The Ancient Rain (19 page)

Part of the ceremony then had involved the Modoc chief, down from Yreka, who came with his dark face and black eyes to exchange gifts—and to dance with his tribe the dance of dirt and feathers. A skid-row Indian, no chief at all, pulled at random from the Bowery along with the other chiefs, all shuffling and shaking along the wooden planks in their ceremonial clothes while the Italians watched, chewing on crab legs and tossing the shells where the Indians danced.

The procession ended at the Italian cathedral. Who marched where, in what position, who were the legitimate Italians, the pretenders, was a matter of squabbling now like then—so that it ended up being not just one procession, but many. Little groups winding down from Goat Hill, from Washerwoman's Lagoon, from Cow Hollow. The celebration would go on all night and into the evening. There were booths up and down Grant Street and a cacophony in the square—street performers and mimes, Indian drumming, Chinese street toughs watching all the while, monopolizing the benches on the south end.

Today was a warm day, unseasonably so, and the old Italians gathered in a red tent at the center of the square. A group of tables close to the stage had been roped off for the local dignitaries, for the Italian Auxiliary. Prospero had bought those seats, reserving them. The other tables were largely unoccupied, despite the crowd streaming by the tent.

Dante was there. Marilyn, too. She had ridden on Prospero's float, and the crowd had waved at her, knowing her story, pressing close to get a look at the woman in the white blouse and company blazer. Everyone was outside. Dante had glimpsed Owens along the route, out with his family, watching the parade.

Now Prospero leaned toward Dante. “Your girl, she's more beautiful than ever, don't you think?”

“Yes,” said Dante.

“You shouldn't drag her anymore places, that business you do.”

Prospero always attracted the local dignitaries, and they came up now, the members of II Cenacolo, with their Italian sausages, their finger food, their glasses of wine—and each of them stopped to talk to Marilyn. She wore a scarf, loosely veiled, but still you could see the mottling on her cheek. She'd always had the air of a wanderer, a Sephardic beauty, and maybe it was this that had kept her apart. Now, though, she was the center of attention—and seemed comfortable in their midst.

Others came, crowding into the area between the ropes. Rossi, who had been mayor two decades past. Father Campanella. Gucci, from the mortuary. Frank Angelo, deputy to the chief of police, who had been Dante's partner. And a gaggle of old-timers up from Burlingame. The gang from Serafina's was here, at Prospero's behest. Besozi, with her cane. Pesci, with his cigarettes. And Stella, of course, hands on hips.

“This stage,” Stella said. “Why is it empty?”

“There is an accordionist coming soon. And later, opera,” said Prospero, ever ebullient.

“There is hummus in the sauce.”

Stella's voice was accusatory. Father Campanella had hired a chef from one of the new restaurants—a dark-skinned boy with effeminate gestures. Prospero looked at his plate, confused. “I don't know what you mean.”

“All these empty tables. What is the problem here?”

Father Campanella glanced away. There were rumors about him and the boy, but there were always rumors about priests. “We have done our best,” the priest said. Still, it was a sore spot. In the old days they had had Frankie Valli here in the tent. Antonio Benedetto, too. And that one time Liza Minnelli, her mother drunk in the audience. Now the place was not even one-third full. The passersby glanced at the white tablecloths, and kept on walking.

In the next stall over, in a booth for the Wu Benevolent Society, Dante saw Leanora Chin mingling with a group of Chinese cops and firefighters. Her companions had marched in the parade, from the looks of them, one of those contingents that marched down from Chinatown. Chin herself was dressed for the weather, shorts and a sleeveless shirt. He was surprised to see her, but maybe he shouldn't have been. She used to work at the Columbus Station and had grown up around the corner.

“Why all the empty tables?” Stella repeated.

“Demographics,” said Prospero. “Times are changing.”

“This is not it,” said Stella. “People walk by. Calzones. Pizza.”

Rossi, the former mayor, piped in, speaking loudly, as he always did, with the air of an insider. “The problem is not here. It's out there.”

