by David Downie
“You do watch them all day,” she remarked. “That will teach you for playing singles again at your age.”
“My age? What do you mean, ‘my age’?” Willem lowered the binoculars, his cheeks burning as if he had been slapped. “At ninety-three my mother was still exploring the Hindu Kush,” he said. “She carried her own, and I see I will have to do likewise.” He released the locks on the wheels of the chair and made a motion toward the wet bar in the living room, but Priscilla sighed and relented.
“Extraordinary circumstances require extraordinary rations,” she said, as if reciting.
“Exactly,” Willem agreed. “Mother lived to be 102,” he added with pluck, “and she always had a shot or three in the morning.”
“You know very well your mother was 101 when she died.” Priscilla spoke crisply, stepping back onto the verandah carrying a glass.
“Not the way the Italians count,” Willem quipped, accepting the whisky gratefully, blinking at her, then using the index finger of his right hand to stir the drink and ice cubes. He licked the finger and raised his eyebrows. Taking a long, slow, luxurious drink, Willem Bremach ran his tongue around his thick-lipped mouth, blinked again, and said, “I want to fly one of those buggies before I die, Pinky, and I will fly one, you’ll see.”
Feeling his gaze upon her, Priscilla rolled her eyes. They were ice blue. “How can you? They are not Sopwith Camels.”
“I flew Spitfires, Pinky, will you never get them straight? Camels were biplanes. Lovely to fly, like kites, but they were before my day. The Sopwith was my father’s plane. In the Great War.”
Tossing her head, Priscilla poured herself a glass of sparkling water from an ice bucket then sat on the bench next to Willem’s wheelchair, wondering if he would ever recover and be his boyish self again. “Your mother lived to be 101 before the advent of modern medicine, which means,” she calculated, squeezing shut her mascaraed eyes, “you have another decade to go.”
“Oh Pinky,” he said, taking her hands and kissing first the right, then the left one. “How can you be so stingy? Mother had a weak constitution by Bremach standards. Nowadays she would live to be 120. That gives me a quarter century.”
“Only if you behave,” she said.
“I shall behave,” he teased, gulping his drink, “and no one will stop me. Or is it, ‘I will behave and no one shall stop me’?”
“It’s too early for your language games,” she pleaded, “and too damn hot.”
Accustomed to her bluff manner after forty-six years of matrimony, Willem checked his watch again and raised his binoculars. “Now Pinky, here’s something very interesting,” he said, pointing. “It’s really very unusual. Take a look. Follow the rocks and breakwater due west from Santa Margherita and look about three centimeters above that, a hair over an inch, if you prefer, and you’ll see the boat.”
“I don’t use inches or hairs,” she said, “you do.”
“Prewar English public schooling,” he retorted, “not my fault. Now, let us make peace and get on with it. Do you see the boat?”
“Yes,” she said, relenting. “It’s Joe Gary’s boat. That silly toy of his that makes noise and stinks. It’s there every morning from ten to noon, as you have told me many, many times for the past two years. Are you going senile, Willem Bremach?”
“But Pinky, don’t you see?” Willem protested. “The boat is empty.”
Priscilla scoffed. She raised the Zeiss binoculars again, focusing them on Joe Gary’s shiny Riva Aquarama. She scanned back and forth along the horizon line. “That’s because Joe is swimming,” she said. “That’s what he does. He swims from the boat into the open sea, back and forth, a quarter mile each way, the same way you bat the tennis balls back and forth with your friends at the club in Genoa, and you’re never bored, until you twist your knee and wind up in a wheelchair. You and Joe are the same age and will never grow up.”
“But Pinky, that’s the point,” Willem insisted, finishing his drink and lifting the binoculars again. “Joe is not swimming. He is no longer swimming and he is not in his boat. I saw him go out. He lowered himself in at precisely 10:00 a.m. the way he always does, and as we talked and you played your usual game of making me beg for my drink, he swam, and then you said something unpleasant to me about my age, so I turned my head, and when I turned it back he had disappeared.”
