So Strange and Wild Ch. 02: The High Priestess

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

The restaurant was hidden in a failing strip mall. Veiled by the last of a summer rain. When I got out of my car--heat draping me like a wet towel--the sun sprang from a dozen fresh puddles. The afternoon light was iridescent in the spitting drizzle, but it could do little to improve the row of dull tinted windows or the drab, gray script above the entrance: "Melograno."

Inside, the joint was dry, chilly, and edged with chrome, like a morgue freezer. Ownership had split the difference between "homespun '50s diner" and "Mafia-run casino," and the result did justice to neither. Pink and blue neon skidded off cheap ceramic tiles and spill-proof carpet. A row of half-moon booths was clad in tufted white pleather. And even at lunch, the place was all but empty.

In that room, on our first meeting, Lucia Visconti stood out like blue hydrangeas in a rundown laundromat.

She was the only woman in the restaurant--unmissable in her azure summer dress. Waving off the bartender's brief interest, I crossed the floor to introduce myself. A sleek, shapely vision rose out of her seat, extending one hand. Five gleaming yellow talons.

I forced myself to smile. "Ms. Visconti?" Her palm felt like satin. "Sorry I'm late."

"'Lucia,' please. Visconti was my father's name."

"Is this his place?" I asked, sliding into the booth. The question was flippant, but it passed for conversation. And I was curious why the partner in a downtown firm had chosen to meet me here, at an affected trattoria on the outskirts of the city.

"Melograno belongs to my brother-in-law," Visconti said fondly. "I take all my favorite meetings here, with J.B.'s blessing. Everyone knows me, and everyone forgets I was ever here."

She sat again, whisking her skirts beneath her. Pale blue eyes shone out of her sculpted face, which was otherwise hopelessly Italian. She had all the traditional features: high cheekbones and sharp brows, the jaw they'd stamped into ancient coins. A single mole on her upper lip. She even worse a matching pastel headscarf like some bygone movie star, though she was rapidly untying this to expose long, dark tresses. Only one detail was wrong: instead of an imperial beak, Visconti had an upturned nose that was a little too perfect--probably a gift from papa on her eighteenth birthday. She looked to be in her late thirties now, but she masked her age with dermal fillers and a queen's ransom in tasteful makeup.

"It's not nice to stare, Mr. Rocchi."

"I apologize," I said. "Bad habit."

"From your line of work, I suppose? You observe people?"

"Sure," I said, breaking her gaze. "Could be." I looked around at the handful of other patrons. They were mostly low-talking, heavyset guys with lots of nose hair. Cream slacks draped loosely over dress shoes.

She waited for me to lend her my attention again. "My uncles would say you're un allocco," she said slyly. "An owl. You know that one?"

Her accent was unpredictable: New York? Jersey? She had a firm Italian contralto, but sometimes the notes fluttered upward to something more breathless and Californian, like she'd picked up her speech from old movies.

"I'm fourth or fifth generation, Ms. Visconti. All I know is my name ends with a vowel."

Smiling faintly, she picked up her fork and spiked two pieces of pasta from the dish in front of her. The overheard lights glanced off her jewelry: gold crescent on her middle finger, gold bangle around her left wrist.

"You must call me Lucia," she insisted, lifting the portion to her gleaming lips, her teeth. She was used to getting her way.

"Lucia," I said, giving in, "why are we here? The woman from your firm told me that things were settled." To emphasize the point, I nodded at the iPad on the table next to her. It looked like she had something to show me.

Visconti took her time savoring the mouthful. Then swallowed, smiling. "You're still in the clear," she replied.

"So ... what? Is there news?" It had been a nearly two-hour drive to the restaurant, and I was impatient to get home. To return to my private wallowing. It didn't help that the place was piping in someone's idea of tasteful jazz. A faint, endless plinking.

"You should order something," said Visconti. "Keep your strength up. And the food is good, trust me! Don't let the decor fool you."

I leaned back in the booth, unsure how to proceed. Visconti was not what I'd been expecting. Her blue summer dress was flouncy, but it couldn't hide the curves beneath; a broad leather belt cinched the waist, showing her hourglass. Her skin was porcelain--pale, expensive. And she was laden with jewelry, just not a wedding ring; I was newly conscious that I still wore mine. Her most prominent piece was an outsize gold cross necklace that nestled in her bosom, leading the eye.

