.

Theo clearly thought I was losing it. "Uh..." he said. "What are we doing?"

"Just take your bag and go upstairs, please. There's something wrong with those guys, the ones who just came into the hotel. I don't know why, but I feel like we've got to get away from them."

I looked back and saw them. They looked directly at us, walked directly toward us. They glanced around like animals sizing up territory, then looked back, at me.

Bernard, climbing the stairs, saw them, too. "Izzy, if you're scared of those guys, Theo and I can handle them."

Theo stopped and glanced over my shoulder. "h.e.l.l, yeah, we can." Why did he sound sort of gleeful about it, as if he'd like to get in a fight with them? Such a twenty-two-year-old.

"Just get up the stairs. Please!"

They did as I asked-Maggie, then Bernard, then me and Theo. When Bernard and Maggie were about to the top, I heard Theo say, "Whoa."

I looked back at the guys. They were moving toward us. And I saw then that they were both reaching into their jackets and holding guns.

"Move," Theo said. Apparently, his gleeful thoughts of a fun-filled rumble had ended at the site of weaponry.

But if that moment was scary, it was even worse when we saw one guy extract the gun from his jacket and aim it at us.

"Keep moving!" I yelled at Maggie and Bernard.

Maggie stopped at the top of the stairs, her hand on her hip. "What is going on?"

"Go, go, go!" Theo bellowed. When he added, "They've got guns," Maggie spun and took off running, Bernard right behind her. I'd never seen a big man move as fast as he did.

At the top of the stairs, there was another restaurant/bar. But it was closed. I remembered the meeting rooms where Carlo had taken me on the other side of the same floor.

"Come on, you guys." I pushed the doors and hurried into the empty restaurant, headed for the other side of the hotel. I gestured for the group to follow me.

"What's going on?" Maggie said again.

"Don't ask, just run." Bernard said. I liked the guy more and more all the time.

We ran around tables and through a door.

"d.a.m.n," Theo said.

We were in a kitchen.

"We're trapped," Maggie said.

From the restaurant, we heard footsteps and the sound of tables being shoved aside.

"There." Theo pointed to a door next to shelving that held bowls, mixers, pots and plates.

He tried it. The door swung open into the other side of the hotel where the meeting rooms were. We went through it.

"Elevators," I said, pointing, hoping the guys following us didn't know the hotel, that maybe it would take them a moment to find that back door from the kitchen.

Bernard banged on the elevator b.u.t.ton. "What floor?"

"Six," Maggie said. She turned to me. "What is happening, Iz?"

"I think we should get our stuff from the room, and I think we should get out of here."

"Who are those guys?" Theo said.

I looked at him and all I could say was, "I'm so sorry I got you into this. I'll explain."

He shrugged a little. The kid could roll with anything.

But why wasn't the elevator coming? Bernard punched a meaty finger at the b.u.t.ton again.

We heard the sound of footsteps. "It's them," Bernard said.

The elevator opened then and Bernard shoved us all in. I hit the b.u.t.ton for the fourth floor.

"Six!" Maggie said.

"We'll go to four and take the stairs, so they don't know what floor we're going to."

"Good idea."

"Let's just get out of here fast."

"Are you sure?" Maggie said. "I mean, did they really have..."

"They really had guns," Theo said, "and we're really getting the heck out of here."

Maggie frowned and looked at Bernard, who nodded at her.

Once in our room, Maggie and I grabbed our suitcases and shoved everything in them.

When we opened the door, Bernard and Theo were standing in the hallway, looking up and down.

"We haven't seen anyone." Theo took my arm. "Are you okay?"

"I'm not entirely sure."

We ran to the elevator, once again pounding on the b.u.t.ton. Finally one came. And then we heard a dinging sound. Another elevator had arrived at our floor. Bernard corralled the group to the back of our elevator, and as the doors closed, we watched, horrified, as the men burst out of the other elevator and sprinted toward our room.