Rossi pointed outside, at the stage at the other end of the square. From where he sat, Dante could see deep into the crowd. The San Francisco Troupe had its truck parked next to the outdoor stage, all decked out in medicine-show colors, and people were gathered on blankets. The troupe had a history of staging plays that mocked the festival. “To keep the agitators off our stage, we have to say this is a church benefit,” Rossi said. “Then to do that, it means charging admission.”

Across the way, Chin had seen him, too, Dante realized. She still lingered.

“The cook's name is Ahmed,” Stella said. “This is the problem. You have a cook named Ahmed, he puts hummus in the sauce.”

“There is no hummus in the sauce,” said Father Campanella.

“In the past, we charged admission to our tent, no problem. But people, they smell the hummus in the sauce, they go elsewhere.”

Prospero, though, had returned his attention to his plate, eating with gusto, lips smacking, a napkin tucked into his shirt, old-style. “I think it's pretty good,” he said. “Maybe you should get the recipe.”

Stella picked her fork out of the linen. Dante thought she was going to stab Prospero in the eye.

Instead she glared at the priest. “This utensil is dirty,” she said. “No wonder no one eats here.”

*   *   *

Dante stepped outside.

The San Francisco Troupe was onstage now. The fights between the community boosters and the troupe were old hat, he knew, and went back even further, to the days when the
buffo
used to mock the
prominenti
in clownish skits, full of pratfalls and goose steps, stage pranks and trap doors—less than subtle, but the kids liked it, and part of the attraction for the adults was to see how it might offend the status quo.

On stage:

Two agents on a special mission from the president. Stumbling clownlike out of a whirling, whizzing machine. Back to the time of Columbus—to nip terrorism in the bud.

They sought an enemy agent by the name of Disappearing L, played by Annette Ricci.

Slipping the Indians from their chains on the Santa Maria: Escaping. Then pushing forward through time, pursued by government agents in their machine.

Meanwhile, the cops were out, walking in pairs—part of the security detail patrolling the square. A stepped-up detail, including plainclothes, on account of the holiday. Dante got a glimpse of Owens in the crowd, sitting on a blanket with his family. Though the man was still living in his house on Fresno, Dante had not talked to him lately. Partly this was on Jensen's insistence. There had been more threats, and the lawyer worried someone would follow Dante to Owens. Dante understood the need for precaution, but he suspected also that Jensen did not want him talking to his client unsupervised.

When Dante turned, he all but bumped into Leanora Chin. She stood in front of him in her blue shorts and her sneakers, but a glance at her, the way she stood, he knew, she was never really off duty. She was a lithe woman, with gray eyes that tended to hold you once they had gotten your attention. Those eyes regarded him in a way that was neither malicious nor particularly friendly.

“I hear you had a confrontation with Sorrentino, out in front of Annette Ricci's.”

“I didn't know you two were in touch,” said Dante.

“Police people talk, like anyone else.”

Back onstage, the play spun forward through time. A slave rebellion, a union meeting, Latino workers in the field.

Chin nodded toward Annette Ricci, in costume, up onstage.

“You were out to her place.”

Dante said nothing.

“I thought you'd like to know, Ms. Ricci's boyfriend, Juan—one of his associates was in town recently. Luis Montoya. Montoya's wanted on extradition charges, by the new government in Nicaragua. Luis and Juan, they did a lot of work in the old days. Burning the capitalists out of their homes.”

Dante understood the insinuation. The noise from certain quarters had grown louder, pointing the investigation into the firebombing back at the people who had been in the house. A political move, Jensen would say—government proxies attempting to blame the victims, suggesting they were bombing themselves.

“I thought it was drug related?” He said it with a smirk.

Chin didn't seem to notice. “I know Owens is your client. But if you run across something, the information would be appreciated.” She nodded toward Marilyn inside the tent. “I know you have an interest in seeing someone apprehended.”

Dante understood what Chin was trying to do. Cops did it all the time, working with private detectives. Reminding them of their legal responsibilities—the hazards of withholding evidence. But if the cops had anything on Montoya, they wouldn't be coming to him. No, Chin was just fishing, he thought. Two steps behind, after all that delay in Oakland. Grabbing at straws—and doing it in a way that would turn the defense against itself, blaming friends of the accused.

