The Disappearance of Grace (19 page)

I begin to climb the steps, my eyes scanning the many men and women I pass by, none of them paying me any particular attention. Until I spot a man standing at the top of the stairs. He's a short man. Pudgy. Stocky. His head is naturally bald and his blue eyes lock onto mine the closer I come to the top.

I stop on the stair tread just below his, making us the same height.

“Captain Angel?” he poses. A question for which he already knows the answer. “My name is Geoff Miles, from Cleveland. My wife and I are here on vacation. A second honeymoon really.” Smiling. “You can call me Miles. All my friends do.”

“What do you know about my fiancée?” I ask. “Who stole her away?”

I feel a near panic in my voice. It increases with intensity with every word I speak. I want to grab hold of this little man, shake him, scream at him, demand for him to tell me what he knows. But that's the last thing I should do.

He steps up onto the landing, approaches the marble banister. I follow, and together we stand at the top of the Rialto looking out onto the Grand Canal and the near chaotic boat traffic that approaches and disappears beneath our feet.

“I was having lunch with my wife,” the man begins, in a soft, calm voice. “We were seated a couple of tables away from yours. Forgive me for saying this, but I couldn't help staring at you. Truth be told, you were…are…a handsome couple. But it was the way you spoke to one another that captured my attention.”

“My blindness.”

He nods, and turns to me. He peers into my eyes as though distrusting them more than myself.

“You're not blind right now, are you?” he asks.

“It comes and goes,” I say. “The condition is not physical. Only the result of the condition is physical.”

He shakes his head. “I don't understand.”

“I was in the war in Afghanistan,” I explain. “Things happened.”

Now instead of shaking his head, he begins to nod.

“I'm sorry,” he offers. “I was deployed with the Marines in Viet Nam. I was at Tet in the summer of '68. Just in time for my eighteenth birthday. I saw some things too, just like you. Things I'd rather forget. But I tend to forget my anniversary more than the human beings I killed. Their faces. Their eyes.”

“It's not your fault. You didn't start the war. You did what you were told. Now tell me, what did you see, Miles?”

He thinks about his answer for a moment while staring out at the busy canal and the bobbing of the boats on the endlessly upset water.

“Your fiancée seemed fixated on a man,” he says after a beat.

“What did the man look like?”

“I was just about to tell you. He was a tall man, wearing a long brown overcoat. He bore a dark complexion, dark hair. Sunglasses masked his eyes.”

I gently take hold of his arm with my right hand. His eyes go wide, but he is not so much alarmed as he is surprised.

“Did this man steal my fiancée?”

I remove my hand, as if it's impossible for him to answer otherwise.

“There were so many people in the piazza that day. So many people surrounding the tables.”

I feel the blood beginning to simmer inside my brain.

“Did he take her or not? Please, Miles, please.”

“To be perfectly frank, Captain, I'm not sure.”

I stare into his round face, feel his eyes glued to mine.

“How can you not be sure when you were looking right at us? At her? At him?”

“The man in the overcoat approached the table. This seemed to cause some alarm in your fiancée. Her eyes went wide and she abruptly set down her drink, some of it spilling over the side of the glass. She even started to rise out of her chair as the man came so close he stood not two feet away from you. Behind you. So close he could have simply reached out and touched you on the back of your head.”

“But you didn't see him taking her?”

“Yes or, I mean…no.”

I take hold of his arm again. Harder this time.

“Which is it, Miles?”

He struggles to free himself. But he can't.

“A group of people suddenly appeared in front of my table. A Japanese tour group. There must have been twenty or thirty people suddenly streaming in between both our tables. It completely blinded me to what was happening. By the time they finished shuffling through, Captain, and I was able to get another unobstructed view of your table, the man in the overcoat and your fiancée were gone.”

I feel my heart sink to new depths. I let go of his arm, again.

“Did you see them walking? Could you see them in the crowd?”

He resumes staring out onto the canal.

“That's just it. They were gone. Vanished. Disappeared. I truly looked for her. For him. But it was no use. They were gone. And when I looked back at your table, you were still talking, as if she were still seated there across from you, sipping her wine.”

“Still talking,” I say. “Until I realized she wasn't seated there any longer.”

“It dawned on you that she was gone. It seemed as if you felt her sudden absence inside your heart. Your face literally dropped to the cobblestones. You reached out with both your hands like you were grasping for her memory. You stood up and almost knocked the table over. When you shouted, the waiter came and took you away.” Exhaling, staring down at his feet. “My wife started to cry and I consoled her. We finished our lunch and waited for the police to arrive, thinking they would come right away. But it took some time. Enough for us to finish our lunch, and then some.”

“But you told the police your story.”

“They wouldn't listen to us at first. In fact, they wouldn't talk with us at all. They simply didn't want to hear our story. They weren't the least bit interested in what we saw that afternoon. And, far as I know, we were the only witnesses. Or the only ones to come forward, especially in light of the CNN report.”

“How can they not take your statement? It doesn't make sense.”

“Exactly. It bothered me enough that, later in the day, I paid a visit to the Venice metropolitan police and asked to see a detective. A big, bearded, well-dressed man saw me immediately. A Detective Carbone.”

“I know him,” I interject.

