The Second Day of the Renaissance

by Timothy Williams

  “Wasn’t she in love? They’d lived together—and she’d returned to be with him in Sicily. Wasn’t it Guerra who’d been trying to get the enquiry going again?”

  “She wasn’t interested in stirring muddy waters—all an act. She simply felt she had to imitate whatever Chiara Gracchi was doing.”

  “They’d been lovers—and they were still friends.”

  “Precisely why she killed him.”

  Wilma shook her head, “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Gracchi’d always been in love with Lia Guerra. Ever since she was a teenager, ever since the day in Milan they met during a fight with the Celere.”

  “Who?”

  “One of those street battles between the armed police and radical students—they happened all the time in the early seventies. It was love at first sight—or at first hurled cobble. She was still a child, trying to break free of her home and her parents. He was a leading light in Lotta Continua. The night they met she was in his bed.” Trotti added, “Like Laura and Petrarca.”

  She grinned with satisfaction. “You see, you are a romantic.”

  “Not Lia Guerra. She wasn’t interested in sex. Not in those days. Dictatorship of the proletariat was more her line. More interested in the coming revolution than having the sweaty hands of a man all over her body.”

  “There’s more to romance than just sex.”

  Trotti frowned.

  “There’s love.”

  “Lia Guerra’d grown up in a private school and the nuns’d put her off men. Which would explain why Gracchi left her in the end. After five years, they weren’t going anywhere. He realized she’d never share herself with him. Gracchi’d always loved her—loved her a lot more than he ever loved his first wife in Turin. Unfortunately, Lia Guerra didn’t love him in the way that every man wants to be loved.”

  “In the way every man wants?”

  Trotti looked at the young woman. “You haven’t found out?”

  “Men can be very frightening, you know.”

  “I’m frightening, signorina?”

  “An irritable mouse with a potbelly and a friendly smile.”

  “I’m supposed to be flattered?”

  “Tell me about Lia Guerra.”

  Trotti put another sachet of sugar into the spremuta and stirred the milky, cool water. The ices cubes clicked noisily.

  “Gracchi went off and married Chiara—while Guerra spent a couple of years with the unlamented journalist Maltese. Didn’t take her long to see she couldn’t live with Gracchi, but she couldn’t live very well without him, either. She took up drugs, and from then on her life went into a downward spiral. Perhaps it was fortunate Maltese got himself killed.”

  “Fortunate her boyfriend was murdered?”

  “Lia Guerra knew I wanted to arrest her—it was Pisanelli, the man you saw at the Termini, who stopped me. Lia Guerra fled to Switzerland. Nearly thirty years old, the woman was on drugs and single. In Switzerland, she started to panic. She could do something about the drugs, but she couldn’t do much about getting old. The two men of her life had disappeared, and Lia Guerra, the Marxist pasionaria, began to see she was no different from all other women. The sweaty hands of a man have their uses. Lia Guerra wanted a family of her own.”

  “But Gracchi was married?”

  “Happily married and living in Sicily with a wonderful, loving wife and a beautiful child—even if perhaps he was still in love with his pasionaria from the Po valley.” Another sip. “I can’t say I ever found Guerra attractive.”

  “Surprised you find the time to think about that sort of thing.”

  “What sort of thing do you want me to think about, signorina?”

  98: Genome

  “Eight years and everybody’s been looking for the killer—and it’s the provincial flatfoot who’s found her without even looking.”

  Trotti turned back to the girl. “Didn’t really have to look.”

  “You wouldn’t be arrogant, would you?”

  “Why arrogant? Arrogant people want everyone to believe they’re sure of themselves.”

  “You’re sure of yourself?”

  Trotti allowed himself a brief smile. “I don’t much care what others think of me.” He looked at the girl, at her high cheekbones. “You were working as a whore in Milan?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Wilma retorted hotly, but the skin turned darker.

  “That’s what the paper said.”

  “Give up reading papers, signor ispettore, if you’re going to believe everything they say. Or stick to the funnies.”

  “How else could Spadano blackmail you?”

  “What blackmail are you talking about?”

  “I’m too old to believe in coincidences. Your waiting for the same train at Santa Maria Novella wasn’t a coincidence. Telling me you were looking for your father wasn’t a coincidence.”

  “I just told you my father works in Mestre. He’s a mason.”

  “On the train, you asked me to look for your father. You said your father was Valerio Gracchi.”

  A glint of teeth as her lips parted in a pretty smile. “I was lying.”

  “And that’s funny?”

  “It’s funny seeing Commissario Trotti getting hot under the collar. You’ve never been lied to before by a pretty young woman?”

  “Pretty young woman? You wouldn’t be arrogant, would you?”

  “Arrogant people want everyone to believe they’re sure of themselves.”

  “You’re sure of your youth and your beauty?” Trotti was no longer smiling. He leaned forward in his seat and tapped the tablecloth in poorly concealed irritation. “You were alone in Florence and you looked unhappy and lost. I tried to be helpful. Why’d you lie to me?”

