Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Terence Hall was in the newspaper the next day too.
“He was that important?” Lena asked Julia.
“I guess it’s bad for the government when foreigners die on Rome’s streets.”
Julia left for her class, but when Laura Mesner came down, she raised her brows at the sight of Terence Hall’s picture on the front page. “Wow. That’s crazy.”
“What’s crazy?” Lena asked.
Laura picked up the paper. “Didn’t you read this?”
“I can’t read Italian.”
“Oh. Well, this guy was a diplomat—the assistant to the diplomatic representative to the Holy See from Great Britain. He was poisoned.”
“Poisoned? Julia said he had a heart attack.”
Laura gave her a funny look. “Yeah. Caused by poison. They’re looking for anyone who might have seen him in the hours before he died. Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Lena said, and nothing was, was it? She had not poisoned Terence Hall. When she and Julia had left him, he’d been very much alive. So why did Lena feel so uneasy? Why hadn’t Julia mentioned that poison was the cause?
Lena felt worse when Julia came home that afternoon and said, “I’ve moved up our holiday. We’re going to Venice tomorrow instead of waiting for the weekend.”
“I have a project due tomorrow.”
“Professor Basile has already given you permission to be gone, hasn’t he?” Julia asked.
“Yes, but—”
“There’s a reason, Lena—I finally got a chance to speak to my friend at Cinecittà. He wants to interview you on Monday!”
Lena stared at her in stunned surprise.
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Oh—oh my God. Oh. I’ve got so much to do. I can’t possibly go now ...”
Julia squeezed her arm. “You’ve got everything you need, Lena. The sketches are perfect. We’re going to Venice on the afternoon train, and when we return, you’ll be relaxed and ready. Repeat after me: relaxed and ready.”
Lena took a deep breath. “I’ll be relaxed and ready.”
Julia laughed. “The afternoon train, yes?”
“Okay.”
“It’s going to be perfect. I just need you to do one thing first. There’s a pickup at the Piazza Fiume.”
“Julia,” Lena moaned.
“You’ll have plenty of time. You can do it in the morning and meet me at the train. From Fiume you can take a tram right to Termini Station.”
Lena sighed. “What do I do?”
“There’s a little news kiosk at the edge of the piazza. The boy you talk to will be wearing an apron advertising Campari. Ask him who’s going to be at Mario’s this weekend. He’ll ask if you like New Orleans jazz. Tell him you love it. That’s it. Then bring what he gives you to the station and we’ll be off.” Julia stretched her arms over her head. “Four days away from here, and then everything will change.”
The excitement of Venice and the interview at Cinecittà swept Terence Hall and her uneasiness from Lena’s mind. The next morning she packed her bag and went to the small and unimpressive Piazza Fiume, where she found herself in the middle of a funeral procession—a phalanx of nuns trailing mourners following a funeral carriage decked with flowers and palm fronds. It took her aback, the creepy chanting and crying set against the everyday life of the piazza, cars spewing exhaust and signs advertising Nazionali Cigarettes and Cinema Teatro and the disconnect of the ancient section of the Aurelian wall and the Porta Salaria standing incongruously amid modern buildings. The clear blue sky and the crow-like shadows of the nuns fluttering on the stones and the heavy specter of death, and abruptly she thought of Terence Hall and poison and the authorities asking who had seen him in the hours before he’d died. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end; it all felt strangely portentous.
She was anxious to go. She hurried to the news kiosk, wanting to get away from the mourners as soon as possible. She found the boy in the Campari apron behind a stand holding Grand Hotel magazines, with their brightly romantic illustrated covers.
Lena approached him as he sliced open a box of new issues of the magazine. “Who’s playing at Mario’s this weekend?” she asked.
He glanced over his shoulder, his shock of dark hair falling into his face. “The Roman New Orleans Jazz Band. You like New Orleans jazz?”
“I love it.”
