Kill the King

by Sandrone Dazieri

  “Yes, work gloves, no fingerprints.”

  Careful not to touch her, Dante pushed his face close to Colomba’s neck and sniffed. He could smell blood, sweat, automotive oil, dust, and soap. And lemon. A chemical lemon smell. A smell he was familiar with. A smell that summoned up grit on the tongue. “Have you washed any dishes or used any kind of detergent or cleaning fluid in the last few hours?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then you can tend to your injuries. I know who it was. But I’m not going to tell you unless you go have yourself looked at in the emergency room.”

  “You’re not bullshitting me, though, right? You really do have a solid idea?”

  “There’s been plenty of bullshit between the two of us already. Go get yourself looked at.”

  “I’ll tend to my own injuries, I don’t have any time to waste.” She washed her face in the hospital’s ground floor restroom, filling the sink with blood. Her nose was twice its normal size, but her septum wasn’t broken. Her lip was split open, though, in exactly the same spot it had been cut the last time. And it burned like acid. Colomba soaked a wad of toilet paper in water and wiped off the blood, and then she twisted more toilet paper into two wads and stuffed them up her nostrils, which in the meantime had started pissing blood again. Five minutes later she was back at Dante’s bedside, where he’d been waiting for her, twisting his hands anxiously.

  “God, what a shitty day,” Colomba said as she sat down; only then did she notice that her T-shirt was torn over her belly. “Who is it?”

  “I’ll tell you, but only if I can come, too,” Dante said with some reluctance. “That way I can get some fresh air.”

  “No. You can’t even stand on your own two feet and it would be a disaster if anyone recognized you. But if you want, I’m happy to sit here chatting about it while the guy makes his getaway.”

  Dante snorted impatiently. “You’re intolerable.”

  “No, you are. Was it Lupo or Leo?”

  “Would a carabiniere have come without a weapon?”

  “Their sidearms are registered.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you wouldn’t have been able to lay your hands on a clean firearm when you were still on the force?”

  “All right, then, who was it? Make it short and sweet.”

  “Your attacker avoided the security cameras at the shooting range. And he can’t have prepared in advance by studying the location, because not even you knew that you’d be going there. So he must know the place. Most likely, he followed you from the hospital but then he just improvised.”

  “I got them to give me the list of the members. Do you want to read it? I did, but I don’t recognize any of the names.”

  “He’s not a member for the same reason he’s not a carabiniere. He would have had a weapon, something to hold on you at least until he could have taken yours. Did you have the safety on your gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he have any difficulty turning off the safety or racking the slide when he picked it up off the ground?”

  Colomba thought back. “No.”

  “So your assailant knows how to shoot, but he doesn’t own a firearm. He doesn’t even have a hunting rifle, and around here they give you shotgun shells for change at the bar.”

  “He has a dirty criminal record.”

  “Exactly. You haven’t had dealings with many people in Portico, and out of them, if you count out the cops and the women, how many are left who are male and of an age to be physically fit to attack you?”

  “Quite a few. And that’s not counting the dozens of journalists who’ve been this way.”

  “Journalists don’t use hand-washing paste. I recognized the smell of lemon on your neck. Which is what you use to cut grease.”

  Colomba knew exactly what that was. It was another thing that her motorcycle-nut ex-boyfriend had taught her to use, when she got home covered with black grease.

  Just like, say, a mechanic.

  9

  Colomba got in touch with Alberti and Alberti managed to get a squad car. Once they reached the little house where Loris lived, next to the repair shop, they all agreed that there was no time to waste by this point: the door gave way after a couple of hard shoulder blows.

  Loris wasn’t there. But there was the stink of food gone bad, as well as a general state of disorder, tangled filthy bedsheets, hundreds of cigarette butts scattered on the floor, and the bloodstained cotton that the man had used on his cuts. The stereo speakers had been kicked in, the TV set lay on its back on the floor. There was a plate with a Conad supermarket loyalty card, dusted with white powder. Colomba cursed herself for the fool she was: How had she failed to notice that Loris was an addict?

