Ercole Benelli said to the others, "In the Europol alerts yesterday. A notice from the U.S. embassy in Brussels. Did you not see it?"
Spiro glared at the young officer and Ercole continued, "Well, sir, this man--they know he is a white male, though not his name--he kidnapped a victim in New York and left a noose just like this one, as a token. He tortured him. The man was about to die but was rescued just in time. The perpetrator escaped. The State Department believed he left the country but did not know where he was headed. It seems he's come to Italy."
"A copycat crime, surely." Spiro was nodding at the noose.
Ercole said quickly, "No, impossible."
"Impossible?" Spiro growled.
The young man blushed and looked down. "Ah, sir. I would say unlikely. The fact of the noose hasn't yet been released to the press. For the very reason of copycat perpetrators. Someone might have seen the video, yes, but Crovi said it was a heavyset white male in a dark outfit. And the noose? The same as the report from the NYPD about the kidnapper there. I think it must be him."
Rossi gave a chuckle. "You're a Forestry officer. Why were you reading Europol reports?"
"Interpol too. And our own Police of State and Carabinieri alerts from Rome. I always do. I might use something that I learn in my own work."
Spiro muttered, "At Forestry? That must happen as often as a pope's death." He kept his eyes on the blackness of the landscape. Then: "What else did this report say? The video?"
"He posted a video of the victim about to be hanged. With music playing. On a site called YouVid."
"Terrorist?" Rossi asked.
"Apparently not. The report said he is on antipsychotic medication."
"Which is obviously not doing a very good job," Daniela said.
Rossi said to Spiro, "Postal Police. I'll have them monitor the site and get ready to trace it if he posts."
"Postal Police" was an antiquated name for a state-of-the-art law enforcement division in Italy. They handled all, or most, crimes involving telecommunications and computers.
Spiro said, "Any other thoughts?"
Ercole began to speak but the prosecutor interrupted, adding, "Massimo?"
"If he is making a production of the death," the inspector said, "I won't spend much time and manpower searching for the body. Only one team. I will send most officers out to canvass and look for CCTVs in the area."
"Good."
Which cheered Ercole, since this was close to what his own suggestion would have been.
Spiro added, "I must be getting back to Naples. Good night, Massimo. Call me with any developments. I want all the reports, especially the crime scene data. And we should pursue this lead, if that's what it is." He was now looking at the noose. He shook his head and walked to his car. There, before climbing in, he paused at the driver's side, pulled the leather-bound book from his pocket and made notations. He replaced the volume, climbed into the Volvo and sped away. As his car drove off, crunching over the gravel on the shoulder, another sound filled the night. The guttural growl of a motorcycle approaching.
Several heads turned to see the gorgeous Moto Guzzi Stelvio 1200 NTX bounding along the uneven roadway. Astride was an athletic-looking man, with thick hair, clean-shaven. He wore close-fitting jeans, boots, a black shirt and a leather jacket, dark brown. On his left hip was a badge of the Police of State; on the right, a large Beretta, a Px4 .45. No-nonsense, it had been dubbed by officers who carried it, though Ercole had always thought that use of "nonsense" and any firearm was largely contradictory.
Ercole watched the man skid to a stop. He was Silvio De Carlo, assistant inspector, young--about Ercole's age. He strolled up to the inspector and gave a nod that was the equivalent of a salute to a commanding officer. Rossi and De Carlo began discussing the case.
The assistant was the epitome of a young Italian law enforcer--handsome, self-assured, surely smart and quick-witted. Clearly in good shape, too, and probably an ace with that powerful gun of his. Karate or, more likely, some obscure form of martial art figured in his life. Attractive to the ladies--and skilled in those arts, as well.
De Carlo was a citizen of that rarefied world alien to Ercole.
Fashionista...
Then Ercole corrected himself. He was selling De Carlo short. He'd earned his slot with the Police of State, obviously. While, as in any policing organization anywhere in the world, there would be dross at the top--officials coasting on their connections and glad-handing--a young line officer like De Carlo would only have risen on merit.
