The Second Day of the Renaissance

by Timothy Williams

  “What?”

  “Tino’d publicly given his support to the legalizing of cannabis.” She laughed. “The Region of Sicily—the local Christian Democrats—was footing the bill for BRAMAN. Giovanni Verga said Tino was pissing in the soup.” She spoke in a low, hushed voice.

  “What soup?”

  “The Mafia could never accept the legalization of drugs.”

  “That’s sufficient reason for the Mafia to kill Gracchi?”

  “I don’t know who killed Tino,” Lia Guerra answered in subdued exasperation. “I just know his so-called friends hid the truth from me, just as they hid it from the investigating magistrates.”

  “Why?”

  “They all had something to hide,” she said. “All of them, Giovanni Verga, Chiara Gracchi, the inmates. There’d been a bitter quarrel between Tino and Verga, and everybody knew about it. Everybody knew why he’d been banished from the main building, from the Dovecot, but no one ever told me.”

  There was silence on the terrace, apart from the wind as it flapped at the clothes drying on the line.

  “The Carabinieri worked away at their theory of an insider at BRAMAN while the Polizia di Stato blindly followed the line of a Mafia killing. The enquiries were badly flawed—in my opinion, deliberately so. Nobody got arrested and all the while, the newspapers in Sicily screeched about Lotta Continua.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve read the article in Prince, Trotti.”

  “I fell asleep.”

  The briefest smile. “Tino’d finally received the summons from the courts in Milan—the summons concerning the murder of Commissario Pugliese.” She added, “Tino was gunned down just six days before his departure for Milan and his arraignment.”

  44: Window

  Prince: Did you murder Commissario Pugliese?

  Gracchi: I beg your pardon?

  Prince: Two friends of yours from Lotta Continua have just been arrested for the murder of Commissario Pugliese back in May 1972. You, too, will soon be served with a summons to appear before the investigating magistrates in Milan.

  Gracchi: Let’s hope so.

  Prince: Were you involved in the death of Commissario Pugliese?

  Gracchi: Lotta Continua was never a terrorist organization.

  Prince: Yet Antonio Cocco is serving a life sentence for murder.

  Gracchi: While it is true that several comrades went on to armed action and that several—including Antonio Cocco and his wife—subsequently joined the Red Brigades, it was not as members of Lotta Continua.

  Prince: What’s the difference?

  Gracchi: In 1968, the working classes started making demands on the ruling elite. Lotta Continua, which we—me and Antonio Cocco among others—created in Trento, was merely intended as a mouthpiece for the working masses. It was no channel for violence or political terrorism.

  Prince: Yet cofounder Cocco is now serving a life sentence.

  Gracchi: That was Antonio’s decision—not mine, nor that of Lotta Continua.

  The “hot autumn” of 1968 was a time of student unrest in the universities and widespread strikes in the factories. The French had risen in revolt in May, and here in Italy, it was time for change. The country was no longer the poor, backward peasant society of 1945. We’d lived through the industrial miracle, yet there was no change in the way the ruling classes maintained their control. The Church and the Christian Democrats felt threatened and nervously referred everything back to their allies and sponsors, the Americans.

  Prince: Reason enough for Lotta Continua to advocate violence?

  Gracchi: Lotta Continua never espoused violence—even if, ultimately, all left-wing parties had to confront the problem of violence from the right.

  When a bomb exploded at the Banca dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, it wasn’t the act of left-wing terrorism—even if that was the message that was promptly flashed around the world. In Milan, on the twelfth of December, 1969, sixteen people were killed and many more injured. They were murdered by a right-wing terrorist group that was being manipulated by the Italian secret services. We didn’t know at the time the Christian Democrats and the military—with the enthusiastic backing of the CIA—had opted for a strategy of tension. Tension that was to last more than ten years and bring the country to the brink of civil war. The PCI was the largest communist party in the West, and the Americans chose to believe Italy could topple into the Soviet sphere of influence, hence the violent repression of the extreme left.

