Chapter 3 #6
“But do you miss her?”
I hesitated. “Yeah. I still do.”
Gianna smiled. “I met her once, you know.”
I was stunned. “When?”
“She came with you to see Lallu. She was really sweet. She let me use this walking stick she had. I kept trying to pole vault with it. And when you guys left, she said I could keep it. She even hugged me. I still have that stick somewhere, I think.”
I didn’t remember any of this. But hearing it made me feel closer to Gianna than ever. Which loosened me up for what I said next. She was so near, yet beyond my reach, which is kind of how I’d felt about her for a long time.
“Listen, Gianna. Can I tell you something? As long as we’re stuck here?”
“Sure.”
I took a breath.
“I think about you a lot. Actually, all the time. It’s weird. Being together as kids, even though we were so little, I feel like we’re connected.
“I’ve felt this way for a long time. Ever since I saw you at the Miami zoo. To be honest, I came to college because of you.”
Her eyes widened.
“I know that sounds creepy, right? I don’t mean it that way. I just—-I just wanted to be where you were. I like being around you. I know I’ve acted stupid sometimes—-a lot of times. It’s because . . . you make me nervous.”
“Why would I make you nervous?” she asked.
“Come on. It’s obvious, right?”
“What?”
I exhaled hard.
“That I like you. That I more than like you. I mean . . .” The words just spilled out. “That I love you. I really do. I know that sounds insane, we’re not even dating or anything. I’m sorry. But it’s how I feel.”
My mouth went dry and my heart pounded. Suddenly, I felt like a complete idiot. What are you doing? What were you thinking?
“Alfie,” Gianna said. “Do you mean all of this?”
“Yeah.”
“Because you say a lot of weird things.”
“No. Yes. I mean it!”
Then, as if she needed physical proof, I opened the bag and took out a small white box.
“Look. I got this for you.”
I pulled off the top and removed a kid’s necklace. Dangling from the bottom was a little silver elephant.
“For your birthday. Happy birthday, Gianna.”
She blinked several times. It looked like she might cry. She put her hand to the glass and I pushed the elephant forward. She moved her fingertips as if touching it.
“Oh, God, Alfie,” she said, smiling.
“What?”
“It took you long enough.”
I exhaled so hard, I fogged up the glass. But when that moisture evaporated, she was staring at me with the most loving expression. And whatever man she was seeing that day was the man I wanted to be forever.
She curled her index finger. I moved my face closer.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing could be better than this.”
She pushed her beautiful lips in my direction and I felt my nose brush the glass. That was our first kiss. Through a revolving door that a thousand dirty hands had pushed against that morning.
It was perfect.
Nassau
“Well, hallelujah,” LaPorta said, sneering. “You finally hooked the big fish.”
He leaned in.
“How long before you got her in the sack?”
Alfie shook his head.
“That’s all you’re getting from this?”
LaPorta pushed back in his chair. “Am I supposed to be getting something else?”
Alfie cocked his head.
“Have you ever been in love, Detective?”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
“I don’t mean the lots--of--times kind. I mean the tumbling, can’t--stop--thinking--about--her, can’t--wait--to--see--her kind.”
LaPorta smirked, but his mind did jump to his second wife, Barbara, and the summer they met in Las Vegas, a late--night swim they took after the pool was closed.
They couldn’t stop pawing one another in the water, bobbing and kissing and wrapping their legs around each other.
Eventually, they ducked into a nearby cabana and yanked the curtain closed.
He was still in solid shape in those days, stomach tight, chest firm, and he remembered the sensation of her body pressed against his, the dampness of their skin, her breath in his ear.
He wanted every inch of her, every minute of her. It stayed that way for a while.
“Let’s say I did,” LaPorta offered. “What about it?”
“What Gianna and I had was like that,” Alfie said.
“Every day in college, I just wanted to know where she was. Every meal, we would sit together. If I went to a convenience store, I’d buy her a key chain or a little stuffed animal.
Or she’d show up at my dorm room with a record album she’d bought because I said I liked a song on the radio.
“When I had exams, she left good luck notes under my door. If she got sick, I brought her chicken soup and nose spray. When we walked around, we held hands. When we watched a movie, she leaned her head on my shoulder. I couldn’t be around her without physically connecting, you know?”
“Whatever,” LaPorta snipped. He didn’t want to let on that he’d experienced such feelings, too, but lost them along the way.
He couldn’t tell if Alfie’s story was making him sympathetic or envious.