  “I was very cold.”

  “The long and convoluted story about your mother . . .”

  “Is true.” Wilma nodded briskly as the smile slowly died on her lips. “The wonderful black nurse who happens to be my real mother lives in Los Angeles, and she’s just what I told you—a selfish bitch. An aging princess with beautiful black skin and thick, sensuous lips, with lustrous hair and a wonderful, doting husband. The black princess farmed me out—she farmed her own daughter out for adoption in Memphis, and I should hate her. I should hate the bitch—a complete stranger took me in and gave me more love than my own mother ever knew how to give. My adoptive parents in Evanston never skimped in their affection—and when I turned up at Los Angeles airport, all my real mother could spare me was a half-hour of her precious time. And a picture of her Nissan car.”

  Wilma was no longer relaxed, and she was no longer bantering or teasing. The dark pupils were immobile, while her hand on her thigh worried nervously at the fabric of the white shorts.

  “The bitch’s my mother and there’s nothing I can do to change that, damn it. As tough as nails and she’s a selfish, unfeeling monster. But the monster’s my mother and her genes are my genes.” Wilma shook her head vehemently, unhappily, as if trying to chase a bad memory. “I needed her to love me because I’d always loved her. Still do. And instead of telling me she was sorry she’d abandoned me or that she was pleased to see me, she talked to me about her car.” There were fresh tears in her eyes as she asked, “Can’t you see why I had to come to Italy?”

  “To see your father in Mestre?”

  She wiped a tear with the back of her hand.

  “You met him?”

  Wilma nodded glumly. “I found him in the telephone directory and he agreed to see me. We met up in a bar and all he could do was look at my chest.”

  “You wanted him to look at your shoes?”

  “We met in a bar in the Piazza San Marco in Venice—like something out of a novel. It was romantic—it could’ve been the key scene in a romantic film. A bad romantic film.”

  “Why?�
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  “Where had he been these last twenty years? I wanted my real father to tell me he’d thought about me. I wanted him to tell me he was proud of his daughter, that I’d done well, that I’d gone to college. I wanted him to see his American daughter’d grown up into a serious, sensible, affectionate young woman. To see I’d learned Italian because my father was Italian. And all the stupid bastard could do was drool over me—his own flesh and blood.”

  “That’s when you started prostituting yourself in Milan?”

  Wilma banged the table, and heads turned in surprise. “You can’t believe that crap.”

  “Spadano set you up as a decoy. He wanted to get his hands on Enzo Beltoni and he used me to do it. Spadano knew I wouldn’t stick my neck out for his sake—so he used you. He knows all about my past, about Eva.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “A Uruguayan I once got involved with—I twice got involved with.”

  “A prostitute?”

  “A black, Uruguayan whore who carries her prison around on her back, just like a snail.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “How would I know?”

  Wilma relaxed. She sat back in her seat and her hand smoothed the legs of her shorts. “You know, in your own way, you’re rather sweet, ispettore. Anybody ever tell you there’s something about you—something almost feminine?”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “I can understand how a woman could fall in love with you—despite those terrible pink ears of yours that stick out like an irritable mouse’s.”

  99: Two

  “Feminine?”

  “You listen to people. Please don’t take offense—it’s just that men tend to be more interested in Juventus or Totocalcio than the workings of the human heart.”

  “I spent my last years in the Polizia di Stato shuttling between the Questura and the hospital, talking to abused girls. Or abused girls who’d grown up into abused women. I had no choice but to listen to what they were saying.”

  “What did they say?”

  “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m not a nurse, not a social worker—just a bad-tempered old policeman.”

  An exaggerated sigh. “What did these girls say to you?”

  “They started pouring out their confessions. I became an ear for them.”

  “A big, pink ear.”

  “They saw me as a father.”

  “Me listening to you now—do I see you as a father?”

  “You see me as a big, pink ear.”

  “Answer my question—you’re a father figure to me?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Why do I listen to everything you say?”

  “Your dream’s always been to speak with the nasal accent of a peasant from the hills beyond the Po.”

  “I consider you as a surrogate father?”

  “You grew up in Chicago, Wilma, where you were never wanting for love. No, I don’t think you see me as your father. You’ve got a father back in America—not a blood father, but a real father all the same.”

  “If I have a father, why did I feel I had to find him? What brings me to Italy? Why look for the man who made me?”

  “You’re afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  Trotti had the feeling that they were alone, just him and the girl. The piazza— the other customers sitting under the bright Punt e Mes parasols, the waiter, the gypsy children—had nothing to do with either of them. He allowed himself a broad smile and with his open hand, he gestured towards the flat belly visible between her waist and the bottom of the short top. “There’s a child in there.”

  Wilma retorted, “I hope not.”

  “Perhaps two children. At the moment, they’re biding their time, waiting for their mother to decide on the road she wants to go down. In time they’re going to start kicking and start wanting to come out.”

  “Not sure about that.”

  “A handsome stranger just a few years older than you is going to help you bring them into this world.”

