Drummer In the Dark (14 page)

19

Monday

J
ACKIE ENTERED DULLES AIRPORT as tormented as the day itself. A stiff wind had raised with the afternoon, gaining strength until the trees bowed submissive heads and shivered with the dread of knowing worse was still to come. Clouds gathered and powers wrestled along heaven’s underbelly, the outcome revealed only to those who could read the script of lightning and lashing rain. She had spent her day fighting both highs and lows, and finding meager comfort in mall therapy.

First she had purchased some clothes and makeup, things she had not brought for a weekend in the big city. Then she spent two and a half hours luxuriating over what replacement computer to buy, before selecting a real prize—a superthin Sony with a 30 gig hard drive, optional CD burner, and 15 inch TFT screen. Not that she needed so much transportable power. She did it because she could, claiming Esther’s paycheck as real and hers. Forcing herself to accept that she really was doing this. Living the life. Traveling to Rome.

Jackie had always recognized a good deal of her mother in herself. The bitter stink of undeserved woes constantly tempted her to view life with the lofty vision of one that disavows all connection. Perhaps that was why she had always fought Evelyn so hard, through the quiet stealth avoiding direct combat. She knew how easy it would be to assume life would never treat her any better, no matter how she tried, so not bother at all. It wasn’t just life she quarreled with. It was herself.

Which was why, even as she walked through Dulles airport, part of her wanted to dismiss the entire journey as a lie.

“Ms. Havilland?”

She recognized the man who approached as Carter Styles, the overweight reader of newspapers. His piggy eyes were red with fatigue. His words grated like gravel tossed by a rusty shovel. “We’ve had a very bad night. Esther can’t afford to give the press a moving target.”

“Graham’s worse?”

“No, actually the old man is better.” He handed her a plastic envelope. “Flight, hotel, instructions.” He turned to leave. “Have a good trip. Don’t let Bryant out of your sight.”

“Just a minute—”

“Lady, a minute is the one thing I don’t have. Read the clippings and you’ll understand.” He scuttled away, soon lost in the bustling throngs.

Jackie opened the packet. On top was a newspaper article cut from the front page of that morning’s
Orlando Sentinel.
The headline read “Former U.S. Congressman Linked To Illegal Arms Trade.” Across the top was the curt handwritten note, “Will Call. Good Trip. E.”

She threaded her way to the international check-in counter, reading as she stood in line. The article claimed to have uncovered documents linking Graham Hutchings to arms dealing with African despots—apparently the true source of what he had always claimed was his wife’s wealth. The article went on to cite bank records revealing how Hutchings had acted as secret head of companies that transshipped weapons and skimmed profits. No mention was made of his stroke, only that he had recently resigned from Congress under a cloud.

“It is terrible, no?”

Jackie whirled about to confront a somber Nabil Saad. Today the Egyptian was attired in Ungaro mourner’s garb, a midnight blue double-breasted suit with an indented pinstripe of identical thread. He cast a faint scent of Oriental spice, yet his features held the same haggard tension as Carter Styles’.

Jackie shook the paper at him. “Resigned under a cloud?”

“Esther warned you about this.” The check-in line moved forward a notch. Nobody paid them any mind. Just two more hypertense Washington bureaucrats carrying their work into the friendly skies. Nabil shifted his carryall in order to reach for Jackie’s case. “Allow me.”

“I’m not interested in charm right now. I want answers.”

“We have none.” Lightning crackled and seared the Egyptian’s features. Wind slammed rain upon the windows. “I am off to Egypt. Perhaps there we shall find answers. But not now. I have nothing now.” He leaned closer, eyes so intent they lit recesses darkened by the tempest. “Here is a proper question for your journey. Why would the hedge funds manufacture such filth to bury a man already gone?”

Before she could respond, Nabil turned and departed. Which meant she asked the empty air, “How do you know it’s a fund?”

W
IND PUMMELED THE BUS as they left the main terminal for the departure concourse. People clung to the railings and peered anxiously out storm-buffeted windows. Thunder echoed louder than the departing planes.

The last person to enter before the doors closed was Wynn Bryant. The man looked like he had not slept for days. When he took the seat across from her, she waited until their eyes met, then asked, “You believe this weather?”

