Fragolino Fuchsia Read online

  “We are doing everything in our power to locate your colleague and his friend.” She rose from her desk and hit me with a glare. “But I would suggest that you spend your time enjoying this beautiful country—provided that you can resist touching our monuments.”

  My pot threatened to boil over, but I kept my lid on because something she said had inspired me.

  Her heels struck the concrete as she strode to the door. “And I would strongly advise you not to try to exercise your profession in Italy. Remember, you have no authority here.”

  Without a word, I got up and left.

  Fire-Mouth had another thing coming if she thought I was going lay low and do nothing. Rome might be her jurisdiction, but American college students were mine. And when it came to finding gladiator swords, I knew better than she did where two young boys would go look.

  5

  Now why would David and the vassal want a sword?” Glenda strutted behind me on the Via dei Fori Imperiali in Roman sandal–style stripper shoes.

  I knew why I’d want one—to lop off five inches from her six-inch heels so we could pick up the pace and to fend off the men following us. Single women were prey for Italy’s Casanovas, and Glenda’s coat had brought out their inner animal. The worst part was that she had begun to molt, and I needed her to keep her feathers. “They probably want to show it off to their friends. The vassal has a Godric Gryffindor sword in his dorm room.”

  “Is he that Gothic porn star?”

  I didn’t answer. I had no idea who she was talking about, and I was positive the vassal wouldn’t have either. I just hoped no Harry Potter fans had heard her. We already had enough trouble.

  We approached the Colosseum, and I stopped to admire the famous arches that had once framed statues of the divinities.

  Glenda squinted at the colossal structure. “What is this place? A bombed-out Superdome?”

  “The Roman Colosseum?” My tone was as incredulous as my opened-wide eyes. “One of the Seven Wonders of the World?”

  She snort-exhaled a drag off her cigarette. “It’s a wonder it made that list, as shabby as it is.”

  I gave a snort of my own—full of the smoke she’d blown at my nose. “Focus on spotting shady types, okay? We’re looking for an arms dealer.”

  She studied the Bangladeshi and Senegalese street vendors, whose counterfeit goods lined the walkway. “All I see are purses and sunglasses.”

  “Keep looking.” I turned and scanned the ground-level archways for loiterers. “It’s a shame, but the Colosseum is a mecca for pickpockets and con artists.”

  A waft of Versace cologne cut the diesel-scented air, and I discovered a thirtyish man in a suit beside me.

  “Ti accompagno?” He asked to “accompany” me, a common come-on.

  “Smamma,” I replied with a less-than-inviting stare. It meant “un-mamma,” which was slang for “get lost.”

  “Bah!” He spun on the heels of his Salvatore Ferragamos.

  I scoured the crowd, keeping a grip on my handbag. It wasn’t only the thieves I was worried about, but the gladiators. The mayor of Rome had banned them from the Colosseum numerous times for extorting money from visitors in exchange for pictures and tours. But like true warriors they kept coming back to fight for tourist dollars.

  As I watched the goings on, something didn’t seem right. And I realized what it was. I hadn’t heard a pio, i.e., peep, from Glenda.

  I looked around, and she was gone.

  Fantastico. All I needed was for her to go missing too. Although, courtesy of her coat, I knew how to find her.

  I followed the fuchsia feathers around the curve of the Colosseum, and there she was.

  In a gladiator’s arms.

  I tapped my toe on the cobblestone. “What are you doing?”

  She waved her cigarette holder. “When in Rome, sugar.”

  “Um, that’s not what the Romans do, at least not in this era. And you’re supposed to be helping me look for the boys.”

  “I am, Miss Franki. Tiberio offered to carry me while I work.” She wrapped both arms around his thick neck. “This is proof that you can investigate and live la dolce vita, so why don’t you get yourself a Tiberio and enjoy the country a little?”

  Et tu, Brute? I thought, flashing back to Boccadifuoco.

  A middle-aged gladiator ambled over with an old Polaroid.

  Spartacus he was not. He was a foot shorter than me and looked like he’d eaten a barrel of Barilla pasta.

  Non-Spartacus analyzed me with bloodshot eyes. “I war you?”