  Wilma had raised an eyebrow.

  “Those children, the children that you and this man are going to create—you’re going to love them. Love them with all your heart. You know that, Wilma, better than I do, but sometimes, when you’re thinking about Wilma’s children—the little boy and the little girl—just sometimes you become afraid. Afraid Wilma Barclay’ll turn out to be a mother like your Los Angeles princess.”

  The pretty face darkened.

  “Being a mother’s something you learn—it’s not genetic. You know that—but still you’re frightened. By looking for your mother and your father, you were looking for an answer.”

  “What answer?”

  “And now you have it.”

  “What answer? What question?”

  “You’re Wilma Barclay, a young woman who grew up in a happy, close family, and within a few years you’re going to have a happy, close family of your own.”

  A smile hovered at the corner of her lips.

  “The only thing that matters is love—complete and unconditional love. The love you had in your adopted family—not what you hoped to find in Venice or Los Angeles.”

  She put her head to one side, paused, smiled brightly and said, “I was right when I said you liked children.”

  “You’ll never be a Los Angeles princess.”

  “You see me as a child, signor ispettore?”

  “I scarcely know you, Wilma.”

  “Just for once, answer the question I ask you—d’you see me as a child?”

  “When I thought they’d killed you, you haunted my days and my nights and I wanted to die. Nobody deserves to die so young and so beautiful.”

  “You want to die now? Now that I’m sitting here in front of you?”

  “They told me you were a whore.”

  “You believed them?”

  “Never.”

  “But you thought I was dead?”

  “Wilma, damn it. I saw your body and I saw the bloodstains and I saw your leg sticking out from under the sheet. I stood looking at your lifeless body and I wanted to die.”

  “I hated doing that.”

  “Then why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice—it just takes a lot of courage to make the right one.”

  “They’d have thrown me out of Italy. They said I might even have to face charges of lewd conduct back home.”

  “What lewd conduct?”

  “I’d gotten involved with a man and I thought he was my friend.” Wilma bit her lip. “Not a good-looking man or anything, but he’s American, and when I met him I was feeling lonely and he was kind to me. The family I was au pairing for wasn’t very nice.” She gave a small shudder. “I needed friendship—the little American girl all alone and lost in the big, strange city of Milan.”

  “Doesn’t sound very lewd.”

  Wilma raised her shoulders in a resigned shrug. “He was sweet. A lot older than me of course—but then, as you say, I was probably missing Daddy—good, sweet, dyed-in-the-wool Daddy.”

  “What happened?”

  “Harry got arrested.”

  “Why?”

  “One day we were stopped in the street. Stopped by the cops in the viale Argentina. We were on the way to the cinema and he got arrested. Immoral earnings.”

  “You were hanging out with a pimp?”

  “I swear I didn’t know. To me he was lovely—ispettore, with me Harry was really charming.”

  “I’ve never met a charming pimp.”

  “How was I to know he was a pimp?”

  “Where on earth did you meet him?”

  “At the US consulate—and he made me laugh. An American, but the family came from Naples.
”

  “Harry?” Trotti looked at the girl, frowned and held up his hand.

  The gypsy children had returned to the plaza. They now had a different football; it was red and it seemed properly inflated. It bounced noisily off the walls of the church.

  “A Neapolitan? About forty years old?”

  “Thirty-seven.”

  “Tall, very pale and blond hair that’s combed flat across the top of his head?”

  “You know him?”

  “Smokes a lot—one cigarette after another? And eats garlic?”

  “You know Harry?”

  Trotti laughed. “I hope you two made love.”

  “Why?” The face clouded with offense. “You have strange ideas about girls from Illinois.”

  “Not sure your Harry’s going to get another chance to share his body with any innocent and naïve girl from Illinois. My goddaughter Anna was rather heavy-handed with him—or rather, with Harry’s testicles.”

  “Your goddaughter’s a surgeon?”

  “I suppose she is.”

  100: Avignon

  They showed little generosity towards the shoeless young beggars; the Japanese tourists clutched their cameras nervously.

  An American woman carrying a shoulder bag—Italy Tours Desmoines—smiled at a little boy. She was in her late sixties, her hair was tinted blue, and she wore bright pastel clothes, tan slacks and sensible shoes. She came out of the church hand in hand with her husband and gave a handful of coins to the boy.

  The child’s immediate smile was a brilliant grin that split the narrow face. Suddenly there was a crowd of children thronging the couple; the woman and her husband were importuned by the clamoring children until they had crossed the piazza and disappeared from Trotti’s sight.

  “She admitted she killed him?”

  Wilma had been silent, and her question awoke Trotti from his daydreaming.

  “Lia Guerra admits she’s responsible.”

  “That doesn’t mean she killed him.”

  “It’s possible she flew down from Rome. She may have stolen the car in Messina—but I imagine she has an alibi. She may even have shot Gracchi in the head. More likely she got an accomplice from BRAMAN to do the job. One of the inmates.”