The Disappearance of Grace Read online

  He thinks about his answer for a moment while staring out at the busy canal and the bobbing of the boats on the endlessly upset water.

  “Your fiancée seemed fixated on a man,” he says after a beat.

  “What did the man look like?”

  “I was just about to tell you. He was a tall man, wearing a long brown overcoat. He bore a dark complexion, dark hair. Sunglasses masked his eyes.”

  I gently take hold of his arm with my right hand. His eyes go wide, but he is not so much alarmed as he is surprised.

  “Did this man steal my fiancée?”

  I remove my hand, as if it’s impossible for him to answer otherwise.

  “There were so many people in the piazza that day. So many people surrounding the tables.”

  I feel the blood beginning to simmer inside my brain.

  “Did he take her or not? Please, Miles, please.”

  “To be perfectly frank, Captain, I’m not sure.”

  I stare into his round face, feel his eyes glued to mine.

  “How can you not be sure when you were looking right at us? At her? At him?”

  “The man in the overcoat approached the table. This seemed to cause some alarm in your fiancée. Her eyes went wide and she abruptly set down her drink, some of it spilling over the side of the glass. She even started to rise out of her chair as the man came so close he stood not two feet away from you. Behind you. So close he could have simply reached out and touched you on the back of your head.”

  “But you didn’t see him taking her?”

  “Yes or, I mean…no.”

  I take hold of his arm again. Harder this time.

  “Which is it, Miles?”

  He struggles to free himself. But he can’t.

  “A group of people suddenly appeared in front of my table. A Japanese tour group. There must have been twenty or thirty people suddenly streaming in between both our tables. It completely blinded me to what was happening. By the time they finished shuffling through, Captain, and I was able to get another unobstructed view of your table, the man in the overcoat and your fiancée were gone.”

  I feel my heart sink to new depths. I let go of his arm, again.

  “Did you see them walking? Could you see them in the crowd?”

  He resumes staring out onto the canal.

  “That’s just it. They were gone. Vanished. Disappeared. I truly looked for her. For him. But it was no use. They were gone. And when I looked back at your table, you were still talking, as if she were still seated there across from you, sipping her wine.”

  “Still talking,” I say. “Until I realized she wasn’t seated there any longer.”

  “It dawned on you that she was gone. It seemed as if you felt her sudden absence inside your heart. Your face literally dropped to the cobblestones. You reached out with both your hands like you were grasping for her memory. You stood up and almost knocked the table over. When you shouted, the waiter came and took you away.” Exhaling, staring down at his feet. “My wife started to cry and I consoled her. We finished our lunch and waited for the police to arrive, thinking they would come right away. But it took some time. Enough for us to finish our lunch, and then some.”

  “But you told the police your story.”

  “They wouldn’t listen to us at first. In fact, they wouldn’t talk with us at all. They simply didn’t want to hear our story. They weren’t the least bit interested in what we saw that afternoon. And, far as I know, we were the only witnesses. Or the only ones to come forward, especially in light of the CNN report.”

  “How can they not take your statement? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Exactly. It bothered me enough that, later in the day, I paid a visit to the Venice metropolitan police and asked to see a detective. A big, bearded, well-dressed man saw me immediately. A Detective Carbone.”

  “I know him,” I interject.

  “He pulled me into a small interview room and listened to what I had to say. I thought he was listening to me. I was convinced the overcoat man kidnapped your wife and did so with so much skill, Captain, that she just seemed to disappear from out of thin air. But something happened after I finished with my statement.”

  I stare at him, my eyesight holding steady, all signs of blindness seemingly disappeared. For the time being anyway.

  “The detective turned away from me and lit a cigarette,” he goes on. “He stared out the window onto Venice, and he began to speak to me without looking at me. He told me that in all likelihood there was no abduction. No kidnapping. That it was more likely your fiancée left of her own accord.”

  “That’s impossible,” I insist. “My Grace loves me. We were getting married soon…are getting married soon.”

