Kill the Angel

by Sandrone Dazieri

  “I knew I never should have let you go in—”

  “You see those stains?” Dante interrupted her. “Motor oil, and from the location, I’d say it comes from the fingernails of whoever wore them. Musta has a scooter; it’s entirely likely that’s how he got his nails dirty. I bet you’ll find his fingerprints inside.”

  “Which means that he was the one who killed his friend.”

  “Someone who uses gloves to commit a psychopathic murder and then leaves them a yard from the corpse?”

  “He wouldn’t be the first one,” said Colomba.

  “CC, I know just one thing. Musta came here after running away from home, and someone took him away from here. And what we should be worrying about is who that someone is.”

  10

  Musta slowly regained consciousness in total darkness. His back hurt, and he tried to stretch, but he soon discovered he couldn’t move. He was on his feet, bound with the duct tape that had been used to wrap him like a cocoon, braced against a cement pillar. He could hear the distant sounds of cars, muffled by whatever it was that he had on his head and which pressed painfully against his face. A motorcycle helmet, he realized, but with the opening turned to the back of his head, which was why he couldn’t see anything.

  Seized by a wave of panic, he screamed and struggled, but the spongy padding that reeked of sweat suffocated his voice. He arched against the tape and pushed, gasping as his teeth bit into the foam, tensing every muscle in his body, but the only result was that he could hear his ribs crack. He pushed until lack of oxygen forced him to stop, then he wept into the helmet, sucking in his own tears.

  A hand came down on his shoulder.

  “Be good, now. You’re in no danger,” said the woman’s voice that had accompanied him into unconsciousness. Frighteningly calm and faint.

  “Please. Let me go,” he begged. “I’m suffocating.”

  “You’re just getting upset. Breathe calmly and you’ll see how much better things get.”

  Musta tried to yell again but produced nothing more than a whimper. Behind his closed eyelids, the luminous globes of hypoxia started to dance. “I’m dying!” he moaned.

  The voice drew closer to his ear. “Breathe. Slowly,” it ordered.

  Musta understood that he had to obey, and did his best to breathe the way his judo instructor had taught him during the two times he’d actually shown up for the lessons. In through the nose and out through the mouth. He realized that, the slower he breathed, the more the sponge in the helmet let the air get through. Now he focused entirely on how he breathed.

  In, out. In, out.

  In the meantime, he thought back to the voice and finally realized what it was that had struck him, aside from the icy intonation: the absolute lack of any accent. Musta, who’d grown up in an environment that was a frothing blender of ethnic groups where the Italian language was frequently the lingua franca, had heard it spoken with all imaginable colorations, spiced up and twisted by patois and dialects from around the world. The woman who had captured him, on the other hand, spoke a perfect Italian, like a television announcer. And there were strange pauses in her speech, as if she were pondering every single word. Maybe she wasn’t Italian, he concluded, as if that made any difference.

  “You see, it’s better now,” the voice said. The fingernails walked up his arm, playing with the back of his hand.

  Musta felt his skin crawl. “Please don’t hurt me,” he whimpered.

  “Breathe. Nothing else. Don’t speak.”

  In, out.

  In, out.

  “I’m sorry about what’s happening to you, Musta,” said the voice. “You weren’t expected.”

  In.

  Out.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Musta shook his head.

  In.

  Out . . .

  The fingernails suddenly snapped shut. It was a really hard pinch, and it tore his flesh. Musta screamed in pain.

  “Think about it. I know you’ve seen me.”

  “No!”

  Another pinch. This time it seemed to Musta that the fingernails had sunk through to the bone. He lost the rhythm of his breathing and fought with his lungs as they twisted in agony until a breath of air started to make it through again. “I swear it. No! Please.”