Now, on the stage, the time machine veered out of control, slamming into the Twin Towers.

“Oh, no,” the agents turned to the crowd in mock chagrin. “What will we do now?”

“Who can we blame?”

The pair looked at each other, as if they both had the same idea at once: “Terrorists!”

Mostly, it was not a government crowd. People laughed, jeering at the agent. Others, though, got up to leave, offended.

“I'm glad to see Ms. Visconti is doing well,” said Chin.

Dante glanced at the cop. He studied her face for the suggestion he'd seen often these last weeks: that he himself was somehow responsible. Often, beneath those expressions of sympathy lay disdain and mockery.

Meanwhile, the play moved toward its conclusion. The troupe almost always ended its skits with an escalating moment, when the boundaries between the audience and the actors broke down. Onstage, the agents were dragging old hippies from their homes. Now they bounded into the audience, making mock arrests. The real cops at the edge of the crowd, the plainclothes, hesitated, not knowing who was in the play and who was not.

Annette Ricci appeared onstage, pulling the shackles off the imprisoned.

“There she is!”

Annette Ricci stood center stage, Liberty herself, torch in hand, the minions around her freed. The agents lunged.

She disappeared in a puff of smoke.

*   *   *

When Dante returned to the Italian tent, the accordionist had at last taken the stage. The crowd had filled out to some degree, and a man he did not recognize sat chatting with Marilyn. The way the man leaned toward her, though, the way she smiled—he had a notion who the man might be. Dante felt a spike of envy. As he stood there, the old Italians were watching him, he knew, their eyes running back and forth between himself and Marilyn at the table and this new man next to her. This new man had a wholesome look, disheveled hair. Dante knew what would happen next. He would follow Chin's lead despite himself. He would head up to Cicero's office and run an Internet check and likely pull a photo. But first he would walk over to Marilyn, and she would introduce him to David Lake, and the three of them would sit too long at this table, making small talk, smiling, the two men politely waiting each other out.

*   *   *

The next day Dante drove to the Tamale House. He'd already been there before, but now he had a photograph in his pocket. He ordered a beer and a tamale and showed the photo to the Latino kid behind the counter.

“No conosco,” the kid said.

The kid did not look comfortable. After a while Dante showed the photo to the waitress, and the cook, and a dark-skinned man who emerged from a tiny room in the back. It didn't take Dante long to figure out they were all related. The dark-skinned man was the father, and when Dante asked the question, he responded that his wife was from Honduras and he himself was from Mexico, and they generally did not get involved in Nicaraguan politics.

He spoke with a little too much of a grin, condescending, as if Nicaraguan politics were for idiots.

In the end, Dante could not tell whether the man was telling the truth or not. He motioned to the man that he wanted to speak in private, and together they went into a small room with a tiny desk and miscellaneous shelves and a couple of mop handles in the corner.

Dante put some money on the table. The little man looked at the money in confusion, still shaking his head, and Dante grabbed him by the shirtfront. Thinking of the old Italians and the looks in their eyes, and how it was his fault and he'd been unable to find out a goddamn thing. Thinking of Marilyn and her ruined face. The man tried to wriggle free. The shirt buttons tore, and Dante thrust him on the floor in the tiny room, so he lay trapped between Dante and the door. Dante grabbed one of the broom handles and started poking it at the man, jabbing, hitting at the wall near his head.

“No conosco!”

Someone was lying. Ricci or Owens or Chin or this Mexican on the floor. Maybe all of them, for all he knew. Meanwhile the man's wife and kids were pounding on the door behind him. A siren started in the distance, but there was always a siren in the Mission. Dante threw down the broom and left the restaurant. Out on the street, no one looked at him, no one met his eye. He, himself, was thinking of David Lake, how when he had been sitting across from the man, there inside the Italian tent, he would have liked nothing better than to take such a broom handle and drive it into his skull.

PART FIVE

The Ancient Rain