All He Saw Was the Girl (2 page)

    Now
they were in the center of a holding cell at police headquarters in Rome,
wondering what was going to happen. Prisoners spread out across the room that
looked to be sixty by forty, bars along one side, guys staring at them, two
American students looking out of place among the Italian drunks, thieves and
cons. The long-haired guy and his friend were still looking at them, grinning,
mocking them.

    McCabe
said, "I'll be right back." He turned, heading for the two Italians.

    Chip
said, "What're you going to do?"

    McCabe
could feel all the eyes in the room watching him as he approached Fabio, walked
up to him and said, "I see you looking over laughing at us like a little
girl. Is that what you are? With that hair, I can't tell if you're a woman or a
sissy." He didn't know if the guy understood what he was saying or not,
but his arm muscles tightened like he was going to throw a punch. McCabe
stepped in, grabbed the cigarette pack, ripping the pocket off his shirt. Fabio
stood there, looking surprised. "You took this from my friend, forgot to
give it back." McCabe turned and went back over where Chip was and handed
the pack of Marlboros to him. "Somebody else takes them," he said,
"you're on your own."

    Chip
gave him a big wide-eyed look. "Unbelievable. What did you say to
him?"

    "I
don't remember."

    "You
don't remember? Come on."

    They
were taken to a room and interrogated by a no-nonsense cop, a detective in a
black sport coat. He was built like a soccer player, stocky and still muscular
in middle age, thinning salt-and-pepper hair combed back. He introduced himself
as Captain Ferrara. McCabe told him their names and told him they were students
at Loyola University.

    Chip
said, "We weren't actually stealing the taxi."

    Ferrara
said, "No? What were you doing?"

    Chip
said, "We were drunk. It was a joke.
Scherzo."

    Captain
Ferrara said, "
Scherzo
? This is how a man makes his living and you
dismiss it as something trivial, unimportant. You have too much to drink and
use this as an excuse? The man's automobile is damaged. Now he has no way to
earn a living, support his family."

    Chip
said, "I'll buy him a new one."

    He
held Chip in his laser gaze, eyes locked on him.

    Chip
said, "You know who Senator Charles Tallenger is, right?"

    He
sounded drunk.

    Captain
Ferrara stared at him, studying him.

    Chip
said, "Well I'm his son, Charles Tallenger III."

    Captain
Ferrara didn't say anything, didn't seem impressed, gave him a stern look.

    Chip
was a smartass, but McCabe had never seen him turn on this arrogant
superiority. Based on the captain's expression it didn't seem to be going over
very well.

    Chip
said, "I have to make a phone call.''

    He
said it like a spoiled Greenwich rich kid, which McCabe decided was redundant,
maybe even tri-dundant if there was such a word.

    "It's
my right as an American citizen," Chip said.

    Captain
Ferrara said, "You are a prisoner, you have no rights. In Italy, you are
guilty until proven innocent."

    Chip
said, "I don't think you understand what I'm saying."

    The
captain's face tightened, like he wanted to go over and knock Chip on his ass.

    He
said, "No, I think you are the one who does not understand, but you
will."

    He
turned and walked out of the room and closed the door.

    McCabe
said, "Do me a favor, don't say anything else, okay?"

    Chip
said, "What's your problem?"

    "You're
being an asshole. Every time you open your mouth the situation gets
worse." He'd never seen Chip act like this before. Jesus.

    "You
want to get out of here?" Chip said. "We've got to tell these idiots
who they're dealing with."

    "All
you're doing is pissing him off," McCabe said, "making things worse.
I'm in this thanks to you, and I don't want you talking for me."

    Captain
Ferrara never came back, and a few minutes later a cop in a uniform came in and
cuffed McCabe's hands behind his back and took him to the garage and pushed him
in the rear seat of a Fiat. Two heavyset cops squeezed in on both sides,
flanking him like he was a hardened criminal, a flight risk.

    The
cops sitting next to him had breadcrumbs on their jackets and there was a
comic-opera quality about them, big men in fancy, over-the-top uniforms with
red stripes running down the sides of the pants and white leather sashes worn
diagonally across their jackets, and matching white leather holsters. They held
their brimmed blue hats in their laps. McCabe thought they looked like cops
from some made-up Disney dictatorship.

    They
pulled out of the garage and turned right and drove down Via del Corso past
Victor Emmanuel, the Wedding Cake, also known as the Typewriter, past the
Colosseum and the Forum and Campidoglio, the cops talking about Italy playing
in the World Cup.

    The
cop on his left said, "Did you see Grosso score the winning penalty?"

    The
cop on his right said, "How about that crazy Frenchman?"

    "Unbelievable,"
the cop behind the wheel said. "Zidane's a madman. Ten minutes to go, he
headbutts Materazzi. That was the game."

    "It
was a factor, sure," said the cop to his right.

    The
cop to his left said, "A factor, it was the difference."

    The
driver glanced in the rearview mirror and said, "What are you, head of the
Zidane fan club?"

    "I
don't like him," the cop to his right said. "But you have to admit he
is one of the all-time greats — up there with Vava and Pele."

    "How
much have you had to drink?" the cop to his left said.

    When
they got on the autostrada, McCabe said to the cop on his right, "Where're
we going?"

    The
cop looked at him and grinned like something was funny.