  “He must have started pretty recently,” said Alberti. “Shall we take a look in the repair shop?”

  “Definitely.”

  The burglar alarm wasn’t activated and from under the metal roller gate came the light of a fluorescent lamp. Colomba and Alberti each took one side of the gate and lifted it, keeping their bodies out of the line of fire, behind the wall. Loris was sitting at his workbench. In front of him stood a bottle of whiskey and a cup, and in one hand was an old cordless phone that was practically falling apart. Alberti aimed his pistol right at him. “Police! Down on the floor with both hands behind your head. Move it!”

  Loris dropped the cordless. Under his half-open overalls could be seen a dirty sleeveless undershirt and the bruises that Colomba had given him. Loris had lost weight; his face was gaunt and his eyes looked as if he hadn’t slept in a century. Instead of standing up, he grabbed the cup off his workbench and held it in his hands, staring at it with great interest.

  “Are you deaf?” Alberti shouted again.

  “I just want to drink a toast,” said Loris in a toneless voice. “In memory of Martina.”

  “What do you have to do with her?” Colomba asked, sincerely baffled.

  “She was my woman. She was expecting a baby. My son.”

  Colomba felt her rage melting away, replaced by pity. “Listen, I’m sorry to hear that, but I had nothing whatsoever to do with her death. Now put both hands behind your head.”

  “Bottoms up.” Loris lifted the cup and threw it right at her.

  Instinct made Colomba duck, and the cup shattered against the wall behind her. The liquid sprayed in all directions and a few drops landed on her heavy jacket, sending up small plumes of smoke.

  Colomba lunged at Loris, slamming him against the workbench with a powerful shoulder blow. He grabbed the bottle, trying to break it over her head, but Colomba grabbed his wrist with both hands and twisted it.

  “Put it down or I’ll shoot,” shouted Alberti, moving one step closer to get a clean shot.

  Loris kicked Colomba in the belly, then he lifted the bottle to his lips and took a long swig. Alberti shouted in horror. Colomba, hunkered down and breathless, rolled away as Loris collapsed to the floor, coughing and in the throes of convulsions. The bottle slipped out of his hand and shattered on the floor, spraying most of the liquid onto Loris’s legs, which, like Colomba’s jacket before, started to fume.

  Taking great care not to touch the wet parts, Colomba and Alberti dragged Loris away from the puddle, which reeked of rotten eggs. The lower portion of the mechanic’s face was swollen and purple, and his mouth had been reduced to little more than a foaming hole full of teeth, which had then fallen out as the gums dissolved. With a gasp, Loris spat out his tongue: it was black and riddled with holes like Swiss cheese, and it continued to writhe and jerk on the cement floor.

  Alberti fished his cell phone out of his pocket to call an ambulance, while Colomba ran over to the hose, turned on the faucet, and aimed the freezing spray of water at Loris. The mechanic practically wasn’t moving anymore, both hands clutching at his throat, which was slowly splitting open, oozing black blood. Colomba went on rinsing him off, but Loris had stopped reacting. The spray of water stripped even more flesh off his ravaged hands, and one fing
er floated away with the stream and down the drain. By now, Loris’s face was black.

  “The ambulance is on its way,” said Alberti, putting his cell phone away.

  Colomba put a hand on Alberti’s shoulder; the man was pale as a sheet and on the verge of vomiting. “Can you take care of this on your own?” she asked him. “You can just tell them that you heard him moaning as you went past and went in to see.”

  Alberti nodded.

  “I’ll try and reach out to counterterrorism and see if I can get your name taken off the reports. Whatever happens, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “But what did he drink?”

  “From the smell, battery acid.”

  “Good God.”

  Colomba gave him a slap on the back, and then she searched the workbench, finding her own gun, empty of bullets, and a framed picture of Martina. She was in uniform, and it had been cut out of a newspaper. Colomba decided that Loris might like to have it while they were taking him to the hospital, but by the time she turned around to give it to him, he’d already stopped breathing.

