Suicide Italian Style (Crime Made in Italy Book 1)

by Pete Pescatore

  “Let’s say you find a body in the sea, but the water in the lungs isn’t salty?”

  “It’s not—”

  “Or you fish it from a lake, and the water in the lungs doesn’t come from the lake—”

  “I understand the question.” She stowed the cigarette behind an ear and looked into my eyes. “It’s not so simple.”

  No kidding. I forced myself to concentrate. “So what did you find? With Mr Goldoni. The water in his lungs.”

  “Neither one. Not salty, not fresh.”

  “Which means what? He died where?”

  “In his kitchen. He was shot. That’s what killed him.”

  “Sorry. Let me put that another way. You found water in the lungs. Where is the water from?”

  “I have no idea.” She frowned. “It had a high chlorine content.”

  “Swimming pool?"

  “It’s possible.” Her eyes narrowed. “The water had a high sulfur content as well.”

  It took a moment to register. Then I knew, without doubt, what they’d done to him. I sat back, sickened, flagged the waiter and ordered a whisky. A double.

  “Something to drink, Miss Kirsch?”

  “My name is Heidi.” Another slow smile. “Cognac, thank you.”

  The waiter nodded and faded away.

  “So, Heidi. Mr Goldoni didn't drown.”

  “Correct, Mr Pescatore.”

  I lowered a hand to hers. She didn’t flinch. Cool hand under mine. “Call me Pete.”

  “All right.” She held my gaze. “Pete.”

  “Mr Goldoni shot himself in the head?”

  “I would assume so. I see no reason to believe otherwise.” She withdrew her hand as the waiter returned.

  “And before he did that,” I said, “we don’t know how, but he almost drowned. Is that saying too much?”

  She reached for the cognac, swirled it, drew the aroma into her brain, smiled and took a sip. “You could say that,” she said. “You are guessing, but it’s a reasonable guess.”

  “Good. One more thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr Goldoni spent some time, in the hours before he died, at the Prince Albert hotel in Lugano. High-end spa, bungalows, golf. You familiar with the place?”

  “I know the name.” She extracted a phone from her purse and tapped in a note. “I will see what I can do.”

  “Terrific.” I stood up. “I’m very sorry, Miss Kirsch, we’ll have to take a walk another time. I’m on deadline.”

  She reached for the cognac, drank it down. “Of course. Don’t let me keep you.”

  I drained the whisky and stood, took her arm and chaperoned the young lady to the door. “Would you like me to call a taxi?”

  She pulled on her gloves and wrapped herself up against the cold. “I have my own car.”

  “That’s right. You drove.”

  “I like to drive.”

  “So we’ll have to go for a drive sometime.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “Soon?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Where are you staying?”

  A smile. “I’m not,” she said. “I’ll call you.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “No.” Her face grew dark, her eyes narrow. “It’s a threat.”

  I laughed, and liked her for that, for making me laugh. “Thanks for the help, Heidi. See you tomorrow.”

  She plucked the cigarette from behind her ear, lit it, turned and walked away.

  Midnight had me back in the office, writing up the double-autopsy story. The Swiss method was high-tech, sexy, three-dimensional. Once you got the body up on screen you could flip it every which way, slice and dice it, peel away the layers down to the bone. The Italian, Cassano, was a man of the past. He’d used the traditional tools of the trade to cut Gigi open, take him apart and stitch him up again at the seams. It made no difference in the end. The result was the same: water in the lungs and a fatal head shot.

  I tried to picture what happened, saw Cassano drive up to the lab in Locarno on a Sunday afternoon. He finds the body laid out for him, performs the autopsy and writes his report, forgetting to mention the water in the lungs. Or maybe it’s an oversight—he’s tired, and it’s only one line. It’s there in his draft but somehow he deletes it.

  Not much of a story. Unless—

  I turned to the screen and the stories Anastasia had posted on Crime News Italy Online. The big names from Gigi’s list were up there, the politicians and celebrities. They would all fire back, no doubt, set loose their dogs to howl and sue, run us out of business by the end of the day.

  Nothing new there.

