“It’s true, it’s a little depressing. When it’s sunny, it’s quite another matter.”
“Right. So can we say we’re done with chitchat and move on to more serious matters?”
“Perhaps we could order first, what do you say?”
“You have quite an appetite, for an alcoholic.”
“I’ve gone to the very edge more than once but I’ve always managed to pull myself back just in time,” I explained agreeably. “When I’m in love I drink less. Right now I’m not emotionally involved so I’m drinking more than usual, but hardly to excess.”
“I can’t imagine what kind of woman would be involved with someone like you.” She waved her hand to take in the other tables. “Do you see any specimens here that might illuminate me?”
“Appearance has nothing to do with it. The important thing is that she not be a bitch, or arrogant, or a snob, just for starters.”
She flashed me an ambiguous smile. She was enjoying herself.
“Shall we say we’re also done with insults?” I asked.
She ignored me. “The food here is truly first-class,” she said, opening the menu. “Both fish and meat.”
I ordered both. A bowl of spaghetti ai frutti di mare and a steak an inch thick.
Oriana was irritating even when she ate. The careful accuracy of the movements with which she deboned her gilthead bream in vernaccia made me want to pick a fight.
I forced myself to stay focused on the details that could prove useful to me in the investigation. I asked how she communicated with her Guido, what kind of places they went together, bars, restaurants, theaters.
After exactly half an hour of questioning I had to conclude that their affair had been too well-kept a secret for anyone to have been able to find out. It was governed by very precise rules, the same kind that a fugitive or a member of a secret gang might have adopted. She had made very sure that no one would develop even the faintest of suspicions and that, in the unfortunate case that such a thing did happen, there would still be no evidence to bear that suspicion out. All the same, the worst had happened. This illicit, clandestine couple had been spotted and attacked by a gang of criminals.
“Obviously someone must have recognized you,” I said. “This morning you told me that several pictures of you have been published in magazines and newspapers.”
“Only in the Ticino canton. In Italy I’m completely unknown.”
“Did you use a credit card to pay your bills?”
She pierced me with a pitying look. “Cash. All payments exclusively in cash.”
“Then the professor must have talked with someone about it,” I theorized, having eliminated all other hypotheses. “He must have confided in a friend, or bragged to one: you know what men are like, and that act put in motion the mechanism that led to the kidnapping.”
“That’s the first thing I thought myself. But Guido isn’t the type.”
“Wasn’t,” I corrected her, breaking in. “Put your heart at rest on that point.”
“I can’t bring myself to do it,” she confessed from behind a film of tears that worried me.
“Forgive me, go on, please,” I said, doing my best to make up for what I’d said and refilling her glass.
“Yes, he has plenty of friends. He’s also a musician, he plays the guitar, but he understood that we’d have to lead double lives if we wanted this relationship to continue. We love each other very much. I am his one true love, his real woman, that much at least is clear to you, isn’t it?”
While Signora Pozzi Vitali raved on, dangerously close to the brink of lunacy, I did my best to suppress my despair. I had nothing useful to help me get started on a serious investigation. And by now too much time had gone by. Memories fade, gangs drift apart, criminals move away, and with every day that passes, they erase their tracks with greater and greater care.
I was tempted to tell her so, but it would have been needlessly cruel.
She pulled an envelope out of her bag: it contained the cash and the keys to the apartment in Padua.
“Did Guido have a set of his own?” I asked, for no particular reason.
“No, he wouldn’t have known how to explain them away, and Enrica has always been rather inquisitive, you know, one of those women who check trouser pockets and cell phones. Not because they don’t trust their men, but rather on principle, because they believe that in a relationship, when the man steps out, he needs to be roped back in immediately.”
“But that’s not the way you see things, is it?”
“Only a petty bourgeois from the bottom of the barrel could humiliate herself like that,” she replied testily. “I’ve always taken it for granted that Ugo was cheating on me, and after a number of years of marriage it even came as a relief since it freed me from my weekly matrimonial obligations.”
She caught a waiter’s attention. “Would you be so good as to bring me a crème caramel? And you, Signor Buratti?”
CHAPTER THREE
I walked into the law offices of Counselor Bonotto and handed my cell phone to his secretary. The lawyer was talking to a guy who looked about forty-five and was wearing a spectacularly garish short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt. He looked me up and down, quizzically.
Bonotto stood up, adjusted his jacket, and held out his hand.
“It’s been a while, Marco.”
“Yeah, a few years I’d say,” I shot back. I wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat.
“Let me introduce you to Inspector Campagna,” he went on.
I turned toward him and shook hands. “Buratti.”
“Giulio Campagna, robbery division,” he introduced himself.
“Before I leave the two of you alone,” Bonotto clarified, “it strikes me that I ought to go over the facts that have brought you here today. Marco, a man I know and respect, asked if I was in contact with a member of law enforcement with whom he could talk about a certain situation, someone whose absolute discretion he could trust.
