Arcadia Burns

FUNDLING’S SLEEP


AN ARSENAL OF LIFE-SUPPORT devices stood beside the sleeping man’s bed, but most of them were not in use. Fundling was breathing by himself, but had to be artificially fed through a tube into his stomach. His face was pale and drawn. His thick black hair had grown back since the operation on his skull, but it was not as long yet as it had been when he worked as a chauffeur for the Carnevares. And as an informer for the capo dei capi—as well as for Judge Quattrini.

Rosa wondered what else, unknown to her, Fundling had been.

“He looks peaceful,” said the nurse who had just put fresh flowers beside his bed.

“He looks dead,” said Rosa.

The nurse wrinkled her nose and seemed about to say something, but she must have been deterred by the black look Rosa gave her, because she just turned and left the room.

“Who sent the flowers?” asked Rosa.

“It’s all part of the service here,” said Alessandro. “A fresh arrangement every day.” He was standing by the window of the single room. Outside, a well-tended garden reached to the top of the steep cliff on which the hospital stood. The crests of the waves sparkled like rubies in the evening sunlight.

“What a waste of money,” she said, looking at the vase.

“They choose blossoms with a particularly strong scent.”

“To drown out the corpse smell?”

“He isn’t a corpse.”

She sat down on the edge of Fundling’s bed and touched his hand. “He got a bullet in his brain, and who knows what harm it did there? He’s been in a coma for four months. How is that so different from being dead? Apart from the fact that he’s breathing.”

“They say that if it becomes necessary, I will have to make the decision. Whether to let him keep going like this, or…”

“But you’re not even related.”

“No one here’s interested in that. Officially, he isn’t in this hospital at all.”

She glanced up at him. “But you had him moved here from a public hospital. So how—”

“His files say something different now.”

“You had him declared dead?” It shouldn’t have surprised her. In a grotesque way it confirmed what she had just said.

Alessandro turned to look at her. “I’ve made worse decisions that were easier for me, all the same. But this is about Fundling. He and I grew up together. Reading the word dead in his files was almost as bad as seeing him lying here. However, now no one will ask any more questions about what happened at Gibellina. Plus, he’s safe only as long as no one knows he’s here. Word got around that he was working for the judge, and as you know, that’s something the clans would never forgive.”

“But he’s in a coma!”

“It hasn’t been that long here since babies were thrown into vats of acid because their fathers had given evidence against Cosa Nostra to the state prosecutor. Do you think Fundling’s condition would stop people bent on that kind of revenge?”

“He can hardly be any quieter than he is.”

“Fundling will wake up again one day.”

“You think so?” she asked sadly.

He pressed his lips together until all the blood drained out of them. Then he nodded. “Yes.”

She turned back to the bed. The nurse had been right. At first sight Fundling did seem peaceful. Only if you looked more closely did it seem as if a silent battle were raging behind that lifeless mask. Rosa wasn’t sure what to make of it. In the first few days his eyes had moved beneath their lids, but that had stopped some time ago. His features were still now, and yet she thought she saw movement behind them. As if she could see him thinking—thinking and feeling.

It occurred to her that the flowers hid the picture that Iole had left beside Fundling’s hospital bed. The photo of Fundling’s dog, Sarcasmo. Rosa stood up, moved the vase aside, and pulled the frame closer to the edge of the bedside table. Maybe it was pointless, but she wanted Fundling to see the photograph if he ever opened his eyes again. He and Sarcasmo had been inseparable, and even after four months she felt every day how much the dog missed him.

Maybe he could hear everything they said. It seemed strange to her to talk to him when there was anyone else present—even Alessandro—and she decided to come by herself next time.

Alessandro followed her eyes to the photo of the dog and smiled sadly. “Iole says that whatever happens, she’s not giving him up.”

“She loves Sarcasmo.”

“I phoned her while you were gone. She sounded cheerful. The lessons seem to be doing her good.”

“She’s driving her tutor crazy. Instead of studying, she’s been sitting down in the cellar for days on end trying out numerical combinations on a lock.”

