The entrance to the gate was twenty feet in front of me by the time I heard panting and footsteps crunching behind me. I knew if they had guns, I was within shooting distance. I could hear them talking to one another.
“There! To your right.”
I turned and came at the iron fence at a running start and used a nearby headstone as a stepping stone that propelled me halfway up the fence. I clutched the metal bars and shimmied my way up. By this time, the men were at the bottom. I expected my leg to be yanked and to fall to the ground, but miraculously, I was inches from their reach. I half-expected the roar of a gunshot as I flung my leg over the pointed barb at the top. My coat caught as I tried to swing my other leg over and came down on another spear-like barb. The pain took my breath away and made me lose my grip completely. I would’ve fallen to the ground except a big fat chunk of my thigh was impaled on this barb.
The voices below me grew dim and I concentrated on not passing out as I gripped the fence as tight as I could and lifted my leg, slowly off the barb, hoping that I wouldn’t bleed to death from taking it out. Gingerly, I felt where the hole was. Instead of a gushing foundation of blood from my artery, I only felt some dampness spreading. I would live. For now.
I slipped to the other side and pushed myself away from the fence so the men’s greedy hands wouldn’t grab me as I fell. I landed in a ball and cried out in pain from the pressure of landing on my injured leg.
I didn’t wait to see what the men had planned, but they clearly couldn’t scale the fence. As I race-walked and limped away I heard this:
“Mr. Turricci, per la stazione ferroviaria.”
Good God. He was here. And he was after me. He was the one who wanted me dead. My own father. The name listed as my father on my birth certificate.
I kept running, breathing loudly as I hobbled through the fog. I saw the sign for the train. I was almost there. I dipped into the entrance to BART, limping painfully and hoping it wasn’t too late.
The platform was deserted and a few lights were out, making it even dimmer than normal. I headed for the far end of the platform and ducked into the shadows behind a pillar close to the tracks. My blood raced and I could hear the pounding of my heart in my ears. My body shook as I silently prayed for the train to come. I clutched the incriminating documents inside my coat, wadding them up into a tight ball in the palm of my sweaty hand. My legs shook uncontrollably and I reached down to see if more blood had come out.
I heard the distant rumble down the tracks. The train was almost here. Far, far down the tunnel, I could see the smallest glow from the headlights of the BART train. Only a few more seconds. I could still make it. If the train came right now, I could slip inside and maybe it would pull away before he caught up to me. But then I heard it, the sound of someone running.
The pounding of footsteps grew closer. I heard someone shout my name. Someone with a thick Italian accent. A voice that was disturbingly familiar, as if my very cells recognized him at my core. Giving one last glance down the tracks at the oncoming train, I knew it was too late. I was out of time.
I turned to face this man. I was going to get my very first glimpse of my own father: the man who raped and murdered my mother. A dark figure in a trench coat hurtled down the stairs, hopped the turn style and then ran into the light.
As train roared into the station, filling the tunnel with light and sound, the man’s face was illuminated. I gasped, the air sucked out of my lungs.
Mateo Antonio Turricci was the man I’d tried so desperately to sleep with at the hotel in Sicily. My vision started to close in and my legs gave out. I felt myself slumping, falling off the platform and onto the tracks.