The Sudden Disappearance of the Worker Bees

by Serge Quadruppani

  “No, but seeing as I plan to prolong my stay here a bit, I’d like to speak with you.”

  Calabonda let two or three seconds pass before answering.

  “I don’t quite understand, but if you’d like, you could come right away.”

  When he saw her arrive in his office ten minutes later, her white hair covered by a red cap, her nose hidden half by a pair of sunglasses and half by a scarf that was a little out of place on such a mild day, Maresciallo Calabonda couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows, though he abstained from making any comment.

  “Excuse my disguise,” she said, shedding the accessories, “but two national television crews and three reporters— a Roman and two Milanese who I know by sight—turned up in the lobby of the hotel. It’s happening just as I was afraid it would: the thought that a weapon belonging to a nationally known antimafia commissario could be used in such a despicable crime was enough to bring them here. I left the hotel through the back exit but eventually they’ll trap me and ask for my statement. I think that I’ll have to stay.”

  Calabonda shifted in his swivel chair.

  “To me,” he demurred, “on the contrary, it seems like a good reason to stick to your plan. You would escape unnoticed, and—if you’ll excuse my saying so—it would allow us to work undisturbed in our little corner of the world.”

  Simona decided that now was the time to exploit her psychological gift for not offending touchy carabinieri in their little corners of the world. She opted for a tone of confidence between colleagues.

  “You know that the National Antimafia Commission in general and I in particular have come under attack, by the media and others, for investigations we conducted that implicated several higher-ups in the ruling party. Of the journalists who arrived I recognized one in particular: Bruno Ciuffani, who wrote an editorial accusing me of being in league with the secret society of communist judges that supposedly exists in this country, and of using the investigations to gain exposure for myself at the expense of our elected officials. If I leave tomorrow morning, Ciuffani will say that I’m fleeing my responsibilities so that I can go get a tan in the Aeolian Islands, that I don’t give a damn about the investigation into a man’s death that was caused by my own imprudence, and that it’s an insult to the family’s grief.”

  “But Bertolazzi had no family. He was unmarried, an only child, and his parents are deceased.”

  “You think that’s going to stop them! In the end they’ll manage to dig up a girlfriend or an ex-girlfriend who they’ll get to talk into a camera, in tears . . .”

  “A boyfriend, rather,” the maresciallo corrected her. “Bertolazzi was gay, and they say he had many lovers.”

  “Even better. If they can, they’ll dig up a relationship he had with a transsexual, who will denounce my indifference and neglect. They’ll have hit the jackpot.”

  Calabonda stroked his mustache, a sign of deep reflection among the majority of carabinieri, according to literature on the subject.

  “So what do you propose?”

  “If you’ll allow, I think I’ve developed a certain routine when it comes to media relations, in spite of myself. I propose that you make a statement with me at your side— but I’ll be a silent presence. I won’t say a word. You will announce that I have made myself available to investigators and that I will remain in San Giorgio al Monte as long as necessary, but that I will abstain from stating my views, so as not to interfere with the investigation.”

  The proposal was met with a nod of solid assent. But Simona added:

  “Still, if you’d like to keep me abreast of developments in the investigation, I’ll be happy to listen, and to let you in on some of my thoughts. Perhaps you’ll admit that I have some experience in these matters?”

  The corners of the maresciallo’s mouth, on the verge of lifting upward, suddenly dropped back down toward his chin.

  “Yes . . . of course,” he said. “That goes without saying. But . . .”

  Simona sensed that the official urgently needed to be reassured. For Pete’s sake, she thought, these men are always so afraid of losing an ounce of power or prestige! Nevertheless, she hastened to add:

  “But I can look you in the eye and solemnly swear that no matter what happens, this is—and will remain— your investigation.”

  He frowned, which she interpreted as a sign of confusion. She decided to make sure she had all her bases covered.

  “If by chance my . . . thoughts end up being of some use, if they help you to solve the case, I will positively refrain from making them known. Right to the end, I will avoid any and all contact with the pack of dogs that just arrived.”

