The Second Day of the Renaissance

by Timothy Williams

  “Beltoni wasn’t somebody to control himself.”

  “Yet it never occurred to you Beltoni murdered Gracchi?”

  “Of course it occurred to me—just as it occurred to the magistrates in Trapani. Like them, I was convinced Beltoni was working for the Mafia. It was later I understood he was working for Giovanni Verga—and Chiara Gracchi.” Lia Guerra paused. “Spadano says Beltoni was blackmailing Verga. Sexual blackmail.”

  “Spadano?” Trotti asked unhappily.

  “Spadano has reason to believe that homosexuals . . .”

  Lia Guerra fell silent. Her dark eyes were wide open.

  “What’s Spadano got to do with BRAMAN, signora?” Trotti asked, but the woman was no longer listening.

  Her glance had turned to the open door of the terrace.

  Trotti followed Lia Guerra’s glance.

  One of the men sharply jabbed the cold barrel of the automatic weapon against Trotti’s cheek.

  The woman put a hand to her open mouth.

  47: Lombard League

  They stuck adhesive tape across his mouth. His hands were held by plastic cuffs behind his back, and a bag was pulled over Trotti’s head.

  Coming down the stairs, his feet scarcely touched the ground, and then one of the men, possibly the man in the beret and bulletproof jacket, jabbed him in the small of the back. As his shins met hard metal, Piero Trotti fell headlong.

  Unable to protect himself with his elbows, he tumbled forward, landing on soft fabric.

  Trotti realized it was a car seat.

  His head was spinning. He had been struck with a butt to the side of his head, and now there was a painful ringing in his ears.

  He would never see his grandchildren again.

  Trotti was in pain, in dreadful pain. He felt old. He wanted to die. He did not want to be hurt. He did not want any more pain. Blood was trickling down his cheek.

  (Crablike, the man had stepped sideways through the door onto the terrace, a finger on the trigger of his weapon. With the other hand, he had gestured for Trotti and Pisanelli to lie down.

  The man’s face was immobile.

  For a long moment no one had moved; just the slightest movement of the muzzle. Then without turning his glance, the Carabiniere had kicked Pisanelli’s aluminum crutch and sent it clattering noisily across the terracotta tiles.

  Lia Guerra started to scream before the other man silenced her.)

  People clambered into the car, pushing Trotti into an upright position.

  Vomit rising in his throat.

  The exhaust pipe reverberated distantly as the car pulled out into the traffic along the Tiber.

  Trotti heard the whine of the siren. It came from another world.

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Bastard says he’s a policeman. Commissario from Milan or somewhere.”

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t arrest us.” The man beside Trotti rocked with laughter and he jabbed something into Trotti’s bruised ribs. “They don’t like us southerners up in the North. Racist bastards.”

  48: Freed

  There was purple bougainvillea climbing down the warm brick of a wall. Beyond the wall stood a clinic or a hospital.

  No one released the handcuffs, but before reaching the hotel, someone removed the cape and Trotti’s eyes, by now accustomed to darkness, blinked unhappily.

  The car jerked to a stop and the man beside him unceremoniously ripped the tape from Trotti’s mouth.

  Then he was being manhandled from the car.

  The Hotel Toscana was hidden behind a crowd of people and carelessly parked cars. There were a revolving blue light, several policemen in uniform, a crowd of onlookers and as Trotti stumbled forward, held firmly on either side by two Carabinieri—their semiautomatic guns had disappeared—he was caught in the light of flashing bulbs.

  He was old and he felt ill, but above all, he was embarrassed by the handcuffs at his back. He tried to turn his head away from the cameras.

  Like a common criminal while the photographers continued to take their pictures.

  The Carabinieri pulled him through the open wooden door with its ground glass window.

  The old man in the Milan AC waistcoat beamed at him inanely. “Commissario Trotti?”

  The Carabinieri pushed the man aside and the smile died on his face.

  They jostled Trotti through the hotel entrance, past the dining room and up the narrow stairs.

  Upstairs to the hotel room. The door was now open.

  There was the white brilliance of a spotlight.

  Somebody coughed and there was silence as heads turned to stare as Trotti was pushed into the bedroom.

  With incongruous relief, Trotti noticed Spadano’s coat was still hanging from the back of the door.

  Just five hours earlier, Trotti had been watching Fred Astaire on the small television.

  Strangers stared at him with cold eyes. Policemen in uniform, policemen in civilian clothes. The dull, olive skin of southerners. A couple of women.

  Turning his head, Trotti looked at the bed. Blood had seeped through the clean, white sheets and formed a shapeless dark blot.

  A narrow leg and a small foot hung over the edge of the bed.

  A narrow, dark leg and a woman’s small foot.

  49: Mission

  “Thank your friend and his telephone,” the man said with a self-congratulatory grimace.

  “What telephone?”

  “How else d’you think we knew where to find you?” The accent was pure Naples.

  “Are you going to take these handcuffs off?”

