Earthquake I.D. (28 page)

But what was “advantage” here? Barbara's announcement meant that Roebuck and her friends would get what they wanted, a PR windfall. And what would the mother and her family get? On the glass tabletop the five passports remained fanned out like a poker hand. What, did Barbara want to gamble? Stay in town?

And now Jay too had started to flag, no longer sounding so game and chummy. He'd lost enough steam for Barb to notice, at least. The more his off-again, on-again wife avoided looking him in the eye, the more his rally faltered. He never let go of Barbara's hand.

“So,” he said, fumbling for another line of talk. “So…”

The Attaché was adjusting her jacket. Barb didn't like to see her touch her lapel.

“Well,” Roebuck said. “I believe that's everything.”

“Everything…”Jay ran a thumb over Barbara's knuckle.

“Certainly you'll need to speak with your children. There's no one in this office who would object to that.”

Jay's thumb was tentative, never completing a circle.

“No,” said Barbara. “No way we're finished here yet.”

The two across the table gave her such a frown that she could compare eyes, Roebuck's round Anglo periwinkle to the other guy's leaf-shaped Arabian chocolate. After a few seconds of that, facing her husband came easy.

“There's still Silky,” she reminded the Jaybird. “We're not leaving here until we know what was up with that guy.”

Her husband the Jaybird. Nobody but Barbara would've seen the fresh energy coming into his looks. But Roebuck noticed soon enough, the way he followed up Barbara's lead, letting go of her to lend his attack body English. He lay his stubby hand across the spread passports, vowing that before he and his wife went to the children with today's offer, they would know everything they needed to know about the late Lieutenant Major. Jay had Attaché dropping her head, studying her nails. For a while the longest response she managed was a couple of frustrated words:
You two
.

“Roebuck. I mean. All Barb and I know is, his killer's still out there.”

“Well, surely you realize that with an investigation in progress—”

“Sure sure, police procedure. Hey. Roebuck. You
are
the police.”

The UN man crossed his legs the other way, a body-language harrumph.

“You are the police,” Barbara said. “You make the rules.”

“That NATO investigation, I mean. It's right here with us. It's in the computer.”

“You two.” The Attaché spun the laptop. “Our organizations are under no obligation to tell you anything.”

Barbara put out a hand, stopping the machine in mid-spin. “Mother of God, you were spying on us.”

“Majorly spying, Roebuck. You might as well've had someone on the balcony.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way. It was your security at stake, may I remind you.”

“My security? Mine and Barb's and the kids? If that's the case, hey. How come you can't tell me anything except how my sex life is going?”

“Well. We've turned up nothing that indicates your family would be a target.”

“Oh, so you
can
tell us something about your investigation?”

Nobody but Barbara would notice the born-again feistiness in her husband's face, in the corners of his mouth and his upraised brows.

“Jay's right,” she said. ‘You called this meeting, you wanted our help. So if you'd thought it would cinch the deal, you'd've told us about Silky already.”

“Barb's right. You'd've told us whatever it took.”

“You always had that card to play. That's all we're saying.”

The Attaché had shrunk back as far as her chair would allow. She shared another look with the UN rep and then set off on a tour of her outfit's accessories, touching glasses and brooch and watchband. Barbara, watching, bit her tongue. When Roebuck let out a long exhale, to Barb it sounded like her Jaybird's cry after he'd gotten hit.

‘You two. One would think you'd been married to the man.”

“No,” said Barbara. ‘You still don't get it. Wrong connection. It's that Silky could've been one of our kids.”

“Well.” The woman gave a tiny shrug, nothing Italian. “The evidence thus far points clearly towards trafficking in false documentation. False papers.”

The UN rep looked more disapproving than ever.

“Earthquake I.D.,” Jay said.

“Counterfeit, yes. Certainly there's a market.”

Barbara found herself imagining that it was she who'd left the Arab so disappointed. She'd let this man down, and a lot of other people too, because she should have guessed this weeks ago.

“The evidence appears pretty convincing,” the Attaché went on. Kahlberg appeared to have gotten hold of a template for the new documents of identification.