“I have a record you’ll like.” He rose and led her to a stack of boxes behind a stand of Turf newspapers. Stealthily he reached between the boxes and drew out a record— The Duke . Not New Orleans jazz at all, but an old Duke Ellington album. He grabbed an issue of Grand Hotel from a nearby pile and shoved the record into it, handed it to her with a wink, and said, “Have fun.”
Lena put the magazine into her baggage. She had two hours yet before she had to be at the station, so she dodged into a trattoria off the square, away from the mourners. She ordered a Coke and drew her sketchbook from her bag, thinking of Cinecittà, but she’d barely started work on a ball gown before two suited men stepped up to her table.
“Elsie Gruner?” asked one of the men—the shorter one, with dark hair and sunglasses.
Something in his look set off an alarm—along with the fact that he knew her name, her real name. “Yes?”
The taller man, with light brown hair and hazel eyes, pulled out a chair and sat down.
Her disquiet grew. Carefully, she set down her pencil. “Who are you?”
Now the other man sat as well. He shoved up his sunglasses to reveal icy blue eyes. “Miss Gruner, I’m Mr. Dunsmore, and this is Mr. Harrison. We’re with the CIA.”
“The . . . what?”
“The Central Intelligence Agency. For the United States government. We’d like to ask you about Terence Hall.”
Now she was afraid. “I don’t know anything about him,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.
“Are you saying you don’t know him?”
Lena had no idea what to say.
“You should tell us what you know,” said Mr. Harrison. “You’ll gain nothing by lying, Miss Gruner.”
“I met him once.”
“At Club LeRoy?” Dunsmore asked.
“Yes, but how—”
“We’ve been watching him for some time,” he said. “You were there with Miss Kovalova?”
“Miss—who?”
The two agents exchanged looks. Dunsmore sighed. “You know her as Julia Keane.”
“She ... she has a different name?”
“A few,” said Harrison. “You were there with her and Mr. Hall that night. Did you note anything unusual?”
“Like what?”
“Why don’t you tell us what happened that night?”
Lena started to rise. “I think I should go. I have a train to catch—”
Dunsmore grabbed her wrist, stopping her. “Sit down, Miss Gruner. Trust me, you want to answer our questions.”
“But I don’t know anything. I haven’t done anything.” She sat again.
“We’re just looking for some information, that’s all. Tell us about that night.”
“We met Mr. Hall for a drink. I tried to be nice to him but he was a jerk. Julia said that she’d call him when he was in a better mood and we left.”
“Where did you go?” Dunsmore asked.
“A few bars. I don’t remember. I got very drunk.”
“Hmmm.” Dunsmore looked thoughtful.
Harrison said, “You said you tried to be nice to Hall. Why?”
“Julia asked me to.”
“Why would she ask you to do that?”
“Because he wanted to go to Venice with us. She wanted me to ... you know, flirt with him. Or do something so she could start a fight with him so he wouldn’t go.”
“I see.” Dunsmore looked thoughtful. “Did you?”
“I tried. He didn’t seem to like me.”
“How close were Miss Keane and Mr. Hall?”
“I don’t know.”
“Close enough that your flirting with him meant that she could start a fight?”
That had not occurred to her. It should have.
“Did Miss Keane offer him anything while the three of you were at the club?” Harrison asked. “A mint? A drink? A piece of gum?”
Such an odd question. Lena frowned at him. “No. He had a drink when we sat down. Other than that ... no. I mean, she offered us both a cigarette, but he didn’t take it.”
Harrison sat back in his chair and let out his breath. “Classic pill drop,” he said to Dunsmore, who nodded grimly.
“Wait—” Lena said. “Are you saying ... what are you saying?”
“Thank you, Miss Gruner,” Dunsmore said, rising. “You’ve been very helpful.” Then, with as little ceremony as when they’d arrived, the two men left.
It was over, but instead of feeling relieved, Lena was more confused than ever. She waited only a moment to make sure they were gone before she shoved the sketchbook back into her bag and raced from the trattoria. Men in black suits. The CIA. She hadn’t imagined being followed. She had to tell Julia. She wasn’t sure whether Julia was in trouble or not—she wasn’t sure what that whole conversation was really about, but there had been that strange “ classic pill drop ,” that ...