He was the only person on board who did not seem the least bit concerned. “We have almost two hours before takeoff. It should blow itself out by then.”

Jackie moved to the seat beside him. “You know storms?”

“I live on the water. Weather-watching has become a part of my days.”

She studied this man, the cleft chin, the deep-set eyes, the strong features. One step and ten years off movie-star looks. Which meant absolutely nothing except he had tools to hide his meanness down deep. If he wanted. If he had any to hide. “You have a boat?”

“Just a fourteen-foot Jon. Little freshwater swamp boat, nothing fancy.”

“I sort of figured you for the chrome-plated yacht crowd.”

“Can’t take a yacht up a low-water canal after bass.”

“The only thing I know about fishermen are the jackrabbit starts to tournaments. They’re murder for windsurfers. We warn each other on a local website of every regional fishing competition. You get these wannabe tourney jerks buying flat-bottomed bass boats with twin two-hundred horsepower outboards. They dig trenches six feet deep and throw out killer bow waves. That is, if they don’t hit a ripple and flip.”

“You won’t find me in that crowd. Twenty horse kicker, nothing more.” He showed a little real interest. “You windsurf?”

“Intracoastal Waterway, mostly. Some wave jumping off the coast. I live for storms like this.”

“My home is on Merritt Island.”

“Then I’ve probably passed your place a hundred times.” Wondering which of the waterside mansions was his.

The bus bounced and sighed and connected with the concourse. People surged forward. Wynn asked, “Buy you a coffee?”

Jackie reminded herself and him both, “You’re supposed to be the enemy.”

He hefted his leather satchel. “That’s Esther talking. Isn’t it time you made up your own mind?”

W
YNN TOOK HER DOWN to the first-class lounge. These days, business-class lounges were merely leather-trimmed corrals. For a taste of the old style, the way air travel had been back before deregulation, there were only two choices—private jet or a first-class lounge. He found the day’s first meager pleasure watching her take in the suede walls and inlaid furniture, the quietly hustling waiters, the soft hush of money at work. He waited until she had finished a slow sweep of the room to observe, “You’re not a regular traveler.”

“I’ve hardly been anywhere.”

On an impulse so strange he did not bother to justify it even to himself, he said, “Let me have your ticket.”

“What for?”

“I just want to check on your seat assignment.”

“Oh. All right.” But as she was about to hand it over, she said, “Could you lend me your credit card?”

The flat way she spoke matched the look in her eyes, leaving him certain this woman had crashed and burned her way out of life with the wrong man. He knew she was expecting either an argument or a lot of questions, so he simply reached for his wallet and slid out the plastic.

The simple gesture unnerved her. “I’ve just bought a new laptop computer. I need to set up an on-line account that’s not under my own name. Someone suggested it as a way to check things without being watched.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He went to the front desk, handed over Jackie’s ticket as well as his own, and swiftly explained what he wanted. Then he moved to one corner and used his cellphone to call Valerie’s office.

Valerie came instantly on the line. Her voice revealed a tougher lady than the one he had dined with the previous evening. “Are you somewhere I can reach you in an hour?”

“I’m getting ready to board a flight for Rome.”

“Just a minute.” The silence was only momentary. “Sorry, I was in a conference. Did you say Rome?”

“That call I got last night. My sister has left her husband.”

“Oh, Wynn.”

“I found out she’s taken off for Rome. I’m going over to see if I can help out. Probably futile, but she’s all the family I have.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“And I had such plans for the upcoming recess. Friends have offered me the use of their yacht, it’s berthed in the Annapolis harbor.” She spoke with the crisp gaiety of someone wanting to be intimate in a public place. “I was hoping you’d come along and crew.”

“Maybe another time.”

“Of course. I haven’t been to Rome in ages.”

He shook his head to the wall opposite. “This isn’t a pleasure trip.”

“Certainly not. Where will you be staying?”

He pulled out his own documents. “The Willard’s concierge booked me into someplace called the Hassler.”

“You’ve never been before?”

“First time.”

“Some of the Hassler’s guests have more money than sense, but the view is the best in Rome.” Softening further. “Have as good a journey as you can, Wynn. I shall miss what we can’t share.”

