by April Smith
“I have Giovanni, but we can’t get through,” Sterling says over the cell. “He was in Oca, like we thought.”
“Where are you now?”
“Bottom of the mountain.”
“What time is it?”
“Two in the morning.”
“What’s going on?”
“The road up to the abbey is blocked.”
Nicosa is snoring away. With the phone to my ear, I open the door and stand on the threshold. The neighbor, Aleandro, has run over from the olive farm, carrying a flashlight and shouting, “C’è un fuoco!”
“Aleandro is trying to say something,” I tell Sterling. “What is fuoco?”
“Fire. There’s been an accident,” Sterling says. “Can’t see it from here. There’s an ambulance and a couple of fire trucks. Looks like a car caught on fire.”
“I can see it from the house,” I say, looking where Aleandro is pointing.
The sky is lit by flames, banging orange light off the low cloud cover, under which you can see black smoke boiling up. I’m shivering in the chill as I recall images of California wildfires feeding on dry brush. Explosive fireballs that jump the road. Firefighters trapped with no way out.
“Are you in danger?” I ask Sterling.
“No; they’ve contained the fire around the car. Put Aleandro on. I’ll tell him it’s okay.”
I hand the cell to the older man. He speaks in Italian to Sterling while nodding grimly. A fire let loose in these hills would be catastrophic. He gives me back the phone. I repeat “Grazie!” until our worthy neighbor waves good-bye and retreats into the night.
“How is it down there?” I ask Sterling.
“We’ll just have to wait it out.”
“How’s Giovanni?”
“Just about like you’d expect. Aw, hell!” Sterling exclaims. “Here comes the coroner. Looks like there were fatalities. Go back to sleep, darlin’. This is going to take a while.”
Two hours later, Sterling and Giovanni are permitted to drive past the site. Under lights set up by crime scene specialists, the smoking, blackened skeleton of Sofri’s black Renault can be seen. As they pass, Sterling gently draws Giovanni close and turns the boy’s head so he is prevented from viewing the corpse. They arrive at the abbey at the same time as the Oca priest, who had followed them up the hill. I open the door and stare at their bleak, heartbroken faces.
Sterling takes me in his arms. “They killed Sofri.”
We all gather close, wondering what might be the kindest way to wake Nicosa from his sleep.
THIRTY-FOUR
When we push through the wooden doors of the questura, every detective and file clerk looks up, as if they had been waiting for us to appear. Even spookier is the universal expression of pity in their eyes, tracking as we follow Inspector Martini through the bullpen. Not sympathy. Pity. The odd looks cause my skin to prickle; once again, I’m a clueless outsider. Nicosa, wearing a coal-black suit, skin as transparent as skim milk, is stopped at every desk for a handshake or a glancing hug. Deferentially, I wait a pace or two behind, feet planted and hands clasped in the rest position, as if I were a Secret Service agent protecting the president.
Inspector Martini guides us up a marble staircase with a peculiar bad smell that leads to the executive offices on the second floor, steering us through a jumble of cubbyholes with scummy windows that obscure what could be a spectacular view of the main cathedral in the Piazza del Duomo. Instead, everybody’s face is turned toward a computer screen. At the far end of the room, a pair of mahogany doors with brass knobs opens to the private office of Commissario Dottore Enrico Salvi.
Once more I am impressed with how thin he is for a man with such a heavy-duty job: how narrow the shoulders, how feminine the waist becomes when you have to cinch a belt that tightly. The white collar of an impeccably pressed blue-striped shirt frames a bony face that is shaped like a violin, all cheekbones and hollow eyes. The man is underweight, possibly ill, but remarkably lithe as he slips out from behind the desk, extending a manicured hand.
“My deepest sympathies. This is a terrible situation.”
“We are grateful for your attention,” Nicosa replies.
Inspector Martini slides two packs of cigarettes across the varnished surface of the desk, and the Commissario accepts them off her fingertips without a glance. She excuses herself and backs out, closing the double doors like an obedient servant.
“Sofri was an exceptional man. He will be missed. How well did you get to know him, Agent Grey?”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t know him very long, but in the time that I did he became like an uncle to me. That’s why I’m here. It’s not just official business.”
The chief gives a little shrug. Official. Unofficial. Depends which side of the page is up.
“How can I help?”
Nicosa and I exchange a look. By prearrangement, he nods at me to go ahead.
“Commissario, with respect, when my sister, Cecilia Nicosa, went missing, we were told there weren’t enough police officers in Siena to investigate because of Palio. You promised to help, but we have seen nothing, except some unfounded threats by you against my brother-in-law. We presented you with evidence of human remains in a vat of lye. Have they been analyzed?”
“A team from Rome is working on it.”
“Cecilia is still missing, and you have another Palio coming up in August. Last night a man very close to the Nicosas was killed. The violence here is out of control.”
“I am sorry you have that impression, Agent Grey. This kind of atrocity does not happen in Siena. This is a calm city. We do not even allow cars in the heart of the downtown. In ten years of working here, I have had twelve bank robberies and six murders — three of them in the last twenty-four hours, coincidentally since you arrived. You have heard that two men were shot to death in Il Campo?”
