by Jeff Carson
Wolf waited again.
Marino glanced sideways at Lia, then back to Wolf.
“We’ve had some interesting developments in the last couple hours. We almost had all of north Italia going on a wild…turkey chase looking for this white truck of yours. A hunch from an American…consulente.”
“That wasn’t a hunch, I saw-”
“We found the truck,” he spoke loudly, holding up his index finger again. “Without having to call a national search, Officer Wolf. National search orders have to come from me.” He pecked his chest with his finger. “So officer Rossi took every action he could to keep me out of this cowboy show. I am in debt to him for that. And do you know why that eez Officer Wolf?”
Sergeant. “No.”
“They stopped the truck in question at the Trieste border within the last hour.” He held up a piece of paper between his thumb and index finger. “The truck was searched thoroughly, by human and by dog — much like many of the shipments that go through that border. There was nothing but the parts listed on the manifest prepared by the employee my officers harassed this morning at the Osservatorio di Merate!” His face flashed to a bright crimson, veins bulged in his temples.
“It was the wrong truck then,” Wolf said. “I know what I saw, and I saw a truck loaded with cocaine and stolen electronics.”
Marino began to chuckle, yanked a cigarette from the pack sitting on the desk, lit it, and dismounted in a high handed pirouette.
“Ah, yes! The brilliant piece of detective work you did last night! I hear you broke into the observatory grounds and saw some interesting things!”
“Yeah. I did see some interesting things.”
“Did you? Well, let me tell you a few interesting things. You were trespassing. Trespassing illegally in a foreign country. As my guest in our country,” he gestured wide with his arms, “you cannot come strutting into Italy on your horse and play cowboy, doing as you please. If you would have been caught, you would be in jail right now and there would be nothing I could do to get you out.”
“If I would have been caught I’d be dead like my brother right now. Because I was shot at! How are you turning a blind eye to this? You’ve got a pub fronting as a legitimate business, going around murdering people, smuggling stolen electronics and drugs! If you don’t care about that, then what the hell do you care about?”
Marino snapped his head to Wolf and let the silence hang for a beat.
“Don’t test me Officer Wolf. I am warning you.” Marino looked at the door, and back to Wolf for effect.
Wolf calmed himself with a deep breath. “I know what I did was out of line, and I could have put you in a very compromising position. But I haven’t tried to make you or your department look bad on purpose. I was acting on a hunch. A hunch I should have talked to you guys about first, I admit,” he said. “But I swear I saw what I saw.”
“And I will take your observations under consideration and proceed accordingly in due time, Officer Wolf. Just because you have a flight to catch back home doesn’t mean we can cut corners and ignore laws in this country. There is no evidence to go on here. Nothing! So, you are going to have to make a decision right now, Officer Wolf. You have to trust me, and trust officer Rossi, and trust officer Parente here, and the rest of our very capable Caribinieri to follow up with this case in due time, the proper way.”
Wolf exhaled hard and leaned his elbows on his knees.
Marino’s expression melted to sympathy, and he flopped down in the chair with a grunt. “Look at this from my point of view. I have hard, undeniable evidence that a man used a pipe to beat another man’s skull in, killing him in cold rage. I have fingerprints, usable fingerprints, in blood, on the weapon. I have evidence that both men were taking drugs. We all know what drugs can do to human beings. It can bring out otherwise hidden rages in a person.
“I have evidence that a man hung himself from his ceiling. I have evidence he died of strangulation. Putting those two pieces of evidence together tells me that I have evidence this man killed himself. There was no one else in the apartment at the time. We have a testimony from the upstairs neighbor that she did not hear anything at all. If there were men inside, she would have heard, would she not? The door to your brother’s apartment was locked from the inside, keys still in the door. All of the evidence points to no one being in the apartment that night.
“And then,” he gestured to Wolf, “we have the conviction of a brother who doesn’t want to believe the evidence that is staring him in the face.”
Wolf didn’t move. “You guys dismissed this case from the beginning. You haven’t given it enough attention. There’s more to it. You didn’t even perform an autopsy, which probably would have told you the bruise on his head was not after death, but before death. You would have found out my brother doesn’t take drugs. There wouldn’t have been any drugs in his system.”
A tinge of doubt crept into his mind with the last statement, but he kept his poker face. “If you would have followed up on the receipt in my brother’s pocket, you would have seen that he was at a pub the night he died. A pub owned by some shady individuals who are current or former gang members. The kind of guys you want to look into further. Guys that I now know are smuggling drugs. Undoubtedly the same cocaine that was found at my brother’s and at Dr. Rosenwald’s apartment.
“There wasn’t even an investigation into the night of his death. Who was he with? What exactly was he doing? Where were the people he was with? These questions didn’t come up for your investigators?”
Marino inhaled deeply and let the question hang.
“Officer Wolf, it looked like a suicide.” He swiped his hands together and held them up, a gesture Wolf was becoming intimately familiar with.
“Not to me.”
Marino took another drag and swiveled his chair to the side, smoke seeping from his nostrils. He stood up. “I will have my men look into it further. Officer Parente will help,” he said. “You have my word. Now I need you to go home and let us do our job.”
