Trotti did as Magagna had asked.
While traffic rumbled past him on the road to Siena, he found the cable and plugged it into the blue telephone. Immediately the screen lit up. A written message, large black letters on green. Trotti held the phone away to get the blinking letters into focus: battery charge in progress.
He was about to put the telephone down on the seat beside him and drive off when inadvertently Trotti touched another button, a different icon.
A number jumped onto the screen of the telephone. Squinting awkwardly, he recognized Pisanelli’s home number in Rome.
Trotti was both amused and puzzled.
There was a cancel button; by punching it, the number disappeared. He then found that if he typed the letters P and I, Pisanelli’s number reappeared.
Again he cancelled.
When Trotti typed A and N, Anna’s home number jumped onto the screen.
There was, Trotti realized, a list of numbers stocked somewhere inside the mobile phone’s memory.
Trotti chuckled, pleased with his own intelligence.
“Anna Maria.”
It was time Trotti contacted his cousin. He could call Anna Maria now, tell her he was all right. Tell her he was alive and well and he was missing her Dutch cooking and her hectoring. It was just past four o’clock and she was probably in the kitchen by now, digesting one of her biscuits, accompanied by a generous glass of Bols after a generous Easter lunch.
He had not called her since Bologna. Something else she would hold against him.
He found the letter T. It took Trotti several minutes before he realized that he had to punch the same key for the second letter.
T and then R.
To Trotti’s disappointment, it was not his number, but the telephone started to ring. It was not his home number, not a familiar code for northern Italy. Instead a number that he did not recognize, something that Trotti had never dialed before.
“Blast,” he said under his breath.
Trotti was starting to panic, but before he could unplug the phone, the ringing ceased and Trotti’s call was answered.
“Trapani,” a nasal voice said.
“Trapani?” Trotti repeated in surprise.
“Nucleo anti-Mafia.”
Trotti pulled the jack from the cigarette lighter just as he heard the distant voice ask him what he wanted.
A Sicilian voice.
78: Minox
(“Be careful, Piero. An awful job to get the bloodstains out. Take care of my coat even if you won’t take care of yourself.”)
The afternoon sky was blue and cloudless. The snow had gone back to Siberia, the recent rains had drifted east, but out of the sun, the air remained cool. The warm coat had been left in Rome and now, no doubt, was in the hands of Portano and his friends. Without the Carabinieri coat, Trotti felt the chill.
In a week, the weather had improved. In the same week, Trotti had been beaten up twice and accused of murdering a young woman. Arrested and put on a saline drip. Trotti had also made peace with his goddaughter.
He parked the Fiat near the station, placed Lakshmi’s folder in the trunk, locked the car and walked up the long hill to the center of the city. In his hip pocket he held the small wallet and fifty thousand lire that he had found in a woman’s bag in the car. The blue telephone bumped against his thigh.
Despite the crowd of tourists, a wind scurried across the Piazza del Campo. Easter Sunday and the bars and cafés were doing excellent business. Tourists, both Italian and foreign, sat on the terraces in sweaters and overcoats as the air warmed with the late afternoon sun.
Trotti felt exposed in the piazza and was in a hurry to cross the open square.
(“Don’t worry about Portano. Get to Bologna—and leave the phone on. I’ll be calling you later. I don’t want you to get hurt.”)
Trotti had the feeling that he was being watched, being followed. He did not like open spaces and he did not like Siena. Trotti was in a hurry to get home, back to his house, back to via Milano and Anna Maria’s stodgy cooking. But there were things that still had to be done, questions that had to be answered if he was to stay out of prison.
The clock in Piazza del Campo chimed half past four. Trotti turned away from the piazza and went up one of the alleys. A moment later, walking briskly, close to the wall, ignoring the strolling tourists, Trotti passed the café in via di Città.
Picturesque?