  I’d heard enough Italian English to know he wasn’t asking to battle but rather inquiring about how I was doing. “Fine.”

  “I take pitchair.” He motioned with the camera for me to stand beside Glenda.

  “No picture.” I shook my finger the Italian way—from right to left. “I don’t want to remember this.”

  “Don’ worey, don’ worey. You like-a.” He reached under his skirt and scratched his bottom. Then he pulled a stack of photographs from under the armpit of his breastplate.

  Not the best way to promote your business. I almost suggested that he take an advertising lesson from the police.

  “Look-a.” He fanned the pictures in front of my face.

  And I thought I saw the word Tulane.

  I grabbed the stack and rifled through it.

  A stab pierced my gut like a sword.

  There was a picture of David and the vassal in gladiator helmets. And according to the date and time stamp, the picture had been taken on Saturday morning—the day they’d disappeared.

  “Did either of you talk to these boys?”

  Tiberio’s expression faltered, but his grip on Glenda didn’t. “They want tour of il Foro.”

  The Roman Forum, where Julius Caesar was killed. Had they gone there to get a gladius?

  “Did you take them, Ti?” Glenda cooed.

  A scrawny gladiator sped up on a Vespa, his red cape flying.

  Tiberio nodded at the caped crusader. “Mio cugino, Adriano, he take-a.”

  I smirked at the name. Either these cousins were con men, or their mothers had a fondness for the emperors Tiberius and Hadrian.

  Adriano stepped off his scooter, stuck out his breastplate, and high-stepped over in his strappy Roman sandals. He took my hand and pressed his lips to it. “At your service, signorina.”

  I wiped my hand on my pants and held up the picture. “After you took these boys to the Forum, where did they go?”

  He exchanged a complicit look with the others and shrugged. “I no know.”

  Adriano was lucky his gladius was fake. Otherwise, I would’ve grabbed it and slayed him. “Then I’m going to tell the police that you stole that camera from me.”

  Non-Spartacus scuttled away, and Tiberio dropped Glenda.

  She landed on the posterior of her peasant skirt. “Hey, I thought gladiators were gentlemen.”

  I helped her up and glared at both men. “And now I’m going to add that you kicked my friend’s culo.”

  Adriano rubbed the broom bristles atop his homemade helmet. “Our cousin, he drive taxi. He take them to country.”

  I sneered. “Let me guess. His name is Cesare?”

  “Ow you know?” Tiberio’s surprise seemed legitimate.

  “Forget that. You call him.”

  He hesitated.

  I pulled out my phone. “Or I call 1-1-2.”

  Tiberio’s unibrow lowered at my reference to Italian 9-1-1, and he pulled his cell from his skirt pocket.

  While he was waiting for Cesare to pick up, I turned on Adriano. “Where did your cousin take them?”

  He kicked an ancient archway. “To buy gladio.”

  “Where?” I wielded my phone like a weapon.

  “To see Don Peppino . . .” He hesitated. “. . . Lucchese.”

  I felt like a gladiator, or maybe a martyr, facing a lion.

  Because the surname was one I recognized, and it didn’t belong to an emperor. In
Texas, the Lucchese family was known for cowboy boots, but in the U.S. and Italy la famiglia Lucchese was synonymous with Mafia.

  6

  I punted open the passenger door of Cesare’s 1969 Bianchina 500, annoyed that a cab driver would own the tiny two-seater. “Could you get your tail feathers off me?”

  Glenda observed an old two-story villa from the comfort of my lap. “I’d rather stay in the go-cart.”

  I glanced at Cesare, who stood at the front door casting furtive glances in our direction as he conferred with a thirty-something male dressed in black. “Because a Mafia clan lives here?”

  “It’s not that, sugar.” She waved her cigarette holder. “It’s too damn rustic. Where are the other houses and the restaurants and the stores?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to the countryside.”

  “Besides New Orleans and Rome, I’ve been to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Miami.”

  All stripper hubs. “Well, I’d say it’s time to experience nature in the country, as opposed to a strip club.” I pushed her onto the driveway and catapulted my 5 feet 10 inches from the seat.

