Damnation of Adam Blessing (14 page)

The
carabiniere
smiled at Adam. “But he has admitted it,
Signore.”

In Adam’s hand were the photographs of Ernesto, the same he had seen in the newspaper, above the story of the murder attempt. Vittorio Gelsi, and after his name, a number.

The
carabiniere
said, “He has not take your money, I hope. He has take money from Americans before this thing.”

“No,” Adam lied.

“Why he call himself Ernesto to you? You call him Ernesto Leogrande? Is that he said his name is?”

“Vittorio Gelsi. The other name is — a joke. I know his name.” Adam put the pictures on the officer’s desk. “I want to help him. I am his friend.”

“Pray for his wife,
Signore.
That will be most help.”

“Well? Can I see him?”

“Not against his will,
Signore.
Prisoners have rights, too. He does not want to see you.”

“He is embarrassed,” said Adam. “I don’t blame him. I still want to help him.”

The officer shrugged. He smiled at Adam. “You can make a complaint if he has take your money.”

“I don’t want to make a complaint! Don’t you see?”

“No.” The
carabiniere
smiled again.

“If his wife is all right, will he be released?”

“He attempt murder,
Signore.”

Adam sighed. “I will go see his wife.”

“Sì, Signore.”

“I will do all I can for him,” said Adam. “That is not the business of the
questúra,”
said the police officer.

The
questura
was in an old palazzo in the center of Rome. The walls were khaki-colored, and there was an institutional atmosphere, brightened by the handsomely uniformed
carabinieri
stationed at the outer doors. As Adam came into the heat outside, he saw Dorothy taking pictures of the
carabinieri.
She smiled and waved at him, and it irritated him that she was not upset. At dinner last night, she had said she was just glad Ernesto had not gotten his hands on the money of the Fellow’s Foundation. He had mentioned a building in Umbria to her, ideal, he had told her, for a headquarters for the Fellow’s. The government would lease it for very little; there were just a few things to be repaired, and Ernesto had promised to get an estimate for the Fellow’s, and handle the negotiations.

Adam had said, “But even if he is a crook, don’t you feel something for him?”

“Sorry for him,” had been her answer. “In fact, I’m going to speak about him at our next session.”

Dorothy knew nothing about the $25,000 Ernesto had taken from Adam. Nor about the additional $15,000 he had failed to collect from Adam before his arrest. That money, plus $5000 more was all Adam had left, other than the $10,000 in the safety deposit box in South Orange, New Jersey.

When Dorothy saw Adam, she waved and called to him, snapping his picture as he walked toward her.

“Did you see him?”

“No.”

“This isn’t going to make you start drinking, I hope.” “No.”

“I have to be back at the office in half an hour. Adam, I wish you’d visit Fellow’s. Just to see it. Not join it. Just see it.”

“I have things to do.”

“No gifts, Adam. Please, don’t send any more gifts to Venice.”

“I didn’t send
gifts!
I sent a gift. A baby-bib!” “Returned.”

“All right, they returned it. That was weeks ago, and it’s all over. I don’t mind telling you that I don’t even think about Chary any more. Let her do as she pleases. I have too much on my mind now. A way to help Ernesto.”

“You mean, Vittorio.”

“Don’t nag at me, Dorothy.”

“Do you have something wrong with your eyes, Adam?” “No.”

“They look funny,” she said. “Almost as though you were crying.”

“Before I go to the hospital,” said Adam, his head turned away from her so she could not see his eyes, “I’ll stop by and pick up the mail at the apartment.”

“Remember to call me if we hear from Shirley? I’m dying to know when she gets here.”

“By now,” said Adam, “she’s probably dancing again.”

Dorothy Schackleford was saying something about Shirley Spriggs having vowed not to dance for two years, and only one year was up, but for some reason, Adam was fighting back his tears with a greater urgency then, so that he was forced to cut short their conversation with the excuse that he needed a men’s room, and that he would meet Dorothy at the Via Po apartment when she returned from work.

• • •

In the small
trattoría
where he found a men’s room, Adam stayed to have lunch. He ordered
Zuppa di cozze,
and a mezzo-lítro of soáve. It was the first alcohol he had tasted since he had seen Billy and Chary, less than two months ago. Yesterday in Civitavecchia he had ordered a whisky in a place called Cucci’s, but he had been unable to lift the glass, his hands were trembling so, his eyes filling with tears to a point where he felt people staring at him.