Trotti smiled wryly as he remembered the couple in the bar; they had laughed and Trotti had raised his head. Trotti had heard the word “pittoresco” pronounced in an English accent. The woman laughed again and the man produced a black object. Trotti realized it was a camera only when the Englishman opened up the front lens.
(“They know my movements, the bastards.”)
Trotti walked towards the cathedral, through the twisting streets of the upper city.
“Spadano?”
“Who?”
Trotti still imagined that most flatfeet were called Quagliarulo or Scognamiglio and spoke in Sicilian or Calabrian dialect. This accent was Tuscan, patronizing and refined.
“Spadano.”
With a remote, patrician smile, the uniformed officer leaned forward.
“I wish to speak with General Spadano,” Trotti said slowly.
A frown, condescending and amused. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“I was here last week.” Trotti nodded his head. “I spoke to you.”
The man seemed puzzled. “To me?”
“You took me to see Spadano.”
“You must be mistaken.”
“You took me to see the general.”
“What general?”
“Spadano—Egidio Spadano.”
The man placed a hand on Trotti’s arm and with hardly any pressure, maneuvered him towards the exit. “Really?”
Trotti retorted angrily, freeing himself, “I’ve got to speak to Spadano. I’ve got to speak to him now. It’s important.”
“Perhaps you’d like to show me your ID. How did you get past the door?”
(“I don’t work for our cultural heritage, Spadano, nor do I have your pretensions to being cultured and using long words.”)
“I’m Commissario Trotti of the Polizia di Stato, retired.”
“I think you should leave, commissario.” There was iron in the thin voice.
“General Spadano of the Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico.” Trotti said, “He’s in charge of protection of cultural heritage. He lives in Siena. I must see him.” Inanely, Trotti added, “You have a swimming pool here.”
“My advice would be for you to go to Florence. No Tutela del Patrimonio Artistico here in Siena, I’m afraid. Never has been. Or perhaps you didn’t know that?” A faint smile, as the man softly added, “Commissario.”
79: Retaliation
He was not Enzo Beltoni.
Trotti had assumed that the man following him—the man who had knocked him to the ground in Siena, the man in the scruffy suit with the Vespa and the gun at his shoulder—was trying to protect him. A guardian angel that Spadano had sent to keep an eye over Trotti. To protect him from Beltoni.
(Trotti would have recognized Enzo Beltoni anywhere. In eight years, Trotti had not forgotten the twin brother. He had not forgotten the face. Ever since finding the corpse on the edge of the city, that face had come to haunt Trotti’s worst nightmares. Beltoni—addict, drug-dealer and police informer. Thirty-five years earlier a mother’s baby, and now mutilated and burned to death because of Piero Trotti.)
Trotti had not seen the man who had sent him sprawling to the ground in via di Città, but the following day in Trastevere, Trotti instinctively knew it was the same man who approached the gypsy children in the piazza.
Enzo Beltoni would not have followed Trotti from Siena to Rome. Enzo Beltoni
would have killed Trotti. At the first opportunity, with the sole intent of inflicting as much pain as possible. Enzo Beltoni was a Sicilian, and he would honor the ancient codes of retribution. An eye for an eye, a sliced tongue for a sliced tongue.
The clumsiness had to be a ploy.
The fellow in via di Città was a professional, and he had wanted Trotti to know that he was being followed. To warn Trotti—or to frighten him off. For the same reason, in Rome he had deliberately placed himself near the terrace table, and both Pisanelli and Trotti had seen the gun beneath the scruffy jacket.
Why would Enzo Beltoni bother with walkie-talkies? Why would Enzo Beltoni lurk in doorways, pretend to read the newspaper while speaking into his lapel?
Enzo Beltoni was Spadano’s invention. General Spadano who now no longer existed.
Pisanelli’s phone rang in his pocket; it vibrated against his thigh. This time Trotti knew how to open the phone, pull at the aerial and speak into the plastic flap.
“Where are you, Piero?”
“Here.”
“Here where?”
“Siena.”