It was definitely distracting, like getting caught up in a TV show when you’re supposed to be doing work.
He wanted to find out what happened with this Gianna.
But.
“What does any of this have to do with the two million dollars?” he asked.
“I told you, the notebook will explain everything.”
“Or it won’t, and you’ll go to jail.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Listen, pal. You gotta take this more seriously—-”
His cell phone buzzed. He lifted it to his ear. “Yeah?”
“I have some new information, Vincent.”
It was Sampson, his connection with the Bahamian national police. LaPorta rose and stepped into the hallway. He closed the door behind him.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Your suspect went straight to the bank after the casino. He wired all the money out.”
“I know that already.”
“The big chunk went to that woman’s bank account in Florida. Rule. Gianna Rule?”
“Yeah, I know—-”
“But, listen. He went to another bank twenty minutes later. He did a second wire. Two hundred thousand. To Zimbabwe in Africa.”
“What?” LaPorta grabbed his forehead. “Why didn’t we know this before?”
“The teller who did the wire went home just before we got to the bank. We found him this afternoon when he came in for his shift.”
“He confirmed?”
“Two hundred grand. To an account in Bulawayo, wherever that is.”
“What kind of account?”
“It’s a company. We’re trying to find out who owns it, but it’s the middle of the night there.”
“Call me as soon as you get ahold of them.”
He hung up and reentered the room. He studied Alfie, who was looking down and smiling at the page he had just read aloud.
LaPorta admonished himself. He had actually started to root for this guy, hoping there was an innocent explanation for the whole roulette thing.
But innocent people didn’t wire money to foreign bank accounts and buy international plane tickets.
“Everything all right, Detective?” Alfie said.
“Just peachy.”
“I know we’re running short on time. So I’m going to skip ahead in the story, OK?”
LaPorta raised an eyebrow.
“What’s your hurry?”
“Well. Aren’t you anxious about Zimbabwe? The money I sent there?”
La Porta blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Your phone call just now?”
“You heard that?”
“How could I hear it? You went out into the hall.”
“Then how—-”
“I figured you were going to find out sooner or later. Anyhow, doesn’t matter, does it? We’re on the same page here, Detective.”
LaPorta dropped into his chair.
“Yeah? What frickin’ page is that?”
Alfie flipped ahead in the notebook, then put both palms down on its corners.
“This one.”
The Composition Book
Not long after we got engaged, Gianna and I called my grandmother. We wanted her at our wedding. But the woman who answered the phone at the nursing home said Yaya wasn’t doing well, so we—-
Nassau
“Wait a minute!”
Alfie looked up.
“You got engaged?” LaPorta said.
“Yes.”
“You married this woman?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“So she’s your wife? Gianna Rule is your wife?”
“No,” Alfie said. He looked down. “Not anymore.”
“Whoa. You dumped her, and you’re sending her two million dollars?”
“I didn’t dump her.”
“She dumped you, and you’re sending her two million dollars? That’s even worse!”
Alfie looked away.
“OK, now I gotta know,” LaPorta said. “Go back.”
“Go back?”
“I want to hear how you got her to marry you.”
“You mean when I proposed?”
“Yeah. Read that.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
“I’ll be the judge.”
“You sure?”
“Hurry up.”
Alfie raised an eyebrow but, complying with the detective’s request, flipped back a few pages, found a spot, and read from there.
The Composition Book
After graduating from college, Gianna and I decided to move in together.
The only question was where. Gianna was hoping to go to South America and pursue her dreams of photographing wildlife.
But my passion was music. I wanted to try to make it in that business, which meant one place: New York City.
“We’ll only stay a couple years,” I said. “We can earn some money, and if things go right and I make good connections, then we can live wherever we want.”
“Promise?” she said.
“Promise.”
We pooled our funds, rented a studio apartment on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, and began a life of circling our dreams without ever realizing them.
We took odd jobs to pay the rent. Gianna worked in a camera store.
I got hired by a music public relations firm to write press releases, a skill I didn’t even know I had.
On weekends I gave piano lessons at a Brooklyn shop, and they let me rent an upright piano for cheap.
Because our apartment was so small, we had to jam that piano between the kitchen door and our futon bed.
We stacked record albums on top of it, and books on top of those.
We kept our clothes in a trunk. We grew plants in the bathroom.
The windows leaked in cold air during the winter, and because we lived in a single room, if one of us got sick, we both did.