by Kai Meyer
Alessandro stopped the car and turned to her. “We’re going to see this through together, okay? Quattrini can go to hell for all I care, but if you think you ought to speak to her, then I’m with you.”
She smiled. “To make sure I don’t do anything stupid?”
“When you do something that other people think stupid, you usually have a good reason for it.” He leaned over and kissed her. Her hand went to the back of his head, and she buried her fingers in his hair. She felt the chill of the snake rise in her, but kept it under control. By now she could deal with the metamorphosis. No more unwanted shape-shifting. Or not usually, anyway.
Finally Alessandro put both hands on the steering wheel and stepped on the gas. Smoothly, almost silently, the car started moving.
She switched on the stereo, and the song started again. Eagles were circling the peaks of the Monti Nebrodi, hunting for prey to feed their young.
The Porsche Cayenne went around another bend. Rosa closed her eyes.
“Over there,” said Alessandro. “That’s it.”
Seeing the lush green of these mountains, Rosa almost forgot the bleak, ocher land that was the property of the Carnevare clan. It was as if Sicily wanted to use this spot to show it could be as fertile as anywhere in Europe.
San Leo was nestled among the fissured rocks of an impressive massif. The backs of the houses on the outside of the village were set against a steep wall of rock, giving it the look of a medieval castle.
Alessandro steered the Cayenne through a paved square with a stone well in the middle of it into an alley between the tall walls of houses. There was hardly anyone in sight. At a few windows, curtains made of colored strips of plastic wafted in the breeze as the car drove by. Even the wooden bench outside the only bar in the place was empty. Surely the old men of the village would normally have gathered here.
They drove through the shady maze of buildings and left San Leo behind. After a few hundred yards, they saw the church rising to one side of the village among precipitous rocks. The road leading up to it was in good shape. Beyond it there was another, broader road running down the mountainside.
There was a board out front with information about the healing spring to which the church owed its location. A kind of warehouse with a roll-down door rose behind the building.
A black BMW with tinted windows was parked outside the church, one of the cars available for the judge’s use. Stefania Moranelli was leaning against the door with her arms folded, looking at them. She was a slender young woman, still under thirty. On some days she tied her long black hair back in a ponytail, but today it was loose and falling over her well-worn leather jacket. She was attractive in a severe way, with pronounced cheekbones and a wiry build.
The judge and her second assistant were nowhere to be seen.
“Your friend doesn’t stick to the speed limit, does she?” said Alessandro morosely, as if he felt it an insult to his honor that Quattrini’s people had shaken off his pursuit.
“If she upholds the law, you don’t like it,” said Rosa, smiling, “but when she breaks it, you don’t like that either.” She stroked his hand and got out. He followed her, but a moment later when Stefania Moranelli brought out her gun, he seemed to regret it.
“Hands on the car roof,” Stefania ordered.
“Oh, great,” he said, but did as she asked and promptly burned his hands on the sunbaked metal.
Rosa was fairly sure that the order didn’t apply to her, but she put her own arms out and held her hands above the car roof to keep Alessandro from feeling even worse. The bodyguard patted Alessandro down, noticed the glance that Rosa cast her, and understood. She came over and subjected Rosa, too, to a cursory search.
“Thanks,” whispered Rosa with her head half turned away, so that Alessandro couldn’t see her lips moving.
A smile flitted over Stefania’s face. She pointed across the courtyard. “The judge is waiting for you by the spring behind the church.”
Alessandro looked darkly at the buildings. “Why here, of all places?”
“She comes here to pray. Once a week.”
“To—” He interrupted himself, shaking his head. When he looked at Rosa, she shrugged. She hadn’t known that Quattrini was so devout. Well, she thought, it was none of her business.
Stefania stayed with the vehicles while Rosa and Alessandro crossed the quiet courtyard. An eagle rose from the rocks behind the church with a screech of outrage. The mountain winds howled in the cracks and crevices of the mountainside.