J
UST AS WYNN HAD PREDICTED, within the hour the storm had passed. The departing wind rumbled soft as a muffled bass drum against the concourse window, raising nervous glances from less experienced travelers. Jackie was not the least bit bothered. The wind was her very dearest friend. Perhaps that was why it had come now, in an hour that occasionally threatened to lift her from her seat and send her zinging around the first-class chamber. She needed something familiar and comforting just now.

Jackie was in the process of signing herself in as Wynn Bryant, new account holder with AOL, when he returned and dropped her ticket onto the keyboard. “I’ve had them upgrade you to first class.”

“I can’t possibly—”

“If we’re going to be played like other people’s puppets, we might as well do it with champagne.” When she did not respond, he quietly added, “Please.”

“All right.” This was a come-on, no question. But one glance at Wynn’s face was enough to know this guy would never press his case overhard. “Thank you.”

Jackie watched him move to the next set of seats, plop down, pick up a magazine, and blindly leaf through the pages. As her computer continued the signing-in procedure, she found herself wondering about this strange lonely man who fed on other people’s joy while feeling so little of his own.

Once on-line, she went straight to the internet address given her by the young man who was hopeless upon stormy waters. The website was a blank white screen with a heading that read simply
Trastevere.
Beneath the heading was only one large boldfaced word.
Go.
She slid her cursor over to rest on the word, and when she clicked, a message box appeared. She wrote out a brief note addressed to the Boatman. After a second, the message departed, and the single word reappeared.
Go.

“Jackie, did you hear? They just called our flight.”

“Coming.” She tried to cut the connection, only to find the service frozen in download mode. “Hang on, I’m getting new upgrades. It’ll just take a minute.”

Wynn waited with weary resignation. As soon as the download was complete, Jackie slammed the computer shut, stowed it away, hefted her bags, and scampered.

She let herself be guided to the front of the cabin, where she took in the smiling flight attendant, the deference, the overwide seat, the silver tray of drinks, the space. Wynn sat there beside her, a tired smile on his face, saying nothing. He observed her with the glassy-eyed stare of a starving man watching another dine. The smile only touched his eyes once, when just after takeoff the plane did a serious dive-and-swoop, and Jackie could not help but laugh like a kid on a roller-coaster. Once they were through the turbulence, Wynn sank back inside himself, put the seat on full tilt, closed his eyes, and said, “Enjoy.” End of tale.

Except for the fact that she was flying first-class across the ocean. Dining on roast tenderloin in a truffle sauce, fresh asparagus tips, chocolate mousse, all the silverware and linen she could hope for. Seventeen television channels, a stewardess there for whatever she might want, and up ahead lay Rome.

20

Tuesday

F
OR WYNN, the drive from the airport into Rome passed in a golden blur. Normally he was more than willing to go along with Sybel on her do-good journeys, watch her back, feed the poor, let his remorse pour out with the heat. He could not say he had ever looked forward to these trips, but they did him good. He always returned with a sense of having cleaned out a multitude of wounds, albeit temporarily. Yet this voyage was different, of that he was certain. And the difference did not lie in the fact that Sybel had left Grant. His only hope was to rush in, do whatever was needed, and depart. Before he was hooked and dragged into whatever soul-wrenching maelstrom loomed just beyond the next turning.

Jackie spent the journey into town switching birdlike from one window to another. Wynn had never been to Rome before but could see nothing outside that would warrant such fascination. The city was just buildings and grime and noise. And traffic. Roman drivers did not steer, they hurtled with horns used as weapons of combat. Jackie seemed oblivious to all but the wonder of sunlight upon old stone. Wynn found himself vaguely jealous. “Did you get any rest on the plane?”

She spared him a single glance. “I’ll never sleep again.”

When they arrived at the Hassler, Wynn was completing his check-in before he realized Jackie was nowhere to be seen. He returned outside to find her staring over the steep-sided piazza fronting the hotel, out to where the rooftops of Rome gleamed from just another dawn. She watched the light and the day with shoulders hunched and hands folded across her chest, an awestruck penitent.

He had no time to indulge her veneration. “I have to go. The hotel car is taking me to the church where I hope I can find Sybel.”

She turned reluctantly. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

“Stick around, why don’t you. I’ve booked you into a room down the hall from mine. Enjoy the day. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I really should come with you.” But she did not move.

