Chapter 17 - The Hello Kitty brigade

Darkness had fallen, but we were still sitting on an eroded stone wall at the edge of the town, watching the lights of speeding cars in the road far across the valley. Jan had brought us two bottles of wine from the van, and we had almost finished them, in silence. Woozy from the wine, Jan had cuddled up under Angelo´s arm, and I kept looking straight ahead to avoid seeing the two of them.

“You really think he won´t call the police?” Angelo asked, dubiously.

I shook my head, trying to look convincing. “I´ve seen him furious but never spiteful.” I paused, remembering the disastrous first night. “Well. I did once, actually.”

“Great.”

Our search party hadn´t found Ivan in the town, and it had been Jan who´d spotted him in the valley, walking fast towards the road in the last light of the day. We´d gathered behind the stone wall to watch him go, as there was no way to catch up with him before he reached the road and the darkness fell, making the return trip impossible. An overwhelming mixture of just god-awful feelings was churning in my chest, and I almost burst into a howl when Ivan reached the road and all we could do was to watch as a truck picked him up, almost immediately, and took him away.

“My sunglasses and a baseball cap are missing,” Angelo told me. “I´d say wherever he´s going he wants to go incognito.”

“That won´t last long.”

The night fell in earnest. Angelo and Jan prepared a makeshift dinner of country bread and various Italian cheeses, and while they were eating and I was staring at my slice Angelo said, “If he´d called the police with the truck driver´s phone they´d already be here. Or if the driver had recognized him.”

“How could he not recognize Ivan?” I asked. “I mean, even with the sunglasses – at night – “

“Maybe the kid chose some foreign truck on purpose,” Angelo interrupted me. “He´s not dumb. I bet you told him about the Czech driver.”

“I did.”

“Shouldn´t we get going?” Jan asked. “He´s going to meet other people besides the truck driver, sooner or later.”

“I don´t think it makes much of a difference, leaving or not. We can only hope that he doesn´t talk and that he´s far enough from here when they catch him,” Angelo said.

When they catch him.

“We can´t go back to the north,” Angelo continued. “And he knows where we´ll be in two days´ time, in any case.”

Suddenly something crossed my mind. “What happens to Jan if they catch him with us now?”

After a brief silence, Angelo answered, “He´ll be deported, most likely.”

I turned to Jan. “We´re going to take you somewhere you can catch a bus or a train back to Milan. I won´t let you-“

“We don´t have the GPS coordinates yet,” Jan interrupted. “And my people won´t give them to anyone but me.”

I cursed.

“Angelo is my friend,” Jan said simply. “I won´t leave him.”

The night was very bad. I couldn´t sleep, having dozed all day long, and after a while I ordered the others to leave me alone as I was too upset to be anything but awful company. To have your friends consoling you for an hour or two was all right, but there´s a limit to everything. Angelo and Jan retired into their house, and I went wandering into the starlit ruins of the town, as much to distract myself as to avoid hearing the whispers and occasional groans through the glassless windows of the occupied house.

The town was spookier than ever, but I was beyond caring. Walking the streets that hadn´t known humans for decades, I kept listening for the sound of helicopters, police cars, dogs. And Ivan: I was having a crazy, silent conversation with him, as if he was walking next to me and defeating my every attempt at explaining, and apologizing, with merely a word or two. Finally I sat down on the worn steps of a steep, narrow alley, and leaned my shoulder on a wall of a house that was still emanating heat from the day´s sun. I was a wretched being; I deserved all the shit that had happened to me.

I don´t know how long I sat there before I heard steps. It was Angelo, alone, looking for me. Somehow he saw into the darkness of the alley, and walked up to me. The tall, dark shape sat down next to me, and a big arm pulled me close to him. Neither of us said a word. We just sat there for the longest time, in silence, until Angelo nudged me and claimed that his bum was falling asleep. As we walked back to the van, he asked if I wanted to sleep in the other house with him and Jan but I shook my head. He didn´t insist, and gave me one of his bear hugs before letting me go.

They caught Ivan the next afternoon. After a couple of hours of sleep I´d been watching TV all morning until I collapsed around ten o´clock, and Angelo practically had to carry me back into my house to get some sleep. Then, a few hours later, I woke up to Angelo standing in the doorway and calling my name.

“You better come,” he said.

Jan was already in the caravan, eyes glued to the TV set. It was the hateful Berlusconi Channel 5, once again leaving competitors in the dust. There was the text “Edizione Straordinaria” plastered across the screen, and just as I sat down on the edge of a couch the director switched away from the studio and into a view from a fast-moving helicopter, but all one could see were blurry treetops.

“What-“ I started, and then the camera picked up a passenger train.

“They believe that someone in the train recognized him and called the police,” Angelo explained. “Maybe the ticket controller, or another passanger.”