“Yes,” answers Nicosa.
“How do you plan to investigate these murders?” I continue briskly. “As well as the kidnapping of my sister and the attack on her son?”
The Commissario’s slender shoulders seem to sink even farther under such heavy burdens.
“I am nothing but a high civil servant,” he apologizes. “I am in charge of immigration, passports, and weapons licenses — which is all that is generally called for. But as I said, the police in Rome are of the top-notch.”
“Then let me suggest that we bring in Rome right now, with the assistance of the FBI. We have the expertise and the manpower. Why not?”
“I am sorry, signorina. That is impossible.” He raises his eyebrows for emphasis. “It would not help to get your sister back.”
He reclines in the chair. The chair is blue. The carpet is blue, just like in the Bureau. I guess blue is the international color of law enforcement and its consequent evasions. Beside me, Nicosa is tense and staring straight ahead. I can feel the storm gathering and try to head it off.
“You work immigration. Does that mean terrorism?” The chief does not reply. “I’m trying to get a picture of what happened to Sofri. Cars don’t just spontaneously catch on fire.”
The long fingers in the white cuffs come together, signaling that we are about to be granted crucial, top secret information.
“There is a mosque in a neighboring city that is receiving high attention,” he allows.
“Is that relevant to this investigation?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you’re saying the fire bombing of Sofri’s car was not an act of terrorism meant to destabilize the city before the next Palio, or something like that?”
“Unlikely.”
“Do you have any suspects at all?”
“Nothing I can discuss.”
“Please. We are both professionals.”
The Commissario briefly shuts his eyes as if avoiding a painful thought.
Like a thunderclap, Nicosa shouts, “Al diavolo questo!”
“We don’t know,” the Commissario says calmingly. “But w
e will find out.”
“When? How? What is your plan?”
He leans forward, bringing his skull face toward us. On the wall behind him are photographs of his children, and the usual certificates in gilded frames. His tone takes on elegiac solemnity.
“Signore Nicosa, I must tell you, the coroner’s report is grim.”
“A man of seventy-one is burned to death in his car. How much worse can it be?”
“The fire didn’t kill him, signore. First, he was beheaded.”
The pitiful looks we received from the cops downstairs are now understandable. They already knew what we were about to hear.
I briefly touch Nicosa’s hand. He is wordlessly gripping the chair.
“Then it’s clear. Sofri was killed by the mafia.”
The Commissario nods. “It is a mafia-style killing, meant to convey a message.” His flat brown eyes slide toward Nicosa. “As to the meaning of that message, we should properly ask the victim’s business partner.”
“Sofri was never involved in anything illegal,” Nicosa replies, tight-lipped.
“… Although,” the Commissario continues as if Nicosa hadn’t spoken, “given the timing, it may have had something to do with the killings in the Piazza del Campo.”
I force myself to exhale and relax, hoping Nicosa gets the cue and doesn’t broadcast with telltale body language that we were right in the middle of it. The Commissario may be a high bureaucrat, but he has no doubt been trained to recognize the stiff posture and rapid blinking of a guilty man.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“There were two male victims. One was shot in the middle of the square, right in front of a group of Boy Scouts, the other through the window of a third-story apartment.”
“What is the connection between the victims?”
He doesn’t bite. “We are investigating.”
As if the body in the apartment wasn’t found beside a sniper rifle. As if the bald one lighting a cigarette wasn’t instantly identified by police sources as a mafia operative.
“I mean,” I say naïvely, “what is the connection of these victims to Sofri?”
“In both homicides, the bullets were fired from Sofri’s apartment.
And he was killed hours later.”
Nicosa manages to ask, “How do you know where the bullets were fired?”
“The ballistics report. We have reconstructed the path and speed of the bullets. In fact, we have the bullets. You see, we are just as good as the Americans.”
He smiles smugly, and I realize he’s been playing us all along, only to get to this point.
I return the smile and ask, “Are you seriously suggesting that Sofri, a seventy-one-year-old scientist with no history of violence, was capable of firing a high-powered weapon from his own window in broad daylight, with a hundred percent accuracy?”
“We don’t know who fired the gun, but we are certain as to where the shots came from. Our theory is that the mafia murdered Sofri and set fire to his car in retaliation for the deaths of those two men. That’s all I can say at this time, and I have probably said too much.”
“Have you given this to the press?”
“Not everything. I reserved it for your ears only.”
“We appreciate your candor,” I assure him.
He nods curtly. Nicosa stands.
“What about my wife?”
“I have pulled in extra officers and assigned every available detective to the case. Our department is under a microscope — the case is all over the Internet, those sick websites that love the misfortunes of famous people.”
“And what progress have you made, with all this police work?”
A pause. “We’re doing the best we can.”
“Non fare sopra te stesso,” Nicosa says.
The Commissario fixes him with an impassive stare.
“Again, my sympathies for the tragic loss of your friend.”
Going down the marble staircase with the bad smell, I ask Nicosa what he said to the chief of police.
“I suggested that he not get above himself. People who get above themselves are generally brought down.”
“Damn right. Talk about arrogant. You were good,” I tell my brother-in-law. “Didn’t let on, didn’t give an inch.”
