White Shotgun

Greece. He flicks me off like a fly, and none of the grim carabinieri, whose cold eyes sweep the crowd, pay attention to my garbled entreaties in Italian, so I sneak inside by following in the slipstream of a French TV crew, through heavy brass doors to a cavernous lobby bustling with cops and members of the press. We go up the staircase, where I recognize the light blue uniforms of Inspector Martini’s provincial police, who have taken over an apartment on the second story.

Paintings are still on the walls and vases on the mantel, but folding tables and chairs have replaced the furniture along with a minefield of wires supporting laptops. Everyone’s wearing ID tags and radios. I feel like the old guy in the park with his fingers curled around the chain link, watching the hot high school pitcher, longing to get back in the game that used to be his.

I’d better make a move before someone throws me out. The lumpy-bodied, melon-headed officer I met when Giovanni was in the hospital is sitting at a nearby terminal.

“Ciao,” I say heartily, like we’re old friends. He looks puzzled until I give the universal password: “CSI!” He breaks into a grin with those twisted teeth. “CSI!” “Dov’e Inspector Martini?” I ask, but before he can answer, she’s right there: a Madonna in a tight blue uniform with a white gun belt, cradling a carton of cigarettes.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

I take her aside and lower my voice.

“I have to see the Commissario.” “You can’t. The race is about to start.” “I need his help. My sister is still missing. There’s been no note. No demands. What you said last night is true. She’s been taken. I know Cecilia was once a special friend of the police—” Inspector Martini doesn’t flinch. Oh, God, is she sleeping with him, too?

“I’m hoping the Commissario will start an investigation—” A polished wooden door opens and the Commissario steps out of an adjoining room, along with two senior commanders with creased faces and crisp suits. The slender chief of police has flat brown eyes and hollow cheeks, like a cipher. Inspector Martini grabs my wrist and hauls me into his line of sight, talking rapidly in Italian. He shakes my hand and his long soft fingers linger. The five of us keep walking past the computer tables, aiming for the door. Inspector Martini has ten seconds to tell him my story, before they are faced with a coliseum’s worth of spectators pumped to the gills at the most dangerous horse race in the world. Does it register with him who was taken? That it’s Cecilia Nicosa?

He utters five words, like the crack of a whip, affirming what Martini has told him: “You are from the FBI?” “Yes, but that is not why I’m here. She’s my sister. They almost killed my nephew. The FBI’s hands are tied. The only one who can find her is you.” “It seems the Nicosas are a marked family.” From beneath the fixed hooded eyes comes a piercing stare. He gives me his card. “I promise we will do everything possible to locate Signora Nicosa,” he says, and the entourage, including Martini, disappears through the door.

By the start of the race, I have inched and squeezed back through the spectators to almost where I was. Now points of sunlight crown the roofs of the palazzos, a moment that must be significant to the Sienese celestial calendar, because a heightened alertness has come over the multitude, the way a flock of birds will settle down, the body language of one individual passed to the next. When the corona of the sun spikes at a certain angle, sixty thousand bodies become absolutely still in the golden bowl of the Campo.

A crack! explodes with a puff of white smoke from the mortaretto cannon, calling the horses to the starting area between two ropes. Now you can see the dirty business. The jockeys, riding bareback, wear the colors of their contrada, painted helmets, and white running shoes. Their long legs hang over the heaving ribs of the horses, which are fired up on amphetamines. Round and round go the colors, as the jockeys circle in an unruly pack, negotiating deals and making lightning-fast alliances, menacing one another with long whips made from the phalluses of calves. There is more than one false start. And then the rope is dropped — the race begins — and a roar comes up like the explosion of a wind-whipped forest fire.

They gallop full-out, three times around the track, ninety seconds total. With each turn there seems to be another horse that has lost its rider. A jockey is thrown right in front of me and trampled. The whole bunch skids sideways in front of the San Marino curve. Dust flies, the jockeys trade whip smacks and try to shove one another off, the horses stretch, manic spectators cannot be stopped from running across the track, something happens at the far end that I cannot see, and then a banner unfurls from a window in the Mangia Tower, declaring Leocorno, Unicorn, orange and white, to be the winner.

Hand-to-hand combat breaks out everywhere. The losing contrade rush their horses, pulling off their own jockeys and pummeling them in the holy dirt. Young men stampeding blindly in all directions push me, spin me. Faces are contorted with rage and tears and joy. People are ripping at their own shirts. Someone running by smacks a little girl across the face with a flailing arm. They’ve breached the rails and are rioting in the center of the Campo — men are hugging, men are throwing punches. Women clutch one another, sobbing and screaming, in a wild blur of anarchy. I see the knife. I see the Torre scarf in burgundy and blue. The lips drawn back over the teeth of the man who is charging us. He shoves the American grandmother aside, and she hits the ground. The arm holding the knife is raised. I block it. The blade slices my hand. He keeps on running. If there is a coordinated police response, I can’t find it in the pandemonium.

SIENA

TWENTY-ONE

Among the crowd of passengers getting off the morning train in Siena, FBI legat Dennis Rizzio is easy to spot. Wearing a boxy charcoal plaid suit, a light blue tie, and Ray-Bans, he’s a head taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the Europeans in summer clothes. The bulky, scarred-up briefcase is a hint that all he really cares about is the business it contains. And you can bet he’s carried the grim look on his face all the way from Rome.

As soon as he has folded himself into Giovanni’s mailbox car, he demands to know if I am certain of the way to the police station. He has to draw his knees up to his chin and rest the briefcase on top of them since there is no room at his feet.

“Our appointment with the Commissario is at ten,” he reminds me testily.

“Under control.”

“How’s the hand? Lemme see.”

I display the gauze bandage that was wrapped around my palm yesterday by the paramedic.

“You’ve had a tetanus shot, I hope?”

“Yep.”

“How bad is it?”

“Kind of like when you’re cutting an onion, and you look up to watch the game?” I indicate a slice through the base of the thumb.

“Lucky he didn’t cut your finger off.”

“Stupid move on my part, getting into the middle of that.”

“You’re gonna let him attack an American grandmother? So the idiot was what? A guy from Torre?”

“He was wearing a Torre scarf, but he could have bought it on the street.”

The mailbox car stalls as we are climbing the hill from the train station. The stick shift is tall and spindly, and I’ve been having trouble keeping the car in gear.

“Who taught you to drive?” Dennis asks.

“My sainted grandfather,” I reply between gritted teeth, as Poppy’s voice lashes out, You’re gonna kill us! What’s the matter with you?