“It’s an impressive place here,” Michael agreed.
“We have the autopsy report on your friend Patronne.”
“Oh?”
“There was some sort of drug in his system. A sedative.”
“Something to calm his nerves before he tried to fly?”
“According to the autopsy, he couldn’t have walked, much less flown.”
Michael shook his head. “I don’t understand. How did he climb up to the roof?”
“He didn’t. He was already unconscious when somebody carried him up there and pushed him over the railing.”
“You’re saying he was murdered?”
“Yes.”
Michael Vlado was not as certain about it as the inspector seemed to be. He’d known Gypsies to perform amazing feats of strength and endurance while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He could imagine Josef Patronne swallowing the sedative as a preliminary part of some bizarre ceremony and then launching himself from the Galleria’s glass ceiling while his coven watched. Or was he conjuring up demons where none existed? Was there a simpler explanation for what had happened?
He found Axel Tortero on the street near the cafe, in animated conversation with a dark-haired young woman. Watching as Axel gestured and waved his hands, Michael found it hard to believe that Axel and Josef could have been close friends. Why, he wasn’t sure. They came from different cultures, after all, and there was only the nebulous fraternity of wizardry to unite them. But perhaps that was enough.
When he approached the couple, the woman immediately backed off a few feet, frowning. “Who are you?” she asked. “I saw you at the playground with Elsa’s husband.”
“I’m Michael Vlado, a friend of Josef Patronne’s brother in Romania.”
She nodded. “I am Elsa’s friend, Ida Fileno.”
“I was going to come by and speak with you at the hospital.”
She shrugged uncertainly. “This is my day off. What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Actually, it was before Josef’s death that I wanted to talk. His brother back home had read about his trip to Rome with the other wizards. He feared Josef might be having mental problems.”
“He may have been right,” Ida said, nervously twisting the wedding ring on her finger. “Josef often acted strange.”
“You knew him well?”
“I – my daughter was friendly with him. She’s just at an age where all this supernatural business intrigues her. Ghosts and witches – and wizards.”
“He came to your house?”
“The children knew him from the playground. And the Galleria. He taught an informal class at his apartment, filling their minds with wild ideas. Axel here was nearly as bad with his herbs.”
Axel scowled, still angry with her. “You and Elsa tried to get him arrested! He was only teaching religion!”
“Not the religion of our churches.” She turned away, ending the discussion. “He is dead now. It is past arguing about.”
“Did you play cards with Elsa Mancini last night?” Michael asked her.
“Cards? Yes, we played. We play every other week at someone’s home.” Her mind seemed to be far away.
“With a tarot deck?”
“What?”
“I saw a tarot deck at the Mancini apartment.”
“Oh, that.” She waved it away. “One of the Petrie sisters was telling fortunes after the game. You know – the sort of things Gypsies do,” she said pointedly. “How many babies we can expect and whether or not our husbands really love us.”
Michael nodded. “Yes, I know about fortune-telling with tarot cards. Patronne wasn’t there, too, was he?”
She turned her deep-brown eyes toward him. “Why should he have been there?”
“Perhaps to instruct you, to lead you as he did the children.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You are wrong, Mr. Vlado.” She walked away from them and Axel watched until she rounded the next corner. “There’s a cool one,” he said. “She knows more than she tells.”
“Was Josef part of it?” Michael asked. “You know, don’t you? Was it a coven? Twelve witches and a wizard?”
Axel backed away from him. “What gave you that terrible idea? Josef never practiced black magic or Satanic rites!”
“Are you certain?”
Axel turned and broke into a run. Michael started after him and then let him go. He went looking for Inspector Storia again and finally located him at the police station on the Corso Magenta. Storia had his necktie off and was drinking a cup of hot coffee as he read through some reports. “What is it now, Gypsy?” he asked.
“That piece of paper you found in Josef’s hand – could I see it?”
“It’s in the file. I have too much else on my desk to worry about that.” But he rose from the desk with some reluctance and pulled open a file drawer. “Here it is.”
Michael took the plastic envelope and studied the slip of paper with ‘pevole’ printed on it. “It might be someone’s name,” he suggested. He noticed that though three sides of the paper were sharply cut as if by a scissors, the fourth side by the letter ‘p’ was torn jaggedly.
“No, we checked the telephone directory,” Storia told him. “It’s not a name.”
“What, then?”
“Who knows?” The inspector took the envelope from Michael and returned it to the file. “I have to leave now. They need my testimony in a trial.”
Michael stared at the detective. Something –
“Come on, you have to go now,” Storia insisted.
“An idea’s just come to me, Inspector.”
“Ideas we get all the time. Bring me some evidence and I’ll listen.”
He disappeared into the elevator and Michael watched the doors slide shut behind him.
Michael found Elsa Mancini shopping at the open–air vegetable market near her apartment. “It’s you again,” she said, not unkindly. “I thought you’d have left for home by this time.”
“I will be leaving soon,” he confirmed. “I had to see you once more, to tell you I made a bad mistake about you. I told a couple of people I thought you were a witch.”
