by JJ Partridge
“Forgive me, Dottoressa,” giving her the honorific she easily accepted. “I beg your indulgence at this hour.” She took a step forward to inspect me as though I brought nothing but bother, taking my business card as I said that the Instituto dell’ Italia Studi where Signora Cioffi had been employed remained interested in her well-being. The Dottoressa nodded reluctantly in acceptance; in Italian, she asked the nurse to take me into the visitor gallery.
I was led down a hallway, past a fleet of walkers and wheelchairs, into a spacious room with bottom windows open to the court yard, walls painted a lilac color, posters of Italian scenic landscapes, a plasma screen television, card game tables, and couches and chairs, some covered in plastic, perhaps for incontinent patients.
I sat comfortably by windows that let in a golden Roman light from the courtyard until I heard the squeak of wheelchair’s wheels. Claudia Cioffi, in a dark blue smock, her lank hair cut short, wearing unattractive, oversized sunglasses, was wheeled into the room. I stood in deference as the nurse tucked the chair’s arms under a small table by a window; a whispered comment from the nurse as she locked the chair’s wheels in place evoked her patient’s dismissive wave.
“So, it is you,” she croaked.
The sunglasses hid much of her face and were likely not worn out of vanity but to avoid the glare of a morning sun. Her complexion was pale, there were sags of skin in her cheeks, loose folds under her chin. Can this be the same frenetic but healthier woman who berated me not two weeks ago?
I sat opposite to her at the table. “I insisted that Father Pietro tell me where you were convalescing. I appreciate your time, Signora.”
“Well?”
“Before he died, Italo Palagi delivered to Father Pietro an affirmation of his determination to leave his trust and estate to the University, even with knowledge of his son, Vittorio Ruggieri.” I removed a copy of the letter of affirmation from my jacket, unfolded it, and showed it to her. She ignored it. “Signora, I must ask you if this document is in your handwriting.”
“Did he not acknowledge the document as his before a notary?” she asked flatly.
“Yes, he did,” I admitted.
“Then, I have no comment,” she replied with a sigh and weary shake of her head.
Her hands, which had been folded in her lap, reached for the rubber wheels at each side of the chair as though she was going to wheel herself away, but she didn’t; she adjusted herself in the chair for comfort and abruptly, thrust her face toward me, expelling the acidic breath of the sick. “Have you told your mother that Palagi was duplicitous? A liar? You must know by now.”
“My mother will miss his company.”
“Hah,” she growled, showing me a profile of her gray, drained of life face. “Fooled like all the others. Do you know how often he bragged of his connection to your family, used your family name to ingratiate himself? It was his intention, always, to identify with those who could be protective, whose status could rub off on him, to disguise, disown, his past …”
I interrupted. “Did you send him a copy of a funeral card for Maria Ruggieri?”
“Why would I do that,” she said flatly but not answering. “Is that why you are here?” She said, disappointment in her voice, and turned her head to the window.
“A portion of Palagi’s royalty and license fees to be shared with the University were diverted to …”
“Montecristo?” She coughed out a dry laugh, still facing the window. “Do you not see his attempt at humor in the name? Like the Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas’ fictional count, Italo considered himself an innocent forced by society to take revenge. Montecristo, to save you time, was Italo’s pleasure account. Because of your faculty’s jealousy, his fear of publicity and discovery of his past, he felt browbeaten into giving up half of his royalties and license fees, and to create the trust account. He felt justified in his theft. He took advantage of your lax supervision. The funds helped maintain his Florence apartment, his Lerici apartment, pay his gambling losses, for his long trips to Europe, the … boys … he debased. After the funds reached Genoa, they were sent to Lugano, Switzerland. On his trips to Italy, he would cross the border, make his withdrawals. In Lugano, the account was under an alias. He had a fake passport for identification. Never once questioned by the Guardia di Finaza or the Frontiere.” She turned to me as her face cracked into a dolorous grin. “The amounts he could divert each year became smaller and smaller as the royalties and other payments diminished. With his expenses so high, he was becoming a pauper.”
She stopped, took a momentous breath and wiped her dry lips with the back of a mottled hand. I then breached a professional confidence for the greater good. “The Institute’s accounts in Rome are being audited and …”
“Ha!” Her hands came together weakly, as if to clap, but made no sound.
“… we know Brunotti was aware of the Montecristo fraud …”
“Brunotti insisted I act as executor because he thought he could control any investigation by the estate or the University into Montecristo or into his own fraudulent accounts, thinking my reputation, Palagi’s reputation, were important to me. As if I cared. When I refused, the idiot terminated me.” Her lips formed the grim, determined smile of one who senses victory. Brunotti had been outclassed.
Her hands moved slowly, painfully to remove her sunglasses. She blinked in the sunlight; the eye with the cataract seemed opaque, the other was gray and rheumy. Her head was thrust back and she spoke louder than before, as though addressing an audience.
