FRATELLI FAIGANO — VINI E PRODOTTI TIPICI.
Zen stared at it with a deepening frown. Where had he seen that name before? The answer came to him almost immediately. It had been in the report that he had just been thinking of, the one on the Vincenzo case which Tullio Legna had delivered the day before, together with a map of the area and Zen’s truffle-laden cure. The Faigano brothers, or one of them, had been among the witnesses who had testified to the loud and public row which Manlio Vincenzo had had with his father at the village festa the night before Aldo was killed. This had apparently originated in a series of sarcastic gibes by Aldo on the subject of his son’s supposed homosexual inclinations, and had ended with Aldo disclosing in a loud voice that he had read a letter from Manlio’s lover, a young man named Andrea. It had been at this point that Manlio had stormed out of the gathering, not to be seen again until after the discovery of his father’s body.
The Faiganos’ improvised stall was tended by a teenage girl perched on a stool reading a pop music magazine. She looked up with a bored expression as Zen approached.
‘Good morning, signorina.’
She flashed him a dazzling smile which revealed the embryonic beauty that would soon remake her pasty adolescence.
‘Is it possible to speak to either of the brothers?’ asked Zen. ‘It’s a business matter.’
The girl pointed in an over-emphatic manner almost certainly copied unconsciously from one of her teachers.
‘They’re in the bar over there. The one across from the town hall.’
Zen thanked her and threaded his way through the crowds to the corner of the Via Vittorio Emanuele, which Tullio Legna had referred to as Via Maestra. In a similarly confusing touch, the cathedral square was officially billed as Piazza Risorgimento. The original designations would have been officially changed during the era of reunification — Zen could imagine the ceremony, complete with brass bands playing selections from Verdi — in a fit of patriotic fervour and keeping-up-with-the-rest-of-the-country, but now the ancient names were showing through the scrofulous paint of those discredited ideals.
The bar which the girl had pointed out to Zen was crowded with elderly men whose worn, wary faces and heavy-duty clothing contrasted sharply with those of the townspeople. The air was thick with rumbling dialect and cigarette smoke. Zen told the barman he was looking for someone called Faigano. The latter in turn consulted a group of men standing at the counter, one of whom nodded mutely towards a trio playing cards at a table in the corner. Zen made his way through the throng.
‘Signor Faigano?’
Two of the men looked up simultaneously.
‘Yes?’ one of them replied warily.
Zen took a card out of his wallet and placed it on the table. It was one of those he had had printed during his stay in Naples, identifying him as one Alfonso Zembla.
‘Excuse me for interrupting, but I wonder if you could spare a few minutes. I’m a reporter for the Mattino, the most important paper in Naples, and I’m working on a story about the Vincenzo case. I’ve got the basic facts, of course, but I need some colour and comment to round it out…’
The man sitting immediately beneath Zen picked up the card.
‘Naples, eh?’ he said.
‘You know it?’ asked Zen.
The man laughed shortly.
‘The furthest south I’ve ever been was Genoa, and that was back in the war…’
The third man at the table, who had not responded to Zen’s initial greeting, started to whistle a short, melodious refrain. Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.
‘Time I was off,’ he announced to no one in particular.
‘All right, Minot,’ said the other man, who had not spoken yet.
He, too, stood up, stretching lazily.
‘I’d better go back and give Lisa a hand with the stall,’ he said through a forced yawn.
‘Take care, Maurizio,’ said the first man.
‘You too.’
‘May I?’ asked Zen, sitting down in one of the chairs thus vacated.
The remaining man held out his hand.
‘Gianni Faigano. It’s an honour to meet you, Dottor Zembla, but to be perfectly honest I don’t know how much help I can give. I’m just a simple man, and I don’t read the papers. To tell you the truth, I can hardly read at all. My brother Maurizio, he’s the smart one. He does all the paperwork, but he doesn’t like to talk. So there you are! We make a good team.’
