“The police will not trust me. Or you.”
“I’m afraid it’s out of our hands now.”
21 – Deferred Plans
I looked down at the ground again. The man was resting face up on the cobblestones, half in sun and half in shadow, the sword still stuck out of his chest. A crowd had gathered around him—a couple of men, an old woman towing a shopping cart, a younger woman with a small white dog on a leash.
“You see yellow cloud in the sky?” Grassini asked, as if he hadn’t just killed a man in front of us. “Is from chemical complex in Marghera, on the mainland. This gas, it stains the air. It will kill all of us one day.”
If the sword doesn’t get you first, I thought. But then I remembered the news I’d seen before leaving Florida, about a toxic algae bloom that had swept down from Lake Okeechobee, poisoning the water north of Fort Lauderdale.
“It’s everywhere.” I hesitated. “Who was that man?”
“Very bad person. A southerner. You cannot trust them at all.” He shrugged, then pulled out his phone. “I call police.”
As Remi did that, I walked over to my brother. “You all right, Danny?”
“I’m okay,” he said, though he was shivering, and I heard a catch in his voice. “Is this what you do, Angus?”
“Not usually,” I said.
He nodded toward the railing, and I noticed he was staying well back from it. “Do you think that guy is really dead?”
“Hard to imagine that he isn’t, after getting speared like that and then toppling down four floors.”
“This isn’t the first dead guy you’ve seen, is it?” he asked.
“No, it’s not. It’s easier, I guess, because I didn’t know him.”
“How do you do it?”
“I don’t know, bro. I just do.” I thought about Larry, the clerk at the booth who’d wiped out on his bike. I still didn’t know if he’d been murdered, or if his death had been an accident. And then I remembered the other dead bodies I’d seen on my visits to the morgue and I shivered like Danny had, even in the heat of the rooftop.
Remi was still on his phone as the sound of the siren grew closer. I wondered how they were able to get police cars through those narrow streets, but when I saw the flashing lights bouncing off of a neighboring building I realized the police had arrived not in a car but in a low-slung blue and white boat with POLIZIA on the side. A red, green and white Italian flag flew from the stern, flapping in the breeze.
I kept an eye on Remi as the boat pulled up along the sidewalk. I didn’t want him to run off and leave Danny and me to face the police alone.
Down at the water’s edge, a man in a blue polo shirt and blue slacks with a red stripe jumped out. Another man on the boat, similarly dressed, threw him a rope, which the first man looped around a tall wooden pole.
Both men wore navy blue ball caps, and even from the roof I could see the badges on their shirts. I watched as the officers approached the dead man on the street. One moved the crowd of onlookers away while the other leaned down to the man and took his pulse.
He looked back up and shook his head at his partner. Then they spoke to the old woman with the shopping cart, who pointed up to the roof. When the officer looked up, I waved at him, and then sent Danny down to show him and his partner up the ladder.
I stood there with Grassini, who looked morose. “That man,” I began.
Grassini shook his head. “Is better not to say.”
Another police launch pulled up beside the first, and a blonde woman in a navy business suit stepped out. Was she the detective?
Through the opening in the roof, I heard my brother’s voice, speaking in Italian to the officer. As soon as the officer arrived, Remi launched into a long diatribe in Italian, of which I understood nothing. I glanced at Danny, and though he was concentrating, I could see he was getting little more than I had.
The officer listened for a moment and then must have asked Grassini who we were. Grassini pointed at us and said our names.
“American?” the officer asked.
“Yes. Do you speak English?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Commissario comes. Speak English.”
It got crowded up there quickly, with the officer and then the female detective, who introduced herself as Commissario Nerina Affogato. Up close she was older than I’d thought originally, probably in her early fifties. She looked like she ate nails for breakfast.
I asked her to step aside so that Grassini couldn’t hear us. Then I showed her my FBI badge and my passport. I told her that Danny was my brother, and she nodded, as if it was standard for her to find an American law enforcement officer at the site of a grisly death in Venice.
She told us to go back down the ladder to the apartment, and when I picked up the painting she said, “No, no, you must not remove evidence.”
I shook my head. “I bought this painting from Grassini earlier today, so it’s mine, and not part of the evidence here.”
“Fine. We will sort everything later.”
I once again stuck the painting under my left arm and went down the ladder. Danny and I sat on hard chairs in the kitchen with a different officer, who didn’t appear to speak English. Danny tried to speak to him in Italian, but the man shook his head and refused to answer.
From above us we could hear the sound of agitated conversation between Commissario Affogato and Remigio Grassini, but Danny couldn’t tell what they were saying. After about fifteen minutes, the Commissario, the other officer, and Grassini all came down the ladder.
The officer followed Grassini out of the apartment, and then closed the door behind him. “So, Mr. Green,” the Commissario said in English. “Can you tell me please why you are here today?”
I explained about the painting, and the chain of events that had brought Danny and me there. “I don’t know who that man was, but he attacked Signor Grassini right in front of us,” I said. “Grassini was defending himself.”