  “And yet I’ve seen you.” The woman’s fingernails rose, tapping, to the helmet, then slid under his chin. However much he tossed his head, Musta couldn’t get free of her. A fingertip pressed under his Adam’s apple, and he immediately felt his trachea shut down. He didn’t know how the woman could do it with a touch that felt so light, but no air was reaching him now. Musta flailed like an epileptic, uselessly, and sounds grew liquid and his body grew light. It was while he was in that state that a memory fluttered in the dark like a vision. He and Farid had ventured into the Testaccio neighborhood, and had been drinking in the immense courtyard of what once was a public slaughterhouse but had since filled up with restaurants and cafés.

  They’d gotten comfortable on a patch of lawn with a plastic bag full of bottles that they’d brought. Halfway through their little binge, Farid had stood up. “Wait for me here, I’m going to take a piss,” he’d said, and then vanished through the line of trees. Musta, half-drunk, had watched him go as he’d vanished through the main entrance. There was something funny about this, and more to bust Farid’s chops than out of any real curiosity, he’d tagged after. When he’d reached the street, he’d seen Farid leaning in to the driver’s-side window of a black Hummer. Musta loved those monstrous cars, and one day he hoped to have enough money to own a Hummer of his own; maybe he could buy it used. Weighing in at three metric tons and with a powerful three-hundred-horsepower engine under the hood: the kind of car you could get a hard-on over. He imagined himself pressing the pedal to the metal—which must have been like jamming the accelerator down on an army tank—with Pitbull or Eminem blasting out of the speakers, and then stopping at a red light and glancing over—down, really—at some young woman who’d pulled up next to him in a compact car. In his dream, she’d agree to climb aboard the off-road monster, just abandoning her pathetic little car then and there, and he’d take her to the Dinosaurs. That evening, however, the dream had been rudely interrupted when Farid turned around and saw him and the Hummer peeled out, tires screeching. Before driving away, though, the woman at the wheel had turned to look at him. Her face was an indistinct oval, extremely white, but her eyes were glittering in the streetlamp’s glow like two shards of metal. Musta had felt them prying their way into his head, reading everything inside him—everything good and everything bad. However strange it might seem, he’d had the distinct impression that if the woman had found something she didn’t like, she would have put the tank of a car in gear and driven it straight at him, crushing him like a cockroach. With neither pity nor remorse.

  Then Farid had come back.

  “Who was that woman?” Musta had asked him.

  “No one, just a person asking directions,” his friend had replied. Musta had realized that there was something that didn’t add up, but he’d been too drunk to worry about it. They’d gone back to their drinking, and the topic hadn’t come up again.

  Back in the present, Musta nodded, frantically making use of what little strength remained to him. The woman removed her finger and his throat opened up again. Air. Lovely, blessed air.

  “You remembered,” said the voice.

  “You’re the one in the Hummer,” said Musta hastily. “You’re the one who bought the video.” And you’re the one who killed all those people on the train, he thought, though he lacked the courage to say so.

  “Who did you tell about the video?”

  “No one.”

  “Not even your brother? Don’t make me go and ask him myself.”

  “No. I never tell him anything.”

  “There’s a hole right here, next to your ear.” Musta felt her tap on the helmet. “I can put anything through that hole that I want. Just try
imagining what it would be like to try to breathe in a helmet full of sand. Or insects.”

  “No, please don’t,” Musta stammered. “I haven’t told anyone. I swear it!”

  The voice fell silent. Musta heard her breathing, outside, calmly, the way he ought to be.

  In.

  Out.

  Musta felt something cold slide along his arm. It wasn’t the fingernails this time but the blade of a knife.

  “I swear to you,” he said again. He could feel his breath failing him, and he went back to concentrating on his respiration.

  In.

  Out.

  In.

  The air smelled of sweat and blood. The voice wasn’t talking anymore.

  Out.

  In.

  Out.

  If she sees that I’m afraid, she’ll kill me, he thought. Like a wolf.

  In.

  Out.

  The blade stopped at his wrist.

  In.

  Out.

  In.

  Out.

