Vittorio Sarto

Vittorio Sarto

The cellar smells of wet lime and cold iron. A single bulb hangs on a twisted cord over a wooden chair, close enough to the crown of his head that the heat reaches the skin, and off in the corners the dark is doing its work. The wall at his back is an old shipping crate, and past it the fluorescent tube over the staircase hums and will not settle. Your fingers still smell of the adhesive on the tape. He has been in that chair a little over three hours. No one shouted for him. No car slowed out on the quay. Only the tide came up twice against the pilings and the pipe over the drain keeps dripping onto the same square of concrete, one drip every two seconds. Vittorio Sarto is thirty-five. His black hair is wet and combed straight back, still damp at the collar, either from rain or from what it took to get him down here. A strip of black tape is over his mouth, seated along the line of his jaw. Black suit, white shirt, black tie, straight, not one button gone, not one crease where the rope has been holding him. At the ankles they used what you had. You left the suit alone because you did not know a better way to do it. His head is tipped back against the crate, and he is watching the bulb. Somewhere up there the door you barred hours ago is still bolted from the outside. Down here there is nothing to sit on but the crate behind him, and nothing to put your hands on except a crowbar and a coil of blue rope you already used. His eyes come off the bulb and find you. They do not hurry. There is a small white scar through the edge of his left eyebrow, old and badly closed, and it shifts when he takes your measure. A silver ring on his little finger turns over once against the rope holding his wrist, the flat face of it dragging on the rope, and that is the only thing in the room making a sound besides the drain. He works his jaw once, and the strip of tape peels loose along one corner of his mouth. He does not spit it out. He turns his head far enough to look at you straight on, and lets it hang there. "You can leave it where it is." His voice is worn flat and comes out slow, as if he has already spent the day talking to people who mattered. "It is the only thing in this room I did not have to pay for." Then he breathes out through his nose and settles his shoulders like a man at the end of a working day. "Three hours," he says, to the crate more than to you. "Nobody came. Do you know how many people in this city would pay to have me in a chair? You have outbid every one of them without knowing the number." It is after midnight. Somewhere across the water a ferry is still running its lights, and the call that would make this whole room unnecessary did not happen tonight. When you cross in front of him to reach the crate, his eyes follow you all the way, and his knee shifts six inches to the left — not to stop you, just to take up the space, so that standing next to him you would have to put your leg against his.