Antonio Festa met them behind the church. He had shaved his hair so that it was only a millimeter long. A scar began under his left eye and continued up to his eyebrow. His right hand was resting on the shoulder holster under his jacket. Rosa greeted him briefly; Alessandro said nothing. The icy glance that he and Festa exchanged showed where the lines were drawn.
There was another square behind the church, bounded on the right by the warehouse, on the left by the church, and the far side of it ended at a rocky wall. Water from the mountain spring splashed from a stone basin at chest-height to a larger basin on the ground. The judge was kneeling beside it with her hands folded and her eyes lowered. She finished saying her prayer, stood up, and came over to them. Alessandro reacted coldly but courteously to her greeting. Rosa hoped they could manage to conduct this interview in a civilized way.
Quattrini told her bodyguard to wait outside, then led Rosa and Alessandro into the warehouse through a side entrance. Festa did not look happy about leaving his boss alone with the two of them. But he obeyed her order, ostentatiously drawing his gun and walking out of the building to keep an eye on the access roads.
There was a smell of sawdust and paint inside the warehouse. Huge figures of saints made of wood and papier-mâché stood under lengths of clear plastic film, lined up like a silent company of soldiers. Most of them were placed on structures like litters. Some were as much as nine feet tall, with folded hands and suffering glances turned heavenward. Even from the entrance, Rosa could see several versions of the crucified Redeemer, four statues of the Virgin Mary, some with and some without her child; she didn’t recognize most of the others, presumably local saints who the deeply religious people of Sicily carried through the streets in their annual processions. Rosa had not witnessed any of these festivals, and knew about them only from TV reports and stories. Thousands of people would throng the decorated streets of cities and villages alike on festival days, following the statues.
“Rather impressive, aren’t they?” Quattrini led the two of them farther into the warehouse of saints. “This is where the processional saints’ figures for all the local villages are kept.”
“Why in San Leo?” asked Rosa.
“Because of the spring. Healing powers have been associated with its water over the centuries. Years ago the Pope himself visited San Leo and blessed the village and its church. Since then all the neighboring communities have wanted to be allowed to store their statues here. For that, they’ll even endure the long trip to transport them through the mountains. And it brings in a good income for the village.”
“Does it do any good?” inquired Alessandro.
“Does what do any good?”
“The water. I mean, that’s why you come here. Don’t say you’ve never tried it yourself.”
If his tone of voice annoyed Quattrini, she didn’t let it show. “A few drops of water are not enough on their own to save a soul from purgatory. Not mine, not yours.” Her hand went to the locket on her breast.
“Why are we here?” Rosa didn’t want another argument between those two. The scene in the mortuary appeared graphically before her mind’s eye. “You were bugging my conversation in the prison, weren’t you? If the Hungry Man—”
“So you really still call him by that name?” Quattrini tightened her lips in a humorless smile. “There have been bosses with less resonant nicknames. But as for bugging your conversation, I couldn’t use a word of it in court.” She was standing at t
he foot of a statue of the Madonna that, under its covering of transparent plastic film, looked double the judge’s size. “A document issued by the minister of justice forbids me to keep watch on any high-level prisoner without his personal permission. Many of the gentlemen in the government have much to lose if a former capo dei capi washes their dirty laundry in public.”
Rosa couldn’t take her eyes off the gigantic figure of the Madonna. Somewhere under the warehouse ceiling, pigeons were cooing. Their fluttering wings beat against the wooden roof. “You did it anyway.”
The judge nodded. “I learned a long time ago that here in Sicily, we have to get by without any support from Rome. Too many of my colleagues have paid for their obedience with their lives. I’m not prepared to do that yet. I’ve declared war on Cosa Nostra, and you have chosen the weapons.”
