“The guy recognized it and he forced the Dutchman to give him your name,” I summarized. I was in a hurry to understand what the story was, and Imbriani was a little slow with his exposition.
“He seemed like a bomb about to go off. He was stifling a rage so intense that he had a hard time talking.”
“So what did he tell you?”
“That his brother had died on account of that bracelet,” he replied, looking me in the eyes. “And that unless I told him the name of the man who sold it to me, he was going to kill me right then and there.
“I tried to reason with him, but he grabbed my wife by the throat and started squeezing, ordering me to talk. I was sure he was about to kill her.”
“The name was all he wanted?” I asked.
“Yes, he opened the door and disappeared.”
“Why didn’t you warn poor Oddo?”
He looked down. The moment of shame had arrived. “Fear. My wife had a hard time recovering. And resentment. Gastone hadn’t respected our agreement; he’d put us in danger.”
Bullshit. Business partners don’t treat each other like that. His silence had cost an innocent woman her life. “What’s this guy’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I’ll need the footage from the video camera in your shop.”
“We’re in Liège, Signor Buratti; here, discretion counts for more than security does.”
“Can you at least describe him for me?”
“Forty years old, average height, light brown hair; he wasn’t ugly, but his face was creased and tired.”
“Is that all?”
“His hands,” Imbriani added. “They were callused and beat-up.”
I stared into his eyes for a moment, trying to figure out if he was trying to trick me with that bullshit, but he seemed satisfied with his shrewd description.
I went back to my cup of caffè latte without saying another word. I wouldn’t even look at him. After a little while the fence stood up; he left a photo of the bracelet and headed off, mumbling a farewell.
Johnny Cash had just started in on Bonanza, the theme song from the famous TV series. Famous for me and the people of my generation, I mean. I’d never missed an episode, and it was quite a while before it dawned on me that those cowboys, with their sound principles, had none of the allure of real pioneers. They were nothing but members of a clan, forever fighting to defend their patrimony.
I wondered if the guy who had extorted Oddo’s name out of that idiot Imbriani was part of a clan.
* * *
Padua.
We’d returned the night before from Belgium with a decidedly flimsy lead from a treacherous, untrustworthy man. Max would follow up on it. Beniamino had gone back to his speedboat and I’d gotten up early to go meet Cora.
The jazz woman was reading the paper, glancing at her cell phone every now and then to check for texts or see what time it was. I went over to her table, flashing a smile.
“What’s the first thing a jazz singer does when she wakes up?” I asked.
The woman sighed. “She gets up, gets dressed, and goes home.”
I took a seat next to her without being invited. “I apologize for that sleazy musician’s joke but I didn’t know how to strike up a conversation.”
“Doesn’t it seem a little early to be bothering a lady?”
“A lovely lady,” I emphasized. “But anyway, yes, this is hardly the ideal time of day, but last night I couldn’t come to Pico’s. Otherwise I would have declared myself at just the right moment.”
She eyed me carefully. “Now that you mention it, your face isn’t new to me.”
“We’ve seen each other here, too, sitting at adjoining tables.”
She held out her hand. “Cora, pleasure,” she introduced herself briskly. “And now I’d like to go back to reading my newspaper.”
I ignored her words. I’d made up my mind to play the game out to the very end. “I know that you took voice lessons at my friend Maurizio Camardi’s school, and I also know your real name: Marilena.”
“And which name do you prefer?”
“Cora. To me, you’re only Cora, in a green dress with green shoes. Jazz woman.”
She seemed to like what I’d said, but her silence muffled my enthusiasm. I stood up to stave off further embarrassment. “I believe we’ll meet again in this café. You’re always welcome to share my table should the fancy strike.”
“Do you actually like me, or do you just think it’s worth giving it a try because I must be ‘easy,’ like all jazz singers?” she asked suddenly, touching her hand to her cheek.
“I like you a lot, more than a lot,” I said with conviction. “It’s been quite a while since a woman made my head spin like this.”
“No kidding,” she replied, her tone ambiguous; then she went back to reading.
I stood there looking at her in silence for a few seconds. No doubt about it, Cora knew how to floor a guy. I left the café stumped, but definitely more in love.
I swung by home. Max was sitting at his computer and gestured to me that he still hadn’t found out anything.
I put in my earbuds to continue the treatment Catfish had prescribed. The second CD was entitled I’m In Deep, after the song by the Altered Five Blues Band. The music made me particularly clear-minded and capable of analyzing my encounter with my Cora. It didn’t take me long to realize that this was a complicated situation. On the one hand, I couldn’t tell her the truth because that would mean betraying my pact with her husband. On the other, it was wrong to start a relationship based on a lie. Luckily, at the moment, the chance of anything really happening was decidedly slim and I had all the time I’d need to rack my brain for a solution. For the nth time, circumstances were against me. And that couldn’t be an accident. I was slipping inexorably into a wallow of self-pity when I saw the fat man coming toward me with a worried grimace.
