I Knew Armand

I Knew Armand

By Heather Ann Martinez

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. I had forgotten what they looked like this time of year in the United States. It had been a year since Armand’s unexpected death. It had been a year since I went into hiding. I have spent the majority of the last six months editing vlogs for friends who have been biking across Colorado. As much as the federal agents said I shouldn’t, I’ve been hiding in plain sight. No one out here is looking for Vesna Lombardi, wife of a now deceased Italian mobster. No, the only person they have met is Cat Sommers. I sit in the back of someone’s camper and post and edit video content, social media content, and write captions. Occasionally, I’ve left the camper. I’ve met locals at restaurants and campgrounds. I’ve gone unrecognized. No one sees that I am a witness waiting for a series of trials to begin for different members of my husband’s family. No one here knows that I once was a scared little girl who witnessed my father’s murder when I was six.

My father was murdered by his brother more than twenty years ago. I was sitting underneath the table in my father’s office when his brother came in and shot him. My uncle had no idea I was there. My mother came into my father’s office after she heard the gun shot. She knew I was underneath the table. It was one of my favorite places to play with my dolls. I could see my father sitting at his desk working. Every now and then, he would ask me to sit with him. He would give me a treat whenever I spelled a word correctly. He taught me both English and Italian. I learned Spanish in school years later. My father wanted me to know more languages than he did. He did not have hope for my brother Paolo. Paolo was nine and hated to study. My father knew I would leave Italy some day. He knew I would need to know more than Italian to live abroad.

Armand Lombardi came into my life when I was twenty. He was charismatic and charming. Paolo and I lived with our mother and grandmother after our father was murdered. No one except for me knew that our father’s brother killed him. I did not know much about Armand’s family prior to meeting him. I knew he was an only child and his father was well respected in our community. I didn’t know much about money laundering, drug smuggling or selling weapons. I didn’t know Armand was at the head of an organized crime family. Armand and his cousins were caught up in a world I dared not look into. Armand swept me off my feet. I loved him. I don’t know if he ever loved me. He never said the words. He would buy me new earrings and necklaces whenever someone told him something became fashionable. He gave me everything I ever wanted. We vacationed in the Virgin Islands. We had a summer villa in Venice and a house in Naples. I never asked where the money came from. I never visited Armand’s office or saw him use a credit card. He told me I did not have to think about those things. All I had to do was be happy. I was his arm candy, and he was my knight in shining armor.

When Armand died last year, the veil was lifted. My world, the world Armand showed me died with him. We were in debt. There were people who wanted to kill me because they thought Armand shared information with me. I did not know anything. I lived in a glass house that had been shattered. I knew something was wrong leading up to the day Armand was killed. He would come home from work agitated. He would go into his home office and lock the door. He was often on the phone screaming at one of his cousins. I still think it is a great blessing that we did not have children. I did not know that Armand had two children with someone else until his mistress came to our home looking for him. He had not returned her calls for several days. She told me Armand married me because I came from a respectable family. She did not. Her children would not be respected in the world of organized crime. She told me she did not have much time left. The people that killed Armand targeted her as well. She had accompanied Armand to several meetings and exchanges. She said they had made a couple of attempts on her life already. With tears in her eyes, she asked me to take her sons out of Italy.

Reluctantly, I did so and she died a few days later. Her sons have been cycling. We have been on a cycling tour through Colorado with a caravan of cycling enthusiasts.  I was given a new identity and my husband’s sons found a way to grieve the loss of both of their parents. They said they knew about me through the years. Their father did not hide me from them. He told them I was his precious jewel. He said he was often on stage for the world to see and I was the leading lady the world loved to see on his arm. Their mother was not beautiful. She did not have any money and came from an obscure village. She didn’t know who her father was and was not well educated. Armand used her background to his advantage. He would often have her meet his clients alone. She would pass messages, make phone calls, set up travel arrangements, and coordinate the trades.  

When the federal agents asked me about my husband’s crimes, I told them I didn’t know anything about them. I told them I chose to live a pampered life. I chose my words carefully around my husband. I did not see him every day and I chose to make the most of the time we had. I left out a lot of information for the American federal agents who were about to prosecute my husband’s cousins and the Italian government who allowed me to leave with my husband’s sons.

My mother was a shy beauty. She knew my father and uncle were in some underhanded business. When the suspicion had died down, she killed my uncle. I suppose I followed in her footsteps. I waited up for Armand to come home the night he died. He smelled like cheap perfume and had a smudge of lipstick on his tie. He was drunk and singing to himself. I stopped him before he reached his home office door. I told him he was pathetic to be seen with some desperate woman who came out of the woodwork. He came at me and tried to strangle me with his bare hands. In a moment, I thought he would have the upper hand, but he did not. He tripped over a pair of shoes he had left on the floor. I grabbed the vase on the side table and struck him in the head. He died instantaneously. I moved the shoes out of the way and dragged Armand’s body to his office. With a gloved hand, I shot him with his own gun. I picked up the pieces of the vase and mopped the floor. I disposed of the gun and created suspicion around my husband’s cousins. When I called the police and told them I found my husband lying on his office floor, they believed my story. They believed a burglary had gone terribly wrong. No one suspected that I would do such a thing to the man I loved. His cousins, our friends and family thought he kept me so far away from who he really was. What they didn’t know was I allowed them to think that. I knew Armand. I knew Armand as I knew my uncle and father. I did not know he had two sons. I knew my husband’s business and the circumstances around his demise intimately well.