  He holds both his hands up, palms facing me, eyes closed, like he’s surrendering. Surrendering to my emotions. It’s his way of agreeing and commiserating with me. My sadness and frustration.

  “Detective Carbone would not listen to my arguments. Not when I spoke of the overcoat man. Not when I spoke of the alarm on your Grace’s face. He simply wouldn’t listen. He just smoked and stared out the window, as if…”

  He allows his sentence to drift off, like the supply boats and barges that move away from us in the distance.

  “As if he couldn’t lie to my face.”

  “And why would the police be lying, Mr. Miles?”

  He looks at me blankly.

  “Why have you been experiencing blindness as of late, Captain Angel?”

  “I don’t really know. No one knows.”

  “Exactly. I wish I could tell you that’s where my story ends, but it doesn’t. Because a day after I spoke with Detective Carbone, I received a visit to my hotel from a representative of the United States Embassy.”

  My heart drops even further.

  “Was his name David Graham?”

  He nods.

  “Yes. A most distinguished man in appearance. He asked me for a favor.”

  “A favor.”

  “He asked me to forgo interfering in Grace’s disappearance. That it was a police matter now. He also told me that if I continued to get involved, the Italian government might be forced to detain me for an unspecified amount of time.” Pursing his lips, lowering his head, as if suddenly ashamed. “I’m sixty two years old and I project manage construction jobs in a terrible market, Captain Angel. I have barely enough vacation time as it is. Being detained for months or even weeks would cost me my job.”

  “I understand,” I say. “I don’t want you to lose your job.”

  He raises his right hand, sets it on my shoulder. It’s a little awkward for him, since he’s shorter and rounder than me.

  “My wife and I are leaving in a few hours. From here we head to Florence and then Rome, and then back to Cleveland.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “Enjoy your second honeymoon. Never let her go. Never let her out of your sight.”

  He removes his hand.

  “No need to thank me. I sincerely hope you find your fiancée. I agree with you. She very much loved you. I could see it in her eyes before she…”

  “It’s okay. You can say it.”

  “Before she disappeared.”

  Biting down hard on his bottom lip,Miles turns, and heads down the Rialto staircase to the opposite canal bank where he so easily blends into the crowd. I turn and head back down the opposing stairs towards Giovanni, convinced now that the police are hiding something from me.

  Chapter 51

  “DID YOU FIND ANYMORE clues regarding Grace’s abduction?” Giovanni asks.

  I tell him everything Miles told me. The both of us standing at the bottom of the Rialto staircase, the tourists passing by us in both directions.

  The café waiter mulls over what I’ve revealed, smiles, stuffs his hands inside his jacket pockets.

  “I told you the police cannot be trusted. But then, perhaps your Grace could not be trusted either.”

  Under normal circumstances, I might punch another man i
n the mouth after a comment like that. But staring into his soft, almost childlike face, I can’t help but believe that he is absolutely right. Perhaps in the end, Grace did simply get up from the table and leave me. For good.

  Just the thought of her doing something so drastic and so final, and performing it so coldly, makes my already bruised heart feel like it’s about to split down the center. I can hardly breathe at the thought of walking back to my apartment.

  Then my cell phone rings.

  Chapter 52

  I LOOK DOWN AT the keypad.

  Alessandra Betti.

  I hit Send, press the phone to my ear.

  “What did you find out?”

  “There are many prints on the ring, as would be expected, including yours and your fiancée’s. Prints from overseas military personnel are easily accessed. Grace’s prints were also in the system as your significant other since she had access to your base in Frankfurt.”

  “What about the overcoat man? Were his on there?”

  “We have no way of knowing. But there is a third set of prints that might interest you.”

  My breathing grows shallow.

  “I’m listening,” I say.

  “The prints belong to a man. A man who belongs to Interpol.”

  I look out onto the canal and a gondola carrying a handsome young couple under the bridge. As they pass beneath the bridge they look at one another and smile longingly, and kiss. I see Grace and me sitting in their place, and it makes my heart grow as heavy as a stone. Makes it bleed.

