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SPRING, 2006
Rome
3:00 A.M.
The thought that he should be more careful on the slippery ancient stones had no sooner crossed the mind of Dominic Renzi, when he found himself lying flat on his face on those same cobblestones.
The light drizzle that fell throughout the city and surrounding Roman countryside all through the day had continued into the early morning hours. It brought with it both a chilling air that seeped into Dominic’s bones—despite his Armani Exchange leather jacket—and a dampness that made for dangerous walking on wet, ancient stonework.
Dominic saved himself from serious injury, by throwing his arms out at the last second before hitting the stones, but the palms of his hands took the brunt of the fall and they were stinging. He landed, face to the stones, arms under him. His hands molded around the curves and ridges of the stones, that had been carried from the fields that once surrounded the city and the river bed, then laid out all along the Roman city some two thousand years ago. He could feel the wetness seeping into his clothes.
Of course I landed in a puddle. The thought was both self-effacing and sarcastic.
Slowly, Dominic began to push himself up. His hands slipped slightly on the sticky wetness of the foul smelling puddle he had landed in, and he struggled for a moment to regain his balance.
His apartment was just up the road, not more than ten yards. This was not the brightest idea, he chided silently, walking at this early hour with the rain still falling.
He eased himself up from the roadway and continued to make his way along the few remaining feet with a slight limp to his gait, but without further incident. He leaned against the doorframe to his apartment putting pressure on his left leg. It hurt. He pushed the door open and stepped inside. I didn’t lock it? He shook his head at his own thoughtlessness and justified his lack of action by the lateness of the night and the fact that no one else was out at this time, at least none that he saw. Still, clear thoughts seemed to be a thing of the past. He sighed heavily. I couldn’t even remember to lock my door, what else have I forgotten? He didn’t know and he didn’t care. He couldn’t think about it now. His thoughts were too clouded, filled with indecision. He hated indecision in others and now that’s all his thoughts were, one indecision after another. Taking long late night walks and sleeping until the sun was high, did not make thinking or decision making any easier. It did nothing to clear up his mind. In fact, it might be making everything worse.
A sudden image materialized in his mind; a lone lamb in an expansive field, baying to an unseen and unresponsive flock. He was that lamb without a flock and certainly no herder. He pondered the biblical reference then closed the door to his apartment. He turned and walked the few steps down the main hallway toward the living room. His left knee ached. Old uneven bricks were just as hard and unforgiving to human skin and bones today as they were when first pried from the earth and laid to form the old Roman streets.
He leaned against the wall with an outstretched hand, while using the other hand to check his knee. His pants weren’t torn. That’s good. Not that he was a clotheshorse, but he had just purchased these pants, some shirts and the jacket he was wearing, about a week ago—and he didn’t want to have them ruined already. Funds were tight and even shopping at the exchange got to be expensive.
His left knee took more of the fall than he had previously realized. There was blood soaking through the pants at the knee. Then, glancing to his right knee Dominic noticed that blood covered his pants there, too. He was bleeding from both knees. His eyes skimmed the fabric of the pants from the knee to the hem. They too were stained with the rain-diluted blood.
He reached out to touch the hem of the pants and noticed that his hand was covered in the thick red liquid. As he pulled his other hand away from the wall, blood, like a watercolor painting, smeared the wall with a reddened handprint, reminding him of the Anasazi Indian rock art he had seen in deserts of Arizona. He had spent two years after high school finding himself, as well as ancient petroglyphs and pictographs, in the mountains of Nevada and Arizona. He didn’t fare very well at finding himself, but he did manage to stumble upon a previously unrecorded trove of pictographs in Sloan Canyon in the Black Mountains of southern Nevada, and he’d received some acclaim for the find. He still had the pictures that appeared with an article on the find in the Las Vegas Review Journal, somewhere.
After finding the intellect in himself, he decided to find the man and joined the military for a short stint. Dominic never saw any action, save a few exercises in the New Mexico deserts. But he did find a calling—at least he found what he had thought to be a calling.
