The Second Day of the Renaissance

by Timothy Williams

  “In the event, my accusations were proved wrong—but Gracchi was deliberately unhelpful.”

  “Tino saw himself as the protector of all women and children.”

  (“But you blow people up? You admit to that, Gracchi?”

  “If it’s necessary.”

  Gracchi sat with his hairy arms resting on his thighs; the blue jeans were scuffed and patched with white dust. Large plasters on his forehead and temples.

  “And it is necessary?”

  “A bomb can be a clinical instrument. With fools, commissario, there can be no dialogue.”)

  “You asked me why I disliked him. I can only tell you how I felt. Gracchi believed a bomb was a clinical instrument.”

  “He was trying to provoke you, commissario.”

  “He succeeded.”

  “He saw you as part of the establishment. But that was in 1978, and already he was changing. We were all changing.” She caught her breath. “You know Trapani?”

  “I’ve never been south of Naples.”

  “And Giovanni Verga?”

  “What about him?”

  “You’ve met him?” she asked sharply.

  Trotti shook his head. “I know Giovanni Verga set up BRAMAN with Gracchi. I know Verga later got very rich—at about the time he became intimate with Craxi. And at the time the Socialists were in power.”

  Lia Guerra nodded in sardonic amusement. “Bettino Craxi, our ex-prime minister, who is now hiding in Tunisia.”

  “Spadano tells me Verga’s living in Managua.”

  Lia Guerra said, “Neither Nicaragua nor Tunisia has an extradition treaty with Italy. A great pity, because both Craxi and Verga know who killed Gracchi.”

  “You should’ve asked them.”

  “I asked Verga.”

  Trotti’s face broke into a smile.

  “I spoke to Verga,” Lia Guerra said. “I spoke to him often—when he was still the uncontested master at BRAMAN. When I went back to visit the place.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He lied.”

  “You knew he was lying?”

  “I still believed he was Tino’s friend.” The dark eyes inspected Trotti’s face. “When did you first hear about Gracchi’s death?”

  “It was in the paper.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Tino’s death wasn’t important?”

  Trotti shrugged. “I didn’t make the association between Gracchi’s killing and the terrorist I’d arrested all those years ago.”

  “Tino was no terrorist.”

  Trotti shrugged.

  “You didn’t realize it was him?”

  “An uneducated flatfoot.” He shrugged again. “For many years, I never read a newspaper other than the local Provincia Padana when I found it lying around the Questura or on the table in a bar.”

  “Tino said you were shrewd.”

  “Gracchi believed a lot of strange things.”

  “He had his reasons.”

  “Obscure reasons that are beyond me.”

  “You didn’t care about Tino’s death, Commissario Trotti?”

  “If I’d cared about every politician or journalist who’s murdered in this country, I’d never have had the time to do my job.” Trotti set the empty glass on the floor and sat back, his arms folded on his lap. “My job rarely required me to read the papers.”

  Lia Guerra relaxed, as if Trotti’s answers were the right ones to some private examination.

  “I loved Tino, Trotti. You realized that when you met me. I tried to forget him. For five years I tried to forget Tino and lived with Maltese. Who was also murdered.” Still smiling, she said, “Forgive my stupid obsession. I bring bad luck to the men I love. Forgive me for taking up your precious time. I know you can’t understand why I wanted to see you. You have reason for not liking me, commissario—just as I have many reasons for hating you. But all that was a long time ago, so much water under the bridge. I’d like you to know I’m very glad you came—very grateful to you both.”

  37: Open City

  They were sitting on the roof beneath a striped awning propped up by poles. Several wicker chairs and a low table. Beside the table was a wheeled refrigerator, and on a chaise longue, the morning’s newspaper lay facedown. Also a dog-eared copy of Prince magazine.

  The red tiles of the terrace absorbed the warmth of the gentle sun. Potted plants—cacti and bougainvillea and dates—stood along the low wall and incongruously, there was a line of towels and white sheets drying in the breeze.