  “Interpol. We’ve had no contact with someone from Interpol.”

  “But apparently your fiancée has, Captain.”

  I turn and eye the shiny black gondola now having passed under the Ponte Rialto. The gondolier is precariously perched on the impossibly narrow bow while the young lovers nestle together in their red velvet-covered seats, the Venice that surrounds them a romantic dream come true. In the back of my mind, I picture my Grace, lying at the bottom of the Grand Canal.

  “That’s impossible,” I explain. “She was with me the entire time.”

  “Let me ask you another question then,” she goes on. “Who, prior to yourself, was the last man to touch the ring?”

  I shift my eyes from the gondola slowly fading into the distance to Giovanni who is standing on the edge of the canal bank, lighting a cigarette.

  “I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” I say, cutting the connection.

  Chapter 53

  I CALL FOR GIOVANNI.

  He turns at me, smooth-faced, brown-eyed and smiling. Always smiling while blue smoke oozes out the corners of his mouth and nostrils.

  “Did you find out about the fingerprints?” he asks.

  “Just mine and Grace’s on the ring,” I say. “Some other unidentifiable ones, but that only makes sense.”

  He nods, smokes.

  “I’ll go home now,” I say. “No need to follow me. I feel like my eyesight is going to stay for a while.”

  His smile dissolves.

  “I insist,” he says. “It is my duty and my pleasure to look after you, Captain.”

  He’s peering into my eyes like he’s not about to take no for an answer. Like he’s ordered not to take no for an answer.

  “Grazie,” I say, but it spills out of my mouth sounding as cold and dirty as the canal water.

  I walk.

  Giovanni, quite possibly of Interpol, follows close behind.

  Chapter 54

  WHEN WE COME TO the door to my building, I turn and thank Giovanni.

  “How long have you worked for the café?” I ask.

  He smokes the last of his cigarette and tosses it down onto the cobbles instead of into the garbage-infested canal which is only a few feet away.

  “Why do you ask, Captain?” he poses, the smoke gently escaping out his mouth and nose.

  In my head I’m hearing Alessandra Betti: “Who, prior to yourself, was the last man to touch the ring?”

  “The owners are generous to you. They give you a lot of time off.”

  He cocks his head over his left shoulder.

  “They are very generous indeed. But this is Italy, Captain. Not America. We are not so obsessed with making money.” Working up his now-characteristic smile, which I characterize as decidedly false. “We are more concerned with la dolce vita.”

  “Of course,” I say, the first signs of total gray beginning to mask my vision. In a few moments I will be blind again. But in the blindness, I will begin to see things. Things having to do with the disappearance of my Grace.

  “The good life,” I add.

  “Yes, the good life.”

  I unlock the door, step inside, and close it behind me.

  “The good life,” I whisper to myself. “The. Good. Life.”

  Chapter 55

  BY THE TIME I get upstairs my eyesight is coming and going. Mostly going.

  I use what sight I have left to view the keypad on my mobile phone while calling Betti back.

  “I’m home,” I tell her. “How long will it take you to get here?”

  “Not long,” she says. “I understand the urgency of the situation. The gravity.”

  “I’ll try and hold it together,” I say.

  “Hold what together, Captain?”

  “Me. My Vision. My broken heart.”

  Chapter 56

  WHEN SHE ARRIVES, I am seeing only gray. The French doors are open and I can hear the now familiar sounds coming from the narrow alley below and the occasional motor boat that travels over the feeder canal. Voices. Footsteps. Laughter. Not a single one of them coming from Grace.

  I ask her if she wants coffee. She tells me she’ll take care of making it for the both of us. I don’t argue. I just stand before the open French doors, letting the sunlight soak my open eyes. The breeze blows in on me and the smells from the water-city fill my head.

  “Interpol,” I say after a time. “The last man to touch the ring besides myself was a man I know. His name is Giovanni. He works in the café where Grace was abducted. He helps me.”