It was in Civitavecchia that he had finally begun to accept Ernesto’s deception. Even after he saw Ernesto’s picture in the paper, and went for the first time to the
questúra
to straighten out what he felt was an alarming case of mistaken identity, he was unconvinced that Ernesto had deceived him. He had gone to Civitavecchia a day later on the bus. As he rode along the old Via Aurelia, he smiled at the idea Ernesto had taken his money with no intention to ever build an Adamo’s. Adamo’s would be there, perhaps even finished (except for the air-conditioning, which he had never had the opportunity to pay Ernesto for). Despite Ernesto’s wrongs, their dream of Adamo’s in Civitavecchia was not among them.

There in Civitavecchia was the very building from the pictures Ernesto had shown Adam. Adam’s heart had missed some beats at the sign: Cucci’s … it was just remodeled, the waiter assured Adam, and Adam had sat out on the terrace waiting for his whisky, thinking of how often in his imagination he had sat on this same terrace, entertaining Luther Schneider, and Billy and Chary, laughing and talking on this same terrace…. Less than a week before he had come here to Civitavecchia, on one of Ernesto’s and his walks through the Villa Borghese, Ernesto had told him that the terrace had been widened, that Adamo’s would have the finest view of the sea in all Italy.

“You make me feel so happy, Ernesto,” Adam had told him.

“Not
lèi,
Adam.” Ernesto had seized Adam’s wrist and pressed it with his palm. “Tu. We are friends. No longer
lèi,
but tu.”

When the waiter brought Adam the whisky on the terrace at Cucci’s, Adam had remembered Ernesto’s touching invitation to Adam to use the familiar form of address. He had left the whisky and run off, and since then at odd times, Adam would find his eyes filling up, as they had a moment before coming to the
trattoría,
when he was leaving the questura with Dorothy.

Adam poured his wine and began to eat his mussels.

When he finished lunch he would visit Ernesto’s wife in the hospital. He would reason with her. It would do her no good if Ernesto were to go to prison again.

Adam remembered what the waiter at Cucci’s had said: “I come from these parts,
Signore.
There has never been a family named Leogrande, nor one named Gelsi who run the
pensione
you ask about. That name, both of them, I can tell you is not of anyone around here.”

And in Adam’s mind had come the retort: “Not yet, but wait!”

For there was still time, still some money left.

“Tu.
We are friends,” Ernesto had said, and Adam felt forgiveness was the only obstacle in their way now. Adam would forgive him all, just as Ernesto had tacitly forgiven Adam for a crime he would not even allow Adam to confess to him.

The
carabiniere
smiled at Adam. “All right,
Signore.
He has consent. You wait and in a moment, you can see him.”

Adam went and sat on a straw-bottomed chair opposite the police officer’s desk. He had not had a drink in twenty-four hours, not since the fight with Dorothy over the fact he had found her letter to Billy and Chary, opened it and destroyed it after he read it. Well, he had expected Dorothy to turn on him; it was just a matter of time. He supposed Shirley and Norman had triggered it, and as he waited to see Ernesto, he promised himself he would not return to the Via Po until they were out of Rome for good. Dorothy had made reservations down the street at the
pensione
for them, and for the past four days, the pair were forever intruding on Adam. Norman had even tried to talk to Adam “man-to-man", as Norman put it, about Adam’s drinking. The whole apartment had taken on the atmosphere of The Salvation Army, and Adam was tired of it. Last night Adam had suggested Norman take Shirley dancing, which was the occasion for a crying jag on Shirley’s part, intermixed with sniffling memories of Ginger Klein’s demise, and a threat to punch Adam in the nose from Norman.

Norman had even had the gall to ask Adam what his intentions were toward Dorothy.

“What are hers toward me?” Adam had answered him. “To betray me to my best friends?”

The
carabiniere
signaled to Adam to follow him, while another officer took his place at the desk. Adam went behind the
carabiniere
up a dirty, badly-lighted staircase. At a dark passage, down a narrow corridor, the
carabiniere
took a key from a chain attached to his uniform, and unlocked a door. In this room, in front of another closed door, sat a young policeman with his cap perched sideways on his mass of black curly hair.

“Signor Gelsi,” said the
carabiniere.

He turned to Adam with another of his cryptic smiles. “Any time you want to sign a
denuncio,”
he shrugged, “it might make you feel better,
Signore.”
He tipped his hand to his cap, and walked out of the room. The policeman with the black curly hair pointed at a doorway, and Adam went inside. He sat on a bench and waited.