  A black cat slept in the shade beneath the woman’s feet.

  “Everyone calls me Lia but my real name’s Angela. The name of an American actress, I believe, with beautiful legs who’d get undressed in the strangest situations.” Lia Guerra laughed, more to herself than to the two men. “I’m not going to undress or anything. At least, I hope not,” she said. “Past that sort of thing, I’m afraid.”

  Lia Guerra wore black tights and a white shirt with long sleeves. She had a small, wiry body, a narrow waist and the hips of an adolescent. There was no spare fat to the line of the thighs.

  (He caught hold of her wrist and with his other hand, Trotti rolled back the sleeve of her checked shirt.

  “An expensive habit.”

  The arm was scarred and hard where needles had pierced the skin.

  Lia Guerra pulled her arm free, fell backwards and crumpled on to the floor. “You bastard,” she muttered and she scratched at her arm.)

  Perhaps sensing Trotti’s thoughts, Lia Guerra put down her glass, got up and went towards the balustrade. She placed her weight on her toes and Trotti wondered if she had been—or indeed still was—a dancer.

  She was smiling. She beckoned and the two men obediently rose and joined her.

  The view of Rome from the rooftop was breathtaking.

  The glint of the waters of the Tiber, the grey of St. Peter’s, the round walls of the Castel Sant’Angelo and to their right, the dazzling, white brashness of the Vittoriano.

  “One of the better things to living in this provincial place.”

  Pisanelli said, “Birthplace of Christianity? Seat of the Catholic, Apostolic Church?”

  “Rome’s never really gotten over its past.”

  “I wouldn’t call the capital of the Republic provincial.”

  “The artificial capital of an artificial country,” she remarked dismissively. Lia Guerra spoke with a Turin accent. She deliberately softened the fricatives, as if to prove that she was an outsider in this city.

  Peering over the wall, Trotti glanced down at the street below. The machine guns of the Carabinieri appeared no more sinister than the glinting cars or the occasional passerby in via del Tempio.

  “In 1555, Pope Paul the Fourth built a wall around the ghetto and the gates were locked every night for 315 years—until Victor Emmanuel decided to tear the walls down. Then when the Germans took control of Rome in 1943, a Jew called Foà collected fifty kilos of gold and took it as a gift to the German Embassy. The Germans promised him no Jew would be deported from Rome. A few days later, a convoy of a thousand Jews was sent to Auschwitz.” A shrug of her shoulders. “Just fifteen survived.” As if bored by the subject, Lia Guerra asked, as she moved back into the shade, “Would you care for another drink, commissario?”

  On the other side of the road, set back in the synagogue garden, Trotti caught sight of a bearded man with a broad-brimmed hat and a dark coat. He had the bowed, thoughtful look of a priest reading his breviary.

  Trotti turned back and joined Lia Guerra and Pisanelli in the shade of the awning.

  Pisanelli was grinning like an adolescent.

  38: Apology

  It was eighteen years since Trotti had last seen her lover, yet he could recall the hot, fruitless in
terrogation of Gracchi over Anna Ermagni’s disappearance, he could recall the smell of fear and sweat and frustration at a time when the very structure of the Italian republic seemed threatened by mindless terrorism.

  “The artificial capital of an artificial country.” The words could have been Gracchi’s. The same voice, the same arrogant tone.

  Lia Guerra smiled. “The general said you’d help.”

  Lia Guerra’s slippers lay on the tiles before her. She had raised her feet onto the chaise longue and set them beneath her thighs.

  The cat stirred in its sleep.

  “Tino’s been dead for eight years. With all this talk of the pubblico ministero reopening the case, I remain cynical—even if they do arrest Chiara Gracchi.”

  “Nothing’s going to bring Gracchi back.”

  “You don’t believe in justice, commissario?”

  “I don’t believe in wasting time.”

  “Tino was murdered—and I want to see justice done. I want to know the truth. I no longer have faith in the police or the Carabinieri or the investigating judges. Perhaps not even in Spadano. They have their private agenda—and the truth has little place there.” Lia Guerra looked at Trotti. “Spadano maintains you’re a man of integrity.”