“I want seafood,” he announced. “I’ve already talked to Beniamino. We’ll go to Punta Sabbioni, hop on his speedboat, and head for that little restaurant we know in San Pietro in Volta.”
“You don’t look like somebody who’s in the mood to celebrate.”
He shook his head decisively. “No. We’ve always worked twisted cases, but this one is the worst yet.”
“Obviously on the way over you’ll tell me all about . . .”
“No,” he said, cutting me off. “When you tell a story twice, there’s always a chance you’ll leave out crucial details. Plus, I need to think.”
Max was a man of his word. He split a pack of cigarettes with me, but said not a word—except to complain that it made no sense to spend a small fortune putting a stereo system into a car so old it didn’t even have air conditioning.
June had come, dragging with it a mantle of oppressive heat. I promised I’d talk to the mechanic, even if I already knew the answer.
Beniamino was fresh from a night on the high seas. He’d transported an old fugitive who, after many, many years in Bulgaria, had decided to come back and turn himself in to the cops—though not until after he’d seen his two daughters.
“It broke my heart,” said Rossini. “He looked like a homeless bum. He’d calculated his pension wrong, and going on the run has its costs.”
“Then where did he find the money to pay you?” I asked, knowing the fares my good friend charged.
Old Rossini opened his eyes wide in surprise. “The passenger traveled gratis, Marco.”
Of course. I should have guessed. The outlaw heart and its rules. I apologized; I’d opened my mouth without thinking.
To lighten the mood, Max started in on the air conditioning.
“This love affair of yours with old Škodas is the affectation of a radical-chic old schoolmarm,” Beniamino piled on as Sylvie’s powerful engine roared to life.
I refrained from responding. We were all tired, on edge, and worried about what the fat man was about to tell us.
Luckily, the trip was short and agreeable. The water was calm and a slight westerly wind provided a perfect antidote to the heat.
I was always happy to go to San Pietro in Volta, a charming little town on Pellestrina, one of the largest islands surrounding Venice. I liked lazing on the benches or walking along the waterfront. It was a place where time went by at a different pace.
That day, after tying up, we immediately slipped into a well-known restaurant. In silence, we ate our antipasti, which had been paired with an ice-cold white pinot.
When the waiter took our plates away, announcing the arrival of the risotto agli scampi in just five minutes, Beniamino turned to Max with an impatient gesture. “So, what have you found out?”
“The man who roughed up Imbriani and spouse in Liège to get Oddo’s name is called Kevin Fecchio, forty-three years old, a goldsmith by profession.
“The company in the Vicenza area where he still works was founded by his older brother Maicol—that’s the Venetian version of Michael. Maicol was considered a real artist and he was the one who designed a successful line of jewelry, starting with the bracelet that wound up in Imbriani’s hands. Business was going well, in fact it was booming, until the day that three armed robbers burst into the workshop and cleaned the place out. Before they made their getaway there was a struggle, and Maicol caught a large-caliber bullet in the gut. Kevin and the other employees were tied up and couldn’t get help to him in time. He died after many hours in excruciating agony.”
“Spezzafumo and his boys killed Maicol, so his little brother took revenge by murdering Oddo and his housekeeper and carting off two million,” I summed up.
“That’s exactly what seems to have happened,” Max the Memory confirmed.
I turned to catch Beniamino’s gaze. He was as flabbergasted as I was. The hand of a goldsmith, a businessman, might be behind the massacre in the villa. It was hard to believe.
“And that’s not all,” Max preempted us. “Kevin is now a prominent figure. Not only has he gotten the company back on its feet, he’s also an activist in that more-or-less grassroots political movement protesting the lack of public safety. He’s one of the first who leapt to defend the deli owner who shot and killed the would-be robber of Sinti origin a few months ago.”
The fat man turned on his tablet and showed us Fecchio’s Facebook page. He had a lot of followers. I skimmed the comments. It was the unfiltered voice of the Venetian heartland expressing itself. The voice that could be heard on television, read on the front pages of the newspapers. Mayors who were hailed for declaring that the Roma had no right to stay in their towns. Shopkeepers who fought back by opening fire, killed would-be robbers, and became heroes. Torchlight parades, T-shirts. Fear, exasperation, hatred. Lynch mob moods. And votes: So many votes that they ended the argument.
“Is he trying to land some political office?” I asked.
“Not at the moment. But he’s truly tireless when it comes to organizing.”
“Excellent cover if he really was involved in the robbery at the Oddo home,” Rossini commented.
“Do you have any doubts?” Max asked, astonished.
“A few,” he replied. “Why didn’t he go to the police? After all, he’s a civilian and his name never circulated in armed robbery circles. Nicola Spezzafumo would have caught wind of it.”
The old gangster wasn’t wrong. “We can always ask him,” I suggested faintly, guessing at the eventual meeting’s real reason: figuring out our role in all this and deciding what to do next.
Rossini shrugged. “It seems to me we don’t have any other choice if we want to get to the truth.”
“Kevin Fecchio is a public figure. We have to be very careful,” the fat man broke in.