‘So can we,’ suggested Zen, with just the suspicion of a wink. ‘You do the talking and I’ll take care of the paperwork.’
Gianni Faigano shrugged.
‘Why me, dottore? Look at all the people in here, and out there at the market. Any of them could have told you what you want to know. Yet you chose me. Why?’
‘I’d heard the name.’
‘Where?’
Various possibilities presented themselves to Zen’s mind, and he decided instinctively to go for the riskiest. What had he to lose, after all?
‘Someone told me that it was you and your brother who did it.’
There was a long, intense silence.
‘Did what?’ demanded Gianni Faigano.
‘Killed Aldo Vincenzo.’
Faigano inclined his head and laughed with what seemed like genuine amusement.
‘Now who told you that, dottore?’
Zen frowned and pretended to consult his notebook.
‘Someone called… Wait a moment. Ah, here we are! Beppe Gallizio. So when I saw your stall in the market I asked the girl there — Lisa, is it? — where I could find you.’
Gianni Faigano turned his misty brown eyes on Zen.
‘I heard that Beppe met with an accident.’
‘That’s right. Which, of course, would make you even more of a suspect, if I were to tell the police what he said to me.’
Zen paused to light a cigarette.
‘But I’ve no intention of doing that. All I want to know is what happened the night Aldo Vincenzo was killed.’
A brief laugh from Faigano.
‘Eh, we’d all like to know that!’
‘What people think happened, then. What they’re saying about it. A bit of background for my story, and the more scandalous and colourful the better.’
Gianni Faigano glanced around, as though to check whether he could be overheard.
‘I’ve heard a couple of stories. I’m not saying there’s anything to them, mind you, but…’
‘Don’t worry, this is all off the record.’
The other man looked at him acutely.
‘But is it on… What do you call it?’
‘What?’
‘When the people who hired you pay for everything.’
‘On expenses? Of course.’
Gianni Faigano smiled slowly.
‘In that case, I think we should talk about it over lunch,’ he said.
The resulting meal was by no means the first time that Aurelio Zen had had occasion to dine out with men for whom the principal point of the exercise seemed to be to make themselves look good by giving the staff of the restaurant a hard time. Service, food, wine, the menu itself: nothing passed muster by their exacting standards. Other patrons — credulous, ignorant or weak — might be taken in, or too feeble to protest, but not them!
Dishes and bottles of wine would be sent back, or grudgingly accepted after a long critique of their multiple defects. The course of the meal would be interrupted by long negotiations with the waiter, the implication being that while the establishment was capable in principle of producing the genuine product, otherwise they would not have favoured it with their patronage, it equally obviously was not going to do so for just anyone, only for those who had aggressively demonstrated their credentials as true connoisseurs, not to be fobbed off with anything less.
So far from being the type to play games of this kind, Gianni Faigano had struck Zen as someone who would eat whatever was put in front of him and be grateful to have it. T
his erroneous impression was dispelled the moment they reached the restaurant his guest had suggested, in a side street just off the piazza where the weekly market was now winding down. Even before they were seated, Faigano had pointedly objected to the table they were offered. And once this was rectified, he proceeded to find fault with the selection of daily specials, and, most vociferously, with the truffle with which it was proposed to adorn their meal.
‘At least a week old,’ he declared, having taken a briefly dismissive sniff. ‘And it’s not even from the best area.’
A selection of other tubers was brought to the table, and one eventually met with Gianni’s grudging — sigh, grimace, shrug, not-much-but-what-can-you-expect-in-a-place-like-this? — gesture of heavily qualified approval.
Next it was the turn of the cellar.
‘Macche? Only a couple of bottles I’d drink, even on my deathbed, and they’re priced for the Swiss and German tourists. No, no, dottore! I may be your guest in one sense, but in another and more important one you’re mine. I can’t have you come all the way from Rome — I mean Naples — and be held to ransom like this. Wait here.’