  The point of the knife pressed hard. A drop of blood beaded up on the flesh.

  In. Out. In . . . Ou—

  Musta felt pressure and then a jerk. She just slashed my veins, he thought, but his arm moved when he flexed the muscle and came away from the column. It was the duct tape that had torn.

  The blade ran down along Musta’s body, freeing it entirely. Musta could no longer resist, and he grabbed the helmet, pulling it off his head with his eyes closed.

  “Look at me,” said the woman.

  “No. I don’t want to,” said Musta, his teeth chattering with terror. “If I don’t see you, you don’t have to kill me.”

  The voice drew close to his ear. Musta sniffed again at the scent of oranges and realized that it was coming from her. “Unless you do it right away, I’ll cut your eyelids off,” she whispered. “It’s very painful.”

  Musta realized he couldn’t refuse any longer and he obeyed, but for an instant he thought he’d fallen asleep and was having a nightmare: the face that was staring at him from a yard away wasn’t the face of a human being. It had no features, it was a strange off-white color, and in it were two colorless eyes. It looked like the face of a mannequin that had come to life.

  The woman took a step back, and the light from the camping lamp illuminating the raw cement walls of the room slid over her. Only then did Musta realize that he was staring at a flesh-colored rubber mask that wrapped tightly around the face of his captor, leaving only her eyes uncovered. In place of a mouth, there was a circular hole covered by a small perforated grille. This realization was, if anything, even more horrifying. He wondered what was hidden under that mask. What deformity.

  Musta had seen a mask that looked like that once, on a girl whose jealous boyfriend had burned her face with gasoline, but this one was even more opaque, concealing any scars his jailer might have on her face. Her hands, too, were covered with latex bandages, from which long yellow-enameled fingernails extended.

  “What happened to you?” Musta stammered.

  The woman brought her face close to his, and Musta once again breathed in the smell of oranges. “It would be better for you not to know,” she said. When she spoke, the mask made little creases around her mouth, but the expression remained indecipherable.

  “Excuse me,” said Musta, recoiling. He stood there next to the column, unsure what to do. One thing was certain: he had no intention of attacking the masked woman. Even if she hadn’t been holding the hunting knife she’d used to free him, Musta knew that he wouldn’t have the slightest chance against her. It was his instincts that told him, instincts that he had honed in dozens of street fights. He looked around. Aside from the two of them and a pile of garbage, the room was empty, and it looked like it was in a building under construction. A crescent moon shone through a window frame without fixtures. “Do you really belong to ISIS?”

  “No,” she said. “But Farid believed that I did. He wanted me to give him a ticket to the United Arab Emirates and a female sex slave for his help.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You’re wrong. I never lie. He believed me, though. Do you know why he got you involved?”

  “No.”

  “Because he wanted someone to be able to put the blame on in case things went badly.” The woman cocked her head to one side, like a bird of prey studying a small animal. “He really wasn’t much of a friend.”

  “What do you mean, he wasn’t?” Musta faltered.

  “I killed him,” said the woman in a detached, relaxed voice.

  Musta felt like vomiting, and he leaned forward, grabbing his belly. “Oh, God.”

  She effortlessly pulled him upright by the arm. “How did the police get there so fast?”

  “I don’t know. I know they were at my house.”

  The masked woman seemed to hesitate for the first time. “Are you sure you didn’t tell anyone?”

  “Positive. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “All right. I won’t hurt you. Your arrival was unexpected, but I can use you.”

  The woman pushed her rubber face next to Musta’s and stared at him with the holes she had instead of eyes. He couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away.

  “I have a job for you to do,” she told him.

  11

  Curcio was driving the squad car, while Santini was in the passenger seat. Alone, they were prowling through the streets of the Roman night, so they could chat without any prying ears. Santini was nervous, Curcio was angry, and he was driving to let off steam. “I told you to keep an eye on her,” he said for the second time. “I thought I’d made myself clear.”