An excited voice-over from the TV´s tinny speakers went on, unstoppable, while the train kept running through forests and fields on the screen.

“We´ve just been told that the train won´t stop until Ancona,” the male voice continued, clearly stunned. “Apparently, the police don´t want to take a chance that Ivan Capitani will somehow be able to leave the train before they have adequate safety measures in place.”

Angelo chuckled, incredulous. “They have a trainload of crazy yelling people in there right now. There´s going to be a riot in Ancona.”

“Maybe Ivan can get away in the scuffle,” I hoped.

“Anything can happen there,” Angelo replied, shaking his head, still in disbelief.

More information gradually came in as the train ran through small towns and passed by the waiting passengers at full speed. The helicopter camera often panned to these groups of people, catching their confusion and then the hand-shaking frustration as they realized that whatever their destination, they weren´t going to get there. About a half an hour before the train reached Ancona, Channel 5 managed to get a phone connection to a passenger on board the train. The line wasn´t very good with the background noise, but after a few repeated questions the story got through. Apparently there were lots of different rumors going around among the passengers, but most seemed in accord that a passenger had recognized Ivan and alerted the ticket controller. An entire carriage had been emptied for Ivan; few people had protested as they´d been evicted from their seats by the controllers, probably because of the presence of a now hugely famous person, but the procedure had taken time because everyone had tried to catch a glimpse of him and snap a photo with their phones.

It didn´t take long before the first photos started showing up on TV. Channel 5 had once again outbid the others and had the very first one: blurry arms and headrests in the foreground, and then Ivan, standing alone in the empty end of the carriage, looking away from the camera. The photo was too blurry to show his expression, but otherwise it was exactly what Channel 5 would have wanted. He looked so lonely I thought I would go crazy. I couldn´t watch, I had to stand up and walk away for a moment.

However, I hadn´t gotten far before I heard Angelo call me. “You better get here now.”

The hateful Channel 5 had earned another scoop. They had live feed from the ticket controller´s video phone. The anchor hurriedly asked the controller a few questions, to make him feel important, and his answers more or less confirmed what we´d heard earlier. But even the controller soon realized that the real prize was live interview with Ivan, and he obediently walked over to him.

“That guy is making a hell of a lot of money today,” Angelo grunted.

Or maybe not as much as he had anticipated. Cautiously, the controller approached Ivan, with the phone video camera pointed at his direction, but all we could see were wobbly images of seats and overexposed windows. When the camera finally settled on Ivan he kept looking away, indifferent, and when the man tried to coax him to answer, repeating twice that it was the Channel 5, Ivan´s only response was clear.

“Fuck off.”

The controller stood back, his hand shaking, judging by the movement of the camera.

“Uh-huh,” Angelo nodded, impressed. “I thought the kid didn´t even know words like that.”

In the end, that was all the controller could get out of Ivan. No doubt there were frenetic negotiations going on as the image returned to the studio for a while, but even with an unresponsive Ivan the video feed was too good to drop and soon we were back with the controller. Then the train reached the outskirts of Ancona, and the helicopter moved ahead to show the view over the station.

Chaos was too mild of an expression to describe the situation at the terminal: a huge crowd had gathered to witness the capture of Ivan, and passengers trying to get on and off two long trains, with luggage in tow, had to fight their way through. The police that were originally intended to focus on Ivan ended up occupied with crowd control; apparently some southbound trains were standing still on their tracks north of Ancona, and their waiting passengers were both confused and furious as they wandered from one track to another as conflicting information about their trains kept being announced every few minutes.

Angelo flicked through channels and hit pay dirt: Raiuno had their reporter on live feed outside the station. However, that was also their big problem. They couldn´t get in. The crowd was impenetrable, and the image shook and wobbled constantly as people kept bumping into the cameraman. The male reporter´s tie was askew and there were visible pearls of sweat on his forehead as he tried to stay calm and manage to say something to the TV audience while exasperatedly shooing people away. Another collision with someone almost sent the videocamera crashing to the ground.

Fortunately, two uniformed policemen walked by and after some off-camera persuasion decided to escort the reporter inside the station. A lot of shouting and pushing ensued, and gradually the four of them made their way into the platform, just in time for the arrival of the train. The two handsome policemen, happy to have suddenly become TV stars, managed to keep the crowd at bay just enough to allow the reporting to resume as the train slowed down and came to a halt.

Then the train began spewing out enraged passengers and any attempt at crowd control instantly turned into wishful thinking. The struggling and grunting reporter was helplessly swept away from the cameraman who, left to his own devices, kept filming the scene nevertheless. For the next twenty minutes chaos reigned supreme. Nobody knew what was happening, and caught on camera by various TV channels some people said Ivan had already been taken away, while others were convinced that he´d been attacked by a mob or beaten up by the police, resisting arrest.

