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Chapter Two: Alwin

Sybil and I were making love. 69 is LXIX in Rome. She moaned. It all felt so good. I moaned back.

But softly. Two of the children, the little ones, were sharing the room with us. They were sleeping in a folding bed, one at each end.

After a while Sybil and I came together, unusual for 69. There was, surprisingly, a magnolia outside the window. The city lights shone on its wet leaves. We kissed, and murmured a few things. Love. She fell asleep.

After a medium interval of time I decided to get back up. Rome was right outside, and it was only midnight.

My clothes were on the floor by the bed. I slipped them on, took the key and walked the two flights downstairs.

The hotel halls were narrow and oddly shaped, like pieces in a 3-D jigsaw. Hotel Caprice, just a block off the Via Veneto. It was shabby and casual, some forgotten bankrupt's converted house. Out of politeness, the horse-faced clerk ignored me on my way out.

A fine rain was falling. It was a cool spring night, a few days before Easter. With all the pilgrims in town, we'd been lucky to find a hotel room.

On the Via Veneto I sat down under a cafe awning, ordered a Heineken, then wished I hadn't. There was hardly anyone out, hardly anything to look at. I was getting cold through my damp sport coat. Holy Week comes well before the Dolce Vita.

A madman approached. Already from twenty meters you could tell. He carried a big toy robot, one of those weird Japanese toys that looks like a member of Kiss. The maniac's eyes were all over the place, and he caught me staring at him.

"Ecco!" he screeched, holding the robot towards me and raising one of its arms. He made a buzzing noise then, like the robot was supposed to be warding off my eye-attack with a death ray. "DZEEZEEZEEEEENTINI!"

I looked away, hoping he would keep walking. Fat chance. I could hear him pause, move closer, pause again. One more step and he'd be breathing on me.

With a sudden cry I whipped up my arms and pointed them at him, holding my fingers out and my thumbs flexed, as if to shoot Dr. Strange energy bolts from my palms.

A stupid move . . . this wasn't exactly my first beer of the day . . . but it worked. Falling right into the Marvel Comics idiom, the madman crooked a protective arm in front of his face and backed slowly off, eyes ablaze.

I looked around the café to see if anyone had noticed my little victory. But the place was empty and . . . no, over there was a woman smiling at me, nice dark hair, good ass-flesh mouth, hi, baby, but, heh, there's a man with her, also staring at me . . . should I look away? No, he's not sending eye-attacks, no indeed, he's . . . pimping, with a flick of his eyes at the woman, and a crook of his pinky at me . . . weird and scary. I called for my check.

Out from under the awning it was still wet . . . not rain so much as heavy mist swirling and roiling in light-brightened patterns which twisted clear to heaven. All that information, just getting me wet. I decided to walk up to Harry's American Bar, have a whisky and go back to the hotel. Full of purpose, I strode faster.

There was a man ahead of me, a big strapping fellow loafing along under an enormous silk umbrella. I could see that I would have to pass him, and felt a bit nervous . . . he had fifty pounds on me, easy. But, after all, the street, though empty, was brightly lit, and the man was, I realized, much too well-dressed to be a mugger. He was wearing Gucci shoes and a three-piece gray suit, for God's sake.

I angled out to the curb and stepped up my pace, hoping to just whisk past him. Fat, as I said before, chance.

"Tsst!"

I slid a glance over. With that suit he looked like the junior partner of a Newark law firm. Played football at Rutgers. Breast-heavy, wasp-waisted wife and a newborn named Nino. You just had to trust this Roman.

"What?"

"Come here." He stepped closer, including me under his umbrella. "You American?"

I repressed my stock response, Does the Pope shit in the woods, and just nodded.

"You live here?"

I was flattered he knew me for an expatriate. I'd been out of the States for almost two years now, though not in Italy. I decided to make him think I was really worth his time.

"Sure. I work at the Embassy."

He nodded, pleased with his catch. Time to reel me in.

"You wanna come to my place? It's just down there."

