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.

Chapter 14 - Torre del Lago

The wind was blowing straight in from the sea, letting rough waters make their way into the river estuary through the opening in the brakewater. The boat bounced up and down, spraying me with the cool white foam flying off the tops of the waves as they were slashed by the bow, and with each passing swell the electric hollow rollercoaster feeling in the pit of my stomach was switched on and off. Ahead of us, the sea turned into a brilliant turquoise as if underneath the water the seabed itself was glowing with light, and then farther along suddenly darkened into a deep fathomless blue that I´d always found unsettling. Even now my heart beat a little faster with the thought of us gliding recklessly hundreds of yards above the invisible, dark sea bottom, with only an insubstantial and treacherous liquid sustaining us from the deathly, mysterious depths. To shake off these thoughts I scampered back to Ivan, shedding my disguise of rags and ´70s sunglasses and trying not to fall overboard.

“Do we have enough gas to get to Torre del Lago?” I asked, dropping down on the seat next to him.

He made some quick mental calculations, and nodded. “Not enough to get back, though. Why?”

“I´m meeting Angelo there tomorrow at midnight.”

We had cleared the wavebreaker and he steered the boat to the north, but a frown was deepening between his eyebrows.

“What is it?” I asked, even if I already knew what was bringing him down.

“Is that where you´re planning to dump me?”

Overcome by the feeling in his voice, I stood up and hugged him tightly from behind.

“I´m not going to dump you,” I answered, my voice sufficiently convincing now that he couldn´t see my expression. “We´ll decide together what´s the best thing to do.”

I felt him relax in my arms. “We better.”

I should have gone into the cabin to put away the groceries before the choppy sea ground them into pulp, and to hook up the TV, but these were going to be the last two days I´d ever see Ivan. I remained standing behind him, kissing his smooth neck and my hands resting on the narrow muscular waist, while my skipper manouvered the boat ever farther from the shoreline.

“Why Torre del Lago?”

“Angelo took me there last summer,” I explained. “There´s a gay beach, a few gay clubs, and a gay cruising area in the pinewoods behind the beach. That´s where I´ll – we´ll – meet him because it´s dark and safe.”

“Gay pinewoods? At night? That´s safe?” Ivan seemed alarmed with all three concepts, each more worrying than the previous one.

“Well,” I hesitated, “perhaps it´s better if I go there alone.”

“No.” He shook off my hands. “I´m in trouble already, have been since yesterday, and now I´ve practically stolen this boat for you. So what difference does it make if I stay with you a little longer? Why do you keep selling me short?”

“Because every minute you spend with me you´re getting deeper into that trouble. It´s just not right.”

“I´ll be the judge of that. I´m not a little kid, you know? I can decide for myself.”

“Can you, I mean legally? Are you really eighteen like you said?”

He didn´t answer.

“Ivan…” I said, laying my hands on his shoulders, half expecting him to shake them off this time as well. My erection was pushing painfully against the leg of my pants, and as the boat swayed he could feel it press against his back. “I don´t think the Italian law is as strict as American, but when they catch me I´ll probably get the local equivalent of death penalty for what I´ve done to you.”

“But you´ve done nothing wrong!”

“You didn’t think so the night we first met.” I slipped my hand under his t-shirt, my fingertips tracing the curves of his taut abdominals.

“No one will ever know about that.”

“Let´s see what they do know. I´ll check if the TV works.”

The abbreviated early morning news were on, and as expected we were the main headline. Ivan couldn´t hear the commentary to where he was standing, and I had to relay it to him over the wind and the low groan of the motor. Through the cabin door, I could only see his legs and the lump of his groin, and the smooth hard curve of the muscles of his belly when the wind occasionally picked up the waist of his t-shirt. We´d have to find a place to anchor the boat soon.

“The call was anonymous,” I called out to him, relieved that Luca had at least had the common sense of not to implicate himself and Angelo. “They say I´d left the house only moments before their arrival, and – wait – happened to catch you riding your scooter alone and abducted you. And you´re just barely seventeen.”