Then something seemed finally to happen, even though visible only to the helicopter. Police teams, blue blotches among the crowd, were starting to gather around a certain car towards the end of the train. TV crews went frantic in their attempts to reach the car. This time it was a Raitre crew who emerged victorious, only few meters away from the door where Ivan would soon step out and where the policemen, who refused to answer any of the crew´s questions, had managed to form a small opening into the crowd. Suddenly the door swung open and Ivan, followed by a line of officers, stepped down on the platform.

Without further delay, the group started pushing their way through the throngs of people gawking at them and snapping photographs. Ivan tried to look indifferent but by the way he kept blinking his eyes to the camera flashes I could tell that the crowd was making him very nervous. One of the officers, quite a good-looking one too, was holding Ivan´s arm and I felt a sudden irrational pang of hate for the man.

Then mayhem broke loose. I watched, mouth agape, as out of the blue a group of teenage girls assaulted the policemen, pelting them with colorful handbags and yelling insults, and a hailstrom of coins and small objects landed on the hapless law enforcement.

“Lui é innocente!”

An actual cell phone, the mightiest arm of a teenage girl, sailed through the air and hit a policeman on the face. He grasped at his eye and crouched instinctively, causing a commotion among his colleagues, and taking advantage of the melee Ivan pulled himself free and threw himself at the crowd.

People stepped aside and let him through. I watched in amazement as the crowd separated like the Red Sea as he passed, and then closed around the policemen in hot pursuit, bogging them down more efficiently than a Louisiana swamp would.

Impressed, I turned to look at Angelo. “You know you people are crazy.”

He shrugged, but I could tell he was surprised himself.

“It seems that the Hello Kitty crowd loves your boyfriend,” he added, deadpan.

“Uh... ex-boyfriend.”

The camera crews on the ground lost all sight of Ivan, and the view switched back to the helicopter. Ivan was now somewhere inside the station building and nothing seemed to be happening, apart from the struggling police squads.

“Can he get away? Is there a subway?” I asked.

Angelo stood up and stepped next to me. “There´s no subway in Ancona,” he said, his big hand squeezing my shoulder. “And you know how this is going to end. Even if he got away from the station there´s no way he can leave that town without being caught.”

The helicopter was gradually moving over to the piazza in front of the station, waiting. Even the commentators in the studio fell silent. The show would soon be over.

Chapter 16 - Ghost town

For the next three nights, we drove slowly and painstakingly towards south, high along the mountain range that runs like a backbone the whole length of Italy. We kept to the smallest country roads, driving only at night, and spent the days hiding in out-of-the-way areas in high altitude where there was less chance of running into people. Angelo had stacked the van with food but we still needed gas and water for the camper´s tanks, and when we stopped at small town garages only Jan left the car to take care of the transactions while the rest of us waited inside, with curtains drawn, hoping that the garage owners weren´t curious enough to come snooping around.

The first night we only got as far to the south as Umbria, past the city of Assisi, and as the sun rose we found a copse of trees that shielded us from a few distant farmhouses. I hadn´t realized how maddeningly crowded Europe was; the continent was so crammed with towns and villages that there was almost no trace left of the wide open spaces that I´d grown up with in Texas, and only up in the mountains there were still areas that were relatively uninhabited. The air was fresh, too, which was fortunate as keeping the air conditioning off allowed us to make fewer stops for fuel.

We spent the day either sleeping or hanging around close to the camper, ready to duck in and drive away if anyone seemed to approach our little forest. In between long naps we cooked pasta and talked, but somewhat surprisingly Jan and Ivan weren´t hitting it off. They regarded each other warily, and the little conversation they had among themselves was stilted.

And, of course, we watched the news. Until 11 a.m. none of the channels had nothing new to say, only meaningless updates on the chase of the heinous child kidnapper – namely me – but we knew our luck wasn´t goint to last. By noon the connection between the abandoned boat owned by Ivan´s friend, Roberto, and the rumor about the cruising area sighting were starting to leak, and this time it was the never squeamish Italia Uno channel which breathlessly reported the news first. It didn´t really matter if the story turned out to be false later during the day as Italia Uno had no credibility left to lose, their headline news most nights consisting of psychics working for the Italian police and Channel 5 showgirls´ latest boot fashions. Obviously, they didn´t much bother with a boring old stolen boat; the dish consisted of me hunting new victims in a forest notorious of nightly gay orgies, only minutes after having murdered Ivan and thrown his body to sharks. An hour later the more reputable news channels joined in on the fray, and Channel 5 was already inteviewing Roberto´s sweetly befuddled grandmother when the police from Milan arrived to question her.

“He was so friendly,” she kept protesting, apparently thinking it had been me, hiding behind the helmet, to have picked up the keys. “I can´t believe he just went and killed that boy.”