“That is not what Signor Grassini says,” she said. She tipped her finger against Grassini’s kitchen table, and I noticed that she wore no jewelry, not even a watch. “He says you killed the man, not him.”
My mouth dropped open. “All I did was pull the man off him. Grassini stabbed him. You’ll find his fingerprints on the sword, not mine.”
She said, “You will come with me to the Questura, the police station, please. We will speak there.”
“You can’t believe him. I don’t even know who that man was. I had no reason to want to hurt him.” I motioned to Danny. “My brother will tell you the same story.”
“Yes, you say he is your brother. Is he FBI, too? Maybe he is CIA? Or you would like me to believe he is from some other agency? Maybe KGB?”
I was smart enough to shut my mouth at that point. When we got to the police station, I would ask to speak to someone at the American embassy. Then we would get all this sorted out.
Commissario Affogato turned to speak with another officer. While her back was turned, I sent a text to Leonardo Foa. From what I’d looked up before I left, I knew that the Carabinieri were a division of the military, and that Foa held the rank of Colonelo. I hoped that was enough to help us out.
Being taken to Questura for questioning after the man we got painting from killed another man in an argument, I texted him. Can you help?
“What’s going to happen, Angus?” Danny asked me, when I put my phone back in my pocket.
“We’ll have to rethink our sight-seeing plans for this afternoon,” I said. “Sorry, bro. But I have a feeling we’ll be tied up for a few hours.”
I didn’t want to tell Danny that I was worried that somehow Grassini had set us up, though I couldn’t see how yet. And even if he hadn’t, this could turn into an international incident that might cost me my job at the Bureau.
22 – The Criminal Gene
I shouldered my backpack, and Affogato allowed me to carry the painting with me as we accompanied her back to the boat that had brought her
to the scene. She walked with a slight hitch in her step, as if she’d hurt one leg somehow, and I remembered the way I had been shot myself. If that bullet had hit a few inches lower, I might be walking with the same kind of limp.
She stepped onto the launch and immediately went to the bow to make a phone call. The pilot offered Danny and me a hand to get on the boat, which rocked gently in the current. There was enough room for both of us to stand in the stern comfortably.
The pilot went up to the console and expertly backed the boat out and made a sweeping turn in the canal. We went forward, then he turned right onto another, narrower canal, which eventually led us out to the Grand Canal. I couldn’t concentrate on the scenery, because I was worried about what would happen. How long would it take the police to figure out the true story? Who was that man, and did he have anything to do with the painting?
Would Danny and I end up in jail on some trumped-up charge?
I stole a glance at Danny, who leaned against the gunwale and looked out at the small boats and gondolas we passed. This wasn’t the kind of experience I’d hoped to share with him in Venice, and my anger toward Grassini began to rise. Why had he involved us in this drama? Why bother to blame the man’s death on me, when it would be so easy to prove otherwise?
What if the Venice police weren’t careful, though, and they weren’t able to pick up Grassini’s prints from the sword? Then it would be his word against mine and Danny’s. A local resident versus two foreigners – though Grassini already had a criminal record, which ought to count against him. A lot was going to hinge on who the victim was, too.
The pilot zoomed expertly down the Grand Canal, then docked in front of a long three-story building, in the middle of a row of similar boats. The Questura was a three-story building of stone and coral-colored stucco, with the tired look I had come to associate with government buildings in the US. Affogato shouldered her way past Danny and me to get off the boat first, and then we followed her through a white stone arch into the building.
We climbed stairs to a hallway lit by broad windows that looked out the side of the building. “You will wait here,” she said to Danny as she opened the door to what looked like a small interrogation room.
“I’ll stay with my brother,” I said.
“You will be right next door,” she said, motioning to the adjacent room. “If he cries, you will hear him.”
What a bitch. I would see her cry long before she did anything to hurt my brother.
She closed the door behind me. I was alone, but she hadn’t taken the painting, my backpack and laptop, or my cell phone. I used my cell to find the number for the U.S. Consular Agent at Marco Polo Airport in Venice. I dialed the number, but before the call connected I had to hang up and answer an incoming call.
Fortunately, it was from Leonardo Foa. “Tell me what has happened,” he said.
I explained quickly about meeting Grassini, transferring the money and getting the painting, then the approach of the other man, the argument, and his death.
“This is very interesting,” Foa said.
Interesting to him, perhaps. But he wasn’t the one in custody.
“This man Grassini is known to us, but he is very smart and it has been difficult to gather enough evidence for an arrest.”
“You’ve got it now,” I said. “I saw him kill that man. The Commissario told me that Grassini says I killed him, but that’s ridiculous. His fingerprints will be on the sword.”
“It can take some time for the fingerprint match,” Leo said. “Affogato, you say? I have heard of her. I will come to her office.”
“Should I call the U.S. consulate?”
“Wait, please, until I arrive. Perhaps we can keep this from becoming an international incident. When you involve the politicians things often get worse before they get better.”
Then he hung up. An international incident? That would not look good to my bosses back in Florida. It was hot in the small room and I was sweating. I could imagine the way the press would see the story. A gay FBI agent sent to buy back a family painting confiscated by the Nazis from a gay Jewish art lover who was later killed at Auschwitz.