We scramble down a few more steps and then Nicosa stops. Taking hold of the flaking metal banister, he bends his head, and weeps. Watching from the bottom of the stairs, Inspector Martini waits respectfully.
When we return to the abbey, Nicosa goes straight up to his tower. Giovanni is once again gone. He slept past noon, Sterling says, and then the same kid who took him to school showed up and they left.
“How was he about Sofri?”
“Badly shaken. But he won’t talk about it. When we rolled past the roadblock, he put his hood over his head and just kind of zipped up.”
“Did he say anything at all?”
“He said, ‘This is crazy.’ ”
“What was he doing when you found him yesterday?”
“Like his dad said, he went back to the old neighborhood. He was in the contrada headquarters, eating soup.”
“Eating soup?”
“They have a kitchen set up. I guess there’s always a mama or two around.”
“Well that’s okay, then,” I say.
“Wish I could say that’s true. When I found him, he was high as a kite.”
“That’s disappointing. My talk with him had no effect.”
“When you were sixteen, did you have a clue?”
I take off the worn-out courthouse heels I wore to see the Commissario, letting them drop one by one to the floor.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. We might as well go home.”
Sterling looks at me with clear eyes. “You understand there’s not a real good chance of rescuing Giovanni from himself.”
“I’m not going to let him just go down.”
“Poor ole Ana. The Invasion of Normandy, all by her own self.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Aw, come on.”
Sterling is lying across the sweet-pea bed with his hands behind his head, wearing nothing but undershorts. The heat of the afternoon funnels through the small arched window like a flamethrower.
“Come on, now.” He pats the sheets. “Come on over here.”
This is a welcome change. I take off my skirt and flop beside him in just my camisole and bikini. Sterling slips an arm under my neck, and I roll against his shoulder, finally safe in protected territory. We are quiet. I breathe the living smell of his body.
“Sterling, the Commissario is dirty.”
“All right.”
“You knew that?”
He shrugs. “What’d he do?”
“He gave himself away. In the meeting with Nicosa. He’s telling us Sofri was killed in retaliation for the mafia bozos being shot from his window. But the only way you could know that is from the ballistics report. And the ballistics report hasn’t been released. Not even internally.”
“Are you sure?”
“Inspector Martini told me. I saw her in the police station on the way out. I asked if she’d seen the ballistics report on the shootings in the Campo, and she was surprised, said nobody has, the lab is days away from even letting the detectives know the results. The only one with access to a preliminary finding is the Commissario.”
Sterling thinks about it. “He saw the report that said the shots came from Sofri’s apartment, makes a call, and sets him up for a retaliation kill. Because the Commissario is a cominato. A made man.”
“That’s why he won’t involve the FBI or Rome,” I say.
“He’s trying to contain it.”
“Two mafia guys are killed in his piazza. On his watch. He’s responsible. They own him. Everybody is owned by somebody around here. Half the time they themselves don’t even know who. Look at it! Giovanni’s a soldier in the bank of cocaine. Cecilia pays bribes. Everyone in this family is owned. And here I co
me, like you say, the Normandy invasion, waving the flag of liberation. What a joke.”
“Let’s go after the bastard,” Sterling says. “Let’s take him down.”
“With what proof? We have no evidence to tie him to the mafias.”
We stare up at the beamed ceiling.
Sterling says, “I really miss baseball. I bet it’s the All-Star Game.”
I laugh out loud and snuggle close. His fingers begin tracing circles on my back and are just finding their way under the silk strap of the camisole when my U.S. cell phone goes off. The screen says Los Angeles.
“It’s Mike Donnato.”
“What is it with that guy?” Sterling mutters.
“Mike? You’re on speaker.”
“Hi, guys. I thought you’d want to know.”
“We always want to know.” I smile over at Sterling, who rolls his eyes.
“I’ve got something on Spectra.”
“The chemical company?”
“Yes,” says Donnato. “Where Nicosa’s company has an account. I’ve been looking for a common denominator between Nicosa, sodium hydroxide, and your sister.”
“We know Cecilia’s remains aren’t in the tank of lye,” I say. “She’s been kidnapped, and we have proof of life.” I fill him in on the ransom call, and Sofri’s murder in retribution for the shootings in the piazza.
When I am finished, Donnato tells us what he’s got.
“Remember I said to follow the lye? I put Spectra into my computer,” he says. “I typed in ‘Spectra Chemical Company,’ and ‘under surveillance’ comes up, entered by an agent in Pittsburgh, meaning the Bureau is already onto them. I pull up what the case agent wrote. He’s been monitoring a ’Ndrangheta connection that moves cocaine concealed in bulk cargo on container ships from Colombia through Naples to Pittsburgh — then from Kentucky to Ohio and on to Chicago.”
“Is this container ship connected to anything else?”
“That’s what I’m onto,” Donnato says. “I’m going to our Field Intelligence Group and checking with other agency partners in the intelligence community.”
“Good to spread the net.”
“I’m hoping that DEA or ATF has more information on Spectra, how it connects to the drug route to Chicago, and if Nicosa is somewhere in the mix. I’ll see what I can weave together.”