For a city lawyer, she had a shimmering, unreal quality. A timeworn glamor. And after months of grief and guilt, a life turned upside down, I decided she was a welcome sight.

"What are you having?" I sighed.

She pointed out the elements with her fork. "Orecchiette with apple, kale, and pomegranate. And an espresso martini." The drink sat beside her, barely touched. She'd been waiting for me.

"Lucia," I said scoldingly, trying to match her tone, "it's not even one o'clock."

She batted her lashes, precise as claws. "I needed the caffeine. Some of us are late to bed and early to rise, Mr. Rocchi. You should try it."

The remark was barbed, because I hadn't exactly dressed for lunch with legal counsel. I was wearing crumpled linen slacks with no belt, white sneakers with ankle socks, and a slubby olive henley that didn't stand up to the restaurant's AC. My hair was untamed after a hasty, late-morning shower, and my stubble had long since turned to silver bristles. Visconti was looking at me not with pity, exactly, but almost in confusion.

"I'm grieving," I ventured, knowing it sounded too much like an apology.

"I believe you," she said. "And thanks to my firm's efforts back in February, so do the police."

She kept her eyes on my face while she beckoned the server. A scrawny college kid came over, clutching a laminated menu. He had a wispy blond moustache, acne scars, and a black polo shirt and slacks that more or less matched. Probably someone's son or nephew.

I refused the the menu. "I'll have what she's having," I said, gesturing at the table. "The orecchiette. Same order."

Visconti didn't spare the kid a glance as he moped away. She was too busy watching me. Clicking her acrylics on the lip of the table.

"Perfect pronunciation, paisan."

"'Orecchiette?' I'm a big words guy," I said, pointing at the iPad. "Should be right there in my file."

Raising her eyebrows, Visconti woke her tablet and opened something--a PDF. "Thomas Anthony Rocchi," she read aloud. "38 years old. Born on ... Valentine's Day! 1984." She listed off my known address in two states, my parents' names, my alma mater, and at last, inevitably, my marital status: "Unmarried. One former wife, Iris Braithwaite--recently deceased."

That last word hung in the air like a misplayed piano chord. Like a phrase that wouldn't resolve. I did my best to keep my face neutral, but I suspect I failed, because Visconti's big, blue eyes had turned tender. It would have been so easy to drown in them.

I cleared my throat. "I was working with Penny before. What happened to her?"

"Penelope Underwood is an excellent attorney," Visconti said smoothly. "And she had good things to say about you." Flipping forward on her iPad--nails clacking on glass--she stopped on a high-contrast scan of handwritten notes: "'Thoughtful and professional,' it says here. 'Honest to a fault.'"

"Seemed like the wisest course when you're accused of murder."

Visconti cocked her head like a cat spotting a bird. "You were never accused of anything, Mr. Rocchi. You did the right thing, reaching out to us."

"I've seen the true crime shows. I know how cops and lawyers think. It's always the husband, a boyfriend. Or a male relative--father, son ..."

"Holy Ghost?"

I let my eyes rove over Visconti's serene face, her twitching lips. Was she mocking me? I knew Penny had been skeptical of my more speculative theories about how Iris had died; perhaps she'd passed them on to her boss.

"All I mean is that the ... perpetrator is always a man," I said carefully. The word I didn't choose--'killer'--howled in the depths of my skull. "Usually someone close to the victim."

Visconti, finishing another bite, made a regretful sound. "I apologize for the joke," she said. "I want you to know I trust your version of events."

"Does it help, believing your client is innocent? In court, I mean."

A smile slid across her face like quicksilver. "That's a pretty thought."

The server reappeared to place a glass by my elbow: a second espresso martini. Before I could tell him he'd made a mistake, Lucia reached across the table to lightly encircle my left wrist. The gesture surprised me--her touch was gentle, yet assured--and I froze with my mouth open, saying nothing. I wondered if she could feel my heart beating under her thumb.

When the server moved on, she chuckled: "You told the boy 'same order,' and he took you at your word. So enjoy, Anthony. Drink up."

She spoke my name with relish, as if it were part of an incantation, and I found myself compelled. Picking up the glass with my free hand, I brought the drink to my lips. It tasted of cocoa, coffee, sugar; the vodka was neatly concealed. And there was a prick of something else--an oily hint of citrus. Cointreau? Only when I took a second, longer sip, did Visconti release my wrist. I immediately missed her touch, and so did the rest of me: to my faint shame, my dick stirred under my slacks.