  10

  When Colomba walked back into the hospital tent, Dante jumped out of bed in his anxiety.

  “Are you all right? How’s Alberti?”

  “Everyone’s fine. Except for Loris. He’s a goner. And it was …” Colomba couldn’t continue. “Jesus, why does everyone around me keep dying?”

  “Come here and let me give you a hug.”

  “No. You wanted to get outside, let me take you.”

  Dante threw his coat over his flannel pajamas, scattering sparks of static in the darkness. Colomba helped him into the car and took the road leading out of Portico. Distractedly, focusing mostly on driving, she told Dante what had happened, and when he heard how the mechanic had died, he turned a little green.

  “I understood that they knew each other, Loris and Martina, but not that they were a couple,” Colomba finished up.

  “Can you pull over? I think I’m going to throw up.”

  Colomba stopped at a pizzeria on the provincial road with a couple of outdoor tables for smokers. Putting her arm around his waist to support him, Colomba helped him to get seated, then turned to the waiter and ordered a couple of beers. It was still cold out, but the sky was clear and the stars were shining brightly for the first time in a good solid month. Dante let the sight fill his heart. “I wonder what acid tastes like,” he said.

  “I don’t even know why certain things pop into your head. Anyway, Martina wasn’t pregnant,” Colomba said. “We would have known.”

  “Unless the medical examiner lied to defend her postmortem reputation, Loris must have misunderstood, or else someone else tricked him into believing it.”

  “Loris didn’t need Leo to have it in for me.”

  “Are you sure of that? If you ask me, he needed Leo to connect you to the murder of the lady carabiniere. How could he have known that you were a suspect? He was a drug addict and he had a criminal record; can you seriously picture Lupo telling him all about it?”

  “No.” Colomba ordered another beer, promising herself she’d only drink half. “One thing’s for sure, Leo knows how to pluck all the right strings. He even made me believe in a phone call that he’d fucked Romero.”

  “And did that bother you because you thought he liked Romero better?”

  Colomba’s beer went down the wrong pipe, and she spat it out, coughing and breaking out laughing. She’d been physically attacked and had then watched her assailant intentionally melt his face with acid, and yet, for the first time in a very long while, she really couldn’t restrain herself. “Did I ever tell you what an asshole you are?”

  “Asshole is my middle name.”

  “You don’t have a middle name. Or a first name, for that matter.”

  “Ouch. Cruel!” Dante chuckled. The limited alcohol content had immediately gone to his head.

  “I can’t force you to lend a hand, because if you’re not up for it, you’re just not up for it, but I have to admit that you’d definitely be a help,” said Colomba. “And then … there’s Tommy.”

  “Who may have spent some time in the Father’s diabolical clutches.”

  “This would finally be proof that the Father wasn’t some solitary nut job, but that he had a whole organization behind him. You’ve tried to prove that for years; now you could actually do it. And you’d be helping a kid.”

  Dante stole her bottle. “One of us,” he said, and took a gulp.

  He handed the beer back to Colomba, who polished it off. “One of us,” she repeated. Everyone who’d brushed up against the Father in any way had had their life changed, and Colomba was part of that group. “So, are you going to give me a hand or are you just planning your escape?” she asked.

  Dante cocked an eyebrow. “I have three escape plans figured out and ready to go, and I’ve skimmed enough money off my adoptive father to live comfortably for a couple of years anywhere on earth I choose to take up residence. But I have no intention of abandoning you.” He took a half-crushed cigarette out of his sock. “Unless I have a smoke, my mood is going to collapse. Do you want to pick this fight?”

  “No. Enough’s enough, I’m not your mother.”

  Dante lit up and emitted a moan of satisfaction as he breathed a plume of smoke skyward, in the general direction of Sirius. “Considering that we’re doing something much more dangerous than ingesting tobacco, it wouldn’t really make sense anyway. Alberti told me that protective services is ready to reveal that I’m still alive.”