“A witch?” The statement seemed to take her by surprise. “Where on earth could you have gotten that idea?”
“There were twelve of you at your apartment last night, supposedly for a card game, but I knew you didn’t play cards.”
Elsa picked up a head of lettuce, weighing it speculatively. “How did you know that?”
“Because of the tarot deck on the table. The most common tarot games are three-handed, or else they’re played with a mixture of tarot and regular cards. Also, you told me the group met once a month. Your friend Ida said it was every other week. It’s an odd card club when the members can’t agree on how often they play.”
“So you thought we were witches?”
Michael nodded. “The Gypsy mind runs to superstition too easily, I suppose. A coven of witches led by the wizard Josef Patronne. It made perfect sense, except –”
“Yes?”
“Except that I was wrong. There is one other thing that twelve women might do besides playing cards and engaging in witchcraft.”
She put down the lettuce and stared at him. “What would that be?”
“Serve as a jury.”
“You’re very clever, Mr. Vlado.”
“Josef Patronne was tried and convicted by the twelve of you, and then he was executed for his crime. You injected him with a sedative, no doubt obtained by Ida Fileno from the hospital where she works, and then you carried him to the top of the Galleria and shoved him over the railing to his death. Everyone knew he’d talked of flying. It was a perfect way to kill him.”
Elsa walked away from the vegetables, her face drained of color. “You’re guessing. You have no proof.”
“I haven’t, but the police do. You wrote your verdicts on slips of paper. A torn portion of one slip was clutched in Josef’s fist. It said ‘pevole.’ The entir
e slip would have read ‘colpevole’ – the Italian word for ‘guilty’.”
“He was guilty!” she flared out. “Guilty of the worst of crimes! And the police would do nothing!”
“You went to them?”
“Time and again! We told Inspector Storia what he was doing to our children, twisting their minds with his tales of wizardry. He only laughed and promised to speak to Patronne. Then it became more serious. Two of our children were physically molested by him. Still the police did nothing. They thought we were lying, getting our children to invent stories merely to harass Patronne. That was when we decided on our own brand of justice. We held a trial, and even gave him a chance to defend himself. He was found guilty.”
“I can’t believe he did those things.”
“He did them, all right. He admitted everything as he tried to storm out of my apartment last night. Ida used a hypodermic on him, as you guessed. We wrapped him in a rug and carried him to the Galleria. There we took the elevator to the top floor where one of the women worked. We pushed him out a window.”
“I’ll have to tell the police about this,” Michael warned.
“Tell them. I’m not sorry for what we did. We’d do it again to protect our children.”
Michael slowed his pace and watched her walk on alone. He wondered what he should do, and what he should tell Patronne’s brother back home.
In the morning, he stopped at the police station before leaving Milan. Inspector Storia was busy. There’d been a shooting overnight, and a jewelry-store robbery. “Go away, Gypsy,” he told Michael. “I have no time for you now.”
“It’s about Patronne’s death.”
The inspector reached for a ringing telephone. “That case is closed.”
“Closed?”
“We don’t have the manpower to pursue every unexplained death. My superiors have ruled it accidental.”
“But –”
Storia waved Michael away. “After all, he was only a Gypsy. And a wizard besides.”
MURDER OF A GYPSY KING
On the long, lonely highway into Bucharest that sunny August afternoon, Jennifer Beatty suddenly changed her mind. She ignored the arrow that read BUCURESTI 50 KM and took a left fork that ran up the side of a hill toward the dense forest beyond. She hadn’t really been going to Bucharest, anyway. She was running away, and she had a feeling Peter would come looking for her before too long – if for no reason than that she’d stolen his motorcycle when she took of the previous night from a resort town on the Black Sea.
Now, feeling the heat of its engine between her legs, she remembered the good times they’d had touring the Balkans all summer, moving from the Greek Islands up through Macedonia and the western tip of Turkey, then up the coastline through Bulgaria and into Romania. Travel in the Eastern Bloc countries had eased considerably, even for Americans, and Jennifer had ridden the back of Peter’s motorcycle for so long that when the inevitable finish came it seemed natural for her to take it. She had no other transportation and very little money.
The road ahead seemed to climb relentlessly and for the first time she wondered if she’d made the right choice in leaving the highway. She slowed the motorcycle to stop by the side of the road just as a black military staff car appeared ahead at the crest of the hill. It paused next to her and a man in military uniform rolled down the window. “Are you lost?” he asked, using some of the first words she’d learned from her Romanian phrase book.
There was a time just a few weeks back when she wouldn’t have been able to respond without consulting the book, but now she was becoming quite proficient in the language. “I’m only traveling through,” she told him.
“An American?”
“Yes.”
He was a handsome man in his forties, who reminded her a bit of her Uncle George back home. “I am Captain Segar of the district police,” he told her. “This road leads into the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. There is nothing ahead but a few farming communities and Gypsy villages.”
“Gypsies!” Jennifer was an incurable romantic. “Do they travel in caravans and tell fortunes?”