“I thought immediately of Inspector Campagna, in whom I have implicit faith, and I asked him if he would be willing to hear what Buratti had to say. Based on his assurances of complete confidentiality, I arranged this meeting.”
The cop raised his hand. “Of course, the terms apply as long as Buratti is not directly involved in any wrongdoing, otherwise he’ll be walking out of this office in handcuffs.”
“Of course,” I confirmed, trying to get a sense of the man. At first glance, he struck me as a tough character, rigid and intractable. I hoped he would be turn out to be smart as well.
The lawyer stood up, picked up his briefcase, and left the room.
“I know who you are,” the inspector told me straight off. “So let’s skip the preliminaries.”
I offered him a cigarette. He took it, stood up, turned off the air conditioner, and opened the window. A gust of hot muggy air blew in. Clouds heavy with rain covered the sky. Luckily the sidewalks in downtown Padua were lined with porticoes.
“Two lovers. She is wealthy, he’s an academic who lives on his salary,” I began, doing my best to be clear and concise. “The woman imposes maniacal security measures, but one fine day she receives a phone call from a stranger telling her to hand over three hundred thousand euros’ worth of jewelry in a few days’ time, or else the man will die. She severs all ties and the male lover hasn’t been heard from since.”
“When is this all supposed to have happened?”
“March 14th, 2013.”
“Have the police come up with anything?”
I shook my head. “The man is still listed as a missing person.”
The detective crushed out his cigarette butt on the windowsill and sat down in the lawyer’s office chair. “These plastic chairs cost an arm and a leg and they’re uncomfortable too,” he said, changing the subject just to give himself time to think.
“Then there was the period, much shorter, of kidnappings ‘on the fly.’ They’d demand thirty to a hundred million lire and release the hostage in the space of twenty-four hours. But back then people had an easier time laying their hands on cash. These days the banks give us a call whenever they get a suspicious request.
“But now, according to what you’re telling me, a gang has kidnapped a guy with no money and tried to extort his wealthy lover.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“And all of us at headquarters are entirely in the dark.”
“Precisely.”
“How lucky that the great unlicensed private detective has turned up and is determined to break the case wide open with my help.”
He didn’t like me. But I stayed where I was for one reason: I needed him.
“I think we could both help each other out, that is, if you’re still interested.”
“I’m certainly in no position to just let a kidnapping and a murder go. If what you say turns out to be true, then someone needs to be sent to prison for life without parole, but I want one thing to be clear from the start: to me you’re nothing but a confidential informant, and that’s how I’m going to treat you. Don’t think for a second that you can play at being my ‘partner.’ That’s not going to work with me.”
He was going over the top. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I retorted drily. “I’ve never liked cops or informants. The offer on the table involves the two of us working together in an atmosphere of mutual trust, sharing whatever we find. If you don’t like that, I’ll leave right now and never bother you again.”
He gave me a slap on the shoulder. “Sorry, Buratti, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t dealing with some wing nut who thinks he’s Nero Wolfe or with some brownnosing informer.”
“I thought you’d asked around about me.”
“Old news. You’ve been missing from our fair city for far too long, I’d have been a sucker to rely on what little I was able to find out.”
He wasn’t exactly a barrel of fun, but maybe the attorney had introduced me to the right cop. I brought him up to speed on the details, leaving out only the truly useless ones. “I don’t have the resources to investigate Guido Di Lello in Rome,” I said. “His work environment, his friends, his family. Everything points to the idea that he was the one who talked about his affair with Oriana Pozzi Vitali. Here in Padua, so far, my partner and I haven’t found even the faintest shred of evidence.”
I looked at him. I’d let slip the detail that I worked with another person and Campagna hadn’t blinked, which meant that he already knew all about Max. This cop knew what he was doing.
“It’s not going to be easy for me either,” he said. “Here I can operate no problem, but if I want to investigate down in Rome I’m going to have to ask, and give, favors.”
A few minutes later I found myself strolling through city squares and piazzas crowded with stalls and people out shopping. Padua hadn’t changed a bit. The new coalition had won the municipal elections with a campaign focused on security and the fight against urban decay, promising to eliminate intrusive panhandlers, Roma camps, prostitution on the streets, illegal immigrants, and all the other irritations of modern European life. The new leaders of the city were, however, canny enough to understand that when they went too far, they had to recalibrate, and in a hurry. An acrobat from southern Italy, particularly beloved by the citizenry, had objected when he was threatened by city cops who didn’t want him to perform just a stone’s throw from the renowned Caffè Pedrocchi. When he announced that he was ready to set fire to himself in the public square, suddenly the mayor himself discovered that he’d always been a huge fan of street performers.
The politicians were plying their trade, the people of Padua were satisfied with promises of a “clean” city, but the cocaine trade continued to call the shots downtown. The faces of pushers, old and new, local and foreign, alternated with those of informants, cops, former escorts, young boys and girls eager to trade sex for drugs and cash. And then there were the buyers. Lots of them, all discreet. The merry-go-round went on spinning.