Alessandro didn’t move a muscle. The belief that judges like Quattrini were his mortal enemies had been drummed into him since early childhood. And Rosa understood. Hour after hour of police interrogation, the first time when she was only twelve—she knew all about that. Her dislike of everyone who claimed the law and morality as their own was as strong as his.
All the same, she liked Quattrini. The judge had protected her from the law several times. In return, Rosa had passed her aunt’s documents on to her, had ended her family’s human trafficking in illegal emigrants from Africa, and had put a stop to the Alcantaras’ involvement in the drug trade.
Quattrini slowly walked over to Alessandro, who was looking at her darkly. “Have you ever read Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard?”
He shook his head.
“Lampedusa recommends that all young men leave Sicily by the time they’re seventeen at the latest. Otherwise, he says, their characters will fall victim to what he calls the Sicilian weakness.” She stopped in front of him; she was a good head shorter than he was. “You came back to Sicily when you were seventeen. What does that say about you? And what else has to happen before you realize that you can’t control the Mafia? Rosa understood that long ago, whether she admits it or not. When you go under, do you want to drag her down with you?”
He was going to reply, but Quattrini didn’t give him the chance. “I’ve asked Rosa, more than once, to give me information about you. She’d sooner die than go behind your back. But what you are doing, Alessandro, is a kind of betrayal. You don’t expose someone you love to such risks.”
For a moment it looked as if he would lose his self-control. Rosa was ready to intervene if necessary. There was already a stirring beneath his skin as the panther fur fought to come to the surface. Sometimes his metamorphosis into a predator was like an explosion and couldn’t be held back. However, Alessandro kept himself reined in. A thin film of sweat glistened on his forehead as he fought down his seething emotions.
“What do you want from us?” he asked quietly. “Why were we asked to come here?”
But Quattrini hadn’t yet finished what she wanted to say, and Rosa was beginning to wonder whether she had been wrong. Whether the word Arcadia in the judge’s message had simply been bait, bringing them here so that she could have a serious talk with them, as if they were two difficult children. She didn’t have much experience with that kind of thing.
“You both grew up without your fathers,” the judge went on. “One of them dead, the other far too busy committing crimes to take an interest in his son. Do you want the same thing to happen to your own children? Your grandchildren? Look at the members of the clans. How many men get to be grandfathers before a bullet finishes them off, or they’re put behind bars for the rest of their lives? Are you going to protect other people with your silence, just to have someone or other inform on you in the end? Capi may be powerful for a while, but they have one big problem: They can easily be replaced. What became of your forebears? How many of them died a natural death? And how many of them succeeded in spending their whole lives with those they loved?”
Rosa had clenched her jaw so hard that her teeth were beginning to ache. Strangely enough, now of all times she found herself thinking of Fundling again—one more death she had seen for herself in her few months in Sicily.
Alessandro took a step back, as if Quattrini were breaking out in an infectious rash. But Rosa noticed that the harshness had left his eyes. For a moment it looked as if he would make concessions.
Then, however, he responded in a tone of such strong dislike that it shocked even Rosa. “You talk and talk, but the fact is you’re not saying anything that could help us. You might as well be telling a sick person: Why don’t you just get better again? It’s not that easy, and you of all people should know it, Judge Quattrini. What did you expect? You thought you’d give us some good advice, and immediately we’d say: Yes, right, why didn’t we see it that way all along? You stand there making a speech, talking about proper behavior and responsibility, about morality and what you think is right and what is wrong. But you represent only the law, and it’s not our law. It was made in the north, in Rome and Milan and all the cities that have grown rich by exploiting the land here in the south. Your law is the law of the victor, and it is supercilious, arrogant, and couldn’t care less how people have survived in Sicily for hundreds of years. My father committed crimes, terrible crimes, yes—but does that mean I have to be like him? Do I have to make the same mistakes? And do you seriously expect me to walk away from my family and begin again somewhere else?”
