The Zebra-Print Shoe

On a road near Rome, I found a woman more frightened of speaking than of dying

A cyclist’s shadow (Upsplash)

Note: this essay discusses violence against women and may be upsetting for some readers. --Eric

The Cyclist

I was halfway through a Friday morning bicycle training ride near the sea, turning around to head back to Rome, when a woman’s zebra-print shoe caught my eye at the bottom of a roadside embankment.

I made another pass, stopped, and a dark-skinned leg near the shoe came into focus, partially obscured by the brush. I carefully laid the bike on its side and looked both ways. “Hello? Buongiorno?” I called down the hill. Then, after a moment: “Jambo?” -- the only Swahili word I knew. No movement.

I started to make my way down the embankment but stopped after a couple of steps. She was probably dead. Did I want to risk trampling over evidence? And if she was alive, she didn’t need me, she needed a doctor. I climbed back up to the road. I found a rock to mark the spot and raced back toward Ostia. I repeated what I wanted to say in my head as I rode.

Before even getting to the city, I found a police car on the side of the road and two officers leaning against it, smoking. I pulled up to them and announced: “Ho trovato una mignotta morta!” I was out of breath.

The Cops

“Che?” one of the officers asked -- “What?”

“I found. A dead. Prostitute,” I repeated, in Italian. I didn’t yet realize how ugly the word mignotta was. I’d learned it from other riders on my cycling team, where I was the only non-Italian. Sometimes one of them would shout it when we rode past certain women standing on rural roadsides during late-in-the-day rides.

“Where did you learn Italian?” the other cop asked.

I repeated the phrase a third time, pronouncing each syllable with more emphasis.

“Allora,” the first officer said, “dov’è questa famosa mignotta?”

I pointed south and he told me to get in the car.

What about my bike? Just leave it, he said, we’ll bring you back here. But I refused: it was an expensive aluminum racing bike.

“Fammi metterla nella macchina,” I said -- “Let me put it in the car.” But that was against regulation.

“Se è morta, che cambia se vai in bici?” he asked -- “If she’s dead, what difference does it make if you go by bike?”

I rode as fast as I could back to where I’d left the stone in the road. The police car followed behind me, lights flashing. At least one jogger we passed thought I was trying to outrun them.

“Stop!” he shouted. “You won’t get away!”

The Woman

The three of us stood at the side of the road looking down the embankment; two in blue and black uniforms with badges, one in spandex shorts and cycling shoes. “Lui ha ragione,” one of them finally said -- “He’s right” -- “è una mignotta morta.”

They both turned back to the car. One walked back to me with a metal clipboard; the other started to work his way down the sandy embankment.

“Last name?” the cop asked me. “First name? Date of birth?”

Suddenly, his partner shouted from below: “È viva! È viva!” -- “She’s alive!”

The officer near me shoved the clipboard into my hands and leaned into the window to shout into the radio. Within minutes, it seemed, an ambulance and fire truck arrived. Someone took a chain saw to some of the branches and then two medical technicians dressed in white walked carefully down the hill with a stretcher. A few minutes later, they carried the poor woman up the incline.

My stomach sank. She was wearing a tight, scuffed, cream-colored dress with four or five dark spots around the torso, where she’d been stabbed or shot. The zebra-print shoe I first saw remained at the bottom of the hill, but the other one was still on her foot.

One side of her face was caked with sand, but the side closest to me was clean. What I remember most is her eye -- it darted around in panic.

The ambulance sped off.

On my slow ride home, in the shower, I couldn’t stop thinking about that terrified look I saw in her eye. I wondered whether she’d have anyone to call, anyone who knew where she was. Maybe I could bring her something.

I called the hospital in Ostia, but the person who answered the phone told me she was sorry, but unless I was a friend or a family member they couldn’t give me any information.

A lifeguard rescue boat in Ostia (EJL photo)

The Captain

A few months earlier, I’d been in Ostia with my mother and a family friend visiting from the U.S. When we returned to our rental car after a walk on the beach we discovered we’d been robbed.

On the drive to the police station my mother became unexpectedly anxious. In her stolen purse were my apartment keys and my business card with my home address circled in pen. Back in Rome, she had thousands of dollars in cash hidden in her suitcase. She was convinced the thief would find it.

We pulled up to the station, but my mother kept insisting she wanted to return to Rome.

Eventually, we were all seated in the office of the police captain, who dutifully took down our information, but my mother was still visibly upset. She told the captain why. He tried to console her, saying the thief would probably just take the cash in the purse and then ditch the purse itself.

She pleaded with him to send an officer to the apartment. But he explained he couldn’t: an officer from Ostia would have no jurisdiction in Rome. The captain promised to move quickly, but it was still an hour before we could head home with our paperwork.

When we got back, a police officer was standing at the door and my first thought was that there really had been a robbery. I trotted up to the door and from up close up I could see his badge was from Ostia. He said he’d been dispatched to guard the building until we could return.

Inside, I found the captain’s name on the report and called to thank him. But why did he send the officer after saying he couldn’t? He explained that he could not formally order someone to go, so he spoke privately to an officer he knew well and asked him to make the trip.

“I could see how upset your mother was,” the captain told me. “I would hope that if my mother was ever that upset in some unfamiliar place that someone would do the same for her.”

The Lido di Ostia at sunset (Unsplash)

The Papone

I could fill in the blanks. A young African woman lured to Italy with promises of legitimate work -- a secretary, maybe, or a caregiver or an au pair. But it’s a setup for a prostitution ring.

Did she have any friends? Did her family know where she was?

Later in the day, I remembered the kind-hearted police captain. I hurridly flipped through stacks of papers in my office and smiled broadly when I found the months-old police report. I called, but the captain was already gone. I’d have to try again on Monday.

What I’d seen cast a shadow over the weekend, and I eagerly called Monday morning. “Si, certo, Eric, il giornalista americano,” the captain said. “I saw your name on the report, but I couldn’t remember why it seemed familiar. How can I help you?”

I asked about the young woman from Friday and said I’d like to help her in some way.

“I’m sorry to tell you this,” he said, “but she died Sunday. She’d been stabbed many times. Her lungs were full of blood. There wasn’t anything the doctors could do.”

“Was she alone when she died? Did any friends visit her?”

“No, I don’t think so. Just hospital staff.”

The captain said she almost surely worked for an Albanian “papone” -- a pimp -- operating in the area. Once or twice a year the papone would pick “an under-performing girl” and accuse her of holding back money. He’d stab her and throw her off the side of the road as a warning to the others.

“The difference was that the girl you found was still alive,” the captain said. “We knew she’d probably die. But we thought she could help us find the papone. We sent translators, a psychologist, a priest. But she was too scared to speak.”

He paused.

“She was more frightened of talking to us than she was of dying.”

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