He looked at her. “These Gypsies farm the land and raise horses. They will not harm you, but still it is not safe for a young woman to travel these back roads by herself. Do you have a passport?”
She removed it from her saddle bag and handed it over to him, wondering if Peter might have reported the stolen motorcycle to the local police. “You’ll find it in order.”
He flipped quickly through the pages. “It is a good picture of you. Only twenty-two? So young to be traveling alone.”
“I graduated from college in May,” she replied. “I’m on my own now.”
“I see.” He hesitated for a moment and then returned the passport. “If you insist on continuing up this road, look for a village named Gravita and ask for Michael Vlado. He is the leader of the Gypsies there. He and his wife will take you in for the night.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He waved as he pulled away and continued down the hill.
Toward evening, Jennifer reached the village of Gravita. She’d been uncertain about whether to stop, but with the coming of the twilight a pause for the night seemed best.
A Gypsy working in a field directed her to Michael Vlado’s farm, not with-out some difficulty. It hadn’t occurred to her that the residents of Gravita would speak Romany Gypsy tongue rather than the nation’s official language. When she reached the Vlado farm, she was relieved to find them willing and able to converse in the language she knew.
It was a pleasant-looking woman who responded to her knock, surprised to find a late caller on the doorstep.
“I’m touring through here on my motorcycle,” Jennifer quickly explained. “I met a police officer named Segar n the road and he told me I might find a night’s lodging with Michael Vlado.”
“I am Rosanna, Michael’s wife,” the woman said. “He’s putting the horses away. Please come in.”
“I’m an American,” Jennifer explained. “I’ve been traveling through the Balkans this summer. My name is Jennifer Beatty.”
“Alone? On a motorcycle? Come sit down. You must be hungry. We have food left from dinner.”
The house was neat and homey, with colorful Gypsy good-luck symbols decorating the walls – otherwise the residents could have been any European nationality. Jennifer noticed a work table with carefully carved wooden animals in various stages of completion. “Did you do these?” she asked. “They’re lovely.”
Rosanna beamed. “I carved them to sell at the shops in the village.”
A few minutes later the back door swung open and a tall Gypsy with a weathered complexion entered. “I saw a motorcycle outside,” he said. “We have a visitor.” Jennifer noticed the single earring in his left ear.
“My husband, Michael,” Rosanna announced. “This is a young American named Jennifer Beatty. She’s been touring the Balkans on her motorcycle and met Captain Segar on the road.”
“He was such a nice man,” Jennifer said. “He advised me to stop here overnight. But I’d hate to be a burden –”
“You are no burden,” Michael assured her. “Perhaps Rosanna and I will learn something of America.”
She accepted their offer of food, realizing for the first time how hungry she was. She told them of her life back home and of her summer in the Balkans, omitting any mention of Peter. Finally, as the hour grew late, Rosanna showed her to an upstairs bedroom where a four-poster bed with a down comforter put her to sleep within minutes.
She awakened to the sound of horses beneath her window. It was daylight and her watch showed the time to be well after eight. She hadn’t slept so late all summer. Stretching, she slid out of bed and made her way to the bath-room down the hall.
Hearing her shut the door, Rosanna climbed the stairs and called, “Did you sleep well?”
“Fine, thank you!”
“We’re eating breakfast now if you want to join us.”
&n
bsp; Throwing on her jeans and T-shirt, Jennifer went downstairs and found Michael at the table, finishing a plate of ham and eggs. “Everything about this place surprises me,” she told him as Rosanna brought a plate for her. “You eat American food for breakfast, you have flush toilets, you’re not up at dawn like other farmers –”
Michael and Rosanna laughed. “The American breakfast is for you,” Rosanna said. “Michael has been up and working since dawn. And only our house and that of King Carranza have flush toilets and septic tanks. The rest of the villagers still use outhouses. Of course, we all depend on well water.”
“Who is King Carranza?”
“The leader of our particular tribe of Gypsies,” Michael explained. “Although these days he’s too ill to do much leading. Until a runaway horse crippled him, he was a blacksmith with the strength of ten men.”
“I’d like to meet him. A Gypsy leader!” Then she remembered what Captain Segar had said. “But you’re the leader, aren’t you?”
“I preside over the Gypsy court with King Carranza on all important matters. He made a sudden decision. “If you really would like to meet him, you can do so before you leave. I’ll be going over there later this morning.”
“You’d take me with you?”
Michael exchanged a look with his wife. “Yes. It would be all right. King Carranza likes to greet visitors to our village.” After breakfast, Jennifer followed Michael outside. “I should move the motorcycle out of the way.”
“Put it in the shed,” Michael suggested, motioning toward an outbuilding some hundred feet away.
Jennifer climbed onto the motorcycle and started it, only to have it stall. Embarrassed she gunned it a second time and rode it to the shed. Michael followed along on foot.
“Did you raise all these horses?” she asked, watching a pair of colts frolicking in the pasture after she parked the motorcycle.
“Most of them. Some I keep here to train for others. We race them at fairs and such.”
The Iron Angel Page 11