I was glad that I’d worn shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, though I knew that outfit didn’t make me seem all that professional. But hey, I wasn’t in Venice as an agent of the FBI. I was a tourist, carrying out an errand for a friend. I could wear whatever I damn pleased.
What if the police wanted to keep the painting as evidence in a case against Grassini? I didn’t want to have to go back to Fort Lauderdale and face Frank Sena without it. And what if he blamed me for losing it, and wanted me to reimburse him for all the money he’d put out to send me to Venice, not to mention the fifty grand he’d paid Grassini?
I wished I could let Danny know that Foa was on his way, but we’d never practiced Morse code as kids, and I had no way to speak with him beyond going next door—and I had a feeling there was an officer stationed outside to prevent that.
I stewed for a half hour before Affogato returned and sat down across the scarred table from me. She had taken off her suit jacket, and spots of perspiration showed on her white cotton blouse. “Tell me again how you know Signor Grassini,” she said.
“I don’t know him. I only met him an hour ago.” I explained how Danny and I had met him at the café, then accompanied him back to his apartment, and what I had seen on the roof. “I don’t speak Italian so I don’t know what they were saying. But it was clear the dead man was angry. When he grabbed Mr. Grassini by the neck and began to strangle him, I felt obliged to help.”
“By stabbing this man with a sword?”
“No! All I did was pull the man off Grassini!”
“Tell me again what happened on the roof. Slowly.”
I went back through a step-by-step explanation. How after the man stumbled away from Grassini, Danny and I had watched as Grassini grabbed the sword and plunged it into the man’s chest.
Finally it seemed like she understood. I took a deep breath.
“So, Mr. Green. You say you are with the American FBI. But you have no authority here in Venice. Why should you be investigating Signor Grassini?”
It felt like I had said the same thing over and over again. “I’m not investigating him. I’m just picking up this painting for a friend.”
I didn’t feel the need to tell her about the investigation into Jesse Venable and immigrant smuggling. That would only muddy the water—which already had begun to smell.
“You have proof of this?” she asked.
I opened my laptop and showed her the material that Frank had sent me – the copy of the bill of sale and so on. “Mr. Sena is the legal owner of the painting, and the cash transaction was between him and Mr. Grassini. I’d have to contact Mr. Sena to get his record of payment to Mr. Grassini.”
We went back and forth a few more times, until she finally gave up. She pushed her chair back with a loud scrape and then walked out the door, closing it sharply behind her before I could challenge her on how much longer Danny and I would have to stay there.
Her attitude had become more than just irritating – it was threatening. I could not understand why she would listen to Grassini, even if he had implicated me. What possible reason did I have to stab a stranger? With a sword I’d only seen for the first time moments before?
I heard the door in the room next to me open and then close, and I tried to listen through the wall but I couldn’t make anything out. If she hurt my brother....
I got up and paced around the small room. Every moment Affogato kept us apart was a moment I couldn’t spend with Danny before I had to fly back home, and he returned to Florence.
Another half hour passed before the door opened once again. This time, Affogato was accompanied by a thirty-something man in white tennis shoes, jeans, and a bright blue World Cup jersey with ITALIA printed sideways, surmounted by the Italian flag. Was he some neighbor of Grassini’s? Would he pretend to have seen the incident on the roof, and imp
licate me?
“This is Colonelo Foa,” she said. “With the Carabinieri.”
There was an antagonistic undercurrent in her voice, and when I turned to see Leo Foa, I worried. He was younger than I’d expected, and he looked like we had interrupted him on a day off. He didn’t seem like the kind of cop who had enough pull to rescue me and Danny from the clutches of Commissario Affogato, who for some reason had decided to suspect everything I said.
The two of them spoke quickly in Italian, and though I didn’t understand the words, I got the subtext. They were arguing in a turf battle. Had I fallen into some larger investigation? Was Foa trying to exert his own authority, or help out my brother and me?
“Acceto,” Commissario Affogato said finally. Then she turned and stalked away.
Foa turned to me. “Miriam Washington speaks very well of you,” he said, with only a light accent. “She says you are very smart and very courageous. From what I understand, you acted well today, even if you were protecting a bad guy.”
I was curious to know what kind of “bad guy” Grassini was, but Leo said, “Now we get your brother and I take you away from here.”
He led me into the hallway and opened the door to the room next door. I was worried that Danny would be upset, nearly in tears, but instead he said, “Oh, good. Angus. Can we leave now?”
“Yes.” I introduced him to Leonardo Foa, and as we walked downstairs I asked, “If Grassini is a known criminal, as Miriam said you told her, then why was Affogato so quick to suspect us?”
“I do not know, but I do not trust her.”
We walked outside into the sunshine, which sparkled on the canal that ran alongside the front of the Questura. It seemed a lot brighter and cleaner than it had earlier that day.
As I chewed on the idea that Foa didn’t trust Affogato, he said, “I saw the name of Signor Sena in the papers Miriam sent me. You believe he is the rightful owner of the painting?”
Survival Is a Dying Art Page 14