  Claiming the bomb in Piazza Fontana was the work of terrorists, the police promptly rounded up all the various anarchists and leftists. While being interrogated by the police, one of these anarchists threw himself out of the window of the Questura and fell to his death in the street below.

  It was not Lotta Continua who decided the anarchist had been ‘suicided’. It wasn’t Lotta Continua who ordered his presumed assassin, Commissario Pugliese, should be eliminated in an act of proletarian justice.

  Sixteen years later, my two ex-comrades from Lotta Continua are in prison and if I myself am to be arraigned, it is simply because during the intervening sixteen years, since that fateful day in May 1972 when Pugliese was gunned down in Milan, the judges haven’t been able to find a culprit. Like drowning men, they now jump at the rope thrown to them by a pentito—a grass who, for reasons best known to himself, has decided to accuse my ex-companions. The same witness has mentioned my name. Yet he’s also stated explicitly I was hostile to any form of violence. How he can say these things when he and I’ve never met?

  I look forward to any opportunity to speak openly with the Milanese judges.

  It’ll be fun to see how they cope with the truth.

  45: Metropolitana

  “Unfortunately, Tino chose not to see what was going on.”

  “What was going on?”

  “Giovanni Verga, Chiara Gracchi and Tino were absolute masters. The three of them ran BRAMAN.”

  “Why was that a problem?”

  “BRAMAN changed—and Verga was doing all the changing. When Verga and Tino returned from India, they’d set up a nonprofit association—all very innocent and amateur and highly laudable.”

  Trotti nodded.

  “Verga could always smell where the money was. That’s why he went to Poona in the first place—his girlfriend, the daughter of a millionaire Austrian aristocrat, had run out on him and he needed to bring her back to Italy. Once he was in Sicily with Tino, he realized he could do without her. BRAMAN was now his golden goose. Within four years, Verga turned the commune into a foundation. Then, before I was sent to Rome, it became a therapeutic community. That lasted just four years, until 1990. With Tino conveniently out of the way, BRAMAN was made a holding company with nearly thirty rehabilitation branches throughout Italy—and a couple in France. As well as a private yacht for Giovanni Verga—and a plane. Plus, of course, the residence in Milan and the office in Rome, in the via Veneto.”

  “With Gracchi out of the way?”

  “Tino was the short side of the triangle,” Lia Guerra said sourly. “Tino didn’t play their game. He believed in what he was doing. Unlike Verga or Chiara, he genuinely liked people—he wanted to help them. Tino was a friend—sometimes intolerant, sometimes unfair—but always loyal. Just as he was faithful to his ideals.” She added, “Just as he was always loyal to me.”

  “Gracchi must’ve seen what was happening.”

  “In the end, Tino compromised. He hated quarreling with a friend. Courageous in front of the Mafia, he would back down in front of his wife or his daughter or Verga. Tino had never wanted to change out of his Poona saffron—but Verga told him it was a financial necessity and Tino did as he was told. Verga said it was imperative to break with the guru in India.” Lia Guerra gave a cold laugh. “The framed photograph of the guru Anish in the main dining hall was replaced with a bigger, better pai
nting of Giovanni Verga, dressed in white and looking wise and benevolent. The great helmsman. With the engraving, ‘BRAMAN exists to help all those who dedicate themselves to the mystery of life.’” Lia Guerra gave another snort of mirthless laughter as her glance went from Trotti to Pisanelli. “Tinpot philosophy, completely bogus, but everybody went in fear of Giovanni Verga. Even Tino was in his thrall. Or perhaps,” she added, “simply in thrall of all the dope he was consuming.”

  Pisanelli raised an eyebrow.

  “The whole cult of personality remained hidden to the outside world. Too many sects around—Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientologists. Verga realized people wouldn’t like to see public money being funneled into anything that resembled a sect, not in the very Catholic Sicily. When BRAMAN was recognized as a therapeutic center—that’s when the money really started rolling in. Word of the place began to spread—Club Med for addicts and their keepers. Giovanni Verga, Chiara Gracchi, and Tino lived in the Dovecot, which could’ve been the Ritz. They were served hand and foot by the inmates—a very far cry from the egalitarian commune that Tino’d intended. Giovanni Verga was the undisputed head, and Chiara Gracchi the administrator. It was Chiara who did all the hobnobbing with the Region of Sicily, then later with the city of Milan that was controlled by the Socialists. Don’t forget that in 1986, Craxi and his Socialist clan were in absolute control of the country.”