  “Spadano doesn’t know me.”

  “Don’t jerk me about, commissario.” She moved her legs and sitting up, set her feet onto the floor. “I’ve been jerked around for too long. Jerked around by too many people, too many false promises. I need to know the truth.”

  “From a retired, ignorant policeman? A retired, ignorant, Northern policeman who threw Gracchi into jail all those years ago? I just happen to be in Rome for a few days. Visiting my good friend Pierangelo Pisanelli.” He gestured towards Pisanelli.

  The woman’s glance went to the aluminum crutch, then to Pisanellis.

  “A one-time colleague,” Pisanelli apologized, grinning from ear to ear. “Now retired from the police. Thank goodness.”

  Lia Guerra asked him, “You knew Tino, Pierangelo?”

  “A long time ago, in 1978. I met him—and I met you.”

  She frowned, “In those days you had more hair? You wore aviator sunglasses?”

  Trotti interrupted, “Pisanelli and I met Gracchi just once. Not a nice experience for us and probably not for Gracchi, either.”

  “If you don’t want to help, Trotti, I don’t see why you came here,” Lia Guerra remarked, turning back to face the older man.

  “Gracchi’s presumed killer now wants to kill me.”

  “He must have his reasons.”

  “A man called Beltoni.”

  “I know all about Enzo Beltoni, Commissario Trotti.”

  “His brother was tortured, strangled and then his body burned and left for the dogs. Beltoni holds me responsible for a Mafia killing.”

  “It’s to protect yourself you’ve come to talk to me?”

  Trotti looked into Lia Guerra’s dark eyes. “Spadano asked me to speak with you. He says I owe you a favor.”

  She frowned, “Why should you owe me any favors?”

  “When you and I met several years after the kidnapping and you were working in Milan at the Porta Ticinese and . . .” Trotti allowed his voice to trail away.

  “Yes?”

  Trotti was silent.

  “Is this your way of apologizing, Commissario Trotti?”

  “Spadano asked me to see you.”

  “You owe me nothing.” In the shade of the overhead canopy, the dark eyes appeared to glow. “Someone killed Tino, commissario. Find out who killed him and why. You don’t owe that to me. You owe it to Valerio Gracchi.”

  39: George

  “You said you spoke to Giovanni Verga.”

  Lia Guerra nodded. “Several times. Later I learned to hate the bastard. Just as I learned to hate Chiara.” She tried to light a cigarette with a kitchen match, but her hand trembled. Pisanelli produced a lighter from his pocket.

  “You believe Giovanni Verga and Chiara Gracchi murdered Gracchi?”

  “For years I thought Enzo Beltoni and the Trapanese Mafia’d killed him.” The woman inhaled a mouthful of smoke. “So did everybody else. As a young man, Tino’d wanted to save the world. Later he wanted to save Sicily. I had this idea of the gallant Northern knight going to the rescue of the Sicilian masses, downtrodden by the dragon of organized crime. A television camera and a microphone instead of a shield and a lance, but the motive and the nobility of the gesture were the same.” The hand that held the cigarette lay on her thigh. “With time, I learned to be less naïve. Not every violent death in Sicily is a Mafia killing.”

  “So who killed Gracchi?”

  “I’d been seeing these people as his friends. Later I realized Tino’d always been alone. Alone because of his ideals. Alone because he stuck to those ideals and, in sticking to them, he made things very awkward for other people.”

  “For Giovanni Verga?”

  “For the kind of people whose motivation was different.” Lia Guerra caught her breath. “I went down to Sicily for the first time in 1984. It was a joy to be with Tino again, and I was pleased to see he was happily married. You know, he was not a serene person—Tino was always running after something, and his new family’d given him a certain peace of mind.”

  “Turning up the way you did—that didn’t create more problems for him?”