"You brought your iPad," I said, trying to refocus. "I thought maybe you'd have an update or a lead. Something."

Visconti clasped her hands on the table. "No," she said softly, inclining her head. "I wanted to tell you, in person, that your wife's case is about to be closed. The police have deemed her death an accident."

Whatever she said after that, I didn't catch it. I was thinking of petals tumbling through the late fall air. Bones on rising pavement. I saw the sordid club with velvet drapes, and mouths in profile--red as sealing wax, ripe as cherries.

Visconti was watching me closely. Her manner made me think of a scientist peering through one-way glass, taking notes on an experiment gone awry. Her voice brought me back to the present.

"--eeling all right?"

"I'm good," I declared. "Never better. Did they look into my wife's ... connections? Fourteen, the club? The people there. I told the detectives everything I know."

If Visconti thought my question pitiable, she hid it well. "The police didn't think that avenue worth pursuing. What was it you said?" She scrolled through her files till she found the relevant part of my statement: "'Fourteen is a sex club, invite only.'" She went on mechanically, repeating my own words back to me. "'The people Iris met there, I don't have names, but they were country club types. Lobbyists, bankers, pols. They were all in that club together.'"

"You're suggesting the cops were bought off?" I asked, too eager.

Now the pity was vivid on her face. "No, Mr. Rocchi. I'm suggesting it all sounds... fanciful. Worse, it made you sound suspicious. Trying to pin your wife's death on some elite sex ring, a cabal ... what would even be their motive?"

I had asked myself the same question. "Maybe it was an accident--I don't know. They told me everything they found in her system. But someone was there when she died."

"Ah, yes. Your phone call that evening. You heard another voice in the background."

I nodded. Not a voice, exactly. Just a short little whistle--a musical phrase. A stranger had walked into the unseen room that night, cheerfully repeating the song in their head. Then stopped short, realizing they might be overheard. When I registered the sound, I asked Iris, "What was that?" And she had replied: "No one." But those notes remained with me. Four ascendant. Then a fifth, falling.

Visconti combed a hand through her hair--the glossy chestnut waves that fell to her shoulders. "Not a great piece of evidence in your favor," she said, "to be the last call received by the deceased."

"I was nearly a thousand miles away. Penny was able to prove that."

"A thousand miles and six inches," she offered, pursing her lips. "You were deep in another woman's pussy at the time, correct?"

The jab hurt more than she intended, in ways she couldn't have understood. But I tried not to let it show. Tried to ignore the ease with which she'd said "pussy"--and the way it sent blood to my crotch.

"Why are you suddenly interested, Ms. Visconti? You don't strike me as the moralizing kind."

She took a long, leisurely sip of her martini, and her eyes closed in evident pleasure. For a moment, I could appreciate how neatly she'd painted her lids: the thinnest thread of yellow, tending into blues and purple. Like a sunset, or a bruise.

"It was clear, early on," she said, eyes snapping open, "that establishing your innocence would be trivial. But the police also know me by name. If they'd heard I was representing you directly, they might have thought your wife's death more suspicious. With Penny on the case, a junior associate, they would assume I'd judged the matter ... beneath me."

"You assigned a junior lawyer," I said, bristling, "to a murder investigation?"

"Again, Mr. Rocchi, you were in no danger. You were only ever a 'person of interest.'"

"That wasn't how it felt."

Visconti leaned forward, extending her bare arms across the table. The motion brought her breasts together, and the gold cross between them swung free, flashing as it danced in the light.

"Anthony," she said, voice solemn. "I promise you were in capable hands."

This time, she took both my wrists in her grasp. She turned them over with care, exposing my palms--like a mystic preparing to read my fortune. Or a doctor inspecting my wounds. I could have just gotten up, walked out. But I didn't, because this was the first time in nearly five months that I'd felt acutely conscious of another's touch. No embrace at the funeral, no tearful kiss on my cheek, had done as much for me as Lucia's mere fingertips. Unbidden, my cock jerked hard in my slacks.

But then my pasta arrived. Visconti forced to withdraw. The server's eyes darted as he set down the plate, yet he seemed to immediately shake off what he'd seen. By the time he'd returned to his station by the bar, his face was blank, uninterested.

"Eat," said Visconti with maternal sureness. "There's something else I want you to hear."

So I ate, and she talked. To my surprise, the pasta was excellent.

