Ring of Fire (22 page)

A
T ELEVEN PAST ELEVEN ON THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR
, E
LETTRA
arrives in Via della Gatta. Walking around a Gypsy woman, the kind who asks for money to read your palm, she crosses through a sunny little square used as a parking lot. In her pocket is the top with the eye, along with the tooth they found in the briefcase. Before leaving Ermete’s house, they divided up the tasks … and the treasure.

Via della Gatta is a total disappointment. It’s a dark, narrow, dirty little street tiled with porphyry and flanked by tall buildings in dark travertine. Tall black bars protect the windows on the ground floor.

What is it you were trying to show me here?
Elettra asks the top she’s carrying in her pocket.
Don’t tell me Harvey’s right and you don’t work at all, okay?

She turns into the lane with the best intentions, but no matter how hard she tries, she can’t find anything that seems important. After a few meters, the street broadens into a square and continues on, becoming a sunnier, paved area.

Elettra sees a bookshop, a library, a few stores, the customary
cars parked sideways over the sidewalks, a beat-up van bearing the name of a moving company and … basically, that’s it.

She’s reached the end of Via della Gatta.

It might just have been a coincidence
, she tells herself, turning back.

She searches high and low, remembering what was written in the professor’s journal:
Search below and you shall find it above
.

And of us three crazy kids, I just might be the craziest
.

Four crazy kids
, she corrects herself instantly.
Four, not three
.

She searches the lane a second time, checking the names on the intercoms in search of a sign.

“We’ll find you, Mistral …,” she whispers. “Don’t worry. We’ll find you.”

This conviction is stronger than any other thought in her mind, stronger than her concern about calling home to let them know everything’s okay. Elettra’s totally committed to her task, to her friends. She’s never felt so close to other people before. It’s like she’s known them her whole life.

Sure, Harvey’s grouchy, but deep down he believes in their adventure, too. Elettra can still feel his cheek pressed up against hers as he protected her in the professor’s apartment. … Then there’s Sheng, who’s so enthusiastic he might even seem a little naive. But he’s got undying faith in the others.

“Can’t find it, can you?” asks a portly man with a big mustache who’s standing outside a café.

Elettra stops in her tracks.

“You’re a tourist, right?” the portly man asks bluntly. “I’m good at spotting tourists. Never get it wrong. You’re here in Rome to celebrate New Year’s Eve! Got it right, didn’t I? Where are you
from, Paris? I bet you’ve never had a real dish of spaghetti!” The portly man bursts out in a hearty laugh, and Elettra doesn’t know whether to answer him directly in Roman dialect or to ignore him completely.

She decides to ignore him and continues walking down the street.

The man looks at her, amused, and shouts after her, “In any case, you need to keep your head up. The cat you’re looking for is up there, on the cornice of the corner building! Second floor. You can’t miss it! It’s a statue!” He lets out another hearty laugh.

Elettra looks up. Resting on the cornice of one of the buildings is a statue of a cat.
So that explains the name of this street!
she thinks.

But the man standing outside the café isn’t done. “Everybody comes here for the same reason. … Legend has it that a treasure’s hidden in the very spot where the cat’s looking. But I say the cat’s turned its head over the years. If you ask me, it used to be looking down here at the café! What other treasures could there be around here, do you think?” And, with a final burst of laughter, he turns around and walks back into the café.

Sheng elbows his way out of yet another crowded bus and, once on the sidewalk, makes his way briskly down the blocks separating him from the Coppedè district. He’s armed with a giant map of the city that, at least in theory, can be refolded, along with a pen and pencil to take down any notes he might need, a half-used stack of bus tickets and a professional camera that makes him look just like Peter Parker, the only reporter able to unmask Spider-Man himself.

In his pocket he’s carrying two of the tops they spun around on the map: the one with the dog and the one with the whirlpool. He’s hoping that what he’s trying to do will actually help them somehow.

At the first intersection, Sheng spreads the map out in his hands, examines it carefully and, without thinking twice, goes the wrong way. When he realizes this, it’s almost too late to fix things. The sun’s high in the sky, the trees in the park in Villa Borghese are a beautiful sight with their centuries-old trunks … but Rome is clearly far too big a city for anyone to be wandering around lost.