“He did it himself,” Barbara put in, loud and exasperated. “He did it himself, he ran the things off in the print shop. How could we not
have guessed?”

“Well, it's not that simple, Mrs. Lulucita.”

“Jay, you remember, he even bragged about it. He told us, the public relations officer has access to the facilities for—”

“It's not that simple. These are official documentation, watermarked and notarized. You can't simply run them off.”

Barbara heard Jay sighing, struggling the same as she, unable to fathom how he'd failed to notice the giveaways. His wife had told him often enough about the Lieutenant Major's sheaf of “authorizations,” coming out of his bag each time the family arrived at another tourist site. The Attaché meantime acknowledged that, “in keeping with his position,” Kahlberg had already been issued a notary stamp. The template for the new I.D., in the same way, would've been a simple enough business for an officer who wore two hats, or was it five? “All he needed was a single key and a four-digit combination.” The Lieutenant Major could pick up the template when he needed, and no one in the Organization would be the wiser.

“But the stock, the paper,” Roebuck went on, “well. That was another matter. It wasn't as if the man could simply open a cabinet, thank you and goodbye. All the investigation has turned up so far is, the officer somehow got his hands on something like a ream. With that, he could run off the counterfeits as they were needed.”

“You're saying, he didn't keep a stash around?” Barbara kept her tone conversational. “He waited till, till someone asked, and then he printed off—?”

“Well, I'm not ‘saying.' We don't have all the facts, Mrs. Lulucita. I can only tell you what the evidence suggests.”

Jay raised his chin. “At the museum, he had the bag with him.”

“Yes
. He'd come prepared to make a deal, it would appear. But as your wife will recall, the papers were left lying on the dock.”

Barb remembered: paper that rustled more noisily than the hair on the corpse.

Jay stuck to the subject, pointing out that Kahlberg “always had an angle,” and he wouldn't have left home with his entire stash in his bag. “Bag like that, hey. Easy pickings.” Instead the liaison man had probably set aside a number of the counterfeits, somewhere safe, all signed and ready to go. “Like guys who keep four or five hundred in the sock drawer.”

Roebuck shook her head. “It's not my place to speculate.”

“But, I mean. Chances are. There's more of them out there somewhere.”

Barbara returned to her recollections of the crooked soldier-boy at work. He'd met his contacts right under her nose, and more often than not, that very evening the mother had told Jay all about it. She'd wondered aloud, in particular, about the men who'd looked over the so-called authorizations. Some of Kahlberg's inspectors had hardly looked official, and she'd never understood why they'd always needed a gunman standing by (in plainclothes, but a gunman, anyone could see). Then yesterday there'd been that Umberto. He hadn't been Silky's buyer, Barb would guess, but rather the middleman, the gofer. Either way, it was one more reason you couldn't trust the “museum guide” as a witness. Besides, the killers hadn't been in the business; they'd ignored Umberto once he was down and they'd left the fake I.D.—for just one of which 500 Euros would be a bargain rate—scattered across the loading dock. All this came to Barbara so quickly, so transparently, here in the Consulate. Here a long way from her bed up in the Vomero, or her walks around the ancient
centro
.

“Now, I must reiterate,” Roebuck was saying. “I must make it quite perfectly clear, this man operated on his own. Entirely autonomous.”

“Autonomous, hey.” Jay broke into a smirk. “I think I like what they call them in the movies, a rogue agent.”

“I'm quite serious, Mr. Lulucita. It's as you said, this man always had an angle.”

So many angles that Barb began to wish she could get another look at the coded message on the computer screen, now facing away. She thought of Saint Joan of Arc. Joan had died in a fire. But so had a lot of others, and the mother knew what it would look like if she spun the computer and studied the website again. Meanwhile Jay was conceding the Attaché's point—Silky had run a one-man shop. His documents business had nothing to do with NATO, the UN, or the Consulate.

“Well
. Thank you for saying so at last. And for my part, let me once more offer the sincerest apology, from everyone in our community…”

“It's okay, Roebuck. I mean, nobody's perfect. Barb and me, you heard about our ups and downs, here. We're not saints.”