  Lia Guerra shrugged. “He was good to me. Tino got me a job, and I enjoyed working at BRAMAN. I stayed for over three years, helping the guests—addicts, but also people with drinking problems.” She paused as her glance went from one man to the other. “I’d had my own encounter with addiction. What BRAMAN was doing was useful—it was practical. Yet I could see Tino was bored with the place—this was before he got the job on television. I created problems for him? Tino was glad to have me around—somebody who shared so many of his ideals. He was speaking less and less to Giovanni Verga. Verga wasn’t happy about all the dope Tino was smoking.” Lia Guerra added, “She couldn’t stand me.”

  “She?”

  “Chiara Gracchi was pathologically jealous. Not what you’d call an intellectual, not by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t say she reads Duemila or Vissuto; she’s never had two ideas to rub together. Not a particularly good mother, either. Lakshmi spent more time with her father and Giovanni Verga than with Chiara Gracchi. The woman was like an animal in the way she wanted to hoard what belonged to her. Absolutely convinced her husband and I were lovers, and she couldn’t believe what existed between Tino and me wasn’t sex. Something stronger, something better, something quite beautiful. The woman was consumed by a diseased jealousy. You could see it eating away at her. Chiara’s never understood there’s more to a woman than what’s between her thighs.”

  Trotti frowned. “Chiara Gracchi had lovers?”

  “There were a lot of very virile young men at BRAMAN—and Chiara was boss.”

  “That’s why you disliked her?”

  “She pretended to be my friend. Behind my back, she persuaded Giovanni Verga to send me off to Rome.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “I felt useful in Trapani—happier and more useful than I’d ever been before. It was good to be near Tino again, but Verga needed someone here in Rome to run the public relations. Someone to deal with the politicians. I gave in.” The same hand that held the cigarette brushed back hair from her forehead.

  “You weren’t in Sicily when Gracchi was killed?”

  “I came to Rome just as Tino was starting on television—in July 1987. He had another fourteen months to live.”

  “You’ve been back?”

  “For the funeral. Several times afterwards. In 1992, I finally spent two months in Trapani. I’d always refused to admit Tino was dead. For years, I’d talk to him as if he were in the kitchen or sitting in the car beside me. We would cha
t. When at last I brought myself to admit he was dead, I had to know why. I needed to make my own enquiries. The police were getting nowhere, and I no longer believed Beltoni’d acted alone—there were too many contradictions. Since his death, BRAMAN had become a vast international enterprise. So I asked Tino’s friends from Lotta Continua to help me. Friends from Trento and Milan. They’d been down to the funeral with me in ’88, they’d thrown their flowers on his coffin. They made me their fine promises, but in the end they all had something else, something more pressing to do elsewhere. So I flew down to Trapani alone and started interviewing everybody at BRAMAN.”

  “What’d you discover?”

  “People Gracchi’d loved—people who should’ve been only too willing to push the police and the magistrates out of their lethargy—these people refused to talk.”

  “They had something to hide?”

  “They talked in riddles.”

  40: Prime-time

  “His death became a knot in my belly, getting tighter and tighter. Gradually killing me.”

  “Let’s not exaggerate.”

  “Pure, deep friendship. Mine was the kind of friendship no other woman could give him. Not his first wife—poor little thing—nor the loathsome Chiara.”

  There was silence while Lia Guerra looked thoughtfully at him, and Trotti could almost see the face of her dead lover in the eyes and the prominent cheekbones.

  “You should have married Gracchi.”

  “Marriage is a bourgeois convention. I had other preoccupations at the time.”

  “You didn’t want a home and children of your own, signora?”

  “The best friend I’ve ever had. The best and the truest. Tino and I shared everything—including our reticences and our silences. We understood each other, and there was little need for words. Like brother and sister.”

  “And sex?”

  A scornful smile. “We already had everything.”

  “Gracchi didn’t want children?”

  “Tino had enough children. Lots of them—and they were just the ones he knew about.” Lia Guerra laughed, “At Padua, at the university, Toni Negri was plotting the downfall of the Italian Republic, but it was my Tino all the girls were bedding.”