“I suppose that too is my fault?” Priscilla frowned and began scanning the surface of the sea, sweeping with the binoculars as the helicopters and water bombers circled and dipped, and the plumes of smoke from the wildfires on the steep hills hemming the Ligurian coast rose thicker and higher into the sky, the day growing hotter by the minute. “He must be there, Willem,” she said, her voice betraying doubt for the first time.
“Yes,” Bremach muttered. “He must. But he isn’t.” He lowered the binoculars. “Be a dear and pass me the telephone, will you?”
Priscilla retrieved the cordless phone from the living room. “Who are you going to call?”
“La Davinci,” he said. “Who else?”
“Why call Daria?” Priscilla objected. “Call the emergency number—112. He may be drowning as we speak.”
“Too late for that,” he said, a note of wicked glee stealing into his voice. He held up a finger to silence her. “Pronto? Is that Inspector Morbido?”
“Who is it?” snarled a rich male basso. “How did you get this number?”
“Bremach here.”
“Oh, ambasciatore,” Inspector Morbido exclaimed, “my apologies, eccellenza, I did not recognize your voice.”
“Because you have not heard it in many months, my dear Morbido. But rest assured, I am not dead yet.”
“Of course not, ambasciatore, you are clearly very much alive.”
“Might I speak to the Americana, otherwise referred to as La Davinci?”
Morbido hesitated, covered the handset, then came back on, saying, “Commissioner Vinci is very busy, eccellenza, she asks if she might call you back later?”
“We are all busy, Lieutenant Morbido, be kind enough to tell La Davinci that this is not merely important, it is importantissimo, otherwise I would not be disturbing her or you.”
“Sì, eccellenza, I understand. One moment, please…”
Ambassador Bremach waited, fingering the binoculars and listening to what sounded like a muffled wrestling match. Then he heard Daria Vinci breathlessly snatching the phone from Inspector Morbido’s hands.
“Pronto?”
“Daria?” he asked with brio, “how are you?”
“Wrong question,” said a distant, tense female voice. “What is it, Willem? Is Priscilla all right?”
“Oh, she’s fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” He paused and counted inwardly to three. “You’re about to become extremely busy, and given Italian police protocols, you will want to get over here soonest,” he added, “subito. Finders first.”
“Impossible,” she snapped, choking on something. “If you only knew.”
“Come visit your dear old godfather, who misses you terribly,” he said, “and has something extraordinarily important to share with you, which he cannot divulge over the telephone.”
“You know it’s a secure line, Willem, it’s encrypted, even the Carabinieri can’t hear us.”
“Not on my end,” Bremach said dryly. “What I have to show you, not only tell you, is very time sensitive,” he added. Waiting, Bremach could feel her exasperation. She was carrying on another conversation, either in person or on another line or both. “I’m sorry to add to your plate,” he said, “as your American colleagues say these days. But you really must find a way. Now.”
“Hold on,” she ordered. Bremach could hear Commissioner Daria Vinci of the Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali covering the phone again and shouting across the DIGOS headquarters, a stony neo-Renaissance pile
westward twenty miles across the gulf in downtown Genoa. “This is the worst time ever, Willem,” she said, coming back on. “We have nine new fires this morning, all apparently set by arsonists, and three dead bodies, or maybe it would be more accurate to say three plastic garbage bags with parts of human bodies in them—that’s off the record, of course, and no sharing. I have been out since dawn and am going back out again now and can’t take the long weekend in Rome as planned to see my mother.”
“Then that’s perfect,” he said brightly. “Drive here on the way to wherever you’re going. You will thank me, Da,” he added in an undertone. “Now listen carefully. Since you claim this is a secure line, I strongly suggest you have Morbido or your young Lieutenant Gambero pull everything you’ve got on a certain Signor Joseph Gary. That’s Gary with a ‘y,’ alias Gary Baldi with an “i,” also known as Joe Gary Baldi. No, I am not making this up. He is or was a Canadian and American dual national of Italian descent, resident for the last two years of San Michele di Pagana, municipality of Rapallo, owner of the famous Villa Glicine. Read the material in the car, Daria, on the way over. See you shortly. Pinky will make us lunch.”