  “And Gracchi? He didn’t mind?”

  “I tried talking to him about the new money, but he’d just give me that little-boy smile of his and shrug his shoulders. Shrug his shoulders and take another drag on his spliff.” She added bitterly, “There was so much money—and Giovanni Verga enjoyed spending it. In his heart, Verga’s basically a peasant, a Sicilian peasant with an atavistic Sicilian hunger. He can’t quite believe he’s got money. Only the best will do for Giovanni—expensive, but tasteless and pretentious. Even the chicken run at BRAMAN was luxurious—the inmates called it ‘Beverly Hills Coop.’” A smile as she shook her head. “When I went to Switzerland, believe me, the rehab clinic there was no Club Med—although my parents paid through the nose for the pleasure of getting me off drugs.”

  “Through the nose?” Pisanelli repeated quizzically.

  “Heroin in those days,” she said.

  Trotti asked, “You’ve never gone back?”

  “To Switzerland?”

  “To drugs.”

  Lia Guerra gave Commissario Trotti a thoughtful glance before shaking her head. “I’ve got you to thank for that. Spadano says a lot of good things about you, but with me, Commissario Trotti, you were an unfeeling bastard.”

  There was silence. Possibly Guerra was awaiting a reaction from the old policeman.

  There was none.

  “Switzerland was hell and I hated being there. I wanted to die—I suppose I’d always wanted to die, and heroin was an agreeable way of killing myself. Then one morning I woke up, and for the first time since I was a little girl, I could smell the trees, I could smell the flowers, I could smell the newly mown grass. I don’t know quite why, but I was happy. It was like being born again—or being with Tino the first time we met. It was Tino who said that addicts were beautiful. We’ve visited death—yet I’m still here to talk about it.”

  Lia Guerra’s hand ran slowly down the sleeve of her arm, as if to reassure herself that the scabs and the marks had gone forever.

  It was very quiet on the terrace. The wind had dropped and the clothes no longer danced on the line. The black cat slept.

  Lia Guerra gave Pisanelli a fleeting glance.

  Trotti said, “Pisanelli and I were there in Milan the day you scurried down into the Metropolitana, the day you left for Switzerland, signora. It was Pisanelli who insisted I let you go.”

  46: Automatic

  Lia Guerra took her third cigarette.

  “At the end of 1994, the pubblico ministero asked for the Gracchi dossier file to be shelved. After six years of getting nowhere, there was no point in wasting more public money on the search for Tino’s killer.”

  Pisanelli leant forward to light her cigarette.

  “The possible motives—the three possible motives behind the murder had been amply investigated and no culprit had been identified.”

  “Three?”

  “An ex-companion from Lotta Continua, the Trapani Mafia or somebody within BRAMAN wanting Tino out of the way.” Lia Guerra stared at her three outstretched fingers; two fingers held the burning cigarette. “Tino died just six days before he was scheduled to give his evidence in Milan. He could have been an embarrassment for his old friends at Lotta Continua.”

  “They didn’t kill him?”

  “It’s possible Tino knew more about Pugliese’s murder—but I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “Tino hated violence.”

  “That would save him from being murdered by his Lotta Continua companions?”

  “Sixteen years on—middle-aged, married men who’d lost their revolutionary fervor. Why kill him? They were all friends.”

  “Friends who are afraid of being sent to prison like Cocco. Friends can do a lot of bad things.”

  “After so many years, what could Tino tell the judges? Even supposing he knew anything about the murder.” Lia Guerra appraised Trotti reflectively. “You are cynical.”

  “Realistic.”