“Believe me, Jackie, there’s nothing going on here except a brother looking for answers. Get some rest.”

J
ACKIE TRAVERSED the hotel’s public areas so fast she could almost hold her breath. Moving quickly was her best defense against the rich surroundings and these people who actually looked like they belonged. Upstairs, she showered and changed and spent a long moment staring out her window. The French-style doors opened onto a tiny balcony, not more than a foot deep and railed by ancient iron balustrades. The view looked straight onto the dome of the neighboring church, but off to the left there was a drop and then the whole of Rome, or so it seemed. She looked for just an instant, then forced herself to close the shutters. If she remained the bed would claim her, and that could not happen, not with Rome beckoning.

She walked and walked and walked. To merely look was a sacrilege. Jackie wanted to dine upon the day, devour everything she saw. Even the profane was bejeweled. She strolled the length of a grimy cobblestone street, where graffiti was scrawled upon palaces of ocher and age and stone. She stopped to admire a gated courtyard trapped in sunlight and medieval silence. Across the street and up two floors she spied a portico from which Juliet could have yearned for a Roman lover. From the handwrought railing hung plastic buckets filled with blooming daisies. Jackie felt an urgent need to pound on the nail-studded door and order the inhabitants to cultivate something extraordinary. An Italian lotus perhaps, or jasmine and lavender and plants for royal purple dye. Beyond the rooftops rose a hill crowned with trees and convocations of Roman doves. Higher still hung a painter’s sky.

When her hunger became strong enough to resonate over her fatigue, she stopped at a streetside restaurant and ordered the lightest item on the menu. The Italian name was
caprese,
translated merely as a plate of tomatoes and mozzarella. What arrived deserved lines of verse. Tomato slices doused with oil so pungent it caught in her throat. Mozzarella balls little more than solidified milk wrapped in delicate skins.

A tiny espresso, a thimbleful of explosive flavor, then she was up and walking. It was lunchtime now, and she was surrounded by all the city’s impossible contrasts—fumes and wood-roasted lamb, grime and spices, and five thousand years of flowers.

The sky grew steadily darker as she wound her way down toward the Tiber. Next to a bridge sheltered by poplars, an old man scraped ice off a block three feet thick. Back and forth his arm swept, shaving the ice with a metal grip, before ladling the snowball and fruit juice into a paper cup. He was surrounded by trees and laughing children and ribbons of green-tinted sunlight. The children’s joy merely turned the man older still. Jackie bought an ice and let a tiny girl of perhaps six select the flavor and pay the old man from the money in Jackie’s palm. She walked on to the sound of children singing a Roman farewell, her mouth drenched with the flavors of pineapple and perfect afternoons.

As she approached the Pantheon, a sudden deluge chased her off the cobblestones. She joined a thousand others under Hadrian’s archway and relished an impromptu symphony of thunder and rain. She moved inside. The Pantheon dome was decorated with geometric designs that drew the eye ever higher up to the giant circular opening at its top. Through this central void fell a pillar of lightning-slashed rain. Down below, children danced about the watery border. Then the rain passed, and there came a single instant of metamorphosis, before the circle formed a pillar of light. The children danced on, transformed now into cherubs all. The crowded chamber halted to watch their flight.

W
YNN SAT ALONE in the back of the hotel’s limo, an oversize Alfa Romeo designed like a Mercedes with Italian flair. As the sunlight gradually gave way to approaching showers, he reflected on how much he already hated Rome.

He loathed its beauty and its deformities with equal fervor, and not merely because he had been forced to come. Hardly at all for that reason, in fact. He hated this city and this journey for the lie they made of his life. Money and success had not resolved his inner conflicts. Rather, they had enveloped him in an opiate dullness, distancing him from the wounds he still carried. He stared out the window as the limo pass over the Tiber, caring for nothing, wanting merely to be away. Anywhere was better than a place of such horrid truth.

The limo halted by a narrow cobblestone lane. The driver turned around. “Please sir, from here you must walk.”

Wynn felt no great desire to enter whatever mission his sister had designed. “What is this place?”

“Piazza di San Callisto. Your church, it is down this street, but I cannot drive. Is permitted only at night.”

“Sant’Egidio is there?”