Bremach hung up before Daria Vinci could object. Dialing again and speaking this time in fluent Italian, Willem Bremach asked to speak to Colonel Rossi, spoke briefly and quietly to him, then hung up, and set the phone on the bench by Priscilla’s thigh. “Well, well, well,” he intoned, giving the thigh a gentle pinch. “Joe Gary has gone glug-glug, either that or he’s taken a very high dive. What shall we give Daria for lunch, my dear? Do you think she’s become vegetarian, like everyone else these days?” He paused to eye his wife, unable to suppress a wolfish grin. “And for goodness’ sake,” he added in a jocular tone, “tell your perpetually famished niece and nephew to take a hike. They are not invited.”
Three
Commissioner Daria M. Vinci of the Genoa Investigative Division of DIGOS, an elite unit of Italy’s State Police, had never been squeamish. Her premed studies, done in part at the University of Padua and later, unhappily, at Yale, at her father’s insistence, had prepared her for a clinical view of the human body. Daria had analyzed, dissected, and reassembled men and women whole or in parts, including specimens in states of advanced decomposition.
Medical school had not worked out. But twenty-three years of climbing the slippery ladder at DIGOS had bolstered her innate sangfroid.
So, she was all the more surprised that the sight—and above all the smell—of this particular rotting, butchered cadaver seemed unbearably gruesome.
A blackened, festering, bloody torso and severed head, plus other body parts, some shriveled and unrecognizable, spilled from a torn heavy-duty leaf bag onto a muddy, littered patch of ground. It flanked a partially paved turnout on the two-lane highway east of Rapallo. Daria was beginning to wonder how she could get through lunch with her godfather and Pinky after this. Three bags, each containing dismembered cadavers, each found in a strategic location, in a single morning, was too much, even for her. Steeling herself, she took a deep, calming breath through her nostrils and successfully fought off the nausea.
Flies swarmed. Dogs bayed from a scabrous farmhouse beyond the pitted highway. The perimeter of the site had been cordoned off. Florescent yellow-and-red tape and red ribbons fluttered festively each time a car passed. The narrow, twisting rural road had been choked down to a single lane. A squad of heavily armed Carabinieri, usually posted five miles away on the Via Aurelia coast highway, had been summoned. They brandished submachine guns. They were not alone.
Visibly out of their depth, a carful of nervous traffic cops from Rapallo’s polizia municipale had been drafted to help. They chased away rubberneckers and waved vehicles past using batons. Two of the Carabinieri randomly stopped every fifth or sixth car, signaling it onto the turnout. With their submachine guns swinging menacingly, they checked documents, passenger compartments, and trunks. Daria watched them impassively. Nothing unusual had been found. The morning was almost over.
Sheltering in the shade of a dry, scruffy olive grove, a three-man ambulance crew waited for the police photographer and pathologist to do the wrap-up. Only then would the Carabinieri give the medicos the green light to remove the leaf bag.
Daria heard the driver of the ambulance whistle and mutter as he moved farther upwind to light a cigarette. She lingered at the edge of the paved road and glanced from the scarred, stinking patch of mud to the luxurious, armor-plated four-door Alfa Romeo that had conveyed her to the site. She had been assigned the car that day at dawn, shortly before six. Up to now, the vehicle had been reserved for her immediate superior, the Vice Questor of the Provence of Genoa. Daria thought of the ironies of fate and wondered what other surprises the day held for her.
Seeming to fill every inch of the car’s cool interior with his large, doughy body, Inspector Osvaldo Morbido spoke animatedly on his smartphone. With the stubby fingers of his meaty right hand he drummed or poked the steering wheel, the air conditioning on full blast and the windows down.
Respecting the draconian Italian police protocol giving priority to finders, the traffic cops said nothing to Daria, letting the paramilitary Carabinieri in their upswept hats and operetta uniforms take the lead. They had arrived first. The investigation was theirs. All of the Carabinieri were young, swarthy males. All wore an expression of smug superiority. Perhaps out of an inbred sense of gallantry, three of the Carabinieri fell back, saluting Daria and bowing slightly, softly speaking or mouthing her title.