  “How exactly does he help you, Captain?”

  “He was the one who found Grace’s ring. He was the one who alerted me to it and gave it back to me. He also acts as my seeing-eye dog. He even walks with me when the blindness isn’t there, just in case it should suddenly come back.”

  I hear her standing by the kitchenette, filling the coffee pot, setting it on the stove, turning on the gas, lighting the flame, setting out the demi cups.

  “Do you know Giovanni’s last name?” she asks.

  “I don’t. I’ve never asked.”

  “Maybe you should. Or perhaps we can go see him together. This afternoon.”

  “I’m not exactly seeing anyone right now,” I laugh. But nothing’s funny.

  I hear the sound of the coffee rapidly percolating, and she shuts off the gas, killing the burner. She pours the coffee and carries the cups over to the table, sets them down to cool for a moment. When they are sufficiently cool about a minute later, she sets my cup in my hands.

  “How long will your blindness last?” she poses after a beat.

  “It could last a week. Or it could last a few minutes. I’ve come to learn that it usually means I need to rest. Sleep. Most times, when I wake up, I can see again. Sometimes I sleepwalk, and I can see when I sleepwalk. But of course, I cannot remember what I’ve seen.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  I recall my waking up on the roof of this building. For a brief moment I think of telling her all about it. But then I decide not to. I don’t want her to think I’m crazy.

  I set down the coffee cup.

  “Can I have the ring?”

  She shuffles around in her pockets. Or that’s what it sounds like she’s doing anyway. She takes hold of my hands, sets the ring into the palm of my hand. I close my fingers around the ring, squeeze my hand tight. It isn’t until a tear slowly rolls down my left cheek that I realize I’m weeping.

  �
��What do you feel?” asks the journalist.

  “I feel my Grace,” I say. “I feel her heart beating. Her lungs breathing. I feel Grace alive.”

  “You understand that if she has been abducted, she could be anything but alive, Captain.”

  Another tear rolls down the opposite cheek.

  “I refuse to believe that. Just like I refuse to believe she has simply walked away from me.”

  “This man who gave you the ring…Giovanni. Are you sure he is simply a café waiter?”

  “I’m not sure what to believe anymore.”

  I hear her shuffling around in her pockets once more. By the sound of it, I know she’s unfolding a sheet of paper.

  “I have an image of the Interpol man we identified by his print on the ring. But of course, you can’t see it now.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Heath Lowrance. Originally from New Jersey. Princeton undergraduate in criminal justice. Did his master’s at Oxford before joining the military and earning the rank of Captain in the Army Rangers. Fought in the Persian Gulf War. Decorated. Fought in Iraq in the second Gulf War. Decorated. Fought in Afghanistan. Again decorated. Knows several languages fluently including Italian, his dialect decidedly Tuscan. More recently he’d been picked up by Interpol to work in both the war crimes and terrorism divisions.”

  “Could be he waits tables in Piazza San Marco on the side.”

  “Could be that’s his cover right now while he keeps an eye on you. That is, Interpol and the US military feel the need to keep an eye on you, both prior to and after your fiancée’s disappearance.”

  In my head, I’m seeing the hill in Tajik country. I see the ancient village that’s situated near the top of it. A village that will be bombed back to the Stone Age.

  “Captain,” Alessandra Betti goes on. “Is there something else that happened to you in Afghanistan that you have not told me?”

  I’m blind. But I see inside my head I see brilliantly. With full clarity. I see the jet fighter reflecting the sun off its silver skin as it screams across the valley. See it nosedive towards the hilltop. See the missiles rocket off the wings. See them strike the village, the red-hot lightning explosions visible before I hear their back-to-back concussive bursts. In my head I climb the hill once more, see the wrecked stone and wood buildings, the burnt- out shells and the dead bodies. I see a small boy lying beside a stone well, his arms resting above his head like a toddler asleep in a crib, a white patina of dust coating his round face and bare legs. It’s his feet that steal my breath away.