Rags & Bones Page 19

  Less than a liter, by the look of it.

  Effing movies.

  There was no body, though. No body, and no Connie. Only red water and rocks, and a scattering of odd-looking black feathers, bobbing in the current.

  That was the first problem.

  That was how it all began.

  II. La Maladizione (The Curse)

  Within the hour, word had gotten out, and calls from the States came flooding in.

  Production shut down. The cast sequestered themselves inside the small, warm darkness of the Bar Il Castello across the way, too afraid to enter their own trailers.

  By lunchtime, the paparazzi posted blurry photos of the wreckage online at TopPop Italia.

  By sieste, the polizia swarmed the Castello. The normally chained gates were taped off, surrounded by red-and-white-striped cones. There was no way in or out—and crowds of curious Italian tourists stood in the piazza, looking up at the large, stone potato-castle in front of them, wondering what all the fuss was about. Farther back, crowds of paparazzi sharpened their long, long lenses like so many teeth, like antennae.

  An hour after that, the Guardia Costiera began dredging the harbor. It was the greatest spectacle Otranto had seen since plumbing first came to the region.

  Bigger, even.

  Inside the Castello bar, the cast put on a different sort of show, even if no one but Theo and the bartender were there to see it. “I’ve a mind to call the British ambassador. Those are my personal possessions. It’s a matter of security.” Sir Manny was unhappy because his cell phone was trapped inside the Castello, in the leather saddlebag he liked to sling over his director’s chair.

  “Security? Don’t you mean insecurity?” Pippa rolled her eyes, tightening her clutch on her Coca-Cola Light. Theo wondered if she was going to throw it at him.

  “Who’s the one complaining about the paps getting their bad side up online, eh, darling?” Sir Manny narrowed his eyes.

  Sullen Matilda glared back at him, sitting as she was between them. If drinks were thrown, she’d be the first casualty.

  Theo decided not to wait to find out. Instead, he slipped outside, moving quickly past the production assistants who stood guard at the doorway.

  He’d had enough drama for one morning.

  It wasn’t until Theo made his way to the shadows behind his father’s trailer that he heard the shouting coming from inside.

  “Don’t answer that. Blocked number—that’s Bulgaria, and I got nothing to say to Bulgaria.” His father sounded frantic, and the phone only kept buzzing.

  “Jerry. It’s online already. Bulgaria knows. New York knows. LA probably knows.” Diego, the Italian dialogue coach, answered in perfect English.

  “What is there to know? If there’s no body, there’s no body. It can’t be a murder if no one was murdered.” His father sounded panicked.

  “Tell that to the polizia, Jerry. They’re shutting us down. You know that’s what comes next.” Diego was from Malie, the next town over, which meant he was the only person who knew anything about what the police or the town magistrates or the Italian film commission was actually going to do at any given time. “You know what they think, the whole castle’s cursed. We shouldn’t have come here. They shouldn’t have let us film here, no matter how many euros crossed hands.”

  “You’re acting like we bribed them.” Jerome was shrill—the phones were still ringing.

  “Because we did.” Diego sounded relaxed. “You did, anyway.”

  “It’s called business. I’m not in the mafia. And there’s no curse, Diego. Unless you’re talking about that fakakta plumbing.”

  Theo took a breath, climbing the steps to the trailer door. No one answered his knock, so he pushed his way inside, where his father and Diego sat at a small table, a bottle of some kind of gold-colored liquor between them.

  “Jerome,” Theo said, clearing his throat. He always called his father by his first name on set. Anything else, the director maintained, would have been weird. Theo thought this was weird, but his father ignored him—just as he did now.

  Diego nodded at Theo, but he didn’t stop talking. “You don’t think it’s cursed, Jerry, and I don’t think it. But you have to ask—why have they kept the place closed down, all these years?”

  Jerome poured himself another yellow drink. “Because it’s Italy. Because no one got around to unlocking it. Why the hell do I care, so long as it’s open tomorrow.”