  I got up and walked down the hall, dug through the papers in Anastasia’s office, sat and worked my way down the list of names. I knew some from the talk and reality shows, from the movies and the gossip rags. There was a judge or two, and lawyers, of course, and bankers and comedians and a low-rent purveyor of miracle cures. And near the bottom of the page at the end of the list—Cassano, Dr. Massimo. I ran a finger along the row and found a street address in Varese.

  A rush of adrenalin. Dr. Cassano had a name account at the Banca del Gran San Bernardo? How much in the account? I tracked my finger to the end of the row. Five thousand francs. Not much. Not enough to risk your career. I picked up the phone and called Sarge. No answer, so I left a message.

  A sigh lifted my chest and let it fall. That would do it. That was the hook, I could hang the whole story on the missing words. In the end it doesn’t matter what you say. What matters is what you leave out. Water in the lungs, for example.

  High sulfur content. The stench of rotten eggs, reeking, leaking from my pores. I stood up and trudged out and down the hall to Johnny’s office, stretched out on the old leather sofa and closed my eyes. And there she was. I felt a smile spread over my face. Hello, Heidi.

  The whippoorwill called me back to earth. I rolled off the sofa onto the floor, scrambled to my feet and picked up.

  “Pete.”

  “Hey, Sarge. You’re up late.”

  “Nerves. Can’t sleep.” He was silent for a moment. “Listen, that account you were asking about? Cassano?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You hit the jackpot. Fresh deposit, couple days after Gigi died. Fifty thousand Swiss francs.”

  “You’re kidding. Fifty thousand?” Not bad for a typo. One sentence gone missing. Accidental deletion. “Thanks, Sarge. I owe you. The phone and all the other night. Saved my life.”

  “I’ll count on you to remember that. In case anybody asks.”

  “Got it,” I said. “So. Just so we know what we’re talking about—” I drew him a picture with my take on the story, put him on the scene the night Gigi died.

  Thursday night, the last night of his life, Gigi calls Sarge, asks him for a favor. Could he bring him his gun, the Swiss army pistol, and ammunition. Sarge wants to know why, Gigi says he’s frightened, needs to protect himself. Sarge agrees, retrieves the SIG Sauer from the cabinet and runs it over to Gigi’s house. He parks, walks around the back, takes the path through the garden to the kitchen door and knocks. Julia comes to the door, takes it, asks him to stay with her. Sarge refuses, takes off back down the garden path. Sees Tommy O and the boys arrive, dragging Gigi in from the street.

  “Have I got that right, Sarge?”

  “Close enough. I didn’t want to give the gun to Julia but I didn’t want to hang around either. So I left. I was on my way out when I heard a shot and ran back inside.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why didn’t you run the other way?”

  “It’s my gun, Pete. I’m responsible.”

  “OK. So you ran back to the kitchen, found Julia and Gigi.”

  “With a hole in his head and her sitting there, screaming. She couldn’t stop screaming.”

  “And then what, Sarge?”

  “Tommy picked up the gun.”

  “Tommy—”

  “Wrapped Gigi’s hand arou
nd it.”

  “Which hand?”

  “Right.”

  “Great. And this is the story you’re telling the cops?”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Hey, it’s your life. And I can quote you, right?” I hung up and walked down the hall to the hack room and wrote up the end of the story.

  Tommy O and the boys drag Gigi to the kitchen. The boys set him up and pin him against the wall. Tommy O folds the gun into Gigi’s hand, slips the finger on the trigger. Ready. Aim. Fire. Sarge hears the shot, comes running back, finds Julia there, out of her mind and screaming.

  Thirty one

  Sleep played hard to get that night. Over and over I ran through the scenes. They ran in a loop behind my eyes, shape-shifting every time. I started with Gigi at the hotel sauna.

  A bench, a bucket and a rag, steam and the smell of sulfur in the air. Gigi Goldoni’s strapped on his back to a bench slanting upwards, his head at the low end. Freddie fills the bucket from the hotel jacuzzi and carries it to Tommy O, who soaks the rag and slaps it over Gigi’s mouth and nose. Max picks up the bucket, pours water over the rag. Gigi breathes in, chokes, sucks in water, gags, swallows, sucks in, starts to jerk. They tear off the rag, haul him to his feet and get him breathing again.

