White Shotgun

“It is unbearable to hurt your own child.”

Nicosa’s mouth is set in self-reproach. On the table is the morning paper from Rome. The photo of Cecilia on the yacht is on the front page with the headline, IL MISTERO DI PERSONA MONDANA MANCANTE IN SIENA!

“What does that mean?”

“ ‘Mystery of missing socialite in Siena,’ ” Nicosa says, as if resigned to the media onslaught that has only begun.

I squeeze his arm in sympathy.

Sterling scans the story, translating as he goes: “ ‘People are speculating about what happened to Dr. Cecilia Nicosa, wife of the well-known coffee entrepreneur. Rumors are that Dr. Nicosa has disappeared, like Signore Nicosa’s mistress, Lucia Vincenzo, a mafia associate whose body was never found … People are afraid … Nobody feels safe … If Dr. Nicosa has been kidnapped, it will be a daring assault on the upper class—’ ”

“Enough,” says Nicosa. “I’ve read it.”

Sterling pushes the paper aside. “The family should issue a statement. Put a lid on information getting out.”

“I’ll see to it,” Nicosa says.

He brews us two espressos, and we gather at the counter, hacking off pieces of yesterday’s bread, spreading them with honey and slices of pecorino cheese.

“What do you do?” he asks Sterling, finally. “Are you also FBI?”

Sterling picks a pear from a ceramic bowl and quarters it with the blade of his Leatherman tool.

“I work for a security company called Oryx. I’m a private military contractor, Mr. Nicosa.”

Nicosa’s eyes refocus. Soldiering, the military hierarchy, is something he understands.

“I hired a company like yours in El Salvador to protect our coffee plantations.”

“Did they do the job?”

“Yes, they did.”

“Good.” Sterling offers a crisp wedge of pear.

“Why are you here?” Nicosa asks.

“We completed the mission. I knew Ana was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by.”

Nicosa eyes us back and forth, sniffing out the connection.

“Do you know what Ana does?”

“Yes, sir, I do. We’ve worked together before.”

“Well, she lied about it to me. My sister-in-law, she sits at my table and tells me with a smile that she sells home alarms.”

“I notice you still don’t have one,” I say pleasantly.

Sterling sighs. “That’s the way they do it in the Bureau. You’ll never meet such lying bastards.”

“Why did you hide it from me?” Nicosa asks.

“Cecilia begged me not to tell you.”

He is now pouring straight grappa. “Cecilia told you to lie? I find that hard to believe.”

“She said you were ‘under the thumb’ of the mafias,” I reply matter-of-factly. “She thought I could help you and the family to find a way out.”

“I don’t know where she got that idea.” Nicosa waves dismissively.

“Maybe because the Puppet was in your son’s room. Was he there to threaten you?”

“Not at all!”

My cover may be blown, but I’m still on assignment. Sterling senses I’m about to push it, and he steers us back to the line of inquiry most likely to engage Nicosa’s cooperation: his son.

“Sir, it’s Giovanni we’re most worried about. With all due respect, I just got here, but anyone can see there’re problems. Ana and I worked a case where young people came under bad influences, just like your son. I understand that you want to concentrate on your wife’s situation, so why not let us help untangle this mess with the boy? What do you know about his relationship with the woman who passed him cocaine?”

Nicosa shrugs with his eyebrows, his shoulders, his whole body.

“She’s just a local oddball. I don’t know what’s in Giovanni’s head.”

I ask if he knew how much the boy had been using at the time he was found passed out in the shower.

“He was buying painkillers from some little piece of trash who stole them from his grandparents.”

“Giovanni told you that?”

“Of course not. We hired a private investigator. The same private investigator my wife used when she was looking for you. Pain pills were nothing compared to what Giovanni was into. Our son was hanging out with heroin addicts. Nice kids. University students. The detective said it was a matter of days — hours — before we lost him forever. We got him away from his ‘friends,’ the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do. The rehab people came and took our boy in the middle of the night. There was no other way he would go. We had to tell everyone he was trying out another school. Cecilia was the strong one. She sees addicts every day; she knows what has to be done. I thought, you know, lock him in his room. Beat the crap out of him, like my father would have done to me. I didn’t know what we were up against. But three months later, they brought him back to us, and so far he’s been clean. Now we will always walk on eggshells. It’s my fault. You don’t have to say it.”

“I wasn’t going to say that, because it isn’t true. It’s the mafias who control your lives,” I tell him.

Nicosa shakes his head sadly. Hollow-eyed, he says, “The trouble is inside of us,” and bangs his own heart.

“Be fair,” Sterling advises. “You’re up against a well-armed criminal organization. You live in a castle, but you’re in the middle of a ground war.”

“What you keep calling a kidnap — it’s all for show, just a game,” Nicosa interrupts impatiently. “They ask for ransom, you pay, they give her back. It’s like a bank robbery. No one gets hurt.”

This has been Nicosa’s stance all along. Sterling remains silent, but his face conveys the message: Let him have his little fantasy.

Nicosa sees this, and it incites him to a fury.

“If I believed otherwise for one minute, I would be on the phone right now to the prime minister of Italy. You don’t think so?”

“I don’t doubt you, sir,” Sterling assures him.

“One phone call to Rome and the military police would take over my wife’s disappearance. But I agree to play their game, because unlike you, I have patience, and I do not like war.”

“I didn’t say I like it,” Sterling says quietly.

“I am sending the clans a message. We are businessmen; we work it out.” Nicosa wipes his forehead, adding, “The president of a company, who kicks a ball like an idiot and almost kills his son.”

His voice cracks and his eyes redden. Mine fill up just watching.

“Let us talk to the private investigator who followed Giovanni,” I suggest. “He can help us understand some things.”

“You can’t. The man is dead.”

“How did he die?”

“I believe it was a stroke. He had a terrible headache, his wife took him to the hospital, and he didn’t come out. He never finished the report,” Nicosa says. “I have what he left on the computer in my office. I’ll get it.”

He seems relieved to have an excuse to leave. As the day breaks open, the kitchen is feeling more and more like a slow-motion hydrogen explosion. Sterling places both elbows on the table and digs his knuckles into his bare scalp.

“Wishing you were back in the field?”

“Not in that field, ma’am, no way. Texas. I’m wishing I was back in Texas, where at least they flat-out shoot you and put you out of your misery.”

I laugh. “They’re pretty good at that in Italy.”

“Man, these folks are into the pain. Christ on a stick! All this bitchin’ and moanin’, until you can’t see straight. He doesn’t like war? Boo-hoo for him. I hate to tell him, but he’s walking a freakin’ minefield.” Sterling stands up from the table with disgust. “First day of deployment, we tell the newbies, ‘If you plan on coming home alive, remember this — there’s a difference between a hard-ass and a dumb ass.’ He truly believes he’s the Man of