  Diego shook his head. “No, Jerry. Because it’s in the book. The book is about the castle—this cursed castle. And the curse is all anyone has on their mind since Connie … ” His words trailed off.

  “What curse?” The moment Theo said the words, his father looked at him like he’d popped some sort of peculiar bubble.

  Diego pushed a tattered book toward Theo. “Hubris. Vanity. Thinking the studio and our distributors are more important than a thousand years of local history.”

  Theo stared at the book. “That’s all in this book?” The cracking black leather cover was embossed with fine gold print. He hadn’t seen it in the trailer before. His father didn’t usually read books, especially books as old as this one. The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole. That’s what the gold letters said, on the cover.

  “Not in so many words,” said Diego. “But see for yourself. The story of the castle is really the story of losing the castle.”

  Theo opened it to where one particular passage was underlined in red ink on the ivory page. He began to read.

  “That the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it—”

  “Too large?” Theo looked up, confused. “What does that mean?”

  “It means, we’re going to be driven out of the castle,” Diego said, tapping the book.

  “It doesn’t say that.” Jerome shoved the book out of Theo’s hands.

  “Why not? We’re the largest cast and crew ever to come to Otranto,” Diego offered unhelpfully.

  “More like, it means the hundred thousand large we paid to use this dump wasn’t large enough,” snorted Jerome. “So now someone’s screwing with us.”

  “Or the size of your ego,” said Theo, looking at his father. “Extra-large.”

  Silence.

  “I mean, our egos. You know. Hollyweird.” Theo shoved the book away, but the damage had been done. It didn’t happen very often, but on occasion his father heard him. So Theo kept talking. “Besides, if someone wants to start tossing people off cliffs—I mean, who’s even the lord of the castle now, anyway?”

  Jerome sighed. “I’d say it depends on how you look at it. I think the city owns the castle, but a threat’s a threat. It could be meant for any one of us. Sir Manfred—he’s literally a lord. Pippa—she’s a lady.”

  “Not much of one,” Theo pointed out.

  Jerome smiled, softening toward his son. “Technically, anyway. And there’s me.”

  “You are the boss man.” Diego nodded. “Lord of the set.”

  “And Dante,” Theo suggested, trying not to roll his eyes at Diego.

  “Who?” Jerome furrowed his brow. He was still caught up in reconsidering his own lordly status, Theo imagined.

  Diego sighed. “Dante. You know. The poor schmoe with the castle key.”

  “Who?” Jerome looked at him blankly.

  Theo tried to help. “The guy with the key. He brings you your lunch, like, every day? His name’s Dante.”

  “Sure. Dante, Diego, whatever.” Jerome shrugged. Diego looked insulted. Theo tried not to laugh, but the obvious point hung in the air between them.

  When it came to everyone involved with The Castle of Otranto, the movie—how could heads get any bigger?

  More to the point, who wouldn’t want to push any one of them off a cliff?

  Theo shivered.

  Jerome’s phone buzzed again, and he picked it up. “Now fakakta Bulgaria is texting me. He’s here.”

  “
Here, here?” Now even Diego looked stressed.

  “The cab stand, at Porta Terra.” Jerome dropped the phone, pouring himself a tall, yellow drink. “Do me a favor, will you, Theo? Go get him.”

  Of course Theo would. He was a lowly PA. He’d have to do whatever Jerome said, even if he wasn’t his father.

  Which was how Theodore Gray came to meet Bulgaria for himself. Bulgaria—and the beautiful Isabella.

  Because nobody told him Bulgaria had a daughter.

  When Theo reached the Porta Terra, there was exactly one cab waiting at the stand—not a surprise, really, since there was exactly one cab company in all of Otranto—across from the pizza restaurant. This was only one of the reasons you ignored the people who said there was no tipping in Italy; you pissed off the one cab company in town, and you were never going to the airport again. Theo’s father had learned that the hard way, which was why Diego had now been made to hire a car of his own.

  This afternoon, the cab driver looked irritated, smoking while the engine ran. In the back, a man sat on the edge of his seat, his short, gray-suited legs dangling out the side. They didn’t reach the ground.