She told me that she'd been intrigued by my case from the start, even before I'd made that fateful call to her office. Reading about my wife's death online, Lucia had seized upon the least interesting detail: Iris Braithwaite--44, found dead outside my condo--still bore the surname of her father, Bram, the bestselling mystery novelist. Back in the early '90s, Bram Braithwate had made his money grinding out nearly two dozen grim, lauded detective novels. Each was set in his native Glasgow, and each had the same dedication:

To my darling daughters, Iris and Vee.

An ocean away--in Bensonhurst, NY--a teenage Lucia Visconti had devoured Bram's books in her childhood bedroom. Later, she'd reread them as an English major at Barnard.

"The early consensus was that Braithwaite was a British inheritor of Chandler or Cain," she said now, her eyes glittering with genuine feeling. "Hard-boiled noir transplanted to Scotland. Today, you can earn a Ph.D. in gender studies by reappraising his work. His depiction of stunted masculinity. The buried eroticism." And taking up her martini glass, Lucia drained it in one gulp.

"I've read the books," I said, a little bored by her fervor. "Nothing's buried too deep."

The truth was I'd had this conversation more times than I could count--at dinner parties and in snooty bars; at symposia and my own damn wedding. The specter of Bram Braithwaite, famous author, had chased his daughter and I throughout the few short years we'd known each other. "Daddy would have hated you," Iris had told me more than once, and she'd meant it approvingly, as testament to my character. Yet even after she was gone, the talk still turned to her raging drunk of a father.

"I take it you prefer your own work?" Lucia asked slyly, flashing her teeth.

I prodded at the pasta with my fork, deciding how best to dodge the question. I settled on indignation: "Do you do this with every victim's family? Drag them out to lunch to talk airport fiction?"

Lucia returned a lazy, unfazed shrug. "What was I to think? The mysterious death of a mystery writer's daughter--it was like something out of his books. I was hooked, Anthony! And then you stepped into the picture."

I gave up on my meal, moved the plate aside. "I'm glad the worst year of my life has been so ... thrilling."

Disappointment washed over her face. "You keep pretending I've upset you," she said. "Why? Oh, you're miserable, I give you that. But my questions don't offend you. So cut the bullshit."

I could have fought back, but I didn't. Instead, I raised my head proudly and tried to stare her down. Which proved difficult: Lucia just smiled back at me, sphinxlike, her eyes as bright and unreadable as the summer sky.

Finally, I admitted defeat: "Finish your story."

She leaned forward on her elbows, inviting conspiracy. "You didn't kill your wife, Anthony. Nor did you hire some goon to do it. Both things were obvious to Penny, and she shared every last detail with me. Yet the more I picked over the story you told her, the murkier it started to seem." An excited grin took hold of Lucia's face as she spoke, and I could suddenly picture her younger self, poring over the clues she'd found in one of Bram's novels. "Can I show you what I mean?" she asked eagerly, motioning toward her iPad.

Before I could answer, she scooted around the booth to sit next to me. Our shoulders were nearly touching, and I became aware of a subtle scent I'd been inhaling for some time: the bewitching vanilla of her perfume. She shared the tablet screen with me, unlocking it to display a two-page spread of black-and-white photos. They showed a hotel hallway I'd hoped to never see again.

"Here you are," she said, pointing at my grayscale image approaching the camera. "And here she is: Bethany Abel. An MFA candidate at the University of Iowa. 25, 26, something like that? More than ten years your junior, anyway. Tall and honey-blonde. Basically a cartoon milkmaid. Nothing like your wife."

"Careful," I said, but the word came out a croak. I was watching Lucia's zoom in on the younger woman's figure, which even these pixelated captures couldn't hope to conceal. The memories were flooding back in full, lavish technicolor: beestung lips and taut pale flesh; a body like sin, like Eve, like envy. Remembering Bethany, my cock roared back to life.

"The hotel was quick to supply this footage," Lucia went on, "once Penny explained our need. Midnight in Iowa, neatly timestamped. There are no cameras in the rooms, of course, but we both know what happened inside. You gave us all the details we wanted--and more. 'Honest to a fault,' remember?"

"I answered my lawyer's questions," I said, conscious of Lucia's heady presence, her own abundant curves. My rising erection had somehow gotten trapped against my thigh; there was nowhere left to go.

"You felt it important to leave nothing out."

"That's right."

"You told Penny that you 'made love' to Bethany Abel for two hours," murmured Lucia. "Then tried calling your wife again, around 2 a.m. This time she didn't pick up."