Tweedledum and Tweedledee (8 page)

"Yes. They were concerned about their son. He had been missing for a long time and they were worried. I think most couples would be fighting."

"We're not here to judge, Mrs. Frost. We just take notes of the facts," the other officer said.

"Did Mr. Colombo seem threatening to you?" the first officer asked.

"What do you mean by threatening?" I asked. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. I didn't like to add more to the case against Alonzo Colombo. A thought had entered my mind, put there by Victor.

What if he was innocent?

"Was he being threatening towards Mrs. Colombo?" the officer continued.

I exhaled. I had to tell them the truth. "Well. He was angry. That was very obvious," I said diplomatically.

"We’ve been told that he threw a lamp against the wall and shattered it. Is this true?"

I nodded, seeing all the headlines in the newspapers before my eyes. I exhaled. I had to tell them what I saw.

"That is the truth, yes. He threw the lamp."

"Thank you so much, Mrs. Frost. That was all we wanted to know," the first officer said and got up from the couch. "Enjoy the rest of your cruise."

20

April 2014

I
DIDN'T FEEL GOOD
about myself once the officers had left. I didn't quite understand why I felt this way, since I had seen the man yell at his wife and act with great anger. There was no reason for me to think he was innocent.

Except for what Victor said.

I sighed and grabbed another beer from the mini-bar. What did Victor even know about this case? He hadn't been with me in the room. He didn't see how angry Alonzo Colombo was at his wife.

But he did know that the wife needed a doctor. He did know that she was dead before you told him anything.

I shook my head and turned on the TV in my suite. After all, I had only told the officers the truth. They already knew he had thrown that lamp from the doctor's statement. Nothing I said could change their minds about Mr. Colombo anyway.

I switched the channel. An old episode of
Friends
was on. It was in Italian. I watched it anyway. I knew what it was about. It was the one where Chandler decided to try and commit to a relationship with Janice and screwed it all up by getting too clingy and needy. I didn't understand much of what they said, but it didn't matter. I just needed something to take my mind off the murder. I knew it would be hard for me to sleep.

Chandler was eating ice cream with Monica and Rachel when I went for some chocolate from the mini-bar. I ate it all, but it didn't make me feel any better. I looked out the big windows leading to my balcony and wondered if we would be able to depart at midnight as promised. It was pitch dark outside, nothing but the endless ocean. I thought about my home and my family. I had to admit, I was actually pretty stoked about my parents getting back together again.

I walked outside on the balcony and felt the warm spring breeze. There were voices coming from the other balconies surrounding me. It made me feel safe. I drew in a deep breath of the salty air and closed my eyes. I thought about my childhood back in my old house in Elsinore where I grew up in an average middle-class Danish home. My parents had been annoyingly normal and the childhood very uneventful. I guessed that was part of why I had felt so compelled to act out greatly as a teenager. I had cut my hair into a Mohawk, colored it green and worn military boots and lots of piercings. I laughed out loud, thinking about it. What a shocker it must have been for my parents. Their pretty daughter suddenly becoming rebellious like that. I even, at one time, had a chain from my earring to my nose-piercing. It must have scared them. Even scarier was the crowd I started to hang out with in Copenhagen. Every weekend, I took off to the capitol and hung out with these people who fought for anarchy in our country, occupied houses, and demonstrated against the government in the streets. We were quite the bunch. I never cared much about fighting the government, but I really liked shocking my parents. And, boy, had I shocked them. I was arrested several times and they had to come and get me. I wondered how I myself would react if Maya ended up doing anything similar. I guess I would be really mad. I sipped my beer, wondering why my parents hadn't been…Why they hadn't been really angry with me for acting out like that. They had been so understanding and mellow and…well, I guess that was why I had done it. I wanted them to be outraged. I wanted them to be angry. They never were.

I thought about Maya again and felt a sort of unease inside of me. She was the exact same age now as I had been when I started acting out. Was that what she was doing now? Was it part of her rebellion? What kind of trouble would she end up getting herself into? She was so angry with me and I couldn't talk to her anymore.

I looked at my cellphone and went through all the old pictures of her and me, then felt a sadness grow inside of me. What if she never forgave me? What if she never came back? I wanted so badly to call her and tell her to come home.

But I couldn't. She needed this break from me. She needed to find her own way right now and there was nothing I could do about it.

I just had to accept it and pray she wouldn't get herself into trouble. I had to be the grown-up, the reasonable one.

God, how I hated everything about it.

21

April 1980

H
E WAS MAKING A
lot of money. Officer Maraldi was practically swimming in it. Every Friday night, he took the twins to a new place in town to fight in dog fights and, every time, they won by killing the dog. It was quite the spectacle and soon the Spider Boys became famous all over the Rome underground. They came from everywhere to see them and see if it was really true that a set of circus freaks could actually kill ferocious dogs in an arena.

When they weren't fighting, he kept them in his basement. He had gotten a cage for them, so they wouldn't escape while he was at work. He couldn't risk losing his golden goose. Before a fight, he would starve them for two days, giving them nothing but dried up bread and water…Just like their opponents were starved by their owners to make them aggressive.

And the twins were growing more aggressive by the day. They would bite the bars of the cage in anger when he entered the basement and growl at him and sometimes even bark when he gave them their food.

"You're nothing but animals, aren’t you?" he said, as he watched them attack the chunk of meat he brought them on the days when he wasn't starving them. He liked to watch them sink their teeth into the meat and rip it apart, growling and drooling like wild animals. He enjoyed studying them, just like everyone else who came to the shows. It was fascinating. What were they? Humans? Animals? It was impossible to tell. But as time went by, he started more and more to regard them as mere animals. Even if he still listened to them talk to each other at night, not understanding one single word.