He sits down, taking stock of his situation.

He’s never been good at getting his bearings, especially in a city that’s so different from the one where he grew up. If he were in Shanghai, he’d call one of his cousins to come get him or flag down a palanquin. But he isn’t in Shanghai. He’s in Rome. And just trying to understand how the buses work is already enough to drive him crazy, staring at all those signs in Italian. …

He checks the time, tries not to think about how late he’s made himself by getting on and off all the wrong buses and heads back to the Coppedè district.

The camera bangs against his chest and sharp pangs shoot through his bandaged arm, but Sheng’s happy to be there. He has no idea what he’ll find at the spot he’s circled in red, nor what he’ll learn from the photos he’ll manage to take, but he’d rather try doing everything possible than sit there feeling sorry for himself or being mad at the world, like Harvey.

“It’s not my fault!” Sheng shouts after a while, when he realizes that the street he’s turned down goes uphill instead of downhill. “These streets are all crooked!”

* * *

Meanwhile, at the Regno del Dado, Harvey paces back and forth nervously.

It’s noon.

Ermete’s still in the shower. He’s been in there for at least half an hour.

Harvey can hear him singing away as steam swirls out from the door, which is slightly ajar. When the man’s voice cracks for the millionth time, Harvey paces around and checks the time yet again.

“How much longer is this going to take, anyway?” he asks. It’s a question aimed at just about everything: Ermete’s endless shower, Elettra and her mission in Via della Gatta and Sheng, who by now must’ve gotten lost in the streets of Rome.

Harvey’s convinced that their splitting up was a terrible idea. Just like his decision to stay there, spending the morning listening to Ermete’s phone calls with a series of friends, each one shadier than the last.

On paper, at least, their task seems to be the most critical one. They’re supposed to go see one of Ermete’s unscrupulous connections to find out if he knows anything about the man with the violin. Or Mistral’s kidnapping. But after a million useless attempts, just when he seemed to be on the verge of talking to this unknown friend, the engineer said he was tired and that he needed to take a shower so he could concentrate better.

“An hour-long shower?” yells Harvey, exasperated by the wait.

Inside of him, he feels a growing rage, which he’s perfectly unable to vent. He wishes he knew whether Elettra and Sheng have discovered anything by following the directions given to
them by the tops. And he’s not sure what answer he’d rather hear, because if those pieces of wood actually work, it means he’s losing his mind.

“It’s all crazy …,” he mutters, staring down at one of Ermete’s board games. “This is what I feel like. A pawn in someone’s hands.”

He walks through the apartment for the millionth time, and, hearing the engineer crooning blissfully, he clenches his fists in anger. “You’re such a big help!” he snarls impatiently.

When he goes back to the kitchen, he passes by the phone and decides to make a call. He picks up the receiver. He puts it down. He picks it up again. Then he quickly dials his father’s cell phone number.

“Dad?”

“Harvey?
Where on earth are you?” his father shouts immediately. There’s a muffled noise as the phone is handed over to Mrs. Miller, who, in a single breath, gives him a seemingly endless third degree.

“Everything’s fine … just fine …,” Harvey tries to tell her. But his mother is like a raging river. “No, really, we’re perfectly fine! Yes, we’ll be back soon. … We’re just … No! No! Mom! Listen to me! Would you listen?
No!
I can’t come back right now! And don’t come looking for me! At a friend’s house. Yeah, a friend! I don’t know his name!
I’m fine!
Mom! I just wanted to … I just …” He brusquely hangs up before his ear catches on fire.

“Yeah, happy New Year’s Eve to you, too!” he mutters, staring at the phone.

The bathroom door opens. Ermete’s finished his shower.

“Everything okay?” he asks, drying off the few strands of hair left on his head.

“Nothing’s okay!” yells Harvey. “Let’s get going!”

What treasure is the cat pointing out?
wonders Elettra, staring up at the graceful statue in black marble perched on the cornice. The girl moves closer to the building and then draws back, looking for the best vantage point to find out where the statue’s gaze is directed.
Well …
, she decides, after countless attempts.
The cat’s not looking at this street. She’s looking toward Piazza Grazioli, where the parking lot is
.