  “Chiara Gracchi’s convinced Tino was killed by the Mafia. She thinks Lotta Continua was just a way of sidetracking the enquiry.”

  “She knew the people from Lotta Continua?”

  “Not as well as I did. She says the motive of silencing a loudmouth journalist is more convincing than a sixteen-year-old murder enquiry.”

  “Perhaps the Mafia did kill him.”

  Lia Guerra shook her head. “No witness has ever come forward to say Tino’s death was ordered by the Mafia in Trapani or indeed anywhere else in Western Sicily.”

  “Which leaves the third possibility?”

  “Precisely,” Lia Guerra said.

  “Your theory of a person on the inside?”

  “Person or persons.”

  “Giovanni Verga and Chiara Gracchi?”

  Lia Guerra said nothing; she bit her lip, her glance on Trotti.

  “You’re saying Chiara Gracchi’s support of the Mafia theory was a way of diverting attention?”

  “She knew about Enzo Beltoni and she never told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  “Commissario Trotti, a few weeks before his death, Tino received a call from the studios.”

  Pisanelli interrupted. “What studios?” He was still holding the cigarette lighter.

  “The television station, TRTP in Trapani. There were several ex-addicts working as apprentice journalists on his television program. Including the girl Luciana, who was in the Duna when Tino was murdered. In the car when he was shot and she was never touched—not even a drop of blood, and yet there was blood all over the car. Blood and splintered glass.”

  “Who phoned Gracchi?”

  “A TV journalist—a real one, a professional journalist—had found a syringe while rummaging through various pockets for a cigarette.”

  “The apprentices from BRAMAN were shooting up?”

  “According to Giovanni Verga’s statistics, eighty-seven percent of the inmates at BRAMAN broke free of their various addictions following treatment. Statistics which so pleased the Sicilian Region and all Verga’s chums at Bettino Craxi’s court.” The mirthless laugh. “Eighty seven percent—and here they were, all these rehabilitated addicts, mainlining under the nose of Tino—not in BRAMAN, but on the outside, out in the real world—in the Trapani studios.”

  “How d’you know all this?”

  “I went to the television station and spoke to the journalist,” Lia Guerra replied simply.

  “But the journalist didn�
�t tell the police?”

  She shook her head. “Too dangerous. When Tino discovered what was going on, he was furious. Hypocritically, really, when you think of the dope he’d gotten through over the years. That same evening he phoned me here. Didn’t say why he was pissed off—too proud for that, too proud to admit BRAMAN wasn’t working, too proud to admit Giovanni Verga was playing him for a fool.”

  “What did Gracchi tell you?”

  “I told you, Trotti—our friendship was very special. When one of us was feeling miserable, we’d phone the other—and the phone calls could last hours.” A drag on the cigarette. “Tino intended to throw several people out of rehab,” Lia Guerra said. “Including Enzo Beltoni.”

  “That’s all he told you?”

  “In front of witnesses, Beltoni produced a knife and threatened Tino.”

  “What did Gracchi do?”

  “He immediately told Giovanni Verga that Beltoni was threatening to kill him.”

  Trotti frowned. “Gracchi phoned you in July?”

  “Late June.”

  “Enzo Beltoni was working at BRAMAN at the time of Gracchi’s death—in September.”

  “Giovanni Verga never kicked Beltoni out.”

  “Why not?”

  No answer.

  “You knew Enzo Beltoni, signora?”

  “You couldn’t help knowing Beltoni at BRAMAN. Everybody knew him just as everybody knew Beltoni’d killed a boy in America. He was dangerous—violence waiting to happen. Beltoni was wild—and he wanted everybody to know there was nothing they could do to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was Giovanni Verga’s favorite. Verga indulged Beltoni, humored him. Which was strange, because everybody else was frightened of Giovanni Verga. Verga carefully cultivated power, and everybody went in fear of him—everybody except Enzo Beltoni. The two men were more like good friends than employer and employee.”

  “Giovanni Verga protected Beltoni?”

  “Tino knew he couldn’t kick Enzo Beltoni out.”

  “Then why did Beltoni threaten him?”