26. Regan #3
We all hold our breaths collectively for a moment. Nothing. No sounds or movement from inside the room.
“Come on… come on…” Grant is pacing up and down, glancing to the window and the advancing police cars, then back to the door of the listening room. Still closed. Still silent.
Maria taps again. “Tony? Will you let me in?” She taps once more, a little harder, and just like that, the door swings silently open.
We all stare at each other. Grant recovers first.
“Come on. Quick.”
We throw ourselves into the room. It’s spacious, with bare walls, decorated with what looks like some kind of audio treatment to prevent echoes. At the far end is a gleaming hi-fi system—all LEDs and glass and chrome. Two huge loudspeakers dominate the corners.
A chair has been carefully positioned in the dead center of the room. And a man sits in it, facing away from us, perfectly positioned for the speakers.
From the hi-fi issues the sound of a woman singing. A voice of an angel, rising and falling, emotional, searing, filled with pain and suffering. The voice reaches a crescendo—a final sustained note like crystal, then falls to silence.
“Addio, del passato,” the voice says in an American-Italian accent. “It means ‘Farewell to the past.’ From Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. She’s mourning her imminent death. It is often considered to be one of the finest and perhaps the most emotionally moving aria in any opera. I hope you liked it.”
The figure turns in the chair, and Maria let’s out a gasp.
“Papa!” She flings herself at the man in the chair, burying her face in his chest. He sits there, holding her, stroking her long, dark hair.
“What’s going on? Where’s Tony?”
Sandro nods towards a recumbent body, lying off to one side, that we’d not noticed.
“He’s dead.”
“What? How?” Grant looks as amazed as I feel, but Abe is simply laughing. Does he know something we don’t?
Sandro opens his mouth to answer, but the sirens are just a few doors away now, and Grant interrupts him.
“Second thoughts, tell us later, once we’ve got out of here. We need to get going.”
Quick as a flash, Grant moves to the rear windows. They’re large, sash-opening ones. He turns the handle and pulls the window fully open. The sirens suddenly much louder, almost in the room with us.
“Good. There’s a decent-sized sill out here to stand on. Regan, the rucksack, please?”
“What?”
“The rucksack. I need it.”
“But I left it downstairs. I knew I could get back up here faster without it, and I didn’t think we’d?—”
“Well go and get it.” He hisses. “Quickly.”
I turn and sprint for the stairs.
I don’t bother with stairs on the way down, just leap straight down, swinging myself around the bottom balustrades and on to the next floor.
I’m down to the second floor before I know it, scooping up the rucksack and flinging it onto my back.
I glance upwards, my heart thumping, breath heaving.
Now for the tough part. The staircase winds up and up above me, seemingly for fucking ever.
I sigh, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
I take the stairs three-at-a-time, just as before, stopping on each landing for a three seconds breather before starting again. The wailing sirens get louder still. How the hell many cop cars are they deploying?
Whimpering and completely shattered, I turn the last corner and fling the rucksack to Grant, who fumbles it open, takes out the zip line and crossbow and takes one end of the line around the stone mullioned window, securing it safely in a knot.
He slaps a five second charge on the knot.
Then he takes aim with the crossbow and lets loose.
With a “twang”, the bolt slams forwards and downwards, becoming lost to view in the darkness of the park that adjoins the Moretti family home. It’s going to be a steep old death slide, but it’s better than waiting here. The cops are in the road now. Just one block away. Time we were gone.
“You’re first, Regan. Leave everything here. Secure the area. Sandro will be next. Then get ready to catch Maria. Then Abe, then me. Go!”
“But who’s going to set the charge?”
“I’ll do it myself, obviously.”
“Shit, Grant. You won’t have time. Three or four seconds to swing yourself into place. Then what? Another three or four seconds coming down. That’s six to eight seconds. Charge is for five.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it. Now… get going.”
Without hesitation I pick up one of the handles from the rucksack, clip it to the zip line, and launch myself off into space.
The angle is steep—much too steep for comfort—but I know how to roll when I reach the bottom.
The ride is literally over in seconds. I do a textbook landing and give a whistle.
The line goes tense. Sandro is on his way.
I brace myself to stop him before he smashes into the ground, but he surprises me by somehow managing to gently brake himself and come to a controlled stop.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“9th Paratroopers Assault Regiment, ‘Col Moschin’, Italian Army Special Forces.” He smiles.
“What?”
“I was in Lebanon, in 1982. You’re not the only three assholes to have seen action.” He smiles, and I let out a whistle, which of course is the signal for the next person.
The line goes taut again, and two seconds later I am hit by something that appears to be a house falling on me. Turns out to be Abe, with Maria in one hand and holding on to the zip line handle with the other.
“Fuck, Abe. What the hell?”
“She froze. I grabbed her. No time.” I shrug. Fair enough. Give a whistle.
“A few seconds later, the zip line goes taut again, then there’s a sharp crack, a cry of alarm, and a solid “Ooomph” as Abe catches the falling Grant just in time.
The line falls free and I hastily reel it in, just as the police pull up outside the Moretti residence.
“Right team,” says Grant softly. “No noise. Get changed. Running gear and sneakers, they’re in the rucksacks. We’re an early morning jogging club, got it? Bury everything behind those bushes. If we get stopped, we can’t have anything on us to link us to this place. And Regan?”
“Yes, Boss?”
“Do not forget your truck keys.”
“Yes, Boss,” I reply, sheepishly.
A few minutes later, and we’re jogging through the park, just like good New Yorkers, up early for some much needed, healthy exercise before a long day of hard work at the office.
Having just run up and down five flights of stairs at full tilt—twice—I am already shattered, but thankfully, Grant doesn’t set an impossible pace.
“We’re meant to be normal people, doing normal things, in a normal way.”
“Good.”
“This is our exit out the park. Now, at this pace we’ll be at the truck in about twenty minutes, then it’s back home.”
Flashing lights and sirens surround the area. A couple of squad cars pass us, but they don’t even slow down, let alone stop us. Why would they?
The hubbub of police activity grows quieter the further we jog, until it fades into the distance, But we keep up the pretense anyway, just in case anyone’s observing us.
When we reach the factory parking lot where we’d parked earlier, I think we’re all grateful to have got there. I check my watch.
“Twenty-four minutes past five, Boss.” I smile.
“Twelve hours journey there, twelve hours journey back, just for fifty-four minutes of action… and thirty of those were getting changed and going for a jog.”
“Twenty-four minutes in the house. I’d only counted on twenty. My God, we were lucky to get away with it,” he says.
The journey home is uneventful, but very tiring. Sandro cannot drive, and Maria’s in no physical or mental state to even try, so the three of us take it in turns, doing two three-hour shifts each.
Finally, we pull up in our yard and stumble wearily from the truck. Looking at my watch, I smile.
“Twenty-four minutes past fucking five, again.” This time in the evening though, of course.
“Shower. Food. Bed,” says Grant, and Abe nods his agreement.
“Your turn to cook, Regan,” he says, tossing me the apron.
I sigh. Some things never change.