I’d been here for a couple of weeks and I was feeling much better. I was focused on the investigation, keeping nightmares and ghosts at bay. The fact that we were in the saddle again as unlicensed private detectives meant Max was finding his footing again too. He’d taken up old habits and now he spent hours archiving information, though not before fully mastering the kitchen in the apartment that Oriana Pozzi Vitali had so kindly put at our disposal.
The kitchen was elegant, beautiful, and equipped with everything a great chef could desire. But nothing had been used even once until we showed up. The couple hadn’t eaten anything but snacks and breakfasts here. Clearly the Swiss woman had wanted her relationship to inhabit a full, vital space, rather than the temporary one most love nests occupy.
Every room was furnished as if it were lived in every day. And not just by two people. Three bedrooms, a study, two bathrooms, a living room, and a kitchen on the top floor of an apartment building on Corso Milano. From the window of my room, I could see the roof of the Teatro Verdi and other views of Padua that had certainly been factored into the purchase price.
That house spoke eloquently of the strength of Oriana’s love for her professor. The spectacular warmth of the furnishings aside, when you opened armoires, cabinets, and dresser drawers there was no mistaking the care she had taken to make her lover comfortable.
For once I felt sorry for that odious woman now holed up in an exclusive clinic in Lugano, a place that was well known for taking in famous people who had a few screws loose. The illicit affair with Guido had been a discreet attempt to flee an environment that had forced her to deny her own emotions. But she’d been unlucky. And the professor even more so. If the corpse hadn’t been found yet, it must have been buried or otherwise efficiently disposed of.
During all those days wasted in trying to hunt down a lead of some kind, I had done nothing but think about the gang of kidnappers. I’d known criminals at every level, but these had to be special in some way. The idea had been brilliant in its way: to blackmail a wealthy woman who’d be unlikely to go to the police, and to come prepared with a very specific demand—not even a particularly outrageous one, given the woman’s personal wealth—for jewelry, not cash. In other words, the gang was well informed about certain essential details. They knew where, how, and when. It had all been nicely planned. The criminals had invested time and resources. They were capable of kidnapping a man in broad daylight without leaving witnesses, no weapons leveled, no tires screeching. And they’d been capable of disappearing into thin air without leaving the slightest trace.
They couldn’t have gone to all that trouble just for that one kidnapping. It had to be a gang of specialists who had done this before, and since. Their victims had simply chosen to remain silent. Individuals vulnerable to blackmail. People having affairs.
Max and I had checked out neighbors, local cafés, and shops. My partner had trawled the Internet. The professor’s fiancée’s despair, which she had made public on her Facebook page, aside, the question remained: why had he vanished? No one had dreamed he could have been a victim of a gang that targeted lovers.
Two weeks of completely fruitless investigations had persuaded me that the only lead that could light a way through the impenetrable fog shrouding the case in mystery had to be in Rome. Only Di Lello could have caused the fatal breach of security, whether intentionally or inadvertently. And it was up to Campagna to find out how and when the professor had begun to dig his own grave.
CHAPTER FOUR
He never should have agreed
to meet the Alligator. Giulio Campagna kept repeating this to himself as he pedaled toward police headquarters. For some time now he’d been wondering whether he was up to the stresses of his job. He’d migrated from one department to another, playing the part of a cop who dressed eccentrically, didn’t suffer hierarchies gladly, and was constantly at odds with his colleagues because of his stubborn determination to conduct investigations his own way. He’d become a loner, no one wanted to team up with him.
The truth was that the inspector was a troubled man. Working for years in narcotics, he’d witnessed the slow but unstoppable triumph of organized crime, the impossibility of putting a halt to drug dealing and drug use. A lost battle that every damn day of the year demanded some new and greater tribute. Giulio had asked to be transferred to the robbery squad, but even there, things were more or less the same. Armed robberies were less frequent than they once had been because the underworld had shifted its strategies and targets, not because police work had done anything to dismantle the networks behind that type of crime.
Campagna never ceased to be amazed at the speed with which new crimes were dreamed up and tried out. What Buratti’s story had revealed was serious and worrisome. He had to put a stop to it at all costs.
He suddenly lurched to a halt. Anxiety had emptied his lungs of air. He pretended to study the window of one of the scores of shoe stores, trying to calm himself. Inside, a bored clerk was leafing through a magazine. Shops like this one seemed to be popping up like mushrooms these days. They were always empty and yet they rang up dozens and dozens of sales. The miracles of economic downturns. But money laundering helped a limping economy and these days everyone turned a blind eye. Even him.
When he’d chosen to become a cop, he could never have imagined that the day would come when he’d have to pick and choose which crimes to prosecute because law enforcement lacked the resources to pursue them all.
“We are the ones keeping a sinking boat afloat, bailing out the bilge with a teaspoon,” an old cop had told him, just before quitting the force and taking a job as the head of security at a superstore. The man was right, but neither surrendering nor fleeing made any sense. The real problem was trying to figure out whether he was even capable of working for the police anymore.
Gang of Lovers Page 7