He gestured at a dark side-street. Sure. Right. I was really going to walk into some random alley with this guy. What kind of idiot did he take me for? I shook my head.

"I'm going up to Harry's for a drink." I looked pointedly at my watch. 1:20 already. "I really better be on my way."

He looked hurt, surprised at my rejection.

"Whatsa matter? Come on! I got a beautiful place. Italian girls very romantic."

A pimp! Of course! A silk-lined room full of sensual Italian courtesans . . . high cheekbones, dark-fleshed lips and nipples, animal haunches, smellow cracks and the dewy jet-black deltas . . . .

"No," I heard myself saying. "No thanks. I just got laid. I couldn't eat another bite."

The pimp looked more and more agitated. It was like I was the only mark who'd chanced past all evening. He all but grabbed me by the arm.

"Just come and look. Cost you nothing. Come back other night."

I wanted to. I wanted to see. But I had a nagging suspicion that there really were no girls down that dark street, that this big strong guy would just beat the shit out of me and take my watch and wallet. On the whole, he looked too well-dressed for such a crude approach, but hell, what did I know about Rome?

Stubbornly I shook my head and started walking again. The big pimp tagged along, sheltering me with his umbrella.

"How can you do this to me? Old friends and you won't even come look at my beautiful girls!" There was a catch in his voice.

"I've never seen you before in my life," I said with a short laugh. "Where do you get this 'old friend' stuff? For all I know, you'll kill me if I go in a side-street with you."

His face hardened. "You insult."

"I'm sorry," I said hastily. Only half a block more to Harry's, all warm and lit up, dear God, let me get there alive. "I do think of you as a friend."

A dark figure on a bicycle came whipping around the corner up ahead. The bicycle had a light on each handlebar, one red and one green, like an airplane. The skinny rider was standing up on the pedals, his tattered clothes flapping and one hand waving free.

"Guai a voi, anime prave! Non isperate mai veder lo cielo: i'vegno per menarvi a l'altra riva ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e'n gelo," he declaimed in a high, fanatical voice. He was riding down the middle of the sidewalk, speeding straight for us.

I spotted the toy robot in his free hand then, and realized it was the madman from before. I should have known better than to still be out where he could find me.

I stepped out from under the big pimp's umbrella, hoping to get out of the madman's way. But he'd fastened his eyes on me now, and seemed determined to ram me. The robot's lit-up eyes swept back and forth with the man's cries and wild gestures.

"ZAPPAPPA ZEZEENO SFERA GLOBO POW POW POW." His sound effects. Without looking, I stepped back off the curb to get out of his way. There was a screech of tires behind me. I tensed convulsively.

The pimp in the three-piece suit lunged towards me, the mad bicyclist shot past and a car nudged gently against the backs of my thighs. I felt like fainting with relief. But my troubles were just beginning.

The car that had almost run me down was a black Fiat four-door, slewed sideways from the sudden stop. The driver came boiling out of his vehicle, hairy and fighting mad. He screamed at me and pointed repeatedly at a small green sticker on his windshield. I had no idea what he was talking about.

The big pimp got in on the conversation. He introduced himself in Italian, and I caught the name: Virgilio Bruno. The ugly little black-mustached driver redoubled his shouting. Virgilio stood calm and stolid as a rock in a stormy sea. The words Americano and lire kept cropping up. The driver rummaged in his glove compartment and got out a little pamphlet with the Pirelli Tire Company logo on it. The numbers printed on the back seemed to be of importance. He pulled a folded yellow receipt out of his wallet and unfolded it three, six, nine times till it was the size of a pillowcase. He read off some more numbers in a loud voice, frequently pausing to gesture for effect. Finally he pointed one last time at the sticker on his windshield and handed the tire pamphlet and the yellow receipt to me.

Virgilio nodded formally, quite the lawyer now, and drew me a pace aside.

"He," a slightly contemptuous inclination of the head accompanied the word. "He say you have damaged his tires. Want ten thousand lire."