Unfazed by the revelation, Ivan called back, “Why not steal just the scooter? Why me, too?”

“Wait – they´re saying that you´re exceptionally attractive – here´s the photo, they´re right – and I´m a sick murderous pervert, and there should be death penalty in Italy for certain crimes.”

Despite my dismissive version of the newscast I couldn´t help a rush of the old familiar panic, but smiled nevertheless when I heard the urgency in Ivan´s voice.

“Which photo?” he called. “Was it good?”

“Yes, very good,” I reassured him. Brutta figura was the worst thing imaginable to an Italian. “Here´s more of them, you´ll soon be as famous as I am.”

His family hadn´t provided only the best photos in the family album, there was a statement as well. “They´re asking me to let you go, and not to harm you…”

“Are they on TV?” Ivan took a quick peek into the cabin.

“No, not yet, it´s just a written plea.” I listened to some more. “They think we might be in Rome, your phone trick worked.”

He sneaked a quick look into the cabin again, smiling proudly. The last piece of information the newsdesk had was that the owner of the house – Carlo´s name wasn´t mentioned – was living abroad and the authorities hadn´t been able to reach him yet. I wondered how long it would take for the police to connect Carlo and Angelo, and if the fact would be sufficiently incriminating to throw Angelo into jail. Then the newscast was over, promising live coverage with ´an expert panel´ starting at nine. Out of Ivan´s sight I sat on the berth, my head resting on my hands, as I tried to figure a way out for my friends. It was useless, of course, as even giving myself up wouldn´t now stop the investigation no matter what lies I told the police. Furthermore, the agonizing moment when I´d have to leave Ivan was inexorably moving closer at seemingly increasing speed, as if the time itself was accelerating, and I still had no idea how to make it happen. No amount of reasonable talk would sway him; in the end I´d have to resort to something vile.

There were no secluded bays in this part of the coast, but we anchored the boat near the shore in front of a wide swath of forest with only a barely visible strip of a beach beneath the trees. A few other boats had chosen the same area but as all of us had done it for privacy´s sake none of them came alarmingly close, and in fear of powerful binoculars we always wore sunglasses and headgear when out in sight, even while swimming. We splashed like two children, had sex, napped, devoured sandwiches, had sex again. Every now and then I caught him staring at me coldly, aware of the impending betrayal, but the stare always melted into a smile and an embrace with the certainty that he´d outwit me when the moment came. In the meanwhile, the TV news and commentary went from bad to worse as there was no word from Ivan to his parents, and by the time we woke up on Monday morning the whole country believed I´d done away with him and dumped the body in the sea in Ostia, or in certain more pictoresque versions into the river Tiber in the very outskirts of Rome after repeatedly having had my way with him. Ivan´s parents kept asking for silenzio stampa, which the news organizations naturally ignored; Ivan was far too good-looking, perfect for the role of the innocent, and there was much emphasis on his age. Marinella was interviewed by the Berlusconi´s flagship Channel 5, Ivan´s schoolmates and cousin by RaiUno, and the lesser characters of the drama by the equally lesser channels. At first we made fun of the newscasts, although somewhat awkwardly, and then stopped commenting on them altogether as the more vicious pundits took over.

Late in the Monday evening we had our last swim, reluctantly scampered back onboard, our spirits dampened and heavy, and soon before sunset Ivan switched on the motor. His eyes shimmered in the last warm rays of the sun as he looked at me, there was a twitch to the side of his mouth, and I had to turn away to clear the sudden lump in my throat. The night fell; the pinpoints of light of the coast slowly slid past us as the digital numbers of the GPS display clicked closer to the location neither of us wanted to reach. Then, inevitably, I recognized the lights of Torre del Lago and the flurry of people crowding the beachfront bars, and the night breeze carried the music to us over the water. It was already ten past eleven, and we didn´t have time to find a proper place for the boat. Protected by darkness, Ivan took us as close to the shore as he dared, anchored the boat, and we took off our clothes and stashed them into the plastic bag along with our money. The water felt cold as I slipped in, holding the bag high above my head, closely followed by Ivan.

