Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
The car park was in a vineyard, grass and flowers wending through concrete slats, twisted vines teeming with leaves.
It was drizzling, and the air was humid, thick with the earthy smell of plants, and diesel from the nearby road.
Peering through the bars of the high metal gate, Nikki saw only luxury vehicles: Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and a Bugatti.
“This is it?” she asked Federico.
Behind her, on the motorcycle, the old man gripped tightly.
His voice was muffled by the helmet. “That’s what they told me.”
Nikki, who never considered she might need to find De Rosa, hadn’t known where to look. But Federico made some calls, and they were directed to this thermal spa in the rural hills of Campi Flegrei.
On the other side of the high concrete wall and gate, Nikki heard men speaking, and the sounds of a television program.
She shouted, and the voices stopped. A muscular figure in a T-shirt stepped into view.
More bull than man, with a large forehead and burly forearms, he was chewing something.
He gazed for a moment, then scooped his large hand through the air, pushing them along.
“No loitering.”
His voice was gravelly.
Nikki worked against the mad thrumming of her heart to keep the words steady: “We’re here for Benedetto De Rosa.”
“He expecting you?”
“Yes,” she lied, meeting his gaze.
He chewed for a moment, evaluating. Then smiled.
“You’re not his type, sweetheart.”
“Call. Tell him Nikki wants to talk.”
“Nikki…Nikki…” he muttered, strolling away.
Nikki pulled the bike to the curb.
When the guard returned, he pointed at her as the gate screeched slowly open on its rails.
“Just you. The old man stays here.”
—
Leaving Federico, Nikki followed the man through the gate and car park, past flowering gardens and a pond, to a glass-fronted building among the trees. A guard in a Kevlar vest sat by the door, rifle propped on his knees.
Her beefy escort stopped, turned, and said, “Arms up.”
He frisked her, hands lingering a little on her thighs and buttocks, then said, “Give me your phone.”
She handed it over, noticing that she’d missed two calls from Phoenix Seven.
—
Inside the building, a woman with long hair and immaculate lipstick hurried to greet them. She gestured with an impersonal smile and nod.
“This way.”
They followed her into a high-ceilinged room with rows of white lockers.
It was warm, smelling of hot stones, eucalyptus, and bergamot, with the underlying stink of sulfur and sweat.
They walked past two young men in towels and flip-flops, and a tattooed old man with an overhanging belly, drying his hair with a towel.
The woman handed Nikki a key on a lanyard, and indicated a locker.
“Undress and put your things in there.”
“I’m not going into the spa,” Nikki protested. “I just need to talk to Signor De Rosa.”
“Those are the rules,” said the guard. “Take off your clothes and shoes, or De Rosa won’t see you.”
“I don’t have a bathing suit,” Nikki told him.
She looked to the woman for support. There was none.
The guard stared openly at her.
She’d come this far. She refused to quit now. Moving mechanically, she unlaced and kicked off her shoes, peeled away her socks, her jacket and hoodie, unbuttoned her shirt, then folded and placed these neatly in the locker. Face burning, she stripped off her belt and trousers.
She secured the lock and slipped the stiff shoestring lanyard around her neck, the cold key tapping the skin between her breasts.
Standing in her bra and underpants, she stared at the guard, daring him to say more.
He took a good long look, then ambled away.
“Follow me,” the woman instructed.
—
They marched down labyrinthine tiled corridors that echoed with the efficient clip of the woman’s shoes, past massage rooms, into a hot and humid antechamber.
Here, light filtered in from a filmy window showing concrete walls stained green with algae.
Men in Speedos reclined in blue canvas beach chairs, staring as they walked past.
Her guide stooped, and whispered to one of the men. He answered, gesturing to the room beyond.
In the next chamber, the echoing din of water drowned out all other sound. Men moved chest-deep in a swirling pool, skin reflecting the eerie green light.
Here, the walls were composed entirely of the bare rock face of the mountain, black and pitted, water dripping down. A heavy door was set into this, dark and glossy wet.
The woman pointed.
“In there.”
—
Behind the door was blackness and an assault of heat and steam. Nikki gasped, struggling to breathe.
As her eyes adjusted, she was dismayed to find herself in a narrow volcanic tunnel, the walls uneven and shiny with moisture—black rock scraped away with crude tools, striations still visible, streaked with lines of calcium grey.
The soles of her feet burned on hot wooden planks, beneath which came the roar of rushing water, superheated from the volcano.
A bright flash of lightning struck in her memory, the screaming sizzle of an orange flare, and the crashing terror of a thunderstorm in the dark. Her body tensed, ready to fight, ready to tear apart the nightmare waiting for her in the shadows of that cave.
Paralyzed, heart hammering, Nikki told herself to breathe, but the hot air seared her lips, burning her lungs. Chest constricted, panicked, she sipped the air. Closed her eyes.
O my dear Guide, who more than seven times hast rendered me security…. do not desert me….
Gradually, her breathing began to adjust. Yet the heat, unrelenting and stifling, carved desperation along the boundaries of her mind. She wanted to run. Instead, she wended through the narrow passageway, heat growing with every step, until it opened into a cavern lined with wooden benches.
Two men sat side by side on a bench, skin slick in the dim light of a single bulb.
The beautiful younger man held a long branch of eucalyptus.
He stroked this against the back of Benedetto De Rosa, who was bent forward, elbows resting on his knees, eyes closed, the tattoos on his muscled back and arms moving gently as he breathed.
Both seemed lost in their own struggle with the heat and didn’t seem to notice Nikki until she was standing before them.
“Signor De Rosa.”
She spoke loudly to be heard above the relentless rush of water.
De Rosa’s eyes opened, and he leaned backwards, resting against the rough wall. His companion adjusted to the new arrangement, giving Nikki an unfriendly stare.