That was something like ten dollars. Should I pay him? It would almost be worth it, just to get off the fucking street. I looked over my shoulder to see if the mad bicyclist was around. I fingered the loose bills in my pants pocket. There was enough.

"We no pay," Virgilio informed me firmly. "I fix."

Before I could stop him he turned and unleashed a machine-gun burst of Italian on the driver. Even while holding an umbrella, Virgilio's hand-gestures were magnificent. Watching his one active hand you could see it all: the cautious pedestrian, the foolishly speeding (and possibly intoxicated) driver, the near-fatal accident, the likelihood of my suing for lower-back damage.

I was convinced, absolutely. But not that hairy little wart of a driver. He began negotiating a compromise. This was going to go on for hours! I snuck a look at my watch. It was almost two in the morning.

Just then the lit-up sign outside Harry's went out. And, whipping around the same corner, there came the mad robot-master on wheels. He must have ridden around the block. As if on cue, Virgilio and the driver stopped arguing. Before I knew what was happening, Virgilio had me in the backseat of the car with him and we were driving down the Via Veneto. In a way, I was glad.

"What you name?" the big pimp asked.

"Alwin Bitter. Could you drop me off at my hotel? Hotel Caprice." I called the name up to the driver, but he only hunched his shoulders stubbornly.

"Virgilio Bruno." He shook my hand, holding the contact longer than I liked. "You no live in hotel. We all have Scotch whisky at my club."

"My wife's going to be wondering where I am."

Virgilio just laughed. "With sex you gave her, she sleep all night."

The driver sped past the street where I'd met Virgilio, past the café where I'd had my beer, past the side-street where dear Sybil and the kids were sleeping. Would they wake as widow and orphans?

"Hey!" I tapped the driver on the shoulder. "Let me out! Alt! I'll give you your dice mille lire!" I pulled a bill out of my pocket and waved it in his face.

He accelerated through a red light, missing a Mercedes with a reflexive twitch of the wheel. We passed the American Embassy on the left.

"You work," said Virgilio, hooking his thumb at the building.

"No, no," I cried. "That was a lie!"

Virgilio thinned his lips and shook his head. "No lie. You insult, but no lie. You very valuable, Alvino. Dead or alive."

There was another red light. We were near the Termini railroad station. There was too much traffic for the little wart to run the light. He had to stop. This was my chance to escape my kidnappers. Stealthily I took the back doorhandle in my left hand. Just a quick jump and . . .

I'm not a brave man. My self-image is of a very small and weak person. In point of fact, I'm almost six feet, and solidly built. But I was a late bloomer. I spent those formative early high-school years as a pudgy little science wimp. I'm still scared of big men with deep voices.

"Calmo," Virgilio said, snapping down the lock on my door. "Keep your head. I am heavily armed." I saw the dark glint of an automatic in his hand. The light changed and the car sprang forward.

The traffic thinned out rapidly as we drove away from the Termini. Anonymous street-lit buildings strobed past. Food, food, food. I wondered how they would keep me, my kidnappers. I noted the names of the streets we passed. I tried to think of the binary notation for the number 69. I tried to think of anything but the photo, still vivid in my memory.

The photo: Aldo Moro, Italy's most eminent statesman, found dead in the back of stolen Renault: a color newsphoto in Time, May 22, 1978: There he is; they dressed him in his blue suit after shooting him; you can see through the station wagon's open hatch; he's lying on his back, legs folded to fit; dead lumpy unshaven jaw and neck, dead closed eyes pointed away, dead limp hand loosely curled; the Brigate Rosse held him two months and no one met their price, even after his pitiful letters; they shot him eight times in the chest and washed and dressed him; a bloodless blue corpse in the back of a red Renault with green soldiers standing guard; try only to think of the colors, not the angle of his legs, the canceled empty gray face . . . .

We pulled into a vast empty parking lot and stopped. There was something huge and black looming over us.

"Colosseo," the little wart of a driver observed. Footsteps approached. Virgilio unlocked my door and poked me in the ribs with his pistol.

"How much are you worth, Alvino?"