  Bulgaria.

  A girl sat on a nearby bench, Indian-style, reading a book. An army backpack sat on the bench next to her. She was all kinds of hanging hair—in her face, down her back. It didn’t seem to bother her; she blew the dark strands out of her face only when the wind blew them directly into her eyes.

  Theo cleared his throat. “Hello?”

  No response.

  Neither the man nor the girl seemed to be in any kind of hurry, which apparently made the taxi driver rev the car’s engine even more.

  Theo took a tentative step closer. “Excuse me?” The girl still didn’t look up. Neither did the man. Instead, he growled into the phone. “BS. It’s all BS.”

  Theo tried again. “Sir?”

  The man barked, “Don’t tell me this isn’t Jerome Gray playing the odds. He knows he has a crap production, and he’s doing everything he can to shut it down and cash out before he hangs his own cash out on the line.”

  The girl finally looked up from her book and scowled. “Dad. Dad!” She turned to look at Theo. “Sorry. He’s kind of a jerk. But I guess you’re probably picking that up on your own.”

  “Me too.”

  “You’re a jerk?”

  “Yeah. No. My dad. I’m Theo.”

  “Isabella. Daughter of Jerk.”

  “Likewise. We must be related.”

  “Hope not.”

  The taxi driver revved the engine reproachfully.

  Theo smiled, and Isabella smiled back, and he didn’t say anything after that. He was too busy staring at what was, however improbably, the most beautiful creature he’d seen in seventeen years, let alone the last seven weeks.

  Long black hair hung in straight lines—spiky black bangs—over pale skin and peach-colored lips. Strangely light eyes. Dark everything else.

  She was like a Venus, Theo thought. She could have been in a thousand movies; she could have been a model …

  “I hate this shit,” she said, squirming uncomfortably.

  In the front seat, the restless driver was squirming even more.

  Theo was positively smitten. It was as if somewhere offscreen, rogue cherubs were staking him with every arrow in the prop trailer.

  The short man in the taxi shouted louder, unaware of the relative significance of the moment. “But it’s not his cash out there, it’s mine—”

  Theo and Isabella rolled their eyes, right at the very same moment. Friendships had been born for less, Theo thought.

  Friendships, or something more.

  The driver began to honk, one long blast after another. They’d been sitting at the Porta Terra for nearly a quarter of an hour now; enough was enough.

  Then the man slid out of the car and onto the hot black pavement. He motioned to Theo. “Can you pay the guy, kid? Don’t have anything smaller than a hundy—” He waved a fistful of euros in Theo’s face.

  Theo scavenged in his pocket, until he handed over every last euro to the angry driver. Bulgaria wouldn’t be getting a cab to the airport anytime soon. Theo didn’t care. It was funny. At least, he hoped Isabella thought so.

  She did.

  They laughed about it all the way back to the Palazzo Papaleo, the only hotel in town, Isabella hitching her backpack easily over her shoulder, while her father slipped on the hot stones in his patent leather loafers.

  Connie may be missing, but the universe was kind, and all was right in the world.

  “Are you crying?” Isabella leaned toward Theo, curiously, the moment the cobblestoned piazza of the cattedrale bumped into sight, just across from the hotel.

  “It’s the stupid sirocco; it’s blown something into my eyes.” Theo rubbed his sleeve into his eyelid. “Everything’s fine, see?”

  “I love the wind. It changes everything,” Isabella said, pulling his sleeve away from his face. Then she smiled and ran toward the hotel, and Theo knew right then everything really would be all right.

  Only the fact of the wind promised otherwise.

  III. L’Investigazione (The Investigation)

  The postcard-perfect sunset came and went, all peach and blue and geraniums and wrought iron and fuzzy orange stripes as it should be, before anyone came to meet Theo on the roof of the hotel.

  He waited for Isabella, but it was only his father who finally appeared. It was disappointing, of course, but Theo was used to disappointment.