Commissioner Daria M. Vinci was not only strikingly handsome in an angular, Picasso style, she also happened to be the only female mover and shaker in the local police hierarchy. As the number three official at the provincial DIGOS headquarters, she held the rank of captain. Everyone knew Daria was slated for promotion to major or lieutenant colonel. The grapevine also prognosticated she would be named Vice Questor before the year was out.
According to the arcane Italian pecking order, Daria in theory already outranked many police, Carabinieri, armed forces, and Ministry of the Interior officials in the district. Vice Questor Ruggieri, her boss, a colonel, was soon to become a lieutenant general, moving up to the post of Questor, once the current, problematic occupant of that coveted position retired. This prominence made it unusual for Daria’s lean, athletic figure, or that of any other elite DIGOS operative for that matter, to be seen on a sordid crime scene such as this.
That was why the Carabinieri watched her warily and seemed to be wondering what the murder of a homeless man or group of men could have to do with terrorism, subversion, human trafficking, or politically motivated gang violence, the normal purview of DIGOS.
Stepping forward, Daria shook the outstretched, calloused hand of the senior marshal of the Carabinieri, a grizzled, mustachioed veteran she recognized as Luigi “Gigi” De Filippo. Gigi was a lifer nearing the end of the operational line, bound for a desk job in Naples or Palermo, she couldn’t remember which. A lusty Southerner, not from the Riviera, his thick accent had helped create De Filippo’s tough-guy persona.
But Daria knew he had a malleable, hedonistic heart and was more dangerous these days with a fork than a gun. His prodigious, nine-month belly could not hide behind the black-ribbed bulletproof vest he wore. The body armor made him and the three identically equipped Carabinieri look like armadillos in carnival costumes with red piping on the seams.
“Pretty business,” De Filippo said in a surprisingly fluty voice, stroking his salt-and-pepper push-broom mustache, then pointing to the muddy ground. “Wild boar prints. Those are from a dog. I hate to think…”
It appeared, said De Filippo, that the boars and a dog or dogs had torn open the bag and scattered its rotting contents. “The coroner says there are teeth marks on the head,” De Filippo added with relish. “We’re not sure if they’re boar or dog teeth yet. Someone pulled over this morning at 8:05 a.m. to relieve himself. He called the standard emergency number.
The Rapallo station responded. They pulled us off the Aurelia. The couple living in that house came over and tentatively identified the head.”
“And?” Daria asked, brushing her dark hair out of her eyes. She wondered if her expression betrayed her distaste for De Filippo.
“They say he was a bum who slept under the autostrada trestle at the bottom of the valley. They say they gave him food sometimes.”
“You’ll take them in for questioning?”
“Of course, signora commissario. In Rapallo. But if you would like to speak to them in Genoa that can be arranged.” He spoke unctuously, pausing for effect. “We are always glad to share with DIGOS.”
Daria forced a smile and thrust out her jaw, aware De Filippo’s eyes were watching her with more than professional interest. “I’ll let you know,” she said, her words clipped.
“Any special requests?”
“If it were my case,” she said, her body language betraying distrust, “I would make sure to find the dogs and boars if they can be found.” She spoke in what she hoped would pass as a conciliatory tone. “I’d check everything in the garbage bag. Find out where it came from, when and where the contents originated, so forth, and if the deceased did or dealt drugs.”
“Clearly,” he said, “that will be done.”
Pausing to avoid any hint of arrogance, she pointed to the farther edge of the turnout. “Where does that lead?”
De Filippo peered at what looked like an overgrown hiking trailhead, half hidden by weeds and mounds of litter. He glanced meaningfully at the nearest municipal policeman, a sergeant guarding the perimeter, and waved him over. “Gianni, where does that go?”
The officer, Gianni Giannini, saluted, stepping up. “To the bunker, sir,” he said crisply. The sweat stood out on his forehead and trickled into his eyes. They were a soft, baby blue. Daria blinked. Gianni was thirty-five or forty, she guessed, and too good-looking and well-spoken to have wound up a traffic cop. She had seen him before, on his beat, in Rapallo. They had spoken once or twice. She wondered what misstep Gianni Giannini had made, probably when a teenager, to wind up where he had.