“Signorina Serafino.” De Rosa’s expression was blank. “Why are you here?”
“I’ve come to ask for your help,” she said.
Uncomfortably conscious of her body, she squared herself to him, as if this was a professional meeting, as if she wasn’t so exposed.
He didn’t answer, but he looked at her. She took this as invitation to continue.
“I understand Signor Calandra has agreements with Luca Errichiello,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow, and she continued: “Signor Errichiello is holding one of my friends. I’d like you to help me arrange for his release.”
“Why should I help you?” De Rosa asked.
Nikki trembled, a surge of rage overcoming the fear and heat.
“You fucking burned down my studio, that’s why.”
De Rosa’s expressionless stare raked her.
“That was not my doing,” he said.
Nikki opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. If he didn’t accept responsibility, she was in no position to force the matter.
“Tell me what you want from me,” she said.
“You’ll do what I ask?”
The heat nauseated her. She felt unsteady, a rush of blood in her ears, terror and sweat pouring from her skin.
But her thoughts seemed to travel far away.
They sought out Valerio, the easy movements of his body as he clambered over Calypso; the sense of having him beside her, of him joining her in the darkness of that cave as she grappled for her life, the ringing shot that saved her.
“Yes.”
“I thought you didn’t deal in favors,” said De Rosa.
Nikki’s heart slammed against her ribs. When she didn’t answer, he stood.
His eyes fixed on hers, body so close, they were almost touching. He seemed to be looking for something. She stared back, breathing in his exhalations.
“Follow me,” he said at last.
—
Sweating, body glowing with the heat, Nikki almost collapsed with relief as they exited into the relative coolness of the echoing antechamber. Beneath a steel showerhead, De Rosa pulled the lever. Water slammed down, soaking him.
De Rosa’s companion handed him a towel. He wiped his face and chest, and Nikki followed him through the spa and out a set of double doors. The noise of the water was abruptly cut, and they passed into a garden with a large pool, steam rising from the surface.
Wrapping the towel around his waist, De Rosa indicated for her to join him at a small table in the misting rain. She did this, and the cool air and rain, the cold chair, came as a relief.
Nikki watched as De Rosa looked out over the view.
“Luca Errichiello is an unscrupulous man,” he said after a long silence. “If your friend has gotten into trouble with him, I pity him.”
“Please,” Nikki said. “I need your help…if you could just make a call. Luca’s brother, Federico, said that Tito has agreements with him.”
He gestured. “That’s finished.”
There was a hard edge in his voice.
Then, as if he’d just heard what she said, he sat suddenly upright and looked at her. “You have contact with Errichiello’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“He might be dead to his brother,” said Nikki. “But he’s alive, and he still knows people. That’s how I knew where to find you. He says he has information for you.”
“Where is he now?”
“Outside the gate.”
—
They didn’t require Federico to undress, as they had Nikki. The old man took unsteady, loping strides as he followed the gate guard down the path.
Federico glanced briefly at Nikki, seeming unsurprised to see her stripped.
He turned to De Rosa.
“Are Calandra and my brother still trying to kill each other?”
The hint of a smile played on De Rosa’s crooked lips. “What have you heard, old man?”
“Luca broke the truce when he tried to have Calandra killed. You must have known he would. He’s a malignant fuck. Ambitious. And Calandra’s standing in his way. If you let him think he’s won, he’ll only get more vicious.”
“You’re well informed,” said De Rosa.
“Be informed, or be dead,” said Federico.
“Anything else I should know?” asked De Rosa.
“Just suspicions.”
“Such as?”
“I suspect Luca’s made friends with some big dogs,” said Federico. “He doesn’t have the teeth to attack Calandra on his own.”
De Rosa leaned back and tapped on the glass window behind him. His beautiful young companion came to the door, and stuck his head out.
“Bring me my phone,” said De Rosa.
—
When the young man returned with the phone, De Rosa scrolled through, and handed it to Federico.
“You know this man?”
Federico examined the screen, then shook his head. “I don’t know anyone anymore. I just talk to old friends sometimes.”
Federico looked at Nikki. “Ask her.”
“I’ve already asked Signorina Serafino to look,” said De Rosa. “She doesn’t wish to be contaminated with our business.”
Nikki remembered De Rosa in the dark and rain, outside the studio, holding out his phone, and her desperate compulsion to look away. She didn’t want to see, to know. But closing her eyes to the reality hadn’t helped her.
Federico clucked his tongue. “Try to stay out of it…try to stay out and it pulls you back in.”
The city’s entrenched criminal systems were terrifying: a reef beneath black waters, impossible to navigate without knowing where to look.
It could break you into pieces. Maybe somewhere, right now, Valerio had wrecked against this hidden hazard.
If she could feel along the edges, map its shape, maybe she stood a chance of finding a way through—like Federico had.
Nikki put out her hand. “Show me.”
—
The picture was a still from a CCTV camera, in black and white: a man wearing a Kevlar vest and carrying an assault rifle. Immediately, she recognized the white hair and cold eyes of il Fantasma.
“His name is Yasen Lazarov,” she said. “Also known as the Ghost. He’s wanted for the murder of a Bulgarian police officer.”
“Where did you get this information?” De Rosa demanded.
“I won’t disclose that,” she said.
“Bulgaria,” he said. “Is that what the authorities think?”
“You think different?”
“He’s a link,” said De Rosa. “As the old man says, Errichiello needed sharper teeth. The question is: Who is the big dog with those sharp teeth? I want to know who this Ghost is working for.”
“My friend was surveilling the billionaire Paride Silvestri,” said Nikki. “Lazarov was there—and also at Errichiello’s place.”
De Rosa looked interested. He glanced between Nikki and Federico.
“Tell me everything.”