Elettra twirls a lock of hair in her fingers, deep in thought.

I’m not looking for a treasure …
, she tells herself.
I’m looking for Mistral or, at most … the Ring of Fire
.

If the cat is what the top was indicating, then what the cat’s indicating is … an elegant building in Piazza Grazioli. But its stony stare might be focused on any one of the windows. Or the front door. Or the cellar.

Elettra steps over a snowbank and checks the names on the intercom.

But as she’s drawing near, she notices for the second time the Gypsy she avoided before. The woman’s sitting cross-legged in the doorway of a building on a makeshift mat of cardboard.

Could it be?
she wonders. Elettra looks back to check the position of the cat again.
Could it be?

She walks up to the Gypsy, not even knowing what to say to her.

The woman turns her wrinkled face up from the thick pile of
old coats she’s bundled up in, trying to protect herself from the cold. She holds out a plastic dish with a few copper coins resting in it.

“Good luck to you, young miss. I wish you much good luck, to you and your family,” she mumbles, like a sad refrain.

A little good luck couldn’t hurt
, thinks Elettra. “Oh, why not?” she blurts out.

Slipping her hand into her pocket to grab a few coins, she pulls out first the top and then the tooth. She finally finds a fifty-cent coin and holds it out over the Gypsy’s dish. “Here,” she says.

The Gypsy gives a start. Her expression suddenly changes and the moment the coin clinks against the others, she gets up from her cardboard mat and turns to leave.

Elettra looks over her shoulder to see if a policeman is coming toward them. But, with the exception of a few people crossing through the square and the cat perched on the cornice, she doesn’t see anyone.

“Where are you going?” she asks the woman.

The Gypsy waves her hands over her head and, turning her back on the girl, exclaims, “No, no! Go away! Go away!”

“Are you talking to me?”

The Gypsy nods. She walks off in her bundle of coats, repeating, “Don’t! Don’t!”

“Don’t
what?”
Elettra insists, baffled.

The woman doesn’t reply. Instead, she starts running.

Sheng stops to check the not-exactly-foldable map in front of a large, dark archway crowning the main road. After a brief struggle against the wind, he heaves a sigh of relief. Unless he’s making
another massive mistake, the bizarre-looking archway divides Coppedè from the rest of Rome.

The archway is menacing, light and heavy at the same time, supporting a structure that looks a lot like a prison.

“It’s up to us, guard dog …,” murmurs Sheng with a heroic attitude as he rolls up his sleeves while trying not to crumple the map any further. “It’s up to us, whirlpool. …”

As he walks through the arch, he has the strong sensation that the city has changed. In the middle of the square he sees a fountain with four frogs, surrounded by patches of gray snow. All around him are buildings that look like they’ve been quilted with dark travertine.

Sheng checks the position of the house he’s there to see, raises his camera and starts snapping off shots.

Yellow-and-red checkered house. Click.

Windows held up by leering masks. Click. Click. Click.

Balconies resting on the shoulders of Titans. Click. Click.

Knights in suits of armor holding up copper drainpipes. Click.

Slanting rooftops. Click.

He photographs these subjects with the speed of a sharpshooting gunslinger. He continues on, never slowing his pace, with the professional expression of someone who’s being forced to do dirty work and wants to get it over with as soon as possible. None of the passersby even bothers to look at him, assuming he’s just an average tourist.

And so, totally undisturbed, finally Sheng reaches his intended destination. It’s a little house with a somber-looking turret surrounded by an iron gate topped with twisted spikes that look
so strange they deserve four shots of their own. Click. Click. Click. Click.

On the other side of the gate is a dismal-looking yard (two clicks) and a series of tiny prints made by a raven (one click).

The boy looks up to study the rest of the house. Its facade is completely asymmetrical. Columns and canopies hide side entrances and rooms. Sheng aims his camera and starts snapping shots.

And then, just as he’s focusing on a window with closed shutters, he has the odd feeling someone’s standing behind it. He zooms in and out without being able to see anyone, and, his voice so low he can barely hear it himself, he asks, “Mistral? Are you in there?”