“Then we need to know more and that’s your job,” I retorted.
A smile stretched across the fat man’s face. He couldn’t wait to get to work.
Old Rossini poured a round of drinks with a thoughtful air. “Spezzafumo and his henchmen are truly nasty people. That Maicol bled to death; very probably, he could have been saved. There’s no need to kill anyone just to steal some gold.
“And after all, if you wind up shooting some poor bastard in the guts just because you don’t know how to handle the situation, it means you’re not that good at what you do, and it’s time to retire.”
I felt a shiver run down my spine. “Are you planning to express your point of view to him?”
“At the first opportunity that presents itself,” he replied indignantly. “They need to find a new line of work before they start more trouble.”
I shot Max a look. This was proof that the job wasn’t going to be painless, and that someone was definitely going to get hurt.
We dropped the subject and, when it was time to head back, Beniamino took the long way around. The Sylvie seemed to wander over the waves. Stretched out in the prow of the boat, we enjoyed a picture-postcard sunset, shooting the breeze as if we were little kids. Late that evening, I found myself in a nightclub, talking about my Cora with a Colombian hostess. We were in the mood to share personal stories. I told her about my romantic sorrows, she confided that she was flying a virgin cousin over and trying to place her on the bridal market. She wasn’t sure what percentage she should take as a commission.
Rossini drank vodka in silence in the company of another “girl” who would most likely be forced into retirement soon. She’d been a friend of Sylvie’s back when Sylvie had danced in that same club, on the stage that the old gangster was looking at now, lost in his thoughts.
Max of course was ranting on about diets with other girls who had no customers to take care of. They were amused and laughing. When he wanted to, the fat man could deploy a self-deprecating irony whose comic beats were as good as any actor’s.
If we’d been younger, we might have—with a dash of imagination—resembled a trio of soldiers about to head back to the front or sailors getting ready to set out for the China Seas. Instead, we were just waiting to walk through the darkness of crime and lies, in the hope that the truth might help us to set matters straight.
Max the Memory didn’t take long to track down someone he could chat with about Kevin Fecchio. The man was a union organizer who had also known Maicol very well. The fat man had met this guy in the movement, when politics was by and large a matter of dreams. They’d since drifted out of touch, but a mutual respect had remained intact.
We met him early one morning at a pastry shop in Creazzo, in the province of Vicenza, a place known for the quality—and size—of its brioches.
Enzo, skinny and sick and tired of no longer being able to properly represent workers who were ever more discontented as their jobs grew ever more precarious, was very useful in giving us a sense of the world in which the Fecchio brothers moved.
Maicol was an entrepreneur in the true sense of the word. He’d built his company according to a precise plan that he’d continued to successfully expand until the day of his death. He had a dozen or so full-time employees with full benefits, and when he was under pressure to meet his orders he, like everyone else, paid freelancers under the table.
Kevin, according to the union organizer, was a hard worker and an immensely likeable person, who’d grown up in the shadow of his older brother. Maicol’s death had completely transformed him. He’d turned aggressive; it had become impossible to have a reasoned discussion with him. For a couple of years the company had teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, not so much because of specific problems related to Maicol’s death, but because Kevin had been unable to cope. Except for two of Kevin’s childhood friends, everyone else had been fired. And his private life hadn’t been going much better: His wife had left him, taking the children with her.
Then, suddenly, there had been a turning point. Fec
chio had managed to get back on his feet and revive his company.
Max tactfully probed to flesh out the timeline, and the union organizer was able to be fairly precise: The winds had started blowing in the company’s favor three months after the armed robbery at the home of Gastone Oddo.
As the evidence piled up, Kevin was becoming more and more interesting. The fact was that there was little doubt he’d been involved—but we were neither cops nor judges. We needed solid proof before we could present the check.
“I’ve heard he likes to play sheriff,” I tossed out, pretending I just wanted to make conversation.
Enzo lowered his voice: “He watched his brother die without being able to lift a finger to help him; the pain and grief sucked him dry of everything good he’d ever had in him.”
The union organizer had guessed that our interest in Fecchio went beyond the company and asked us if we needed to know anything in particular.
“We need to get in touch with him,” Max replied. “But we don’t know how. We ought to have a thorough knowledge of his private life but we don’t have time.”
The man made a baffled face. “He lives for his work and for the ‘cause.’ In his free time he always and only sees two friends, Sante Zanella and Vasco Merlin. But to be perfectly honest, there’s not much more I can add. After all, we move in completely different circles.”
“Are the other two men married?” I asked, following up on a hunch.
“Married with children, small-town life, the parish church, foosball, cafés. Normal guys.”
Once we were alone, we went out to smoke a cigarette. By then I had half an idea about how to continue our investigation. “A young man who works all damn day and spends his time with a group of good citizens whose politics are a little over the top, a man who wants to take justice into his own hands and who no longer lives with his wife—this young man, who does he fuck? Maybe he also runs with a more unusual crowd.”
“Are we really interested in finding out?”
For All the Gold in the World Page 5