She was followed by a famous Christian Party MP, interviewed in front of a church. “This proves beyond doubt that in our country there is a powerful clandestine gay mafia that stops at nothing to protect their own. Every parent should be concerned what may happen to their children if these attempts to legalize homosexual marriage should be successful.”

Ivan scoffed at the TV set, and Jan regarded the ranting MP with his usual imperturbability.

“These people shall be punished for their crimes!” the MP had time to declare before the discussion in the studio turned back into the more titillating possibilities of the gay cruising area.

“I told you so,” I said to Jan. “You´re going to get into trouble over this.”

He glanced up to me, wide-eyed. “But Mr. Judge, I´m only seventeen. I was psychologically manipulated into submission.”

“Psychologically?” Angelo asked, his eyes lingering over my crotch. “I can tell he´s manipulating you right now.” He turned to Jan. “I think we should go for a walk.”

The second night the kids rode in the back, sprawled on the mattress on the floor and exchanging a few words sporadically, while I took the navigator´s seat and Angelo drove as usual. He kept ribbing my map-reading abilities while refusing to acknowledge that his countrymen had forgotten to put up half of the roadsigns, and his eyes looked very dark in the dashboard lights whenever he glanced at me. We both knew it was going to happen, sooner or later; we´d never been able to spend more than a couple of hours together without ending up in bed or the nearest secluded spot, which had once included a dressing room at the Emporio Armani store while trying on speedos, with a salesguy Angelo had once fucked closing an eye in exchange for having his workday lightened up by a quick show of Angelo´s speedo-wrapped hard-on, and a chance to adjust it to confirm that the size of the swimsuit really was way too small.

We reached the Molise region before morning, without incidents of any kind, and after the third night of driving we were down in Basilicata. Puglia, our destination, wasn´t far away, and we had three more leisurely days to drive the length of the “heel” of Italy down to Gallipoli. Then, in the early morning light, we chanced upon a ghost town.

Built of old, weathered and now partly moss-covered and slowly crumbling stone, the small town seemed to have grown out of earth on its own accord. The winding mountain road gradually turned into a street, and lost its way among the narrow, maze-like alleys. All the glass panes and shutters were long gone, and the empty black windows gave me an unsettling feeling of someone watching us as the van came to a halt in the small central piazza. Amazingly, proving the quality of past workmanship, a fountain still disgorged a narrow stream of water into a moss-filled basin. Looking around, we judged that the last inhabitants had moved away, either emigrating to North or the New World, or to the more fertile coast close by, at least fifty years earlier. Far in the distance, across a valley, a piece of a busy road could be seen. The place was perfect for spending a couple of days to wind down before the last leg of the drive, and it was a recipe for disaster.

As we prepared the breakfast, before going to sleep for the day, I noticed Jan throwing one of his sphinx-like yet inquisitive glances every now and then towards me and Angelo. Ivan, on the other hand, of more trusting nature, didn´t seem to notice the tension. I tried to avoid being alone with Angelo as much as I could; after all the things Ivan had done for me I couldn´t imagine anything more rotten that cheating on him. Furthermore, for the last couple of days, a lot had been said on TV about the fact that the bloodhounds had run straight into his room, “drooling and howling” around his bed, and there had been less and less talk of kidnapping although he wasn´t being directly accused of complicity yet. There were easier ways to come out than on national television, amidst the irated public denials by your own family, and I could tell it was weighing on him heavily.

We were munching on thick, crusty slices of Sicilian bread, with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, when the morning news came on TV. The headline item was the prefect of Rome declaring in an impromptu press conference that Angelo had violated the request to remain in town, and coudn´t be found in Milan either, contrary to the reports of his friends who claimed that tired of the media attention Angelo had left Rome merely to get back home. Then it was Ivan´s turn to take a beating: “there was firm evidence of physical relationship” with the “known murderer”. It didn´t take much imagination to see that within hours he´d be an official accomplice.

Trying to lighten up the atmosphere, Angelo quipped, “Bonnie, could you pass the bread?” but Ivan wasn´t ready to joke about it, and Angelo quickly apologized after seeing his expression.

The car was too hot to sleep in, and so we dragged mattresses into two houses which looked as if they might not collapse on us as soon as someone sneezed. Ivan was biting his lip, to keep himself from crying I suspected, while we set up our little camp for the last time. Once we left this place it would be time to part, and he´d be alone, with a hell of consequences to pay. And Channel 5 having found – or paid – two of his former classmates to tell on air, at the end of the newscast, that they´d always considered him “a bit queer” certainly didn´t help. The house smelled musty, but it was cool inside, and I cradled Ivan in my arms as we ducked under the covers.