  He scarcely looked like the Neapolitan of Trotti’s northern imagination. The detective was tall, very pale, and had thin blond hair that had been combed flat across the top of a large domed head. He wore a shabby, crumpled suit. He was smoking an unfiltered cigarette. “Why did you kill her?”

  “I’ve killed nobody.”

  “You’re going to be difficult?”

  “Get these cuffs off.”

  The man had led him into another hotel room, and Trotti now sat on the beige counterpane of the bed while the detective leaned against the jamb of the bedroom door, his back to the hall.

  A woman in the uniform of the Polizia di Stato, her arms folded, stood at the door of the bathroom.

  There was movement in the hallway.

  “The dead prostitute in your bed—nothing to do with you?”

  Trotti raised his shoulder in a shrug and there was an angry ringing in his ears. “Give me a glass of water, could you?” He felt nauseous.

  “That black girl in your bed? Things got out of hand?”

  “A glass of water, please.”

  “What tricks had you two been up to?”

  “I don’t feel very well.”

  The uniformed women went into the bathroom, removed a glass from its cellophane package and poured water from the tap. Trotti, his hands helpless behind his back, drank the proffered glass in a single gulp. He was like a child being fed.

  “Thank you,” he said; he could smell the policewoman’s perfume.

  The Neapolitan asked, “The bitch deserved to die?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Why’d you kill her?”

  The policewoman was young, and blonde hair cascaded over the collar of her white blouse and blue serge uniform. She did not acknowledge Trotti’s thanks. She returned the glass to the bathroom sill. She was wearing lipstick.

  The detective lit another cigarette with the stub of the old one. “You knew her?”

  “I met her in Florence.”

  “A high-class whore.”

  “I met her outside the railway station in Florence. She was freezing to death.”

  “You’re sick. You know that? Young and ready for anything
. . . at a price. You like the black girls, don’t you?”

  “She’s an American student.”

  “She phoned you this morning and you thought you were in luck.”

  “She’s an au pair in Milan. From Chicago.”

  (The word sounded distant and exotic.)

  “The young ones cost a lot of money. Surprised you can afford that sort of thing.”

  In exasperation, Trotti said again, “Are you going to take these cuffs off?”

  “You told her to come here. The call’s been traced.”

  “Then you know she was staying with American friends in Rome. You know she phoned me—wanted to meet me in the city. In the via Veneto.”

  “When she got here, she wasn’t willing to play your dirty games.”

  “She’s not a whore.”

  “I hear you do things differently up there in the north.” A leer. The breath smelled of cigarette and garlic. “Missionary position not good enough for you?”

  “Remove these cuffs.”

  “A pervert.”

  Trotti caught his breath, knowing he was going to lose his temper. “You know who I am?”

  “A pervert.”

  Raising his voice only made the ringing more painful. Quietly, Trotti asked, “You really believe you can talk to me like this? Take these cuffs off at once.”

  The detective appeared amused.

  “I’d advise you to be careful.”

  The Neapolitan took the cigarette from his thin mouth and held it between finger and thumb. His lips broke into a smile that transformed the lopsided face. The tip of his tongue darted at a shred of black tobacco.

  “I’m Commissario Trotti.”

  The detective pushed himself away from the door and stood directly in front of Trotti.

  “You advise me to be careful?”

  “Please take these cuffs off.”

  The detective struck Trotti across the face with the palm of his left hand. “You’re a pervert.”

  50: Scola

  “She called me just as I was leaving my room.”

  “You waited for her and then you screwed her.”

  “I screwed nobody. I was with Pisanelli.”

  “You sodomized her.”

  “Tenente Pisanelli and I were in the piazza. Santa Maria in Trastevere. Lots of people saw us. Ask the waiter.”

  “How did the bitch end up in your bed?”

  “No idea.”

  “End up in your bed—raped, battered and killed?”

  Trotti’s ears were ringing. “The last time I saw Wilma . . .”

  “You know her name?”

  “Of course I know her name. We traveled down from Chianciano together. She asked me to help her. I gave her Pisanelli’s phone number.”

  It was too painful for Trotti to raise his head. The Neapolitan was standing directly in front of him and Trotti was staring at the man’s leather belt, at the crumpled, stained trousers, at the fly zipper.

  “You’re lying.”

  “Wilma Barclay. Her name’s Wilma Barclay. She’s working as an au pair with an American family in Milan.”

  “Working as a whore in Milan.”

  There was no reason for the detective to hit him, yet Trotti knew another blow was coming before the man’s palm ever struck the side of his head.

  Trotti let his body loll sideways. The ringing in his head became intolerable. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to lose consciousness. He wanted to die.

  He thought of his granddaughters.

  “A pervert.”

  Piero Trotti stared at the carpet between his feet. Blood was falling from his mouth—or perhaps from his nose—in a continuous stream onto the floor.

  “We know about your daughter.”

  Trotti tried to raise his head. “What about my daughter?”

  “We know all about your games.”

  “Where’s my daughter? Where’s Pioppi?”