  We were in Frascati on the outskirts of Rome, but the landscape looked like The Godfather scene when Michael Corleone dined with his future bride and her family outdoors in Sicily. There was even a long wooden table set for the midday meal, pranzo, on the side of the house.

  An elderly woman in a plain black dress emerged from the villa and placed a large ceramic bowl on the table.

  “Prego, venite.” She motioned for us to come.

  Glenda and I obliged, and she filled our glasses with a fuchsia-colored liquid, presumably local wine. Then she removed a cloth from a basket filled with coarse bread.

  It was one o’clock, and I hadn’t eaten anything since the cornetti Silvana had served. But even though I was starving, I refused to break bread with mobsters. All I wanted was to talk to the host. “Signora, potrei parlare con Don Peppino?”

  She smiled, but it didn’t reach her dark eyes. “Soon.”

  I stared at her, stunned. What was it about my Italian that was no good?

  A couple in their sixties exited the house. They looked like they’d taken a wrong turn on their way to the Royal Ascot racecourse, as evidenced by the man’s gray ascot and his consort’s matching feather fascinator.

  “Good day.”

  His English accent, not to mention his greeting, confirmed my suspicion.

  He helped the lady into her chair, and then he took a seat. “I’m called Alistair, and this is my wife, Camilla.”

  “I’m called Fr—” Why was I speaking British, and in Italy of all places? “I mean, my name is Franki, and this is my associate, Glenda.”

  Camilla ignored me and gaped at Glenda. And her expression looked like her name sounded—royally uptight.

  Glenda smiled and blew her a smoke heart.

  I studied the pompous pair. Italian organized crime had infiltrated the United Kingdom, so it was possible they’d come on business pertaining to drugs or money laundering. “Are you related to Don Peppino?”

  Camilla gave me a sovereign stare. “We’re English.”

  Glenda’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t it nice that we’re in Italy together? And with our feathers, you and I are practically twins.”

  Camilla choked on her wine.

  But Alistair grinned. “Yes, quite.”

  A young woman in a low-cut red dress pushed an elderly man in a wheelchair toward us. His legs were visibly frail beneath a plaid blanket, and I wondered whether his paralysis was related to his profession.

  “Ah, Don Peppino.” Alistair rubbed his hands together. “Now we can eat.”

  Our host arrived at the head of the table and surveyed his guests through empty black eyes offset by a double set of dark, swollen bags. He gave a slight nod of his cement-shaped head.

  Alistair dove for the pasta alla carbonara, which taunted me with its odor of pancetta.

  Don Peppino picked up a platter and offered it to Glenda.

  “Why thank you, Donny.” She leaned in close. “I like eggplant.”

  He leered at her chest. “I like too.”

  That exchange made it easy not to eat. I took a sip of wine and realized it was liqueur.

  “Strawberry drink-a.” The Don pointed to my glass. “Fragolino.”

  Glenda swallowed a sip and made a show of licking her lips. “This would be dynamite in Sex on the Beach or a Strawberry Stripper.”

  Camilla’s face turned as gray as her fascinator.

  And Don Peppino’s eyes popped. “You stay gratis. On-a the ‘ouse.”

  “Stay?” I looked at the Brits. “What kind of place is this?”

  Camilla tossed her napkin on the table like she’d thrown down the gauntlet. “That’s precisely what I was about to ask my husband.”

  Alistair speared a slice of salame. “It’s an agriturismo.”

  “A farm stay?” I translated.

  Glenda shot me a shame-on-you look. “And you said this was a Mafia hideout.”

  A silenzio ensued.

  Nevertheless, I grabbed the pasta and served myself a helping now that it was no longer off limits. “Hilarious, isn’t she?”

  But no one was laughing, especially not Don Peppino.

  I decided to get to the point of our visit before we got the boot. But not before I downed a forkful of pasta and slipped a piece of bread in my purse. “We already have a place to stay. We’re looking for two young men.” I pulled up pictures of David and the vassal on my phone and showed them to the table. “They came here on Saturday afternoon.”

