And now? What would happen—?
His thoughts were interrupted as two men appeared nearby in the prison yard, stepping from the doorway of a wing nearby. He didn’t know the short, muscled prisoners very well, other than that they weren’t Italian. Albanian, he thought. Swarthy and forever unsmiling. They kept to themselves or hung out with a few others that looked somewhat like them. The two, brothers, had never said anything to Garry and had largely ignored him.
Now it was the same. They looked toward him once and returned to their conversation, continuing on a path roughly parallel to his, about twenty steps behind.
He nodded. They returned the gesture and kept walking, heads down.
Garry thinking: Why the hell did I go to that party in the first place?
I should have been studying.
He didn’t regret coming to Italy. He loved the country. He loved the people and the culture and the food. But now he was looking at the whole adventure as a mistake. I could have gone anywhere. But, no, I had to be the big famous world traveler, show everyone from a punk-ass suburb in middle America that I was different. I was special.
Garry observed the two Albanian prisoners moving slightly faster. They would catch up with him in the shadow of the children’s climbing wall—in a small area where prisoners could play with their children and visit with their wives on Sunday.
But he ignored them and thought again of the party at Natalia’s. He never should have left Frieda on the roof. But seeing her drowsy eyes and feeling her head on his shoulder…and feeling nothing down below, he’d had to flee. It never occurred to him that she’d been drugged and would be at risk.
What a mess…
The Albanians were now closer. Ilir and Artin, he believed, were their names. They claimed to have been wrongly arrested simply for helping refugees flee oppression. The prosecutor’s charges were a bit different: that they spirited young girls away from their homes and set them up working in brothels in Scampia, a grim suburb of Naples. The altruistic argument they made—that they were saviors of the oppressed—fell on deaf ears, as most of the girls they “rescued” came not from North Africa but from the Baltic states and small towns in Italy itself, lured by their promise of modeling careers.
Garry didn’t like that the men had sped up and were just a few steps behind. He diverted, hoping to avoid them.
But it was too late.
The squat, swarthy men lunged and flung him to the grass.
“No!” Gasping, his breath knocked from his lungs.
“Shhh. Quiet!” Ilir—the smaller—raged in Garry’s ear.
His brother looked around to see there were no guards or other prisoners present and drew a long, thick piece of glass from his pocket, a shiv. The base was wrapped in cloth, but six inches of razor edge glistened.
“No! Please! Come on, I haven’t done anything!” Maybe they thought he’d been with the prison police, just now, informing on them. “I haven’t said anything!”
Artin smiled and eased back, letting Ilir hold him down. In thickly accented English, he said, “Now, here. Here it is. Yes? Here is what is going to happen. You are knowing Alberto Bregia?”
“Please! I haven’t done anything to you. I just—”
“Now, now. You are answering me. Yes, there you go. Answer me. Do not baby-cry. Answer me.”
“Yes, I know Bregia.”
Who wouldn’t? A huge, psychotic prisoner—six foot four—who terrified everyone who crossed him, even if their betrayals were pure figments of his bizarre imagination.
“So, it is this. Bregia has problem with my brother and me. And he is wishing to murder us. Now, now. What we are doing is this.”
Garry struggled to push Ilir off. But the wiry man held him down firmly. “Stop,” he muttered. Garry complied.
“We are having to hurt you some. Stabbing you, yes.” He held up the glass knife. “But we not kill you. Cut you some much. But you will not be dying. And then you will be saying that Alberto Bregia did this.”
Ilir said, “So he will go to other prison. For dangerous prisoners. We have seen into this. It is how this works. All good.”
“No, don’t! Please!”
Artin was nodding. “Ah, it won’t be much. Six, seven times. Which is nothing. I am being stabbed. Look at these scars. People here in prison, they talk. They say you should have balls cut, you rapist.” He brushed the point over Garry’s crotch. “No, no. We are not be doing that.” They both laughed. “Just some girl you fuck? Who care? So, you good. Just face, chest, maybe cut ear bad.”
“Cut off,” his brother said.
“Has to look like Bregia, something he would do.”
“Look, baby-cry, stop that. Okay, Artin. Cut him and we go. Hurry!”
Artin muttered something in Albanian and Ilir clamped his filthy hand over Garry’s mouth and gripped him with fierce strength.
Garry tried to scream.
The glass point moved toward his ear.
And then a distant voice: “Signor Soames! Dove sei?”
From the doorway he’d just exited through, the hallway that led to the interview rooms, a man was calling him.
“Are you still in the yard?”
The Albanian brothers looked toward each other.
“Mut,” Ilir spat out.
The knife vanished and they rose quickly.
Garry struggled to his feet.
“You are saying nothing!” Artin whispered. “Silence, baby-cry.” They turned and walked away quickly.
Garry stepped from the wall.
He saw who’d just called to him. It was the assistant director of the prison, a narrow, balding man who wore the uniform of the Penitentiary Police. It was perfectly pressed.
Garry joined the man in front of the doorway.
“You are well? What has happened?” He was regarding Garry’s gray, grass-stained jumpsuit.
“I fell.”
“Ah, fell. I see.” He didn’t believe him, but in prison—even in this short period of time, Garry had learned—the authorities don’t question what they choose not to question.
“Sì?” Garry asked.
“Signor Soames, I have for you good news. The prosecutor in your case has just called and informed me that the true attacker has been identified. He has applied to a magistrate that you be released.”
Breathlessly, Garry asked, “For sure?”
“Yes, yes, he is certain. The documents for release have not been signed yet but that will happen soon.”
Garry looked back at the doorway to his cell wing, thinking of the two Albanians. “Do you want me to wait in my cell?”
The assistant director debated a moment looking over Garry’s torn sleeve. “No, I think that’s not necessary. Come into the administrative wing. You can wait in my office. I will bring for you caffè.”
Now the tears came. And came in earnest.
Chapter 54