“I thought you were going to Bologna?”
“You’re in a greater hurry than I am?”
“Go to Bologna.”
“I need to buy some socks. My feet are frozen.”
“I don’t want you hurt.”
“Portano’s out to get me?”
“Portano’s gone back to Rome—in an ambulance. No need to worry about Portano. The word’s out you’re in the clear.”
“In the clear over what?”
There was a brief pause before Magagna said, “The Carabinieri have found Enzo Beltoni’s prints.”
“What prints?”
“In the Hotel Toscana.” He laughed. “You’re not the murderer of the American girl.”
80: Merino
“Let the bastards watch me,” Trotti muttered to himself, “I’m in no hurry.”
Socks, reading glasses and the latest edition of Vissuto were scattered on the seat beside him. And Pisanelli’s telephone.
It was warm inside the car, and he would wait an hour before the drive north. Wait until the sun had set and there was less traffic on the superstrada to Florence. Wait until the darkness when he could lose the Volkswagen.
Trotti put the second tape into the player and unwrapped a rhubarb sweet before taking the woolen socks out of their packet.
“Last week I quarreled with Giovanni Verga. It is with sadness that I realize he is no longer my friend.
It is sad that after nearly a decade of collaboration, there can’t now be the same feeling of camaraderie and common purpose which inspired the early years of our being together.
I will always be grateful to Giovanni. At a time when I was at a loss what to do, at a time when I didn’t know whether I should stay in India or give in to my wife’s demand that we return to Italy, Giovanni’s offer of a commune came at just the right moment.
For nearly ten years, Giovanni Verga was a good and loyal friend.
When did things start to go wrong between us? Was it when the regional government began putting money into BRAMAN? Was it when Enzo Beltoni came to the commune, first as a client, then as a trustee? Or was it when I sensed that Giovanni Verga had replaced me in the affections of my wife?
Those first years in Trapani were wonderful. The three of us were so enthusiastic. Unlike me, Giovanni Verga had never had any truck with communism. I, on the other hand, had never really thrown off the need for structure to my existence. As a child, I’d been a good Catholic. As a young man, I’d been taken in by the religion of Marxism.
Dopo Marx, Aprile.
It was with Giovanni—and probably thanks to him—that at the age of thirty-three I put Marxism behind me and entered the springtime of my life. Wife, daughter—they only took on their true meaning once we arrived in BRAMAN. Before then I had been play-acting—always play-acting.
Within a couple of years we began to diverge, Giovanni Verga and I. Nothing dramatic, simply the difference in our philosophies began to make itself felt. He had never made a secret of his desire to be rich. Just as I had never made a secret of my idea of the revolution: sex, drugs and rock and roll.
I loved my family—and I always will—but there are times when I need to escape. People often call me ‘the lieutenant.’ I have never wanted to wield power, and I’ve always been happy to be the second in command. By standing back, by distancing myself I’ve tried to keep my sense of perspective—and my sense of humor. Grass helps me to relax, but unfortunately, when you’re running a rehab center and when a lot of important people are placing great hopes in you, it’s not a good idea to appear permanently stoned.
A lot of hopes and a lot of money.
Things started going wrong in 1985. Until then, Giovanni Verga managed to tolerate my behavior. Three things changed all that.
In 1985, BRAMAN got its first check from the Region.
Until then, we’d been mucking through as best we could. My wife and I felt we’d embarked upon an adventure of self-discovery, and I had no reason to think that Giovanni Verga saw otherwise. He was good to us—and a wonderful surrogate uncle to Lakshmi. They would spend a lot of time together, my friend and my daughter, and there was a strange symbiosis. She had a calming effect upon Giovanni—whenever he saw her, his face would light up. And he was, no doubt, a substitute parent for her.
I wasn’t always the best of fathers.
Once the money came in, there was a shift of vision—and because I was living on my little cloud, I was slow to see what was happening.