  Jerome Gray slid into the chair across the table from Theo. He poured himself a glass of wine from the communal jug on the table—the sort Theo knew had been filled with basically a gas pump nozzle from the working vineyard nearest Galatina—without saying a word.

  “So. Bulgaria.” Jerome played with the bottom of his glass.

  “Yeah?” Theo didn’t look at his father.

  “It would be helpful if you could entertain the daughter. Bulgaria and I, we have some tough conversations. Financials, that kind of thing.”

  Theo nodded.

  “Because Bulgaria is a total dickwad,” his father added. He couldn’t let it go.

  “Got it.” Takes one to know one. So Theo thought. But still, he said nothing.

  Jerome Gray drained his glass.

  By the time Isabella and her father appeared at the rooftop restaurant of the hotel, the first jug was empty, and Theo’s father was on his best behavior.

  The wine had been flowing for hours. Hours. Better than the conversation, at least between the dickwads. Theo sighed. Though he had noticed his father not picking up his phone when it buzzed this time, either. “It’s New York,” Jerome had said. “I have nothing to say to New York, right?” Bulgaria had agreed. After that, Theo hadn’t bothered listening.

  Entertain her. That was what his father had said.

  Entertain me. That was what the peach lips said. She didn’t often touch her wineglass—neither one of them had needed to—but still, the dark red liquid reminded Theo of the red on the splintered trailer doors, dashed on the rocks of the harbor. He didn’t feel sad, though. Not for Connie, not this time.

  He was exhilarated.

  Isabella smiled at him, sort of a smirk, while they both ignored the conversation around them.

  “Do you even know what they’re talking about?” She leaned forward, breathing the heady scent of muscat grape into his face. Theo felt like he was going to pass out.

  “The movie, probably. Sixty million American dollars, most likely. All blown over the side of a cliff, as far as we know.”

  “All ruined by one dead guy.” The words sounded sweet, any words would have. Even those.

  “Exactly. At least, missing.”

  I love you. I mean, I think I love you. I’m going to love you. You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.

  “What?” She looked amused.

  “Nothing.” Theo looked at his plate of pasta, shaped like clumsy ears.

  “Did yo
u say something?”

  “No.” Theo shrugged. “Did you hear something?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Do you want to get out of here?”

  “Is that even a question?”

  They were gone before either of their fathers noticed.

  Theo first took Isabella’s hand in the alley leading toward the Cattedrale di Otranto. Her fingers were cold and calm, while he felt warm and worried.

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

  “You should see the inside. The mosaic floor. It’s actually quite insane. Like, Zeus and Hera meet Adam and Eve insane.” Theo smiled. “At least, insane by a monk’s standards.”

  “Monks have very high standards.” Isabella smiled back at him. “And you sound like you’re pitching a movie.”

  Theo winced. “Speaking of which. Why are you here, I mean, with your father?”

  “He always makes me meet him when he comes to Italy. I’m north of here, up in Viterbo for the year. My junior year. Intensive Latin and Italian. School Year Abroad.”

  “College?”

  “High school.” Theo felt a rush of relief; they were the same age, after all.

  “I thought you guys were from Bulgaria? I mean, that’s your dad, right?”

  She shook her head. “We moved there when I was thirteen. Low-budget movie capital of the world. Before that it was strictly California. Sorry to disappoint you. I’m nothing too exotic.”

  I’m not disappointed. He didn’t say it, but he realized it was true.

  “Me, either.”

  They turned the corner and Theo found himself staring at a green wooden door. He stopped short. “That’s Connie’s place.”

  “Conrad? The one with the trailer that blew into the ocean? The dead guy?”

  “Technically, he’s missing. But yeah, you know. It’s pretty crazy. The whole sirocco thing.” Talking about it made Theo more uncomfortable than he wanted to admit. He was only seventeen; he’d never actually known a dead person until now.

  Or missing, he reminded himself.

  “If the guy’s really dead, where are all the cops? Why isn’t the place, like, roped off or something?” She looked excited.