Well, Ercole decided, he himself had done his job--brought the attack to the attention of the investigators, informed them of the Composer. The truffle counterfeiter was long gone, and it was time to get home to his small flat on the Via Calibritto, in the Chiaia district. The neighborhood was far more chic than Ercole would have liked, but he'd come upon the place for a song and had spent months making it charming and comfortable: crammed full of family heirlooms and artifacts from his parents' home in the country. Besides, he had the top floor and it was a short climb up from his den to his pigeons. He was already looking forward to a coffee on the roof tonight, gazing over the lights of the city and enjoying his partial view of the park and the bay.
He could already hear the cooing of Isabella and Guillermo and Stanley.
He climbed into the front seat of his Ford. He pulled out his phone and sent several email messages. He was about to replace the unit when it sang with the tone. It was not a reply but instead a text from his superior, wondering how the operation was going.
The operation...
The capture of the truffle counterfeiter.
His heart sinking, Ercole texted he would report later.
He couldn't discuss his failure now.
The engine engaged, he pulled the seat belt strap around his chest. Did he have any food in the kitchen?
No, he believed not. Nothing that he could whip up quickly.
Perhaps he would have a pizza at one of the places on the Via Partenope. A mineral water.
Then, the short walk home.
A coffee.
His pigeons.
Isabella was nesting...
Ercole jumped at the loud rapping to his left.
He turned fast and saw Rossi's face, eyes peering at him. The inspector's head seemed oversize, as if viewed through thick glass or a depth of water. Ercole eased down the window.
"Inspector."
"Did I startle you?"
"No. Well, yes. I have not forgotten. I will prepare the report for you tomorrow. You will have it in the morning."
The inspector began to speak but his words were obscured by the growl of the Moto Guzzi engine firing up. De Carlo turned the large machine and sped off, lifting a small rooster tail of stones and dust behind him.
When the sound had faded, Rossi said, "My assistant."
"Yes, Silvio De Carlo."
"I asked him about the noose. And he knew nothing of it. Knew nothing of the case in America, the Composer." Rossi chuckled. "As I knew nothing about it. And Prosecutor Spiro knew nothing about it. But unlike you, Forestry Officer. Who knew very well about the case."
"I read reports, notices. That's all."
"I would like to make some temporary changes in my department."
Ercole Benelli remained silent.
"Would you be able to work with me? Be my assistant? For this case only, of course."
"Me?"
"Yes. Silvio will take over some of my other investigations. You will assist on the Composer case. I will call your supervisor and have you reassigned. Unless you are involved in a major investigation at the moment."
It was surely his imagination but Ercole believed a smell wafted past, not unlike the fragrance of truffles.
"No. I have cases but nothing pressing, nothing that can't be handled by other officers."
"Good. Whom should I call?"
Ercole gave his superior's name and number. "Sir, should I report to you in the morning?"
/>
"Yes. The Questura. You know it?"
"I've been there, yes."
Rossi stepped back and looked at the field, then focused on the bus stop. "What does your instinct tell you about this man? Do you think the victim is alive?"
"As long as there's no video posted, I would say yes. Why should he change his MO because he's in a different country?"
"Perhaps you could contact the authorities in America and ask them to send us whatever information they might have about this fellow."
"I already have done that, sir."
The email he had just sent was to the New York Police and copied to Interpol.
"You have?"
"Yes. And I've taken the liberty of giving them your name."
Rossi blinked, then smiled. "Tomorrow, then."
Chapter 12
See Naples and die.
This was a quote from some poet.
Or someone.
The actual meaning, Stefan knew, was that once you had seen the city and had sampled all it had to offer, your bucket list was complete. There was nothing more to experience in life.
Well, for him it was the perfect quotation. Because after he was finished here--if he was successful, if he pleased Her--he would be going directly to Harmony. His life would be complete.
