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“Two, three days at most,” was Doc Cunningham’s estimate for how long it’d been in the water. “Just after it was sawed off.”
“Sawed?
He nodded gravely and then, with a scalpel, scraped surfaces of two exposed bones. “You see how clean these are, as if the radius and ulna were simply detached. As if the hand belonged to a mannequin.”
Through the smoky lamplight, she squinted at the doctor’s examining table. The hand was displayed there, palm up, as if to check for rain. Her initial disgust at seeing it, wrapping it in oilskin, and transporting it to the office above the diner, was surpassed only by the knowledge that other parts were no doubt still floating out there and liable to be snagged, that she might have to reassemble them puzzle-like. This single segment would do just fine for now, she reckoned. Already, it told her a lot.
“No manual laborer, this one,” the doctor concluded. “No calluses. And not much of a fighter, either. No bruises on the knuckles, that is if he led with his left. No skin beneath the nails.”
Yet key deduction came not from the hand but from the ring the doctor removed from it. Leaning over the table, Mary Beth saw that there were eagles embossed on each of its sides, and on its face, a bundle of what looked like sticks.
“Fasces,” Cunningham said.
“Excuse me?”
“Fasces. The ancient Roman symbol for strength. One rod is easy to break but try it with a bunch of them tied together—impossible.” He lit one cigarette with the smoldering end of another. “It’s where they get the word fascism.”
“An Italian ring…”
“Not necessarily. We use it, too. Just look on the back of a dime.”
Mary Beth fished into the pocket of the black leather jacket she had just started wearing again, for the fall, and found an old Mercury head. Holding it up to the light and turning it around, she suddenly gasped, “Jiminy Cricket.” Smack in the center of the tails side, right next to E Pluribus Unum, was the same laureled bundle of sticks.
“But, yes, Italian.” With a yellowed finger, the doctor pointed at the inscription inside, “Oro Alla Patria.”
“Meaning?”
“Gold for the Homeland. That is, if I recall what I learned at Boston Latin. Whoever owned this iron ring got in return for donating his wedding band.”
Mary Beth was stumped. “But why? To who?”
“For the war effort, course.” Cunningham clicked his heels comically and raised on one frayed cuff toward the ceiling. “To Il Duce.”