His knees were bleeding and so were his palms. He must have hit the roadway harder than he had originally thought. Attempting to avoid contact with any other surface, he made his way to the hallway bath. It wasn’t anything more than a room with a sink and toilet, but being the American he was, he still referred to it as a bathroom, just as he refused to call the apartment a “flat.” Something his onetime housekeeper, a local woman from his church, could never understand. “Toletta, non una stanza del bagno,” she kept telling him.
“I know it’s a toilet,” he would respond. Then he’d call it a bathroom again, just to get her going. He couldn’t afford the housekeeper anymore, so now he was free to call the room whatever he wanted, without outside commentary.
Tapping at the faucet handle with his elbows, he got the water to pour out. A little too cold, but he couldn’t make an adjustment with bloodied hands, so he just let the numbing cold flow over his flesh.
The water ran red, then clear. He dried his hands gingerly on the terrycloth towel that hung from a hook in the wall, taking care not to exacerbate the injury any further. On closer inspection, he saw clearly that his palms were scratched, but not cut. He pulled his hands closer to his face. There was nothing more than a minor scratch. He turned his hands over slowly, one at a time, checking the top of each. He checked his knees, rolling up the legs of his pants as far as he could. Then, looking into the mirror, he checked his face. Dark brown hair, now looking black from the rain, hung, weighted down with tiny drops of water over his forehead. His cheeks were flushed with color from the cold, and the slight creases around his black eyes showed signs of age slightly ahead of his years. But there was not one cut on his hands, knees or face. And yet, there was clearly blood on his pants, his hands, and the wall. He paused in his thoughts as the question rose up. If not mine? And begged the answer. Whose?
A crash from the hallway startled him from his self-examination and he rushed from the bath, out into the hall that lead from the main entrance down toward the living room of the apartment. The door, the same door that Dominic had just entered through a few moments ago, smacked hard against the wall, pushed by a heavy wind that gusted from outside and now cylconed through the apartment.
Dominic closed the door, this time remembering to lock it. Then, turning in the opposite direction, he began to make his way toward the main living quarters of the apartment. He saw them a second before his mind admitted what he was looking at.
Footsteps.
Bloodied footsteps.
Confused, he hesitated. Then, bracing himself against the rough plaster walls, he checked the bottom of his left and then his right shoe. There was a touch of blood on the sole of the right shoe and an uneven thin line of it around the ankle, but not near enough blood to mark his own footstep. He studied the tracks for a moment, squinting his eyes at them to make out the detail. And then, the thought hit him hard enough to cause him to suck in his breath. He had stepped into the bloodied tracks...not made them.
A cool sweat broke out under his arms and quickly began to trickle down his sides. He began to breathe heavily, an unconscious response to the now growing fear. Run. Get out! His conscious thoughts screamed in his brain in response. But he paid no attention.
Dominic stepped around the crimson footsteps, walking alongside the bloodied path into the living room. There, they faded into the dark room. The lights were off. He damned himself for being so conscientious about wasting power and turning the lights off when he left a room. He decided that he would leave the lights on in every room from now on. So what if he wasted power?
Commanding one hand to do what he wanted it to and not to act on its own, as the deepening fear willed it to, he slid the hand around the corner of the wall. He fingered it slowly along the rough stucco. Finding the light switch, he let out a gasp of breath. Did it come from the greater fear of being able to see, once he switched the lights on, or from a sense of relief that he would soon have light? He wasn’t sure.
He wasn’t sure what to do next either. His fingers paused on the button of the electrical switch; the bottom button was extended out, the top button in. That’s all he needed to do was push in the bottom button, popping out the top button and the lights would be on. He thought about what he’d do after the lights came on, and came to the quick conclusion that...he had no fucking conclusion. He didn’t know what he was doing or what he was looking for, and he didn’t know what the hell he was doing still in this apartment? More indecision, of course, he cursed. He was growing angry with himself and his inability to make a decision in life, in love, and in this damned moment. Before he could consciously decide what action to take, his fingers took control and pushed the bottom button in.
There was just a second’s hesitation before the lights came on—flickered really. The tattered electrical wiring in the old apartments of this Rome neighborhood was held together with masking tape and rat spit. He prayed that the lights wouldn’t flicker back out as they tended to do. The faint glow from the dust-covered, glass bulbs nearly illuminated the room. It was better than nothing. He nodded his head slightly in self-agreement.