It was already early evening with the summer sun close to the horizon when I woke up. The slanted golden rays entered the room through the empty windows, slowly creeping along the grey weathered stones of the walls, and the air felt uncomfortably warm. I looked by my side and saw that Ivan wasn´t awake yet, having slept poorly all day long, and I carefully extracted his arm wrapped around my chest and stood up. He remained asleep, face flushed and his full lips slightly open, and looking younger than ever. I cursed myself, once again, for having dragged him into this mess. Quietly I left the room, and entered the central piazza. Outside, the high mountain wind was pleasantly cool, and I quickly grabbed some breakfast and had a makeshift shower under the fountain stream. Ivan was still asleep, there was no sign of Angelo and Jan, and I decided to explore the old, derelict town.

Despite the neglect, or perhaps because of it, the place actually looked magnificent. Narrow, stone-paved street and the houses seemed so much part of the landscape that they almost appeared camouflaged, and occasional wild trees, breaking through a crack in the street and slowly but inexorably displacing the adiacent slabs of stone, only accentuated the impression. The empty black windows were spooky, though, and when I heard something akin a soft, echoing wail I stopped, my heart thumping, and tried to smile at myself for having immediately thought of some ghostly presence from the past, haunting the abandoned town. It´s just the wind, passing through the hollow, old crumbling houses, I told myself.

After a few steps, however, I heard the sound again. This time, it had sounded distinctly more human, and I could even make out the direction it had come from. Worried, I walked faster towards the house I thought it had come from, and stopped at the empty doorway, peering into the shadows.

The building might have been a stall originally, but the elements, scouring the place for decades, had carried away any trace of animal presence. A line of three worn-out wooden pillars ran along the center of the room, and between two of them, secured by two leather belts tied around his wrists, arms stretched out to their full length, naked Jan was held in kneeling position. Behind him, looking shockingly tall and muscular next to the much smaller boy, Angelo was crouched on his knees, one hand holding a tight fistful of Jan´s hair, pulling his head back. The other hand was placed on the boy´s abdominals to keep him in place while Angelo, with a slow deliberation, thrusting forward with his narrow, muscular hips, forced another inch of his massive hard-on in between Jan´s tensed buttocks. Only the topmost third of the thick, veined shaft had already slipped in; there was still a long way to go before full penetration. The boy let out another cry, pleading Angelo to stop.

I stood still, transfixed by the sight. Neither of them moved for a moment, and then, noticing the shadow I was casting into the room, Angelo slowly turned to look at me. Our eyes locked as his grip on Jan´s hair tightened, pulling the boy´s head further back, and this time, no longer satisfied with the slow progress, he thrust several inches of his hard dick into the quivering boy in one graceful move. Jan wailed, and a sheen of sweat broke out all over his body.

Only after taking the first step I realized I was walking towards them, and Angelo, never taking his eyes from mine, pushed Jan´s head forward to my direction. His other hand moved up from Jan´s abs, cupped the boy´s jaw, and pulled his mouth wide open. I stopped in front of them, undid the buttons of my shorts, and slipped my rock-hard dick into Jan´s gaping mouth. The soft, wet lips closed around the pulsing shaft, and his swirling tongue went straight for the sweet spot under the crown. I groaned, and my knees almost buckled with the intense pleasure that shot through my body. Then he swallowed the entire length of my cock, an impressive feat, and I felt the muscles of his throat convulse around the shaft in choked wail as Angelo drove his hard-on to the hilt. Jan could do nothing to stop us as we fucked him, trading places several times, teasing and stretching his tight slippery holes before forcing our cocks back into him again and again. Despite his cries, Jan´s dick remained rock-hard the whole time, and with a slow, long thrust against his prostate we could always squeeze yet another thick glob of precum out of him, a glob that was then wiped off his dripping cockhead and fed into his mouth. We were using Jan exactly the way I had imagined while I´d been masturbating in the lonely farmhouse in Tuscany.

That had been before the arrival of Ivan, of course. Gradually the thoughts of him were coming back from the back of my mind where I had pushed them, and just momentarily imagining Ivan´s face in Jan´s place instantly brought me into a helpless, tainted orgasm. I shot my load all over Jan´s face, already shrinking back in shame from what I´d done.

“Calm down, it´s OK,” Angelo said, seeing my expression.

But it wasn´t all right. Far from it. I quickly wiped myself clean, and almost ran out of the place, still buttoning up. On the way back to the van I slowed down, trying to compose myself and knowing that I´d have to tell Ivan right away what had happened. However, I discovered that there was no need. He wasn´t in the house where we´d slept, and when I entered the van I saw that all the kitchenware and food that had been on the table had been struck down, now laying scattered on the floor, and one of the side windows had a large fracture, probably from the nearly full and heavy water bottle that was now slowly leaking its contents on a couch. A suitcase lay on the floor, half of its contents spilling out. Ivan was gone.