My door flew open and a man in a guard's uniform beckoned for me to get out. Virgilio and the wart came close on my heels.

My three captors led me in under the Colosseum's outer arcade, the guard snapping gates open and closed. There was a lot of trash on the ground: fruit rinds, food-papers, handbills with the Pope's picture. The rain stopped and a full moon came out. The Paschal Moon. Today had been Maundy Thursday. I remembered that the Pope had, in a televised religious observance, imitated Christ by washing the feet of several mental defectives at church this evening. We'd seen part of it on the tube in the hotel lounge.

The guard opened the door to a downward flight of stairs. "Scendere, signor." This was it.

"I won't." I got out my wallet. "This has gone far enough. I'll give you all my money." I counted rapidly. "Three hundred thousand lire, and I'll sign my traveler's checks."

Virgilio shook his head and took my wallet anyway. He laid a hand on my shoulder and pushed me gently toward the stairs.

Something in me snapped. That was death down there. Green-red-blue. I had nothing to lose. I swung around and punched Virgilio in the neck. He made a husky crackling noise and dropped his gun. I scooped up the pistol and took off running along the arcade circling the Colosseum, looking for a way out.

But all the exits I passed were locked up tight. My shoes were loud on the ancient stones. After a while I heard voices ahead of me . . . I'd run almost full circle. I stopped and leaned against the inner wall to catch my breath. In the silence I could hear the scuff of footsteps coming after me. Quietly drawing closer. I looked down at my pistol to check that the safety was off. But surely they all had guns, too.

My pursuer was almost on me now, and around the curve ahead I could hear the guard reviving Virgilio. I scooted through one of the short passages leading into the Colosseum proper.

The Roman Colosseum is a roundish stadium about a hundred meters in diameter. The central arena's flooring is long-gone, exposing a warren of subterranean halls, stalls and cells. The stadium seats and benches are gone too, so that the supporting walls are uncovered. The supports slant all the way from the arena's edge to the top of the Colosseum's outer wall. The whole thing looks a little like the inside of a dried-out sea urchin: a crude central maze surrounded by crumbly radial fins.

With the moon as bright as it was, I was going to have to move fast. It was a choice of up or down. The kidnappers had wanted to take me down, so I chose up, first slipping off my shoes.

With a leap and a wriggle I got up onto the butt of one of the slanting support walls. I was lucky, for it wasn't half-collapsed like some of the others. My wall angled smoothly all the way to the top. Silently I rushed up the moon-silvered stone slope. There was a puddle of shadow by the parapet of the outer wall. I flung myself into the shadow just as the wart stepped into the stadium. He was cradling a machine gun with a wire stock.

I pressed myself deeper into the shadow, hardly daring to breathe. He found my shoes, glanced up, failed to see me, walked over to the edge of the arena and stared down. Virgilio called something from outside, and the wart called something back. For a while nothing happened, and then I saw the guard moving about in the arena's sunken maze, machine gun at the ready. The little wart followed the guard's movements like a hunter watching a bird dog.

I was going to have to do something before they searched up here. My shoes were right down there, showing them where to look.

I wormed a bit higher and peered down the outer wall to the ground. Quite a drop, twenty-five meters at least. But the wall was cracked and pocked enough to climb down. I decided to go for it.

Virgilio had joined the wart in staring down into the arena, where the guard was hoping to flush me out. Neither of them saw me slink out of my shadow-pool and slide over the edge.

The low moon lit up every cranny and fissure of the stone. I picked my way down over some decorative ledges. So far, so good. Next came a bunch of arches separated by pillars. I hung onto one of the cornices and swung my legs down, scissoring madly. Finally I got them wrapped around a big column. I leaned my head back and let go with my hands, starting a slide down the shaft. I caught the column with my arms and got the next few meters for free.

When I slammed into the column's base I almost lost hold. Fatigue. I was still too high above the street to jump, and the next stretch of wall looked dangerously smooth. I got in one of the arch's shadows and sat down to rest. I'd killed my back, torn a fingernail and rubbed my cheek raw. Some more moldings and another slide down a column and I'd be on the street. If I didn't fall on my head. I sat there sucking my hurt finger.

