Part 17 (1/2)
”Did the office give her anything?”
”Just the door. You know they do not hand out information.”
”Certa,” he said. Obviously. Of course. It would be so much easier for him if the office was loose with their information. ”Did she come in cold?”
”Si. She did not have an appointment. Walked in off the street.”
”Interesting. Name?”
”Isabel McNeil.”
Sandello p.r.o.nounced it all wrong, but Dez recognized the name right away. She'd been on his mind for days.
He put down his pen and gestured for his secretary to leave. He asked Sandello a mult.i.tude of questions and learned that after being turned away, Isabel McNeil had walked down the street with a staff member of the office. A notary. The office's cameras recorded the direction they were heading, but then she'd gone out of range.
He told Sandello to talk to the notary, told him exactly how to do it, then he hung up, a little disappointed. She had seemed quite intelligent to him, but how f.u.c.king stupida did you have to be to run from the Mob and head straight for Italy?
Then again, maybe he was the stupid one. Could there have been any basis to the words she'd thrown out in that G.o.dd.a.m.ned b.u.t.terfly room-that she was a federal agent? Was she the one playing him?
25.
M aggie and I took a seat in front of the travel agent's desk. In Italy, travel agencies are as plentiful as tomatoes, and they're always the most orderly places to book a trip in a very disorderly country.
”Tickets to Naples, please,” I said, telling the agent we wanted to leave as soon as possible.
”Si,” the agent said. ”Napoli Centrale. Regular or Eurostar tickets?”
Maggie sat, rubbing her head. ”I still can't believe all this. I cannot believe it.”
I'd told Maggie everything in the cab from the airport. The night on the stairwell, Dez and Ransom chasing me from the museum, finding Alyssa in Sam's apartment, our teary goodbye. I even told her about the fact I had been working for Mayburn. Mayburn would kill me, but I simply could not hold it back any longer. And it felt d.a.m.n good to have my best friend once again knowing all.
But Mags was having a hard time wrapping her head around it. ”You?” she was saying now. ”You have been doing undercover work?” More rubbing of the head. ”And your dad? You think he might be alive?”
I asked the ticket agent about the Eurostar price, did the math. ”Shazzer,” I said.
Maggie frowned. ”What's shazzer? Is that an Italian word?”
”My replacement word for s.h.i.+t.”
”Are you still on that kick? It's not working, by the way. You always end up saying the swearword because you have to explain it.”
”Allora,” the clerk said, ”regular or Eurostar?”
”How much is the Eurostar?” Maggie asked.
”I can't afford Eurostar,” I said.
Maggie dug a credit card out of her purse. ”I'll get it.”
”Wait. Mags, I don't want you paying for everything.”
”Well, I'm paying for this.” She gave the agent her card. ”Do you remember the time we went to Florence on a 'regular' train? 'Regular' means the local line, in case you've forgotten.”
I had a flashback-Maggie and me, an un-air-conditioned train car, the press of bodies around us. People were packed onto the seats, some standing one after another in the aisles, some huddled at the end of the cars, near the broken, powerfully smelly bathrooms. The heat had been junglelike, the moods of all the pa.s.sengers beyond surly. When the train finally spat us out in Florence, Maggie and I had practically kissed the ground. We'd stayed an extra three days just to recover.
”Eurostar,” I said definitively to the agent.
She nodded. ”Pa.s.saporti, please.”
After we gave them to her, Maggie nodded at my chest. ”I've been meaning to ask you. What is that necklace?”
I lifted the amber stone and gazed at its bevels, which seemed to manufacture sunlight. ”Elena gave it to me. It was my grandmother's.”
”Stunning,” Maggie said. ”It suits you.”
At the Termini, the main Rome train station, the heat was thick and the crowds thicker. The open-air nature of the place only supported humidity and prolific sweating, and yet the Termini was nicer than when I was last in town. A huge Nike store and other designer shops resided next to the tabacchi, and the place had a little sparkle where before it had been gritty-city.
Maggie breathed out hard as we walked through the Termini, throwing her shoulders back in an exaggerated way and squinting her eyes a little.
”What are you doing?” I asked.
”Getting ready for the onslaught.”
”The onslaught of what?”
”The Italian guys.” She sent a couple suspicious glances over her shoulder.
”You mean, the flirting and the hara.s.sing? They don't really do that anymore.”
”Seriously?”
”Yeah. Just the notaries from the antimafia office.”
On the train, we boarded a blissfully chilly car and began searching for our seats. Maggie struggled with her suitcase, muttering lots of scusi, scusi to the patrons she kept knocking into. When we found our seats, we looked at her bag, then back up at the overhead compartment, which seemed about nine feet high.
”How are we going to get that thing up there?” I asked.
Maggie exhaled determinedly. She'd never seen a task she thought she couldn't do. She squatted and began tensing her arms. I sighed and bent to help her.
But then we heard, ”Let me get that.”
We turned to see a huge Asian guy wearing an orange golf s.h.i.+rt and baggy jeans. He scooped up the ma.s.sive suitcase with one hand, like a socialite picking up a kicky little purse, and slipped it into the overhead compartment.
”Thank you!” Maggie said.
”No worries.”