Wolf shook his head and looked to the dirty tile floor.
Marino sat on the edge of his desk. “You will let us do our job. Or we will risk having an international incident. I do not want to have to take you into custody, Officer Wolf. But I will not have you going around breaking into property and conducting an investigation by yourself. How would you like it if this happened in your town in Colorado? How would you deal with it?”
Wolf looked at Lia, who gave him a sympathetic sideways glance. He narrowed his eyes and stared back at the floor, coming to a lucid conclusion. “All right. I have your word you will look further into the pub owner and the observatory employee?” He stood up straight and tall.
Marino put his cigarette in his mouth and stood, hands out to his sides.
“You have my word.”
Wolf exhaled, looking to the ceiling, a resigned look on his face. “Okay. I’ll take the next day and get my brother’s things in order, then I’ll be leaving on Sunday morning.” He looked back down to Lia, who sat obediently. “Is it possible to get a ride to the airport on Sunday morning from officer Parente? Rather than take the train again?”
“If it is her day off. You will have to arrange that with her.”
“I’m on duty Sunday, sir,” she said.
“Then Lia will take you to the airport in the morning. You two can arrange it. Now if you will excuse officer Parente and myself, we need to speak about something.”
Wolf shook Marino’s hand and opened the door.
“Officer Wolf,” Marino called.
“Yes?”
“I’m very sorry. Good luck to you and your family.”
Wolf nodded and closed the door.
The room outside Marino’s office was subdued. A few officers pecked at their cream colored keyboards. The air was stagnant, hot and damp, windows all shut for some indiscernible reason.
Rossi looked up from his desk and ran over in a hurry. “David, I’m so sorry. Did you
hear about the truck?”
“Hi, Valerio. Yes, I did. They must have been spooked and changed their plans.”
Rossi shrugged. “I’m sorry. I was going to let you guys know about it, but I was just inside Marino’s office myself. I didn’t have a chance to call, then I saw you enter his office just now.”
“No problem. Don’t worry about it.”
Lia came out of Marino’s office behind Wolf.
“Why didn’t you tell us about the truck Valerio?” she hissed, closing the door.
“I was just telling David, I didn’t know about it until just now, then I had to talk to Marino. Then I didn’t get a chance to talk to you when you came in here.”
She shook her head in disgust, looking back at Marino’s office.
“Anyways, thanks Valerio,” Wolf held out his hand.
Rossi straightened and shook it. “You are welcome, Wolf. I wish you and your family the best of luck.”
“I would really appreciate it if you looked into this further after I leave.”
“David, I am going to look into this personally. I’ve already spoken to Marino about it. If they are running a smuggling operation, I will get the evidence needed to bring them in. Then we can find out if they are behind your brother’s murder, once and for all.”
Wolf fetched his brother’s computer from Paulo, said his goodbyes, and made his way down the stairs, giving one final wave to Valerio, who was dialing his phone. He stopped and put the phone to his chest. “Goodbye, David. Do not worry.” Rossi nodded his head with a steeled look.
He didn’t worry. He also didn’t give a shit what they did.
Lia was glancing at him frequently on the ride back to his brother’s house.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I’m thinking I let my brother down.” He looked at the hordes of Friday afternoon lake shore walkers whizzing by.
“We will…” She let the futile sentence die, sensing his mood.
Wolf glanced in the side mirror as they swept around a traffic circle, revealing another Caribinieri Alfa Romeo cruiser directly behind them.
He looked at her and nodded. “I appreciate it. I really do.”
They pulled up to the courtyard of his brother’s apartment building. He unbuckled his belt and climbed out.
“What are you going to do for the next couple days?” She leaned over the seat, looking up at him with perfect eyes.
“I’ll probably get some rest tonight and just pack up my brother’s things. Then, I have no clue,” he lied. “How about tomorrow night you pick me up and I take you out for a pizza?”
She smiled wide and laughed.
“There’s more to Italian cuisine than pizza! I will take you for Risotto Milanese.”
He shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” He closed the door and slapped the roof.
“I will see you at eight!” She rolled up the window and drove off with squealing tires.
Chapter 36
The room was pitch black save for the screen on his cell phone, the alarm on it chiming next to him. A bright flash flickered through the shutter slats from outside and the building rumbled. He ripped the sheets back and stood with a forced enthusiasm and walked to the bedroom balcony. He opened the sliding shutters, revealing a bright orange sunset sky with jet black storm clouds stacked up against the mountains. A long ground strike of lightning flickered for a two count halfway up the mountain followed by a deafening boom that shook the windows near the point of breaking. The thunder rolled long, sound waves sloshing back and forth across the lake against the surrounding mountains.
It jolted him into action. He put on his pants, socks, and shoes and ran up the stairs to Cristina’s.
He knocked loud and Cristina cracked the door, showing her big coffee eyes. She smiled pleasantly and opened the door wide. The apartment was filled with the sounds of modern electric jazz and an aroma that made his mouth water.
“How are you?”