And then we saw, right before the elevator closed, a door in the hallway being thrown open with force, cracking the first guy hard in the face. He gave a strangled, surprised cry and his hand flew to his face. The guy behind him knocked into him, and they both crumpled to the floor.

32.

W e went to Bernard's hotel, a small villa near the school where he was teaching.

Bernard led us into his room, minimally decorated with white walls and simple furniture. "Ladies," he said. "I think you owe an explanation to two men."

"Dude," Theo said in return, nodding like h.e.l.l yeah.

Bernard bent over a small refrigerator and took out four Peroni beers. He opened them, handing one to Maggie, then me, then Theo.

Theo and I sat on one of the twin beds. Maggie and Bernard on the other.

"So?" Bernard said.

Maggie and I exchanged frightened looks. "Here's the deal," Maggie said. "Izzy thinks that her dad, who died when she was eight, might not be dead. And so she came here to Italy to look for him."

Both Bernard and Theo stared at me, their mouths open in surprise.

"Thanks, Mags," I said. "Thanks for making me sound like a freak."

"I was trying to be succinct."

"Okay, well, here's the long version..."

We talked and talked, the four of us an odd and bizarre quartet. An hour later, I had told Theo and Bernard everything about my father and how I'd been looking for him. I skipped over the part about working for Mayburn. Maggie didn't disclose that part, either. Maggie was always a vault. The information you told her went in and never came out unless you wanted it to.

I told them about my aunt Elena, how we were heading to Ischia to find her, how the Brothers Rizzato-the guys whose case my father was working on when he died-had been from Ischia, too. I told them what I'd learned about the Camorra so far.

I kept looking at Theo, anxious for his reaction. If I had been afraid it might be a little much to have him come to Italy, then certainly dumping this boatload of information on him, was way too much, wasn't it? And yet he didn't look freaked-or maybe I just didn't know him well enough to tell. He simply kept nodding when I talked, his face tense with concentration, as if he had discussions about reincarnated fathers often.

"So, let's go back for a second," Theo said now. "Some Camorra guys killed your grandfather?"

"Right. His wife, Oriana, who was my grandmother, was from a Camorra family originally."

Theo brushed his hair out of his eyes and nodded thoughtfully again. "Oriana was originally from Naples?"

"Right."

"What was her maiden name?"

"Lombardi." I'd found that information among my dad's papers-the ones that my mom had saved for me-but it hadn't led to anything more significant. "It's a common name around here."

"And after your grandfather died, your aunt Elena moved to Italy," Theo said. "I don't get why."

"She said that her mom, Oriana, was having a hard time after her husband was killed. Oriana moved to Arizona to try and put the whole thing behind her. Apparently, her family must have thought Oriana was a bit unstable. They thought it would be good if Elena went away from anything that reminded her of her father. So she moved in with a cousin who lived outside of Rome."

"What about your dad?" Bernard asked.

"He was a senior in high school when his father died. So he just went off to college."

"And got a psychology degree," Maggie said. "He met Izzy's mom in college."

"Then he got his master's degree," I said, "and he landed with the Detroit police."

"And they had two kids," Maggie said.

"And then he died."

"So, who were those dudes in the hotel?" Theo asked.

"I have no idea."

"Do they have anything to do with your dad or your grandfather?"

"Again, no clue. All I know is that I asked my aunt questions about my grandfather and my dad and the Camorra, and I asked questions at that antimafia office, and then I decided to come here and now this happened. Maybe it's a coincidence?"

"That's a h.e.l.l of a lot of coincidences," Bernard said.

"It's just hard to know..."

There was quiet in the room except for the faint tick, tick, tick of a round, black clock on the nightstand between the beds. And a quiet tap, tap, tap on the window.

"It's raining," Bernard said.

More quiet.

My phone rang and we all jumped.

I looked at the screen on the phone, then I looked at Maggie. "Sam."

She pursed her mouth, gave a slight shrug.