Chapter 15 - Cruising and eavesdropping

Perhaps two hundred feet of dunes and dried out grass separated the sea from the road and the bars, and a tall hedge running along the road provided further protection from curious eyes. We stood in the shadows for a while, waiting for the humid night breeze from the sea to at least partially dry us, and started then awkwardly to pull on our clothes. A couple, holding hands, walked by but paid no attention to two people in partial state of undress, no doubt their minds occupied by similar plans. The wind picked up a few words of their murmur, and I tensed up alarmed when I thought I heard them mention Ivan´s name although they couldn´t possibly have recognized us in the dark. I must have heard wrong, and even if I hadn´t, it wasn´t such an unusual name in Italy after all.

Completely lost, never having been to Torre del Lago, Ivan grabbed my hand as we stumbled across the dunes towards the dead end of the seafront road where, after the last two gay bars, the cruising area began. I had remembered the place correctly; there was enough light from the stars and the bars to make it possible to see people´s outlines but not their faces. A sandy track snaked its way from the road to a clearing at the edge of the pine forest where it split into a number of paths leading into the darkness, rather like Medea´s hair, and black shapes were slowly drifting about, trying to figure out their peers´ vital numbers by the few visible cues available. The low thump of bass from the nearest bar pervaded the air, like a quick heartbeat. Ivan´s wristwatch, with its brief blue glow, indicated 11:36pm.

“Are they really having sex in there,” he murmured into my ear, incredulous and rather excited.

“Yes they are,” I answered, pulling him close and slipping my tongue into his mouth. His lips were still a bit salty with seawater, and as I licked them clean I felt his body respond. “It´s not midnight yet,” I added suggestively.

For a moment he thought I was being serious, and let out a little gasp with the idea of plunging into the darkness where anything might happen.

Perhaps it was better to reassure him. “We don´t have time, Angelo´s probably here already.”

I explained him that one of the paths from the clearing went straight through the forest to a road where people parked their cars when they came to the beach during daytime, and that was the most likely route we´d take with Angelo. He´d be relatively easy to recognize even as a mere dark outline, with his height and muscles. After a couple of minutes no one matching him walked by, however, and every now and then I had to display the not so subtle signs of disinterest when someone veered close by to see if either one of us was worth a try. Ivan was too curious and excited to send out the proper signals, so I was constantly pegged as the nasty jealous lover. Now that we were doing little else but standing still, the air started feeling cold, and the humidity seeping in from the sea seemed to be condensing everywhere. Each time I shifted my feet, clammy blades of grass tickled my ankles like a myriad of cold steel knives. A couple, deep in conversation, walked towards the clearing from the bars and unwilling to interrupt their gossiping stopped not far from us before entering the woods. This time I was certain I heard them mention my name – there weren´t too many Eriks around in Italy – and I gave Ivan a nudge, to surreptitiously move us a few steps closer. One of the speakers had a short haircut that made his head resemble a frequently nodding dark box.

“No one believes it´s a coincidence,” he said dismissively to his more average-shaped friend. “Of course the kid arranged for the house, they must have known each other already in Milan.”

“I don´t know,” the other hesitated. “I mean, an underage dumb kid like that…”

I could feel Ivan stiffen with indignation next to me.

“He´s seventeen, that´s old enough,” the box boy replied. “If my neighbors had had a kid like that I´d have ended up in jail, too. Have you seen the photos?”

“I sure have.”

“And guess what I heard just this week? A friend of mine has a friend who has a gay friend at the police, and they have a big problem with fingerprints.”

“What kind of problem?” the other one said, almost matching my own interest, despite the weak hearsay connection.

“OK, this a secret, they don´t want anyone to know because it would mess up the investigation,” the nodding box said lowering his voice, as if he hadn´t already told the story innumerable times during the evening, and I lost the beginning before I managed to move a little closer.

“…the prints on the gate and the front door. I mean, how is that possible? It was Gabriele´s house, he was at home, but there was not a single fingerprint of his on the door handles!”

I could feel Ivan´s hand grab my arm, almost convulsively.

“That´s weird,” the friend said, impressed.

“There were only Dario´s and Erik´s prints, you know, Dario the guy who found him? And that bumbling police officer´s, the one who entered first.”

It was disconcerting to hear strangers use my name with such familiarity, as if we´d been friends for ages.

The box continued, “So what they think is that someone may have wiped the door handles before Erik went in.” He paused to let the implications sink in, before finishing, “So the two made-up thugs Angelo reported to the police really were there. I guess they didn´t want to alarm Gabriele, walking in already wearing murder gloves.”

“Why aren´t they telling this?”

“They have no other evidence, none, and it won´t stand in court. And it´s Gabriele Zaigler, for heaven´s sake! Why would those two thugs have been there? Think about it for just a second!”

“The mafia money laundering,” his friend said darkly.