He was presently in his temporary residence in the region of Campania, home to Naples. It was old--as were many of the structures here. A musty smell permeated the place, mold and rot. And it was cold. But this hardly bothered him. The senses of smell and taste and touch and vision were of little interest to Stefan. His ear was the only important organ.
Stefan was in a dim room, not dissimilar to his lair back in New York. He wore jeans and a sleeveless white T-shirt, under a work shirt, dark blue. Both were tight (the meds kept his soul under control and his weight high). On his feet were running shoes. His appearance was different from what it had been in America. He'd shaved his head--common in Italy--and lost the beard and mustache. He needed to remain invisible. He was sure word would spread here, sooner or later, about the kidnapping and his "compositions."
He rose and looked out the window into the blackness.
No police cars.
No prying eyes.
No Artemises. He'd left the red-haired policewoman behind, back in America, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be another one here--or her brother god or god cousin or whoever--looking for him. He had assumed that was the case.
But all he saw was darkness and distant lights of the Italian landscape.
Italy...
What a wonderful place, magical.
The home of Stradivarius stringed instruments, worth millions, occasionally stolen or left in the back of a taxi, generating New York Post headlines about absentminded geniuses. Appropriate at the moment, because he was winding more double-bass strings into another noose for his next composition, which he would start on shortly. Italy was, as a matter of fact, the source for the absolutely best musical strings ever made. Sheep intestine, goat, lovingly stretched and scraped. Stefan actually felt a twinge of guilt that the strings he was using for his adventure had been made in the United States.
But that was simply practical. He'd bought a supply there, concerned that a purchase here might lead the authorities to him.
Italy...
Home of the opera composers, Verdi. Puccini. Brilliant beyond reckoning.
Home of La Scala--the most perfect acoustics of any concert hall made by man.
Home of Niccolo Paganini, the famed violinist, guitarist and composer.
Stefan returned to his bench and slipped on a headset. He turned the volume up and, as he continued to twine the gut strings together and tie the noose, he listened to the sounds caressing his eardrums, his brain and his soul. Most playlists people store on iPhones or Motorolas ranged from folk to classical to pop to jazz, and everything in between. Stefan certainly had a lot of music on his hard drive. But he had far more gigabytes of pure sound. Cricket chirps, bird wings, pile drivers, steam kettles, blood coursing through veins, wind and water...He collected them from everywhere. He had millions--nearly as many as the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.
When a mood was on him, Black Screams threatening, he sometimes grew depressed that his collection was limited to sounds dating back to merely a short time ago: the late nineteenth century. Oh, the Banu Musa brothers had created automated musical instruments, a water organ and a flute, in the ninth century in Baghdad, and music boxes still played the identical melodies they did when built in medieval days. But they were like music played from scores, re-creations.
Cheating.
Not the real thing.
Oh, we could marvel at a Rembrandt portrait. But it was--right?--fake. It was the artist's conception of the subject. If Stefan had been moved by the visual, he would have traded a hundred Dutch masters' works for a single Mathew Brady photograph. Frank Capra. Diane Arbus.
The first actual recordings of the human voice were made in the 1850s by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, a French inventor, who came up with the phonautograph, yet it didn't actually capture sounds but merely made graphic representations of them, like lines of a seismograph. (Stefan was aware of rumors that de Martinville had recorded Abraham Lincoln's voice; he'd tried desperately to find if this was true and where it might be. But he'd learned that, no, the recording never happened, sending the young man into a bout of depression.) Nearly as troubling to him was the circumstance surrounding the paleophone, invented by another Frenchman, Charles Cros, twenty years later; it had the capability of creating recordings but none had ever been found. The first device to make recordings that survived to the present day was Edison's phonograph, 1878. Stefan owned every recording made by Edison.
What Stefan would have given for phonographs to have been invented two thousand years ago! Or three or four!
In his gloved hands he tested the noose, pulling it hard--though he was careful not to break the latex gloves.
