Chapter 59

THE CAFE INTERIOR IS as busy as the exterior. Waiters of all shapes and sizes dressed in black and wearing long white aprons dart around the tables like hungry starlings around a couple dozen nests. We stand in the doorway, my now-seeing eyes searching the gold trimmed and gilded mirrored interior for Giovanni. But he doesn’t seem to be working right at this moment.

“Do you see him?” Alessandra poses.

“Not yet,” I say. “He could be in the back office. He took me back there on two separate occasions.”

“You’re sure the man in the photo is the man who works here?”

“I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” I explain. “Much of the time I am blind. But I think it’s him.”

Soon a waiter greets us at the door. He’s an older man sporting a thick mustache and a large gut that makes his apron bulge out and away from his legs like a tent. Since he speaks no English, Alessandra becomes my translator. He speaks something and the reporter translates.

“If we wish to be seated,” Alessandra translates. “There is a wait of one half hour.”

I peer at the waiter, his face deadpan and tired.

“We don’t want to sit,” I say, waiting for Alessandra’s translation. “We’re looking for someone who works here.”

She tells the waiter what I said, he responds with a question.

“He wants to know who you are.”

“My wife was abducted from this place just a few days ago. I’m her husband.”

She translates. Afterwards, the waiter’s eyes peer into my own. Unblinking.

“How can I help you?” asks the waiter via the reporter.

“A man who works here helped me out. His name is Giovanni. I would like to speak with him.”

The heavyset waiter starts shaking his head. He speaks.

“He is very sorry,” says Alessandra. “But he has no Giovanni in his employ at the moment. Are you sure you weren’t mistaking him for someone else?”

“He must work here,” I say. “He was waiting on some tables here just the other night when I came back here. He found a ring that belonged to my fiancée, and he took me into the back room.” Raising up my right arm, I point to a door located all the way in the back of the café. I’ve never actually laid seeing eyes upon the door before, but I’m sure that must be it.

Alessandra reaches back into her bag, produces the paper. She unfolds it and shows the waiter the image of the man printed upon it. She shows it to the waiter and speaks something in Italian.

“I told him that this is the man we are looking for,” she says to me, waving the photo. “I told him he claims to be employed here.”

The waiter continues to shake his head and speaks again.

She turns to me.

“He says he is the owner of this café and he can assure us that the man in the photograph does not work for him. Nor has he ever worked for him.”

The café owner turns, makes a sweeping gesture with his thick left arm, and says something else.

Alessandra nods and then shakes her head, disbelievingly.

“He says to take a look around, Nick. All the waiters he employs are currently on the floor. All of them. And something else too. He claims that there is no back office attached to this establishment. That the back door simply leads to an alley where they keep the trash receptacle.”

My throat goes dry. I try to swallow. But I can’t seem to work up the moisture. I step away from Alessandra and the café owner, make my way quickly across the floor, past the tables to the back door. With all eyes on me, I open the door onto a dark alley. Set on the narrow cobblestoned alleyway is a blue dumpster. It smells of rotting food. I feel lightheaded and a bit dizzy. Before I close the door, a brown rat pokes its head out from under the plastic dumpster cover. The rat jumps down to the cobbles, and scurries away. I close the door and head back across the floor to the front of the café.

“The owner says he is sorry about your fiancée, Nick,” offers Alessandra. “But if there is nothing else, he must get back to work.”

I take one more look at that back door. I recall being led into a room where I was seated and given several shots of sherry.

Alessandra and I turn and leave the café.

“I’m sorry,” she says, as soon as we’re through the door. “Is it possible you have the wrong café?”

I take a step back and take in the long building, and all the doors and windows that belong to it.

“I suppose it’s very possible I was led through another doorway instead of this one,” I say. “I was blind, after all.”

She nods because it’s the only valid explanation. Unless, that is, I’m entirely crazy and delusional.

“Nick,” Alessandra says, taking hold of my forearm. “Are you okay?”

My eyes lock once more on the table where I last saw and spoke with my fiancée. Where a strange man in an overcoat approached us and possibly…quite possibly…stole my Grace.

“Let’s go back to the police,” I say.

“Let’s go now,” Alessandra says, pulling on my arm.