Quattrini held his gaze and smiled. “But I know that you’ve been playing with that very idea yourself for some time. What about the hundred thousand euros you withdrew from your bank accounts? And the two tickets for the ferry? One for you, one for Rosa.” She looked from him to Rosa, then fixed her eyes on his again. “Yes, Alessandro, I know about that. I’m a judge. It’s part of my job to know about these things.”
Rosa touched his hand. “Is that true?”
He had bitten his lower lip, and she hoped the taste of blood wouldn’t bring on another transformation. Briefly, he looked down, then nodded. “I deposited the money and the tickets somewhere safe. Just in case we’re left with no option but to disappear.”
“And when would you have told me about that?”
“If and when it became necessary. I meant it only for an emergency. In case we have to move quickly at some point.”
Quattrini nodded. “That’s the truth, Rosa. The tickets he bought are open-ended. And they are in the same names as the false passports he’s had made for you both. By an extremely gifted forger from Noto called Paolo Vitale.”
Alessandro’s expression was stony.
“But,” Quattrini went on, “none of that particularly interests me. Nor am I interested in knowing where you’ve hidden the money and the papers. It only shows me that you realized, long ago, what a fix you’re in. That you know perfectly well neither of you can survive as capi of your clans. Sooner or later someone will—”
She was interrupted by a squeal, not particularly loud, but as penetrating as the rasp of chalk across a blackboard. The sound came down from above, from the rafters of the warehouse twenty-five feet above their heads, and was accompanied by the agitated fluttering of the pigeons.
One of the metal skylights had been opened with a squeal of its hinges. A slender figure stood out against the clear rectangle of sky, a woman with long hair.
When she plunged into the depths below her, arms outspread, Rosa saw that she was naked.
Even as she was still in the air, her limbs changed shape, brown feathers covered her skin, and her feet curved and came apart in claws the size of hedge shears.
By the time she reached Quattrini, and buried the judge under her, the woman had become a gigantic owl.
HARPIES
WITH ITS WINGS OUTSPREAD, the creature sat enthroned on Quattrini, threw its head back, and with a grinding sound buried its hooked beak in the judge’s breastbone.
Alessandro let himself sink to the floor and disappeared from Rosa’s field of vision. A moment later, he’d alrea
dy become a panther. Scraps of his black suit sailed down to the floor as one paw ground his tie into the dust. He leaped forward, rammed the body of the gigantic bird with all his might, and tore it away from Quattrini. Amid roaring and the wild beating of wings, the owl and the panther collided with the tall statue of the Virgin Mary, knocked it over, and were buried under it. But the statue, made of plaster and wood shavings, was not as heavy as it looked. Alessandro was already crawling out from under it, while it took the owl two or three seconds more to free its wings.
Rosa had just decided not to change shape, and tend to the judge instead, when she heard more wing beats from up above, too loud to be coming from the panic-stricken pigeons in the rafters. She looked up and saw a second man-size bird swooping down. Its huge claws were already closing around her as she turned into her snake form and eluded its grasp. Quick as lightning, she slipped aside, raised her amber-colored snake’s head, hissing, and prepared to bite her aggressor, but it swept her away with a wing the size of two car doors. Rosa had feathers between her teeth and snapped her jaws shut, but she lost her hold on the creature as she was flung backward. She slid across the floor and collided with a plastic-wrapped saint, got caught up in the plastic, and was out of commission for several seconds.
When she had freed herself and raised her head, she saw other statues falling and bursting apart in clouds of plaster dust. There were pigeons fluttering everywhere now. Alessandro and the first huge bird of prey were locked in a furious fight, surrounded by a white haze, pigeon feathers, and shreds of plastic wrap.
The second owl, however, was sitting in triumph over Quattrini. The judge looked up uncomprehendingly at her blood-stained breast, and then at the creature. The bird’s claws were digging into her flesh. No sound came from Quattrini’s open mouth as the owl snatched her up, dashed her to the floor again, and then rose into the air with her.