He had bought himself a whip and a bull hook like those used to dressage big animals like elephants. With that in his hand, he didn't risk the twins attacking him when he transported them from one place to another. He had to use it a few times, but mostly to gain respect from them. Maraldi was slightly terrified of the twins, as well as fascinated. They were making him a lot of money, but he was also afraid they would cause his death some day.

He never once worried that they might be taken away from him. But that was exactly what happened. One day, when he was loading his truck after a show well-done, someone sneaked up behind him and put a gun to his face.

"Put them up," the voice said.

"I don't have any money on me," he lied.

"This is not about the money," the voice hissed.

"Then what is it about?"

A face appeared next to him. Maraldi gasped. "You!"

"Hello there, Officer Maraldi. I heard you’ve been looking for me," said Mama Florea, the woman known as the leader of the Slovenski Gang. She was known to be a notorious criminal who would kill any of her gang-members if they didn't bring home enough money. She wouldn't hesitate to kill him as well. Maraldi knew he had to be careful.

"What do you want?" he snorted.

"You have something that belongs to me," Mama Florea said.

"And just what might that be?" Maraldi asked. He wondered if she was talking about the money he had made tonight. It was all in the truck. He wasn't going to give it up without a fight. That was certain.

"The boys," Mama Florea said with her deep rusty voice. "Your precious Spider-boys. They're mine. I paid a lot of money for them. You’ve had your fun with them. Now I'm taking them home. "

Maraldi's hands were shaking in anger, but he knew he had lost. It was him up against an entire gang of ruthless gypsies. He knew what they were capable of. He had seen their victims.

"So, if you don't mind, I'll just take them now and be on my way," Mama Florea said. She signaled someone and two men came forward.

"Take them," Mama Florea said.

The men did as they were told and Maraldi could do nothing but watch as his golden goose was carried away from him. Mama Florea looked at him, then smiled at the guy holding the gun.

"Now hurt him. No one steals from Mama Florea and gets away with it."

The old woman turned her back on Maraldi while the man with the gun pointed it at Maraldi's leg and pulled the trigger.

22

April 2014

F
RANCESCA
A
LESSANDRINO WOKE UP
when the ship took off again.

Finally,
she thought to herself and looked over at her parents who were both sound asleep in the other bed.

It was past midnight and, as usual, they had all been in bed by ten-thirty. Tonight was worse than ever and they had both wanted to go to bed before ten. They demanded that all lights were out and Francesca wasn't even allowed to watch TV or play games on her iPad, since the
light from it woke them up
.

At the age of thirteen Francesca was getting increasingly more annoyed with her parents. First of all, they were too old. None of her friend's parents were this old. Her mother had been in her mid-forties when she had her and her dad was ten years older. Second, they never let her do anything fun. When her classmates went to the youth club on Friday nights, she was always told to stay home and watch old films and shows on TV with her parents.

"You don't need to be running out at night," her father said.

"It's over at ten o'clock in the evening, Dad," she had argued so many times, but it was no use.

"We never did that in my youth," her mother always said.

Maybe because you were young in the seventies!

Her parents were so extremely boring and now they had taken her on this boring cruise. It was nice and all and the suite was great, but Francesca did not appreciate the fact that she had to sleep with her parents. Both of her parents snored and she had no privacy. Her mother was always checking in on her and monitoring her time on her iPad, telling her to not spend so much time on Facebook. She would say something insanely stupid like:

"Young people today never stop to smell the flowers."

It annoyed Francesca immensely. Everything about her old parents annoyed her and sometimes she imagined running off. Just take off and live her life. She couldn't wait to be old enough to leave home.

But it was still so many years away. She wasn't sure she could wait that long. How was she supposed to survive her teenage years locked up with these old people while all her friends went to parties, drank their first beers, and hooked up with boys? It had already started. And she was already an outsider. Having to say
no, I can't come
over and over again eventually made people stop asking. Most of her friends had sympathy for her situation, but some didn't understand why she didn't just
do it anyway
. Why she didn't just sneak out at night when the old people were asleep.

"They'll never know," her friend Ada said. "They'll never find out."

But up until now, Francesca hadn't dared to do anything like that. She was afraid of her dad's anger if he found out. He always thought of her as his pretty little girl who would never get herself into trouble.

"Being the daughter of a well-known surgeon brings responsibility," he always told her.

He wanted her to go into medicine as well and she was still finding the courage to tell him it wasn't going to happen. He had retired years ago, and now he had cast all his expectations for the future upon his daughter.

"Look at those hands," he would say and grab her by the wrists. "Look at them. They're made to hold a scalpel. Look at how steady and delicate they are. They're just perfect. You are going to do great wonders in this world, my daughter."

Francesca liked that he had high hopes for her, but she knew she would never be able to live up to them. Especially not when she was dreaming about becoming a writer.

Francesca tried, once again, to fall asleep, but it was hard. She was sleeping way too much on this trip, since she had to be in bed so early. She wasn't tired at all. Finally, she got out of bed and found a pamphlet about the cruise-ship. She had heard there was a nightclub on board.

Francesca looked at her sleeping parents. The ship rocked slightly as it speeded up, probably trying to catch up from the many hours of delay.

They'll never know
, she heard her friend Ada say.
They'll never find out
.

Francesca felt a thrill in her stomach as she made her decision. She went to her suitcase and found the dress she had brought with her, just in case she ever had the chance to go out. She never thought she would actually get to use it.

23

April 2014