  Calabonda grabbed a pen and tapped it against his teeth, making a sound that Simona found irritating in the ensuing silence. She could imagine what he was thinking: It can only be to my advantage . . . In any case, if she steps on my toes . . . At last, he set the pen down and smiled broadly.

  “I’m sure that I will never be compelled to criticize you to the national press for your lack of cooperation,” he said, causing the phrase “piece of shit” to instantly flash across Simona’s mind. “And so it will be a pleasure, in an informal capacity, as fellow enforcers of the law—”

  He was interrupted by the telephone on his desk. He answered it.

  “Yes? . . . Ah. Fine, I’ll see,” he said curtly. Then, hanging up, he explained, “The press . . . They’re here, a small army of them, out in front of the main entrance to the building.”

  “All right then,” Simona said, standing up. “Shall we go? Are we in agreement?”

  Having gotten to his feet, picked up his cap from the desk, and puffed out his chest, the carabiniere said, “Let’s go.”

  Then, circling around the table to make his way to the door, he squeezed her hand.

  “Thank you, Signora Commissario. It will be my honor to hear your . . . thoughts.”

  Simona was sure that he was about to say “advice.”

  “And it will be my honor to observe your work,” she declared, looking him in the eye.

  And now, here she was, in a dingy café on the outskirts of San Giorgio al Monte, about to eat a breakfast of cookies made with corn flour, rye, and chestnuts and sprinkled with chocolate. It would certainly taste good, but she was eating it alone. The idea that Marco—Marco who, unlike nearly every other Neapolitan, preferred the mountains to the sea—would be in the Aeolian Islands by late morning, while she, a sea worshipper who felt oppressed at high altitudes, would be staying put, thrust her into a mood that she absolutely despised. From time to time, the owner behind the counter shot her a look with his bulging eyes then let out a clucking sound he made with his tongue. In front of the bar, a ruddy-faced regular drank his third rum without paying the least bit of attention to her, so completely absorbed was he in indulging his senses in the most extreme, drawn-out, and deliberate way possible. They were the only beings keeping her company on that radiant spring morning that illuminated the windowpanes, with the exception of the deer whose head and horns decorated one of the walls. In its glass eyes Simona seemed to perceive the very same melancholy she felt as she thought of Marco, who would be absently strumming his guitar by the pool of Michele’s hotel that afternoon, with a view of Stromboli’s smoking volcano, and perhaps also of the ample breasts of a fellow lodger who happened to be traveling alone.

  The door opened to reveal a little redheaded man whom she recognized immediately. It was the guy who had been watching them for a long time the day before. He had caught her attention; she had a knack for identifying men from the Services, and this guy reeked of it. If political reputations were at stake, these men would, as they had done countless times before, try to derail the investigation and steer it toward conclusions that benefitted the political power they answered to. Unless it was the political powers that be that answered to the Services—one could never know for sure. Seeing her, the man was slightly startled, which led her to the conclusion that he was either not much of a professiona
l or not very bright. He went to sit at a table near hers and ordered a cappuccino, then began shooting sideways glances at her.

  With an exasperated sigh, Simona stood up to face him, picked up a chair, and sat down in front of him, crossing her arms.

  The man seemed to wither in his seat. Simona waited until the café owner had brought the cappuccino over and walked away, wearing an increasingly perplexed expression.

  “Listen closely,” she said almost in a whisper. “I don’t know who you work for, whether it’s the Department of Information Security, the Intelligence and Current Status Service, or whatever-the-fuck, but right now you leave me alone, because if you don’t I’ll make a nice statement to the press about harassment at the hands of certain splinter Service groups. I don’t know if you understand what I’m getting at, but the adjective ‘splinter’ has proved harmful in recent years.”

  “But . . . but . . .” the man stuttered.

  He had become violently flushed. Simona’s conviction seemed to waver for a moment; but then she told herself that he must simply be a first-rate actor. She took it up a notch.

