The Flight Attendant(95)

She followed the bartender and the flight attendant at a careful distance. It was twilight, which was an easier time of the day to tail someone. Moreover, there were tourists and dinner crowds in this neighborhood, and she could blend in should Bowden suddenly turn around. But then, it was unlikely the woman would recognize her with her new hair color. She’d dyed it specifically because she couldn’t risk a repeat of what had happened that morning at the airport.

She noticed that the couple wasn’t touching as they walked, though it was still possible that they were returning to her hotel. Instead of cutting back through the Villa Borghese, however, they were strolling along the Via di Villa Ruffo, and so she assumed they would stop at a restaurant on the way.

Because they were dawdling, she had to dawdle, which meant that she also had to endure the occasional whistles and come-ons from young men as they passed on the sidewalk or as they drove by—slowing—on the street on their colorful Vespas. She smiled at the men whose remarks were less offensive because it was important not to make a scene, and she ignored the others.

It was in the Piazza del Popolo, as the bartender and the flight attendant passed a waist-high black fence with a beautiful cycloid of wrought-iron arches and neared the great obelisk in the center of the park, that she figured out why Enrico had brought Bowden to his uncle’s. Piero had a little place in the country. In Tuscany. No doubt the fellow had a hunting permit. Perhaps even a concealed carry license. His nephew had brought the flight attendant to his uncle’s apartment to get the woman a gun.





30




“So you’re really not going to allow me to make you one of my perfect Negronis?” Enrico asked her as they entered the lobby of the hotel where she was staying. Instinctively she looked around to see if any members of the flight crew were present. None were. The lobby was so small compared to the Royal Phoenician—more living room than ballroom—the ceilings low and the decor modest. She noted the faux Renaissance tapestries on the walls and the fainting couch where she had sat that afternoon.

“I’m not,” she said, though she glanced longingly at the bar as they approached the elevators, her ears alive to the clink of glasses and laughter and the music that occasionally bubbled up and over the bacchanal.

They had eaten dinner at a romantic trattoria with brick walls and lit candles in wrought-iron chandeliers where he was friends with the sous chef, and so they ate like royalty for almost nothing, which was about what they had for a budget. She had never had a panzanella salad so good, each tomato a different shade of orange or red. The house wines were excellent, Enrico told her, but Cassie insisted that she wasn’t going to drink, and so Enrico didn’t either. She sat with her back to the wall and sipped sparkling water, and stared at the entrance to the restaurant. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. She wasn’t sure who she was looking for. She didn’t honestly believe that Miranda—or someone—would appear in the dining room, but after Fiumicino she wasn’t willing to sit with her back to the door.

It had been a lovely evening, though it had been and (she told herself) would be almost stoic in its denial: no booze, no sex. She was bringing him upstairs to her room so he could hand her the gun. The fact was that she knew more about firearms than he did. But he didn’t dare bring out the Beretta at the restaurant, and so they had agreed they would retreat to her hotel room so he could give it to her there. She’d been clear that they weren’t going to have sex, but she knew that he nevertheless remained hopeful. He was charming beyond his years; he was as unaccustomed to someone saying no as she was to saying it.



* * *



? ?

When they got to her room, she saw that the square red light on the desk phone was blinking. Instantly her anxiety rose. Enrico stood patiently by the window, his back to her as he stood bordered by the drapes, while she picked up the receiver and listened. It turned out that she had two messages.

“Hey, there. It’s Makayla. I’m just checking in. How did I not think to get your cell? I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Do you still want to have that drink? Do you feel up to joining some of us for dinner, maybe? I’m in room seven-thirteen. It’s a little before five.”

She made a mental note of the other flight attendant’s room number and then listened to the second message:

“Hi, Cassie, it’s me again. Makayla. Some of us are meeting in the lobby at seven thirty. Join us if you’d like. No pressure. Maybe text me when you wake up or get back from wherever you are,” she said, and this time she left her cell number. Cassie wrote it down and texted back that she was sorry she hadn’t gotten the messages. She wrote that she had gone for a long walk, but now she was back in her hotel room and she was fine. She was in for the night. She thanked her.

“Everything is okay?” asked Enrico.

“It is. That was just another member of the crew wanting to be reassured that I was safely back in my room.”

“Good.”

He picked up the paperback Tolstoy on the nightstand beside the hotel’s digital clock. “Did you ever read Carlo Levi?”

“No.”

“You should—if you like Tolstoy. He wrote beautifully about Italian peasants. My people, once. He had a soul like Tolstoy. ‘The future has an ancient heart.’ I think I have that right.”