“I’m doing well, how are you?” Wolf mused that he was telling the truth. The few hours’ nap had energized his mental and physical state.
“One second, come in!” she said shuffling to the stereo. She wore a pair of black tights without shoes, a long gray sweater and black leather belt that cinched to show her slender waist. Her sandy blonde hair was pulled up in a quick pony tail, and she swept the straggling strands behind her ears as she straightened.
“Please,” she beckoned again. “Come in.”
He realized he was just staring dumbly. She looked a lot better than he’d remembered, and she didn’t seem to be trying too hard. Maybe it was her chipper mood and spring in her step. Or the beautiful body, face, hair and eyes.
“Who was that?” He pointed to the stereo and shut the door behind him.
“Oh, it’s a group from New York. Incognito.”
“Okay. Yep.”
She looked skeptical. “Really? You? Country boy from the Colorado mountains?”
“Yeah. I like them actually. I’ve got some of their stuff, but I’ve never heard this CD.”
“It’s their newest. It’s great,” she said. She turned it a little louder. “I would think you listened to country music.”
“I do.”
She laughed, walking to the kitchen. “So what’s happening?” She lifted a pan lid revealing a simmering tomato sauce.
“I was hoping you could give me a ride somewhere tonight.”
“Right now? I’m about to eat. Are you hungry? I have plenty of food.”
He looked at the spread. “No, it can wait until later. And yes, I am hungry.”
They ate pasta and listened to jazz while it rained torrential sideways sheets outside, drumming the dining room window. They mostly swapped stories about John.
He felt energized after the conversations, meal, and the nap from before. “Cristina.” He looked at her with a serious expression.
“Yes? What’s going on?”
“I need to know about these guys who own this pub. The Albastru Pub that John was always going to.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know the guys from home? From before you came here?”
“No, I don’t. Why? Because we are both Romanian?”
Wolf wiped his mouth and looked out the window. The rain was letting up gradually. “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. How about this guy, Ferka Vlad, from the observatory? Did you know him from before?”
“I’ve met him before at the pub once. But it was just the one time. There really are a lot of people from Romania in Italy. But I don’t know many. I know that they are often looked at as criminals here, though. There is a lot of crime in northern Italy, where there is more money — more theft and people’s houses getting robbed. The finger is often pointed at the Romanian.” She shook her head. “There are bad Italians just like there are bad Romanians. But I do know that those guys at the Albastru Pub look bad. I would bet a lot of money they are criminals.”
“So would I.” Wolf looked out the window. She didn’t seem to be lying.
“Why? What’s going on? What have you found out?”
“I’m pretty sure that the owner of that pub and this guy Vlad killed my brother. But they’ve covered all their bases, and I can’t prove it. They’re smart. Or one of them is smart.” He set down his fork. “Or, they’re getting lucky.”
He looked around the kitchen, then got up and walked over to the knife set on the counter. He pulled four smaller knives on the bottom row, then checked the larger blades on the top. “You know my brother doesn’t have a single knife in his apartment other than four butter knives? Didn’t he ever cook?”
She laughed, then stopped, watching him put all but two blades back. He picked them up in one hand and brought them back to the table.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“I need these.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked. “You have to be careful with those guys from the pub. I’m serious. They are probably killers.”
>
“Yeah, I know.”
She shook her head with glistening eyes. “What are you going to do?”
“It will come to me.” He picked up the plates and put them in the sink. “They beat my brother over the head and strangled him to death. And they beat Matthew Rosenwald’s head in. Making it look like my brother did the whole thing.”
He fetched the blades from the table and put them back in the wooden housing.
“I’m going to just bring this down to my brother’s apartment, okay? I’m sorry, you’re going to have to get another set. If anything happens, I don’t want anything tied to you. And come to think of it, it really would be better if I could just borrow the scooter tonight.”
Chapter 37
Faint ambient light from the city beyond the piazza streamed into his brother’s otherwise pitch dark bedroom. His show of walking around in his underwear, turning off the lights in the entire apartment, as if turning in early, was over.
Now he was dressing quickly. Wearing the darkest clothes he had, without overtly looking like a cat burglar. The two most important things he wore were tucked into his socks — two kitchen knives, the blades loosely covered with folded paper towel sheathes to protect his skin.
His stomach was queasy with nerves. He was paranoid from seeing the Alfa Romeo in the side mirror earlier. But more importantly, he needed to prove something to himself. There was no other way to know for sure how the killers left his brother’s apartment, leaving it locked from the inside.
He patted the knives, twisting his ankles to test the tuck-job, adjusted his socks, and went to the balcony. The piazza was ninety degrees to his right and out of site, on the other side of the A-ridged roof. The roof extended straight out to a distance of at least fifty yards. He could hear the murmur of a bustling Friday night crowd and see bright lights pouring upward against the thick humid air, swirling with insects.
There was no moonlight shining on the ceramic roof. It was dark, difficult to get a sense of the exact angle of pitch. He knew it wasn’t too steep to navigate, no more than thirty degrees, but steep enough to keep his heart rate racing, and wet enough to quicken his pulse even more. If it was a ski slope, it would have been labeled black diamond.