“She was locked up herself for six years. If anyone knows how to occupy herself on her own, it’s Iole.”

“But she doesn’t need to do that anymore.” Another of those maternal remarks—she could have kicked herself.

“How many of your old habits have you abandoned since you came to Italy?”

“I’m not stealing now,” she said defiantly. “Well, not often.”

“You’re the head of a Cosa Nostra clan,” he said, amused. “You steal nonstop, twenty-four hours a day, without ever lifting a finger yourself.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Tell that to the judge.”

His grin infected her, and she leaned forward and gave him a long kiss.

Suddenly it was as if she felt Fundling’s eyes on her. But when she reluctantly moved her lips away from Alessandro’s and looked at the sleeping man, he still lay there with his lids closed, the same as ever.

Alessandro was smiling so irresistibly that she found it difficult to change the subject. “I’m going to see Trevini tomorrow,” she said.

“Better leave him alone, if you ask me.”

“I have to rely on him. He’s the only one who knows all about the business affairs of the Alcantaras.”

“He sent you that video to drive a wedge between us. Maybe even to make you turn to him. So how straightforward do you think his intentions are where your business is concerned?”

“If he really has the profits of the Alcantara companies at heart, as he says, he can’t ignore our relationship,” she said. “Suppose we took it into our heads to merge the business of both clans?”

He laughed—a bitter laugh. “We wouldn’t survive ten minutes. Trevini’s not the only one who would—”

“You underestimate him.”

“One more reason for you not to go and see him alone. Wheelchair-bound or not, he’s dangerous. You don’t know what he’s planning or what surprises he still has up his sleeve. That video was only bait.”

“I can’t have him plotting behind my back.” She steadily returned his gaze, and at last he seemed to realize that it was pointless to go on arguing.

“You’ve made up your mind.”

“I don’t have a choice.”

“And you think the video really was shot by this girl Valerie?”

“I was there when she was filming it. The only question is, how did it get into Trevini’s hands?” She hopped off the edge of the bed, walked past him, and looked over the gardens at the shimmering sea. Cutters were on the way to their fishing grounds. It was going to be a clear, starlit night, and the moon hung in the sky, bright white in the evening twilight. “You’ll look after Iole, won’t you, if…?” She watched the window cloud with the moisture of her breath.

“Don’t talk like that.”

“If something happens to me, either tomorrow or some other day, then I want you to look after her. And Sarcasmo.”

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“Promise me.” She turned slowly around to face him, and saw that the evening light was bathing the whole room in gold. Fundling, the furnishings, the walls—and Alessandro. Everything seemed to glow. “Iole has no one else in the world.”

“I know. And I’m as fond of her as you are.”

“Sarcasmo has special diet dog food.”

That made him laugh.

“And he loves his Kong.”

A sound came from the bed. They both swung around.

A wasp, buzzing, was hovering over Fundling’s closed eyes.

Without thinking what she was doing, Rosa lunged forward and opened her mouth—and out shot her long, forked snake’s tongue, catching the insect in the air and crushing it in a fraction of a second. Before she realized what had happened, she was standing there, bent double and coughing. She spat the dead wasp out on the floor.

She murmured a curse that even she didn’t understand. Her tongue quickly went back to its usual shape, but the horrible taste was left in her mouth.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” she groaned, shaking with disgust. “It…it just happened.”

Alessandro put his arms around her. “We can learn how to control it,” he said. “How to start the transformation deliberately. Or how to stop it in its tracks.”

“And you of all people are going to teach me?” She remembered, only too well, the outbursts of temper that always ended with his transformation into his panther form—at the expense of his jeans and T-shirts.

“It’s all just a question of practice.”

She raised one eyebrow. “So what do you get up to in secret when I’m not around, capo Alessandro?”

He kissed her, but when his lips opened she retreated; she didn’t trust her tongue. It probably still tasted of the wasp’s poison.

“Well?” she whispered.

“I’ll show you how to do it.”

“Here and now?”

“No.” He was openly grinning now, but with such charm that she felt dizzy. “I know a place where no one will disturb us.”