Unlike Woman One, a moment ago, they both ignored him but Garry didn’t care. He was in a very good mood. And what twenty-three-year-old wouldn’t be, having exchanged his home state of Missouri (sorta, kinda like Kansas) for Italy (Oz without the flying monkeys)?
The athletic young man—built like a running back—hitched his heavy backpack higher on his shoulder and turned the corner that would take him to his apartment on Corso Umberto I. His head hurt slightly—a bit too much Vermentino and (Heaven help him!) cheap grappa at his early supper a half hour ago.
But he’d earned it, finishing his class assignments early in the afternoon and then wandering the streets, practicing his Italian. Slowly, he was learning the language, which had at first seemed overwhelming, largely because of the concept of gender. Carpets were boys, tables were girls.
And accents! Just the other day he’d raised eyebrows and earned laughs when, at a restaurant, he’d ordered penises with tomato sauce; the word for male genitalia was dangerously close to penne, the pasta (and to the word for bread too).
Little by little, though, he was learning the language, learning the culture.
Poco a poco…
Feeling good, yes.
Though he would have to rein in the late-night parties. Too much drinking. Too many women. Well, no, that was an oxymoron; one could not have too many women. But one could have too many possessive and temperamental and needy women.
The kind that he, naturally, ended up bedding all too often.
Naples was far safer than parts of his hometown of St. Louis but instinct told him he probably shouldn’t sleep over in strangers’ apartments quite so much, waking to the girl, bleary-eyed, staring at him uncertainly, muttering things. Then asking him to leave.
Just control it, he told himself.
Thinking specifically of Valentina, a few weeks ago.
What was her last name?
Yes, Morelli. Valentina Morelli. Ah, such beautiful, sexy brown eyes…which had turned far less beautiful and far more chilling when he’d balked at what he’d apparently suggested as they lay in bed. It seemed he’d told her—thank you, Mr. Vino—that she could come to the United States with him, and they could see San Diego together. Or San Jose. Or somewhere.
She’d become a raging she-wolf and flung a bottle (the expensive Super-Tuscan, but empty, thank God) into his bathroom mirror, shattering both.
She’d muttered words to him in Italian. It seemed like a curse.
So. Just be more careful.
“Spend the year in Europe, kiddo,” his father had told him, upon his departure from Lambert Field. “Enjoy, graduate at the bottom of your class. Experience life!” The tall man—an older version of Garry, with silver in his blond hair—had then lowered his voice: “But. You do a single milligram of coke or pot and you’re on your own. You end up in a Naples jail, all you’ll get from us is postcards, and probably not even that.”
And Garry could truthfully tell his father that he’d never tried any coke and he’d never tried any pot.
There was plenty else to amuse him.
Like Valentina. (San Diego? Really? He’d used that as a come-on line?) Or Ariella. Or Toni.
Then he thought of Frieda.
The Dutch girl he’d met at Natalia’s party on Monday. Yes, picturing them being on the roof, her beautiful hair dipping onto his shoulder, her firm breast against his arm, her damp lips against his.
“You are, I am saying, a pretty boy, isn’t it? You are the football player?”
“Your football or mine?”
Which broke her up.
“Foot…ball…” Her mouth on his again. Above them spanned the Neapolitan evening, milky with million stars. He and this beautiful Dutch girl, blond and tasting of mint, alone in a deserted alcove of the roof.
Her eyelids closing…
And Garry looking down at her, thinking: Sorry, sorry, sorry…It’s out of my hands. I can’t control it.
Now he shuddered and closed his eyes and didn’t want to think about Frieda again.
Garry’s mood grew dark, and he decided that, hell, he’d open up a new grappa when he got home.
Frieda…
Shit.
Approaching the doorway of the old flat. It was a shabby two-story place, on a quiet stretch of road. The building had probably been a single-family at one point but then converted into a two-unit apartment. He lived in the basement.
He paused and found his key. Then Garry was startled by two people walking up to him. He was cautious. He’d been mugged once already. An ambiguous threat; two skinny but mean-eyed men had asked to borrow money. He’d given it up, along with his watch, which they hadn’t asked for but had happily taken.
But then he saw that these two were police officers—middle-aged, stocky both of them, a man and woman, in the blue uniforms of the Police of State.
Still, of course, his guard was up.
“Yes?”
Speaking good English, the woman asked, “You are Garry Soames?”
“I am.”
“May I see your passport?”
In Italy, everyone was required to carry—and produce upon demand—a passport or identity card. It rankled the civil libertarian within him but he complied without protest.
She read it. And slipped it into her own pocket.
“Hey.”
“You were at a party Monday night, in the flat of Natalia Garelli.”
His memories of just a few moments ago.
“I…well, yes. I was.”
“You were there all night?”
“What’s all night?”
“When were you there?”
“I don’t know, from maybe ten p.m. until three or so. What’s this all about?”
“Mr. Soames,” the man said, his accent thicker than his partner’s. “We are putting you under arrest for certain events that occurred at that party. I would like you to present your hands.”
“My—”
Steel cuffs appeared.
He hesitated.
The male cop: “Please, sir. I would recommend you do this.”
The woman lifted the backpack off his shoulder and began to look through it.
“You can’t do that!”
She ignored him and continued to rummage.
The man cuffed him.
The woman completed the search of his bag and said nothing. The man searched his pockets, taking his wallet and leaving everything else. He found three unopened condoms and held them up. The two officers shared a look. Everything the man took he placed in an evidence bag.
Each taking an arm, they led him up the street to an unmarked car.
“What’s this all about?” he repeated stridently. They were silent. “I haven’t done anything!” He switched to Italian and said, in a desperate voice, “Non ho fatto niente di sbagliato!”
Still no response. He snapped, “Qual è il crimine?”
“The charge is battery and rape. It is my duty to inform you that, as you are now under arrest, you have the right to an attorney and an interpreter. Signor, please, get into the car.”
Chapter 22
Rhyme and Sachs examined the evidence chart that Beatrice and Ercole had assembled.
Rossi and Spiro stood behind them, also scanning, scanning, scanning.
Beatrice had done a solid job, isolating and identifying the materials.
“Do you have a geological database?” Rhyme asked Rossi. “Where we can narrow the source of that clay-based soil?”