“What if someone rams into the boat,” I asked him, bobbing in the waves and looking back at the dark hulk silhoutted against the night sky.

“No one will, I think this is a restricted area because of the beach,” he answered, kicking water next to me. “And it´s too close to the shore anyway.”

I felt his warm hand touch my arm underwater, and we turned and swam towards the lights and the noisy, happy crowd.

Chapter 13 - Marina di Pisa

It was Saturday night, in the holiday month of August, and the traffic grew steadily heavier as we approached the coast. Ivan therefore judged it relatively safe to use certain stretches of main roads every now and then, even though it made us both feel horribly exposed. About an hour into the journey we entered the outskirts of a small town, keeping a wary eye on all the approaching headlights, and stopped at an automated gas station to fill the scooter up. Thankful for the emergency funds Angelo had left me, I gave Ivan two bills for the machine and stood by, stretching my legs, as he proceeded with the smelly job. Once he was finished, he pulled out a cell phone from his pocket and checked the display.

“Eleven missed calls,” he grumbled, looking worried. “My parents. I have to call them back.”

He pressed a couple of keys, and the call was answered even before he had time to lift the phone to his ear.

“I´m fine, just fine,” he said, with the appropriate amount of teenage irritation. “I´m over at Enzo´s, in Pisa, watching TV. You don´t know him. Never mind that, what´s going on?”

A truck carrying two huge concrete elements rumbled into the parking lot, contradicting Ivan´s claims about the imaginary Enzo, and he had to wait for a moment before the call could be continued. Once the driver had turned off the engine Ivan resumed the conversation, listening for a while, and then interrupted, innocently, “Oh, that was why the police stopped me?” However, hearing the answer his expression clouded, he squinted, and then a frown appeared. “No, of course not. What, you let those dogs into the house?”

His focus shifted to me from the call, even as he listened to the anxious warbling voice from the other end. The next question was for my benefit. “What did you say? The dogs ran straight into my room? Why would they do that?”

The pitch of his mother´s voice rose. “That´s what we want to know, too.” More incomprehensible talk followed.

“No. No,” Ivan answered. “If they say that, they´re crazy. No, I´m not coming home, I´m in Pisa, I don´t know Enzo´s home number.”

Someone else came on the phone, with a deeper voice. His father. I thought I heard something like “The dogs were howling around the bed, for Chrissakes-“

Ivan listened for a while, and then interrupted, “If they want to look for me, let them. I don´t care.” Now he was starting to look anxious himself, defying his own father, not an easy task for an Italian. “Listen, I have to go now-“

“He´s with you isn´t he?” This time I could hear his father´s voice quite clearly. “Is he holding you hostage?”

“Don´t be stupid,” Ivan snapped, but his face had turned pale. “I´m just fine. I have to go now. I´ll be home tomorrow morning.”

He ended the call before his father could answer, and started to push the phone back into his pocket, his hand shaking.

“Ivan, the phone leaves a trace,” I said. “When the police checks it they know where we are.”

He nodded, and was starting to turn it off when he saw the truck he hadn´t paid much attention to before.

“It has Roman licence plates,” he said contemplatively, thought about it for a second, and then pitched the phone into a hollow in one of the concrete elements. “At the rate my parents keep calling the battery will go dead pretty soon, but there should be a nice southward trace by then.”

I stared at him, impressed. “You just threw away your music collection.”

He shrugged. “I´ll download it again.”

“Ivan.” I started, gnawed my lip, knowing how stubborn the kid was. “Maybe you really should go back. If your parents think that you´ve been kidnapped they´ll go crazy with worry.”

“That´s what they´ll say,” Ivan answered with a sneer. “For the neighbors´ sake. And stop telling me what to do, thank you.”

“So what are we doing?”