“He pulled me into a small interview room and listened to what I had to say. I
thought
he was listening to me. I was convinced the overcoat man kidnapped your wife and did so with so much skill, Captain, that she just seemed to disappear from out of thin air. But something happened after I finished with my statement.”

I stare at him, my eyesight holding steady, all signs of blindness seemingly disappeared. For the time being anyway.

“The detective turned away from me and lit a cigarette,” he goes on. “He stared out the window onto Venice, and he began to speak to me without looking at me. He told me that in all likelihood there was no abduction. No kidnapping. That it was more likely your fiancée left of her own accord.”

“That's impossible,” I insist. “My Grace loves me. We were getting married soon…
are
getting married soon.”

He holds both his hands up, palms facing me, eyes closed, like he's surrendering. Surrendering to my emotions. It's his way of agreeing and commiserating with me. My sadness and frustration.

“Detective Carbone would not listen to my arguments. Not when I spoke of the overcoat man. Not when I spoke of the alarm on your Grace's face. He simply wouldn't listen. He just smoked and stared out the window, as if…”

He allows his sentence to drift off, like the supply boats and barges that move away from us in the distance.

“As if he couldn't lie to my face.”

“And why would the police be lying, Mr. Miles?”

He looks at me blankly.

“Why have you been experiencing blindness as of late, Captain Angel?”

“I don't really know. No one knows.”

“Exactly. I wish I could tell you that's where my story ends, but it doesn't. Because a day after I spoke with Detective Carbone, I received a visit to my hotel from a representative of the United States Embassy.”

My heart drops even further.

“Was his name David Graham?”

He nods.

“Yes. A most distinguished man in appearance. He asked me for a favor.”

“A favor.”

“He asked me to forgo interfering in Grace's disappearance. That it was a police matter now. He also told me that if I continued to get involved, the Italian government might be forced to detain me for an unspecified amount of time.” Pursing his lips, lowering his head, as if suddenly ashamed. “I'm sixty two years old and I project manage construction jobs in a terrible market, Captain Angel. I have barely enough vacation time as it is. Being detained for months or even weeks would cost me my job.”

“I understand,” I say. “I don't want you to lose your job.”

He raises his right hand, sets it on my shoulder. It's a little awkward for him, since he's shorter and rounder than me.

“My wife and I are leaving in a few hours. From here we head to Florence and then Rome, and then back to Cleveland.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Enjoy your second honeymoon. Never let her go. Never let her out of your sight.”

He removes his hand.

“No need to thank me. I sincerely hope you find your fiancée. I agree with you. She very much loved you. I could see it in her eyes before she…”

“It's okay. You can say it.”

“Before she disappeared.”

Biting down hard on his bottom lip,Miles turns, and heads down the Rialto staircase to the opposite canal bank where he so easily blends into the crowd. I turn and head back down the opposing stairs towards Giovanni, convinced now that the police are hiding something from me.

Chapter 51

“DID YOU FIND ANYMORE clues regarding Grace's abduction?” Giovanni asks.

I tell him everything Miles told me. The both of us standing at the bottom of the Rialto staircase, the tourists passing by us in both directions.

The café waiter mulls over what I've revealed, smiles, stuffs his hands inside his jacket pockets.

“I told you the police cannot be trusted. But then, perhaps your Grace could not be trusted either.”

Under normal circumstances, I might punch another man in the mouth after a comment like that. But staring into his soft, almost childlike face, I can't help but believe that he is absolutely right. Perhaps in the end, Grace did simply get up from the table and leave me. For good.

Just the thought of her doing something so drastic and so final, and performing it so coldly, makes my already bruised heart feel like it's about to split down the center. I can hardly breathe at the thought of walking back to my apartment.

Then my cell phone rings.

Chapter 52

I LOOK DOWN AT the keypad.

Alessandra Betti.

I hit Send, press the phone to my ear.

“What did you find out?”

“There are many prints on the ring, as would be expected, including yours and your fiancée's. Prints from overseas military personnel are easily accessed. Grace's prints were also in the system as your significant other since she had access to your base in Frankfurt.”

“What about the overcoat man? Were his on there?”

“We have no way of knowing. But there is a third set of prints that might interest you.”

My breathing grows shallow.

“I'm listening,” I say.

“The prints belong to a man. A man who belongs to Interpol.”

I look out onto the canal and a gondola carrying a handsome young couple under the bridge. As they pass beneath the bridge they look at one another and smile longingly, and kiss. I see Grace and me sitting in their place, and it makes my heart grow as heavy as a stone. Makes it bleed.

“Interpol. We've had no contact with someone from Interpol.”

“But apparently your fiancée has, Captain.”

I turn and eye the shiny black gondola now having passed under the Ponte Rialto. The gondolier is precariously perched on the impossibly narrow bow while the young lovers nestle together in their red velvet-covered seats, the Venice that surrounds them a romantic dream come true. In the back of my mind, I picture my Grace, lying at the bottom of the Grand Canal.

“That's impossible,” I explain. “She was with me the entire time.”

“Let me ask you another question then,” she goes on. “Who, prior to yourself, was the last man to touch the ring?”

I shift my eyes from the gondola slowly fading into the distance to Giovanni who is standing on the edge of the canal bank, lighting a cigarette.

“I'll call you back in a few minutes,” I say, cutting the connection.