  “I did all I could, Maurizio,” said Santini. In private, they were on a first-name basis, despite the difference in rank. “But Caselli is what she is. Do you know how many critical situations I’ve had to handle with her since she returned to active duty?”

  “I’m not interested in gossip,” Curcio said brusquely.

  “This isn’t gossip. She doesn’t get along with the others, and she always does exactly as she sees fit. She comes and goes as she pleases, and she snaps like a mousetrap if something doesn’t go the way she thinks it should. Ask your colleagues how they like working with her. Ask Infanti.”

  “I hate to say it, but Infanti is an idiot.”

  “That’s why we sent him to the task force, isn’t it? He wouldn’t have to make decisions, just take orders, but he was no good at doing that, either.”

  Curcio shook his head. He wished he could have said something in his colleague’s defense, but nothing came to mind. “How is he, by the way?”

  “He’s still in the operating room. He’s going to lose his left eye and the hearing in his left ear at the very minimum. Poor asshole.”

  Curcio said nothing and went on driving at top speed.

  “Can I be undiplomatic for once?” asked Santini.

  “For once?” Curcio asked sarcastically. “You don’t even know where diplomacy lives, do you?”

  “I’m making an effort.”

  “I have to give you that.” Curcio smiled in spite of himself. “Well?”

  “Who the fuck cares how Caselli figured it out? She figured it out, and that’s that, let’s congratulate her and be done arguing about it.”

  Curcio deafened a careless pedestrian with his horn, and the man hurried back onto the sidewalk as the car almost grazed him. “If it were up to me . . . But they’re not going to let me sweep the dirt under the carpet this time. Not with her.”

  Santini unwrapped a piece of candy he’d found on the dashboard and started sucking on it in a corner of his mouth. It tasted old, and he spat it out into the ashtray. “What dirt are you talking about? All that counts are results.”

  “Why don’t you look at it from the point of view of the security agencies: Colomba dug in to a terrorism case without involving them. How does that make them look? What would you have done when you were at the Central Investigative Service if we’d cut you
out of a case?”

  “I’d have kicked up a big fuss,” Santini admitted.

  “They’ll go around saying that we’ve destroyed valuable intelligence leads . . . that we’ve scattered the accomplices . . . You know the song and dance.”

  “If they’d succeeded in staging another attack, the song and dance would have been worse.”

  “True, but that doesn’t count right now. Then there’s the district attorney’s office. Half of the people there consider Colomba an enemy, since she eluded arrest last year, and now the other half are in support of her because she operated without authorization. If she’d only talked to Spinelli, at least . . .”

  “Maybe she really didn’t know anything when she was questioned,” said Santini, knowing he was lying.

  “Don’t talk bullshit,” said Curcio as he crossed the intersection that marked the invisible boundary with the Malavoglia quarter. A team of highway cops was directing traffic: one of the officers waved them through with his traffic paddle and was almost knocked to the ground by the blast of air as they went past.

  “If you don’t like her methods, then why did you talk her into resuming active duty?” asked Santini.

  “Rovere cared about her. I felt a moral obligation.”

  “He lost his mind, too, toward the end,” Santini said, darkly. There had been no love lost between him and Rovere, but he’d respected him.

  Curcio sighed. “Right.” For a short while there was only silence, except for the siren screaming on top of the car. “Colomba is a good cop,” Curcio went on, then: “After what happened to her, she deserved a second chance.”

  “Is she going to get a third?”

  Curcio didn’t answer, just downshifted and parked at the edge of the piazza with the horrible fountain. There were police cars and armored trucks, a mobile NBC laboratory, and a small group of NOA agents cordoning off the area. There was also an ambulance and a number of special forces soldiers in hazmat suits. Sitting on the curb, fifty feet or so up the sidewalk, were Colomba and Dante. When he saw them, Santini swore. “Oh, so now she’s dragged the lunatic into it. It just keeps getting better.”