I could see my watch. 3:30. The hangover from yesterday's drinking was starting up.

Virgilio's smooth voice came drifting down from somewhere overhead. What was the matter with those guys? Were they political terrorists or just in it for the money? They thought I was some bigwig from the American Embassy. I cursed myself for the lie.

God, I was tired. Utterly drained. Maybe it would be a good idea to just stay put. If I started running off down the street, they'd spot me and chase me down. Every now and then a little truck full of vegetables buzzed by, but other than that there was no one to turn to.

It seemed fairly safe where I was. My sheltering arch opened into an arcade ringing the second story of the Colosseum, but this arcade wasn't connected, in any obvious way, to the central area where they were looking for me. I was so tired that the stone behind my back felt like foam rubber. I decided to stay here till morning. Then the rats would go back into their holes, and I'd get a cab back to the hotel, and we'd get the hell out of Italy. I had no intention of getting involved with Italian police. Just put me and Sybil and Tom and Ida on the train back to Heidelberg. Basta!

I could have dropped right off to sleep, except that I had to piss. That last beer on its way out. I struggled to my feet and stepped over to the other side of the arch, leaned up against the cool stone and . . .

"ECCO!" screamed a voice below. The madman with the robot!

The crazy rotten fuck. Waving his goddamn light-up toy. I'd show him death rays! Aiming quickly, I fired my pistol at him, capering on the pavement some ten meters below. Missed. No time for another shot. I could hear someone running down some stairs to my left. I took off down the arcade in the other direction.

And ran right into Virgilio. He darted out at me from a shadow and had his pistol back before I knew what had happened.

"You make good sport, Alvino." He twisted my arm behind me in a hammerlock and pressed the gun against my spine. "Come quickly now."

I groaned and went along quietly. Down the stairs to the ground-level arcade. Down more stairs. Some doors and stairs again. Doors. A cubical concrete room lit by a single caged light bulb.

The guard was there, and the madman, and a businessman-gangster. The businessman-gangster seemed to be running the show. He was comfortably overweight, with amused, blinking eyes. They called him Minos.

At his direction, Virgilio put leg-irons on me, and chained the irons to a heavy staple set into the wall. Minos watched from a sofa across the room. I had a pile of rags to sit on. The guard left, while the madman stood watch with a machine gun.

"You are from the US Embassy," Virgilio began.

"I am not. I'm just a poor physicist living in Germany on a research grant."

"Fancy words," Virgilio replied. "Signifying nothing." Now that he was no longer playing the pimp, his English had improved considerably.

"You don't have any girls at all, do you?" I demanded. "Your whole living is kidnapping people off the Via Veneto. How long do you think you can get away with it?"

"Virgilio is a very good trapper," Minos remarked in his mild, cultured voice. He had a cupid's-bow mouth. He looked as clean and well cared for as a newborn baby. "I often buy from him. But how much are you worth?"

"He is very important," Virgilio insisted. "The Embassy will pay billions of lire. I'll let you have him for only one million."

"He says he's merely a scientist," Minos said doubtfully. "Perhaps you should just . . . " He made a negligent, lethal hand-gesture. "Why couldn't you get me a spy?"

"Kree kree," the madman said, swinging his machine gun around. "Kree kree kree." The businessman-gangster said something to him, and he sat down on the sofa too, with his robot on one knee and the machine gun on the other. They talked quietly for a minute. The madman's name seemed to be Lafcadio.

Virgilio paced back and forth slowly, exuding menace. Suddenly he stopped and stood over me, his fists clenched.

"You are from the US Embassy."

"Don't start hitting me," I said in alarm. "If you want to think that, you just go right ahead. Phone them up when they open. It shouldn't be much longer." I looked at my watch. It was almost 5:00.

"What kind of physicist?" Minos wanted to know. "Lafcadio was a physicist, too, before he went crazy. Lafcadio Caron. You know of?"