He got up and stomped out of the restaurant. Zen sat glumly sipping mineral water and nibbling at a bread-stick, feeling fairly sure that Faigano had used this as an excuse to back out and that he would never see him again. But he was wrong. A few minutes later, his guest returned with an unlabelled bottle which he handed to the waiter and told him to open ‘with the greatest care’.
‘Our own,’ he explained to Zen. ‘Not one of the best years, but at least we’ll know what we’re drinking.’
Nor was that all. When the food began to arrive, Faigano proceeded to denigrate the quality of the insalata di carne cruda, finely minced raw veal seasoned with oil, lemon and garlic, then to complain that the risotto was overcooked and too dry, and finally to interrogate the waiter in considerable and sceptical detail about the provenance of the hare, which, stewed in wine and its own blood, formed the basis of the main course. Once these formalities had been disposed of, he glanced at Zen in a worldweary, man-to-man way and proceeded to eat his way through the whole five courses on offer while managing to suggest that he was doing so simply as a favour to the management, to avoid them losing face before a distinguished visitor from out of town.
In his spare time, he outlined his views on the Aldo Vincenzo case.
‘No one round here ever believed that Manlio did it. Quite apart from anything else, he doesn’t have the balls, if you’ll excuse the expression.’
‘But I was told that he and his father had a big row at the festa the night before Aldo died,’ Zen replied.
Gianni Faigano gestured dismissively.
‘They were always quarrelling about one thing or another. I don’t blame the boy. Aldo’s mistake was sending him abroad. He learned foreign ways and manners and got strange ideas in his head. When he left, he was a good, obedient son, but when he got back he had changed. Our little world here in the Langhe seemed provincial to him. Aldo tried to bring him back to heel, but the damage had been done.’
He finished the last of his risotto and looked round critically for the waiter.
‘That’s a nasty-looking cut you’ve got there, dottore,’ he remarked, still looking over his shoulder. ‘Quite fresh, too, by the look of it.’
‘I slipped in the shower.’
Now that the anaesthetic was wearing off, he could feel the stitches as a dull, persistent tugging in his forehead.
‘Probably a woman,’ said Gianni Faigano, signalling to the negligent minion.
Zen peered at him.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘They used to burn them for it, round here.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Zen replied, indignant yet oddly disturbed by the turn the conversation had taken. ‘I was completely alone. It was just an accident.’
Faigano smiled.
‘There are no such things as accidents, dottore. Everything that happens has its cause. And when a healthy man like you injures himself as badly as that, it’s almost certainly woman’s work. Someone’s put a hex on you, maybe even without knowing it herself. But there’s a way to break the spell.’
‘What’s that?’ Zen found himself asking, despite his better judgement.
Gianni Faigano leant forward, as though imparting some forbidden mystery.
‘Find another woman, one who really loves you. Then the other one won’t be able to harm you any more. Despite everything, good is more powerful than evil in the end.’
They were distracted from these abstruse speculations by the arrival of the lepre al civet, which Gianni Faigano proceeded to damn with praise so faint as to be practically imperceptible.
‘Let’s get back to the subject,’ Zen interrupted briskly. ‘You say that no one here believes that Manlio killed his father. So who do they think did it?’
‘That depends who you ask. Everyone’s got their own theory.’
And what’s yours?’
Gianni Faigano poured them both some more of the dark brick-red wine.
‘You like it?’ he asked, tapping his glass. The wrinkled skin of his finger contrasted oddly with the smooth, pink tip whose nail had apparently been torn away.
‘It’s excellent.’
‘We don’t mess around with our wine,’ Gianni Faigano said solemnly. ‘We don’t make any money off it either. Some people might say that there’s a connection.’
‘But plenty of people around here do make money from their wine,’ Zen pointed out. ‘Aldo Vincenzo, for one. Did he mess around with his wine?’
Faigano shook his head decisively.