  “She stopped eating, didn’t she? Your daughter nearly died. We know all about that. Just as we know about the Uruguayan woman you beat up. Broke her arm, didn’t you, and the bitch needed fifteen stitches.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re sick.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ve always been sick, Commissario Trotti. Can’t control yourself. You can’t control your obsessions and you don’t get better with age.” Again the man laughed. “A pervert in charge of a children’s center.”

  The policewoman moved uncomfortably and from the corner of his eye, Trotti could see her flat, black shoes.

  “A pervert in charge of a children’s center—where he can be alone with all the little girls and boys. Where he can get up to his tricks.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Or perhaps your wife never told you why she walked out on you? Perhaps your daughter never told you why she wouldn’t leave you with her children?”

  “You’d best be quiet.”

  “You thought the Scola woman would keep silent about your nasty habits? Nasty little habits with the children—and everybody covering up for Commissario Trotti, the pervert, the child molester, the sodomite.”

  Between Trotti’s feet, the drips were forming a puddle; a puddle of saliva and blood and mucus.

  “This time, you’re retired and nobody’s going to cover for you. You’re on your own, Trotti. This time you’re going to pay for your dirty little habit,” the man said and struck him again. “About time, too.”

  51: Barbour

  The policewoman moved away from the bathroom and now stood by the door of the hotel room, her hand on the handle.

  The Neapolitan detective had started to shout. “Time you were put away, Trotti.”

  Trotti was no longer listening.

  “You’re old and sick.”

  From beyond the closed door came the sound of people moving along the corridor and the heavy fall of feet down the narrow stairs.

  “Can’t you get it up anymore?” the detective was saying. “Is that why you play your games?”

  Trotti slowly raised his head to look at the woman and their eyes met. Trotti found no sympathy. She could have been looking at an animal or an inanimate object.

  With his hands locked behind his back, Trotti felt ashamed. A mistake—his arrest and now the ignominy of being interrogated, it was all a mistake. That did not stop him from feeling ashamed. More ashamed than angry.

  “You began sticking things into her.”

  Trotti tried to raise his head.

  “Sticking objects into every orifice.” The detective struck Trotti, but this time less harshly. The hand glanced off Trotti’s jaw.

  “Can’t you see the man’s hurt?” The policewoman opened the door. Her accent was Roman.

  “Close that damned door, bitch!”

  On the edge of his vision, Trotti saw the stretcher coming out of the room opposite. He saw two men in white coats and white canvas shoes bearing the black body bag.

  Trotti’s eyes hurt; they were watering and it was hard to focus.

  Several people followed the stretcher. A young man wore a windbreaker, the word carabinieri stenciled in yellow letters on the back.

  Nobody took any notice of Trotti.

  The detective went to the open door, but just as he pulled the handle from the woman’s grip—her face remained immobile beneath the peaked cap—there was shouting from the stairway.

  Shouting in a foreign language.

  The detective tried to close the door but a shoe was firmly placed against the jamb. A large shoe. Then the door was pushed open and a head poked through the doorway.

  The intruders’ eyes fell on Trotti where he sat on the bed, head bowed and his hands behind his back.

  T
rotti looked up and their glances met.

  The man looked at Trotti and smiled with embarrassed surprise.

  (The place was both warm and empty; no sign of all the tourists.)

  “You crazy, Portano?” The Englishman barged into the room.

  (When the man placed the small camera on the glass shelf, beside the chocolate boxes, Trotti rose and hurried out into the cold of via di Città.)

  “Take those absurd cuffs off Commissario Trotti,” the man in the waxed jacket said in Italian. “Take them off at once. Can’t you see he’s ill?”

  Trotti lost consciousness.

  52: Ray-Ban

  “Commissario?”

  He was wearing an anorak, and he now had a mustache. He looked fatter than when Trotti had last seen him.

  “Commissario?”

  If Magagna had not been wearing his American sunglasses, Trotti would have had difficulty in recognizing his friend.

  “Well?”

  He had been sitting on a steel chair; he now stood up and emptied the contents of his pockets on to the bed. “I bought you this.” Half a dozen boiled sweets.

  “A rich man.”

  “One of the advantages of working for the Polizia di Stato—easy money and fast promotion.”

  Trotti winced in pain as they shook hands. The ringing was still there in his head. “Unwrap one of those sweets for me.”

  “What flavor?”

  “Milan, Omicidi and promotion make you forget rhubarb’s always been my favorite?”

  “I thought perhaps in retirement, your tastes might have matured.”

  “No risk of that.”

  Magagna took one of the packets, removed the wrapping and placed the sweet in Trotti’s mouth. “Looks as if you’ve been in a fight.” Magagna smiled.

  “I walked into a door.”

  “In Rome?”

  “Lot of doors in Rome.”

  The smile vanished. “The Carabinieri did it, commissario?”

  Trotti felt stiff. His shoulders and arms were bruised. There was a pain in his ribs. When he moved his head, he could feel a sharp pain at the back of his skull. “Trying to remember.”