    Twenty
minutes later McCabe understood why, the walls of a prison looming in the
distance, 3:30 in the morning.

    The
cop on his right said, "Rebibbia. Your new home."

    He'd
heard of Rebibbia, the prison for hardcore cons, and wondered why they were
taking him there. Stealing a taxi didn't seem serious enough. They drove along
a fence topped with razor wire, the prison set back on acres of flat open land.

    They
entered the prison complex and McCabe's carabinieri escorts took him into the
processing area, released the cuffs and handed him over to the Polizia
Penitenziara, a prison cop signing a form and giving it to one of the
carabinieri cops, making the transaction official.

    Then
he was standing in line with at least twenty other prisoners - some he
recognized from the holding cell - waiting to be processed. Each prisoner was
photographed and fingerprinted. Then they went through a room where they were
given a blanket, a tin cup, a spoon, a bar of soap, a towel.

    McCabe
heard Chip's voice and saw him at the far end of the line. "I'm an
American. My father is a US senator.
Capisce
?
"

    The
guard looked bored, his expression saying he had no idea what Chip was talking
about, but there was no way he could mistake Chip's attitude, his arrogance.

    McCabe
said, "Hey, Tallenger, with your connections I thought you'd be out by
now. Don't they know who you are?"

    He
spent the night in an eight-by-eight-foot cell, solitary confinement. As he was
waking up, he was thinking about

    Chip
and the taxi and being taken to Rebibbia, wondering, before he opened his eyes,
if it was a dream, and then opening them and seeing sunlight coming through the
barred window, making a distorted pattern on the floor.

    He sat
up studying the room in daylight for the first time. The door was made out of
steel, painted blue. It had a little square window about three quarters of the
way up, so the guards could look in, check on him, which they did on a fairly
regular schedule.

    There
was a metal sink against the wall, and the bunk he was sitting on, the frame
painted orange, bolted into the wall. There was a stainless-steel toilet
without a seat, squares of newsprint cut for toilet paper. The walls were cracked
and scarred with graffiti. Some guy named Ricki professing his love for Anna in
black marker.

    McCabe
got up, went to the sink, turned on the faucet and scooped water in his hands
and splashed it on his face. He dried himself with the towel they gave him,
gray-white and stained. He wondered how many inmates had used it before him to
dry their own parts. He moved to the window and held the bars, looking out at
the prison walls and guard towers, and below him the exercise yard, an expanse
of concrete surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire, the yard empty
first thing in the morning. It looked like ghetto playgrounds he'd seen in the
projects around Detroit.

    A
guard came to his cell and got him, 3:30 in the afternoon, took him through the
cellblock, passing blue steel cell doors just like his, to a barred gate at the
end of the hallway. It felt good to get out of the little room, stretch his
legs. He'd never been in a confined space for that long without being able to
leave and it was getting to him, messing with his head.

    Adding
to the problem, McCabe was on an academic scholarship, thirty-five grand's
worth of tuition, room and board. He'd lose it if he was involved in a
disciplinary situation, school rules listing a dozen things that would get a student
kicked out: drinking, drugs, fighting, cheating, missing classes, not
maintaining an acceptable grade point average and a few more infractions he
couldn't remember, but stealing a taxi was definitely not one of them.

    The
school would bend the rules where Chip was concerned. He wasn't on scholarship
and his dad was a US senator who had generated a lot of positive PR for the
Rome Center Year Abroad Program.

    Mazara
watched him walk across the yard and stand with his back to the fence, face tilted
up feeling the sun after almost twenty-four hours in a cell, the white box as
prisoners referred to it. Mazara studied him, one of the Americans from the
holding cell. He was not big, but looked like he was in shape, about his age.
He had surprised Mazara, taking the cigarette pack out of his pocket, surprised
him and caught him off guard by the boldness of the move, not expecting it. Now
Mazara wanted to see how good he was, see if he could back it up.

    He
dribbled the basketball over to the American, inmates watching him, wondering
what he was going to do. Mazara bounced the ball off the concrete at him, the
ball thudding into his chest. The American opened his eyes, reached over,
picked it up and held it, eyes on him.

    "I
don't have any cigarettes, if that's what you're looking for."

    Mazara
said, "Want to play? You and me. The winner walks through the gate a free
man."

    The
American smiled, looking up at him, eyes squinting in the sun.

    Mazara
said, "They catch you selling drugs?"

    "Stealing
a taxi," the American said.

    "
Va
bene,"
Mazara said. "They keep you here eight, ten months, no
more than a year."

    The
American said, "What about you?"

    Mazara
said, "Is a misunderstanding." He pulled his hair back and wrapped a rubber
band around the ponytail.

    "They
put you in Rebibbia for a misunderstanding, huh?"

    "It
can happen," Mazara said.

    The
American bounced the ball to him and got up.

    Fabio,
as McCabe thought of him, took it out. He started with the ball straight up
over his head. Moved it down to his chest and waist, then his knees and back
up. He faked left with his eyes and McCabe went for it. Fabio dribbled to his
right and went up for a shot, arms bent, snapping his wrist as he released the
ball, the ball arcing up and swishing through the cylinder. He raised his fist,
looked at McCabe, nodded his head a couple times. There were hoots and cheers
from the inmates that had formed a circle around the half court.