  One more time. Again and again until he breaks. It doesn’t take long.

  So. “The briefcase, Gigi. We need the documents. All of them.”

  He nods. He’s hidden it. He’ll take them there, hand it over.

  They clean him up, get him dressed, march him outside to the fern gray Jag. Tommy O takes the wheel, Max and Freddie frame Gigi in the back. They drive a while, it’s not so far, to the tall iron gates of the Villa Sofia. Head down, exhausted, Gigi leads the way to the office, up the stairs, gets the ladder from the storeroom, climbs it, up through the hatch to the roof terrace. Pulls away the tiles. There. The safe. Twist the knob. Right, left, right again. Simple. Door opens up, he reaches in.

  Nothing. It’s empty.

  “And this is what, Pescatore?” Johnny dropped the pages on his desk and kicked the door shut. “You writing movies again or what?”

  He flicked his Zippo, lit up and thumped into the chair behind the ancient Olivetti.

  I looked up at him from the sofa. “It’s how I work, Johnny. I can’t make sense of it until I see it.”

  “So what do you see?”

  “Goldoni shot himself in the head.”

  “Why?”

  “They took him to the sauna at the hotel—it’s a nice little five-star torture chamber—and poured water down his throat until he just about croaked. It’s called waterboarding.”

  “Waterboarding?”

  “Enhanced interrogation, whatever. All the rage these days,” I said, and lowered my feet to the floor.

  “How would you know?”

  “Trust me, Johnny, you feel like you’re dying. And you’ll do anything to never, ever go there again.”

  “Such as—“

  “The briefcase, Johnny. The docs. The evidence. If he didn’t hand it over, it was back to the sauna.”

  “You got any proof? Or is it just a movie?”

  “They found water in his lungs, Johnny.” I pushed myself to my feet. “The pathologist found water in Gigi’s lungs.”

  “Since when?”

  “I spoke to the woman from the lab in Locarno. She did a digital autopsy—the high-tech thing—the day before Cassano drove up from Varese and cut him up the old-fashioned way.”

  A frown folded his brow. “Two autopsies?”

  I held up two fingers and gave him the rundown while he smoked in silence. Swiss digital scans and slides, low-tech Italian hatchet job. Both had found water in Gigi’s lungs. But Cassano left it out of the official report.

  Johnny heaved a sigh. “So?”

  I picked up a stack of papers from his desk, flipped through them until I got to the names, the name account held by Dr. Cassano. I scratched out the five thousand and wrote in the news I’d got from Sarge: Fifty thousand Swiss francs, transferred to the account just a couple days after Gigi died.

  “Look at this, Johnny.” I jabbed a finger at the name. “Cassano is family. Bellomo paid him off. Paid him to cut the connection.”

  “Slow down. What connection?”

  “To the hotel. The water in the lungs – there’s sulfur, chlorine, it’s a six-lane highway leads straight to Bellomo. He paid Cassano to leave it out.”

  “Porca miseria.” Johnny wasn’t happy. “Forget Cassano. You got a story already—Gigi’s Magic Money Machine.”

  “Laundry.”

  “Whatever. It’s a terrific story, all we ever need.”

  “Forget Cassano?” I sagged and fell back on the sofa. “What do you want, Johnny?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Who murdered Gigi Goldoni?”

  “Nobody.” I sat up, leaned forward, punching the air with my hands. “Gigi Goldoni wasn’t murdered. They boarded him, but it didn’t kill him. It was pain that scared him, Johnny. Pure terror. He killed himself rather than go through it again.”

  “In my book that’s murder. Even if he pulled the trigger himself, it’s still murder.”

  It was no use. Whatever I said, Johnny heard something different. I got up and marched to the door.

  “Come on, Pete. The suicide thing, nobody believes it.”

  “What’s there to believe? It’s true—”

  His voice rose up over mine. “What about the bricks? The yellow brick road.” His eyes lit up and he began to sing. “Follow the yellow brick road—”

  Anger erupted from my gut and I stomped back to his desk. “The Masons again? What about the Vatican, Johnny? You’re forgetting the zombies.”