Friends come first, Adam thought, and he felt himself begin to choke up. When he saw Ernesto, he would say nothing about his shock at the knowledge that the woman in green from the whorehouse, was Ernesto’s wife … nothing about Tonia, either, the brunette whore whom Adam had spent his time with, nothing about her angry denials that she had taken a thousand dollars from Ernesto to keep quiet about Adam. Another of Ernesto’s lies, Tonia had insisted at the hospital, and Adam realized that one thing Ernesto had told him
was
true. All of his family did speak English; Tonia told him in very plain English that Ernesto had first intended to blackmail him. The meaning of her words, anyway, was very plain.

“You were afraid you say something to me, no? You didn’t not say anything, but Vittorio know you afraid. He would have blackmail you, but you give him the money without he do it!”

Adam was able to figure it out, trace the whole thing from the day he handed Ernesto the thousand to keep the brunette quiet; in the next breath he had mentioned going into business with Ernesto. Then Ernesto had dropped the subject of the brunette and what she knew. If it had not been the club at Civitavecchia, it would simply have been more blackmail. Adam sucked hard on the Gauloise to keep himself from feeling very sad. Outside the room he heard the police officer exchange words with another policeman, then in the doorway, Ernesto stood.

“Ernesto!” Adam walked across to him smiling, while the policeman with the curly hair shut the door, staring at them through the wire window.

“Don’t call me that. You know that is not my name.” Ernesto was sober-faced, and Adam thought he even looked angry.

“I want to help you,” said Adam.

Ernesto rubbed at his hook nose, and let his hand drop to his side again. “I come to tell you leave me alone, and leave my sister alone! Leave Tonia alone!”

“I only told her what I told you. I want to help you!”

“She does not want me to be helped!”

“Then forget her, Ernesto. We’ll figure a way out!”

“There is no way. The best way is you go. Leave us all alone. I come to tell you that.”

“I don’t want the money back. You think that?”

Ernesto glared at him, arms akimbo, rocking on his heels. “What money?”

“You don’t trust me. You think I care about the money. I don’t!”

“You are crazy!”

“Sit down, Ernesto. I have an idea. Listen, we could still build the place in Civitavecchia. I was there, Ernesto. I saw the place, and we could still — ”

“Don’t call me that! You are crazy.” He turned and said something to the policeman at the window of the door. Adam did not understand more than the word “open".

“I have so much to tell you,” said Adam, “Please. We can talk. I could open the place in Civitavecchia and we could run it together when you are free. We could — ”

Ernesto spat on the floor. The Italian policeman shouted something at him and began opening the door.

“I have never been to Civitavecchia,” said Ernesto, “and I will never go now. I have seen pictures though,” he laughed, a laugh of derision. “I have a friend who is a brick-layer. He just finished a place called Cucci’s, a do-over job. Did you see Cucci’s?”

“Why do you want to hurt me, Ernesto?”

Ernesto said something to the guard who stood in the doorway, and the guard returned the remark with another, and an obscene gesture. Both Ernesto and the guard laughed.

“I remember when you told me the things about man’s inhumanity to man,” Adam said. “I don’t believe you want to be cruel.”

Ernesto started walking toward the door. “I don’t care what you believe. I have my life not to care. I have my life what is left to sit in a cell and do nothing but not to care what you believe!”

“Are you blaming me? Is that it?” Adam pulled at his arm. “Are you blaming me?”

“Without you, and your money there would have been no need to fight her.”

Adam’s eyes were filled with tears. “But I only wanted to — ” He could not think any longer what it was he had wanted to do.

“To have your fancy club, ah?” said Ernesto.

“But it isn’t my fault! I came here to help you!”

“Help yourself to a jump in the Tiber!” Ernesto said. He was in the entranceway of the room when Adam caught his arm a second time and held on to it. “Remember the day in the Borghese? Remember, you said I should say
tu.
Not
lèi,
you said. We are friends.”

Ernesto shook his arm free. “Let go! Crazy!”

“Tu,” said Adam. “Ernesto, let me help you. Not
lèi,
you said, but
tu.”
The tears were starting down his cheeks. “Wait, Ernesto, there’s so much more I want to say!”

Ernesto stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Adam.

There was a crooked grin on his face, and the silver medal around his neck gleamed against the dim light of the low-watt bulb overhead.

“At least I am not you,” said Ernesto; “I am a man at least!”

He spat a second time and made the same obscene gesture which the policeman had made a moment ago. Then he turned his back on Adam.