Roebuck allowed herself a tepid joke: if the Lulucitas hadn't been saints when they'd arrived in Naples, then dealing with a Tempter like the late Lieutenant Major had made them holy. Certainly.

“Oh, look,” Barbara said. “What matters is, whoever Silky's connections were, they won't come after us.”

The older woman nodded firmly, bending over the keyboard. As she logged off and shut down, Roebuck assured her visitors that any criminal interest in their family was now “moot.” It had died with officer Kahlberg.

“You merely served as the front for the officer. The cover story.”

“Not a player, not a target,” Jay said. “I hear that. But, while we're talking about safety, I mean, also. Three weeks ago somebody tried to kidnap me.”

“Ah, that was a separate matter, Mr. Lulucita.” Kahlberg's under-the-table operations had taken place at economic levels far above those of the desperate
clandestini
who'd briefly manhandled Jay.

“But, I mean. Now you offer a guarantee. Everywhere we go, we're safe.”

Roebuck gave a small smile, then made a remark about “acts of God.” She reminded Barbara and Jay that they lived in a land of earthquakes. “Vesuvius, well. She's listed as an active volcano.” Her eyes, even behind bifocals, revealed a sharpening glitter. “But Mr. Lulucita, since you bring this business up, I must add. Your near-kidnapping would seem to have justified returning at once to New York. Three weeks ago, just as you say. You had a tailor-made excuse for breaking your contract, and yet you remained in Naples. You and your wife both.”

Barbara didn't realize she was reaching for her husband, for the elastic under his shirt, till her fingers touched his waistline.

‘You come in here,” the Attaché said, “and you question
our
motives.”

To see Roebuck lash back was a help, actually. Barbara left off fretting about Romy and JJ, keeping her hand at the Jaybird's hip while he ignored the other woman's implication, once more bringing up yesterday's murder. “That investigation of yours, I mean. You've still got a lot of holes.”

“Certainly. We've got a thousand questions.”

“And as for the girl, Romy. I'm with Barb on her.” The man was still full of beans. He mentioned that DiPio had given the gypsy a clean bill of health.

“Jay,” Barbara said.

“But Silky, I mean. Anybody know anything about his sex life? Something for the autopsy, you ask me.”

He'd even broken into a grin. But when faced his wife, she could see the playfulness drain from him. He fell silent, staring, until the woman across the table repeated what she'd said about a thousand questions.

They had a bigger crew these days, with Jay's mother. They had more on their hands than ever, really. Not that they didn't go through another spell of cocooning, sticking close to home throughout most of the first four or five days after Mom and Pop came home from downtown. Immediately after the meeting, Jay and Barbara had themselves a long walk along the waterfront, a long walk and a talk, trailed at a crawl by a black sedan with Consular plates. But after that everyone tended to hole up in thir ten rooms above the Vomero, sorting out new responsibilities and shoving around the heavy furniture. The apartment could feel as if the Lulucitas had moved into the van they used to share with Kahlberg. But with that guy out of the picture, and with Roebuck keeping hands off, they were no longer at a tourist's distance, staring one day at a four-poster bed draped in silk brocade, the next at a pair of household gods with oversized clay erections. Rather Barbara and the others got their hands dirty, working with more durable ore, creating a presentation with unmistakable message: This Is A Family. Their renewed commitment played a part in every decision, whether it was Jay accepting a new position at DiPio's downtown clinic or the two girls agreeing to share their room with Grandma.

Aurora would've set herself up in a hotel, ordinarily. A suite was more her style. But the new security team argued that their job would be a good deal easier if the old playgirl stayed home with the others. Then too, when it came to getting constructive—to getting rid of the wheelchair and pulling out the hammer—the primary banger was the grandmother. She loomed at the edge of everything, a brassy laugh in the next room or a painted face over somebody's shoulder. Not that Barbara was talking to her. After the Consulate she gave her mother-in-law a wide berth, or wide as the place allowed. As for the jagged edges inside, Barbara couldn't do anything about those.