  “As soon as you’re released from the hospital.”

  “If you want me to go on being part of this operation, then you need to ask them to delay that announcement. No public statements about my liberation. No pictures with the Italian flag as a backdrop. However much I may love groupies, I’d prefer to have the rest of the world continue to believe that I’m dead, so I can be left to work in blessed peace.”

  CHAPTER III

  1

  Alberti helped Dante get into the gray Alfa Romeo outside the overgrown garden that had been his home. “Next stop, Mezzanotte,” he said. Dante leaned his head against the half-open window, deathly tired. It had been four days since Loris killed himself, and he might have gotten ten hours of sleep in all that time, forcing himself to read through the whole stack of documents that Colomba had had sent to him, a roundup of the current state of the investigation. Especially what they had on Martina, whose death struck him as even weirder and more nonsensical than the mechanic’s demented suicide.

  At the time of her death, Martina Concio had been twenty-five years old, perfectly healthy, with good muscle tone, and presenting no sign of previous or current disease. She died of massive hemorrhage as a result of penetrating trauma to her abdominal cavity caused by the pointy tree branch; the angle of entry—forty-five degrees—was compatible with the theory that Martina had landed on that branch after roughly a six-foot fall. It was likewise compatible with the ragged outline of the wound, which fit the shape of the branch, and the bruising on her body as a result of the fall. There were no assault bruises.

  Tests done on her bodily fluids had shown no presence of toxic substances: there was nothing in her stomach but coffee and sugar. She also had sugar in her mouth and esophagus, which, considering the rapidity with which the body tends to assimilate sugar, meant that it had been ingested only minutes before her death. She had in any case been awake at the time of the fall, because she had tried to grab a branch, but there were no defensive wounds, nor had any flesh been found under her fingernails.

  Martina was dressed in her heavy winter jacket, her uniform, and her government-issue sidearm, safely fastened in its holster. In her pockets were a publicity brochure for a beautician, an apple, a handful of coins, and café sugar packets, empty and full, but without any branding or advertising. IDs, keys, and wallet had remained in the car, in her handbag.

  An examination of the ground between the car and the place of her death had revealed
nothing. Hours of snow, wind, and freezing rain had gone by, to say nothing about the tromping of the rescue teams, but the SIS still ruled out any signs of a body being dragged, nor had they found any blood either on the car or around the tree on whose branch she’d been impaled. If Leo really was the one who’d killed her, he’d done a good clean job of eliminating all traces of his work.

  Between reading documents and his physical therapy sessions, Dante had also had to face a closed-door session of questioning from the magistrates of the counterterrorism pool. He’d told them that he remembered nothing of the massacre in Venice, nor of the weeks that had preceded it. Really, I was in Venice? Oh my goodness.

  They’d actually believed him. Dante was as good at telling lies as he was at spotting them, and no one had any interest in digging too deep to find a different story than the one already told in the proceedings of the inquiry. In the meantime, Colomba had been almost uninterruptedly in the Pisa barracks talking with D’Amore and a CIA operative stationed in Italy who had updated her on the international manhunt for Bonaccorso and the specialties of Italian cuisine he was obsessed with, to a phenomenally mind-numbing extent.

  They’d just taken the turnoff for Mezzanotte when Alberti was forced to slow to walking speed on account of a tractor with extremely high wheels that was taking up the whole roadway. Dante grumbled. “Delightful in this part of the country,” he said. “Like bingo games at the hospice.”

  “Don’t you love nature?” Alberti asked.

  “Only in documentaries. In real life, it’s a perfect setting for a horror flick. A couple of idiots, living completely isolated in the countryside, being hacked to death. I just hope that there’s at least a fast internet connection. They’ve aired whole seasons while I was asleep, and I’m going to have to download hundreds of episodes.” Dante lit a cigarette and looked at Alberti’s arms. “What do you take to pump up your biceps like that?”

  “Just nutritional supplements and some time in the gym.”