“Exactly. Remember what happened with the Giulio Andreotti trial?”

I had no idea who Giulio Andreotti was, but the friend let out a knowing snort, and then added, “Everybody in the bar was talking about the Bonamici divorce.”

“Who´s Bonamici,” I whispered into Ivan´s ear very cautiously, even if the box boy already knew quite well he had an audience, and Ivan responded with two high-end brand names, quite well-known internationally.

The boxer let out a wicked chuckle. “He´s not the only one. There´s Cipriani – that right-wing member of the Milan city council – and,” there was a pause for effect, “Ricucci.”

“No,” was the flabbergasted answer. “The president of the Lombardy region?”

“Right. And they´re from the same political party, by the way. But everyone already knew he´s a closet case.”

“I didn´t.”

“His number wasn´t found on Erik´s phone, he´s too smart for that, but the police traced his calls just the same.”

I was sort of taken aback by the news. I had no idea who these men were, couldn´t match the names with faces, but the titles sounded rather impressive anyway. The box mentioned two other men, but when I turned to Ivan he could only shrug in the darkness. Disappointingly, not all my clients were household names.

“So maybe he´s not guilty after all,” the other guy mused.

“Of course he´s not,” the box boy snapped. “But he´ll get convicted anyway. And I´m so bored with the whole story, that´s all everyone´s been talking about the whole night and the whole summer, blah blah blah. And there are so many curious people, too,” he added, with a poignant glance at our direction.

The friends parted ways and proceeded into the woods, to opposite directions, to make sure they wouldn´t unwittingly perform fellatio on each other under the dark trees.

“Did you hear that,” Ivan said, excited.

“I did, and he´s right, I´ll get convicted if Angelo doesn´t show up soon.”

It was ten past midnight already, and knowing Angelo he would have been here already had been able to make it.

“How long will the boat be safe where it is?” I asked Ivan.

“I have no idea,” he answered nervously. “But I´d guess until Coast Guard sees it in radar.”

After a while, Ivan whispered, “I need to go for a pee,” and hesitantly disappeared into the nearest thicket.

I was left standing alone and suddenly all the men walking by slowed down as they passed by and, after some scrutiny, stepped closer. I turned my back but didn´t want to move away, to make sure Ivan would find me, and then one of them walked right in front of me and encouraged either by drink or a joint snapped his lighter on at close range. Seeing my face his eyes first widened and he started to smile, but soon the smile turned into a puzzled frown, exactly like Ivan´s when he had seen me for the first time by the pool, and then he gasped, taking a step backwards. My first instict had been to punch him out cold, but not being a habitual fighter I suspected it wouldn´t happen as quickly and elegantly as on TV, and would more likely result in him lying on the ground with a bloody nose, screaming for help, and me nursing a couple of broken bones in my hand, probably screaming almost as loudly as he would. So I smiled.

The effect was remarkable. Horror-struck, the man dropped the lighter and took two tentative steps back, almost stumbling in the sudden darkness, and gasped again.

“It´s he- him,” he cried out thinly. “Erik - Erik Loefgren! He´s here!”

As he turned and fled, a voice called out from the bushes, “And I´ve got Prince Harry´s dick in my mouth!”

Ivan was instantly back, grabbing my arm, pulling me this way and that, unsure where we should go, to the boat or into the woods, and I was just about to turn to the direction where we´d left the boat when a tall figure strode towards us across the clearing.

“It´s me,” Angelo rumbled with his low unmistakable voice. “This way.”

Hanging onto his coattails, figuratively speaking, we rushed into the darkness and towards the road on the other side of the forest. Soon all light from the bars was left behind and the tall pitch-black trees crowded closer to us, leaving only a narrow path of stars above as our guide, and we had to slow down to an agitated octogenarian pace.

“Sorry I was late,” Angelo said, his hand pressing on my shoulder. “There had been an accident on the Autostrada near Perugia, and we were completely stuck for an hour.”

“We?”

“Jan is waiting in the car,” he said, almost stepping off the path in his hurry. “Where have you been since you left the house?”

“Ivan stole a yacht.”

“What?” Angelo shot a glance backwards, despite the darkness, and the tone of his voice changed. “Wait – he´s still here with us?”

“Of course I am,” Ivan answered, but I could tell he´d been taken aback by Angelo´s tone.

“Ivan, you can´t come along,” Angelo said, stopping to glare back at me. “I thought that was clear.”

“It´s not, and if I go back the police will get their hands on me in half an hour,” Ivan stated firmly, having regained his self-assurance. “The friends of that fool back there will believe him, and sooner or later they´ll call the police, but they won´t have any proof without me.”