“The movement, yes, but not the church. The church of Sant’Egidio is down farther, that way. But the movement is here now. Two years ago, maybe three, it came here to Trastevere. The first
eglise
was too small.”

“You know about Sant’Egidio?”

“Everybody knows. All the city speaks of Sant’Egidio.” He smiled with impossible humor. “There is a saying, Rome is a holy city for all but Romans. You understand? But for Romans who believe, there is Sant’Egidio. They feed the poor. They pray. They work for peace. You know the war in Rwanda? They help to stop. Algeria, same thing. Colombia, Bosnia, Congo, Sudan, so many places. Now Sant’Egidio’s head priest, he is a bishop.”

Wynn reached for the door. “Sounds like my sister’s kind of place.”

“Please?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure, Vatican politics is big talk here in Rome. You know the Curia? They fight to keep Sant’Egidio priest out. Too many people not priests have power in Sant’Egidio. Too many not Catholics. But the Pope, he makes him bishop anyway.” He pointed down the lane. “I wait here, yes?”

Rain began speckling the cobblestones, turning them slick as old glass. The lane opened into a grand piazza, anchored at one end by a truly monstrous church. If Sybel had been able to design her own church, it would have been this one. Not beautiful, as so many were in this city. But vast and old, pitted with hard use, and very busy. The piazza was lined on two sides by restaurants and shops, with a high fortress wall and the church along the others. Beggars and homeless people claimed the shaded fortress and the empty fountain as their own. They hunched and huddled against the gathering storm, but did not move. The church’s tall iron gates were open and fronted by Gypsies selling flowers, pleading with toothless whines as he joined the chattering crowds and entered.

The interior was huge in the way of medieval halls, incredibly ornate, yet worn and faded. Even the ceiling’s gold-leaf mosaics were smoky and muted. The place was packed with people of every race. And not for a service. Groups used side chapels for quietly intense meetings. They gathered along tables at the back. They sat and knelt and prayed. Wynn walked the right-hand aisle, feeling utterly the outsider. Their talk and their laughter all seemed directed at him, speaking in an unknown tongue of all the mysteries he could not hope to fathom.

“Can I help, please?”

He turned to face a dark-haired pixie of a woman. She was tiny, certainly under five feet, with a smile big enough for three of her. A small girl in a filthy oversize frock held one of her hands. “Welcome to Sant’Egidio. You are new?”

“Yes.”

“Please to excuse the noise. We are building new rooms for meetings. Until they are done,” she waved an apologetic hand over the din. “You see?”

“I’d like to speak with Father Libretto.”

“The father is not here. I am Anna.” She smiled beneath dark ringlets. “Please return tonight. For the
preghiere.
You understand? The night prayers.”

“And Sybel Wells?”

“Who, please?”

“My sister. Is she here?”

“So sorry. The Father, he is busy with the poor. I do not think any Sybel is there, but perhaps.” She made a gesture towards the back. “You wish to come?”

“Not a chance.”

“Va bene.”
Even at his refusal, she showed impossible cheer.
“Otto é mezzo.
Eight and one-half o’clock. Night prayers. You come back.”

Wynn had no choice but to retreat, defeated by the welcome that was not his and probably never would be.

J
ACKIE RETURNED to the Hassler when a taxi was her only hope of moving another inch. She found a terse note from Wynn waiting for her: his sister was not found. He had to return to the church that night, but would she join him for an early dinner beforehand? She scrawled a yes at the bottom, left it for him, then almost fell asleep in the elevator on the way upstairs.

She woke three hours later, feeling more fatigued than she had upon lying down. Jackie ordered up coffee and spent a long time seated by her open window, staring at the people and the late afternoon vista. She studied a map and named what she could see—the Trinita Dei Monti church, the Piazza di Spagna, Via Condotti, the Spanish Steps. Trying to anchor herself through the process of identification, and make all this real.

She spent more time dressing than she had in years, almost convincing herself it was for the place and not for Wynn. Her outfit was a smoky buff weave of cotton and silk with collar and belt of nail-polish red. Open-toed shoes to match. She stood for a long moment staring at herself in the full-length mirror, wondering if she could afford to hope once again. Even a little. Yet knowing she had already left the power of choice far behind.