  “Relax, Pescatore.” He laughed, retrieved his cigar, puffed and waved it in my face. “They love you in Rome.”

  The phone on his desk began to ring. Johnny slapped a fat hand on the receiver, picked up and coughed a hello.

  For a couple of minutes he scribbled notes and then hung up and said, “We just got sued. Again.”

  “Hoo-ray.” The blood was still pounding in my head. “Who is it this time?”

  “Everybody on the list. The one you and the Bolshie put up on the site.”

  “Too bad. They can’t sue us for telling the truth.”

  “The truth?” He sat down again, rolled a sheet of paper into the Olivetti and punched out a line. “The closer you get, the more they scream.”

  “But they can’t get blood from a stone, Johnny.”

  He puffed for a moment, sighed and said, “Listen, Pete. Do me a favor.” He looked up from the page. “Go back and write something I can sell.”

  “Such as?”

  “Up to you.” He followed a fresh cloud of smoke with a cough and said, “It’s the new investor. He likes your style. The Vatican connection, that kind of thing. He thinks you’re the greatest thing since bread.”

  My jaw dropped open and snapped shut again. “Sliced, Johnny. Sliced bread.”

  Johnny frowned. I gave up. “What do they want?”

  “Sit down.”

  I trudged back to the sofa.

  He leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs out under the desk and smoked while he told me the story.

  He’d flown to Rome and gone out to lunch with Beppe Lombardi, the editor in chief, and two of the reporters based in Rome. Like Johnny, they all owned a piece of the business. Business, however, was not going well. CNI Rome had been taken to court for suggesting in print that some big-name blowhard was in fact a made man. And even if the charges were totally bogus, the hassle with the lawyers was eating up time.

  I yanked up my sleeve and took a look at my watch. “And time is money.”

  “Easy, Pescatore. I’m getting there.”

  “Good, cause I’m on deadline. Got a movie needs a rewrite.”

  “So shut up and listen. Couple days ago Lombardi gets a call, this guy wants a piece of the business.”

  “You told me a
lready.”

  “Yeah but listen—I met him.”

  “The Arab?”

  “He came to the office in Rome. He’s real. And the money is, too, in the bank by tomorrow.”

  “I believe it.” Right. Where had I heard that line before? “So, what, it’s a done deal?”

  “Just about.” He pushed his glasses up on his forehead, grabbed a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. When he was done he said, “Lombardi wants to talk to you.”

  “Me?”

  “You. He says you already have everything. All you have to do is put it together. Connect the dots and paint the picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “How should I know? Do me a favor, Pete. Talk to him. That’s all I ask.”

  “When?”

  He dug into a pocket and pulled out a Hamilton, flipped open the lid and consulted the dial. “This afternoon.”

  “Can I see that?”

  Johnny handed me the watch. An old railroad watch, a beautiful hand made time machine. “OK, Johnny, I’ll talk to him.” I handed him his watch, snatched the script from his desk and walked out.

  Halfway down the corridor a familiar tune popped into my head. I began to whistle and the words came up and I sang out softly, Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high.

  In the hack room I collapsed onto a chair, leaned back and stared at the wall. Where had I heard it? The old lady. Aida. And someone else, whistling—Tommy O.

  I went back to looking hard at the wall and kept on staring until I couldn’t see straight. I got up and paced and sat down again. There was no way around it. I had to lay it out cold. The truth. What happened and why.

  I had no idea.

  Two hours later I had a page that looked like a sky full of stars. I’d mapped one constellation after another, but the only one that made any sense was the one I already had. No Masons. No murder. Just a man without hope at the end of his road.

  “Porca puttana, Pescatore.” Johnny bashed in the door to the hack room. “Why the hell don’t you answer your phone?”

  “Search me.”

  “Come on, I’ve got Rome on the line.” He lumbered off. I scrambled to my feet and hustled after him. He made a hard left into Anastasia’s office, bellied up to the desk and hit the speaker phone. “OK, we’re here.”