On his playlist, a series of swishes came on. The sound of a knife blade being swiped against a sharpening steel. One of Stefan's favorites, and he closed his eyes to listen. Like many, if not most, sounds, this could be heard in several ways. A threat, a workman's task, a mother, preparing dinner for her children.
When this track ended, he pulled off the headphones and took another look outside.
No lights.
No Artemis.
He turned on his new Casio keyboard and began to play. Stefan knew this waltz quite well and played it from memory once, then again. Once more. In playing the third version, he began to slow the piece halfway through until, at the end, it tapered to a stop and remained a single sustained D note.
He lifted his hand off the keyboard. He played back the recording of the piece and was satisfied.
Now on to the rhythm section.
That would be easy, he thought, looking into the tiny den off the living room, where Ali Maziq, late of Tripoli, Libya, lay limp as a rag doll.
Thursday, September 23
III
The Aqueduct
Chapter 13
The Questura, the Police of State's main headquarters in Naples, at Via Medina, 75, is an impressive pale stone building in the fascist style. The letters of the word "Questura" are in a font any Latin student would recognize (the "U"s harshly carved as "V"s), and the building's architectural elements include nods to Rome (eagles, for instance).
Squinting up at the imposing structure, Ercole Benelli paused on the doorstep and straightened his gray uniform, brushing at dust. Heart thudding with a curious mixture of joy and trepidation, he stepped inside.
He approached an administrative officer, who said, "You are Benelli?"
"I...Well, yes." Surprised to have been recognized. Surprised too that Rossi was apparently still desirous of his presence.
Her unsmiling face regarded him and, upon examining his ID cards--national and Forestry--she handed him a pass, then told him a room number.
> Five minutes later he entered what might be called a situation room for the kidnapping operation. It was a cramped space, the sun sliced into strips by dusty Venetian blinds. The floor was scuffed, the walls too, and a bulletin board was decorated with curling notices of new police procedures replacing old police procedures, and forthcoming assemblies...or, when he read closely, assemblies that had occurred months, or years, ago. Not so very different, Ercole thought, from the Forestry Corps facilities, the large conference room where the officers would meet before a joint raid on an olive oil adulterer, before a mountain rescue, before an assault on a forest fire.
An easel held a large white tablet with photos and notes in black marker. Another--a joke certainly--held a "Wanted" picture of a square-headed Minecraft character, which Ercole was aware of because he played the game with his older brother's ten-year-old son. The boy had promptly and delightedly slaughtered Ercole in a recent game; young Andrea had switched to Survival--combat--mode, without telling Uncle Ercole.
Two people were in the room. Massimo Rossi was talking to a round young woman with thick wavy black hair, shiny, and loud green-framed eyeglasses. She wore a white jacket that said Scientific Police on the ample breast.
Rossi looked up. "Ah, Ercole. Come in, come in. You found us all right."
"Yes, sir."
"This is Beatrice Renza. She is the forensic officer assigned to the Composer case. Ercole Benelli of the Forestry Corps. He was helpful last night. He will be joining us on a temporary basis."
The woman, in her early thirties, nodded in a distracted way.
"Sir, I have my report." Ercole handed him two yellow sheets of notes.
Beatrice looked at them, frowning. "You have no computer?"
"I do, yes. Why do you ask?"
"You have a printer?"
"Not at my home." He felt on the defensive.
"This is hard to read. You might have emailed the information to us."
He was flustered. "I could have, I suppose. But I didn't have an email address."
"The Questura website would have worked, of course." She turned back to Rossi and handed him a sheet of paper--nicely printed out--and a half-dozen photographs then said goodbye to Rossi. The woman left the situation room, without acknowledging Ercole. Fine with him; he had no time for the self-important, the smug.
Though he wished he had thought of typing out the report and sending it as an email attachment. Or getting a new cartridge for his printer at home.
The Burial Hour Page 7