  “Don’t you have anything else you could be doing right now? No negotiation down at the docks with a Mafia boss from Naples or Palermo? No arrangements to make to see that a transsexual dies in a fire? No phony bomb plot to organize? Provided you’re not the real culprit behind Bertolazzi’s murder. Is that it? What’s your game—you want to invent a new kind of terrorism? Ecoterrorism? Now I think I’m starting to understand . . .”

  Simona had been gradually raising her voice and the café owner was now leaning over the counter. His look of perplexity had given way to a look of resolve.

  “Everything all right, Signor Felice? This lady isn’t bothering you, is she?”

  Simona spun around in her chair.

  “How dare you . . .” she started to say. But then she met the angry stare of the café owner, who evidently took her for one of the crazy loner women of a certain age whom one sometimes encounters in coffee shops. She finally admitted to herself that she might be off course.

  “Do you know this gentleman?” she inquired.

  The café owner nodded vigorously.

  “Sure, everyone knows Signor Felice. He’s the local reporter for Il Quotidiano delle Valli.”

  Simona turned back around to face the diminutive man with the carrot-colored hair. He gave her a faint, embarrassed smile and handed her a reporter’s badge bearing the information that the café owner had just provided, along with a telephone number. She started breathing again, thinking that no secret agent, no matter how devoted to his organization, would ever accept such a miserable false identity as a cover, for such a long time, on the off chance that something would actually happen in these valleys. It was her turn to turn red.

  “Forgive me,” she mumbled.

  As she was about to stand up, the man held up his badge. Words burst out of his mouth, all jumbled and running into each other as though they’d long been awaiting release.

  “Commissario, pardon me by chance would you please grant me an interview?”

  The commissario shook her head. She stood motionless for a moment, then sat back down.

  “That’s impossible. I can’t make a statement. I’ve given my word and I intend to keep it.”

  She paused, sizing up her conversation partner, who stuck his head straight out from between his shoulders, like a child afraid of being slapped.

  “You must be well acquainted with goings-on in the area. Know what we’re going to do?”

  “What?” murmured the incredibly shy redheaded reporter.

  “Let’s switch roles this one time. I’ll interview you. In exchange, I’ll let you know the minute the investigation arrives at a conclusion, and you’ll be first in line for the story. There’s just one condition: you can’t reveal your sources, and you have to shine the spotlight on Maresciallo Calabonda and give him all of the credit. Agreed?”

  Felice took a sip of cappuccino, both in an effort to give himself an air of dignity and to buy himself some time to think. As he did this Simona decided through an impressive feat of forced logic that, after all, she had only promised Calabonda that she would have no contact with the “pack that had just arrived,” and that excluded the local media.

  “What do you want to know?” asked Felice, setting down his cup.

  “You haven’t told me whether we have an agreement.”

  “All right, all right, sure. Even though the idea of shining that asshole Calabonda’s shoes doesn’t thrill me, I’ve always done it; it’s my job. I just hoped I’d have the opportunity to do something else . . . So then, what can I do for you?”

  The reporter’s voice had become more self-assured the more he had talked and the more Simona had smiled at him. He had to admit that she really did have a nice smile.

  “What can you tell me about the victim, Bertolazzi, the engineer? All that I know is that he no longer had any family and that he was gay.”

  Felice flung himself back in his chair.

  “Well, he was a local guy. His parents were from here; his father, Maurizio Senior, sold agricultural supplies. Maurizio Junior was born here, went to college in Turin, spent a few years in Africa for Sacropiano. Then he came back and bought himself a nice villa in Torre Pellice. He was responsible for marketing his company’s products— genetically modified seeds and pesticides. Which is apparently why the beekeepers singled him out as a target. CCD is causing mass destruction in our area—”

  “CCD?”