Lena slowed. What the hell had the whole thing been about? “Did Miss Keane offer him anything?” Were they accusing Julia of poisoning Terence Hall? And what about the weirdness with the names? “She has a few.”
Lena couldn’t bring herself to think of it now. Julia would explain things. She had to get to Julia.
She hurried to catch the crowded tram, trying to slow her racing mind. When she reached Stazione Termini, the station was so busy it took Lena several minutes to reach the ticket counters, where she was supposed to meet Julia, and several minutes more to confirm that Julia had not yet arrived. Lena checked her watch, and then looked anxiously at the departure time for the Venice train. Julia was late.
Half an hour later, and Julia still had not appeared. Impatiently, Lena scanned the crowd. Her distress from the meeting with the CIA agents only grew with the noise and confusion of the station; she felt pressed on all sides, somehow culpable and criminal—but for what? Where the hell was Julia?
Fifteen minutes more, and the Venice train pulled in and disgorged its passengers. Lena shifted her weight. Any second now, Julia would be racing toward her, an apology on her lips. Julia would explain everything. She’d put all Lena’s fears to rest. Lena wanted desperately to believe it, but what the agents had said kept circling back. “Miss Kovalova.” Different names.
“Classic pill drop . . .”
The heat of the station and the crowd, the train’s belching steam, Lena’s own anxiety, made her feel ill. The minutes ticked by. Still, no Julia. They announced the loading of the Venice train, and Lena’s apprehension shifted to worry. It wasn’t like Julia to be tardy, especially since she’d been so insistent on leaving today.
Lena watched the passengers board. She watched the doors close and heard the announcement of the departure of the Venice train. With a grunt and a chugging groan, an exhalation of steam, the train ground its way out of the station, and again Lena felt the skin on the back of her neck prickle. She glanced around, never more aware of the possibility that she was being watched.
Now she knew too much to discount it. She felt the danger as a visceral crawling thing. She picked up her bag, looking over her shoulder, looking for a suit, sunglasses. But there were too many suits and sunglasses in the train station, and where the hell was Julia? The stink of fear crept into her pores as surely and permanently as the stink of pig.
She hurried out the station doors and into the Piazza dei Cinquecento. The cars, the horns, the noise of arriving and departing trains and trams—the sounds were all too loud, churning in her head. Desperately she searched for the tram she needed, already losing her bearings though she’d arrived only an hour before.
“Lena!”
The shout stopped her. Julia?
Lena spun around, searching the people rushing into the station, desperately searching. There was no Julia. She wanted to hear Julia’s voice so badly she’d imagined it.
“Lena!”
There it was again. Where was it coming from? All around, inside her own head, nowhere.
And then a hand landed on her arm with such force it nearly knocked her down. Julia, her hair falling from its pins, panic in her eyes, sweating and breathing hard with exertion.
“There you are! Where have you been? I—”
“Listen to me, Lena. It’s all gone wrong. I need you to hide, do you understand? Hide, and stay hidden. I’ll find you.”
“Hide?” Lena frowned.
Julia gave her arm a little shake. Her face was harder than Lena had ever seen it. She looked like the version of Julia that Lena had seen at Strega, the first time she’d seen her with Terence Hall. “ Listen. I was supposed to let you take the fall. I couldn’t do it. I need you to do what I say now.”
“I don’t understand,” Lena said softly. “What do you mean? What fall?”
“You’re in danger. Don’t let them find you. Go.” Julia slipped away.
It was then Lena saw the men—suited men coming from one direction, and a black-coated man from the other, the same man she’d seen fall outside the pharmacy weeks ago. They eased from hidden corners, converging, shouting in languages Lena did not understand—Italian? English? Something else? She didn’t know. She ran. Across the square, dodging through parked cars and those coming to pick up or drop off passengers, ignoring the horns and the shouts and the people who stared after her. Her bag bounced hard against her back. She kept running, now toward the remains of the ancient Servian Wall at the edge of the station. If she could get there, if she could somehow get behind it, hide, find a way to get lost in the streets ...