“First I thought I´d take you to our boat for the night but it doesn´t seem like a good idea now,” he said unhappily, but then immediately added. “I have a plan B, though.”

“Which is?” I didn´t want to sound sceptical, but I was beginning to think we were on a dead end street and driving too fast.

“Have you ever seen anyone alone on a boat in Italy?”

I thought about it for a second, and shook my head. The images that came to my mind all pertained to white boats crammed to capacity by young men wearing speedos and usually making a lot of noise.

“I´ll call a friend,” he said, pulling on his helmet.

The apparent lack of details about his plan worried me as we took to the road again. Also, I had to get in touch with Angelo as soon as possible, supposing he hadn´t already been locked up.

The trip had taken longer than expected, and morning was drawing closer. The traffic, however, only seemed to be getting heavier and I suspected that not all the drivers had abstained from drinking. Luckily they kept the police busy enough, and the one patrol car that passed by never saw us thanks to two cars Ivan strategically wedged us in between. The sun was already lighting up the edges of the highest clouds to the east when we entered a small, pictoresque coastal town and found a functioning phone booth, a minor miracle. This time, as I waited, I didn´t take my helmet off to keep my blond hair hidden. The call itself didn´t take long but I noticed that the machine gave no coins back.

“I got Roberto on his cell phone,” he started. “He´s in Marocco with his family.”

“Damn,” I cursed. “Listen-“

“Wait,” he interrupted. “His grandmother is at home. Robbie will call her, and she´ll give us the key to the marina where their boat is moored. We can stay there for a day or two.”

“What did you tell him? Won´t he call the police as soon as the news comes out?”

“I didn´t have to tell him anything, he´s in Marocco,” Ivan reminded me. “I only implied that I needed a place where I could take a girl behind Marinella´s back.”

“The ever valid Italian excuse,” I muttered, shaking my head disapprovingly as if I could afford it. “What about the granny? She won´t even open the door if you don´t show respect and take the helmet off.”

“Right… well, I´ll tell her it´s my brother´s, and so small that it nearly rips my ears off when I put it on or take it off.”

“I don´t know about your brother but the rest of the story is no lie,” I laughed, earning a hard cuff on the side of my helmet.

Roberto´s house was only a two minutes´ drive away, an old-fashioned villa surrounded by a small but lush garden, and while I waited outside Ivan went in to charm the old lady. Soon he returned, with a wide grin and a happily jangling set of keys.

“She´s a bit addle-brained, I think,” he said with good-humored Italian straight-forwardness. “Not only did she give me the marina key, but the one to the boat as well. We can go and have a ride if there´s enough gas in the tank.”

“Won´t the marina janitor, or whatever his title is, call the police when a boat disappears?”

“First he´ll call the granny, and she´ll say that everything´s all right,” Ivan answered.

“Are you sure?”

“If we stay holed in the boat it´ll look more suspicious than taking it out,” Ivan reasoned. “And we´ll get a sunstroke hiding in the cabin all day.”

“True.”

Still, the idea of going pleasure-boating while half the police force of the country was chasing us seemed a bit outlandish. On the other hand, frolicking in the sea would hardly be what was expected of us, and to spend the afternoon slowly rogering Ivan in the cabin, with all the rope one was sure to have available on a boat, and no one within earshot, was not an invitation easily turned down. Besides, if the shore patrol caught us in the act, with Ivan helplessly tied up, no further proof of his innocence would be necessary.

We found an open bar and bought a cache of food, and got some change for me to call Angelo. Back at the phone booth I put a call through to the emergency number Angelo had given me. Thankfully, the cell phone number was working, but it rang several times before Jan answered sounding sleepy and alarmed at the same time.

“Jan, this is a friend of Angelo´s,” I started, but he interrupted me right away.

“He told me that… eh, someone, might call and leave a message.” His voice was suddenly quite friendly, and I remembered our first and only meeting in the villa by the lake and on what a different footing we´d been then.