Except for the boat, I thought, but said nothing. I knew Ivan wouldn´t back down, and trying to convince him would be a lengthy waste of time with someone like Angelo who wasn´t accustomed having his authority questioned, especially by a teenager. Unwilling to verbally confirm Ivan´s half-truth, I gave Angelo a shove and got him moving.

“Accomplice to kidnapping a minor, then,” he grumbled.

“You can´t be charged with anything if I say I came along willingly,” Ivan said at Angelo´s back.

There was no reply, and undoubtedly another clash would ensue as soon as we reached the car. But when we finally left the forest behind and scampered to the road I got a surprise: instead of a car, Angelo had brought a small camper van.

“Let´s get in before anyone can see us,” he said, with a sharp glance at Ivan as he let us in.

Jan was waiting for us, in the passenger seat, and only gave us a nod with a hint of a serious smile as he recognized me. Angelo walked around the car, got on, and started the ignition.

“Get on the floor where no one can see you,” he ordered, backing the car on the road from under the trees.

There was a tiny kitchen area, complete with a table surrounded by wide couch-like seats on three sides, a door that probably lead into a claustrophobically small toilet, hopefully with a shower, and a living-room area with barely enough room for another couch. Up, above Angelo and Jan, was a ledge fitted with a queen-size bed. With some prodding I discovered that the mattress of the couch next to us could be pulled out, and I set it on the floor. Ivan flopped down next to me and we lay back in silence, watching the street lights flicker by, casting odd moving shadows inside the van.

“Where did you get this thing?” I asked after a few minutes when I thought I saw Angelo´s shoulders relax a little.

“An old college friend of mine from Rome rented it for us.”

“Has there been any – trouble? With the police I mean,” I added quickly, not wanting to discuss Luca yet.

“I was questioned for half an hour in Questura on Sunday,” Angelo answered over his shoulder. “In the middle of the afternoon, so I couldn´t go to the beach.”

“Right, the worst thing imaginable,” I said. “Why only half an hour?”

“The whole thing was organized just for appearance´s sake. With the alibi Luca gave me I´m pretty much untouchable.”

“I see.” Again, I wondered about Luca´s family connections, and since it had been Angelo to bring up his name I asked, “And where´s he now?”

Angelo shrugged. “The twerp flew to Miami, or New York, I forget which, after I acted sweet and comprehending and refused to beat him into pulp.”

“That´s so cruel of you.”

Ivan glanced at me, at loss. Jan was staring ahead, sphinx-like, as if he hadn´t been listening at all.

“What about Carlo?” I asked. “What happens when they find out you know him?”

“I called and warned him. He´ll forget to mention my name.”

“I heard that many people believe I organized the safe house,” Ivan intervened, his campaign to win Angelo over getting in first gear. “That´ll make things easier until Erik´s been cleared, won´t it?”

Briefly lit by a passing streetlight, Jan glanced back at Ivan with an inscrutable expression that could have been anything from suspicion to lust. I was startled with the idea, but then, it would only be natural if Jan and Ivan hit it off. Despite the more pressing matters at hand, the thought lead me to speculate about the sleeping arrangements.

“I´ve heard that one, too,” Angelo conceded. “It does help, for the time being. In the end the truth will come out, though.”

“The later, the better,” Ivan said, relieved by the fact that he´d been deigned with an answer.

I´d forgotten how intimidating Angelo could be, and wondered if Jan´s silence had something to do with it.

“So, where are we going?” I asked.

“Gallipoli.”

“Where´s that?”

“In Puglia,” Ivan informed me helpfully. “The heel of Italy.”

“Jan´s friends will pick you up there on Ferragosto, from a beach,” Angelo said, glancing at his side.

Jan gave him a silent nod, but then found it necessary to add, “Some people my friends know.”

“And take me where?”

“Abroad.”

“I´ve heard about that country, but I´m not quite sure where it is,” I quipped.

“We aren´t either. Not yet,” was Angelo´s reply.

Great, I thought, but said nothing to avoid offending Jan who was, after all, putting his neck on the line.

It was an odd way to travel, lying on a soft mattress on the floor of a house, sort of. Then the procession of street lights vanished as Angelo took us to some small country road, and Ivan snuggled up closer to me. His presence remained a brief comfort, however, as it crossed my mind that these were the only friends I had in this world, and Ferragosto and the Gallipoli beach were now less than a week away. I had every reason to believe that Jan´s contacts, not friends as he had pointed out himself, were the same people who forced their human cargo into the black nighttime sea at gunpoint whenever Guardia Costiera intervened; men, women and children alike, with no concern whether they could swim or not. I resolved to carry some kind of a weapon on board, given the fact that my simple disappearence would remove any risk the traffickers might face. The headlights of a car going the opposite direction briefly glared into the interior of the van, and I realized Jan´s head was no longer in sight, lowered somewhere below the back of the wide single front seat, and there was a hint of a lazy smile I recognized on Angelo´s lips.