But she was too slow and the men were too fast. They were right on her, she heard their breathing, their hard heels on the stone. One of them—the man in the coat—grabbed hold of her bag, jerking her back.
Lena lost her balance, crashing to the ground at the same time she heard a gunshot followed by screams of passersby. She was dimly aware of people crying out, fleeing, racing for cover, but mostly she heard the man who’d grabbed her bag let out a gasping grunt. He let go. Lena scrambled to her knees, her bag sliding over her shoulder, banging into her chest as she desperately looked for where the shot had come from, where next to run, and then she saw Julia, only a few yards away, next to the jutting stone of the old Servian Wall, a gun—a gun!—in her hand, and she realized that was where the shot had come from, and the other men chasing Lena had stopped and stood still, watching Julia, waiting for what would happen next.
Chaos erupted around them, but Julia’s voice carried easily as she said, “Leave her. It’s me you want. Let her go.”
One of the men shook his head. “Not so fast. She’s part of this too.”
“She doesn’t know anything.” Julia leveled the gun at him, and Lena’s thoughts ran in bewildered and astonished circles. “Lena, I want you to get up, and I want you to run away from here.”
“I—”
“Now,” Julia said.
“Don’t go anywhere, Miss Gruner.” The man who’d spoken to Julia put up his hand. “You can’t escape.”
“I don’t even know what this is!” Lena said in desperation. From the corner of her eye, she saw the man in the black coat, who had been lying motionless, flinch. Maybe. She didn’t want to take her gaze from the others, and Julia had already shot him. He was going nowhere.
“Get up, Lena,” Julia ordered.
Lena did, and at the same moment, the man in the coat rolled and grabbed her, pulling her to him. She felt the gun in her back, heard his heavy breathing. She didn’t think, she only reacted, a kick in his shin, and he buckled and released her, but the gun in his hand jerked and his finger on the trigger jerked too. The shot rang in her ears, his gun, and Julia, whose eyes had been on Lena—Julia, to whom Lena owed everything—put her hand to her chest, a bloom of red, crumpled, and went down, motionless.
Lena cried out, and started toward her, but then ... then the man who’d told her she couldn’t escape spun toward her, and she heard the shouts and screams of witnesses and Julia’s voice in her ear, “ Run! ” though she couldn’t have heard it because Julia had been shot, Julia was dead, and Lena turned and ran. She ran as fast as she could and as far. She ran with Julia’s “ It’s all gone wrong. Don’t let them find you ” in her head. She ran without looking back. She ran until she cramped and her lungs felt they would burst and she couldn’t go one step farther, and then she stumbled to a stop at the first tram station she saw.
She ignored the looks she got when she boarded the tram—more accurately, she saw nothing but Julia folding in on herself, that flower of blood, Julia falling like a rag doll. Julia still. Lena transferred from one tram to another before she realized she had to go back to the academy to report what had happened. She needed the police, the carabinieri. And yet ... what would she report? They needed to find Julia’s body and the men who had killed her and who were these men? They weren’t the CIA agents who had questioned Lena in the Piazza Fiume. Lena had no idea who they were or what they wanted. CIA? Or something else?
“She’s part of this too.”
Part of what ?
“ You can’t escape ,” that man had said.
“I was supposed to let you take the fall.” Julia’s words. The fall for what? A “ classic pill drop ”?
“I couldn’t do it.” Julia was dead because of her. It was her fault.
It took Lena two hours to discover where in Rome she was, and to navigate her way back to the academy, and she wanted to cry with relief when she arrived to its soothing pink marble floor and pillars and vast ceiling, though she wondered if there was any place she would feel safe again.