“Palagi portrayed himself as the victim, misled, seduced by others’ lies, as when he claimed he felt compelled by poverty to join La Lega, the conspirators who plotted against the Republic. But I tell you he was a willing participant, an organizer, using his father’s name, his uncle’s contacts, all the while stealing from contributions to their cause. Yes, stealing from them! In this too, he justified it as retribution for his shame. Because the conspirators operated in cells, most did not know of one another, nobody knew how much was paid in or from whom, except Italo who opened accounts, paid bills and bribes. After the plot was smashed, he blackmailed those involved, the businessmen, those in the police and army, politicians, men of affairs who feared that their names might be given to the SDI. I have always wondered if Italo exposed the plot in return for protection from the SDI.”
She raised her chin to me, staring down her nose. “How did his books get published so quickly? Distributed in every bookstore in Italy? Because, they were literature?” A shake of her head ended in a cackle. “Or how did he quickly become a full professor at Bologna while others languished on the lists? Or why he left Italy? Even years later, he blackmailed many to contribute to the Institute to influence the government’s generosity. It was only his longevity that brought him down; he outlived them, their donations ceased, and the royalties, the fees, diminished. Again, he was reduced to theft, skimming off monies that belonged to the Institute, feeding his gambling, paying for his boys …”
“And the ‘Ndrangheta …?”
“What irony. The extortionist was himself a victim. They took their pound of flesh, allowed him his reputation so long as he kept his name on their account. You need to know that he …?” She stopped herself abruptly.
“What, Signora?”
“You said you spoke to Sacchi, the Dominican?” she asked warily.
“Yes, only to locate you.”
That opaque eye searched my face to demand my complete attention. “He told me you want to know about Palagi’s death,” she hissed. “And I tell you it was as deceptive as the rest of his disgusting life!” She clutched her robe as though chilled.
“He telephoned me that night, demanding I come to his apartment. I arrived, I used my key, he was at the dining room table, raving that the money he borrowed had not been paid to the Ruggieri family, that they would kill him, that the ‘Ndrangheta had liquidated its investment account, that his one prideful asset, the trust account for the University,
was likely lost in a Ponzi scheme. On the dining table was a vial of pills, a gun, and a handful of bullets. He said the gun was his father’s, kept by him all these years. He put a bullet into a magazine, slammed it into the gun, all very dramatic, very Italo, and sobbed he wanted to commit suicide but lacked the courage to pull the trigger.”
A trembling hand went to her lips. “He pushed the gun into my hands, placed its muzzle to his head, demanded I put my fingers over his, and squeeze the trigger. I was tempted, but I refused,” she said and turned her head back to me. “He put the gun down and picked up the pills. He shook the vial before my face, back and forth, the pills rattling inside. ‘Push them down my throat,’ he shouted. I refused, again, and he taunted me. ‘Help me die and you win the tontine.’ You know of the tontine?”
I nodded.
“My anger had built up by then and I challenged him. ‘Do it, do it, coward!’ I shouted. He picked up the gun, walked to the window overlooking the street below, opened it, pulled up its screen. For a moment, I thought he might actually shoot himself. But instead, he stared down at the street, and when he finally turned back to me, he seemed calmer. He pocketed the gun, took the bullets from the table and the vial of pills, put them in his trouser pockets …”
She coughed, bringing up phlegm, holding it in her mouth until she worked a tissue from her robe’s pocket and spat into it, returning the soiled tissue to her pocket.
“He went to his study, stayed there less than a minute, took his walking stick, and left the apartment.” She looked over my shoulder as though remembering. “From the open window, I watched him as he exited our building, crossed the street, and approached a car in the parking lot of that striptease club by the river. I swear he looked up at me before he banged on the car’s window, a door opened, and he got inside. What was he doing? Who was in the car? I left the apartment, locking the door behind me, took the stairs to the first floor, and exited, like he did. Although the nebbia, the fog, was gathering, I saw someone huge fling open the car’s door and drag him out. Italo shouted into the car, in a rage again, and threw something, maybe the bullets, into the car. Still shouting, he swiped the side of the car with the knob of his stick, before he was pushed away.”
“You followed?”
“From across the street,” she said. “The fog was thick along the river. Every few seconds, it would open up and I saw Italo being pushed along. And then it was too thick. The man from the car quickly returned. Where was Italo? Minutes went by.” Her voice lowered to barely audible. “I waited and waited. He did not return. There was no sound from a gun. Had he mustered the courage to swallow his pills? I left without knowing.”
She coughed, a hacking cough deeper than before. I expected her to call the nurse, but instead, she pressed her face to within inches of mine. “Why did I stay with him, years and years and years, you ask. Money? I have no obsession for money. Cupiditas radix malorum. The root of all evil. Not for money, no, I stayed,” she said in a voice cold as ice, “to insure his eternal damnation!”
She stopped abruptly and snatched a handkerchief from her sleeve to wipe her eyes, not of tears but of ooze. I used the opportunity to sit back, to move my face further away from her fetid breath.