Lafcadio Caron? This lunatic? Sure, I'd heard of him. I'd even read some of his papers. He'd been in charge of the proton-decay experiment in the Mont Blanc tunnel. There'd been an accident there a few months ago. But how . . . ?

"What kind of physics?" Minos repeated. "I must decide if you are of any value."

"Atoms," I blurted out. "I study atomic and nuclear physics." This was a simplification. My precise specialty was the mathematical analysis of quantum-mechanical Hilbert Space operators.

"He can build a bomb!" Virgilio cried excitedly. "Just think what the government will pay to stop him!"

"Maybe I could build an atomic bomb," I said, playing along. "But you'd have to steal me some reactor fuel."

"Boomawhooma pow pow pow."

"Perhaps we know where to find some. Or perhaps the Embassy will think we know where." Minos and Virgilio exchanged a significant glance.

I was getting in deeper all the time. "I'm not a weapons expert," I pointed out. "I'm simply a theoretical physicist doing research on infinite-dimensional space in Heidelberg, Germany. I wrote a little book about dimensions called Geometry and Reality? That helped me get the grant for Heidelberg. And I came to Rome with my wife and children for a vacation. My wife wants to see the Pope at St. Peter's on Easter."

"Today will be Good Friday," Minos said absently. "A day for human sacrifice." The delicate little mouth formed a small smile in the fat face. "Get a manifesto from him, Virgilio, just in case. Then contact the Embassy."

Minos and Virgilio talked a bit more in rapid Italian, patting each other on the shoulders. Minos left, throwing me a smile and a negligent wave of his pinky.

"OK," Virgilio said to me. "Sit down and write." He dragged a chair and card table over to where I was chained. He had paper and a ball-point pen. Lafcadio still bounced on the couch, making explosion noises and cradling his gun.

"What's this supposed to be?" I demanded.

"Self-incrimination. Revolutionary manifesto. Write."

This is what I wrote:

I HAVE JOINED THE PEOPLE'S ARMY OF MY OWN FREE WILL. DEATH TO THE FASCIST PIG. CUT OFF HIS BLACK PLASTIC TROTTERS. ROAST HIM WITH GAMMA RAYS. USE EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE SQUEAL. FUCK AMERIKKKA, FUCK KKKOMUNISM, FUCK KKKOD. SINCERELY, DR. ALWIN BITTER, THE ARCHIMEDES OF ANARCHY.

I wouldn't want to say that I composed the whole message myself, but I did have a hand in it here and there. On one level, I even meant it. But on the level that counts, I didn't mean a word. Honest! I just wanted to get out alive.

Virgilio was pleased with our collaboration, and taped the note up on the wall. "Here, Alvino," he said, handing me a small machine gun. "Try it on for size."

The gun was an Uzi, Israeli-made, lethal as a cobra's fang. It had a snap-on wire stock. I clicked the trigger. Empty of course. I realized Virgilio had just wanted to get my fingerprints on the weapon. I threw it at him. He dodged easily, then left, laughing at me. Lafcadio was still there on the couch, standing guard.

"Per altra via, per altri porti verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare," he said suddenly, staring at me with glowing eyes.

I noticed that he had a photograph glued to his robot's face, a photograph of a plump blond woman. His mother? Some lost love? Was this really the famous Lafcadio Caron? No point stirring him up with a question.

I smiled politely and lay down on the rags to sleep. Maybe by the time I woke up, this would all be over. Virgilio would contact the Embassy, and they'd tell him I was an academic, a scholar, a nobody. Then he'd just have to let me go.

Or would he? The businessman-gangster hadn't come right out and said so, but I had the impression they might kill me if I wasn't worth a good ransom. Dead men tell no tales.

I pushed the thought away. Once Virgilio realized his mistake, surely he'd put me out on the street. I wouldn't press charges; he could be sure of that. All I wanted was to get the next train out of Rome. The next train. I drifted off to sleep, a bad sleep filled with bad dreams.

 

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