February 19th, 2010
My grandmother was a very religious woman. If a Mass was being said at St. Luke’s, she was probably in attendance. But, she was getting old. When I was twenty, she was eighty-seven and counting. Benedetta was her youngest after Cristiano, Dante, Sophia and Paolo.
It was a dry, windy Wednesday in June. I had heard she wasn’t feeling well, so I went to visit her. About an hour after I arrived back home, we heard the sirens. Papa turned on the news to see what was going on, but my gut told me something was wrong. As I ran for the door, the phone rang.
Three days later, we had an answer. There had been a string of robberies across town. Several fires had been set to distract officials, as well as to cover the tracks. All the houses were empty. All except one. My grandmother had been too sick to go to Mass.
Everyday I visited the ruins. While my other family members were planning a memorial, I drove the investigators to distraction. When no one was looking, I would duck under the tape and do some digging of my own. I could be very single minded when put to task.
Some of the detectives joked that I should think about a career change, as I was much better at interrogating them than they were the suspects. I didn’t doubt it, and personally hunted down several persons of interest on my own. After a few months of no new leads, the police boxed up the evidence and called it a cold case. That, to me, was unacceptable.
So, I carried on. I found witnesses the detectives had overlooked. I kept notebooks and time lines, photos and interview tapes. For half a year, I was like a thing possessed. The hardest decision of my life finally came to bear on a late December evening. I had done it. But what to do next? The fates of two men rested in my hands.
I knew my evidence would not hold up in a public court. It could be eschewed easily, having not been obtained in the most strictly moral sense. I also knew that I was unready to take a human life. I’ve always been a creative thinker, though. My mother used to say I could come up with ways out of six impossible situations, all before breakfast. To me, the answer was clear. I either had to make them turn themselves in, or I had to make them turn on each other.
Shots rang out from inside a closed shop in the market. Within minutes, police responded. Inside lay a former person of interest and a local “upstanding” businessman. Tucked neatly into the latter’s pocket was a matchbook with a single strand of my grandmother’s hair tangled among the colored phosphorous.
As I walked calmly away, my hands in my pockets, I was approached by a gentleman of middling age. I stared him down as I kept walking, keeping my nervosa to myself. After a moment, he fell into step beside me.
“It’s a shame about Signor Tagliabue, don’t you think?” I said nothing and after a while he smiled. “Such a man, with such a good reputation, to be caught up in such a plot.” My stony silence didn’t seem to bother him. He lit up a cigarette and then pulled a card out of the interior of his jacket. “Talent should not be wasted.” With that, he strolled off and disappeared down another street.
Carefully, I examined the card. It was blank, except for four gilt letters and a very tiny string of numbers.
E.D.E.N
00496181069333647
I couldn’t fathom at the time how those seventeen numbers would change, not only my relationship with my family, but my entire life.
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