“My father’s family is Roman, but when my parents separated, I was raised by my mother in Modena. Giovanni Strozzi was my cousin, my mother’s sister’s son, a calm, beautiful boy, intelligent, kind, destined for great things, the pride of our family. He was like a younger brother to me and I loved him. For reasons I can’t guess since he was so beautiful and attractive to girls, he decided after preparatory school to become a priest. With his family connections, his brilliance, his personality, he could have become a bishop or cardinal, maybe Pope. He was at the seminary when, at seventeen, he visited me in Rome during a summer vacation. I was then living with Italo. Giovanni thought our arrangement was shameful and he lectured me outside of Italo’s presence and I lied to him, told him Italo would marry me. I didn’t chaperone him as I should have, I was too busy in those days as Italo’s courier, running up and down the country delivering messages, acting as his agent.”
Her fingers clenched together as a strangler might grip his victim. “He became a priest five years later and five years after, he committed suicide. A priest suicide? A terrible scandal, to be hushed up. To save family embarrassment, it became an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. I never accepted that, and a year later, I went through his belongings that were finally delivered to the family, including a diary that exposed his deep despair. He had been raped by Italo! Raped! Not just once, but many times during the weeks I was away from Rome. Giovanni was intensely ashamed that it awakened in him some dark passion that he could not confess. That was why after his ordination, he devoted himself, in a kind of penance, to parish work with the poor in Reggio, far below his education and status, wearing himself out. Alone, despairing, he died.” She paused, swallowed, and continued. “After that, I knew my fate was to avenge Giovanni. I contrived to meet Palagi in New York. My life would be numb, perhaps without love or family, but Italo would pay for his corruption of my beautiful cousin.”
Her good eye stared at a spot above my head, as she braced herself against the back of the wheelchair. “He was only a boy!” she shouted. “Italo raped him! You see how it was. Italo was making love to me and raping my beloved cousin!” She coughed up phlegm and her voice was barely audible as she gasped, “I planned to divulge Giovanni’s diary to Italo just before he died, when his soul, forever blackened, would be beyond the possibility of penance, of confession….” Then, abruptly she collected herself; slowly, her voice tightly controlled, she said, “He cheated me of my opportunity. Still, he died a suicide, forever damned.”
The nurse appeared, a questioning look in her face for me at the distressed old woman before her. “Take me back to my room,” the old woman demanded in Italian. The nurse released the brakes on the chair’s wheels and turned Claudia Cioffi toward the corridor, a long, dark corridor, that gave finality to the scene.
One Year Later
IT HAD BEEN QUITE a year.
Sugarman: The Musical opened off Broadway, hyped as the next The Producers. Reviewers have been unkind.
The Shoot-Out was so successful that the promoters found a larger city venue. Happened before with the X-Games. Providence had always exported success.
Tony Tramonti remained a popular, if battle-worn, mayor, with sharpened political skills in his budget, reform, and political engagements with the Lucca faction on the City Council. He had gaffs, like being on vacation in Florida when a surprise snowstorm dumped a foot of wet, sticky snow on Providence, stranding kids on school buses.
People talk about the good Fausto—supportive of his brother—and the bad Fausto—enmeshed in the nether world of Providence politics. I didn’t ask what he was doing behind the scenes during the Shoot-Out or his connection to Frannie Zito. We haven’t spoken much since.
Columbus Day remained a nagging issue for Carter University but the rancorous local controversy slowly fizzled, overshadowed by the indictments of Sonny Russo and Puppy Dog for bribery and corruption. There is a God!
The Columbus Day fiasco stopped negotiations on the tax treaty. As an interim measure, the University voluntarily paid the City an amount equal to ten percent of the amount of tax that would be applied to the assessed valuation of its real estate, minus the value of services that the University, its faculty, its social service agencies, and students rendered to the city and its residents. The ten million donation soothed some members of the City Council, but not the Lucca cabal who claimed the City was being shortchanged. No one in College Hall thinks the payment will be the final tab or bring civic peace but it was a start.
The University executed a settlement agreement with Vittorio Ruggieri within weeks of my meeting with his lawyer in Rome. Puppy Dog came to Pine’s office to represent Vittorio Ruggieri; neither of the Luccas showed. Later, the two Italian apartments, which we belatedly found ha
d also been mortgaged by Palagi, were sold for close to seven hundred thousand euros; after payment of the mortgages, fees of the brokers and lawyers and taxes, the net proceeds of barely two hundred thousand were split between Vittorio and the Institute. Benno and I wondered if Vittorio squandered his share, assuming that the ‘Ndrangheta left him with something to squander, and if the Ruggieris of Basilicata ever received a euro. As to the estate, his will was admitted to probate without objection, Heritage Finance did not file a claim in Italo Palagi’s probate, and there was just enough left from his other assets to pay expenses and the legacies in full, leaving nothing for the Institute.
Later, I got a note from Puppy Dog, enclosing crisp new business cards, saying he was available to assist the University at any time. His chutzpah was impressive.
Frannie Zito disappeared last March. Joe Laretta told me that Zito had a falling out with somebody and that Zito may have contributed—bodily—to the stability of a new bridge abutment in the Barrington River.