Not the academy, it turned out. She’d no sooner come inside when she was greeted by the director, Emilio Collie, whom she’d only seen from across the room at a dinner or two but had never actually met. A serious expression marked his already gaunt face, making him look forbidding, and Lena felt another rush of fear—what had happened to make him look that way?
Julia was dead.
He said in a low voice, “Miss Gruner, the carabinieri would like to have a word with you.”
It was about Julia. It had to be. They’d found her. Lena had been gone for hours. Of course. “Is it about Julia?”
To her surprise, Mr. Collie frowned. “Miss Keane? No. They’ve said nothing about her. If you will ...” He gestured down the hallway, and only then did she notice that they had an audience, that everyone in the building had paused to watch, and that farther down the hall, in front of the library, stood two carabinieri, arms crossed, waiting.
Lena’s mouth went dry. “But if it’s not about Julia ... what do they want?”
Mr. Collie said quietly, “I cannot stop them from questioning you, Miss Gruner. I received a call from the American embassy. They’ve asked you to cooperate.”
“Am I in trouble?” she asked.
The director shrugged. “That I cannot say.”
She had an overwhelming urge to run again. But she had nowhere to go, and she knew she wouldn’t get ten yards before she was stopped.
Her pulse jumped as she followed the director down the hall to the library.
The two carabinieri stepped aside.
“There is nothing to fear,” one of them said. “We are only asking questions.”
About what? The last hours became a weight she could not breathe through. She had already been asked questions by the CIA, and she was already afraid, and all she knew was that she didn’t want to be here in this moment, or to be alone with the carabinieri.
But she obviously had no choice. Dr. Collie didn’t come into the library with her.
He closed the door behind them after the two police officers followed her inside.
“I want to report a murder,” she said.
The policeman who was obviously to be her main interrogator raised his heavy brows. “ Sì ?”
“In the Piazza Cinquecento. A few hours ago. I was with my friend Julia Keane. We were pursued by three men, and one of them shot her. He wore a long black coat and ... and he had dark hair. You’ll know him because ... because ... because ...” They looked at her with polite uninterest. “Because she shot him first. I don’t know where she hit him, but he was wounded, that I know.”
“I see. Won’t you sit down, Miss Gruner.”
Lena took a seat in one of the armchairs.
The main policeman sauntered over and pulled up another chair to sit before her. “Are you comfortable, signora?”
“My friend ... aren’t you going to do anything about it?”
“If what you say is true, the police at the stazione will be involved already.” He seemed completely unconcerned.
“It is true. She’s dead.”
“Then there is nothing to be done, sì ?”
“But—” Lena felt as if she were falling into darkness. “But these men ...”
“In a black coat. Yes, I see. It all sounds very interesting. I’m sure we will hear all about it. In the meantime, we will try to make this short.”
“I don’t understand. You mean this isn’t about Julia?”
“Now, I did not say that.” His smile was chilling. “Perhaps you could tell me why you’re in Rome.”
“I’m an academy student,” she said. “I’m here to study fashion design.”
“From where?”
“The United States. Los Angeles.”
“Ah.” The man sat back. Again that little smile. “California, sì ? Hollywood?”
Lena could not smile back. “Yes.”
“How many communists do you know there?”
The question came out of nowhere. “What?”
“How. Many. Communists. Do. You. Know. There?”
“I ... none.” It was a lie, of course, but they couldn’t know that, and why were they asking that question anyway?
“You’re a student?”
“I just told you I was.”
“In Hollywood.”
Lena nodded.
“But you do not know any leftists.”
“I . . . I . . . no.”
“Liar.” The man’s little smile disappeared. “How often do you go to the Via Margutta?”
“I don’t.”
He turned to look over his shoulder at his fellow officer, and they exchanged a laugh. He turned back to her. “I am asking you again, signora. How often do you go to the Via Margutta? To a bar there called La Grotta? Do you know it?”
The walls felt very close. “Could I have some water please?”
“After you answer the question.”
“I’ve been there once or twice,” she confessed.
“To communist meetings?”