  “Colony collapse disorder. That’s when bees stop returning to their hives, all of a sudden and at any time of year, except for in winter, when they go into a state of semi-hibernation. Then you can’t find their carcasses, not in the hive and not in the surrounding area. Entire colonies disappear overnight. It’s a new phenomenon and highly unusual for such social insects. Oddly enough, the abandoned queen always seems to be in good health and often continues depositing eggs, even though there aren’t enough workers left to take care of the brood. The few bees that remain in the hive seem to be lacking in appetite and there’s a significant drop-off in their honey production.”

  “I think there’s been a lot written about this.”

  “Last year 70 percent of the beehives in San Giorgio al Monte and the neighboring towns were affected by the phenomenon. Professor Martini, who lives in our village, studies the trend for a laboratory in Turin; I got all this information from him. And the beekeepers are all up to speed on the issue. They’re convinced that pesticides are behind it, in particular the imidacloprid and fipronil produced by Sacropiano, and GMOs, too. There’s genetically modified corn in the valley. Those seeds are also sold by Sacropiano.

  “But I’ve also done some research online and the studies that are out there contradict each other. When you get down to it, the causes of CCD still haven’t been pinpointed. At any rate, whether or not you approve of Minoncelli and his group’s methods, the fact is that it’s an extremely disconcerting phenomenon. And not just for beekeepers. To be exact, according to a study universally accepted as irrefutable, 84 percent of plant species cultivated in Europe depend on pollinators, 90 percent of which are bees. More than 70 percent of the products of cultivation, meaning almost all fruit, legumes, oil-producing and protein crops, spices, coffee, chocolate—in other words, 35 percent of the tons of food that we eat—depends on pollination, and given that CCD is a worldwide phenomenon . . .”

  Felice’s speech had become heated, and the red in his hair seemed to spread to his forehead and cheeks. He kept his eyes locked with Simona’s and seemed to be very passionate about what he was saying. Before he could get started on biodiversity and the moon’s influence on the harvest, Simona stopped him.

  “And you think that this is what led to Bertolazzi’s death? That they’d kill him because of his association with Sacropiano?”

  “I don’t know. At any rate, you can say what you like about Minoncelli—that he’s a fanatic, that he’
ll stop at nothing to save those bees—but he’s no killer. Nor is anyone else in his group, for that matter.”

  Simona smiled with one corner of her mouth.

  “You really seem to know a lot about the profile of a killer.”

  “I’ve attended seminars given by IASC, the International Association for the Study of Crime.”

  The commissario nodded. She had heard of this organization, which was Italian in spite of its English name and had been founded by a certain Professor Allegri from Rome and two medicolegal criminologists from Sicily. She had her doubts about its legitimacy, but she kept them to herself.

  “I’m very interested in Forensic psychology and criminal profiling. I took the criminal profiling basic training course as well as the advanced course. Full immersion: two eight-hour days of classes, at the end of which you receive a diploma, all with the cooperation of the United Independent Policemen’s Confederation,” he specified. There was something in his eyes that made Simona wonder if he wasn’t the hotheaded one. “Yesterday, I took some photos of the crime scene . . .”

  “You went into Minoncelli’s house?” Simona was dumbfounded.

  “After the Forensics team left. Don’t worry, there was no risk of altering the crime scene; they had already finished their survey. I took a few photos with a digital camera I have that allows you to reconstruct a scene in 3-D. I’m thinking of using software tested by IASC. It utilizes neural network technologies in order to simulate the action, with the objective elements discovered at the scene of the crime as a departure point: the position of the body, bloodstain pattern analysis, signs of struggle, repositioned objects, and so on.”

  “But the bloodstain pattern analysis, you . . .”

  “I have a friend in Forensics. Every so often he hands me some information. But I’m just doing this for fun—you know, I don’t want to interfere with the investigation.”

  Simona sighed, mentally filing Felice under “Nutty as a Fruitcake.” She resumed:

  “And what can you tell me about Bertolazzi?”

  Before answering her, Felice waited for his second cappuccino to arrive, along with a croissant, dunking the latter in the former as he spoke.