BRAMAN ceased to be a commune, a continuation of the adventure I had started with Giovanni Verga and Chiara. We were now running a business and we needed to show we were worth the investment important people were making in us. Giovanni Verga renewed his contacts with his friends in Milan and with Bettino Craxi’s Socialists. He needed to be seen as a businessman selling a product. Giovanni Verga was concerned with quotas and statistics and success rates. In this, he was supported by Chiara. My wife took to the management of BRAMAN like a fish to water. After managing our family singlehandedly, running BRAMAN was an easy step for her.
In 1985, we were sent our first customers from prison. I was delighted and I would make my speech—all very Jean-Jacques Rousseau—about how society created criminals. It took me time to snap out of that liberal claptrap—and for that, I must thank Enzo Beltoni.
I liked the man.
I knew Enzo Beltoni had murdered someone a long time ago, but I could see he was intelligent. At first, I didn’t notice the power he held over Giovanni Verga. I wasn’t even surprised when he was made one of the trustees and given his special room in the complex.
Then I started hearing rumors of his having seduced various women—but of course, BRAMAN had been set up in a firm belief in free love.
Peace and love.
Just like the saffron robes we had once worn, peace and love were soon relegated to the rubbish bin of lost dreams. After all, we were in Sicily, and there can be nowhere in the world—with the possible exception of Afghanistan—where men impose their moralistic values upon the women with such a heavy and hypocritical hand.
Women inmates were soon telling me they’d been forced to spend the night with Enzo Beltoni.
I mentioned this to Beltoni. He simply laughed and gave me a conspiratorial wink.
By now, Giovanni Verga was the grand guru, the uncontested leader of BRAMAN, and he was often away on business. When he came back from one of his trips to Rome or Milan, I told him what the women had been saying.
Giovanni Verga dismissed my fears—he said he had absolute faith in Beltoni’s integrity.
I put the problem out of my mind. Anyway, I had something else to worry about: after a silence of nearly six years, Lia Guerra had suddenly reappeared in my life.”
The tape fell silent except for the gentle hum of the magnetic field.
Trotti picked up the magazine, checked the index and turned to page sixty-five.
81: Prince
Vissuto, Easter Edition
After eight years of frustration, the Carabinieri can at last begin to breathe more easily. With the imminent arrest of Chiara Gracchi, the sostituto procuratore in Trapani appears to be giving belated credence to the first Carabinieri enquiry. That initial report arrived at the Trapani Procura on 26 November, 1988, just two months after Gracchi’s death.
In it, Colonel Mario Nazareno wrote:
The theory of a Mafia killing, so enthusiastically endorsed by the media, can, in our opinion, be little more than hypothesis. Such a theory may suit certain political lobbies, but it is not in accordance with the facts as we know them.
We would be derelict in our duty if we were to overlook the possibility of a vendetta within BRAMAN.
BRAMAN receives large sums of money from various organizations, both in Sicily and on the mainland. In our opinion, the size of these sums may well explain why Gracchi was murdered. While not renouncing other lines of investigation, we continue to look into the ties that bound Valerio Gracchi and Giovanni Verga. It is our belief that Gracchi had become a dissident partner in the financial organization of BRAMAN.
The glaring discrepancy between two eyewitness reports gives further weight to the Carabiniere theory that someone within BRAMAN was the murderer.
On the evening of his death, Gracchi was driving home to BRAMAN in the company of a young woman, Luciana Fiorini. Signorina Fiorini, an ex-addict from Milan, had spent the day with him in the television studios at Trapani. In a signed statement to the Carabinieri, taken just hours after the slaying, Luciana Fiorini states:
“We had got onto the unsurfaced road that leads to BRAMAN. It’s the only way into the commune. On the journey from Trapani I had never had the impression we were being followed. We were traveling slowly, at about thirty-five kilometers an hour—but then, Gracchi always drives slowly. When we got to the double bend, I heard three or four explosions.
The Second Day of the Renaissance Page 20