“To listen to jazz.”
“Did you ever meet a man by the name of Terence Hall?”
Lena froze. “Once. I met him once.”
“What was the nature of this meeting?”
“I met him at the Club LeRoy. He was a friend of Julia’s.” Julia, who was dead. “That’s all. I talked to him a bit. I asked him to dance. He said no. We left.”
“Do you know who he was?”
“I heard about it later. I didn’t know when I met him.”
She waited for them to ask her about a pill drop, about poison. They didn’t, but the questions went on and on and on. Most of them about her associations in Los Angeles, and why she was really in Rome, until Lena’s mouth was dry and she thought she would cry with frustration and worry and fear.
“Do you have friends here in Rome?”
“Yes, of course. I just told you one of them was dead.”
“Who are they? Their names please.” The man gestured to his partner, who took out a pad and a pencil.
“I—uh—don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember your friends’ names?”
“Well . . . they’re Italian, so . . .”
“Please list them.”
Lena cleared her throat. “Julia, of course. She’s a student here, and Tony, who owns La Grotta, but you must know that, and there are some people who are always there, but I don’t know them well ... I don’t remember really? Marco, maybe?”
“You are a messenger for them?”
“A what?”
“You deliver messages? Codes, contraband, things of that nature.”
She was tired. “Cigarettes. I’ve brought them cigarettes. That’s hardly contraband.” A bit of hashish, and there had been that emetic that she was sure was not emetic, and ... Terence Hall had been poisoned— no, no, she refused to believe it. He’d been alive when they left him. “Yes. Yes. Cigarettes.”
“Just cigarettes, signora? Are you certain?”
Even through her exhaustion and sorrow she felt the danger in the question, and she knew then that Julia had lied to her. “She’s part of it too.” Whatever Lena had been couriering was not harmless, not just drugs, but something bad enough that men had followed her for it. It had been bad enough to get Julia killed. Bad enough that Julia had felt the need to protect Lena. And those men were still out there. “You can’t escape.”
This was not the game she’d thought it. It was no harmless hustle as it had been with Walter. She was in trouble, and she was not only grieving, she was also terrified. “If it was anything else, I didn’t know. I didn’t know .”
More questions. She lost track of time; it felt like forever. Finally, her questioner looked at his watch and sighed. He signaled to his partner, who rose and opened the drawn curtain over the window. The pink of dawn light filled the room.
They’d kept her there through the night answering the same questions. Whether she’d given them the answers they wanted, she had no idea. But she was relieved and stunned when her questioner rose and said, “It is time for you to leave Rome, signora.” His voice was firm, but his dark gaze was not unkind. “You should not come back. We will escort you to the airport.”
Lena stared at him in shock and confusion. She wasn’t going to jail. It took her another moment to realize the rest. No interview at Cinecittà. Her internship, gone. The future she’d planned for, gone.
None of it mattered just then. Julia was dead. And those men Julia had died to save her from were still out there.
“You have twenty minutes to pack your things.”
“What about Julia? And those men?”
“Best to worry about yourself. You should pack quickly, signora. We have orders to take you ready or not.”
His eyes might have been understanding, but Lena also saw the resolve in them, and she knew the two of them would have no trouble manhandling her to the airport. They would carry her kicking and screaming onto the plane if they had to, and no one in Rome would question the carabinieri. No one would dare to, even if they handcuffed her to her plane seat. She had no idea who had given the order for her to be removed from Rome, but she had no doubt that it would be carried out with or without her cooperation, especially since—what had Dr. Collie said?—they’d been told by the American embassy that she should cooperate.
Her questioner’s mouth settled into a thin line. “It is better if you don’t ask questions. For your own sake. Now hurry, signora. You have a plane to catch.”
They released her to go to the Augusta and waited outside while she gathered her things. She threw it all, including the bag she’d packed for Venice, into her suitcase, too upset to organize anything. Before the day ended, Rome would be a heartbreaking and confusing memory; she was on her way back to LA.