‘No, no! The top producers don’t need to. They can make their wine the same way I make mine, using the traditional methods and not cutting any corners, and then charge whatever they want. But that end of the market is very small and very crowded. The rest of us have to try to make a living further down. Most of us manage to get by, but others do rather better. Very much better, in a few cases.’
‘And what has this got to do with the Vincenzo case?’
Once again, Gianni Faigano leant forward conspiratorially across the table.
‘The Carabinieri are questioning Lamberto Latini about the death of Beppe Gallizio,’ he whispered. ‘What they don’t know is that Latini wasn’t the only person at Beppe’s house that morning.’
Zen allowed his eyes to open wide.
‘Who was the other?’
Faigano returned to eating his meal with the air of someone who has now earned it.
‘A little while ago,’ he said conversationally, ‘Aldo Vincenzo was implicated in a case involving the export of wine which had been falsely labelled.’
‘There’s money to be made in that?’
Faigano shrugged.
‘Wine’s not heroin. But buying generic Nebbiolo at a few hundred lire a litre, and then selling it as Barbaresco Riserva Denominazione di Origine Controllata at fifty to a hundred thousand a bottle? I’d say there was money to be made.’
Zen paused to swallow a morsel of the succulent hare stew.
‘But why would Aldo Vincenzo risk his reputation by getting involved in something like that?’
‘Because he was greedy!’
For the first time, Faigano showed some sign of personal feeling. He leant still nearer to Zen, his voice a fervent undertone and his stubby, gnarled fingers stabbing the table to emphasize every point.
‘He was one of the richest men in the area, with most of the best land. But he always wanted more. More money, more land, more power, more of everything! And he didn’t care what he had to do to get it. He tried to get that son of his to rape my niece so that the Vincenzo family would get its hands on our property when Maurizio and I died! What do you say to that?’
Zen took another sip of wine.
‘I’d say that it made you a suspect in his death, Signor Faigano.’
Gianni laughed.
‘Ah, but if I’d really done it,
I wouldn’t have told you that, would I?’
Zen said nothing.
‘Anyway, the authorities claim that Aldo and another local producer were involved in a scheme to sell several thousand cases of falsely labelled wine,’ Faigano went on. ‘Apparently they’d bought off the local authorities, but when the shipment of bogus Barolo was seized in Germany, there was nothing they could do.’
Zen took out his notebook.
‘Who was the other man?’
Gianni Faigano paused a moment.
‘It’s all on record anyway, so there’s no harm in telling you. His name is Bruno Scorrone, and he runs a winery near Palazzuole. He buys in grapes from local growers, on a lowest-price-per-kilo basis. Sometimes wine, too, when there’s a glut or someone needs some cash fast. I’ve heard some people say he trucks in wine from down south, too, and uses it for blending, but that may just be malicious gossip.’
He grinned at Zen.
‘There’s a lot of that around here.’
‘I still don’t see how Aldo Vincenzo comes into all this.’
Gianni Faigano sighed expressively.
‘To sell wine as Barbaresco, you have to be able to show provenance from land in a DOC zone. Scorrone doesn’t own any such land, but the Vincenzo family do.’
‘But surely they use it to make their own wine.’
‘Ah, but here’s the trick! With controlled zones, there’s a maximum permitted yield — so many grapes to so much ground. Understand?’
Zen nodded.
‘But the best grapes are always the fewest. The flavour is denser and more concentrated, and so is the wine. Only the top growers can afford to prune their vines that hard, to keep their yields down and reject any grapes that don’t come up to scratch. Men like Aldo Vincenzo, whose wines command the highest prices. That leaves a gap between what they actually produce and the permissible regulated limit, wine which was never actually made but which would have been entitled to call itself Barbaresco if it had. It was that ghost wine that Bruno Scorrone was selling abroad.’
Zen shook his head.
‘All right, let’s assume that Vincenzo and this Scorrone were involved in a contraband wine racket. Why should Scorrone have killed him?’
A long finish az-6 Page 7