He scanned the room, began to take a step in, and then hesitated. A few seconds later, he had a plan. Make it to the phone. Call the police. Of course, he knew damn well that the Italian polizia were notoriously slow, unless, of course, there was a beautiful actress, a socialite, or the Pope on the other end of the line calling for help. He dismissed the plan as quickly as he had come up with it. I’d be long dead before they got here, he reasoned.
Surveying the room, he noted that nothing looked out of place. His half-eaten dinner of a peanut butter, honey and banana sandwich, now stale, sat on a plate on the scratched end table. A pair of dress shoes—recently purchased—were tossed carelessly in a corner. Magazines—partially read—and newspapers—completely read—lie in assorted stacks. I gotta’ clean this place up. Then he frowned as he considered that to be an odd thought given the circumstances. But true nonetheless, he admitted.
Convinced that the room was clear of...well, he wasn’t really sure of what. But it was clear, he noted, and stepped into the room.
Off to one side was the kitchen, to the other side the bedroom and another bathroom. This one was really a bathroom. He decided to go for the kitchen. He was sweating more now, under his arms, in the crevice of his back and on his upper lip. He had gotten his breath under control, and outwardly, was quite composed.
The light in the kitchen was off. Of course! He shook his head at the thought of his mother, yelling in Italian, “Chiuda la luce.” And his response to her in English,
“Mom, we do not close lights in America—we turn them off!” The kitchen in his apartment was like most other kitchens in the apartments in this section of Rome—narrow with an old looking and acting stove and a refrigerator that matched the stove’s style and inability to operate. A farm-style sink—complete with a leaking faucet—was attached to the wall. One small window at the far end of the narrow room barely let any light in during the brightest hours of the day. Now, at something after three in the morning, it was almost invisible.
Dominic took a step closer, peering into the darkness.
Waiting.
Watching for something to move.
Nothing did.
In the kitchen, there was only darkness upon more darkness. The faint light from old, dust-covered bulbs in the living room did not make a dent into the shadows that engulfed the small kitchen. The switch to the overhead kitchen light was on the wall about halfway into the room. If someone—or something—was in there, it would have him long before he made it to the switch and the comfort of light. He held his breath and strained to hear. He could differentiate between the sounds of the refrigerator motor whirling away, the drip of the faucet, and the wind still gusting outside. Then, there was something else. Something more. There. He heard it again. Some unexpected sound that was mixed in with the other sounds: the fan motor on the refrigerator, the wind seeping in through the cracked window seal, and a drip of water from the faucet falling into the still unwashed coffee cup. There again. The strange wheezing noise crept in as if it were trying to disguise itself among the other sounds, yet didn’t quite fit in. Dominic leaned into the kitchen slightly, cupping one ear with a hand.
Then, again, but this time more prominent.
And then the darkness moved.
Dominic yelled.
It fell upon him.
Instinctively—instead of jumping back—Dominic grabbed at the form ready to protect himself against the unknown assailant as best that he could. He steadied himself for whatever was to come and was completely unprepared when the form slowly slid through his hands and down onto the floor.
An old man lay there, gasping for breath. His black coat and the black shirt underneath were wet. Dominic quickly pulled his hands away from the body and brought them close to his face. The smell of the liquid was metallic and it ran thick through his fingers. Blood. “Imploratio Adiumentum. Ue Bonfjote.” The old man’s lips moved and a gurgling whisper escaped, “Tazor Li.” The old man’s speech was barely audible.
The words the old man spoke were somehow familiar, yet Dominic could not immediately place them. His heart pounded as adrenaline coursed through him, pulling him in the two instinctual directions of fight or flight.
The old man’s voice was so weak Dominic had to lean in closer, his ear just touching the old man’s lips. “Ancora. Dirlo ancora,” Dominic begged. And then thinking about it, added in, “Again. Say it again.”
The old man’s breath grew weaker, short shallow breaths quickening. He reached out with his right hand, grasping weakly at Dominic’s arm. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” he said with a voice that was momentarily strong. Then his body fell limp, puddling on the floor where he had fallen.
Dominic ran for the telephone and dialed.