“Great… listen, would you tell him to meet me tomorrow, that´s Monday, in the pine woods near the bars at midnight? The bars - he´ll know what I´m talking about.”

“All right,” Jan answered, sounding a little puzzled.

“If either one can´t be there on Monday, I´ll be there on Tuesday at the same time,” I added quickly.

“I´ll tell him,” Jan promised. “I hope to see you soon. Take care.”

We began the last leg of the ride, leaving the town behind, and soon I noticed that there were unmistakable glimpses of rippling blue water in between copses of trees to the right side of the road.

“What´s that?” I shouted over the wind, pointing at the water. “Not the sea already?”

“The river Arno,” Ivan yelled back.

I was somewhat stunned by the answer, and nearly dropped the heavy shopping bag I was holding between us. The River Arno, whose almost holy waters, albeit rather polluted ones, had run under the Ponte Vecchio in Florence probably only yesterday, and here we were obliviously riding a scooter right next to it as if it were little more than just another ditch. Traveling in Italy was tricky business; ask an innocent question and the answer is likely to contain words such as Michelangelo, Giotto, or Vestal Virgins.

Then Ivan slowed down, his head scanning the riverside trees and bushes, apparently looking for a hiding place for the scooter. Suddenly a salty sea breeze penetrated into my helmet, and delivered the wave of exhilaration that the first smell of sea always brings. Ahead of us, above another copse of luscious trees, I could now see the edge of a forest of gently swaying white masts. Ivan found a place he judged safe enough, and after drudging the scooter into a thicket across a narrow field, hoping that the two cars that passed by in the meanwhile didn´t find our actions alarmingly odd, we headed for the marina. The gate was still locked this early in the morning, and after seeing we had the key the only person about, an expensively groomed tall man tinkering with the ropes of his sailboat, didn´t ask us any questions despite quizzically following us with his eyes. Under his watchful gaze Ivan lead us to the motorboat, and jumped on board.

The boat had looked deceptively small from the outside, as I discovered that the cabin nevertheless had room for two beds and a tiny kitchen, and a cleverly hidden toilet. Despite the size the only correct word for the vehicle was yacht, with its white streamlined shape, enough room on the front deck for sunbathing, and the back designed for an easy descent into water for a swim. The chromed railings were spotless, and the whole thing gleamed with almost blinding brightness in the early morning sun. We ducked into the cabin and pulled off our helmets with a sigh of relief, but there was not enough time to start fussing with the groceries.

“How are we going to get out of here with that snoop out there?” I asked.

“We´ll improvise,” Ivan answered, familiar with the boat.

He rummaged through a series of minuscule cupboards and came up with a dusty baseball cap, a whitish rag that had clearly been used for cleaning the kitchen and perhaps something nastier as well, and a pair of sunglasses so old that the lenses were scratched useless. In the process he also found a black-and-white portable TV set, with a five-inch screen.

“You go sunbathing on the front deck-“ he started.

“What are you saying?” I interrupted, uncomprehending and shocked by the mere idea of exposing myself publicly after the weeks spent inside the farmhouse.

“Boat thieves don´t sunbathe at work,” Ivan explained. “We cover your hair with the rag, and these sunglasses are so large that I bet they belong to Roberto´s mother. If no one can see her wrinkles with these, they won´t recognize you either.”

“All right, you´re the expert on boat behavior,” I agreed warily as he tried on the baseball cap, pulling it down to cover his face.

Once my disguise was ready, including bare chest, Ivan switched on the motor, ran a quick checklist including the amount of gas we had, and told me to step outside and give him instructions lest we hit the jetty and attract our relentlessly curious neighbor. Careful to keep my back towards him, I managed to guide us away from the quayside, and as we inched our way towards the center of Arno I gave a friendly wave at the man, and climbed on the glamorous although uncomfortably curving front deck. As soon as we were safely out of the harbor I´d plug in the TV and find out all the details of my latest dasdardly deeds, wondering which crime received longer sentence in Italy, murder or kidnapping and statutory rape of someone who was most likely still a minor.