  “They buy bread, prosciutto, and cacio.” The Don hooked his thumbs into his suspenders. “I give strawberry drink-a for gift.”

  It was common for Italians to give a gift as a thank you for a large purchase. But I wondered whether the boys had understood that fragolino was alcoholic. They didn’t drink, so the booze would have hit them like a brick. “Where did they go after they left?”

  “My son Gaetano take to catacombs.” He revealed a row of fierce false teeth. “It’s nice-a place for picnic.”

  Horror filled my chest at the mention of the ancient Roman burial grounds, and it wasn’t only because he’d suggested eating in them. There were forty known catacombs underneath Rome, and they were hundreds of miles long. People had been known to disappear in them.

  Never to be seen again.

  7

  Missing in our catacombs?” The monk at the ticket office sounded outraged, or maybe just British. “That’s preposterous.”

  In a rope-belted brown cassock, he wasn’t as stylish as his compatriots Alistair and Camilla, but he was every bit as snooty. “Listen, uh . . . What’s your name?”

  “Bart.” He arched his nose. “Fra to you.”

  I glanced at the man upstairs. Fra was an Italian title that meant “brother,” but he’d said it like it meant “king.” “So, as I was about to say, Fra Bart, I’m sure the Church is careful about accounting for its visitors. But these are college kids.”

  “I hardly see how that’s relevant.” His jowls jiggled à la Alfred Hitchcock. “They would have been with an experienced guide, and if they had strayed from their group, the guide would have reported them missing.”

  I tapped the counter. I was getting ticked. “Maybe they snuck in.”

  “Whatever for?”

  Initially, I’d wondered how an English monk had gotten stuck with a literal graveyard shift, but based on his manners, below ground was the best place for him. “I wouldn’t know. All I can tell you is that their cell phones haven’t been giving off signals, which might mean they’re underground. So could you please give me a private tour? Lives could be at stake.”

  He rubbed his bald head as though weighing whether to say yes, and I weighed whether to take the rope off his robe and choke him with it.

  But because he was clergy, and because I didn’t want to end up back in the Italian clink, I pulled one hundred euro from my wallet to h
elp him make up his mind. “Of course, I’ll make a donation to the Church.”

  “Oof. Very well.” He snatched the bill and tucked it into his robe. Then he speed-walked to a steep flight of stairs.

  As we descended, my lower back spasmed. I silently cursed Don Peppino’s son, Gaetano, and his three-wheel Ape truck. He’d given Glenda the passenger seat and put me in the mini flat bed—with a chicken named Ciro that he had to take to the vet. “How long are these catacombs?”

  “Nineteen kilometers, or twelve miles.”

  Thankfully, I’d convinced Glenda to search for clues outside on the Appian Way. Even though she could’ve walked the entire three hundred fifty miles of the famous road in her stripper sandals, she would have cramped my style in the Catholic crypt. And there was no way in hell she would have let the dead rest.

  Fra Bart cleared his throat. “Additionally, there are five levels, and the deepest is sixty-five feet.”

  My stomach dropped like an elevator in a mineshaft. I was afraid of depths. And with that much hallowed ground to cover, I’d never find the boys in time. “But not all levels are open to the public, right?”

  “Correct.” He stopped at the base of the stairs. “Only this first level.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but not too deeply. There was a musty odor that I wanted to believe was old dirt because it was a more appealing source than crumbling corpses. “Do these catacombs have any unique features? Something that might appeal to young men?”

  “In a word, everything.” His tone was holier than thou, like him. “But one note of interest is that they were expanded in the second century to include chapels, meeting rooms, a dining area, and sleeping quarters.”

  “Wow. Not a chance in Hades of me sleeping surrounded by skeletons.”

  Fra Bart raised his chin and looked down his British nose. Apparently, he didn’t appreciate jokes about the underworld, maybe because he worked in it.

  “Let’s check the dining area.” I gestured for him to lead the way. “The boys had food with them, so they might’ve gone there.”

  He turned, and I followed him through a narrow tunnel lined with arched tombs that had been carved into the soft volcanic rock. The lighting was dim, and his brown cassock blended with the environment, so I used his head as a beacon.